Music again, for the third summer here, to drink for a whole year like a camel. It began at the end of spring, first week of April, with the Dogwood Festival, where I caught some cool groves of Mother’s Finest. They rocked with some great guitar playing and the lead lady’s vocals. The limited crowd was jumping up and down. Also previously I got to hear Jodi Manross Band play. This girl could sing well, but she was sorta shy to be on the stage. So she sorta closed her eyes when she did her thing but I guess it was becoming because she was cute (I realize I am using a tweety superlative here) and sincere. From what I remember she was a school teacher as well to feed herself.

But since I usually don’t remember the music I hear at a concert, maybe a case of musical amnesia, all I can report is that I had a good time that weekend. Also the previous day I had the chance to do my first public reading of what others have called “poetry”. So that was nice.

Then lately I have become good friends with a lad, Patrick, for Ireland who plays the acoustic guitar and sings well like an Irishman. So while I may not understand everything he sings, I get by pretending. He gave us a few sing along sessions, one was at VILLA, where I hang out and play pool, and another at the Cave, with yours truly doing the cooking for the evening. We also had asked Hua, our violinist, violinmaker and photographer friend to bring his violin. So he and Patrick got to jam the Red River Valley, which was fun. This was three weeks ago.

And then this weekend, Tom’s church had gotten dem a portable organ from Netherlands and they were showing that off with a choral sing, to which being a shameless bathroom singer I am, I went and partook in the sang-ing. This was followed by some fest at VILLA, where a few brothers, who looked like distant cousins of Masai, got playing dem drums and got all booties shaking. Man, dem people really got rhythm. The best piece was of course, a drum jam, which apparently is how they “telephone” each other back in dem woods at Africa. We also had an acoustic band perform, I forget their name, who sang a lot of Tracy Chapman songs, apparently they were gonna play dem songs at the band leader’s daughter’s wedding. The Promise, a great song, is gonna be the processional, which I thought was cool. They also had a good cello bass section. And on the evening before, we went to Decatur Square to catch some blues from Delta Moon. The moon lead singer babe, always wore dark glasses and tried to act up like some wicked temptress out of New Orleans. She partially succeeded with her faux country “yall” voice.

Then coming up, we have the Atlanta Jazz Festival this weekend. On The Bricks, the annual summer pop/junk/popular music concert series begins the week after that. Hua also told me that his ensemble is goanna due some Brahms sometime in the first week of June, which should be fun. So that’s the summer music report, for now.

Remember Shakti is an album that is a must listen. This is what happens when all kinds of music collide and get cooked into a wonderful cosmic soup. Yes another thing that is meaningful, enduring and worth living for: music. Music that drills into the soul, as the beat of a tabla or the notes that fall like flowers from the strings of an electric guitar, and makes anything and everything endurable: pain, loss, or numb emptiness.

Because when I sit down and let the sound bullet through me, I am pushed no put into a catapult and hurled over everything that is small and limited into something that is vast, something that dazzles with infinite possibilities and crash into something I can only call divinity.If beauty, stillness and ecstacy be the things that I seek to find in what can only be limited human organic patterns(DNA bits synthesised into long carbon chains), then music has enough and is infinitely more enduring.

Peace.

Wow! Frances told me that going to Music Midtown was worth it, just for this band. That didn't happen and today as I was taking a study break by listening to RadioFreeVirgin online, I heard songs of this band come on. I am stunned and I am amazed by the simple lyrical capacity of these songs.

Everyone should listen to Raining in Baltimore which goes:

There's things I remember and things I forget I miss you I guess that I should Three thousand five hundred miles away But what would you change if you could? I need a phone call Maybe I should buy a new car I can always hear a freight train If I listen real hard And I wish it was a small world Because I'm lonely for the big towns I'd like to hear a little guitar I think it's time to put the top down I need a phone call I need a raincoat

And everyone should listen to Counting Crows: A Long December, a simple and beautiful song that ends "It's been so long since I've seen the ocean...I guess I should"

The last time I heard such consistently good songs is when I heard Tracy Chapman's New Begining fill up a far away room in which a woman is now sleeping, that was already full of unsaid emotions.

Rock on!