#ronnie barron

[guessimdumb]

Dr. John (Ronnie Barron) - Did She Mention My Name? (1964)

A friend played this wonderful NOLA soul tune for me recently, and I found it hard to believe it was Dr. John.  That’s because it wasn’t Mac Rebennack singing, it was Ronnie Barron. Mac Rebennack had come up the the persona of Dr. John, the night tripper, and he wanted Ronnie Barron to play the role.  Ronnie wasn’t having it, and the rest is history.  Mac did write the song, and there’s a  record which credits Ronnie Barron though it’s a bit faster.

[mychameleondays]

Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones

Island ORL 19762, 19??

Originally released: September 1, 1983

[rainingmusic]

Gene Clark - Some Misunderstanding

[seymourmusicclub]

08-Doing Business With The Devil /Ronnie Barron

[adsmusiconstellations]

Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang - Dixie Fever (1976)

https://www.wewantsounds.com

[retrogoldenmemories]

The guy from Above The Law & Code Of Silence

[mariocki]

RIP Malcolm 'Dr. John' Rebennack (20.11.1941 - 6.6.2019)

"See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea."

[herederosdelkaos]

Llevo horas encerrado en esta sala para interrogatorios, la potente luz blanca de la bombilla sobre mi cabeza me causa migraña y mis manos esposadas a una fría mesa de metal, hace tiempo que se han entumecido.

Por si fuera poco, me gruñen las tripas, me siento sucio y no he vuelto a ver a mis hijos desde que esos hombres me separaron de ellos, Dios quiera y se encuentren bien.

Sé que debí sacarlos cuando pude, pero ¿Qué más podía hacer?, en aquel momento estábamos entre la espada y la pared, creí que hacia lo correcto al confiar en él, después todo era nuestro amigo, nuestro líder, nuestro pastor. Texto completo.

[odk-2]

Dr. John, The Night Tripper - I Walk On Guilded Splinters Dr. John Creaux (Mac Rebennack) from: “Gris-Gris” (LP)

Fusion | New Orleans R 'n' B | Psychedelia | Voodoo

JukehostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Album Personnel: Dr. John Creaux: Lead Vocals / Keyboards / Guitar / Percussion Harold Battiste: Bass / Clarinet / Percussion Richard 'Didimus' Washington: Guitar / Mandolin / Percussion Plas Johnson: Saxophone Lonnie Boulden: Flute Steve Mann: Guitar / Banjo Ernest McLean: Guitar / Mandolin Bob West: Bass Mo Pedido: Congas John Boudreaux: Drums

Backing Vocals: Jessie Hill Ronnie Barron Shirley Goodman Tami Lynn

Produced by Harold Battiste

Recorded: @ The Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California USA during 1967

Album Released: on January 22, 1968

[ltwilliammowett]

The Fourth Rate

The fourth rate is a two decker line ship with 46-60 guns. If you look at it closely, they only really appear from the middle of the 17th century onwards, but they also existed from 1626 onwards. However, the ships there were not rated according to their guns but according to their crew size and it is therefore difficult to regard a fourth rate as such. But already at the beginning of the 18th century the admiralty noticed that the fourth rate could not keep up with the other ships of the line.

Model of a fourth rate, with 60 guns, made by unknown c. 1660 (x)

And so the 60-gun class almost disappeared completely by the end of the 18th century. The 50 gun class also had its difficulties, but remained on the Admiralty's books until the end of the 18th century with 16 examples. And six new ones were even taken into service.

Early in 1807, an incident occurred in Chesapeake Bay when several British sailors, some of American descent, abandoned their ships besieging French vessels and joined the crew of the USS Chesapeake. The commander of HMS Leopard, a fourth rate, Captain Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, then demanded permission from the American frigate under the command of Commodore James Barron to search that ship in order to arrest and punish the deserters. When Barron refused, Humphreys opened fire. Taking the Americans completely by surprise, Barron surrendered and a British boarding party began searching the frigate, apprehending four deserters - three of whom were Americans, the fourth, Jenkin Ratford, was British. The prisoners were taken to Halifax, where Ratford was tried and hanged. The Americans were originally sentenced to 500 lashes, but the execution was suspended and they were offered to be returned to the United States. The incident had some political consequences and almost resulted in a war between the United States and Britain. Painted by Ronny Moorgat (x)

The Antelope, Diomede and Grampus 1798-1802 and finally three more for the War of 1812, from 1813-15, the Salisbury, Romney and the Isis. The Navy also had East India ships rebuilt in 1795, but more out of necessity because of a lack of ships than because they liked them so much.

The Earl of Abergavenny was actually an East Indiamen which became a fourth rate with 56 guns between 1803-1804 and served as a privateer to the Admiralty. Before she was returned to the East India Company.Painted by Thomas Luny 1801 (x)

As they were now rather unsuitable as ships of the line, even if they carried two decks. They were used as patrol ships or flagships for frigate squadrons. But one or the other also cut a good figure as a privateer. And they could also be used in the rather low water conditions of the Baltic Sea. Their armament was usually around 22, 24pdr on the main gun deck and 24, 12pdr on the upper gun deck. Unfortunately, her sailing characteristics were rather poor and therefore she was a rather unpopular command.

All in all they were a rather poor warship and were therefore used from the 1810s onwards in the East Indies where they were quite successful. But even here their numbers declined steadily and by the 1820s they had disappeared completely.

[quietya]

Black Lives Matter: A Reading List

On this blog, we believe Black Lives Matter. I’ve been quiet here because I’ve just been absorbing and listening and loud on other platforms. But I wanted to take the time and share some books by Black authors that may not be on your radar, books besides The Hate U Give and Dear Martin and Children of Blood and Bone (though I hope you’re reading those too, you’ve probably heard of them at this point). It also won’t just be books about Black pain because Black people have a huge range of experiences and they all deserve to be heard.

All the links in this post will go to Mahogany Books, a Black owned bookstore in Washington, D.C. that does ship. If I can’t find it on their website, the link will go to Semicolon Bookstore, another Black owned indie bookstore, this one located in Chicago’s, Bookshop page. Please note that many books are currently backordered because there’s a huge rush on books by Black authors (especially anti-racist books) right now and there was already a paper shortage and delays in printing because of COVID-19. If that’s the case, check your local library’s digital resources or check other bookstores since they all have varying stock.

Non-Fiction

We Are Not Yet Equal by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden Say Her Name by Zetta Elliott This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Contemporary and Historical

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess The Wicker King by K. Ancrum Inventing Victoria by Tonya Bolden Saving Savannah by Tonya Bolden Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender Finding Yvonne by Brandy Colbert Little and Lion by Brandy Colbert Pointe by Brandy Colbert The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now by Dana L. Davis The Voice in My Head by Dana L. Davis When the Stars Lead to You by Ronni Davis I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest Now That I’ve Found You by Kristina Forest Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett Endangered by Lamar Giles Fake ID by Lamar Giles Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles Overturned by Lamar Giles Spin by Lamar Giles A Love Hate Thing by Whitney D. Grandison Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson This is My America by Kim Johnson You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kim Jones and Gilly Segal If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann 37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order) by Kekla Magoon How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon Light It Up by Kekla Magoon By Any Means Necessary by Candice Montgomery Home and Away by Candice Montgomery Slay by Brittney Morris Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite Who Put This Song On? by Morgan Parker The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe Girls Like Us by Randi Pink Sorry Not Sorry by Jaime Reed All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds For Every One by Jason Reynolds Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds Truly Madly Royally by Debbie Rigaud The Blossom and the Firefly by Sherri L. Smith Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith Jackpot by Nic Stone Odd One Out by Nic Stone All the Things We Never Knew by Liara Tamani Calling My Name by Liara Tamani On the Come Up by Angie Thomas Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson This Side of Home by Renee Watson Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan The Beauty That Remains by Ashley Woodfolk When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon American Street by Ibi Zoboi Black Enough edited by Ibi Zoboi Pride by Ibi Zoboii

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Daughters of Nri by Reni K. Amayo The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton Mirage by Somaiya Daud The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow Pet by Akwaeke Emezi Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko Dread Nation by Justina Ireland Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams The Black Veins by Ashia Monet A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow Akata Witch by Nendi Okorafor Shadowshaper by Danielle Jose Older Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige Orleans by Sherri L. Smith Given by Nandi Taylor

This isn’t a complete list and I probably missed a bunch - especially since this list is very focused on mainstream publishing. I also added a few books that aren’t out yet, but are coming out this summer. But this is a starting place for whatever kind of YA book you want to read.

[protoslacker]

The venture would have gone nowhere without the help of Harold Battiste. The arranger knew the heads of Atlantic Records through their subsidiary ATCO that released all of Sonny and Cher’s albums. Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler gave Battiste some level of freedom to come up with projects of his own. Battiste seized an opportunity of free studio time when Sonny and Cher were busy filming the musical thriller comedy Good Times, a waste of celluloid that better remains in the vaults. It was William Friedkin’s debut as a director, and he later commented: “I’ve made better films than Good Times but I’ve never had so much fun.” But as footballer Johan Cruyf said, every disadvantage has its advantage. During that free studio time Battiste got Mac and his crew into Gold Star Studios to record their brew of music voodoo. Mac wasn’t planning to sing on the record but his first choice, his childhood friend Ronnie Barron, was not available. Realizing that he can do a singing job no worse than Sonny Bono or Bob Dylan, he decided to debut on vocals on this album.

Hayim Kobi at The Music Aficionado.   Gris-Gris, by Dr. John

[justforbooks]

Lee Konitz, jazz alto saxophonist who was a founding influence on the ‘cool school’ of the 1950s  died aged 92

The music critic Gary Giddins once likened the alto saxophone playing of Lee Konitz, who has died aged 92 from complications of Covid-19, to the sound of someone “thinking out loud”. In the hothouse of an impulsive, spontaneous music, Konitz sounded like a jazz player from a different habitat entirely – a man immersed in contemplation more than impassioned tumult, a patient explorer of fine-tuned nuances.

Konitz played with a delicate intelligence and meticulous attention to detail, his phrasing impassively steady in its dynamics but bewitching in line. Yet he relished the risks of improvising. He loved long, curling melodies that kept their ultimate destinations hidden, he had a pure tone that eschewed dramatic embellishments, and he seemed to have all the time in the world. “Lee really likes playing with no music there at all,” the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler once told me. “He’ll say ‘You start this tune’ and you’ll say ‘What tune?’ and he’ll say ‘I don’t care, just start.’”

Born in Chicago, the youngest of three sons of immigrant parents – an Austrian father, who ran a laundry business, and a Russian mother, who encouraged his musical interests – Konitz became a founding influence on the 1950s “cool school”, which was, in part, an attempt to get out of the way of the almost unavoidable dominance of Charlie Parker on post-1940s jazz. For all his technical brilliance, Parker was a raw, earthy and impassioned player, and rarely far from the blues. As a child, Konitz studied the clarinet with a member of Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he had a classical player’s silvery purity of tone; he avoided both heart-on-sleeve vibrato and the staccato accents characterising bebop.

However, Konitz and Parker had a mutual admiration for the saxophone sound of Lester Young – much accelerated but still audible in Parker’s phrasing, tonally recognisable in Konitz’s poignant, stately and rather melancholy sound. Konitz switched from clarinet to saxophone in 1942, initially adopting the tenor instrument. He began playing professionally, and encountered Lennie Tristano, the blind, autocratic, musically visionary Chicago pianist who was probably the biggest single influence on the cool movement. Tristano valued an almost mathematically pristine melodic inventiveness over emotional colouration in music, and was obsessive in its pursuit. “He felt and communicated that music was a serious matter,” Konitz said. “It wasn’t a game, or a means of making a living, it was a life force.”

Tristano came close to anticipating free improvisation more than a decade before the notion took wider hold, and his impatience with the dictatorship of popular songs and their inexorable chord patterns – then the underpinnings of virtually all jazz – affected all his disciples. Konitz declared much later that a self-contained, standalone improvised solo with its own inner logic, rather than a string of variations on chords, was always his objective. His pursuit of this dream put pressures on his career that many musicians with less exacting standards were able to avoid.

Konitz switched from tenor to alto saxophone in the 1940s. He worked with the clarinettist Jerry Wald, and by 20 he was in Claude Thornhill’s dance band. This subtle outfit was widely admired for its slow-moving, atmospheric “clouds of sound” arrangements, and its use of what jazz hardliners sometimes dismissed as “front-parlour instruments” – bassoons, French horns, bass clarinets and flutes.

Regular Thornhill arrangers included the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and the classically influenced pianist Gil Evans. Miles Davis was also drawn into an experimental composing circle that regularly met in Evans’s New York apartment. The result was a series of Thornhill-like pieces arranged for a nine-piece band showcasing Davis’s fragile-sounding trumpet. The 1949 and 1950 sessions became immortalised as the Birth of the Cool recordings, though they then made little impact. Davis was the figurehead, but the playing was ensemble-based and Konitz’s plaintive, breathy alto saxophone already stood out, particularly on such drifting tone-poems as Moon Dreams.

Konitz maintained the relationship with Tristano until 1951, before going his own way with the trombonist Tyree Glenn, and then with the popular, advanced-swing Stan Kenton orchestra. Konitz’s delicacy inevitably toughened in the tumult of the Kenton sound, and the orchestra’s power jolted him out of Tristano’s favourite long, pale, minimally inflected lines into more fragmented, bop-like figures. But the saxophonist really preferred small-group improvisation. He began to lead his own bands, frequently with the pianist Ronnie Ball and the bassist Peter Ind, and sometimes with the guitarist Billy Bauer and the brilliant West Coast tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh.

In 1961 Konitz recorded the album Motion with John Coltrane’s drummer Elvin Jones and the bassist Sonny Dallas. Jones’s intensity and Konitz’s whimsical delicacy unexpectedly turned out to be a perfect match. Konitz also struck up the first of what were to be many significant European connections, touring the continent with the Austrian saxophonist Hans Koller and the Swedish saxophone player Lars Gullin. He drifted between playing and teaching when his studious avoidance of the musically obvious reduced his bookings, but he resumed working with Tristano and Marsh for some live dates in 1964, and played with the equally dedicated and serious Jim Hall, the thinking fan’s guitarist.

Konitz loved the duo format’s opportunities for intimate improvised conversation. Indifferent to commercial niceties, he delivered five versions of Alone Together on the 1967 album The Lee Konitz Duets, first exploring it unaccompanied and then with a variety of other halves including the vibraphonist Karl Berger. The saxophonist Joe Henderson and the trombonist Marshall Brown also found much common ground with Konitz in this setting. Konitz developed the idea on 1970s recordings with the pianist-bassist Red Mitchell and the pianist Hal Galper – fascinating exercises in linear melodic suppleness with the gently unobtrusive Galper; more harmonically taxing and wider-ranging sax adventures against Mitchell’s unbending chord frameworks.

Despite his interest in new departures, Konitz never entirely embraced the experimental avant garde, or rejected the lyrical possibilities of conventional tonality. But he became interested in the music of the pianist Paul Bley and his wife, the composer Carla Bley, and in 1987 participated in surprising experiments in totally free and non jazz-based improvisation with the British guitarist Derek Bailey and others.

Konitz also taught extensively – face to face, and via posted tapes to students around the world. Teaching was his refuge, and he often apparently preferred it to performance. In 1974 Konitz, working with Mitchell and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean in Denmark, recorded a brilliant standards album, Jazz à Juan, with the pianist Martial Solal, the bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and the drummer Daniel Humair. That year, too, Konitz released the captivating, unaccompanied Lone-Lee with its spare and logical improvising, and a fitfully free-funky exploration with Davis’s bass-drums team of Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.

In the 1980s, Konitz worked extensively with Solal and the pianist Michel Petrucciani, and made a fascinating album with a Swedish octet led by the pianist Lars Sjösten – in memory of the compositions of Gullin, some of which had originally been dedicated to Konitz from their collaborations in the 1950s. With the pianist Harold Danko, Konitz produced music of remarkable freshness, including the open, unpremeditated Wild As Springtime recorded in Glasgow in 1984. Sometimes performing as a duo, sometimes within quartets and quintets, the Konitz/Danko pairing was to become one of the most productive of Konitz’s musical relationships.

Still tirelessly revealing how much spontaneous material could be spun from the same tunes – Alone Together and George Russell’s Ezz-thetic were among his favourites – by the end of the 1980s Konitz was also broadening his options through the use of the soprano saxophone. His importance to European fans was confirmed in 1992 when he received the Danish Jazzpar prize. He spent the 1990s moving between conventional jazz, open-improvisation and cross-genre explorations, sometimes with chamber groups, string ensembles and full classical orchestras.

On a fine session in 1992 with players including the pianist Kenny Barron, Konitz confirmed how gracefully shapely yet completely free from romantic excess he could be on standards material. He worked with such comparably improv-devoted perfectionists as Paul Motian, Steve Swallow, John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron late in that decade. In 2000 he showed how open to wider persuasions he remained when he joined the Axis String Quartet on a repertoire devoted to 20th-century French composers including Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

In 2002 Konitz headlined the London jazz festival, opening the show by inviting the audience to collectively hum a single note while he blew five absorbing minutes of typically airy, variously reluctant and impetuous alto sax variations over it. The early 21st century also heralded a prolific sequence of recordings – including Live at Birdland with the pianist Brad Mehldau and some structurally intricate genre-bending with the saxophonist Ohad Talmor’s unorthodox lineups.

Pianist Richie Beirach’s duet with Konitz - untypically playing the soprano instrument - on the impromptu Universal Lament was a casually exquisite highlight of Knowing Lee (2011), an album that also compellingly contrasted Konitz’s gauzy sax sound with Dave Liebman’s grittier one.

Konitz was co-founder of the leaderless quartet Enfants Terribles (with Baron, the guitarist Bill Frisell and the bassist Gary Peacock) and recorded the standards-morphing album Live at the Blue Note (2012), which included a mischievous fusion of Cole Porter’s What Is This Thing Called Love? and Subconscious-Lee, the famous Konitz original he had composed for the same chord sequence. First Meeting: Live in London Vol 1 (2013) captured Konitz’s improv set in 2010 with the pianist Dan Tepfer, bassist Michael Janisch and drummer Jeff Williams, and at 2015’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, the old master both played and softly sang in company with an empathic younger pioneer, the trumpeter Dave Douglas. Late that year, the 88-year-old scattered some characteristically pungent sax propositions and a few quirky scat vocals into the path of Barron’s trio on Frescalalto (2017).

Cologne’s accomplished WDR Big Band also invited Konitz (a resident in the German city for some years) to record new arrangements of his and Tristano’s music, and in 2018 his performance with the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Prisma, Gunter Buhles’s concerto for alto saxophone and full orchestra, was released. In senior years as in youth, Konitz kept on confirming Wheeler’s view that he was never happier than when he didn’t know what was coming next.

Konitz was married twice; he is survived by two sons, Josh and Paul, and three daughters, Rebecca, Stephanie and Karen, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

• Lee Konitz, musician, born 13 October 1927; died 15 April 2020

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[all-comic]

Valiant Central Podcast Ep 116: Valiant Shenanigans and Exclusives - All-Comic.com

On the latest episode of the Valiant Central Podcast, Paul and Martin are joined by Ronnie Barron from Rebirthically, Aftershock Central and other podcasts as well as mega collector Justin Ehart of the Collecting Valiant podcast to talk about the latest happenings in the Valiant comics universe!...

View Post: http://all-comic.com/2017/valiant-central-podcast-ep-116-valiant-shenanigans-exclusives/

[inas-weltgeschichte]

Sneak Peak: 6 Mädels, 11 Tage, 1 Campervan, 1 Auto & Tasmanien

Da ich diese Woche leider sehr im Stress bin was Uni angeht (es hat heute die letzte Woche meines Auslandssemesters begonnen), dachte ich gebe ich euch einen kleinen ersten Eindruck in meine Semesterferien. Semesterferien sind hier nach der 10. Vorlesungswoche und gehe nur eine Woche. Da man aber meistens nur 1-2 Tage Uni hat, sind wir Freitags um 4 Uhr morgens zum Flughafen gestartet und 11 Tage später am Montag spät nachts wieder in Brisbane gelandet. Gemietet hatten wir einen Campervan indem 4 Leute schlafen konnten und ein Auto für das wir alle Utensilien gekauft haben, damit Myrthe und ich darin schlafen konnten. (Wir haben uns für ein Auto entschieden, weil es das für alle beteiligten günstiger gemacht hat als 2 Camper zu mieten... auch wenn Myrthe und ich am Ende das gleiche bezahlt haben wie die andere.)

Mit in Tasmanien waren Deborah (Deutschland), Katla (Island), Myrthe (Niederlande), Nolia (Frankreich), Suyi (China/Tschechien) und Ich. Ein bunter Mix, der wirklich sehr schön war aber auch ab und zum Haare raufen. Aber dazu in einem anderen Post mehr. 

Allgemein hat mir Tasmanien unglaublich gut gefallen. Mit der Natur und der Größe hat es mich sehr an Neuseeland erinnert. Wer also mal ans andere Ende der Welt reisen möchte, aber nicht genug Zeit hat um Australien oder Neuseeland ausgiebig zu bereisen, dem lege ich Tasmanien wärmstens ans Herz! 

Unter jedem Foto ein kleine Beschreibung und ausführlicher berichte ich sobald ich meine beiden Hausarbeiten abgegeben habe.

Ganz Liebe Grüße von mir aus der Bib.

Unsere erste Nacht in Kettering (Gordon Foreshore Reserve), direkt am Meer und auf der anderen Seite sieht man Bruny Island wo wir am nächsten Tag hin sind.  Unsere Campingplätze haben wir alle mit der CamperMate App gefunden, wo es einem farblich anzeigt wie teuer der Campingplatz ist. Grün ist for free, blau ist günstig und lila ist teuer. Wir haben immer versucht kostenlose Campingplätze zu nutzen, außer wenn die Mädels duschen wollten (Myrthe und ich waren da etwas unproblematischer mit Katzenwäsche und Mütze)

Nach Bruny Island ging es in Richtung Port Arthur, leider gab es da nicht so viel zu sehen wie wir gehofft haben. Diese Steinwand wir liebevoll Devils Kitchen genannt und war neben “The Tasmanian Arch” und der “Blow Hole” (das ist wirklich der Name!) die Hauptsehenswürdigkeiten für uns dort. Oh und auch unsere einzigen Stopps :D

Mit das beste am Trip waren die Fahrten. Die Aussicht und ihre Abwechslung, einzigartig! Im Auto hatten wir auch ein Bluetooth Radio und konnten somit Spotify nutzen worüber die anderen Mädels richtig neidisch waren. Wir hatten also Car Karaoke und ab und an kam von Myrthe oder mir ein “Oooooh” oder “Wooow”, die andere hat dann gefragt “What is it? What happened?”, haha, weil zumindest ich meistens dachte irgendwas sei passiert, aber es war nur die Aussicht. Im Vergleich zum Campervan waren wir meistens 1-2 Stunden vor den anderen am Ziel und konnten dadurch einen Powernap machen oder die Feuerstelle aufbauen. Einmal kamen die Mädels über 2h nach uns an, wir hatten keinen Handyempfang, es war schon stock dunkel und wir haben uns gefragt wann wir anfangen sollen uns Sorgen zu machen. Als sie dann ankamen waren sie kurz davor wieder zu gehen weil die einzige Toilette auf dem kostenlosen Campingplatz geschlossen war, haha. Aber wir sind geblieben und haben Stockbrot gemacht.

Den Abend in Port Arthur haben wir auf dem Fortescue Bay Campground im Tasman National Park verbracht. Die Fahrt auf einer aufregende Schotter-/Schlammstraße dorthin hat uns etwa eine Stunde gekostet. (Das Navi der Mädels war der Meinung man schafft es in 20 Minuten, vielleicht war das der Grund, dass sie immer so spät da waren). 

In Fortescue Bay war Feuerverbot, obwohl wir an dem Tag Feuerholz gekauft haben waren wir nicht traurig darüber. Als Ausgleich haben wir uns mit Wein und Cider und unseren Campingstühlen auf den Steg gesetzt und den Sonnenuntergang genossen. Dabei haben wir über alles mögliche geredet und Figuren in den Wolken gesucht, bis es irgendwann zu kalt wurde.

Jetzt fehlen ein paar Bilder um einen Einblick in die anderen Tage zu geben, aber die kommen dann in den folgenden Beiträgen. Dieses Bild ist auf unsere Wanderung im Cradle Mountain entstanden. Ein Must-Do wenn man in Tasmanien ist, zumindest haben das alle gesagt die schon da waren. Und ich kann das nur bestätigen. Wir sind vom Visitor Centre mit dem Shuttle zum Ronny Creek gefahren, um von dort einen Teil des “Overland Pass” zu den Crater Falls zu laufen. 

Von den Crater Falls ging es weiter zum Crater Lake mit diesem idyllischen Bootshaus. Ein bisschen steiler den Berg hoch ging es dann zum Marions Lookout, von welchem man eine beeindruckende Aussicht hatte. Wir sind dann noch die 2,5 h Tour um den Dove Lake gelaufen. An diesem Tag haben wir nicht nur die beeindruckende Natur Tasmaniens gesehen, sondern auch ein paar Tiere (stay tuned um zu erfahren welche!)

Und eine weitere Blow Hole, dieses mal die Iron Blow Hole. In dieser Gegend wurde sehr viel Bergbau betrieben, was man deutlich sehen kann, selbst auf diesem Bild. Die Iron Blow Hole war ein sehr spontaner Stopp und dafür sehr - ich würde gerne beeindruckend sagen, hab das Wort aber in den letzten 2 Absätzen schon zu oft verwendet - eindrucksvoll. :D

Gegen Ende der Reise wurden die Mädels ein bisschen unmotivierter was Wanderungen angeht - oder waren sie überhaupt irgendwann motiviert?! Vielleicht lag es aber auch daran, dass wir am Abend nach Cradle Mountain ein bisschen höher gelegen (”in den Bergen”) auf dem Parkplatz eines Hotels übernachtet haben. Das war natürlich nicht der ausschlaggebende Faktor, sondern vielmehr, dass es in dieser Nacht -1°C hatte!!!! Myrthe und ich sind im Auto halb erfroren. Wir haben sogar überlegt in Löffelchen Position zu schlafen (ich war mir aber nicht sicher ob sie das als Scherz meinte). Die ganze Nacht haben wir versucht uns nicht zu bewegen um das kleine bisschen Wärme nicht zu verlieren. Schlafanzug + 2 dicke Pullover + Socken + Mütze + 2 Decken + nachts um 4 das Auto anmachen um die Heizung zu nutzen, es hat alles nichts geholfen. Ich hab von 4 Uhr morgens ab die “Daumen gedreht” und war froh als es endlich 6.30 Uhr war und ich aufstehen konnte. Vermutlich war das eher der Grund für die Unmotiviertheit. Bei Myrthe hat es eher das Gegenteil bewirkt. Sie war höchst motiviert eine große Wanderung an dem Tag zu machen. Als Suyi dann auch gemeint hat, dass sie gerne wandern möchte war ich ebenfalls überzeugt und wir sind am Lake St. Clair zur Spitze des Mount Rufus gewandert. Diese Wanderung benötigt aber definitiv einen extra Eintrag.

Unseren letzten ganzen Tag haben wir im Mount Field National Park verbracht. Eine gemütliche Wanderung zu den Russell Falls, den Horseshoe Falls (der Name macht total Sinn wenn man sie sieht! - man kann es ein wenig auf dem Foto erkennen) und den Lady Barron Falls. Auf dem Wanderweg, welcher Tall Tree Walk heißt, waren Infotafeln mit Fakten über die Baumriesen. Die swamp gums sind weltweit die größten blühenden Pflanzen - sehr interessant!

[dustinreidmusic]

Mac's Wild Years: By Michael Hurtt.  Originally published in Offbeat Magazine

Mac Rebennack was born in 1941. Dr. John was born in 1967. What happened in between would color his whole musical career. "In New Orleans, everything--food, music, religion, even the way people talk and act--has deep, deep roots; and, like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious."--Mac Rebennack In 1967, Malcolm Rebennack, Jr., exiled to the West Coast after a final drug bust that forbid him "to go to or through New Orleans," donned face paint, glitter and plumes and emerged as Dr. John the Night Tripper. His debut album Gris-Gris, and the stage shows that followed it, hawked a brand of psychedelic New Orleans R&B that mixed Mardi Gras Indian street chants with the primal gospel of holiness churches, the pianistic funk of Professor Longhair, heavy doses of hoodoo mysticism and nearly every shred of ritualistic South Louisiana culture that he'd absorbed during his decade and a half in the New Orleans music scene. From the drag shows at the Dew Drop Inn to the electric guitar evangelizing of the Reverend Utah Smith, it was a netherworld far stranger and more colorful than anything the pioneer of voodoo rock could have dreamed up. His role in it, though often been eclipsed by his later metamorphosis, established a reputation that would inform every aspect of his later musical life. Populated by high school greasers, high-rolling gangsters, down-and-out dope fiends and jive-talking record men, it was a world that had rapidly begun evaporating with the election of District Attorney Earling Carothers "Jim" Garrison in 1961. Prior to his widely known investigation into the Kennedy assassination, Garrison made his name locally by leading a systematic crack down on Crescent City vice that padlocked night clubs, juke joints and gambling dens. He often led the raids himself, pistol in hand, and by 1963 had managed to single-handedly dismantle the around-the-clock-party that had been Rebennack's entire young life. It had been one of after-hours jam sessions that lasted well into the next day, followed by "record dates" that produced aural snapshots that just reeked with crazed rock 'n' roll atmosphere: Jerry Byrne's frantic "Lights Out" and "Carry On," Roland Stone's narcotic anthem "Junco Partner," and Mac's own sinister, tremelo-charged "Storm Warning." "If we didn't have an artist and we had some studio time we'd just be the artist," Rebennack says of the sessions that produced hundreds of singles under monikers from Ronnie and the Delinquents to Drits and Dravy. The former's 1959 "Bad Neighborhood" was a greasy period piece if there ever was one. Meant to commemorate "the end of the zoot suit era," its gleeful lines of "Lie, steal, drink all day / good folks try to keep away," was an outright celebration of the lifestyle that Garrison sought to eliminate. And the Delinquents moniker was really no joke. "When we hired Ronnie Barron to be the singer with us, he was a li'l thug," says Rebennack, who'd had remarkably bad luck with great front men thus far. "We lost more singers to the penitentiary," he says, naming nearly everyone who preceded Barron with the exception of Frankie Ford. "Deadeye went to the joint for manslaughter, Jerry Byrne fell and went up for statutory rape, then Roland Stone went up on narcotics." Local disc jockey Jim Stewart once recalled that Rebennack's teenage bands "were always high, always late." But somehow through the haze, Mac would manage to simultaneously wear the hats of talent scout, A&R man, composer, producer, arranger, session musician, and when the need arose, singer. It might have stayed that way had Barron not refused to take on the Dr. John persona, which was invented with him in mind. Rebennack had started flirting with drugs when he was 12, already well seasoned in the art of skipping school and Mass to catch the street car to the early morning R&B jams at the Brass Rail. Since his father owned an appliance store that serviced jukeboxes, his childhood was spent wearing out stacks of hillbilly, jazz and blues 78s when they came off the boxes. Schooled on "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by his piano-playing aunt, he soon took up the guitar. By the time rock 'n' roll hit during his freshman year at Jesuit High School, he was more than ready. At Jesuit, Rebennack formed his first band the Dominos, with Henry Guerineau, then joined Guerineau's the Spades with whom he played "the Holy Father Circuit," as he refers it, starring at CYO dances from Redemptorist in the Irish Channel to Saint Anthony's in Mid-City. His teachers were current and future Fats Domino guitarists Papoose Nelson and Roy Montrell, who took an axe to young Mac's brand new green and black Harmony guitar. "He broke it all up, called my Pa and said, 'Mr. Rebennack, I ain't teachin' your son on that piece of shit. Go pick him out something nice.' I thought I was going to get killed. My Pa was hip, though. He knew it wasn't about the guitar as much as having that guitar to bring on the gig." Montrell took Mac to a pawnshop where he picked out a Gibson that he worked off lugging appliances for his dad. "My father didn't say a word til later," Rebennack wrote in his autobiography Under a Hoodoo Moon. "Apparently Roy had taken him aside and told him, 'I taught your son a lesson, that you don't get things because of the way they look. You get them on how they work." "He had a way of teaching that kept me coming back for more. During the lesson, he strung me along with ordinary riffs--but then right at the end he'd play some killer lick, his back turned so I couldn't see his fingers, and say, 'Hey, wanna learn that shit, kid? Come back next week. Now get the fuck outta here." Having already met studio owner Cosimo Matassa, who was a friend of his father, Rebennack spent his schooldays honing his songwriting skills. "Man, I used to go to school, I had a couple of comic books where the outside cover looked like a loose leaf binder. And I'd sit there in class reading that. They thought I was doing something in school but I'd be sitting there writing songs, ripping them off from Mad or Tales from the Crypt." He'd also begun hanging out at Warren Easton High School on Canal Street, a hotbed of hip musical activity that had already birthed New Orleans first bona-fide white rock 'n' roll band, the Sparks. It was here that he first encountered saxophonist Leonard James, whose band was blasting out a set of Sam Butera songs in the school gymnasium. It turned out that James knew all about the Brass Rail too, and dug the same hard-driving sounds as Rebennack did. They were soon rehearsing at James' house in the notorious St. Roch park neighborhood with guitarist Earl Stanley--now playing the recently introduced electric bass--and drummer Paul Staehle. "Leonard lived on Robertson not too far from the park and Stanley used to live around there on Dauphine," Rebennack says. "One of the things St. Roch Park was known for was as a good cop spot. St. Roch church was famous, too, because they'd take the grease out the bells by the cemetery, mix it with some graveyard dirt and some gun powder, add extra nitrate and put that all together with Patchouli oil to make goofy dust. Now, what you did with it was according to how rank a motherfucker you were." The mysterious worlds of drugs and hoodoo fascinated young Mac, but in his new musical partners he found an even deeper magic. "Paul Staehle was bad. I remember him having drum battles with Edward Blackwell and all the top drummers. And Stanley had a finger-plucking style of guitar like Snooks did, North Mexican shit that he'd learned from his daddy. He was into Earl King and Guitar Slim just like I was. We liked those cats because they did something different." Rebennack had picked up on the flamboyance of his guitar heroes a little too acutely for the priests at Jesuit, who'd brought his high school career to a halt after a Christmas talent show where they accused him of making "lewd gyrations" with his instrument. The real beef, Henry Guerineau later told Tad Jones, was that they were playing R&B instead of big band swing or Dixieland. "At the time," he recalled, "it was heresy." Stanley, who became the Spades' guitarist after Rebennack left the band, was having his own issues over at Nicholls High. "I used to hang with the gangsters, all the tough guys," Stanley says. "I was so bad they threw me out of Nicholls but they couldn't throw me out of school. So they asked me to leave and I went to McDonough on Esplanade for a couple of months, then I quit when I was 15. That was in '55. "I didn't know Mac when he was in the Spades. I just remember seeing him playing guitar at the dances. I thought, 'That guy's pretty good.' Then I got with Leonard and through Leonard I met Mac. They had a guy playing piano with them, Hal Farrar, he went by the stage names 'King Helo Attaro' and 'Spider Boy.' Now Hal was a character, he was the character of them all; the main lunatic. He liked to drink vodka, he could care less about anything, just a wild man. He used to have this Cugat jacket he'd wear and he'd play piano and try to do all of Little Richard's stuff. He even had the little moustache. In fact, he recorded the original demo of 'I've Been Hoodood' (later to become the flip side of the Dr. John hit "Right Place, Wrong Time") with Leonard." Vocalists Wayne "Deadeye" Herring and Jerry Byrne were also drifting into the group at this point. "We used to do the old low-down blues," Herring told Jones. "There weren't too many white bands that could do it. Back then if you sat in with a black band, boy, they'd jump on your ass when you come outside. People took a dim view of that but we did it anyway." While band names revolved from the Skyliners to the Loafers to the Night Trains to the Thunderbirds, the foundation remained James, Rebennack, Stanley and Staehle. "Crippled" Eddie Hynes and Eddie Shroeder often floated in on trombone and baritone sax respectively. "Whether it was Leonard's band or my band, it was all pretty much the same crew of guys," says Rebennack, "Nothing really changed other than we changed the name of the band quite frequently. It kinda helped us get some gigs and win some talent shows. We lost them under one name and won them under another." The core foursome debuted on wax with an album of raunchy guitar and sax instrumentals, Boppin' and A Strollin' with Leonard James, recorded for Decca in 1956. Rough, ready and loose, the LP was the perfect soundtrack of noir New Orleans; at once evocative of French Quarter strip joints, high school dances and hood hangouts like the Rockery Inn. Along with discs like the Saxons' "Camel Walk' and the Sparks' "Merry Mary Lou," it stands as a testament to city's incredibly potent--but often obscured--white rock 'n' roll underground. "Leonard always took pride in combing his ducktail perfect," recalls Rebennack. "I mean, he would stand in front the mirror for an hour and then put his be-bop cap on--perfect. He had his little zoot suit pressed, more than the rest of us. We'd just wear them. They were the kind that didn't wrinkle any way. "Leonard was a great hustler. He used to walk in joints where they never had a band in their life. I remember us getting a gig in the Ninth Ward at a grocery store. Leonard conned this guy into hiring us but he wanted country music. We didn't know any country music so we'd play 'Comin' Around the Mountain' or whatever. As long as we were working, we didn't care nothing about none of the rest of it." From dives like the Club Leoma, the Blue Cat and the Jet Lounge, they moved up to the Clock on St. Charles Avenue and finally, the Brass Rail. "While we were working there Paul Gayten says, 'If y'all want to keep the gig, you're going to have to quit playing songs like the record.' And that became kind of a theme with our band. We didn't play them like the records, we played them our way." Gayten also took issue with their slightly out-of-date stage wear. "We had the same suits for so long that I don't think anybody ever considered getting new uniforms until Paul started fuckin' with us: 'Nobody wears zoot suits in Chicago; they wear continental suits.' Man, here we had all our money invested in these royal blue zoot suits. And what do we do? We got some new suits from Harry Hyman's or old man Sutton's on South Rampart--continental suits--and we wore them in Gretna when they had a gang fight at Cass's Lounge. They throwed us all in the drainage ditch out behind the joint. We ruined our new suits and we hadn't even paid for them yet! "When we worked at any of them joints on the West Bank, shit happened. At Spec's Moulin Rouge, old man Spec used to have guys walking around with pieces dressed like police but they wasn't official police, they was just guys who worked for old man Spec. Gang fights was, like, prevalent. When the Choctaw Boys and the Cherokees would have their annual beef at the Wego Inn on the Hill, it would be around Carnival. And it would be like, 'Goddamn.' You know the shit's going to happen; it's just when it's going happen. I would be trying to play close to the slot machines that were on the bandstand because I figured the slots could deal with the slugs better than me. When I saw anything that looked like it could be trouble, I'd back up toward the slots. But this is the kind of shit you had to endure back in them days because you were dealing with a bunch of crazy motherfuckers. And we were crazy, too." If there was one song that distilled the insanity into the length of a 45 RPM record, it was Rebennack's "Lights Out," cut by Jerry Byrne for Specialty in 1958. Punctuated by stop-time drum breaks, a foghorn-like saxophone riff and a searing piano solo courtesy of Art Neville, "Lights Out" has justifiably been called "the perfect rock 'n' roll song." Byrne's breakneck vocal nods to a personality so bent on bringing the house down that fights--and sometimes worse--often ensued. "Jerry was one of them suckers who worked the house," says Rebennack, "but he was a piece of work. He drove me crazy a number of times in my life. He was special with that. Hey, guys wanted to shoot me over things Jerry did. He had the ability to kick up more shit with more motherfuckers than anybody I know." In 1959, Byrne cut Mac's equally boisterous "Carry On" and then got sent to prison on a trumped-up statutory rape charge. Deadeye was already behind bars. "It was a never-ending thing," says Stanley, "just make a record and things happen, you know?" Despite the trouble, says Rebennack, "our band was really popular." They'd toured with Frankie Ford behind "Sea Cruise" and Byrne behind "Lights Out" as well as backing the traveling rock 'n' roll caravans at both the Municipal Auditorium and Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park. And the records kept coming, from Bobby Lonero's "Little Bit" to Morgus and the Ghouls' "Morgus the Magnificent." "I don't think any of us thought that much about doing a record date," reflects Rebennack. "The gigs were the fun part. When I started working for Joe Ruffino's record company, Joe asked my daddy if I could be the president of the company and my daddy says, 'What are you crazy? This boy can't even find his fuckin' shoes!' But there were so many guys we did sessions for like Andy Blanco at Drew-blan in Morgan City and a bunch of other guys that had different little labels in the country. We played on all of Cos's Rex stuff and then we did a lot of crazy stuff all through the days we were working for Johnny Vincent over at Ace. I remember we stole 'Jimmy Crack Corn' and called it 'Ain't No Use.' We cut 'Row Your Boat' with Big Boy Myles. And I don't know how many different versions of 'Junco Partner' we cut with Roland Stone. We were some plagiarizing motherfuckers." Stone, the most prolific of Rebennack's vocalists on record, had already blazed the white R&B trail with local luminaries the Jokers when he waxed the regional smash "Just a Moment" with Rebennack in 1961. His entrance roughly coincided with the departure of Leonard James, who was replaced by Charlie Maduell after he joined the Air Force. "Charlie was just as crazy as Leonard was, but Leonard never got high. On the other hand, Charlie fit right in with the rest of us because he liked the narcotics, too. Probably the only one that wasn't a really serious drug addict was Stanley. If we were somewhere in the country, we would burglarize drug stores. When we were in the city, we forged 'scripts. We were strung out dope fiends, what the hell you going to do? There was a pharmacy on the corner of Dorgenois and Canal that used to sell to all the dope fiends. You had to go in there and ask for certain things, that's when I started getting my collection of Mad comic books together. If I got a comic book and a bag of pork rinds, that meant I wanted some opiates. Everything you ordered meant something else. We used to have so much fun that who'd have ever thought we'd wind up in jail? "My favorite gig was when Roland was singing with us and we started working at Little Club Forest on Jefferson Highway. At Club Forest, you could tell what audience hit because when all the junkies would come in, they'd just want to hear 'Junco Partner' over and over. When the whores came in they'd want to hear whatever their song was that night. So there were all these songs that fit the set. That gig was so fuckin' off the hook, so much crazy shit happened at that gig alone, I couldn't even describe it. "Between Charlie Maduell and Paul Staehle, they would always hide the stash for the band. One night they had a raid and Paul had the whole band's stash in his sock. They didn't shake us down, but the FBI came in and they emptied the joint. Somebody paid everyone's bond and before the night was over, Wes, the Jefferson Parish narc, was selling the customers back their dope in the band room! This is how out there it was. "And then Charlie went out and walked the bar and did the dance of the Seven Veils. He's out and there doing a striptease walking the bar. It's one of them gigs that's printed in my brain. And we always had what we used to call our 'band-aids' back then. Before they called them groupies, we called them band-Aids." When Stone fell for one of the young ladies a little too hard, friction arose. "I told Roland, 'Hey, listen, you can't marry this girl. She's our girl. She belongs to the band.' I thought I was doing him a favor but it backfired. He was obviously pissed." Stone showed up for his next recording session with three henchmen in tow including prizefighter Pepi Flores. "They stomped my ass. Charlie went out and got a gun and was firing in the air. I says, 'Charlie, quit shooting in the air! Shoot these motherfuckers!' He didn't even have real guns. They were replica weapons he'd loaded up! But we all went to work the next night together. Me and Charlie wound up having to wear shades and makeup to hide the black eyes. That's when I learned, hey, when it comes to matters of somebody's heart, stay the fuck out of it." The good times had to come to an end and they eventually did. Stone was busted on a narcotics charge, as was Maduell, who remains in Angola today. Within just a few years, Paul Staehle would die of a drug over dose. Rebennack's own luck ran out on Christmas Eve of 1961 when he intervened in a scuffle between Ronnie Barron and a jealous club owner who accused Barron of having an affair with his wife. "I walked in to get Ronnie at the last minute because Ronnie was like Leonard James, he'd take forever to get himself all perfect. So I go to get him and the guy's pistol-whipping him. Miss Mildred, Ronnie's mama, said if anything happened to her son on the road she was going to take a butcher knife and chop my cajones off. So I'm thinking, 'Man, if anything happens to this guy, his mama's going to fuck me up.' And hey, she was much more frightening to me than this guy was. I thought I had my hand over the handle of the gun, but it was over the barrel. I'm beating his hand on the bricks and as I'm hitting it, all of a sudden the gun went off and my finger's just about to fall off of my hand. It was hanging by a piece of skin and then I went crazy. I took Paul Staehle's ride cymbal out the case and just fucked up the guy's face. I was trying to pull his eyeballs out his head." Doctors managed to reattach the finger, but Rebennack had trouble playing guitar with the intensity he'd become known for. He concentrated on the keyboard, playing organ on virtually all of Huey Meaux's New Orleans sessions, most notably those of Barbara Lynn and Jimmy Donley. The first--and perhaps wildest--chapter of his musical career officially came to a close when he was busted and sent to federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Upon his release in 1965 he headed to California and his future as the Night Tripper. "You know what the kicks of it was?" Rebennack asks. "We wanted to play music so bad that we didn't ever think about it. We were trying to make a hustle just off of the gigs and that was part of the fun of it. Everything we done, we had fun doing it. That was the one thing that I always treasured about them days. It was just something that happened. When you're young and crazy and stupid, you do a lot of crazy, stupid shit. But a lot of that shit is great because you're too stupid to know better. I know that we made it a point to always have kicks, to always have good times no matter what was going to go down. We never thought, 'Oh, this is a suck-ass gig we're going on.' We went on all kinds of suck-ass gigs! But while we were doing them, we had a ball."