Jackson Hole Underground

Can’t make it to Jazz Fest this year?

Jazz Fest is coming to you.

The Neville Brothers, funk, jazz and R&B masters known as the heart and soul of New Orleans, will perform at Targhee Fest this summer.

The festival is slated for July 13-15 at Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyo.

Organizers are close to finalizing a deal with fellow New Orleans funksters Galactic to perform as well.

The Nevilles are slated for Saturday, July 14, and would be followed by Galactic on Sunday.

Also booked are Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, singer-songwriters Iris DeMent and David Wilcox, and country-blues tunesmith Kelly Joe Phelps. More artists are yet to come.

The addition of the Nevilles gives Targhee two dynamite lineups for its summer festivals. The 20th annual Bluegrass Fest on Aug. 10-12 will feature Yonder Mountain String Band, Sam Bush and David Grisman (in two bands).

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Shocking. Stephen Colbert is quick-witted and scary-smart. So is John Perry Barlow. This match made in heaven might have worked with a calmer 20-minute interview. Alas, within its allotted six minutes and a torrent of verbiage, zilch happened.

This is typical of the Colbert Report, really. Promising intellects — Tim Robbins, Steve Wozniak and, last night, Barlow — tend to flame out as Colbert becomes too amped, killing the give-and-take.

Colbert’s style works best on the self-absorbed who forget the nature of the Colbert beast. For example, Colbert baited America-hating conservative Dinesh D’Souza with,”What are the other cultural editing notes we should take from the terrorists?” Colbert badgered D’Souza into admitting that jihadists basically have a good point.

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John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead songwriter and Sublette County rancher, will appear on “The Colbert Report” tonight on Comedy Central.

Barlow is co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to protecting freedom in cyberspace.

EFF recently joined a lawsuit against Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, over a video parody of “The Colbert Report” posted on YouTube. Viacom had the clip, titled “Stop the Falsiness” and produced by MoveOn.org and Brave New Films, taken down from the site.

Former EFF staffer and Jackson bard/freelancer Dennis Derryberry passed along the following letter from Barlow inviting friends to watch the show. An unlikely (and conflicted) Wyoming Republican, Barlow also shares some sharp political insight.

Here’s a snippet:

For one thing, you ironists ought to enjoy the sight of someone who looks, talks, and behaves like a Republican, but isn’t, interviewing someone who fits none of the contemporary Republican stereotypes,
but is.

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It looks ugly, but by summer no one
will notice.

So says Snow King Ski Area Manager Jim Sullivan, speaking of the S-shaped gashes left on the hillside by the “World Championship” Snowmobile Hill Climb this weekend.

Any damage inflicted on the mountain by snowmobiles will be remedied, Sullivan said Monday morning, preparing to head up and begin reseeding by hand.

Officials from Snow King and the U.S. Forest Service will meet this afternoon with the Jackson Hole Snow Devils, which organizes the event, to assess the damage, Sullivan said.

“I am not saying it looks good,” Sullivan said. “We are going to fix it, and it will be just fine.”

Although the Hill Climb, in which racers ride souped-up snowmobiles straight up the King’s steep Exhibition run, typically leaves a mark on the slope, this year the tracks were particularly glaring because of thin snow cover and unusually warm temperatures.

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After two weeks of down-to-the-wire basketball, look who’s sitting in first place in the Bradshaw pool: Fishmon. The guy has got game.

If Georgetown beats Florida for the title, Fish takes the pool. If Ohio State bests Florida in a rematch of the Fiesta Bowl, B.J. Hansen, who is tied with Fish for first, is the winner. About a half-dozen people still have a shot.

It looks like the Hoyas and UCLA have been playing the best ball, but given how my predictions have panned out so far, the mere mention of these teams here is likely a kiss of death.

I’m still at a loss to explain yesterday’s unsightly collapse by North Carolina, which cost me a dinner to a Big East fan. Way to compose your team down the stretch, Roy. Fortunately, I’m not exactly bummed to pay up.

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