moon traveller herald

Reading on the passing of Seamus Heaney   in August 2013.

(THE JUGBAND SPECIAL - Onyx Water, Kansas) A guy reading a paper at a bar today is a slug from prehistory. But give that same guy a cell phone to read this paper and he melts into the crowd. That is how stupid civilization is, you know? I like to spread out the paper and eyeball the pictures, captions, headlines and pull quotes .. with a Bud. The conceit here is that I am a master of the universe in the world of ideas. If you keep up with the raw technology advances (and have to give eternal credit to Steve Jobs for all the 'small' advances he packed into the iPod) you can visualize a sheet of foldable paper something on the order of a kindergarten roll blanket that would be backlit and would receive the paper from the ether. It is the mass of paper that is challenging the news business you know. I bought some newsprint sketch pad at CVS and it cost about the same as a daily paper with all its content and advertising. It would not share the resemblance to a Faberge Egg...

Dalai Lama Foxboro May 2009: The Dalai Lama spent a few days in Boston in May 2009, and Cecelia and I were able to go to see him in Foxboro at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Thought I would try and herald his Holiness’s message. Call us the Modern Day Quicksilver Messenger Service. You should, he said: “Keep a warm heart – and a calm mind.” Remember the kindness of your mother. He went on. The kindness of a mother is nurturing – it instills inner values. He remembers his own mother as very patient and kind. “Avoid useless fear,” he said. Remember, people who always say “I” “Me” “Mine” are at a higher heart attack risk. It is important to remember: “Everyone is a human being.” With a peaceful mind comes a peaceful atmosphere. More

Sitting here watching BET. Hey I did a review on this one.. From the Vault... Picks to Click and Picks to Nit To make a good movie requires some simplification, I suppose. If it is the kind of simplification that distills things to the essential - it improves on what is real but possible to overlook; so I won’t quibble with the fact that Phil Chess never exists in “Cadillac Records.” But other quibbling will this way come.The movie tells a good story and gets at many of the critical elements of the blues in Chicago in America in the 1950s, which is certainly worthy of motion picture treatment. So understand that. But see that it does so without dealing with the fact that Chess was run by the Chess brothers. The film says ‘so long’ to Phil Chess and focuses on Leonard Chess, who by most accounts was in fact the determined driving force behind Chess Records, the fabled label of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James and many others. Ok. Need to go further. My friend Sunnyland Slim intr...

Jack Vaughan with help of Nuno Texiera and Jacob Vaughan

Lately (Jun 2005) I've heard Elmore James anew. He could fix on a single note, but make it ring. Shame he died at 45, his heart exploded, with little mention. But he was in approach to music acutely aware somehow of a universal harmonics, a chord Elysium. And no one had it better. One extended chord that came up from Afrik to Greece by way of Hawaii and Mississippi. Circled the globe, Jack. No one dug more into the musical values of electric signals though they still be trying. Always felt: ''It was Elmore James invented musical electricity.'' But the one-note-ness of Elmore I'd kind of come to take for granted as a limitation. The note bloomed, expanded, of late. Who know why? There is a ringing wood chime at my neighbors where I park my car, and all of music can be spawned from it essential sound. Dust my Blues too is inevitable. Fleetwood Mac you know I've been listening too, I mean what they now call the Original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. I w...