Nov 24th gig at The Palms

FIRST OF ALL: HAPPY BIRTHDAY LENNY!

(His birthday is Thursday, but Cheryl and I brought him a cake for an early celebration)

FRED SCHRUEDERS

Fred is from L.A., and has been with Hiroshima, Jeffrey Osbourne, Eric Benet and many others. Fine, fine, tasty player. He opened the show for Jerry tonight.

When Jerry arrived from his Wayne Brady Show gig, he had Fred stay on and play during Nathan's "Come With Me." They gave Fred the ride tonight (Rob typically takes it). Sweet. Cat has great touch and melodic feel and pacing.

The Flamenco Gods were smiling tonight, yes! Lenny got there early, and handed me Jerry's Spanish acoustic axe. You know what that means: "Canta con Amigo," and it just so happens that Clint and Kelly came to hang tonight, so Clint could get put to work to sing it. Awesome. Lucky us.

That is one classy man, and a killer talent. Below, after the show, Clint and his wife, the utterly elegant Kelly Clinton.

Great crowd tonight. Thank you all for coming out. I'd thought there might be a letdown after the mind-bending Kenny Loggins hang last Monday, but we had a full, very enthusiastic house. Great energy coming off the stage tonight. Tony Davich blew it out with "You Don't Know Me" and "Soul Trilogy."

What a voice! What a nice cat, too! I love it, I get to hear and document this stuff every week. Big bonus tonight for me, too: Cheryl's home from Walnut Creek for the whole week. Friday's our anniversary, so we're havin' a great week. She had a great time tonight, for sure. More shots from the evening:


Below, our esteemed friend Steven Lee showed up at the end of the show and promptly got put to work on "System of Survival." This cat is another totally class act and wonderful musician.

UPDATE ON MY BRO' KURT

My dear friend Kurt Kolstad continues to survive and fight off his lymphoma. His latest post- chemo scans have been negative, and his oncologist just said "see you in three months." Back in the summer we held a fundraiser jam for him up in Tacoma (click for the blog link).

Hang in there my friend. We all want to see you eventually on the Santa Fe stage one night to blow everyone away.

A RANDOM BOBBYG EDITORIAL RUMINATION

So, all last week, I kept seein' this FBI PSA on the TV, warning men about the risky varieties of sexual predation.



Yeah. I personally just don't get that particular Jones (underage bootie). I gotta have a woman who's been lived in.

Of course, that's just me. Most men give flowers. I give reading assignments (but, yeah, Cheryl gets flowers too).

So, I was at Big-O Tires recently getting some car work done, and ran across a slick full page soft-porn-inferential ad (one of the many that overpopulate those frisbee rags) on the inside back page of a copy of Las Vegas Weekly while hangin' in the waiting room. It was for the "Body English" club at the Hard Rock. The headline was "Sunday School" and the tag line read "Ladies dressed in schoolgirl outfits drink free champagne."

Then, tonight, as I traversed Flamingo heading west off the 15 toward The Palms, I see this billboard:

(Click to enlarge) Tag line, yep: "Ladies dressed in schoolgirl outfits drink free champagne."

As President Bush would say, we're sending "Mexed Missages."

Now, I'm most certainly no prude, I dig my eroticism as much as any normal cat, and I don't give a flip about what other consenting adults do with each other, but, this kinda just struck me. A major Vegas casino essentially encouraging appetites that will "put you in prison" and will "ruin your life."

Dunno, man...yeah, I know, it's pervasive in our culture -- using the illusion of sex to sell everything (in this case, absurdly overpriced booze to hormonally addled males) -- but pandering (and not so tangentially here) to the fantasy of child "schoolgirl" sex?

Yeah, yeah, I know. This is Vegas.

But, I'll just continue to pander to the reality of the jaw-dropping excellence that is the Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns hang. Wish I had the ad dollars available that goes into this other lurid banality.

Just a rant.

- BG

SPEAKING OF WOMEN, another context...

Check this out. I first saw this news item yesterday in the NY Times (quoting here from EW.com's PopWatch Blog):

Saudi's AccoLade keep on rockin' in the (not entirely) free world

Yesterday's New York Times featured an article on the AccoLade, an all-girl band that could possibly be the most reckless, punk-rock group of bad-asses making music today. These four female college students have managed to form a band and cut a single, "Pinocchio" (available at their MySpace page), which has become an underground sensation in the ultraconservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For the AccoLade to rock, they have to exist in the shadows, rehearsing in secret, shrouding their face-piercings under traditional garb, and shying away from being photographed because they live in a country where women aren't allowed to drive cars or walk outside without their faces covered, let alone play the Devil's Music from the West.

It's amazing to see how powerful music can be in helping break down barriers and bring people together. But real change also takes heroically courageous people, and the ladies of the AccoLade are willing to stick their necks out and flip-off the establishment -- in this case, an extremely oppressive, authoritarian establishment. Hopefully, the Times article doesn't set Saudi's religious authorities out on a (wo)manhunt to find and punish the ladies who flaunted their strict laws in the Western media. Rock-loving PopWatchers can lend a hand, though, by going to the AccoLade's MySpace page, checking out the song, and leaving a comment pledging support...

You go, girls...