circle the Dairy Queen

This piece by Luiza Restrupo was up with a bunch of similar work in a hallway display case at the LSU art school. I'm into it.

Tuesday:
Showarama Hot Trio, Showarama Hot Trio
Django Reinhardt, Fantasie
The Bad Plus, Never Stop
Masada String Trio, Azazel, Book of Angels Vol. 2
Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine and Blue Valentine
Carney, Hild & Kramer, Black Power

Wednesday:
The Killers doing Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" (via NOWNESS)
Fleetwood Mac, Mr. Wonderful and The Pious Bird of Good Omen
Gene Vincent, Born to Be a Rolling Stone and Rockabilly Rebel
Tony Joe White, Homemade Ice Cream
Jerry Douglas, Everything is Gonna Work Out Fine
Showarama Hot Trio, Showarama Hot Trio


Nathan Martin, the dude behind the Room 220 literary news site and reading series in New Orleans, gave my book Louisiana Saturday Night a very thorough and thoughtful review on shiny, revamped Oxford American website.

Reviews of my own work and my relationship with the magazine notwithstanding, The OA has stepped up their game as far as digital content goes. It's worth a look; they might just figure out how to do this online media thing.

Speaking of digital, the book is available for both Nook and Kindle as well as a paperback version suitable for the mesh map pocket on the back of the passenger seat. Or, that shelf in the back window; Frank McMains' stunning cover shot will look great through the back window of your car in the gravel parking lot of a swamp bar.

I'm writing something about the Showarama Hot Trio, a gypsy jazz situation from New Orleans, and I feel I had to start with them, circle out for two days and get back to them to know how to write about it.  In that circling, I listened some Tony Joe White.


Tony Joe White, "Saturday Night in Oak Grove, Louisiana"

which, among other things, involves "going to town to circle the Dairy Queen to see who's hang in' out." I love how Tony Joe is a man out of time, that digital technology doesn't quite now how to process that baritone and the humid, muddy production on his album Homemade Ice Cream. The vinyl fetishists of the world might go "See? See?!" to the no one listening to their records with them, and they might be right on this one, though I like to think this case is due less to vinyl > digital than it is to Tony Joe White > The Future.

I've also been watching webinars on how to use our new content management system and it is as sexy as it sounds. I have a couch and a projector in my office, but somehow even that casual an environ cannot make one cozy with a webinar.  And thing is, these are actually good webinars, like they get their information across and are organized well in case one does need to circle back and the speaker speaks clearly and everything. But still.