WORK N PROGRESS

Brad Goins Saturday, December 21, 2013 Comments Off on WORK N PROGRESS
WORK N PROGRESS

My grandmother Goins used to tell me, “You know what you like.” Area musicians tell me that what Lake Charles likes is cover bands. A new one, Work N Progress, is trying to take a new approach to the playing of covers. I know this because the band brought a five-song demo to my office.
The instrumental accompaniment for the five songs on the disc differs somewhat from the original instrumentation, which I suppose is what one wants in a cover band. The performance is tight and tempos are steady; I didn’t hear any lags in the beat.
The sound throughout is an upbeat pop. The biggest accomplishment is a vocal performance that comes pretty close to the very deep bass lead vocal of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”
Work N Progress promises “vintage sounds” and “variety.” If you’re curious about whether their taste in vintage sounds matches yours, I can tell you that the other cuts on the demo are “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” “Your Love Has Lifted Me Higher,” “Heard It Through The Grapevine” and “Listen To The Music.”
Work N Progress is shunning the club scene for now. The band wants to play for parties. If you have a wedding, graduation or Christmas party, or any party at all, call Willis at 474-3040; Rick 540-1727 or Jean 540-8024.
I’ve often written in Up Front that I’ll write something about any music CD, demo, MP3 downloads or cuts on SoundCloud that are given to me or brought to my attention. If you can direct me to music I can listen to, I can and will write about it for nothing other than the satisfaction of doing it.

Pres. To Gov.
Here’s the headline of an email the Up Fronter (and everybody else in Louisiana) got from the Office of the Governor on Nov. 8:
“Gov. Jindal to Pres. Obama: Don’t Bully LA on Obamacare, Man Up & Admit Your Mistake”
An anonymous source passed on this copy of an email that was subsequently sent from the Office of the President of the United States:
“President Obama to Gov. Jindal: OK! OK! I’ll do whatever you say, man! Just — please — ease up on me, OK? Ease up a little. I’ll man up if that’s what you want. I swear it. Just ease up, bro. I’m begging you. Let me get up off the ground for a second, OK? P.S. We’ll do it your way, for sure. But is there any way we can use ‘and’ instead of ampersands. Just askin’!!!!”

Suitz In The Hood
In spite of it all, Jindal may yet get a chance to go mano y mano with the president who’s been bullying him. Why? Well, President Obama just moved into Jindal’s neighborhood: The Thirties.
The Thirties is, of course, the notorious gangland where politicians must go when their approval ratings drop below 40 percent.
Obama had been getting by all right, chillin’ up in The Forties. He’d had one run-in with Forties gangsta NSA. But the president walked away from that with nothing more than a split lip.
It was quite a different story, though, when the brutal, 350-pound, heavily armed Forties gangsta Healthcare Rollout caught Obama in an alley and left him shakin’ and bleedin’. Obama’s road dogs were almost happy to get the president into The Thirties for fear of a return blast by Healthcare Rollout.
One thing Jindal and Obama will have in common with everyone else in The Thirties: an outright terror of winding up in the only neighborhood that’s worse: The Twenties. As you know, the gang boss in The Twenties is Dick Cheney, who’s known there as OG Breakdown. Brrr! It makes me squeamish just to think about it. I’d rather go through a gang initiation organized by Jigsaw than have Breakdown bring me the hard candy.

Can’t Argue With That
Now, I think it’s basically a good thing that Louisiana has so many politicians who are, let’s say, colorful. Be that as it may, politicians the country-over who are concerned about their, let’s says, questionable behavior, must be sending up prayers of thanks for Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford. I mean, do what you like, you’re just not going to come off looking as bad as this guy.
CNN put together a list of its favorite Fordisms. I chose my favorites. Settle back, take a long sip of coffee and see if you get a chuckle out of any of these:
— “That is not a crack house. Have you been to the house?”
— “Yes, one day I do want to run for prime minister.”
— “You know what? I made mistakes, I drank too much. I smoked some crack some time. What can I say? I made a mistake, I’m guilty.”
— “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”
— “The revelations yesterday of cocaine, escorts, prostitution has [sic] pushed me over the line.”
When Ford was confronted with the charges of seeking prostitutes, he responded with very blunt language to the effect that his wife met all his needs and then some. We can’t put that language in the Lagniappe. But we can tell you that comedian Stephen Colbert said the comments made him “miss” Ford’s crack days.
Worse was to come. On Nov. 18, Ford knocked down Pam McConnell, a female member of the Toronto City Council that’s been voting to limit his mayoral powers. Now in Ford’s defense — if you can call it defense — he was trying to take down a heckler and McConnell happened to be in the way. Whether mayors should be tackling hecklers, readers can decide for themselves.
McConnell, who is in her 60s, didn’t care for it; she said, “This is the seat of democracy. It is not a football field.”
Too late for CNN’s list was this recent Fordism: “They’re not going to find another Rob Ford.”

Food Stamp Watching
Just because Ford is in all his glory, we shouldn’t ignore Louisiana politicians who uphold the great tradition of acting out. Such a one was Lindel Toups, who recently backed a measure that would have shifted funding from the Lafourche Parish libraries to the construction of a new jail.
You’ll probably agree that Toups made a key strategical error when he started dumping on libraries.
Now before you start reading the comments made by this brainiac, keep in mind he’s a member of the Lafourche Parish Council. Not only that, he’s the chairman of the council. You believe me? Good. Let’s go.
Said Toups: “They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English … Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico … There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. … Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.”
I’ve always said that if there’s anything worse than junkies, it’s them junkies. But the worst of all is certainly them junkies and all.
The most important aspect of the story was that, once again, a Louisiana politician’s hick comments were picked up by major news outlets and spread all around the country.
I wonder why Toups was making all these comments about “them junkies” to begin with. Has he forgotten that his son and grandson were arrested in 2009 for possession of meth?
The one good thing about this story is that you now know what to say to those shady looking guys who stand around outside convenience stores and give you the creeps when you go in to get your Marlboro Lights. When you see a dude like that, just say, “Hey, junkie, why don’t you go to the library and look at pictures of food stamps on the Internet?”

Local Culture Report
The Up Fronter is hearing locals pronounce the name of the new clothing store Plato’s Closet as “Platto’s Closet.” I guess they’re thinking about the famous ancient Greek clothing designer Platto.
On the up side, it’s been years since I’ve heard anyone in the area pronounce the name of the composer Haydn as “Hey den.” I think maybe that’s because I haven’t made a reference to Haydn in years.

Did I Mention I Don’t Care?
The Dead Pelican is supposed to be a Louisiana news site. Still, I wasn’t surprised when I clicked the link for this headline — “Duck Dynasty Star explains why he and his wife waited until they were married …” — and wound up on something called FaithIt. On FaithIt, I read this, longer, headline, and a subhead to boot:
“This Famous Couple Waited Until Their Wedding Night To Have Sex. You’ll Love The Reason Why.
“Things get a bit intense when Jase and Missy explain why their family functions the way it does. Watch this Duck Dynasty couple school the world on the power of a godly marriage.”
Whatever FaithIt may attest to the contrary, I will not love the reason why. I don’t care about the reason why. I don’t care who these people are, what they have to say, or why they are named Jase and Missy. I certainly don’t care why they did or didn’t have sex and hope to FaithIt that I never learn a single thing about that unpalatable topic. And I don’t care why somebody at some thing called FaithIt thinks somebody named Jase is famous.
As a consolation prize, I do promise the Web page maintenance crew at FaithIt that if I ever feel the desire to be schooled on anything at my age, they’ll be the first to know.

Plot Spoiler!
The other day I saw this movie called Planet of the Apes. You won’t believe what happened in this movie. I’ll give you a run-down.
OK. Charlton Heston is driving a space ship. He fires up a blunt in this all-oxygen environment but there isn’t an explosion. He sits there and puffs a while and a few minutes later he lands on a planet that’s controlled by gorillas and orangutans. I swear it! If you don’t believe me, watch the movie.
Anyway, the orangutans put Charlton Heston on trial for talking and he gets busted out of jail by a couple of chimpanzees who take him to a weird archeological dig where he takes the No. 1 orangutan hostage. Then a little doll says “Mamma” and everybody freaks out and there’s a huge explosion.
SO, Charlton Heston takes off with his cavewoman girlfriend, riding down the ocean coast on a horse. All of a sudden he jumps down on the beach and starts hitting it like a little baby and cussing a lot and you see the Statue of Liberty. End of story!
Now keep in mind that all of this happens on the planet earth in year 3600. How the scriptwriter knew that this stuff will happen in 3600 I have no idea.

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