The Gulf Coast Dispatch
Brand Names & Other Things

The cupboard in the travel trailer, or caravan as the Brits might say, is filling with new brands. They aren’t new to me, actually: just out of mind for most of my adult life. Back in state, I find them amusing and curiously comforting. Red Diamond coffee. Golden Flake potato chips. (Like Utz in Pennsylvania.) Bamma mayonnaise. Piggly Wiggly Bite Size Shredded Wheat cereal. That’s the store brand, f.y.i., and it seems that there’s been no update to the package design since 1957.

Piggly Wiggly was the Kroger or Wegman’s back in the day. Indeed, I’m fairly certain that Piggly Wiggly was THE first supermarket on the planet, founded in Memphis if my memory serves. My granny just called it “Pig’s.”

As other things go…

Three or four days ago I came home to find my neighbor – the fellow with the lawn tractor – splayed out in his back yard with a pair of holes chucked out, either side of him. It seemed he’d gouged them out with the claw of a hammer that lay nearby.

Owing to his fall from the helicopter back in ‘Nam, he doesn’t get around well.

So there he was on his rump, between these holes, legs spread apart, jabbing at them with a tape measure.

The whole scene was awkward, so I didn’t press him on it. And he, in turn, let me pass in silence.

This morning, he and two other guys assembled to survey the situation. I left for about 45 minutes, and when I returned the entirety of his back deck was gone, its remnants piled in a neat stack, excepting the steps. They had been flung out onto the yonder lawn.

By sundown, four pilings for the new Uber Deck were standing proud, waiting for their framing, decking, and what. The steps remained far-flung, upturned, and friendless.

I imagine the end result will be spectacular.

JH

Digging Up Bones
Danny O’Keefe
Danny O’Keefe/Breezy Stories
(1971/1973 – Atlantic)

A music business buddy was thinking of doing a "covers" album with a known artist. The concept centered on combining unlikely elements to form something new, unique. The artist (female Americana/New Folk) and label were on board, so it was time to go-a-hunting for the cover tunes. Most would be familiar, but I suggested throwing in a few from left field. A woman singing "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues" popped into my head, and off I went to unearth a one-hit-wonder from yesteryear.

Danny O'Keefe recorded two albums in the early 1970s that turned out to be phenomenal: Danny O'Keefe (his debut) and the follow-up, Breezy Stories. These recordings are gorgeously rendered, impeccably arranged, complex, and daring. They don't always succeed, but when they do it's thrilling. Check out “Drive On, Driver,” for example. “The Road” (a minor hit for Jackson Browne) is another keeper, along with “Magdalena.” O'Keefe took on jazz, psychadelia, and country honk. It amazes me how often he got it right!

The “covers” project is still a dream in the wings, but my music friend still talks about Danny O’Keefe.

JH

The Musical Concern
My Sad Captains
Here & Elsewhere
(June 14, 2009 – Stolen Records)

I yawned at first. Another jangle-fruit band with a predilection for the California sun. Whoopti-doo. Somewhere along the way though, without any great awareness on my part, things changed.

True enough, the first three cuts lead down an all too familiar beach path. But a closer, longer listen reveals a more adventurous musical stroll.

The opener, “Great Expectations” could very well be an outtake from The Velvet Underground’s Loaded sessions. While the fourth track, “Hello Bears” turns slightly brooding with a tad of David Bowie thrown in for…well, because sooner or later everybody scootches Ziggy.

Through synthesizers, acoustic guitars, the occasional guy-girl unison vocal, and horns (synths again?) we wind up at the end of an exceptionally well done and deceptively subtle debut album. “Building Blocks,” an instant indie-pop classic, turns up in the penultimate slot, as if the Captains are saying, “There you have it; we could’ve done it all along.”

Based in the U.K., the band takes its name from the same-titled poem by British poet Thom Gunn. The opening lines seem to shed light on how this collection of songs unfurls:

One by one they appear in the darkness: a few friends…
…How late they start to shine!


JH