big help

Gram Parsons - GP (listen)
Efterklang - Magic Chairs

The above images:These crazy flowers at the farmer's' market yesterday, called something like Dumbrey's something. Big help, I know; Zydeco Man Mel Chavis lays down a sweet little groove and does not care for embedding; The lights still on the trees downtown by the Shaw Center looked magical. My boy Ed stole the show at the LSU Faculty art exhibition therein with his massive, satiny, funny, ominous stack-o-birds painting The Long March; Lafayette's party band answer to Brooklyn hispter jamz Givers played the tent behind the Baton Rouge Gallery's Surrealist Soiree, which saw a marked increase in the quality of the art this year; At the Red Star, Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue have let their hair down a little since I wrote about them a year ago, and are all the better for it.

Before I embarked on the evening of art dissection and free wine sipping, my wife was looking at pictures of Nudie suits online; after Gal Holiday I wanted to be wearing one. Actually, I always want to be wearing one. Dig this one Nudie made for Porter Waggoner, or Webb Pierce's salmon suit with a jail cell scene stitched on the back. I wonder if ol' Nudie can make one of me hunched over a laptop eating a sandwich in goldenrod with black piping. Until he does, Gram Parsons will remain the official Nudie suit poster boy.



Separate topic: I'm not usually so go team promotional about bands up in here, and outside of sending me a digital promo of the record, my praise is not being compensated, but Efterklang gets it. Philip Glassy-eyed piano rolling thunder against unashamed pop vocals is apparently what has been missing in my life. Check out "Modern Drift" from their website.

Oh, and Go Saints! Another unpaid and for me uncharacteristic promotion in which I am happy to participate. Destroy the Vikings for union, justice, and confidence and also for that terrible "Purple and Gold" song Prince phoned in for them, one that I pray will not become a ubiquitous LSU anthem somehow. I'll tack on a couple of fleurs-des-lis to my Nudie suit order.