loops and hacks

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Where've I been so long? Oh, you know, out. In San Francisco this past weekend, covering WonderCon for Publishers Weekly, and not doing too much else there, besides hanging out with Maya and Ben and Robin a bit, and going with the former two to the Secret Café, a wonderful vegan restaurant that's open one night a month, by appointment only. I actually have a bit of a rant about 52, about which I should note that I'm ridiculously psyched, and the elephant in the room of the mainstream comics industry, but I'm going to wait until I'm not coughing every 20 seconds & can think a little straighter about it.

Other than that, it's all a blur--the only thing I can remember doing since the last thing I posted here was singing "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at karaoke. In early February.

Speaking of my attempts to sing: this Sunday, Lisa and I will be playing a couple of songs at Mississippi Pizza as part of Dolly Parton Hoot Night. It should be... interesting. I've been listening to a bunch of old Dolly records, and being impressed all over again by what an incredible singer she is. On the reissue of Just Because I'm a Woman that I picked up in San Francisco, there's a live version of "Just Because I'm a Woman" itself (from a 1970 show at a high school in Sevierville, Tennessee!) where she mutters "there's a lot of truth in this verse" right before the lines about "a man will take a good girl and ruin her reputation/But when he wants to marry, well, that's a different situation..." And then she sings the not-yet-recorded "Coat of Many Colors," and the high school trembles with cheers.

The record at which I've been staring with wide-eyed horror for the last week, though, is Florence Farmer's "Living Legend," one of the rarer original James Brown productions, released (in the same sense that one releases a felon) in 1969 or so. A two-part single, with a warbling big-band medley of J.B.'s standards behind Farmer simperingly reading... something that somebody wrote, gee I wonder who. A relatively brief excerpt from part 1:

I know I could never end this story
No matter how hard I tried
It could last forever and ever
Because when you're talking about a man like this
You're never reluctant to endeavor
We love you, James!
This man will never walk alone! We won't let him,
As long as there's a human race!
Because we have freedom of speech, you know,
To which he keeps a tremendous pace
Now I've seen so many artists
But none with so much finesse
No wonder all those girls holler
When they see the way he's dressed
He designs all his own clothes, you know
Did I forget to tell you this is Mr. James Brown?
The one and only James Brown?
James Brown has been around the world
Oh, at least a hundred times or more
And all of the people that he's met--his friends, his classmates, anybody, anywhere at any time--They've never been a bore

I can't even parse some of that.

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This page contains a single entry by Douglas published on February 14, 2006 12:50 AM.

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