By: Mike Marino
The bluesman, was a jazzman, a riff man…a notorious rastafarian who lived on and off the streets. He would fly high at night with a jet stream fix in his arm, a communist sympathizer, actually, and actually attacking the tanks as captain of a red zepplin…Jazz streets, beat streets, hard streets and harder alleys of Detroit, that are smaller, and more cramped than those they had in old Cairo where mummies, and memories of mummies are wrapped in secrecy and cheap duct tape from the hardware store on Jefferson Ave, a ribbon of racing asphalt running along the river to Belle Isle, the mummies covered in mondo bondo bandage bondage (some people pay good money for that you know!) for the ages of the ageless. The bluesman’s apartment was up high, up atop the escarpment, a Skull Island in the ocean of poverty that was the old Cass Corridor, with it’s Chinese restaurants, one room bars with one broken stool, deep within the loins of the tender, with row upon row of skids, a third floor walkup without a view of the campus or the art institute, but only the blink light of the WDET radio tower, but he would climb them daily, his personal Matterhorn, those wooden steps taken from wooden planks of wooden ships, wooden it be loverly?
His walk was weary at the end of the day, and his foostep slow, a film noir sequence, dark, slow, as he mounted the floors one by one, the steps cascading before him, upstream, spawning by insane salmon with a asylum agenda…he walked upwards against the downward flow of a thousand liquid rain children freely falling from the skies, the other children had broken free from the split apart pinata and spilled out, falling and bouncing down the stairs to hinder his progress, and then out onto the street. He dodged them artfully as he tread deftly, as though they were, and they are, projectiles from space, fired from the moon at the behest of a beast from the outer rings of Saturns rear end planet, Uranus, yer anus, jumpin’ Jupiter yumpin Yiminy.
He painted with music, self-portraits on the surface of rough textured bags of burlap which he found in dumpsters on the westends of eastside alleys, old burlap bags that held the fresh marijuana from old Burma herself. He found that these self-portraits would fit snugly in the gun he kept in his guitar case, a bullet in the chamber of a .38, where all could hear it ring out as a holy sacrament is announced by the pealing bells, the peeling bells, the Irish male stripper bells, dancing in thongs to the catholic throngs of Notre Dame or St. Patricks, where the pious go to pee for peace, and are hooked up inexoribly to the catheters of the catherals with red cardinals and blue birds with beards of black and blue, and the salt and pepper hair of the bluesman, the jazzman, the riff man, a notorious rastafarian…
The bus depot ‘Hounds and the electric streetcars competed with diesel and electricity, making pedestrian noises to drown him out as he six-stringed, sometimes 12 stringed some syringe hymns with Lenny Bruce junkie juice flowing hot and steamy, and the notes playing out like a marked deck of cards at a pharmaceutical convention, with unconvential doctors in attendance, wearing togas stolen from New York City bath house locker rooms with fat sweaty Greeks and those from the Baltics with secret rings…eating lunch naked, he was now William Burroughs weilding a guitar in place of a typewriter with keys that stuck and ribbons that were worn and faded. The Bluesman played with notes, to him they were nubile underage breasts just peeking above the skin with a pink nipple tipped volcano cane ready to erupt with passion as pubic hair began to sprout it’s fertile garden below, and he played with real guns, killing himself with the bullets of their bang-bang music, a real Hemmingway and Hunter Thompson suicide and all with a hypnotic hypodermic dream look carved in granite with a chisel on his rugged face.
His was an old negro face, the kind you see or saw in Look Magazine or National Geographic where at one time they were the only publications that you could see bare Josephine Baker Negress breasts, in 3-D, and as children looking at the magazines, we thought the only women with tits were the African black beauties as the white women seemed to hide securely behind whiter lace, parasols and stays. Our first pre-pubescent crushes were on tribal women in deepest, darkest Africa and all we wanted to do was to set sail in a skiff to explore up and down their moist Nile as the Negress became in our minds the Mother of Men..the Mother of hardons..and then she gave birth to the Bluesman, the riff man..a notariaous rastafarian….
He played for change, spare, copper, nickle or silver, with buffalos on one side, and Indian heads on the other, very old, old change, yes? On the corner near the overpass not far from the art and the asphalt of Heidelberg, but at the Eastern Market on warm Saturday mornings where the suburbs melted, a globally warmed socio-political glacier that shrunk on it’s own, but grew in size as it blended into the urb itself. The market is where the Motor City went for daffodils in spring for planting and fresh fruit and vegetables and peanuts of every race, creed and color at the Rocky Peanut Co. for consumption. They also enjoyed the street musicians, the bluesmen, the jazzmen, the riffmen….and would toss a grenade of crumpled bills into his open yawning guitar case. The currency itself was as wrinkled as an old suit of cheap material, the money tossed by cavalier passerby, you know the type, the casualist, the “lets drop whatever it is we are doing, and go slumming. I know where this bluesguy is on the corner near the meat market and the hardware store, he’s black and everything, like that Jake character that used to walk around downtown Ann Arbor, the Shakey guy by the diner and the candy shoppe. Well, this Detroit cat knows the blues, maybe from Mississippi or some damn delta place,” So they would all fold up their three piece suit-tent cubicles with battleflag neckties flapping in the wind, to go see the bluesguy, and then move on to Starbucks to read some Steinbeck not knowing who he is, this blues man, jazz man, riff man, and notorious rastafarian, nor Steinbeck either. Tyrell is his name, and he came from the bootheel in Missouri, kick ass cotton country, with rockabilly mules hitched to plows with eight track tapes of Narvel Felts blasting from the front seats of pick up trucks with rifle racks and crushed beer cans on the floor near the gas pedal.
He would royally regale you with tales of days of times passed, when he was a younger man in his primes, a young jazzman with a hot wink in his eye, and a load of jazzman jasmine jump jive jism in Paris in the Twenties. He played the cabarets as a musician with the decadent banana dancer, prancing prancer and vixen, Josephine Baker. The art deco diva donced in feathered splendor, collared and leashed to the stage, divulging and revealing as much of herself on stage as she was of her honey flesh, The Follies Negre and more, and her captivating self was captured and immortalized on poster and canvas and figurative drawings by her close friend Paul Colin, who also designed stage sets and advertising posters in Paris in the Twenties.The entourage was entertaining and exotic and old Tyrell (the bluesman, the jazzman, the riffman…) was one of the orbiting planets spinning around her perky twin moons and the gravitational pull of her vaginal vortex. The crowned heads of Europe rolled like bowling balls as they rolled down the alleys of the Palace of Vert-Sigh. She herself was a sensous, sexy Sistine Chapel, a work of art for the ages, horny young men, and horny young women, both of whom wanted to be her and in bed with her at the same time.
1975…Tyrell had a big smile, as well he should, afterall he had enjoyed a life bigger and better than a Cuban cigar manufactured in Tampa…he had a locks of dread now, long, tinged with grey, matted but wore it like a crown. 1975…the days of the past, had passed, and now he lived quietly, split in yin-yang two, a lost Los Alamos atom, wide and far apart from society, distant, and apart from that, he was as rich as only the poorest of men can be. He had a soft, gentle voice inside that told him to create the music in between the injurious injections where you tie your own arm off. I came to know him from the streets, summoned to his palace by invisible trumpeters who heralded his music, and I would stop to talk to him, listen to his stories and always walk away amazed. He liked to be called Robert though, not Tyrell and I did call him that, after Johnson I suspect, and would visit his apartment and listen to him sculpt riffs that were as beautiful as an armless Venus crafted carefully from a blank block of sinewy Italian marble that when finished would float higher than clouds above the Roman columns, and then he would stop, get up, mumble to himself and reach into the drawer of the table that sat near the end of the couch …carefully unwrapping his works kit tied gently with ribbon, a child unwrapping a doll in the early morning of a snowy Christmas, he would prepare himself for the injection, a prize fighter, a pugilist warming up in the locker room to step into the ring of addiction and shoot up.
I would watch him do that, and help at times when he was too shaky (had done it myself for awhile at a shooting gallery on Forest Ave.) and he would use this poorman jazzman handmade kit with an eyedropper to pump the junk to get a headstart rush racing on the adrenalin dragstrip, propelled by a warm fuel injected injection, veins rising to the surface of the skin, magma breaking through a fizzure, a blueline mainline redline submarine, breaching like a whale, begging to be hypodermically harpooned. Ahab’s needle goes in on a slight angle, guided by an angel well within range and in the line of fire, squeezing the trigger, safety off of the eyedropper nipple, the cooked cuisine runaway railroading itself through the bloodstream, Michelangelo was careful, not to knock over a marble statue, Robert was careful not to collapse a vein, or shoot in vain.
Most of Roberts veins were darkened now, to a bruised swampy green and black-blue bruised too, weaker and harder to raise, a limp pulp, even with a gentle spank, have to use the bottom of his feet soon, but they too already bore the scars, but soon…soon…the heroin heroine claims her right, right to the brain. Nodding and smiling, casually laying back in the rickety chair, the junk microwaved in the bloodstream, so warm it’s global warming swarming over you in layers melting your personal ice caps, arctic and antarctic. The homemade syringe is emptied, a sigh and smile cross his face, and he unties the rubber tube from his arm, and picks up his guitar, smiling at it’s beauty, music as poetry filling the room with a lyrical fog as the junk raced further and further along the two lanes of his veins right into the truckstop of the brain. The drugs took hold of the great bluesman, jazzman, riffman and notorious rastafarian.
Soon the song ends…the effects of the drug wear off, a tired old flying horse coming in for a crash landing, Baron von Benzadrine and the Goddess Aphrodite Amphetamine rush to the scene to the rescue all mixed up in a baggie cloudy with powder or a dark brown bottle of an old prescription that belonged to someone else in the basement of an old Victorian owned by an old Edwardian, where junkies would line the walls sitting on the floor in suspenseful suspended inanimation spending quality qualude time until too much speed makes your stom-ache ache, until your hunger returns for a curtain call…after you vomit a vile bile and it is standing room only at the shooting gallery and the turntables turn the tables, but the song is scratched on the vinyl, making that shhhing sound as the needle refuses to go forward, or backward, and enjoys being in neutral. The paranoia in the shooting gallery is thick as black smoke and fragile as the damaged skin of a leper ready to peel off, fleshy chips at a gaming table in Monte Carlo where the stakes are high, death and disease. Shooters forget their own names and are emaciated, not emancipated from addiction.
Tyrell knew the highlife with cocktails for two, and downtown basement crap games, above ground adorned with a white tophat and tails taking Paris by storm. That was 50 years ago, 19-two and five, his pocket full of twenties roaring and rarin’ to go, but that was no more. The times had softened him, not hardened him into sediment, but a canyon of soft, sweet sentiment instead. One day I went to hear Robert play on the street and then as we did on occassion, go to lunch at that stand-up diner we both loved in that Googie shaped flying saucer that resembled a railroad car from space. Grease, a mile away you could smell, and you knew you were getting close to well cooked meat with cooked onions, peppers, and cheese with sesame seed warmed buns holding onto the meat in it’s clutches.
As I ran breathing hard, knowing in my heart what must of happened, or didn’t happen, breathing, bloodflow, that kind of thing that can kill a man, I rounded the corner to look at the spot where Robert would sit on the outside steps and play for the neighborhood, a king holding court, now, the steps stoop was vacant. No Robert, No Music. But the coroners truck was already there, a familiar sight in that particular neighborhood, with it’s overdosing junkies and third floor suicides and basement murders. Two burly hurdy gurdy EMS types innoculated from feeling anything for the dead they carried out over the years, possessing true objectivity in the face of death, were wearing white uniforms Good Humor men playing a dirge in a parade were lugging a load, a human load that would decompose but for now, lay quietly and serenely on a stretcher as they emerged from inside the vestibule of the old building, a baby screaming from the womb, taking a look around, and wanted to crawl back inside it’s bag of safety, a pleasant placenta, a real Hole-in-Wall hideout for real cowboys and babies.
In the bag, the black bag, was Robert, being carried out, dead as an out of tune guitar…the crowd stood around and all I could hear one of them say was, “Heard he was a musician, kept to himself mos’ly and probably a junkie too. Damn shame, these junkies miss out on life all the time, getting high and all then they die and all…” Yeah, I thought to myself…old Robert didn’t miss a thing in life…contrary to the bystanders misstepped, half-assed, assessment…I looked at the guy and asked him, “Have you ever danced cheek to cheek with Josephine Baker?”
No, that’s what I thought…didn’t think so Amigo….didn’t think so….Robert though, he did, yes, he did…he had such a full, rich life…he was in turn …a blues man, a riff man..and a notorious rastafarian.
The Grassy Bowl Conspiracy
By: Mike Marino
Sex…Drugs…Rock n’ Roll!
The left over baggy of the seeds and stems of Haight Ashbury’s purple haze daze, and the tie-dyed Summer of Love have long since gone up in smoke. It was a dime bag time of rolling papers, roach clips, and badda-bing, badda-bong pipes. Tim Leary, the High Priest of The United Psychedelic States of America, told us it was high time to turn on, tune in and drop out. If you had some spare time, along with your spare change, you could also Kick Out The Jams, Brothers and Sisters! Pot, protest and politics, combined to create a strange ménage a’ trois of bedfellows, and the cast of cannabis characters is the stuff of killer weed legend.
Hemp, Hemp, Hooray!
Marijuana, mayhem and the movies were a magical mixture created in the soul kitchen of Hollyweed that manufactured recipes for some classic celluloid cannabis cinema. The semi-fabulous freak brothers, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider” took us for a gas and grass two-wheeled shotgun road trip through the deep fried, Deep South world of southern fried brutality and hospitality. It became the counter cultures roadmap through Mainstream America where the asphalt highways and byways were laced with acid, weed, necks of red and loads of buckshot.
In the film “Alice B. Toklas”, Alice wasn’t just the Baroness of Brownies of her day, but a hemp happy Martha Stewart. “The Magic Christian” with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, had one of the characters, Lawrence Faggot (Fah-go!) tossing “damn hemp cigarettes” aside in disgust! The teen-angel badass, bad-angst full throttle afterburner of the Fab Fifties, gave us a full kilo of delightfully delirious and slightly deranged delinquent doper dramas. Hot Rods, hot chicks and marijuana sticks collided in a tangled wreck of high-speed and high weed.
All of these films owe their potency to a 1930’s pot “high” camp classic silver screen smoke dream marijuana machine called “Reefer Madness”. This is the preposterously hilarious propaganda classic that dared tell the pulp fiction truth. and nothing but the truth about…Marijuana! The Killer Drug!! Marijuana! The Assassin of Youth! One puff leads to murder, rape, insanity and a one way straight jacketed ticket to ride to the looney bin aboard the Lobotomy Express! This film is the good golly Miss Molly great ganja granddaddy of them all. Released in the mid-1930 as a church film decrying the inherently evil properties of the killer weed and its deleterious effects on all decent citizenry of the Republic. It was originally released with the title “Tell Your Children”. After a brief run it was purchased by Dwain Esper, a maestro of the exploitation genre,, who took his meat cleaver and hacked out scenes with the skill of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, inserted new ones, added graphic violence and sex, a brilliant, overacted touch of insanity and a demented piano player and voila! The reefer recipe for success and madness!
After it’s uninhibited run in the Prohibition Thirties (the social experiment that gave rise to Organized Crime!) it ended up in storage and forgotten until 1971, when Keith Stroup, founder of NORML bought a public domain copy for under 300 bucks. The print was cleaned up, the film re-released primarily to college campus audiences, and it became an instant hit. A cannabis midnight cowboy movie to be savored by stoned audiences who cheered wildly at every scene tossing sobriety out the theater doors!
Marijuana is still with us, and so is the prodigal cinematic child of pot parentage, “Reefer Madness”. The original film is still available in its original black and white incarnate form, as well as a new colorized lava lampoon version. The just to prove that people are strange production was a 2005 release of “Reefer Madness: The Musical” a show tune belter that was exhaled and released after a roach clip run on Off-Broadway. Threes No Business, Like Dope Business!
Julius Caesar was a rank amateur when it came to ruling a vast empire. Nero was no hero either, and I Claudius had to make way for I Cannabis. In the power play annals of history and conquest, kingdoms, kings and conquerors, there are only two who can measure up to the tokin’ task of total and absolute rule. Cheech & Chong…The Crowned Heads of the Holy Rollin’ Empire!
California born Cheech Marin and Canadian Tommy Chong emerged as the Laurel and Hardy of the Reefer Revolution. Lighting up the radio dial in 1971 with their first album, and it wouldn’t be long until the big screen went ‘Up in Smoke” in 1978. Over the years they have remained as the Stoner Poster Children of the counter culture and have taken their rightful place in the Hemp Hall of Fame and Infamy.
Cheech met Chong in a comedy club in Vancouver in the post-Woodstock year of 1970. Chong formerly was a musician with Canadian rock bands, eh, and decided to take a stab at comedy, and when the hemp plant planets were in perfect alignment Tommy traded in his Maple Leaf for the Green Leaf and a pairing of historic proportions was conceived. The act was a hit and they decided then to hit road with their act. “Up In Smoke” was the dynamic doobie duo’s big screen debut and featured this oddball couple as Anthony “Man” Stoner and Pedro de Pacas. Produced by none other than Lou Adler it also featured Strother Martin of Cool Hand Luke fame (“What we have here is a failure to communicate!”) and Edie Adams, Mrs. Ernie Kovacs as Tommy Chongs Mom & Dad! Tommy, Man Stoner, gets kicked out of the house and heads for the ocean where he meets son of a beach Cheech in his Chick-Mobile and from there on it’s horsepower, joint jokes and homegrown fun…as they try to keep one toke over the borderline, (driving a van made of marijuana from Mexico to the United States) from Sgt. Stedenko of the DEA, played to bumbling perfection by Stacy Keach.
Eventually, in a pop premonition of the low spark of high heeled leather boys in “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, the Bong Boys end up on stage at LA’s Roxy Theater with a fetchingly attired Cheech in a garish pink tutu and Tommy dressed as a giant red Quaalude! The times, they may have changed, but the lude dudes are still scoring big on the streets with continued sales of those vintage albums and cult classic movies. The best part is, they only seem to get better with age.
If smart bombs and Black Hawk helicopters fill the Pentagons battlefields to overflowing with the tools of war, then rolling papers, water pipes, lava lamps and bongs are the weedy weapons of choice in the head shop arsenals of the United Altered States of America. Getting bombed on bongs, stoned on joints and getting as high as a caterpillar on hookahs is as American as red, white and blue napalm and the cache of nuclear stars and stripes weaponry of mass destruction at our disposal.
Rolling papers have been a staple since they first appeared in 1854 on a European battlefield! It was during the Crimean War and the Battle of Sevastopol that a French Zoave soldier broke his clay pipe in the heatful exchange with the Russkis. Clay pipes were the vehicle of choice for smoking tobacco in those times, so in order to enjoy his daily smoke he simple tore some paper from his gun powder bag, folded it, placed a line of tobacco in it and rolled his own. The idea caught on with others and the rest is hempstory!
This new way of smoking wasn’t just confined to the battlefields, and seemed to catch on back in the toney town of Gay Paree. In 1894, two enterprising brothers, Maurice and Jacques Braunstein, developed and patented a unique process of interweaving cigarette rolling papers. The process was called, simply, zig-zagging and the company became the legendary Zig Zag Company. Zig Zag Papers were such a hit, that they took the Gold Medal honors in 1900 at the Universal Exposition in Paris. So, whatever became of that soave Zoave of fancy France? Next time you pull out your Zags to roll a Godzilla sized doobie, look at the logo. Yep, that’s him. High times have immortalized his Royal Reefer Headness and he’s been helping us all to ride high as a kite for over a century.
The lava flow of the Vesuvian Sixties didn’t race down a Mediterranean mountainside. Instead, it flowed through the inner mind with heat and hot sexy colors performing their ballet of bubbles. The original liquid in motion lights, as they were called, was the brainchild of a native of Singapore, named Craven Walker who called his first light, The Astro Lite! A Roswellian name to be sure to light the path for the invasion of the UFO’s of the Flower Power Ganja Galaxy to come!
During WWII Walker was a pilot with the RAF fighting the flying metal of Messerschmitt during the Battle of Britain. As the world tried to put the pieces of the political puzzle back together after the fall of Berlin and atomizing of Hiroshima, Walker went about his tinkering and by 1963 light up London with the first loads of lava lamps. The lamp lit up one of the trade shows in Germany and two marketing suit and tie types bought the US light rights to the little Astro. In 1965 the first marketing eruption occurred as the inaugural light was sold in the United States. The psychedelic lava flow had begun. Craven Walker died in London at the age of 82 in 2000 and once said of his little light, “If you don’t like lava lamps, you don’t like sex either!”
The weed seeds of the counter culture of the spare change Sixties were planted a long time ago in a compost pile of history that goes back thousands of years. The early American Colonists were no stranger to cannabis and we can trace the nation’s hemp lineage from Washington and Jefferson to Cheech and Chong!
Hemp, Hemp, Hooray!
Bum Wines & Peyote Coyote
By Mike Marino
Now in E-Book Format
Yes it’s a freebie!
Click on Book Cover to Read
There is really nothing little about Ms. Cassie Little other than her waistline. When she’s in a boisterous room or party Cassie commands the floor with a personality that shines and the looks to match. At the young age of twenty two she has worked in live television for over two years, starred in commercials, hosted events, modeled, worked promotions, and somehow fit attending college in the mix. Cassie has attended Lansing Community College for the past two years and plans on transferring to Michigan State University to finish studying Communications. Cassie is originally from a small town outside of Lansing called Portland. She fell in love with the outdoors and the wild adventures that came along with it. Cassie is just as much of a city girl as any other aspiring actress. The bright lights, late nights, and beautiful sights of a big city are something Cassie says she could get use to real quick. Ms. Little has accumulated over hundreds of hours of live broadcast through a show called Text Me TV which was aired in Michigan, Louisiana, Indiana, Maryland, and Ohio. She would work six hours at a time convincing viewers to participate in her live interactive gaming! 
Cassie has also gotten into the world of modeling and the camera has loved her! As you can see in this article she is a beautiful gal, the camera never lies. She also loves sports, including basketball, soccer (which she played all throughout high school), tennis, but most of all she loves baseball. Cassie even decided to work for the Lansing Lugnuts baseball team doing promotions and half time activities! She eventually became part of the pit crew and was entertaining hundreds on the spot with her song and dance! Cassie is very avant garde in the things she wears, does, and excels at. She was born to entertain. In the past few years Cassie has even taken up the guitar and along with her angelic voice has begun writing her own music, look out for her on the radio someday! So, even though Miss Cassie Little might have a small name and come from a small town, she has a big heart and an even bigger fan base!
BY: Helena Kirby
Chantel Giacalone is a model, actress, and choreographer from West Bloomfield, Michigan. She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Chantel will have a roll in the upcoming movie, Butterfly Effect 3
By: Kevin Lamb
I succumb to the allusion of my volunteered confusion
Friend or lover
Guilty of loving her
Hung on a cross
A fine line to cross
It will always be her loss
It will always be my loss
Like a rolling stone that will not collect moss
Unburdened by the ways of the heart
Free to dismiss
Free from the pleasure of a kiss
From the outside in how couldn’t she resist?
Painfully obvious
Sinfully simple
A boy who refuses to comprehend
Capable, yet seeing it to the end
Willingly suffering
Sufferingly willing
A dull drill that keeps drilling
Shattering hope
The numbing effect of dope
Persistent in the face of resistance
Romantic despite idealism
Where is the origin of such a curse?
Haunted by the image of a man on the cross never appearing in church
Only in plain sight does he erode
A heart exponentially beating till it explodes
A love like music without notes
Harmony in the midst of chaos
A symphony of exhausted repetition
Only to be slowed by a petition
From the world because it’s seen enough
Sick of the senility
No longer amused by the evasion of reality
Face the facts
He never could
Or maybe just never would
Like hammering a nail to wood
Until he is out of breath
Perhaps then the conclusion of the quarrelsome organ in his chest
From the beginning it was never like the rest
It needed to be heard
Ignored the telltale signs of even bold words
A lifetime infected by the snooze button
Never asleep, never awake, always one breath from losing something
Holding onto too much
Lacking a reflection to witness such blush
Born with too much blood to gush
How is that all he sought and lacked was her touch?
Desperately committed
For far less things men have been committed
Beyond an Achilles heel that needs to be admitted
If this isn’t proof then there is none
Starring down the barrel of a gun
Love or loss
A fine line to cross
A rolling stone without moss
A tear without moisture
Heart, without a beat
Only when stars aligned could be blessed to meet
Yet here I am
Time and time again
It is fact; my romantic madness has no end
A painful inability to comprehend godsend
Because without experience there is only delirious
Certainly a man should be weary of this
But I am that man
And he is me
Come tomorrow I know not where he will be
Yet I am willing and waiting to see
Like an inmate behind bars with the option to be free.
College Network G1NBC will be filming live at the 20th anniversary party for the Barnstormer Entertainment Complex. The Barnstormer will be the host to the inaugural College Network G1NBC Battle of Bands and Swimsuit Competition, Friday, March 5th!
By: Helena Kirby
Black Jack Persia is essentially a compilation of melody, rhythm, passion, and pleasing aesthetics. Being a personal friend and fan of these jive guru’s has allowed me to follow the evolution of their undeniable talent over the last three years. They have always been able to captivate an audience with their funky bass lines, intricate guitar licks, and pin-point drum solo’s. The band consists of five ingenious musicians; Kyle Firlik on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Matthew Naughton as lead guitarist, Rob Toth is the funky bassist, and Jesse Browman is the jazzy drummer. With their forces combined even the tone deaf and paralyzed can enjoy and groove to their tunes!
Their original identity was actually “Edit Tide” which in itself is a testament to their witty and ingenious subliminal notations. If one was to look at the term Edit Tide in detail some would realize that it is a palindrome, which is a word or term that is spelled the same either way it is viewed. In their own words, “We come from different tides, once edited we flow together.”
I can say that statement describes them to a tee. In any band’s first few shows problems arise; technical difficulties, sour notes, missed beats, and so on. Out of the hundreds of shows I have been too, I have never witnessed any other group that has denounced lady luck as often as BJP! Almost every show in the early days had some type of crisis that arose as if to test their ability. One specific time was nothing short of erroneous. BJP put on an outdoor show during “Welcome Week” at Michigan State University. They were probably about halfway through their set when misfortune struck a chord, literally. As Jesse was keeping the tick-tock of the tempo, his symbol fell from the high rise he was propped up on and landed so coincidentally perfect that it split the cord for Naughton’s guitar in half!
Yet, out of every curve ball that has been blasted their way, they have recovered as true entertainers do. They are so experienced and sync now that if havoc was to come reaping they simply grab an acoustic, or the remaining able-body players simply continue on the jam without hesitation or reaction, it is natural, innate, and very impressive to watch.
Black Jack Persia has claimed their territory and gained fanatic fans throughout all of Michigan including, Detroit, Lansing, Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Royal Oak, Kalamazoo, and so on. They have lured listeners with their acoustic sets in tea houses and side streets, and riled up the roars of the restless in venues everywhere! Their sound has evolved from the embryonic journey every set of musicians explores. From their beginning s which danced primarily around the funk-rock genre such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the intricate jazz-funk, swagger induced rock n’ revive that they can shred and spread today! That’s what makes them so amusing, they do not exploit the vibrations, the vibrations exploit themselves through their music.
No one, male or female, fan or foe can argue Black Jack Persia’s aura that radiates from the stage and bellows throughout the audience. Their musical madness magnetizes even the passion pacifists simply numbing themselves with their pale ales in the pub. Not only do these four have a ravishing appeal to the onlooker’s eye, they come fully equipped with the exotic X factor! Each member of BJP has their own mannerisms which trademark their unique ubiquity. Come have the pleasure of perceiving it for yourself on March 5th at the Bikini Contest and Battle of the Bands at the Barnstormer’s of Whitmore Lake!
Upon realizing that you have crossed the threshold into their tranquilizing trance induced by the funky fusion frolicking from their fingers you are simultaneously and subconsciously shot with their syringe of sensual satisfaction. Did I mention they are sinfully sexy?
Enter into their domain at any time and be prepared for a serenade of sound. With their first EP “Converted World” released this past summer, the average Joe and the advantageous can have Black Jack Persia’s tunes readily available to suffice a fix a funky addict might need! With the upbeat tempo and harnessed harmonies in their songs such as 6X6 room in addition to the unprecedented vocals of Mr. Firlik make the song an instant classic. Every song unleashes lyrics as if they were linguistic legacies, ripe and raw as if to match their beats, then at times solemn and sequential as that of “Delusions of Grandeur”. Yet, my favorite to date and from day one has always been “Bad Blue House”. That song captures my attention entirely every time, it’s one of those songs you could have on repeat only to feel the excitement each time as if it were the first, like the euphoria of a love drug! The slap-bass, syncopated rhythm, staccato guitar licks, and poetically released vocals make the song one for the charts!
All in all Black Jack Persia has something for any trained or unknowing ear. Check them out on ITunes, or even better check out their MySpace page, at myspace.com/blackjackpersia! Check out their tunes for yourself, add them, and then be sure to come out to their show March 5th at the Barnstormer in Whitmore Lake! Tickets are $10; there is a bikini contest, an emcee from Chicago, and DJ PrettyBoi as well to end the night in a rave! All in all, where else can you get babes, bands, and booze for $10? So come out and vote for them Friday, March 5th at the Barnstormer Entertainment Complex! I’ll see ya’ there!
I eventually made my way to the other side of the stage, probably 2nd row, and legitimately believe I got a nod from the chronic-master himself. It was everything I could have hoped for from Snoop, he’s gave props to the 313, 16 or 17 pleas to smoke weed, and was only seen without a bunt for a moments in between. His set list was flawless, hitting all the notable favorites:
1. Next Episode
2. Lodi Dodi
3. Gin and Juice
4. Who Am I?
5. Drop It Like it’s Hot
6. Nothing But a “G” Thang
There is more, but I was drinkings, funking, and boogieing. Pay no attention the order, they are by recollection, not preference. At times I considered leaving, then retained my sanity and saw the “walk-in” of a lifetime through.
The show ended sometime close to two, I removed my flyers from my pocket, and stood in the lobby distributing to all the satisfied departing customers,
“bands and bikins!”
In five minutes time I handed out close to 100, and continued my welcomingly prolonged stroll home.
“Ahhh”
City living.
