I’ve been getting so many inquiries this week about (the relentlessly photogenic) Mrs. Kelp that I thought I should start right off this week by coming straight out and confronting the rumors being spread around here by all you two-bit, no-account readers. No, Mrs. Kelp (the person for whom I live, breathe, and vacuum) and I are not "on the outs", as they say; the truth is, we’ve never been so in love. (When we pass, other couples say "gosh, I wish we looked more like them"; sometimes, in unison. Sometimes the woman says it, alone, and then the man says something like "yeah, except for the fat one with the moustache". I shuffle listlessly, adjusting my cardigan.)
The rumors apparently stem from the fact that She (my dewy-eyed enchantress) somehow failed to make Her usual appearance in the last couple of columns (unbeknownst to yours truly, who’s been off on a gambling spree the last few weeks; it would appear the new ghostwriter is not working out). (I tell them again and again, make sure you mention my completely and fabulously legal yet still fresh as snow Mrs. every now and then because that’s who the people pay to see but noooo, do they ever listen to me? No, of course not! And why should they? I’m only the guy they’re supposed to be imitating!
Well, just because I can’t afford a decent ghostwriter, that’s no reason to assume our marriage is on the rocks. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to get so worked up about it, but we’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, between my recent enormous skin graft (over four yards!) and our young son Kody’s court battles (as you may’ve read, young Kody has been accused of selling guns to people from Harwich; it was all just a tragic misunderstanding- )
Thankfully, my darling wife, the surprisingly resilient, unexpectedly stretchy Mrs. Kelp (for whom I do a series of tricks) has stood right by me all the way through this difficult time, and we all hope (even my young thug son, Kody) that someday, together, we will kill all our detractors.
Well, it certainly feels good to have gotten that off my chest.
Also, I’d like to take full responsibility for a couple of mistakes I made in my recent coverage of new releases by John Sedlock, the High Kings, and Anna Whiteley. First of all, i’d like to apologize to John for losing his album before listening to it, and acknowledge that while conventional journalistic wisdom would in fact dictate listening to something before writing about it rather than after, I still think this was a pretty interesting little experiment that admittedly just didn’t quite get off the ground.
I have since managed to find (and listen to) the album in question and was delighted to find a very nice version of one of the afore-mentioned Anna Whiteley’s better songs, "The Night Was Thunder", which also features some nice harmony work from High King Danny Lyons. The seven-song CD is called "Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing" and is available from John at P.O. Box 764, S. Yarmouth, MA 02664. I was also interested to find that, according to the cover photo, Mr. Sedlock is much younger than I pictured him.
I further erred in the same article by saying that Mr. Sedlock was the man behind Tollie, which put out Ms. Whiteley’s fine new effort; he isn’t, though he does play bass on it and did lend a hand in production. As we all know, there’s a world of difference between playing bass on something and owning it - as I’m sure even the unprecedentedly flexible Mrs. Kelp would agree.
I was also amused to see, on my return, that my good colleague Alan W. Petrucelli had seen fit to write a rather scathing review of the Spice Girls; I propose, in a show of fellowship, to savage the new Hanson album (regardless of what it sounds like) in these very pages next week. (If there’s one thing I never could stand, it’s popular young people.) Together, Alan and I will bring the music industry to its knees!
Friday, November 28, 1997
Friday, July 11, 1997
Kolumn Go Bye-Bye
Readers, I come to you this week with my head hanging low. It appears that through a particularly Kelpian brand of software expertise I have, immediately upon finishing it, somehow deleted this week’s fine kolumn.
I am desolate.
I have heard about this kind of thing happening to other people, but never to me, a super-fine journalist for lo these many years. I must say that I am less than psyched to finally be included in this rarefied group. While I know that if I were a real pro, I would just go back to the grindstone and start over from scratch without even mentioning anything about it, I think it’s important for me to note at this point that I want my mommy.
I had started with a section about how Phoebe Snow should be released from whatever pact she had made with the devil that required her to sing every horrible pop song in history for every commercial on tv. I had pointed out that the latest had been "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Crofts and duly noted how much I’d hated that one in particular, briefly digressing about what a cultural whirlwind I am and about how much I wished my wife, the admittedly adorable Mrs. Kelp, had been (or was still) really rich, and how much fun it might be to marry a rich old broad for her money.
Then I made a number of really incisive comments about a swell new (ten piece) ska band called Skavoovie and the Epitones who are playing at the Beachcomber this Saturday afternoon at 4:30; I covered how surprised I was to hear a new (especially American) ska band that I really liked, especially in view of the fact that as much as I love ska, I really thought there had only been two great ska bands ever -the Skatalites and the Specials (though acknowledging that other great bands like the Clash and the Beatles had used ska as a point of departure).
Then I reported my discovery of the fact that the first true ska record was made in the forties by a bunch of white guys from Indiana called the Hoosier Hot Shots (who apparently featured the only serious concert-quality slide whistle-ist it has ever been my "pleasure" to hear), whose recording of "One-Eyed Sam" had all the specifics of the ska formula down about a decade before ska was thought to have been invented (though apparently it was just a coincidence; they only did one song that sounded like that, and somehow I can’t picture a bunch of Jamaicans in the fifties with an underground fixation for the Hoosier Hot Shots).
I briefly acknowledged the wife’s part in the invention of music in general; and then I got back to Skavoovie and Co., and what made them so much more interesting than the gigantic glut of modern ska bands (particularly domestic ones); which is basically a jazz approach (a la the original Skatalites) instead of a rock approach, and their obvious esteem for the Skatalites’ legendary rhythm section (Lloyds Brevet and Knibbs on bass and drums), nicely exemplified by the work of their drummer Benny Herson on the track "The Plague" from their fine new CD "Ripe" (Moon Ska). I was shocked to be listening to a new ska band and liking it
Of course, I said this all a lot better the first time.
I went on to praise the band’s excellent taste in covers (Ellington’s "Blip Blip" and Joe Liggins’ "Drunk"), the fine detail of their chord voicings and arrangements (especially on "Phobus", my favorite track), their considerable energy, and their youth and lack of (music) schooling (their oldest -and most recent -member, Dan Neely, is only 23, and most of the band are un-schooled, despite appearances to the contrary); I also marveled at Neely’s patience as he graciously fielded kwery after kwery, maintaining his composure despite his obviously having recently spent too much time in a shark-skin suit on a school bus with bad suspension in Texas and Oklahoma with nine other guys in shark-skin suits.
These guys sound like they’re going to be a lot of fun live, so I’m going this Saturday. I’m trying to talk my wife into it on the grounds that we need to get there early for pianist/singer Marcia Ball, who takes the same stage that night for what I assume is her Cape Cod debut. If you’ve spent a lot of your life in barrooms all across the country, you may’ve noticed that Ms. Ball has become one of the south’s most beloved musical emissaries; then again, you should hear what she says about you.
Another event of interest this weekend is my friend Tim Dickey’s annual concert at the Wellfleet congregational church on Sunday, July 13 at 8pm. This year it’s entitled "Back to Bluegrass", which Tim tells me is a way of referring to the fact that this year, he will not be performing any Bach. All I can say is, this guy Bach must really be something if Tim’s going that far out of his way not to perform him. He’ll be joined this year by Ed Sheridan, Julie Wanamaker, Chris Miner, Phil Neighbors, Pierre Beauregard, and the Fermatta Opera Group directed by Richard Busch, performing a smorgasbord of bluegrass, jazz, and western swing.
I am desolate.
I have heard about this kind of thing happening to other people, but never to me, a super-fine journalist for lo these many years. I must say that I am less than psyched to finally be included in this rarefied group. While I know that if I were a real pro, I would just go back to the grindstone and start over from scratch without even mentioning anything about it, I think it’s important for me to note at this point that I want my mommy.
I had started with a section about how Phoebe Snow should be released from whatever pact she had made with the devil that required her to sing every horrible pop song in history for every commercial on tv. I had pointed out that the latest had been "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Crofts and duly noted how much I’d hated that one in particular, briefly digressing about what a cultural whirlwind I am and about how much I wished my wife, the admittedly adorable Mrs. Kelp, had been (or was still) really rich, and how much fun it might be to marry a rich old broad for her money.
Then I made a number of really incisive comments about a swell new (ten piece) ska band called Skavoovie and the Epitones who are playing at the Beachcomber this Saturday afternoon at 4:30; I covered how surprised I was to hear a new (especially American) ska band that I really liked, especially in view of the fact that as much as I love ska, I really thought there had only been two great ska bands ever -the Skatalites and the Specials (though acknowledging that other great bands like the Clash and the Beatles had used ska as a point of departure).
Then I reported my discovery of the fact that the first true ska record was made in the forties by a bunch of white guys from Indiana called the Hoosier Hot Shots (who apparently featured the only serious concert-quality slide whistle-ist it has ever been my "pleasure" to hear), whose recording of "One-Eyed Sam" had all the specifics of the ska formula down about a decade before ska was thought to have been invented (though apparently it was just a coincidence; they only did one song that sounded like that, and somehow I can’t picture a bunch of Jamaicans in the fifties with an underground fixation for the Hoosier Hot Shots).
I briefly acknowledged the wife’s part in the invention of music in general; and then I got back to Skavoovie and Co., and what made them so much more interesting than the gigantic glut of modern ska bands (particularly domestic ones); which is basically a jazz approach (a la the original Skatalites) instead of a rock approach, and their obvious esteem for the Skatalites’ legendary rhythm section (Lloyds Brevet and Knibbs on bass and drums), nicely exemplified by the work of their drummer Benny Herson on the track "The Plague" from their fine new CD "Ripe" (Moon Ska). I was shocked to be listening to a new ska band and liking it
Of course, I said this all a lot better the first time.
I went on to praise the band’s excellent taste in covers (Ellington’s "Blip Blip" and Joe Liggins’ "Drunk"), the fine detail of their chord voicings and arrangements (especially on "Phobus", my favorite track), their considerable energy, and their youth and lack of (music) schooling (their oldest -and most recent -member, Dan Neely, is only 23, and most of the band are un-schooled, despite appearances to the contrary); I also marveled at Neely’s patience as he graciously fielded kwery after kwery, maintaining his composure despite his obviously having recently spent too much time in a shark-skin suit on a school bus with bad suspension in Texas and Oklahoma with nine other guys in shark-skin suits.
These guys sound like they’re going to be a lot of fun live, so I’m going this Saturday. I’m trying to talk my wife into it on the grounds that we need to get there early for pianist/singer Marcia Ball, who takes the same stage that night for what I assume is her Cape Cod debut. If you’ve spent a lot of your life in barrooms all across the country, you may’ve noticed that Ms. Ball has become one of the south’s most beloved musical emissaries; then again, you should hear what she says about you.
Another event of interest this weekend is my friend Tim Dickey’s annual concert at the Wellfleet congregational church on Sunday, July 13 at 8pm. This year it’s entitled "Back to Bluegrass", which Tim tells me is a way of referring to the fact that this year, he will not be performing any Bach. All I can say is, this guy Bach must really be something if Tim’s going that far out of his way not to perform him. He’ll be joined this year by Ed Sheridan, Julie Wanamaker, Chris Miner, Phil Neighbors, Pierre Beauregard, and the Fermatta Opera Group directed by Richard Busch, performing a smorgasbord of bluegrass, jazz, and western swing.
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