Sunday Papers: Franklyn Ajaye

"James Brown was a genius. Took six words and made 50 songs out of 'em."


On the turntable: Willie Dixon, "I am the Blues"

Cumbia de los Muertos

This place, this America, this country of death where we are so afraid of death that we squander our lives, living in a way that is like running to get home quicker so that our shoes don't get dirty.


On the turntable: Jefferson Airplane, "Loves You"

Sunday Papers: Scott P. Phillips

"Ritual is a way to make the unconscious conscious."


On the turntable: The Move, "Looking On"

Tones on Tale

Summer ain't summer without a festival. A festival ain't a festival without weather. It was only June, but rainy season had come on stage early. Jakob Dylan had just finished his set and Robert Mirabal's guys were setting up for him. Despite this being the Taos Solar Music Festival, the clouds had come over quickly, with lightning falling skittishly all around. I wondered how many concert fatalities occur each summer due to electrical storms? I remember back to a Dead show in Vegas, circa 1993 I think, where a guy in the parking lot had been struck. I wondered if he'd been tripping, and if so, how would he know what had happened to him? But I too had been tripping at that show, and may have imagined the whole thing. Anyway, here in Taos, Dylan Jr. had put on a great set, but nothing prepared me for Mirabal. I'd intended to watch it from my camp chair, expecting some mellow Native American flute music. But the guy ripped, his band working through a set of hard blues, the guitar player all tall and black and cool in his cowboy hat and boots, Mirabal nearby spinning and swirling, mostly on one leg. I was dancing up front again by song number two. He put on one of the best shows I've seen in a while, and I was sad to hear that it may be his last, but props to the guy for wanting to spend more time with his young daughter. The main event was Michael Franti and Spearhead, who I'd been wanting to see for awhile. I started out up front again, getting more and more caught in the crush. One guy beside me started to pick a fight, not liking how I was crowding his lady. I said, hey brother, who isn't getting crowded up here? I assumed that this guy was probably prone to pot fueled brawling, for the girlfriend got really pissed at him and quickly rushed away, him following and pleading. I alternated between my usual feelings about how violent this society can be, and the irony of someone starting a fight at a Franti concert. The rest of the set went peacefully, Franti rocking out with his band of look-alikes: Robbie Robertson and Comic Book Guy and Fred Egerer from my college days. The latter had only been with the group a few weeks, and he had this MASSIVE grin on his face, like the happiest boy in the world. By the second hour, I grew tired of the crush, and retired back to my chair to watch the sky. I hadn't been to a big time rock'n'roll show in awhile, preferring smaller, more intimate club gigs. So, I sat in my chair, watching the stars disappear to the flash of lightning, as dozens of kids bounced up and down on stage, way past their bedtimes.

Taos again, this time the 2nd Annual Mountain Music Fest, held up at the ski grounds. Until I'd arrived I hadn't really gotten the name, wondering why Gov't Mule was headlining. Then I turned around and saw Mt Wheeler towering over us and I thought "Oh, right!" We'd chosen Out Back Pizza over the opening acts, but arrived just in time for Yonder Mountain String Band to inspire us to make every muscle twitch in time to their bluegrass twang. Between acts Miki and I watched the kids playing in the play area, on mechanisms I'd never seen before. Then Gov't Mule took us into night, giving us a Whole Lotta Love...

There were also shows closer to home. Lyle Lovett closed out the Paolo Soleri, though whether it is for good remains to be seen. I had thought they'd never let the Paolo die, that some benefactors would come up with the required amounts for renovations, until a wise friend mentioned that the Natives who own the place don't care about the sentimentality of rich white people. Lyle's band was very large, including these backup singers who swung low through the gospel numbers. When I say low, I mean low, for the baritone sang in such a low register that I half expected his voice to get road rash. Lyle kept up the stage banter, the highlight being for me the bluegrass quartet stepping to the mike to take a verse.

A surprise gig was at Buffalo Thunder Casino up on the Tesuque Rez. It was private invite only thing, with us on the list. Miki had befriended a woman in town who is married to a born-in -Japan percussionist, and his band was putting on a short set, the day before playing the music festival on the following afternoon. I ran into the wife at REI the day before, saying that I'd been thinking of going to the festival, since I wanted to see Ozomatli. She laughed and said, Ted, my husband's band is Ozomatli. And they provided, our feet off the floor for half the set, as the hipsters raided the free food table behind us.

There was non-rock going on too, with devotional singing on a chilly night with Deva Premal and Krishna Das. And later in the summer, Miki and I scored 29 dollar nose bleed tickets for "The Magic Flute" at the Santa Fe Opera, where half the fun was tailgating in the parking lot and people watching. Mozart's classic surprised me in how anti-Christian it was. The locals gods apparently agreed, tossing lightning onto the desert behind the open backed stage.

And the summer was equally defined by the shows I missed--Telluride Bluegrass and Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, Aspen Music Festival and Primus up at Red Rocks. But I know that they, and the music will be back next summer too.

On the turntable: Bob Marley, "Burnin'"

Days Away

This was a summer of sacrifice, but there was still time allotted for road trips. Early in the summer, we drove the short drive out to Pecos National Monument, following the Santa Fe Trail where we could. The clouds were low but it didn't detract any from this valley's beauty, between the tall, squared mesas, and the softer, higher peaks where the gods dwell above the trees. We wandered the ruins for most of the morning; above the open grassy field where tribes once came together to trade; around the ruined, roofless Pueblo looking like a game board; and in the shadows of the crumbling mission church standing imposing on the bluff. One could imagine the sight of this place, abandoned and forlorn, from a wagon lumbering slowly along the Santa Fe trail.

Our admission ticket enabled us entrance also to Fort Union, so on a day far hotter we followed the Trail up its northern spur to that monument, now little more than a handful of wooden dwellings lined up in rows of rotting frames of exposed wood pointing out in random displays of geographic possibilities. We were beyond the mountains here, where the plains stretch away for a thousand miles east. It was exposed and very hot, as we walked what were once roads, our eyes open for snakes. There was very little to see, but it was quite romantic to imagine the town that once was, and the soldiers' families who tried to fake a semblance of a life in a place well beyond civilization. Most appealing to me was the parallel lines ground into the earth, the Santa Fe trailing ambling off toward Santa Fe. Back in the visitor center we watched a film in a room that looked like a funeral home, then walked among the exhibits which helped me fill in the blanks about the place I was now living. Earlier in the day we'd stopped at a bizarre little DIY monument at Glorietta Pass, marking where the westernmost battle of the Civil War had been fought. It was no surprise to see here that Arizona had been confederate, especially with the recent immigration laws controversially playing out in the press.

On the way home, we stopped at Las Vegas, NM. We walked the old town that is just down the hill from Highland U. While most of the traditional architecture remains, horseshoeing around a lovely little plaza, the businesses inside have not. Many of these shuttered businesses had fliers or posters from 2005, announcing pride in the place and the intent to restore this little town to its former glory. But the economic downturn had done its thing. Las Vegas, 2005-2010. RIP. A few blocks over we found some life in the old timey Spic'n'Span diner. As we were pulled out, a well-to-do white couple was pulling a small Indian girl (SW Asia, not SW US) along by the hand, her eyes turned in the direction of the Ganesha sticker affixed to our front bumper.

Later still in the summer, we drove south for an intended hike up to 10000 foot Monzano Peak, which I'd never climbed but had seen daily from the house where I'd grown up. After a night visiting with mom, we drove south, turning east onto Rte 60 toward Mountainair. A forest fire had devastated the hills out here, including the trail where we'd hike. Where the scenery had been burned away was now the lair of aggressive bears looking futilely for food. Perhaps the hike can wait. Mountainair itself was charming enough, with an old hotel which, like most of its vintage, had a look seeped in history, a menu filled with comfort food (though not for poor vegetarian Miki), and a resident ghost rattling around upstairs. After lunch, we lurked awhile in the aged shops filled with aged merchandise, had a malt at the pharmacy counter, then moved out to explore the trio of Salinas ruins near town. The name Salinas comes from the huge saline lake on whose banks mammoths were once hunted. Water still plays a part out at Abo, in the form of a stream cutting across the rocky desert floor. Wildflowers filled in the arroyo with color, while above, a reddish mission church was in a bad state of ruin. Unique to this place was the kiva built within the mission itself, hinting at a semblance of religious understanding between the natives and the Spanish conquerors. Some archeology students from UNM were hard at work at restoration, but they could do little for the pueblo itself, most of which had been reclaimed by the clay earth. The discoverer and original preserver of this site lay buried beneath a lone cottonwood at the streams edge. A long drove to the south brought us to Gran Quivira, isolated and lonely out on the storm-swept low desert. I stood out on the bluffs at the edge of the site, watching storms play above the mountains further out. What better metaphor for the dangers presented by the Apache and Comanche tribes which continually harassed this place until the residents moved west to mingle with the Puebloans of the Rio Grande. How did they survive out here, far from any visible water source and on land that looked like it gave up little but the salt reminder of that long dead lake. To complete the trilogy, we visited a site who's name had me punning badly: Quarai (For the Straight Guy). It was in a more hospitable place, nestled in some low mountains beside a lovely stream lined with cottonwoods. Miki and I walked awhile beneath the trees, happy to finally get out of the sun. Like at Abo, the ruins here are unexcavated, giving up little but the crumbling Mission, sticking up literally like a sore, red thumb.


On the turntable: Derek and the Dominos, "Let's Play Domino"

Sunday Papers: Noam Chomsky

'In the phrase “North American free trade agreement,” the only accurate words are "North American."'

--Hopes and Prospects


On the turntable: Ozomatli, "Embrace the Chaos"

October 14th Elegy