MIRRORBALL

It's one of the most ubiquitous organ riffs of all time – ba da ba DA duh DUH duh da, ba da ba DA duh DUH da, laid down nice and smooth over a smooth, funky drumbeat, with that guitar stabbing in on the downbeat just so. You know it as soon as you hear it; it's been used to sell cars and mortgages and retirement plans and Vagisil and probably kidney transplants too. For some I'm sure it conjures up images of Kennedy-era kitsch – formica tables and Jackie bobs like my grandmother still wore in those old home movies from nearly a decade later and wood paneling and Kewpie dolls and the mountain of blasé pukey junk they sell along the interstate in Indiana.

It's a demonstratable fact that white people didn't listen to Stax Records releases back when Booker T & The MG's were beginning to hone their craft. The early 60s were the great rock n roll chasm between Elvis's last brilliant pre-war singles (he was more concerned with his assault on the box office in '62, anyways...at least his robotic clone was. Elvis died in Korea and you can't convince me otherwise) and the fast-approaching Beatle menace from the east, the year of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for Chrissakes. This is the record, however, that put out their Chesterfields and got their clumsy asses on dance floors from Memphis to Montana and that launched the Stax label into the stratosphere, paving the way for the likes of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Isaac Hayes. “Green Onions” was the first in a string of huge hits for the all-instrumental combo, who served as the house band for Stax from '62 up until organist Booker T Jones's departure from the label in 1971. Booker and company peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the song, and it went all the way to the top on the soul charts.

But for me, the album's title track conjures nothing but memories of flouride-scented dread and the prick of a numbing needle just behind your impacted molar. Yes, kids, the first time, the only time, I heard Green Onions was beneath the spectral whine of dentist equipment and the ferocious staleness of Dr. X's breath. So when I say that Green Onions sounds like an extended trip to my dentist's office, pay no heed; my biases are buried deep. But it remains a groovy and tasty thirty-five minute sojourne through the waiting room nonetheless. “Rinky Dink” has me remembering the receptionist's thunder thighs jiggling like Jello molds underneath her scrubs...funkily? (There's no saving that sentence.) “Stranger On The Shore” makes me think of the time when that crazy fish with the huge translucent bubble cheeks got sucked into the filter; I watched its frenzied struggles like Zeus snickering from the safety of Olympus. I find the stretch of three bluesy numbers in the middle of the record intoxicating, yet puzzling, like the horse puppet with huge white teeth that grinned at me from the corner of the room...many many nightmares...it always chased me with its fiery toothbrush and dental floss lasso of doooooooooooooo

Parts of Green Onions would also serve as the ideal soundtrack to a frenzied cab ride to the hospital with your wife, who happens to be in some serious labor throes (“You Can't Sit Down” really grates on those maternal instincts), or to your murder mystery-themed dinner party (toss back those brandy alexanders to “Comin' Home Baby” and see how many of your guests walk out that front door alive haha that's right NONE). These are just serving suggestions, however: with a record like Green Onions in your collection, you have the power to act out your own timelessly groovy manifest destiny anytime you please. Whether you're clambering over Antarctic glaciers in fishnets and bunny slippers or kicking back with your favorite escort-service representative in the confessional, you're sure to do it with panache when Booker and friends are on the Victrola. SEVEN OUT OF TEN.

So sometime last week, I clawed my way out from underneath the mountain of blankets I've layered my bed with during the winter with alarm clocks screeching sweetly in my ears.  I pawed blindly among the detritus on my nightstand for the snooze button and was promptly bitten by a stray pushpin hiding behind last week's paystub.  "YAOW!" I howled, jerking my punctured finger back to my lips.  The recoil from doing so, however, promptly propelled me onto the floor with a THUD and a long, exasperated groan.  (I am the expert at getting up on the right side of the bed, you see.)  While I laid there, finger pounding along with the fresh egg swelling on my head, I happened to glance at the calendar and suddenly my pain faded with the realization that it was late February!  Had I really been sleeping for...six weeks?  No wonder I smelled so bad!  And that concentration-camp, hangdog look in the mirror?  Easy to explain.  But I see that all of you have been waiting here expectantly for news from the front, and I, poor reporter, have given you none.  Let your hunger now be satiated!  I bring manna from City Market!  And Schlitz, too!

Silliness aside, we've been resting after a couple of eventful months in Mirrorland.  That big back-East trip took the gumption right out of us for awhile.  (Fruitcake gives a fella the worst kind of indigestion imaginable.)  But we did see all the prerequisite people and dispense with many frivolous dollars - well, at least I did.  January brought a good string of gigs here in Cortez, Montrose, Telluride, and other places where people slipped me funny drinks and I woke up in bathtubs full of ice with missing internal organs.  But who needs those, anyways?  Now that I've got my nth dimensional dialysis machine hooked up, I can't even remember what it was like to have kidneys....

but yes, February was fun.  Very fun.  We ate some tasty treats, caroused with loose women, lost ten thousand dollars in penny stocks, and started the long and laborious process of recording our first album.  Booyah, says I.  The principal rhythm tracks are complete and Willis and I are hunkering down in our super-secret headquarters in the earth's core to finish guitars and vocals and accordions and murderous screams in the night.  With any luck, you'll see this baby drop hot and fresh sometime near the end of the month.  And how!  World peace will instantly be achieved.  The lame will walk and the blind will see.  Yada, yada, earthshaking buildup to doubtful promise of lifechanging bliss...you think you've heard it all before.  But NO - you haven't.  Trust me.

We hope you are all well and thriving and whatnot, and look forward to seeing you on the road these next few months!  We'll start a new cycle of reviews soon, too...I've got some hot fresh po....er, opinions, OPINIONS, to drop on ya'll soon.  Til next we meet, dearies...

bass player from eastern hell under-the-stairs