TIME TO GET YOUR BOOGIE ON!

Okay,this one is going out to all the Canadians who ate too much Thanksgiving turkey and other goodies over the weekend. Time to get up and start working it off - and what better way to do that than to dance to some Fats Domino - in this case I've selected something I think is very appropriate, "The Fat Man." Come on now, let's go shake the floor!






Just a bit of extra info here - this is one of Fats' earliest hits, dating back to 1949. Ho-lee! I was only two years old then! Of course you're never too young or too old to boogie woogie.

Video from YT member checkingmail
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

OH DEAR! WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO CRUISING?

Now that the price of gas is over $4 a gallon in the States, and about $1.35 a litre in Canada, what is going to happen to that staple of North American car culture – going out for a drive? For as long as I can remember, that’s been one of the most pleasurable activities life had to offer. Ah, the freedom of the open road. Back in the ‘50s, when I was very small, we spent summer vacations with my grandparents in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan), and would take a long leisurely drive upstate. And once or twice a summer we’d all pile in the car head out of Detroit and drive to Howell for its famous cantaloupe melons. Of course, we could have bought them in the grocery store, but we always packed a picnic and made a day trip out of it (back before the network of expressways expanded into the ‘burbs, that was pretty much a given anyway). Then later, when I got my own license, I took naturally to the world of teen cruising. Talk about having no particular place to go! My girlfriends and I made the rounds of the drive-ins, or just plain drove around seeing what there was to see. Somebody had a cottage at the lake; we were on the way! When I went away to university in Kalamazoo, I drove in my mother’s old hand-me-down Valiant. With my own set of wheels, I could come home for the weekend any time I wanted. Okay, maybe that one wasn’t a huge priority…but you get my point.

These days, everyone is effected, but the ones I really feel sorry for are the teens. We could quickly be entering a time when the fun of aimless cruising around with a car full of your school pals will no longer be the rite of passage it once was. But the situation could have even more far-reaching effects. If this dark looming future comes to pass, what will become of road songs? Will anyone still be inspired to write them? Can you imagine a world without the Beach Boys “I Get Around”? Or Bob Seger’s “Roll Me Away”? Or even Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike” (‘cause you ain’t gettin’ a ride if nobody’s out there drivin’). Just think about the hundreds of cool songs that are yet to be written. Who will climb in behind the wheel, turn the key and write another classic? And we haven’t even begun to consider the road movies yet. They too are a much-loved part of our shared experience. There could be some lean times ahead!

Still, bad as that sounds, things may not be completely hopeless. We just have to reinvent the road song. Find the musical equivalent to bunching your shopping necessary trips together, and finding routes with less traffic, fewer left turns and stoplights. We need to think of road songs in a different, energy saying way. I think we even have a few oldies that we can build on.

Melanie, Brand New Key
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKJO8Sy0ugQ
This one went to Billboard #1 in Dec. 1971, back in the day of plentiful, relatively cheap gas, and quad rollerskates. I used to have a pair of those key-operated skates. They were really heavy and cumbersome, but once you got up some speed you could sure make sparks fly going down the sidewalk.

Fats Domino, Walkin’ to New Orleans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lICk_uPAPfg
A great little road song of sorts, written by Bobby Charles for Fats, who had a hit with it in 1960. Bobby was a big fan of the Fat Man. When they met in Lafayette, Fats invited him to come visit him at home in New Orleans. Bobby told him he didn’t have a car, and if he did visit, he’d have to walk there. Then he turned that thought into a song.

Well, there you go. I hope I haven’t brought everybody too far down with this. Here’s one more song to leave with you on a happy high note. It’s a later one from the Beach Boys, with a great YouTube video – a real tribute to the internal combustion engine!

Still Cruisin’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVdKHktiy8I

IT'S FAT TUESDAY / PACZKI DAY

As a kid, I used to think the term Mardi Gras had such a festive yet mysterious sound to it. Then I found out that in English, it simply means Fat Tuesday. That was kind of a disappointment. But of course, it’s the perfect term for it’s original meaning, which did not center around drinking your face off and flashing strangers for cheap beads, but rather it was a big caloric blowout before the stringencies of Lent. Enter the Paczki. For those of you who, like me, only recently got clued in to them, Paczki is a Polish word, pronounced “poonch-key.” At one point I was calling them “punch-keys” but have since been corrected. So, what is a Paczki? Last year I was determined to find out. Determined, but...I waited too long.

Every year, about a week or so in advance, people begin anticipating Paczkis. Signs go up in the bakery; people salivate and talk about how delicious they are; they groan over how many they will likely eat etc. But after Fat Tuesday there is not a Paczki to be found anywhere. Gone-zo. It’s the Lent thing. So this year I was ready, and when I started to hear the buzz all over town, and on the radio, the TV news, I got there early. I didn't know what to expect. Like I said, until a couple of years ago, when I came to Leamington from out West, I’d never heard of Paczkis. And even though I grew up in Detroit, which has at it’s heart the Polish community of Hamtramck, I don’t recall that there was a citywide Paczki Day back in the 60s. And since my ethnicity tends to be more boringly WASPish, I lived in a world without Paczkis. But no more! And today I can report to you that the mystery behind the exotic Paczki has been revealed. A Paczki, it turns out, is basically…a jelly donut. But a jelly donut on 'roids! Sweet dough (fat), deep (fat) fried, and then pumped full-to-bursting with (fat) jam or custard, and then either frosted, or dusted with powdered sugar (fat fat fat). Now, I confess I don’t really care all that much for donuts, but in the interests of research, yesterday I ate one-and-a-half Paczkis (one with custard, one half of a fruit). I can now see why there are no Paczkis available once the restraints of Lent begins – because today I don’t care if I ever eat another Paczki, or anything else for that matter, ever again. I feel kind of like Roger Miller right at the very end of that “Chug-A-Lug” song… I think I have a “fat hangover” this morning. Just coffee for me, thanks.

Well, that’s it for the culinary part of this post; now for the music. This is terrific vintage footage - and who better to listen to on this Fat Day than Fats Domino. I think walking anywhere right now would be very beneficial.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18nTpdDKD04

Let's have a little contemporary Cajun music while we're at it. This is the best of the best: Jo-El Sonnier, Doug Kershaw, and Jimmie C. Newman, and "Jolie Blon." Laissez les bon temps rouler! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMBED9lA25E