It was called the 'Inhuman Party', you know, one of
those crazy things that happened in the late 70's. People camped out, tripped
and listened to music for a weekend—this time at Maribel Caves, a supposedly haunted old hotel made out of limestone in rural Wisconsin. My high school buddy and I went down to
hear the bluesman Luther Allison because, get this, we liked the way his
bassist moved and grooved while he played.
Kids.
The party went wild, in just the right way. A guy named
'bigfoot' got up on the outdoor stage behind between bands and sang dirty jokes that clearly
offended a woman in a bluegrass band. Luther Allison stood out back enjoying the music—bluegrass, folk, rock, blues, whatever—and tapping the toes of his cowboy boots to the beat.
what is the space of inhuman
what is the space around inhuman
what is the space inside inhuman
While we waited, the unexpected happened. They moved
the party indoors because of rain, and the close quarters heated things up. We
were introduced to Pat MacDonald and the Essentials, an
impressive local group that played a sort of laid back but funky r & b. It
was a singular sound. Half the place danced in sweaty, low-down abandon beneath a 10-foot rough; and my buddy and I could
barely see the band through all the shaking bodies, many of whom were probably
tripping and, as the party said, in quite an inhuman state.
Once the Pat MacDonald finished we needed to get home,
so we missed Luther, the headliner of the festival, but that was okay. We had
seen Pat, and our lives would be changed. My buddy got his record, and it quickly became a favorite of ours. We
speculated on how big he could be if he lived in a larger media market. We kept seeing him over the years, always just with his wife Barbara
and not with the Essentials. I missed the propulsion the full band gave him,
but that was apparently not what he was looking for.
Around 1984 we were sitting in a bar waiting to hear
Pat and his wife. They came out and had a mic-ed boom box on a bar stool. It was
truly weird. Pat said that this was their first concert and they called
themselves Timbuk 3. Barbara was one, he was two, and the boombox was three. He
explained that since the drummer was always drunk and the bassist always
stoned, they figured they would record those tracks themselves and play them
through a boombox at concerts.
The story doesn't end there. A few months later, when
I was in Chicago going to college, I pick up a newspaper only to see Pat and
Barbara's faces on the entertainment section. They had scored a major hit with
an anti-nuclear weapons song called "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear
Shades." I remember hearing it that night at the bar. And the album did
well, too. They were off and running.
And then they disappeared. It wasn't until 20 years
later, when I subscribed to a music downloading service, that I on a whim
looked up Pat MacDonald. And there he was, without Barbara. Still writing
songs. But these were dark songs. Deep and unrelenting. About suicide. About
killing an unfaithful spouse. About a sleazy guy trying to pick up a woman at a
bar because "This Band Sucks." Sometimes he accompanied himself only
with a woodblock, guitar and harmonica. And the guitar playing was something to
behold: he rarely left the low chords.
Then he went deeper yet: to the Lowebow.
Story continued in a later post. In the first issue of Altered Scale, embedded you tube links to videos of MacDonald's current project, Purgatory Hill, will probably appear.
No comments:
Post a Comment