Sound Your Funky Horn

From the Wiki:

Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance, and costumes of Akan origin in many towns across the Bahamas every Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year’s Day (January 1), the same as “Kakamotobi” or the Fancy Dress Festival. The largest Junkanoo parade happens in the capital Nassau, New Providence. There are also Junkanoo parades in Miami in June and Key West in October, where local black American populations have their roots in The Bahamas. In addition to being a culture dance for the Garifuna people,[1][2] this type of dancing is also performed in The Bahamas on Independence day and other historical holidays.
Dances are choreographed to the beat of goatskin drums and cowbells.

Here’s kind of what that looks like.

In popular culture, junkanoo has been portrayed or featured in the James Bond film Thunderball, and also in one episode of Miami Vice, and in Top Chef: All Stars, season 8.

What’s interesting about this? At least, to me?

Well, in 1973, a record store employee in Hialeah, Florida named Harry Wayne Kasey started a band.

He called it KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band.

Do a little dance. Make a little love. Get down tonight. Get down tonight.

Nicotine

I think what I’d like is an addiction that doesn’t affect your state of mind at all but that is instead an addiction that immediately becomes about maintenance. Also, I’d like it to interrupt my workday several times each day, to allow me to believe that it contributes somehow to my own social prowess, and to allow me to justify littering.

Also, can it be lethal and smelly?

That would be great.

IT’S IN THE FRRRRACKIN’ SHIP

I work with nerds. Lots and lots of nerds.

Most of them are superhero nerds. Big-time. I mean from the youngest puppy nerd to the oldest oldie old alta kahker nerd. To a tee, they are always watching The Flash or debating the merits of this superhero movie or that. This is not my cup of meat. I am not a superhero nerd, which is surprising because I spent years being Superman when I was younger. You know. 32.

There are Doctor Who nerds. I think I might one day become a Doctor Who nerd. I think I’ll have to watch more than two episodes in order for that to happen.

There are Star Wars nerds. I can identify an AT-AT on sight and have watched Plinkett’s work obsessively. I am most certainly a Star Wars nerd.

There are Star Trek nerds, who, it seems cannot for some reason also be Star Wars nerds. I do not know why this is so. It’s like Elvis/Beatles.

I have to say, though, and with some dismay, that I have never met a fellow nerd of the Battlestar Galactica (reboot) varietal.

I do not understand why this fine program, which I have probably screened several dozen times, does not inspire more passion in nerds as it ought to. I cannot imagine not bowing in sheer reverence to one of the finest television programs ever to have existed.

===

Anyways. I’m now recently working on a particular driving skill I’ve lost.

When I owned a Chevy Lumina, I could back up on a dime. On a mime. On a very good time. I’d sling my arm over the passenger seat, perk my head back, lift my butt up a little in the seat, and I could seriously back that sedan into Anna Nicole Smith’s back pocket.

The current vehicle, however, is a 2013 Malibu. And it has a really big ass.

And shortly after I got her (her name is Eli. I have a transgender/fluid-gender car. F the binary.), I had an accident where I backed into a Safelite car.

Safelite repair, Safelite replace.

So, I’ve been a scaredy cat about backing up ever since. I can’t parallel park anymore, I’m ashamed to admit.

I was threatening to get a backing cam, and honestly, this vehicle needs one. But this car has had so many problems (this time last year she was sitting at the local dealer sans engine; I am not making this up) that I hate to put more munny into it.

I should also add for this story that I have always thought of people who back into parking spaces as morons.

I have. I couldn’t help it. It’s like, what are you trying to prove, doc? It’s always irked me in a way. That’s probably my own little illness. But it’s true. Or has been. Until I read a persuasive article on the Internet. It’s much safer to back into a parking space. Why don’t we do it?

This is absolutely sensible. When you back into a parking spot, you are backing into no traffic whatsoever, the only danger is that you might sideswipe a vehicle next to you. Then, when you go to pull out, your line of sight into active traffic is at like 90 percent.

Backing out of the spot into active traffic? Yeah, line of sight is a real problem. Even with a back-cam, you can’t beat the visibility of pulling out forward.

Turns out, all those jokers I laughed at and made little-dick jokes about all those years? Yeah. They were right.

Besides, if I make myself back into parking spots more often, that’s like, you know, how you get to Carnegie Hall, man.

So when you see that white Malibu struggling to back into a parking spot? Go ahead, laugh. But understand, that’s a honkey trying to better himself.


Meanwhile, I’m on #3 of Dr. Who on Amazon Prime. I may become one of those nerds after all.

The Dance Electric

I like the Purple Rain Deluxe release. It collects many b-sides, extended mixes, and other oddities in one place. But, sadly, I think it is a missed opportunity.

The set contains three compact discs and on DVD of a March 1985 performance at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. CD #1 is the original soundtrack album. CDs #2 and #3 contain extended mixes and B-sides.

But they’re completely unproduced. No attempt was made to craft this material into a coherent album. I think CD #2 should be the original soundtrack with the extended mixes included and that CD #3 could be a produced, coherent album on its own.

And, why still are some of the most prominent songs from the film not included? “Sex Shooter” isn’t a Faulkner novel, but it is the only song we hear performed TWICE in the film. And even this expanded collection pretends that The Time doesn’t exist in the Kid’s universe. Meanwhile, Dez Dickerson’s “Modernaire” has essentially fallen off the planet. You can’t buy it, you can’t beg for it. It may be the most out of print music recording to have ever existed.

Here’s my mix:

    Disc One
  1. Let’s Go Crazy (Special Dance Mix)
  2. Take Me With U
  3. The Beautiful Ones
  4. Computer Blue (Hallway Speech Version) / Darling Nikki (Aaron’s Edit)
  5. When Doves Cry
  6. I Would Die 4U
  7. Baby I’m a Star
  8. Purple Rain

    Disk Two
  1. Our Destiny / Roadhouse Garden
  2. Wonderful Ass
  3. Father’s Song
  4. Velvet Kitty Cat
  5. The Dance Electric (André Cymone)
  6. Katrina’s Paper Dolls
  7. Jungle Love (The Time)
  8. Erotic City (Extended)
  9. God (Love Theme from Purple Rain)
  10. Sex Shooter (Apollonia 6)
  11. 17 Days
  12. Electric Intercourse
  13. The Bird (The Time)
  14. Love and Sex

A few notes. On Disc One, I actually edited the Hallway Speech version to run into Darling Nikki as it does on the album. This way, you get the extended mix but the cohesion present on the album. This was astonishingly easy to do in Audacity. Or maybe I just got lucky.

My original mix of Disc Two started with the “extended version” of “I Would Die 4U.” I figured we’d start with an extension from the soundtrack and then lead to the new mix. But I couldn’t. It’s so bad. I have a problem with Eddie M’s improv skills. Always have. I’m like I improvised better than that when I was 16. Dude. Take some composition classes. Take some theory. Toot toot toot tee toot is not good solo. Sheila deserved a better sax player. Sorry, Eddie.

By the way, do not go on Amazon or eMusic or whatever looking for “Sex Shooter.” I had to order the vinyl from eBay and record the song from there (this is sad because I previously owned the album and got rid of it prior to the day that Prince stopped refusing to die). Worth it. Completely worth it.

I left off several other songs, too, including “We Can Fuck,” largely because I identify this song with the later masterpiece Graffiti Bridge (with the more finished “We Can Funk” featuring George Clinton). Also left behind, “Possessed,” which sounds like bad demo, and “Another Lonely Christmas,” which is not horrible but just feels irrelevant.

And, I’m sorry, but Andre’s version of “The Dance Electric” is just better. It’s more abbreviated. And he actually released it. Made a video for it, even. And why in the wide wide world of sports doesn’t this “deluxe edition” contain “Jungle Love,” “The Bird,” and “Sex Shooter?”

And, as noted, man, Dez Dickerson is the Rodney Dangerfield of this thing and of the world of recorded music generally. Not that “Modernaire” was Mozart, but it was * in the movie. * And this is the * deluxe * edition. Allegedly.

So that’s my mix of CD2 of Purple Rain. I don’t know what to call it. I’m thinking That’s Not Lake Minnetonka or Songs From The Dumpster. AAAFNRAA