Another December 31, another end-of-the-holidays holiday, another excuse to drink and eat to excess, another batch of well-intended and soon-abandoned pledges. Happy New Year. There is no more time-honored tradition on this day (besides liver damage) than to make resolutions to reform and amend your ways, based on the hindsight of your poor performance in the outgoing year. It all seems so silly, you pick a day characterized by inebriation, paper hats and plastic noisemakers, and you select this day to effect serious changes in your life. Talk about a roll of the dice. Besides, why wait until December 31 to think about rerouting your life? I’ll tell you why. Then, all you have to do is to face yourself one day a year instead of 365. Much more convenient.

Here’s another question. Why are we so joyous about ending one year and starting fresh with a new one? Look, I have seen a few New Year’s Eves and I know that each year we welcome in the shining new baby and kick the haggard old skinny guy with a scythe (or is it a sickle?) out the door. Using logic, which comes in handy on occasion, each year must be worst than the one before it, as the baby grows up every year and we end up disowning his scrawny old ass. Either that, or each year is the same as the last, with dashed expectations and fresh hopes colliding in a one-day alcohol-fueled frenzy. I prefer the latter. Although it offers no hope for true reform, it beats a never-ending downward spiral while still leaving room for a couple of cocktails.

In spite of those glaring realities, I’m two beers into the evening’s festivities and I am looking forward to a new start, even though it is an illusion. I believe in fooling yourself every once in a while, particularly when done with a purpose, e.g., giving yourself reason to go on. So to the many thousands (see, I feel better already) of readers of this blog, I will add to my sincere wish for a Merry What-You-May-Call-It a robust round of Happy Here-We-Go-Again. May the coming year be not as bad as the last one, or at least not look as bad as the last one by the time the next one rolls around.

The music business has profoundly changed, that is not my revelation, that is just a widely accepted fact. There was a day when radio airplay meant success because it was the launching pad to a career of recording and touring in support of the recordings. It was a perfect business symbiosis: without one, the other was useless. As in most businesses, bullshit is the coin of the realm, so you had a tiny group of professional musicians (with a smaller percentage of those being veritable artists) sailing a raging sea of sycophants, bean counters and big boys who owned and operated the cash register. Some of them were bottom feeders, and most of them were bottom-liners. They had the money to buy the expensive and elusive studio time so they made the decisions about whom was recorded and heard, usually for reasons more loyal to business than to art. No more, at least until the dinosaur quits writhing in the mire. The Digital Age has signaled the end of the feudal system.

Now we have the new religion of the internet and people with Blackberries permanently fused to their fingertips. Access to everything has exploded. The young starter musicians, armed with the derringer of digitalism, have turned the applecart upside down. They make their own recordings, transmit them in minutes online, and construct a network of fans, worldwide contacts, potential gigs, and renown before they ever sell enough recordings to merit such an extensive profile. In a practice that flies in the face of conventional music business axioms, they start by giving it away. The idea is to get your sound and images out there to as many people as possible and create a demand. Digitally. That’s quite a different M.O.

Unlimited access to each other via mp3s and YouTube on the internet has presented the possibility of fame as the starting point of a musical career. You can literally begin a career well-known, before you’ve “merited” the status in record sales and live performances. The new digital age is dooming to obsolescence the middleman, a term which includes about 95% of the people who claim to be in “the business.” In the same way that people can now be their own travel agents, stockbrokers or realtors, musicians can now be their own publicists, booking agents and distributors. That possibility existed before for the very astute and driven, but the worldwide web has opened the doors wide.

For old-school musical dinosaurs such as myself, this digitalosity is The New World. Although we don‘t navigate it as effortlessly as the youngsters who are defining it, we have never been more equipped to make decisions and stay actively involved in a musical career. The paralyzing parameters of the past have been stretched and snapped. We can all be heard and famous, at least as famous as the next guy. The next question is just this: What happens if the internet goes down? Do we cease to exist?

You will now be spared any further inane ramblings about the tour from either me or Darnell Miller. We are home and Christmas is at hand. I’ll reflect on the tour a little before I write anything more about it, and instead will talk about this holiday. For me and other like-thinkers, there is an inner conflict associated with the holidays. Because our culture so reveres and cherishes this stretch in December, our childhood memories of this time of year revolve around these holy days.  If you finally arrive at a place where the mythology of the season is no longer valid intellectually or where you reject its religious significance, then these become just more days in the year. However, that is a viewpoint you need to keep to yourself or you will be branded a “Scrooge”, or even worse, an atheist. I certainly do not want to be the one to erase the beaming smiles from the faces of the little children, even though I know that the original day of simple gifts from Saint Nicholas has been co-opted by the Bearded One, Mattel and Sony. To say that we have strayed afar from the original intention and focus of Christmas is to dramatically understate. Now in this time of multicultural societies whose citizens’ varied religious traditions must coexist, we have yet another reason to secularize the holiday. So Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and more recently, Happy Kwanzaa have morphed into Season’s Greetings and Holiday Shopping Network.

So if you find no religious significance at this time of year, and if you also resist the crass exploitation by merchants of our guilt-fueled custom of gift exchanging, then what is left for you? A feeling of alienation at a time which you have always been compelled to think of as special and magical? Perhaps, but I think I have found a compromise which I can certainly live with. In deference to the memory of what the season once was, you can find meaning in simply enjoying the seasonal warmth and charm by spending time with people you love. Let’s face it, those who believe in celebrating the birth of Jesus as a human historical milestone and those who believe in the same birth as an excuse to hold a half-price sale are going to continue their annual practices. So take advantage of the down time which their preoccupations provide and affix your own significance. It’s a time to build a fire, share a meal, express your gratitude for life itself and focus on those profoundly valuable people and ideals to which we usually only give lip service. If we can learn to exercise our capacity for tenderness, gentleness and gratitude with no need for a day of significance to compel us to do so, then we are on our way to the day when human kindness is the rule rather than the exception. A day when Christmas Spirit is no longer seasonal, when it prevails for 365 days a year. So Merry Whatever Gets You Through The Night, and Happy Whatever Turns Your Crank. Really and sincerely.

Perhaps the last blog of the trip. I say perhaps because if I have the time when I get to Salt Lake City tomorrow I will write again. That’s right, Salt Lake City. Utah. U.S.A. I smite her and chide her and ridicule her, but she is still home. Full of good people, just like every place in the world. Good people who have faith that their efforts will make a difference, sometime, somewhere, for someone. We all talk funny, we all are full of shit, we all are driven by the same ego-deluded notion that there’s something out there for us. Those  are common denominators. We also each have a starting place, where we learned the earliest lessons, smelled the earliest smells, heard the earliest music, and saw the world for the first time through the unobstructed eyes of innocence. It is that place we call home, and I am going home. I have already been there many times since the trip began, but only in my memory and imagination. Tomorrow I will again be in the world in which I am the most at ease. I will see my cats and remind them that I told them I’d be back. Okay, let’s get this straight now, I have two fucking cats. I’m not one of those weird old guys with an apartment that doubles as a litterbox. Yet. Where was I? Oh yeah, home. Like a mofo. The good old USA. Just to debrief from the weeks of the European lifestyle of moderation and camaraderie, I know what I’m going to do when I pass through Walsenburg on the way to La Veta. I’m going to stop at Seven-Eleven and get me a Big Bite, a Big Grab, and a 64 ounce coke, other wise known as the Big Gulp. Ice to the top. That’s America, baby. Grab, bite and gulp, and do it cold and fast. Fastest bun in the West. That’s dining, my fellow Americans. Just ask Darnell. And even if I decide not to pollute myself with the contents of my handy plastic bag, I’ll know that I’m home. In America, where we demonstrate our commitment to freedom by being free to do everything to fruitless excess. And to the rest of the world, you’d better learn to like it. Or else.

This is another in a series of ongoing “reports” from the tour that I am on now, the 2008 Chicago Blues Festival Tour featuring Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones, DC Bellamy, Shakura S’aida, Ken Saydak, Willie Hayes and Russell Jackson.

What a day in the streets of Paris. Absolute stunning beauty, massive monuments to man’s ingenuity, persistence, and spiritual connection. Despite the unfortunate themes of bravery in war, homage to a God in whose name they fought and conquered, and immeasurable human sacrifice, the buildings, bridges, cathedrals and towers of Paris, France are a frontal assault on the senses. Their messages are screamed in centuries-old voices. I began my day at the Cathedral Of Notre Dame, itself a staggering edifice. Wanting to go in, I balked when I discovered there was a cover charge. There is the first of today’s ironic amusements. Jesus saves, but it’s going to cost you. Not surprisingly, the adjacent streets are lined with cheap souvenirs of the church, saints, and any related marketable image. My personal favorite was Quasimodo’s Gift Shop, shameless exploitation which should make any Parisian proud to be an American. After walking along the River Seine for a while, again in a cold rain, I headed toward the Bastille.

The signs led me to a large plaza, the center of a wheel whose spokes reached out in the form of wide boulevards and smaller avenues. The centerpiece of the plaza is a magnificent phallic protrusion, replete with gold-plated figure on top, erected (pun intended) in 1830 and covered with names from the past, dramatically immortalized in ornate splendor and in full public sight. Excuse my ignorance or apparent lack of interest, but I logically assumed the statue commemorates the Revolution of 1789 and was built during Napoleon’s time. There’s another one for you, overthrow the king at the turn of the century, build a monument to the memory during the reign of a megalomaniacal dictator with little-guy syndrome. But that irony was not to be the most glaring of the day.

That honor is to be reserved for the actual site of the Bastille, the notorious prison which saw the birth of one of the bloodiest coups of modern Western History. The expression “heads will roll” was born right here. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was the battle cry of a downtrodden underclass that was fed up (excuse that pun) with Marie Antoinette’s dessert suggestions. There is no Bastille that remains, at least as far as I could find. The damp chill in the air diminished my curiosity as to its whereabouts anyway. But what replaced this ghost of eighteenth-century oppression? A sparse, somber homage, made of marbled stone and created to etch the memory onto the French psyche forever? No, McDonald’s, The Gap and Starbucks. Conspicuously beckoning from the plethora of shops, hip eateries, and souvenir storefronts, were the neon logos of some of the biggest American-born consumer chains in the world. So the site of the New France, born of sacrifice and squirting torsos, is now another kla-chink on the corporate cash register. How fitting that what was once a place of outrage at the excesses and indifference of the money-and-power-rich ruling class is now flourishing under the very same, minus the tiaras and crowns. C’est la vie, motherfucker.

This is another in a series of ongoing “reports” from the tour that I am on now, the 2008 Chicago Blues Festival Tour featuring Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones, DC Bellamy, Shakura S’aida, Ken Saydak, Willie Hayes and Russell Jackson. The posts are often a day or two late due to the brutality of the schedule and the unavailability of internet connection in some areas of travel. Tough. Live with it.

I took a long walk today, down the Champs Elysees to the Christmas Market. It’s a series of little temporary kiosks that are all decorated with lights for the holidays and offer a myriad of gifts, clothing and foods. The original of these annual markets is in Munich, I’ve been told, but they have sprung up all over Europe and now even in the States. The one here in Paris is not as charming or magical as the one I saw in Strasbourg a few years ago, but it was fun to watch the people and see the different items for sale. Many of the shops were selling cheap souvenirs and such, but a few had some appealing and exotic gifts. I was surprised at the absence of real craftsmen and artisans that I had found at the same kind of market in both Strasbourg and Monte Carlo, but the food vendors, selling all kinds of regional hot and cold food and drinks, added their aromas to the street ambience. It was crowded and there were lots of little children with that look of innocent awe in their eyes, that look that this old cynic smiles at with envy. I again reflected on how fortunate I am to be able to witness such beautiful theatre. The weather was terrible, a gloomy, cold rainy day. I came back to the hotel soaked but well exercised, I think I must have walked a good few miles, with time out for a warm-up with a fantastic café au lait at a small brasserie on a side street off the boulevard. I plan on making the trek again, hopefully on a day when the sun is shining, and continue on to the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Left Bank. It’s a stroll I took in the spring of 2001, when all of Paris was in bloom, but this city is so magnificent that not even the grey winter can tarnish it’s wonder.

We’ll play at the hotel again tonight. Last night’s show was good but lacked the spark of the first night’s performance. We all agreed about that, but I think we can recapture our thunder tonight. Everyone is homesick and ready to get back to real life in the states. We all send our love to all whom we love as this tour winds down to the final days.

Darnell Miller here again, roving ambassador for good eats. I have decided to temporarily stop trying to find good food because it don’t look like there much hope in this town. Leastwise outside of Micky D’s. Instead, I’m gonna tell you about this dude everybody talking about. I’m not too much up on France and the pomme people’s day to day, but I keep hearing about this one dude what people call Chauncey Lee. I don’t know if he still alive or if he one of them dead dudes what be up high on one of them fancy statues on a pillar, but it seem like everybody here know about the dude, even some of the Americans. This dude Chauncey carry a lot of weight because no matter what I have axed about, somebody always tell me what he says about it. Like when I first axed about trying to find Micky D’s, this French dude with tight black pants pointed down the street and told me in that funny French way of talking, “McDonald’s, Chauncey Lee says.” Seems like no matter what I look for around this hotel, everybody talking about what Chauncey Lee says. When I axed about changing some real money into those Euros, somebody pointed down the street again and said, “Change, Chauncey Lee says.” When I axed about finding me one of them little gold Eiffel Towers to bring home to my girl Scintilla, some other lady pointed down the street again and said, “Souvenirs, Chauncey Lee says.” This dude Chauncey more popular here than Barack Obama, and it pretty hard to find somebody you can say that about right now.

Funny thing about it, most everything what this dude recommend is on the same street. It one of them gigantic boulevards full of big old fancy buildings and statues and a great big fancy arch made out of concrete. The arch don’t seem to have any reason to be there other than decoration, can’t nobody drive through it or anything. They call the street, and I wrote this down so I wouldn’t forget how to spell it, the Avenue de la Grande Armee. Funny thing though, as soon as you get to the big arch, they change the name of the street again, then it called, and I wrote this one down too, the Avenue des Champs Elysees. Being the astute international traveler that I am, I think I figured this out. One part of the street named after they armies. I don’t know why they so proud about that, they armies always getting they ass kicked by somebody. On the other side of this arch, when they change the name, I think it named after one of they football teams what called the Elysees and they must have won a championship some time back when they was making up street names. You see, this way, they can use the arch to celebrate both they armies and they football team champs at the same time and they didn’t need to build two separate arches for each one. That’s pretty good thinking, specially for the pomme peoples what seem to be very proud of every damned thing they done. They sure have a funny way of looking at things around here. I got to admit, though, that when you put all of they monuments and statues and big pretty buildings together, this place pretty cool. Tomorrow, I’m gonna find the Eiffel Tower and go to the top so I can tell Scintilla that I stood on the thing what the souvenir I bought for her represent. I will further enlighten you less traveled peoples in the near future. You’re welcome. As they say over here, until next time, Awe vwah. That mean goodbye in French.

Darnell Miller here, roving international food correspondence. I am in Paris, and all my life I heard about French food and how great it is. They even had that funny old big girl on TV what talked with the high voice and waved that cleaver around like a straight razor. She was always cooking up some French food and would give it some name what made it sound special, even if it was just some meatloaf. Well, I’m here to tell you that Paris food ain’t all it cracked up to be. They got some fancy names all right, but time the food get to your table, you be better off with a Big Mac. Leastwise you know what you gonna get with that.

I went to a place called Leon’s Bruxelles thinking that I could get me some rib tips and hot sauce. No luck. They was serving up what they call moulles, which I ain’t never had before. I figured moulles was French for tips, so I ordered me up a big plate. Man, when they brought that plate, my heart sank down to my shinbones. Weren’t no tips at all, just some little bitty black shells with a bunch of tomatoes and green stuff on top. Smelled funny, too. I guess they was some kind of little bitty oysters, and I ain’t going there. One good thing I can say is that at least they looked like they was cooked, but that ain’t saying much. I was watching the pommes peoples eat that shit like it was they last meal. Time they finished they plates, there was a whole big stack of them empty black shells, and they had to pay for them too! What a bunch of suckers these pommes are! Once again, they had a big pile of them pomme frites, you know, them French fries what they don’t call French. I axed for some ketchup, and instead of bringing me a bottle of Heinz, the dude brought a little tiny bowl of some red stuff what looked like ketchup but had a taste that would make the whole Del Monte family roll over in they graves. The pomme frites wasn’t nothing to write home about neither. I finally had to go to Micky D’s and get some real potatoes, the kind they ain’t afraid to call French fries. Got me about fifteen little packets of that ketchup, which still wasn’t no Heinz but at least was better than that red stuff at Leon’s. Anyway, I filled up on them fries and one of them French Big Macs what they don’t even call a Big Mac. Man, these people could learn a whole lot if they would just come to the states and have my auntie cook for they pomme asses for just one week. Maybe then they could come back and start serving up some real food. Maybe then all these French pomme peoples wouldn’t be so damned skinny with they tight black pants.

In conclusions, if you want to have some good French food, forget it. You better off staying back in the states and hitting one of them TGIFs or Black-Eyed Peas or one of them other exclusive American restaurants. That’s some eatin’, and a whole lot more for your money. I’m sorry I can’t tell you that the food here is all they say it is, but hey, that’s just the way it is and Darnell be looking out for you. I believe in passing on good informations about dining. I have made that my own personal crusade and I pledge I ain’t gonna do nothing but that. Ken came into Micky D’s looking for me, he was carrying on about some bullshit, I don’t even know what. That boy got hisself all caught up in this Europe thing and he ain’t been makin’ no sense lately. I shall return.

This is another in a series of ongoing “reports” from the tour that I am on now, the 2008 Chicago Blues Festival Tour featuring Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones, DC Bellamy, Shakura S’aida, Ken Saydak, Willie Hayes and Russell Jackson. The posts are often a day or two late due to the brutality of the schedule and the unavailability of internet connection in some areas of travel. Tough. Live with it.

We are in Gay Paree. I really don’t know or care about the sexual lifestyles and preferences of the French, but that’s what it has been called. We played our first show last night at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Club at the Hotel Meridien and it absolutely kicked derriere (that’s French ass). Again, the band has developed into a juggernaut (that’s English for good band). We are going over so well here that there is talk of us returning to Europe as a group for some more dates later in the year. That would require a lot of arrangements to be made, but it’s encouraging to know that we are this effective after having only met each other last month. That’s either a testament to the talent and professionalism of the musicians, or proof of the dearth of good blues bands in France. I suspect the former.

There are so many things to see here, these streets have seen the blood of countless generations run. They have also seen countless generations of pedestrians run. Getting hit by a car or a bus here is such an easy task to accomplish. There could not be another French Revolution unless they really restricted traffic. It’s like Manhattan, except the motorists don’t curse at you, they just drive quickly forward and wish you luck. Besides that, it’s a whole lot more charming than the Bowery.

Our hotel, Le Meridien Etoile, is populated mainly with business travelers from all over the world. It is modern, first-class, and definitely beyond the reach of the average tourist. Rooms here start at about $650.00 a night (not a typo), and go up from there. I think that explains the cost of goods in the world pretty well. Millions of business expense accounts are drained on a daily basis worldwide, and the cost of a television remote is thus passed on to Herb and Gladys in Hibbing, Minnesota. When you combine that with a corporate penchant for finding labor in Malaysia to sew BVDs for a dollar a day, I believe I have stumbled onto the bread-and-butter explanation for the international financial malaise: there are rich people and poor people. Zees ees zee boolsheet zat make zee world go all zee way round.

I am struck (not actually physically) as I proofread this post by the abundance of parentheses. I never considered myself that much of a parenthetical presence, but apparently I was mistaken (or at least misled). Although I consider myself to be a spelling/grammar Nazi, I never can remember whether to punctuate the end of a sentence inside or outside of the parentheses. Now I am struck that I have one week to see Paris and I’m sitting here wondering about some insignificant grammatical rule (no surprise there.). (just to be safe.).

I’ve got to find Darnell. He’s been on his own here for two days, and this is the place where trouble looms larger than any other on the tour. I’m sure he’s scouting out eateries so he can satisfy both his hunger and his ambition to report on the continental cuisine. There is a McDonald’s down the street. I think I’ll look there first.

This is another in a series of ongoing “reports” from the tour that I am on now, the 2008 Chicago Blues Festival Tour featuring Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones, DC Bellamy, Shakura S’aida, Ken Saydak, Willie Hayes and Russell Jackson. The posts are often a day or two late due to the brutality of the schedule and the unavailability of internet connection in some areas of travel. Tough. Live with it.

I have yet to write two new posts on the same day during this trip, but I saw a couple of things today which merit comment. I took a walk along the sea, an aimless journey to enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of the Mediterranean coast. Tomorrow morning we leave for Paris and this was the last opportunity to do that. I wandered down a narrow boulevard (no, that’s not an oxymoron, that’s Monaco) between towering buildings, old and new, which house condos and apartments. I finally found a staircase which took me down to the waterfront. I walked until I found a beach with public access, very limited areas in this tiny town. The shoreline was one of well-worn pebbles, and I decided to stop and sit for a while, watching and listening as the waves rushed first to shore and then away again. As I sat alone in the quiet, an elderly couple approached, people well into their seventies. The woman was dressed stylishly, calf length leather boots (mandatory Monaco footwear), beret tilted fashionably to one side, a black cloth coat with a fur collar which was buttoned up to the top against the December chill. It was an overcast day and in spite of the palms swaying in the gentle breeze and tropical foliage all around, this is still winter. The man was dressed in baggy slacks and just a wool sweater and carried a plastic shopping bag. They carefully stepped down among the stones, walking as people do when the confident strides of their youth are just a memory, and found a perch on a couple of boulders which formed the perimeter of the beach. After a few moments of conversation, the man shed his clothes, revealing a pair of  baggy shorts, donned a pair of swimming goggles and proceeded to enter the water. He moved forward until the water was knee-deep, and then dove in and began to do an amazingly graceful Australian crawl. I watched as he slowly but steadily swam off into the distance. All the while, his companion, whom I assumed was his wife, sat inattentive to his actions, talking in French on her cell phone. I looked around the beach for some shells (no luck there) and when I returned my gaze to the water, he was gone. I decided to wait a while to see if he appeared again. The woman was so unconcerned that I began to fantasize that their brief conversation had been a farewell and he had swum off to his final resting place beneath the waves, leaving his wife to call friends and begin making arrangements for his memorial. About a minute later, he reappeared, now doing an impressive backstroke. Despite his fragile appearance, this guy was in some kind of shape. I wondered if this was a daily or weekly routine for them, a ritual which was now part of their lives in retirement. I bid the woman a bon jour and moved on.

I came, a while later, to a large concrete wall where I found a solitary fisherman. About forty years old, he was wearing what appeared to be a fireman’s coat and was wielding an extremely long rod with an oversized saltwater reel. He was jigging among the rocks some twenty-five feet below him, and as he raised his bait out of the water, I could see that he was using a large squid-like rubber jig whose tentacles hid the hook. He let the bait down into the waves again, balanced his rod on the top of the wall on which he stood, and took out a slender loaf of bread. He held the loaf against the concrete and began to slice. Lunchtime, I assumed. Wrong. When he finished cutting the loaf into four-inch long slices, he again picked up the rod and hoisted his bait up and grabbed on to the jig. He then removed his artificial bait and carefully tied one of the bread slices on the end of his line, burying the hook beneath the crust. I have heard of dough bait for catfish and carp, but French bread as bait? Only in southern Europe. I figured he was trying to lure some crustacean to grab the bread and hold on, as they will do, unaware that their greed is leading them into a mayonnaise bath. The peripatetic baguette again rears its crusty head.

On a final note, I had to go down to the local police station to bail out Darnell from the gendarme’s custody. You see, the streets here are lined with Tangerine trees, all loaded with Clementines in various stages of ripeness. I have not seen one person pick one single piece of fruit from these trees. That is until Darnell hit town. It seems he had taken a shopping bag to the boulevard and began loading it up to the dismay of the incredulous passersby. Apparently someone took extreme exception to this practice, summoned a cop, and Darnell ended up in custody until he could come up with the fine. So for a bag of oranges that he could have bought at the Super Marche for a couple of bucks, I’m out fifty Euros. What a hopeless jerk. This is his last road trip.