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Been playing hooky from the School of Hardknocks lately, transferred to Bob Watt School of Inferior Poetry. There is no best. There is a year. No try. Just do. - Jack Vaughan    Bold Stump Reunion in my imagination was a little journey on music toward the "castle of heaven." - Aug 2022   Kerouac Bardo Poem - I searched the graveyard - May 2022   Al compas del mundo on the March Jim Haas onboard  - All through 2022   At night the dispatches. -War Blues Prose -Apr 2022 This stuff goes back to Shakespeare and Alexander||There may be only 10,000 sidewinder missiles in US arsenal, and replacing them means production lines like JI Case or Hingham BoatWorks set up in WW11.||The Ukrainians have been fighting this war for several years and have developed methods. and they have intangible desire.||Russian capability for cruelty astounds|| They show a city utterly destroyed by artillery… and say the Ukrainians are blowing things ...

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Jim's show on Demand Radio Show Playlists (and this Video)

 On the passing of Luther Guitar Junior Johnson Christmas Day 2023 at 83 - I post here some excerpts from liner notes I wrote for his 1984 Rooster Record: “Doing the Sugar Too.”  He was a hard-working and riveting performer with a great sense of Time, Dynamics, Emotion, and Blues.  And a thoughtful individual I recall, as a read a bit of the liner notes.  Cringing too, as it's pretty clear I must have asked him some pretty dumb questions. But he fielded them manfully, and they tell a story. He came up from Mississippi to West Side Chicago, and played extensively with Magic Sam, but most notably with Muddy Waters, playing a role as something of a bandmaster for most of the 1980s, counting off numbers in one of Muddy Waters’ greatest ensembles. Here are some portions of the notes: Luther pursues a sound that represents his feelings. “I take my guitar and go into a sound,” he says. “I pick up an acoustic and think about different arrangements of music.” He sometimes com...

A few years ago I self-published “Sunnyland Blues”. The 1990 book is still available on-line .  We named our home press “Proud Truth Publishing,” after the same-named race horse – [By Garustark/Wake Robin] – Proud Truth - Winner of the 1985 Breeders’ Cup Classic (where he defeated a strong field that included Chief's Crown, Gate Dancer, Turkoman, and Vanlandingham.) Proud Truth Press is now a part of Progressive Gauge LLC. We often find people that seek us out, but have difficulty. To reach us, write to: Vaughan Proud Truth/Progressive Gauge 30 Delle Ave Suite 1 Boston, Mass. 02120 Proud Truth also published “Blues Poetry Manifesto” 1995 and “A Wet Bird Never Flies at Night” 2020. Competition for the Bickersons! HA HA

Excerpt  Dylan Tells Wall St Journal - I first heard most of the songs in my book: on the radio, portable record players, jukeboxes. The songs were simple, easy to understand. They’d come to you directly, let you see into the future. I recently binged: “Coronation Street,” “Father Brown,” and some early “Twilight Zones.” I know they’re old-fashioned, but they make me feel at home. I’m no fan of packaged programs or news shows. I never watch anything foul-smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting, nothing dog ass. When you hear a great song: you get a gut reaction and an emotional one. It follows the logic of the heart and stays in your head long after you’ve heard it. You don’t have to be a great singer to sing it. It’s bell, book and candle. It touches you in secret places, strikes your innermost being. I do love the sound of old vinyl, especially on a tube record player from back in the day. I bought three in an antique store in Oregon about 30 years ago. The tone quality is so powerf...

 Al compas del mundo – programa #58, 12-22-22 Blues and bluesy jazz - USA 01 Sonny Stitt - Blues Ahead 02 Lowell Fulson - Trouble, Trouble 03 Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis - Untitled Blues 04 Jimmy Rogers - Goin' Away Baby 05 Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson - When My Baby Left Me 06 Mercy Dee - Red Light 07 Charlie Ventura - O.H. Blues 08 Buddy Guy - Money (That’s What I Want) 09 Jaki Byard - Shine on Me 10 James Cotton - Somethin' You Got 11 Clark Terry - Swahili 12 Arthur Gunter – Don’t Leave Me Now 13 Dave Bailey Quintet - Comin' Home Baby 14 Magic Sam - All Night Long 15 John Handy - Blues in The Vernacular Just sitting here rockin’, with a heatpad over the lumbar region. Guess I rocked till my back didn’t have no bone. I should be so lucky to avoid true, deep-down blues. Never went (seriously) hungry. Always had a pallet on the floor, or something better. My baby done left me (not) after 46 years together. Can you feel me? We’re talking middle class, Midwestern, Catho...

  La Brea -  Today, The Land of Grade School Field Trips Noting here the passing at 91 last month of Frederick Brooks, director of some of IBM’s most important mainframe-era programming projects. He was a key figure in establishing the idea that software projects should be intelligently engineered and organized. He helped as much as anyone to move the mysterious art of tinkering with computer code toward a profession capable of repeatable results. “The Mythical Man-Month,” his 1975 distillation of years of development management, became a common reference work in many a developer’s desk library. He had a sense of humor too, for example, choosing the above pic of animals sinking into the La Brea Tar Pits, to illustrate this epic of software project management. Working at IBM in the 1950s and 1960s, and spearheading development of the vaunted IBM/360, Brooks gave a lie to notions that were bedrock in hardware-software projects, and came up with a few notable inventions as well.....

Young Jerry Louis along with Boston's Preacher Jack. This blog was posted just a few days before Jerry Lee's passing. This timing was just by chance or something more weird. I do remember thinking he was the last of a line and was still alive. With his leaving, leaves the last king of rocknroll.  I had also posted to Facebook, and that incurred some kickback. One of my friends who worked in the music business and had to deal with the Golden Haired Louisianan's Inflated Sense of Destined Self took this as an irritant. I sure don't blame him on that. He wrote: 'I’m sorry, but I can’t even watch. Based on personal experience on two occasions, he’s the biggest jerk in the business. He doesn’t deserve attention or accolades.' READ THE REST OF THE STORY

Music of the Arab world, First Broadcast 12-15-22 Just chewing the qat Runlist 01 Boudjemaa El Ankis - Rah Yendem Men Han Hbibou (Algeria) 02 Fairouz - Saluni an-nas فيروز سالوني الناس (Lebanon) 03 Fatma Eid - Hassanen wa Mohamaden (Egypt) فاطمه عيد - حسانين و محمدين 04 Talal al-Madah - Hobbak Sabani (Saudi Arabia) 05 Trio Fahmi Riahi & Sabry Mosbah - صالح الفرزي  إرضى علينا (Tunisia) 06 Founon Shaabyia - Ya zareef at-tul (Palestine) 07 Kamal Turbas – title unknown (Sudan) 08 Kawkabani Brothers - You Said that You Would Forget Me (Yemen) 09 Children of Abraham - Spiritual Union in Song (Iraq) 10 Jalsah Iraqia - Zalel al'af (Iraq) 11 Sheikh 'Abdu an-Naby az-Zaman – title unknown (Egypt) 12 Fedwa Abid - (Syria-USA) دعاء مولاى كن لى وحدى 13 Mehdi Nassouli, Boganga and Sandia – Ammar 808 (Morocco) Music of the Arab world spans a sizable area from Mauritania in the West, across northern Africa, down to Sudan and Somalia and across the Red Sea to the Middle East: Iraq, Palestine,...

The Early Days of Poetry The word expired on a virus splaat! the asteroid  took off its hat metaphors were facile and easy you picked them off a tree all sleepy & sneezy before the academy.                                   - J.V. ca. 1985 Red Star very bitter cold industrial plain south of Marquette in the way early winter morning  on way to class and sickening smell of Red Star Yeast factory in action hanging in the frigid air. - J.V. ca. 2010 Film Dream I've gotten a job sort of an assignment to drive an individual from Chicago to Milwaukee. Very futuristic airport the modern style white like a stellar sail clipper.  The person I have to pick up is sort of Austrian nobility. Not very talkative. Has small entourage of people who are also not talking too much. I want to get going but we have to wait. some kind of backstory will flash now and then. Story has something to do with ...

Al compas del mundo – programa #56, 12-8-22 La música guapachosa – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Republica  Dominicana, Nueva York 01 Pucho and His Latin Soul Brothers - Heat! 02 Eddie Palmieri and Cal Tjader – Bamboléate 03 Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevayorquino - Canto Ebioso 04 Willie Colón - La Murga 05 Luis Vargas – Tranquila 06 Fania All-stars - Quitate Tú (Live At The Cheetah) 07 Frankie Negron - Qué Tengo Que Hacer 08 Cachao - Spoon Lips (Descarga-Jam Session) 09 Eddie Palmieri – Café 10 Willie Colon y Ruben Blades - Pablo Pueblo 11 Joe Cuba Sextet - Salsa y bembé Immigration and transnational communications being what they are, it gets harder to place borders on the practitioners of “la musica guapachosa” (dance music) in Latin America and the USA. Ruben Blades, for example, was born in Panama, but I decided to forego listing that in my mix title. Comes a point where they all fermented in New York, San Juan or Havana, so musically what’s the difference? Salsa is universally ha...

Was reading an obit for Wilco Johnson [75], who played in Dr. Feelgood. This is a band I'd heard the name of but never heard, had seen the record in a bin, but passed on it. I knew that they were 'of' the British Pub Rocker Scene of the early '70s - But the guy who came out of that that got my most attention was Dave Edmunds and his cohort Nick Lowe. * So tonight I discovered this Wilco Johnson guy. Not better than the Animals, or anything…but A lot of energy, and an upbeat blues, Stones, or Velvet Underground feeling. Kind of a link between Little Richard, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker … and … I don’t know.. The Ramones? Dr Feelgood records died in the U.S. I don't think the name helped. But they have a feel of a lot of bands that never made it over here. After Dr Feelgood Wilco went on to play with Ian Drury, Lemmy Kilmister, Paul McCartney, quite a line up. Made a record with Roger Daltry, so is definitely connected with the British greats. He even took up a...

  Moon Traveller is honored to host the archival list of old buddy Jim Haas's Mexican Radio Show . Get right with Instant Karma and Learn more about AL COMPAS DEL MUNDO . Bluegrass, Newgrass, and Folk USA Spare change?! Lace up your cloggers, folks. This week we’re checking out old-timey music as performed by (mostly) new-timey musicians, along with some new wrinkles. And you needn’t be born in the Appalachians to fit in with this crowd. Up-and-comer Billy Strings hails from Michigan, for example, that haven for moonshiners and out-of-work automotive industry peons. Maybe that’s the appeal: a folkish (i.e. mostly acoustic) musical tradition that roots for the underlings, the underdog, and the under-represented. I’m in! And so is Sierra Ferrell with a voice for the ages and soul to boot that sounds genuine to me. And then there’s Josh O’Keefe. Bob Dylan has had plenty of imitators over the years, particularly early on when a raspy voice, unplugged guitar and bleating harmonica st...