‘They won’t let me play’

Evan wants to do it all. Evan is 15.

He’s been in high school for little more than a semester and already has sampled at least a half-dozen clubs, two sports and most of the social opportunities. This week, the Snoball dance is on Saturday night.

But not all is well on the East High campus.

“Dad, they won’t let me play in pep band,” he said the other day.

Some of his friends are in pep band, including his girlfriend of the moment — the one with the strict parents, the one who gets to do almost nothing outside of school.

But you have to be in band class to play in pep band, and Evan hasn’t taken band class since seventh grade.

That hasn’t stopped Evan. Never mind that he doesn’t know any of the music. Never mind that he doesn’t read music well enough to learn the songs even if someone slipped him the sheet music. Never mind that he rarely practiced when he did take band class.

He got out his sax the other night. He started playing it. I doubt the pep band is playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” but there you go.

He fancies being able to walk in with his sax, sit down and play along with the pep band. I think it’s gonna be a hard lesson learned. It’s a little like playing basketball in the driveway and then thinking you can just join the varsity at midseason. Don’t work that way, pal.

Maybe Evan can listen to these tunes and learn them. From Houston:

“Louie, Louie,” the Rice University Marching Owl Band, from “The Best of Louie, Louie,” 1983. It’s out of print.

“Super Bad,” Kashmere Stage Band, from “Texas Thunder Soul: 1968-1974,” 2006. The best high school band ever.

Yes, this is soul

This is just a little reminder that we’ve updated The Midnight Tracker, our lightly traveled companion blog.

The Midnight Tracker resurfaces at the end of every month. It emerges from the haze of time, reviving an old late-night FM radio show on which one side of a new or classic album was played.

Over at The Midnight Tracker, we’re serving up one side of a record that summons up a bunch of little mysteries.

One such mystery is why this fine little upbeat slice of Muscle Shoals soul wasn’t ever released as a single.

“This is Soul,” R.B. Greaves, from “R.B. Greaves,” 1970.

For more from our mystery man, head over to The Midnight Tracker.

Definitely worth the wait

The song is still downloading as I start to write this — a real slow server, apparently (since fixed) — but I know patience will be rewarded.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, one of the most inventive old-school-sounding soul and R&B groups out there, has a new record coming out. We’ve seen them live twice, on a hot summer night in New York’s Battery Park and on a cold winter night at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. Highly recommended.

This is what the folks at Daptone Records say about “I Learned The Hard Way,” the group’s fourth album and its first since October 2007:

“Produced by Bosco Mann and recorded on an Ampex eight-track tape machine by Gabriel Roth in Daptone Records’ House of Soul studios, this record drips with a warmth and spontaneity rarely found since the golden days of Muscle Shoals and Stax. … From the lush Philly-Soul fanfare that ushers in “The Game Gets Old” at the top of the record, to the stripped down Sam Cooke-style “Mama Don’t Like My Man” at the tail, the Dap-Kings dance seamlessly through both the most crafted and simple arrangements with subtlety and discipline.”

I have no reason to doubt them. But as always, you be the judge.

“I Learned The Hard Way,” Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, from “I Learned The Hard Way,” due out April 6, 2010, on Daptone Records.

Oh, yeah, that download was worth waiting for. Sounds like it comes right outta 1969 or 1970. Reminiscent of Honey Cone, don’t you think?

(Forgive the streaming, but it didn’t come with clearance for sharing as a digital file.)

(But if you would like the mp3, my friend Jon has it over at The Vinyl District. Apparently Jon has the street cred I lack, at least with the Daptone promotion folks. No hard feelings, though.)

That ’70s song, Vol. 4

Once you get this record …

… is there any point in pursuing the albums from which it was drawn?

I can’t think of many other greatest-hits records that have so overshadowed the back catalog.

If you like the Guess Who’s singles — and lots of people did in the early ’70s — this record is the only one you need. It’s the only one I have. That said, I’ve thought about getting some of their earlier LPs to hear what — if anything — I’ve been missing. Please feel free to clue me in.

All these years on, I’m still not sure quite what to make of the Guess Who. Cool band or some inauthentic freakiness? You had lots of hooks and harmonies. You also had a hard edge to their stuff — the intelligent lyrics, the great guitar work and Burton Cummings’ voice turning to sandpaper when he really got into it.

In the last week of January 1970, another Guess Who song was rocketing up the charts. “No Time” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” by Sly and the Family Stone duked it out for No. 1, at least here in the Midwest. A couple of pretty good songs, eh?

“No Time,” the Guess Who, from “American Woman,” 1970. It’s out of print but is available digitally. “No Time,” written by Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman, was the first single off that record.

Of course, it’s also available on “The Best of the Guess Who,” 1971. (That buy link is to a 2006 re-release with three extra cuts.)

When I pulled out my vinyl copy, which I’ve had for 35-plus years, I found the original picture sleeve and the original shocking-pink-and-midnight-blue poster that came with it.

(This is not my poster. Mine looks nicer. Flickr photo by Bradley Loos.)

Songs for Andy

Andy is my friend. We are kindred spirits, throwbacks to old-school newsrooms that were full of characters.

Andy’s busy tonight. He’s getting ready to help some people who desperately need help.

Andy is, among a vast circle of friends, a legend. A burly, flat-topped, gregarious, swaggering legend.

Sometime in the next 24 hours, Andy will pass into legend.

Andy was sitting in the newsroom on Monday night, watching the 10 p.m. news. He had what his family calls “a significant brain incident.” Maybe a stroke, maybe an aneurysm. We don’t know.

Andy is 38.

Tomorrow morning, Andy will head to the operating room. He’ll be working with the organ procurement team from Madison, giving some other folks what they so urgently need.

Later on, we’ll say goodbye to Andy. Wherever they have it, there won’t be room enough for all of Andy’s friends.

A former football lineman who stood 6-foot-5, Andy spent his vacations working security at Summerfest in Milwaukee and at Brat Days in Sheboygan, where we both grew up. He covered cops, courts and fires and loved hanging with those folks. He worked at a bar on the side. He organized summer cookouts in the parking lot, Mardi Gras potlucks in the newsroom and countless other adventures. He quietly did countless small, random acts of kindness that no one ever found out about.

About now, Andy probably would demand that I shut the fuck up.

OK, how about a little Buffett, then?

“Growing Older But Not Up,” Jimmy Buffett, from “Coconut Telegraph,” 1980.

“Lovely Cruise,” Jimmy Buffett, from “Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes,” 1977.

It has been a lovely cruise. Peace, my man.

Postscript: Andy Nelesen passed into legend shortly after noon on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010. According to Andy’s family, his death was caused by a burst blood vessel in the pons area of the brain stem.

A second postscript: Since Andy passed on Thursday, we have been treated to some gorgeously sunny days and some beautifully moonlit nights. Those nights have been so bright, the moon casts shadows. OK, pal, now you’re just showing off.