The Geography of Jobs - TIP Strategies

The Geography of Jobs - TIP Strategies

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Rodeo at the (old) Student Union Ballroom, 1971

New technology, especially that which allows people to duplicate and share pieces of expressive culture, always allows for reconfigurations and DIY revisions of historical memory. The libratory possibilities involved in this are compromised of course, by the (small) circulation of these materials relative to mass-market artifacts and instituionally derived narratives, and by the imbrication of the technology and its social apparatus in networks of capital that posit exclusionary barriers and offer consolation prizes in order to co-opt the possibility of truly extracting freedom from a world of necessity. But, caveats aside, and apologies for sounding like a .com uptopian ten years too late, I do think that we're living through the birth of the digital vernacular, and that whatever it's corporatized and compromised position, Youtube offers a fascinating forum for people to personalize and revise local history. there's a line to walk here, over the pit of nostalgia and false consciousness, but for me this came roaring out of the screen and obliterated what Jameson calls "the nostalgia for the present" which keeps us dangerously disconnected from the past. Your mileage may vary.



Riffs: I imagine that the tape recorder this was recorded on, now obsolete, inspired many of the same Utopian visions that I'm tapping into regarding Youtube. And well it should, since that technology is just as, if not more important in delivering this artifact to us than digital video. Second, note the club "West Street" which I'd heard about but never seen pictures of, located on the corner of Laffayette and West Ave, longtime home to the Magnolia Haircutters and a bike shop. I don't know what it is now. Also: lots of gigs with Moloch, a truly revolutionary multi-racial heavy blues band from Memphis that included Mudboy and the Neutrons guitarist Lee Baker. Also, maybe because I know him and not the others, I find the pictures of a young Windy Austin, still 5 years or so away from Zorro's first performance, fascinating.

Thanks Fayetteville Flyer!

Thanks to the folks at The Fayetteville Flyer for adding this blog to the Flyer Blogfolio. If you wander here from over there, please drop me a note. I'm still messing around with the format, and since I can't find a way to caption it I'll jsut tell you here that the picture at the top of the page is Windy Austin and Jojo Thompson playing the same piano at the Library Club, around 1988. The picture at the bottom is Don Tyson bringing Jojo a drink around the same time. I'm working on a post about early 1960s Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa based record label Cimarron Records, and I'm amazed that I haven't posted anything about the amazing Avett Brothers show here in Iowa city last month. And my band played a show too...more on all this later.

I promise I'll do a free music Friday this week. Until then, give the Stompers a listen below.

Free Music Friday: Blue Boy Orlis & The Stompers: Same Old Man

Hi Folks

Since the recordings from the last two weeks were from Orlis' archive, I decided to put up some of his music this week. This is called Same Old Man, and it's the song I always want to use when I introduce the Stompers to people. it was the the first song we recorded when we set up the four track at the Peace & Justice Center in 1993. It was January of 1993 in fact, and listening to it I'm remembering doing alot of playing and recording in that building with only a little wood stove for heat. Anyway, here's the track:



And, you can take one home, here. Creative Commons license, you can have it, just don't sell it.

Credits: Orlis: vocals and guitar. Levi Williams: bass, mouth harp, vocal. Mark Mcgee: harmonica, sandpaper blocks. Chris Moody: banjo, saw. Eric (who usually played bass) vocal. Brian Petty: vocal. Cori Teeple: vocal. Stomper engineered by Lvi, Chris and Eric.

let me know what you think!

Free Music Friday: Kiwi at the Library Club, I Am the Walrus

Kiwi, at the Library Club 1981. The song is a full-on, over the top cover of "I am The Walrus" by two (three?) musicians, an excerpt from a sociomusical relic, a cassette recording called Kiwi's Last Stand. Lead singer Tommy Elskes is still playing in Texas (*update, no, the google is telling me something about Colorado and now New Orleans...) He's put out a couple of albums and there are videos on Youtube to be found. I think that Kiwi was from Texas and moved up to Fayetteville, or played in Fayetteville alot in the 1970s. Beyond that I don't know much and would be grateful to hear more in comments.




* note this recording is also thanks to Orlis! Download link at here.

Test: Jojo Thompson in Cybersapce

Alright folks,

I'm going to start putting songs up here, and I think I figured out how.

I'm hoping to generate some conversations about the music that I'm listening to, mostly related to my project on Northwest Arkansas. So let me know what you think.

Here's a test: It's Jojo Thompson, playing at his own birthday party at the American Legion Hall in Fayetteville, Arkansas, sometime in the late 1980s or very early 1990s. The recording is from Orlis, Thanks!



Update: by the way, most of what's going up here is going to be stored at
the internet archive, that's where the player is from, and where I can I'll put links up like this one.

Update #2: That's Jojo playing piano and having a drink served to him by Don Tyson at the Library Club in the picture at the bottom of this page, by the way.

I salute You, Brother.

when I met my friend Billy in 1985 he had a cassette tape of the Jim Carroll Band playing this song, "It's Too Late" on Fridays. he'd recorded it by holding his cassette player up to the TV speaker. That cassette was/is like a holy relic to us, or at least to me and I think to him. Despite what some might think, it isn't any less so because can go fetch the audio and video from all three songs that Jim and his band played that night, and stick them up here. That's what we wanted, after all, and that wanting, to hear this throbbing, snarling, slashing performance at will, is what made that cassette so special.

Jim Carroll died yesterday. I suppose that it's a wonder he made it to 60, but it's still sad. I've seen "People Who died" posted alot, but thanks to my friend Billy, this song has always been the one I remembered from the performance on Fridays that we'd both seen at the same time in different places. "Day and Night" from the Fridays show is up on Youtube as well, and it's also a great performance. There are also some homemade videos from Dry Dreams, the Jim Carroll band's second and I think best LP.

I'll post something tomorrow so this doesn't just turn into the RIP blog.