Friday, July 28, 2017

Wangdangdoodle on 9th Street









Last Friday a party for Swan's market
 100 year birthday
with cake and ice cream
calling it my birthday party
(birthday which is today)
 
 

It's strange new world
on 9th Street
in Old Oakland




Try not to look like
some kind of white alien




Super Juice
They also serve
Mayor  Libby Schaff's special sauce
they use it to make a thick
Guap cover-up





We so far out
we down home



The drummer was heroic


 
The lead guitarist
didn't get his name
from Texas he said
that the Oakland blues
is Texas blues


Recently I had two strange incidents
of apparent prescience
The first I thought of trying for the first time
Berkeley Goodwill for a pair of pants
I imagined I'd get a pair of slim green chinos
and then found the one pair, new with tags
in my size. maybe because of the Leo effect
 
Then before this party I went to my nearby pad
for earplugs and a toke and I fantasized
that I would go back and be allowed to sing
"Smokestack Lightning" by the great, great
Howling Wolf
 
I returned to the party as
this singer took the mic
in what was a sort of review
with various woman taking turns singing
First thing she asks
Anyone remember Howling Wolf
I had to ask the guy next to me
what she had said
then when I said
Howling Wolf, he's my favorite
The guitarist who sat right near me
overhears and loves the fact I do,
Then they start the song
"Ooooh Smokestack Lightning"
and she ain't doing the howl
So I do the howl,
I do it quite well
She thinks it's one of the band
 and says thanks because she can't sing like that
The guitarist flips and comes over
to get me to do it a couple more times
He's talking to me while playing just fine,
Meanwhile the highly gifted drummer et al
are just kicking it
A troop of black West Oakland
Blues ladies file up and begin a very cool
synchronized dance
We over the top and I am in
A very happy time all around
I throw in the howl
in the places where it goes
 
The guitarist later said,
This
is Oakland
 
 
 







 
Despite the years and
perhaps a few extra pounds
these blues ladies could move



 This one didn't focus well
but it captures a great array
of moves, y'all




There followed soon afterward
 an intermission
with a lot of palaver



Then came a colorful
but ear-splitting
Chinese
Lion Dance

 
I call this
Abstraction on a Lion Dance






Then the band
came back in black
starting with
Ain't No Sunshine
 
At another point the guitarist
is talking to a lady next to me
and a real pro back up singer
has to get his attention
to play the bottom of the song
You gotta play the riff
I tell him
 
Little kids
Chinese, Mexican,
African-American
and European Americans
enjoying themselves
in spades
 
 

 
Leroi Jones
Inamu Amiri Baraka
(who well-remembered me
30 years after our first meeting)
calls us
Blues People
 
 
 
 
 
Cake and ice cream are served
I have some then get in another line
for some of fancier cake
and take it on home to have
with coffee after I make me supper
 
That's how a poor man
stands such times
and lives
 
 
 
 
 
21July 2017
 
 
 

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