Wild Gift

I walked into the Starbucks at Damen & Lincoln last night looking for a hot chocolate. Waiting to meet up with the Lovely Carla. Pleasantly surprised to hear Mick Jagger singing "Moonlight Mile," from Sticky Fingers. One of the Stones all-time best songs off one of their top three albums. I took it as a good omen. I'm in the business of looking for good omens. And bad ones too.

Anyway, The Lovely Carla arrived shortly after Mick finished up and we headed over to the Horseshoe BBQ. Now why on earth would we be going to a BBQ place late on a Tuesday night? Good question. For some unexplained reason we were booked to play music at 11:00 p.m. at the Horseshoe.The Horseshoe is a nice, funky, well-laid out C&W bar and restaurant.

The superb L.A. punk band X was on the box. Another good omen. We used to listen to their early discs all the time, way back in the early 80's. Back when the Lovely Carla had a perm, and I used to wear pink shirts. And after a good dose of X, next up was Hank Williams, and the Lovely Carla reminded me that she used to sing Hank songs all the time in the shower. "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It."

I noted that there is a logical continuum from Hank Williams to X. I never realized it until that moment.

So, finally 11:00 p.m. rolled around and we got up and played to a bartender, a waitress, and 4 dudes in tight britches with big belt buckles. We did a 40 minute set of songs. It was a tight, good sounding set, the sound-man did a great job bringing out the resonance of my acoustic guitar. We did our thing and finished up to some scattered applause. Another show under our belt. Tuesday night at the BBQ!

So this morning, I'm surfing, looking for some X on YouTube. Here's a glimpse of X in the studio recording "White Girl," from their album "Wild Gift."