Neal Pomea

Well, Stras just gave up his first home run!

Jelly Roll Morton, Chronological Classics, 1939-40. Not as early as you might be thinking, but some very good solo piano and the sound is good.

MLB Network is actually showing Padres v Mets. I am catching the local network (Mid Atlantic Sports Network) coverage of Nationals and Pirates. I like it that Strasburg works fast. This game is zooming by!

I hear you - I am quite familiar with his music. But there's a difference: It'd be hard to argue that Iry hold the same sort of mythical status in cajun, IMO, as RJ does in blues. Or that cajun is any way comparable to delta blues in the context of this sort of multinational myth-making. I LOVE tradition-based but ever-evolving music - these days I really don't listen to much else. But for many, RJ is perceived as The Beginning, The Big Bang. Check out the reviews for the box set at Amazon, for instance. Thanks for reporting how insignificant my culture and its music is. Was that even necessary? I was only remarking that there's no point in holding it against an artist for having heard records.

If in Cajun music we held it against someone because he studied earlier records, what would that mean for Iry LeJeune, perhaps our greatest artist of all? He studied records by Amédé Ardoin and Joe Falcon quite closely and transformed some of their tunes and themes.

After a 10 game road trip that had us Nationals 3-7, including 3 straight losses to Houston, it's a tough home stand against the Redlegs, then Strasburg's debut next week! Time to climb back over .500. Did anything else happen in baseball this week?

I never saw canteloupe (melon français) served as a fruit until I moved away from Louisiana. I never even thought of it as a breakfast item. It was always served with dinner as a side dish, but we wouldn't salt it. The combination of salty and sweet has some appeal for me, I guess. Now, I haven't seen salt on a beer can in a long time!

While we are talking about Goldwave, will this volume equalization thing work if I am compiling speech followed by music folowed by speech, for a podcast like a radio show? Will Goldwave equalize the volume for mixed formats like that? Thx.

Go figure! The Nationals lose to the Giants' Wellemeyer on Tuesday, but they beat Lincecum on Wednesday. Hope our bats are waking up. Tough road trip against the Giants, Padres, and Astros might sink us below .500 for good.

Here is the label for Easy Rider Blues Soileau and Robin, Easy Rider Blues Great performance on CD 9!

Happy Birthday!

http://www.redhotjazz.com/noone.html That might help.

A good pitching performance tonight against the Rockies for Livan Hernandez might put Washington atop the pitching triple crown standings: Livan Hernandez for era, Tyler Clippard for wins, and Matt Capps for saves. Much improved over last year! Clippard's on a pace to match Elroy Face (18-1 in '59)!

I don't think this article quite comes across the way it was intended. If Art Pepper HAD caused someone's death or injury in an episode of drug-induced negligence, we would not be congratulating his wife for keeping his intellectual property wealth off the table in a lawsuit by the victim's family. I bet, for the average reader, long copyright terms mean money for nothing for the heirs of the owners of companies that bought out earlier defunct companies that ripped off artists. Let artists provide for their families with real wealth handed down, and let the heirs create on their own.

Got my Volume 1 in the mail Saturday! Great job with the sound! Thanks for preserving this music. So much of it was news to me, so I don't know where to start. I've got quite a bit of Butterbeans and Susie from Joe Bussard, and some Hersal Thomas too, so I will have to go back and listen more closely to the kind of humor you wrote about. I really liked the Bennie Moten piece on CD3. My copy from Joe B. was so mossy. This is going to be a great set to hear!

This must be the first series the Nationals have won over the Marlins in a while. They've had our number the last few years. Well, most teams have.

Good points on catchphrases. 12 Things We Should Toss (Wash Post, 5/9/2010) Internet Memes - Joe Randazzo, editor of the Onion "At some recent point, bacon became a meme. Bacon. The cured pork product that has been a staple food for hundreds of years was suddenly a fashion accessory for Internet style-mongers. There were odes and T-shirts and cartoons. People taped bacon to their cats and took photos. It was so ubiquitous that I started to hate bacon. No one should ever have to hate bacon. What used to be an amusing by-product of Internet use has mutated into something horrible: an insatiable parasite that impairs its host's judgment, rendering it totally useless. Instead of acting as an organic cultural touchstone, the modern meme -- from LOL... to Lolcats -- now sucks the joy out of our interconnectedness. It destroys uniqueness. Once an "enjoyable thing" becomes a "meme," we stop enjoying the thing for its own sake, but consume and regurgitate our enjoyment of it as a symbol of hipness, as if to say: "I am aware of this thing's popularity --- therefore I too exist!" ______ Also, why meme? We already had a word for that. Catchphrase. Another one. Fad. Here are 2 I hate. Much. And Hmmm? "Biting the hand that feeds you much? Hmmmm?"

Zing!

Back in the day, I too sucked up all the cajun I could lay my hands on - good, bad, really bad. So I understand about that. But nothing stays the same, especially in terms of South Louisiana music, which as much as any other genre/region is pretty much founded on beg/borrow/steal. Steel guitar/pedal steel was not part of the original cajun equation, but there's no question it's presence has enhanced countless post-WWII sides. And then there's Belton Richard playing accordian on Johnnie Allan's Promised Land - the best Chuck Berry cover ever! Or Johnny Sonnier doing The Devil Went Down To New Iberia. Not to stray too far from MG's topic, but have you heard Joel Sonnier do Chuck Berry's song Memphis? It was with Robert Bertrand and the Lake Charles Playboys. Great! I think many of the older guys were actually closer to the rock and roll spirit than the younger guys. Sung in English, you can even hear Joel's accent when he sings "Hep me information, more dan dis I cannot axe." Great use of steel guitar and fiddle on a rocking number. Memphis. I certainly don't have anything against steel guitar in Cajun music. That's probably the stuff I love the best. No, I mean the out of whack, busy bass guitar that you even hear sometimes in greats like Aldus Roger. He has two lps on La Louisianne that have either a simple bass or an electric guitar doing barre chords. They're great. A third lp has a too-slick swing bass in it and it's just about unlistenable, even for an icon like Aldus. If you like steel guitar, here are some YouTube videos of Arcange 'Coon' Touchet of the original Badeaux and the Louisiana Aces:

Somebody needed to tell Matt Diaz of the Braves not to take so many called third strikes last night! (Same for Adam Dunn of the Nationals, I know!) A near no-hitter for Scott Olson and the Nationals still could have lost that game! Well, at least some of last year's dread in the late innings seems to be going away.

That sounds familiar, Dan. There's some sort of dread over in Nationals Land about what will happen to him in 2012.

I don't understand contracts too much, but I believe that the reason Strassburg will not be up before June is in order to secure sole rights to his contract for a longer period of time. If the Nationals brought him up any sooner, then he would become a free agent sooner. It's discussed that way on Nationals Journal, the Washington Post's online discussion group. Anyway, the kid is like 21 years old and has no record of pitching past the 5th inning in the minors, so he probably also needs some minor league work. The one I want to see sooner rather than later is Drew Storen, a reliever. The bullpen could turn into our strength rather than the disaster it's been since 2006, but especially last year.

I would say that in the area of Cajun music I can distinguish between what's good and what's mediocre. I have a friend who collects it all, and he seems just as excited acquiring stuff that's mediocre as he does the stuff that's good. I just shake my head. How about this, MG? Could you point out to the people making the mediocre stuff what they are doing wrong? I know there are some Cajun musicians who think they are improving the music by adding a walking bass or by syncopating in rock style or playing fast when really, they're just messing it up altogether. Addition by subtraction sometimes. The simpler can be better.

Braves-Nationals game tonight is see-sawing through 5 innings. I don't know how many times there have been ties and lead changes. Lots of hitting for a 4-4 game.

Happy Birthday! And many more.