russ, impulse of will, radidio

when i was setting up my equipment at the little wreck room last wednesday, i found a trio of new russ walton cd's sitting on a table off to the side of the stage. one of 'em in particular caught my eye 'cos it listed the names of a buncha jam participants from "karl and lee's jam, wreck room, 6/22/05," including a coupla folks who i was pert certain had never shared the stage at the same time. whatevah, i took it home and gave it a listen. i remembered the night 'cos damien stewart had invited russ to play but was unable to make it himself, and when i came offstage sometime in the middle of the last set, russ was sitting there with his equipment. i spoke to him briefly and went off to the bar. what he recorded was the last 30 seconds or so of some (last) song, followed by the sounds of musos breaking down their equipment and wreck room wizard o' sound andre edmonson talking to russ while the recording of the previous week's jam played over the p.a. the other tracks i've listened to consist mostly of drunk bar patrons heckling various local performers, mainly at the cellar. i don't know why, but it's become the cd i stick in the player whenever i can't think of anything i wanna listen to. i can't explain it.

i just spent the last four days brainwashing myself with andre's videotapes of wednesday night jams going back to may. he and i had been bugging jam-meister lee allen to come over and help us wade through the hours 'n' hours of material in order to compile a cd-r's worth of good stuff so we'd have something to give away and maybe help promote the gig a bit. i e-mailed lee some suggestions and wound up getting deputized to vet andre's mountain o' tapes. so far i've only listened to about half of what exists and i think i've already got enough material picked out to fill 80 minutes. some of the stuff i remembered being real good, wasn't, while i've also stumbled onto lotsa good stuff i'd totally forgotten. some of my fave pieces are much too long for cd inclusion (part of the idea being to highlight as many jammers as possible in segments that aren't _too_ attention-taxing), a couple are plagued by tech issues (on one late june recording, darrin kobetich is visible on screen but frustratingly inaudible on the audio track), and anything we played in the little room survives only in memory. the dogshit-to-diamonds ratio is about what you'd expect from any live, extemporaneous performance, and while some nights are more stellar than others, most have at least few moments that are worthy of preservation. once andre can transfer the toonage from tape to disc, we'll start churning and burning and what i'm optimistically calling impulse of will: wednesday night at the wreck room, volume 1 in my head wil be a reality.

88.7 ktcu-fm has been remarkably well-behaved of late. last weekend was the mighty me-thinks' studio appearance on the goodshow (altho their appearance was marked by more hijinks 'n' jive than dialogue 'n' music, as is often the goodshow guyzzz' wont, but i'm an old-school music nerd, so whatevah). this past weekend, black dog / wreck room bartender, music nerd's music nerd, and fort worth-bay area connexxxion billy wilson was guest deejay and elevated the level o' discourse 'n' toons as much as he does in almost any situation when he's not pouring dranks. the goodshow celebrates five yrs on the air this friday at the black dog and hellz yeah, ya mo' be there. best of all was the electric mountain rotten apple gang's segment on the "choice pickin's" bluegrass show, especially the solo segments by individual bandmembers (mark deffebach's "becky" was a particular treat, altho i always loves to hear expat lawn guylander darrin kobetich's orgy of chiming harmonics, percussive tapping, and strange-ola chords on "playing in the hedges") and adam kobetich's revelation that his discovery of bluegrass had given him "something _else_ in common" with his and darrin's dad. family unity and love wear the white stetson.

next sunday, i gotta return to my usual practice of digging dr. paul slavens' sunday-night festival o' eclecticism on 90.1 kera-fm. doc paul informs us via e-mail that next weekend is his one chance to show the powers-that-be at the station he actually has listeners, so we plan to tune in and pledge until it hurts, again.