Well, we just had to have our SUVs, PCs, HDTVs, VCRs, DVDs, MTV, HSN and NFL. We paid for it all with IOUs. Now, the USA economy is DOA, and our IRAs and CDs are worth less than our BVDs. May the empire R.I.P. LOL.

What a day! No complaints, no dissatisfaction, no problems. First of all, here in Huerfano County, fall has arrived. The mountainsides and valleys are a patchwork quilt of color. The scrub oaks have turned, and the overall effect as you drive through the passes is a painting of browns and maroons and yellows and oranges and greens. The aspen are beginning to change, their golden-yellow getting deeper by the day. The weather has been spectacular, temperatures in the 70s and 80s, light breeze, blue skies. Perfection. Without question this is my favorite season in the mountains.

I was facing a huge workload today. Between the ongoing process of updating and working on the website and the backlog of recording and writing that needs to be finished before the November tour in Europe, I knew when I awoke this morning at 7 that I would be busy all day. After the coffee brewed, I assessed the situation. I figured the best way to get started was to head over the La Veta pass and into the San Luis Valley. Not forty miles from here lies the Smith Reservoir, the scene of a fall trout bonanza. It’s time to stock up the freezer for the long winter. With our miraculous economy bringing surprises by the day, getting free food for the cold months is an opportunity that you can’t let slip away.

I arrived at the reservoir about 10:30 a.m. I called my friend and fishing/recording guru Steve from my cell, and he guided me to the exact spot to set up day camp. Within thirty seconds of my first cast, I had a 2-3 pound rainbow trout.  They grow them big in that water. The actual measurement is inconsequential, there are always more where the last one came from. The fish was stripping line off my reel like some ocean-bound steelhead would. All the while I was facing the majesty of the 14,000-foot-plus Mt. Blanca and the adjacent peaks that form the eastern border of the valley. It’s beauty that cannot be adequately described in words or photos. It is beyond a visual experience, you actually feel it inside of you. You are dwarfed by the magnificence, it puts you in your place. Being a lifelong urban dweller in the world of man, I cannot express the significance of being greeted by the indescribable each morning, 365 days a year. Somebody up there likes me.

After a mere two hours of fishing from a flat, unobstructed shore, I had my legal limit of fish. Two of them were big boys, the kind of fish that would challenge anyone’s conception about how large trout are. I headed back across the pass, arrived home, cleaned the fish, froze some, and shared some with my good friend, Jill.  I love sharing such bounty with those who truly understand its blessing. Just yesterday, she brought me homegrown squash and kale from her garden. It’s an organic barter system, love flowing between friends in the form of nourishing sustenance. What a life!

To all of my friends and family back in Chicago and Wisconsin I say, hello, I hope you’re well and I send my love to you. To any of them who may wonder why I chose to leave the bounty of work back home and come to a place where it is so difficult to earn a living as a performing musician, I say: I just told you. I hope to remember not only the day, but the joy in my soul this day that left me wanting nothing.

I am asking for your help with this one. I am trying to regenerate the plans for a sado-masochistic diner. No, it’s not a place where you can eat and be beat. S&M is simply a theme for the menu. Darnell Miller was involved in a scheme to open such a place last year but the financing fell through. So far, here are our menu items:

Beet soup, Mashed Potatoes, Black-Eyed Peas, Battered Chicken, Blackened Fish, Creamed Corn, Blood Sausage, Dessicated Liver, Pound Cake with Whipped Cream.

If you have any suggestions for other dishes that fit the theme, please let me know. Also, we are taking suggestions for names for the diner.

Darnell Miller here. For those of you who don’t know me, let me introduce myself. My name is Darnell Miller. I am a well known radio personality and community representative (I Rep My Peeps). My late brother, Roland “Stumpy” Miller, was a very talented journeyman bass player who toured and recorded for many years with some of the most famous names in blues, far too many to mention any, for fear of forgetting the dear. In addition to a career surrounded by the greats in his field, shortly before his untimely departure he recorded with Ken Saydak.

Roland had an interesting background. He and I were born in Arkansas on a farm, and at the age of fourteen, Roland suffered the loss of his right foot in a farm machinery accident. He was fitted with a wooden leg and decided to seek his fame and fortune as a musician since farm work was now all but impossible. Roland was a balls-out bass player. He could be real smooth, then he could turn around and slap that thang like Moe used to slap Larry and Shemp. Anyway, Roland had a habit of keeping time with that wooden leg, kind of stompin’ it out. The fellas in his band started calling him Stomp. One day at a recording session, the engineer heard the nickname wrong and he said, “Hey Stumpy, you got to keep that foot quiet!” Man, the fellas just fell out. From that day on, they all called him Stumpy. Roland hated that shit, but the snowball had rolled too far down the hill to stop it.

The name came in handy when Roland opened Stumpy’s Ribs,  a ribjoint in East St. Louis, Illinois, a town where he had found work after he lost his foot. He was tired of the road and the rib joint was a steady income but a lot of hard work. As luck would have it (Roland was a very lucky man…well, except for that one day on the farm) he entered his secret-recipe barbecue sauce in a cook-off and it won! Stumpy’s Slappin’ Super Sauce got a bottling and distribution deal in a five state area and he was set. That gave him the freedom to get back into music a little. That’s when he recorded with Ken. He was a good musician and I miss him. He passed away in late 2000, right after he helped Ken on his second CD.

It was this connection to Ken Saydak that brought me to Trinidad, Colorado, where I currently reside. I am the co-host of the Trinidaddio Blues Hour, a weekly blues radio program on KCRT-FM, 92.5 a 50,000 watt commercial station that reaches approximately 27 million people in a two state area. It is with this vehicle that I launched my radio career. I have remained humble through it all and vow to continue in that regard, unless it become too difficult.

Because we do the radio show together, Ken allows me to put up posts so I can counter his largely uninformed opinion on most everything. I insisted on this is in my contract. I like to fish (but not in a boat!), I am a Sagittarius, I am considered by more than a few to be handsome and virile, and I enjoy making the acquaintance of any and all of the lovely ladies who have come to admire me through my extensive and excellent work in radio.

I vow to continue to follow up on Ken Saydak’s blogs, I’ll be right behind him wearing my boots and swinging my shovel. Think of me as a kind of charming in-house early warning system. When the bullshit start to fall, I will be there to point out the pies. Thank you for reading my posts, you will hear from me when it become necessary.

I was just checking my e-mail, which unfortunately I do at AOL. I have had the same e-mail address for many years. When I first decided to commit a portion of my life to staring at a new kind of TV screen, AOL was “it”. There weren’t a whole lot of options and we users (I love the fact that this is the conventional term for computer owners, it’s so clinical and accurate) were not as computer savvy back then as we think we have now become. In reality, the software designers have just learned to do a better job of  holding our hands. So, for a number of practical reasons, I still use my AOL account for webmail. And now I can get it free by agreeing to join a cyber-caste that is relegated to AOL’s class Z servers and the slowest connection they can offer without attracting attention from the FCC.

After reading my mail, I visited the AOL home page for the news. That’s a parallel effort to eating at Wendy’s for nutritional reasons. But I forged onward nonetheless. Scattered among the predictably spun stories about the  election, hurricanes, murders, fires, military coups, or any other man-made or natural disaster are the tidbits that give us strength in tough times like these, the stories that offer hope and relief from the real news. Like the one about the 714 pound bagel. As the world sinks into economic collapse, as armies march on each other in countless theaters of battle worldwide, as children born into famine waste away literally miles and hours from abundant food, we know that Lindsey Lohan has been outed. Or has she? We know that cucumbers can prevent aging. We can read about the Ninja dog and peruse digital photos of successful back fat surgery, no doubt necessitated by eating too much fatback. We have unearthed the heretofore sealed sarcophagus holding the mummified remains of the ancient Egyptian secret to six-pack abs. Hey, there’s a living to be made in this country by sticking a camera into any orifice you can access without getting punched out. We once had Papa Hemingway. We now have papparazzi.

Let’s get back to this 714-pound bagel thing. This one fascinates me. Imagine the amount of total human, plant, and fossil-fuel energy was spent on this story from beginning to end. The wheat was grown, harvested, milled, packed, delivered and mixed. Each ingredient had a similar itinerary. Then, in addition to the people baking this bagel, there were the cameras and news reporters and their expenses, and on and on. Then there’s the energy that is used to read the story and the energy used to read things that idiots like me write about the story. And perhaps most tragically, we must consider the hens that went through the hell of fruitless and futile childbirth innumerable times in the pursuit of this mammoth mockery, the product of which they would never share. An incredible expenditure of hours and calories pain and thought for……? A story which lasts less time than the bagel. I don’t know this for sure, but I’ll bet the bagel will be donated to the indigent. This way, instead of each having received a fresh normal-sized bagel which they would enjoy, they receive a huge bagel so that half of them are gumming the doughy, uncooked center. In addition, the whole excessive and wasteful folly can be justified as a fun charitable event which feeds the hungry homeless. Now you tell me we aren’t nuts.

I left the AOL homepage with a renewed sense of satisfaction and an at least temporary sense of balance. I’m not crazy about the fact that I had just borne witness to the pathetic truth about our cultural priorities, but at least now I know how George W got elected. Twice. Look, even if you steal them, they have to be close enough to steal in the first place. I also know why John McCain leads the AOL straw poll by a nearly 2-1 margin. It also explains Mrs. Moose. We are being invaded by the Wal-Martians, and this is no radio show.

Much is made of this crusade to keep the blues alive, particularly in the world of blues festivals, blues publications, and blues societies. I think with many, if not most, the intention is sincere, although some of the fervor is simply an invitation to a big party. Far be it from me to bite the hand that feeds. I am grateful that anyone still wants to hear a style of music that I professionally embraced years ago. However, as an insider in the blues world, I am sorry to break in with a news bulletin. Not only is the blues not up and around, it’s not even on life support anymore. The power has been cut, and there was no special session of Congress called to pass a resolution opposed to pulling the plug.

What about all of the festivals and concerts and awards and foundations and mailings and cruises and e-zines and paper-zines and new releases from the blues indies you ask? Well, all of those things are obviously real. I mean you look up and there they are.  Many even bear some kinship to the music called blues. There’s the three chords, for example, the old I-IV-V. Shit, most popular music is built on that pyramid. You can still find a pair of alligator shoes, some greasy hair, an affected stage accent, a pseudo-Negroid growl, etc., etc., etc. I’m not suggesting that what passes for blues today is without merit or a completely wasted effort. As in any other field, there are the substantial and the sub-par, the connected and the concocted, the sincere and the synthetic. I’m just saying let’s cut the crap about championing and preserving the idiom.

Blues, as a musical style, was the marriage of African rhythms and scales with western European harmonic tradition. That’s only the technical portion of the program. The heart and soul of the blues was born of the collective cultural nightmare of human bondage. The first sounds of the blues were not searing string-benders on a Telecaster. They were the sounds of human flesh snapping with the crack of a bullwhip.  The entire development of this musical genre was the history of African culture in America. The usefulness of blues as a cultural conduit was long ago exhausted as soul music, funk and hip-hop took their successive turns at repping the peeps.

When the mainstream and white listeners discovered blues, it was a mixed blessing. Seminal blues artists, unsophisticated, unpretentious black men and women from the country, found themselves riding the coattails of British upstarts to a new level of acceptance and adulation. These musicians never could have imagined that they would be standing on stages in front of thousands of young white college students, some of whom were perhaps grandchildren of slave owners. They had no illusions of such fame and fortune when they began their careers, not in a society which was just coming out of Jim Crow. This long-overdue reward for the musicians who inspired a young generation of color-blind devotees was also the end of blues as a living, breathing art form. Now it was business. Now it needed to concern itself with contracts, billing, riders, sound checks, you know, rock star crap.

In time, these purveyors of America’s original art form passed on and left a legacy of recordings and concert footage for the young aspirants to study. Some students got it and others were simply using the blues and its bad-ass posturing to get laid or get paid. Sounds pretty much like any field of artistic endeavor or, for that matter, cattle ranching. You must wade through the bullshit to get to the beef. So in a style of music where songs once spoke of infidelity, duplicity, cheating, disappointment, terminal illness, and any one of many actual life experiences, we now had a new set of topics. Zydeco bands now sang about how hot their gumbo is, blues bands sang about how much they have the blues because they’re from Chicago, and the parade of cliches and blues trademarks marched on (thanks a lot, Blues Brothers). It’s as if someone was holding a mirror up to the blues as it described its own bastardized image in the lyrics of its songs. It became self-conscious. That’s always the end.

So, more power to anyone who enjoys today’s “blues”, whether on CD, live in a club, or at one of the hundreds of festivals each year. Have a beer, dance, call some friends, download the newest releases onto your iPod. Enjoy, revel, compare notes and have fun. Those of us who depend on your support to put bread on the table are sincerely appreciative and always ready to perform. But please, let’s not “keep the blues alive”. That kind of talk is disrespectful to the corpse.

I was reading a column written by the three-piece syndicated Bush-apologist/Cubs fan, George Will, one in which he advocates that John McCain remind people of how important it is to have at least one branch of government controlled by the opposing party. Since it’s largely presumed that the Democrats are going to add to their majority in Congress, Will urges McCain to once again scare the living shit out of people (McCain’s only hope)  by reminding them of how horribly the Democratic liberal excesses will smell unless we have G.I. John in the Oval Office with a can of air freshener. I am first struck by the fact that George Will didn’t seem worried about that very danger when the GOP ran the whole show. As a matter of fact, he was rather a cheerleader for the whole regime change in Washington. I am secondly struck that George Will forgets that the judicial branch is firmly in the hands of the conservatives, or right wing, or whatever you choose to call the monied, powerful, privileged elite and their deer-in-the-headlight working-class abortaphobic followers. If you have any doubt, listen to Anton Scalia describe his “impartial” political and judicial vision.

“Liberals”, socialists, and the other marginal leftists are frequently accused by the conservative opposition of “living in a dreamworld” for embracing egalitarian, Utopian visions of mankind. The rough-and-tumble tough guys in Armani suits claim that we are doomed without their practical supervision and no-nonsense readiness to kick ass and take names. The world is full of scoundrels and evil-doers (I  didn’t make that up, our president said it about 73 times) who just can’t wait to bring us to our knees, in other words, force the season’s NFL schedule to be canceled and take the American Idol panel hostage. In short, liberals are dumb-assed, namby-pamby, gullible, inexperienced-in-the-real-world, wusses whose mere presence in Washington will guarantee last call at the open bar.

Here’s a question. Where are these champions of pragmatism and common sense when a government who doesn’t like to give a dollar to a kid with a runny nose suddenly throws hundreds of billions at a bunch of suits who got a little greedy and fell asleep at the wheel? Did somebody say socialism? Oh, I forgot, it’s only socialism when the recipients of taxpayer’s money are the taxpayers themselves. When the hand being held out is attached to an arm of one of the Fortune 500, that’s just responsible government acting heroically in our national interest to avert a world economic collapse.  So much for the free market correcting itself.  Part-time fiscal conservatives.

The point is this: All of the truly sincere fiscal conservatives and socially cautious who continually support the ilk of Bush and Cheney and their corporate cronies seem to be overlooking a blatant reality. The assumption that a free market, devoid of governmental regulation, will function in reality as it does in theory is as apparently erroneous as the deluded liberal notion that life is just a bowl of cherries. There are simply greedy, thoughtless, self-concerned sociopaths out there whose penchant for $200 lunches and weekend trips to Tahiti lead them to violate any sense of fair play and righteousness and, most certainly, any un-written rules. Continued defense of this Darwinian capitalism is the domain of people like George Will. He always knows if, when and where his bread will be buttered. When you observe humanity from a privileged, lofty perch you will always be looking down.

Back to politics. I know a lot has been written and bandied about concerning this year’s election and its importance. Regardless of your political leanings (if you are a Democrat, you lean to the left, if you are a Republican, you lean forward so the party leaders have a better angle on the point of entry), you really cannot question that this election of 2008 has historic implications. No, I’m not referring to the heated primary race between an African-American and a woman.  I’m not referring to the fact that the Democratic nominee is the first African-American to achieve the top spot on a major party ballot. I’m not referring to the second female nominee for the VP slot on a major party ticket. I’m not even referring to the fact that we now have our first beauty queen/sportscaster/moose skinner/vindictive bitch on a major party ticket for the number two spot behind a seventy-something four-time cancer survivor.

What I am referring to is the unique confluence of events which pose the possibility of consecutive administrations which would feature the man who is the biggest dick to ever hold the highest office in the land, followed by (assuming Obama wins and assuming the conventional wisdom about African-American males) the man who has the biggest dick to ever hold the highest office in the land.  There are those cynics who feel Obama does not have the experience to hold both the office of President and his junk at the same time. It is this kind of disrespect which the Obama/Biden ticket faces.

Actually, I don’t want to betray my political preferences in a public forum. I do admit that I would like to see John McCain and Sarah Palin get on a plane and stump this country from the redwood forest to the gulf stream water, from sea to shining sea, border to border, spreading their resounding message of minimal government, American superiority, and an oil rig in every pot (right next to the $9.79 chicken). I urge them to do so and I urge them to allow John McCain to pilot the plane.

If I were advising either camp, I would have to suggest that the candidates to try to appeal to all of the demographic groups among the electorate. For the Democrats, this would require Obama and Biden to appear in dresses at 51% of their campaign rallies. Of course this would also require McCain and Palin to appear in blackface 14% of the time.

I am writing this to respond to the desert island list in the previous post. I would have posted this as a comment, but I felt an urge to write a new post, as this is an urgent matter. I take umbrage at the seclusion of my man Barry White. As you know from the radio show, I often take umbrage when dispersions have been cast. But this time, I’m taking a massive amount of umbrage, way more umbrage than usual. More umbrage than a man can be asked to carry.  Even in his currently deceased condition, Barry White is responsible for more romance than even the little fat dude with wings and a bow-and-arrow, who still flying around. I personally have enjoyed the weekend company of many a fine lady as a result of combining my irresistible charm with the mellifluent strains of my main man, Barry White. “I Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Baby” alone has been responsible for the dispensation of a great deal of my manhood. To leave Barry White off a short list of necessary tunes is to ignore the Bible’s command to be fruitful and multiply. And who Dave Matthews anyway? Damn! And Gram Parsons? Just from the name he sound like some country-ass cracker. That’s it, Gram Cracker! Heh-heh-heh, I have done amused myself one more time up in here!

They used to be called songs. Then they became tunes. Then they became tracks. Now they are mp3 files. Sometimes change really bytes. The idea is simply this: The old question of which music you would take to a desert island if you could only bring ten records or tapes is a largely moot point. In a small bit of plastic and metal which can fit in a human nostril, you can now store 100 billion songs. Forget about remembering which ones you have. You can now have every single second of recorded music in the history of our civilization (and remakes of some tunes from previous civilizations). It’s a soundtrack for the Story of the Universe. “Here’s the song I work out to, here’s the song I make love to, here’s the song I cook to, here’s the song I crack coconuts to.” Yes, with the help of a small battery and some earbuds, you can now insure that you will never have a waking moment of silence again.

If you can still hear me, I pose once again the old question in a new frame: What are the tunes that you would absolutely be compelled to load into your i-Pod if you knew you were going to spend the rest of your days on a desert island? Or an arctic island. I submit some candidates:

When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge
Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum
Hey Jude by the Beatles
Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson
Crush by Dave Matthews
Sweet Little Sixteen by Chuck Berry
Breathless by Jerry Lee Lewis
Get Off My Cloud by the Rolling Stones
Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons
Respect by either Aretha Franklin or Otis Redding

That’s just a few suggestions. God Almighty, how they reveal my age! They aren’t necessarily ranked in any order, I don’t believe in the notion of relative aesthetic value. It’s just that you never know when you might have to listen to a song fifty-three times in a row, and you never know which song that might be. It’s just good to have a few options handy. Note the conspicuous absence of anything by Celine Dion or Billy Joel.
For a whole album, I would have to have “Otis Spann is the Blues”, a monster piece of work featuring only Robert Junior Lockwood on guitar and Otis on piano, with both contributing vocals. This is the moment when country and urban styles fused in a sparse, haunting, reverb-soaked display of everything that is good about the real blues. Perhaps the deepest vocals I’ve heard in this idiom, delivered mainly by Otis Spann: not considered a great singer, but here he shows how far soul and sincerity can carry a limited vocal range. It will send shivers up your chills, and make your neck stand up on the back of your hair.
More music talk later. I’m declaring a very temporary moratorium on politics. My bullshit meter is in the shop being repaired. It seems that it was triggered so many times this past week that the LEDs started smoking and sparking. Without that meter, or at least a shovel and a good pair of rubber boots, it is best that I steer clear for a few days. There’s plenty of time left at the circus. Besides, I just recently found out that a good friend of mine is actually a Republican. I’m still being treated for injuries resulting from that revelation.