(Prelude to) the Kelp Kristmas Round-Up for '07!

Do you think it's tacky to write your Christmas kolumn after Christmas? Is it like wearing white pants after Labor Day?

Well, so what if it is? This has always been an unflinching, hard hitting kolumn where talk is cheap and nothing is taboo, and the Man can't stop me from writing about Christmas any gosh darn hell the phooey time I want to, because I'm an American, and I'm free to do what I gotta do and be a man and all stuff like that, yay.

The nice thing to think about this is that I love everyone so much that I'm willing to think about Christmas even way after it has happened, during a time when no one is and no one has to. No one should have to think about Christmas in January, but I am, because I love you, or something along those lines. Can't we all be friends and have had the Merriest Christmas in the Whole Wide World? Of course we did -and can!

That's one way to look at it (an illiterate way, but still, a way.)

And then the other way is... well, never mind the other way, just do the first one and none of your lip.

I'd like to dedicate this, my Kelp Kristmas Round-up of '07, to all the little people everywhere who still believe(d) in Christmas, and even the regular-size people who try so hard to be small but aren't, at this most sacred time of year.

Man, I really should've done this a couple of weeks ago.

Look, right now while we're still at a compleat standstill, momentum-wise, I'd like to mention that there is a bill coming up this Saturday at O'Shea's in West Dennis (at 348 Main Street / Rt. 28; 508-398-8887) that is simply adorable and I mean A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E, Adorable, that includes the legendary and hilarious older person Philo “Rockwell” King (AKA Rock King) vs. the also hilarious and ever-appealing Kami Lyle in an epic battle of the sexes. The history of the earth will be blithely portrayed in their mighty rolling and grunting would certainly be the wrong sentence to have after that last one; let's try another approach, quickly!

Rock truly is a local legend, a classic suit-and-tie comic, sophisticated but with a lovely crude streak that he lords over the (semi-) innocents, and he's been doing this a long time (and I mean a lo-o-ong time -this last season at his beloved Sand Bar in West Dennis was his 48^th!) His sophistication is almost Catskillian in its epic range. Not many people do this any more and he does it really, really well. As you might expect, or even hope, there is an occasional reference to his wife, Cobra. And he'll probably also do a couple of songs, but you should go anyway.

If Kami Lyle majors in writing and singing (and her writing and singing is quite fine indeed), her minor is definitely something way sillier. Kami has mastered the art of personality, and the raps between her songs -usually unrehearsed ramblings about whatever is going on in Kamiland that day -are themselves well worth the price of admission. On occasion I've seen her improvise a jazz song read out of a catalog or a magazine picked at random. She's youthful, cute, and vivacious, and she's an enormous Rockwell King fan and bound to provide memorable counterpoint, not to mention trumpet.

This is a perfect beauty and the beast set up -but wait! That's not all! You also get Sean Brennan and Johnny O'Sullivan, and a loverly dinner, if you pay $30 (the non-dinner version goes for $15, which is a savings, also, of $15, if I'm not very much mistaken.) I'd go to this show even if I was dead -well, as long as I had $15, I would. And I'd do my level best to get there at 7:30, which is when it starts.

Ok, now I'm too excited to write the Christmas kolumn. Forget it! It's off. Maybe next week. Sorry. You guys must be totally dying for some shopping tips.

One thing before I go, though: Tim Dickey and Friends with Julie Wanamaker will be appearing at the Snow Library in Orleans on Saturday, February 2^nd at 4pm. I know that's still a few weeks away, but that way you can make reservations now, unless it's one of those weird libraries that doesn't take reservations, which of course I wouldn't know, but this too could be a very nourishing program, despite the fact that some of the time, they will be playing bluegrass.

You're just going to have to sort it out yourselves.

The Detroit Cobras Make Everything Clear

Alright, I know this is a little out of character for me lately, but I want to go way out on a limb here and recommend that you all leave your little huts next Wednesday, June 27^th , and scamper down to the Wellfleet Beachcomber to see a new, tough little band called the Detroit Cobras. For any right-thinking American, leaving the house nowadays has to be regarded as a potentially hazardous proposition; yet I truly believe that these guys -once described as the Ronettes crossed with the Rolling Stones in Motown (!! -I mean, how cool would /that/ be?) - might be, uh, fun.

I use the term "guys" rather loosely here, as two of these guys, namely co-leaders Rachel Nagy on vocals and Mary Ramirez on guitar, clearly aren't. There's plenty of bad girl attitude to their work, but it's nicely understated (and, unlike Cape Cod's original, beloved bad girl group, the Extremes -and when will that reunion finally happen? - endearingly under-dressed, as the band uniform seems to lean heavily toward whatever-I-had-on-in-the-van wear.)

These folks play with a serious kick, loud and proud and relatively unadorned, and the music is a sort of rocked-up soul thing, but with a minimum of guitar effects and arena rock hooey. The guitars sound like guitars, careless and clangy, maybe not all that far from Joe Strummer-ville, and the drummer kicks. And the clear aim is to make you dance and go nuts, except for the occasional ballads, which were made for melting. Most of their songs sound like they were recorded in about half an hour, and there's a feeling of abandon to it that's just swell. Some of it's cave man stuff, but it's smart cave-man stuff (or, if you prefer, cave-person.)

One of the most distinctive and delightful things about the band is that they more or less steadfastly refuse to write their own songs, to which I can only say, thank you. The number of awful songwriters on tap lately has truly mushroomed out of control, and I'd like to thank the Detroit Cobras for at least trying to stem the tide. Plus, the material they pick is masterful, and obviously born of large record collections and dogged pursuit, alternating between obscure songs that you can't believe someone else knew about and obscure songs that you didn't know about. It's record collector's heaven: Ruby Johnson, the Cookies, the Blossoms, the Staple Singers, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Tammi Terrell, etc. (plus, the goils are really cute, and look like they might be on something.)

Even with all these other assets, though, the thing that really cinches the deal is singer Rachel Nagy, who had all sorts of interesting things to say -including "it's ironic that I'm a singer, 'cause it has always been my view that white women should not sing." From that point on, we got along famously.

Rachel's a great singer, not just a good one. She understands that the first focus of a singer shouldn't be showing off or belting or giving it all you got or putting in ten more doo-dads per syllable; it should be about singing the damn song, period, in a way that lets you know how the songwriter felt. For someone working a genre that sometimes leans toward histrionics, she has a restraint that's very intriguing.

More than anyone, Nagy sounds like Irma Thomas, most obviously on the Irma covers, "It's Raining", "Breakaway", and especially a just plain perfect version of "Cry On." There's a little of that bluesy feeling throughout, though: beat up, resigned, but sweet. She calls Irma "my godhead, my hero. I saw her live at her club in New Orleans [since washed away in Katrina, alas] and fell on the ground, screamed and cried. I could've washed her feet with my tears and hair." She got it.

Plus, she just turns out to be one of those rare people with pipes, an instantly satisfying and unadulterated sound so compelling that... well, I don't really buy that whole reading-the-phonebook analogy, but she's got pipes, and pipes is good. You don't have to show it off, everybody knows from note one.

Ms. Nagy seemed to share my feelings on the tragic lack of smoke in bars nowadays ("I mean, it's New York in the winter and you're supposed to stand outside and smoke -that's retarded!"), coddling of modern chillens through excessive monitoring of various health issues ("They're gonna turn 25 and a butterfly's gonna land on their head and they're gonna have an aneurysm") (and how'd we ever get going on that, anyway?), hatred of the singing of Janis Joplin (otherwise Janis seemed ok), and of people who get all bent out out of shape when they lose children (especially people who have multiples to begin with. After all, as Rachel pointed out, "you can always have more kids.")

At one point, she did imply that the band was born joyfully out of the record collection of its founder, since-departed guitarist Steve Shaw. She said she never meant to be a singer, and that she was plied with drinks early on, when the band played for the best reason, which is wanting to make those noises enough. "We sort of pulled a fast one -we said we were gonna break up, and then as soon as [Steve] left, Mary and I giggled and started up again. The only reason we keep boys around is as archivists; the girls job is to dance and sing."

I like a girl with her feet on the ground.

The Cobras' five records have their ups and downs, but the ups are pretty wonderful; their best album might still be 2001's "Life, Love, and Leaving", though their latest, "Tied and True", gives it a run for its money; the one Cobras' original, the fabulous, hilarious, "Hot Dog", is on 2005's "Baby". They're a good downloading project, as you might not need whole albums, but there's songs here that will rock your world.

And they've never been here before, and who knows when they'll pass this way again? Those who must rock should be in attendance.