Friday Night Music

From a musician’s perspective, the South Africa of my youth — that would be White South Africa — was very similar to the southern states of Murka, in that they loved  country music.  Demographically, White South Africa outside the cities was largely rural in character, and I think that other than cowboy hats and stitched boots, those people had more in common with the American South than, say, New Yorkers of the Manhattan persuasion.

So we had a lot  of country music in our repertoire when not playing in and around Johannesburg — and sometimes even then.  Here’s a sample:

Mr. Bojangles — Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (killed two birds with one stone by playing this song:  country, and  a waltz)

If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body — Bellamy Brothers (cheesy as hell — but man, people loved this song, as they did the next one)

Kiss You All Over — Exile (note: for the time — mid-1970s — the lyrics for this and the previous song were unbelievably suggestive.  Sometimes I still miss that innocence.)

Lying Eyes — Eagles (I know, some would say the Eagles weren’t a country band;  I would suggest that before Joe Walsh joined them, they were.  Another crowd-pleaser, this one:  I think we performed it every time we played outside a club.)

Sunday Morning Coming Down — Kris Kristofferson (and by the way, our guitarist Martin had a MUCH better voice than Kristofferson:  pure velvet)

It’s A Heartache — Bonnie Tyler (I know, she’s a Brit;  but the song is pure Nashville.  And I used to sing it, because I could — and still can — do that raspy-voice thing like Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.)

Stranger In My House — Ronnie Milsap (his version is a little too  country;  we hardened it up into a rock song.  By the way:  I saw Milsap live after I came over to the U.S., and to this day I think he’s the greatest percussive pianist ever.)

Love Is In The Air — John Paul Young (everyone in the band hated this thing — and everyone in the audience loved  it.  Talk about selling out…)

Next week:  old-time rock ‘n roll.

Friday Night Music

Last week was the intro to this series.  Now, as threatened, I include for your entertainment a few of the songs sung by our sometime-vocalist Jill:

Bette Davis Eyes — Kim Carnes (pure sex appeal, this one)

Angel of the Morning — Juice Newton (our arrangement kicked ass — once again, we turned a country ballad into a rock song)

Midnight Confessions — Grassroots (curiously, the lyrics make more sense when sung by a woman)

Turn Me Loose — Loverboy (band favorite, this one, and she killed the vocals)

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart — Elton John & Kiki Dee (pure fun, and Jilly had a better voice than Kiki, by a country mile)

Black Velvet — Alannah Miles (rolling blues, baby)

Stop Dragging My Heart Around — Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty (duet with lead guitarist Kevin)

I Got The Music In Me — Kiki Dee (our favorite closer for just about every gig we ever played — and LOL we caused no end of trouble once;  we were backing a rather snotty female cabaret singer who performed this as her “show-stopper”, but after she’d finished her set, we closed the show much later by reprising the song — and Jilly blew her off the stage.  We never backed her again, but it was worth it.)

For some reason, I don’t have any pics of Jill on stage, which is a great shame.  As I recall, she quit the band because her boyfriend got jealous.  An even bigger shame.

News Roundup – Vegan Edition

Headlines, with pissy pithy comments.

1) Militant Vegan Gets Smacked By Court — guy should have just shot the bitch.  And in a totally  unrelated piece of news…

2) Veganism Makes You Stupid — most religions, when they mess with your diet, are also stupid.

3) Stupid Is Hereditary, If Vegan — fortunately, most vegans appear to be childless, as they’re too tired to have sex, probably.  Although it would appear that the only thing more stupid than vegans are Customs officials, as below.

4) Vegan “Food” Mistaken For Drugs — although I could probably understand that the crap probably set off the drug-sniffing dogs, their howls of disgust mistaken for drug-triggering.

5) Vegan Eats Meat, Survives — she probably thought it was delicious, until told there was Evil Meat inside.  What’s funny is that she never noticed it was meat.  Clearly, her “vegan-radar” was deficient (amongst so many other deficiencies).

6) KFC Tests Meatless Meats — as long as this insanity doesn’t spread to Chik-Fil-A, I’m cool.

7) …As Does Greggs — as if the news about their shrinking pastries wasn’t bad enough… and with that, I can now officially announce the arrival of End Times.

 

Advance Notice

If you don’t come to this website via a RSS feed, check out the post that’s scheduled for 7pm Central tonight.  It’s called Friday Night Music — and will be the first of many, I think.  You’ll see why when you read it.

Lighten Up, Frances

Somebody buy this bad boy a drink:

Gianluca Vacchis litters Instagram daily with videos of himself dancing with scantily clad women.
But the Italian 52-year-old millionaire playboy has run into a social media backlash after posting a video of himself hitting the bikini clad models’ behinds on his private yacht.
Vacchi has recently taken up music and the video shows him bouncing his hands off the model’s derrieres to the beat of his newest track ‘Mueve.’

LOL

But the video has been met with criticism.
Many of the comments posted under the video said the video was ‘demeaning’ and a ‘sad moment,’ and that his behaviour suggested a lack of respect towards women.
Some asked whether his girlfriend Sharon Fonseca, who he’s been with since April 2017, approved.
Others said the women filmed did not respect themselves and that they were ‘following your money.’

Good grief:  the feministical snowflakery is strong with this one.

But Our Hero responded in the proper way:

Vacchi used more than words to respond to the negative criticism of his video with a follow up released around a week later.
In the video, four women dressed in stylish business suits discipline the silver haired multi-millionaire by returning the spanking.
Vacchi, dressed in a leopard print leotard and high heels bends over twerking in high heels.

Somebody buy this man another  drink.

News Roundup

1)  Chicago: 75% of Murdered Are Black, 71% of Murderers Are Black  — …and the accusations of “RAYCISSS!!!” will begin in 5… 4… 3… 2…

2)  Round 2 of Democrat Socialist candidate debates ends —  all around the same theme:  “We’re going to give stuff to undeserving people and make other people pay for it, or else distill the money from unicorn droppings.”

 

3)  Getting Tough On Crime In Britain from one of Boris’s Babes  — and about damn time, too, although we’ll have to wait and see how effective it is.

4) Beaten up for wearing a MAGA hat — my advice is that if you’re going to wear a MAGA hat, you need to wear a .45 as well, just in case.  Tough shit if you live in New York Fucking City, like this poor guy does.

5)  That asshole Moore wants Michelle Obama to run against Trump in 2020 — my suspicion is that Black Hillary won’t do any better than White Hillary did.

6)  “What’s Killing Office Romances?” — rabid feministicals, lawyers and Human Resources [considerable overlap].  Next stupid question?

7)  Mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton — not gonna comment until we get some facts in (unlike this asshole).  But just for the sake of balance (amid the press hysteria):  29 people dead in these two incidents equates to half the average monthly shooting deaths (63) in Chicago in 2016 .  Just sayin’.