Jackson Hole Underground

Photos © Jim Stanford. Click to enlarge, and use arrow keys to navigate slide show.

How fortunate the world is that while studying Shakespeare in high school, Maceo Parker decided it was better to suffer the slings and arrows of life as a musician.

Despite the weather, it sure felt like summer inside the Knotty Pine on Wednesday night as the noble sax man unleashed a torrent of funk, including the recitation from “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” that has become a staple of his routine.

Rivulets of sweat poured from his head as soon as he began to blow. The Victor log cabin was packed, and the crowd, weary of cold and rain and ready for something to get excited about, let loose.

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(Editor’s note: This dispatch comes from Clint Troxel, eminent computer guru, J-lister and mandolinist who with a group of friends trucked it out to The Gorge for Memorial Day weekend. Sasquatch Fest has become a popular road trip for Jacksonites looking for a spring fix of new music.)

The Sasquatch Festival at The Gorge has provided this music fan a necessary good-music-infusion for a few years running. It never fails to surprise, inspire, and re-invigorate. Check out the lineup.

Highlights included Blue Scholars’ conscious hip-hop, Yeasayer’s awesomely re-created set of self-described “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel” — and, let’s not forget The Flaming Lips! I know jhunderground is a Michael Franti fan, but my vote for Musical Prophet Of The Year goes to Wayne Coyne. The Flaming Lips UFO show might actually have been from out of this world. If you haven’t heard (or seen!) The Flaming Lips since “She don’t use jelly,” do yourself a favor. This show is a spectacle.

In terms of “most memorable” it was hard to beat, but I can’t stop thinking about R.E.M. I’ve never paid much attention to R.E.M. — for some reason they never clicked. Until Sasquatch.

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As I drove north in Grand Teton National Park yesterday morning, I listened as Fish-mon of KMTN played Billy Joel’s “Goodnight Saigon” on the radio in honor of Memorial Day.

The lyrics, written from a soldier’s perspective in Vietnam, convey some powerful imagery of combat and camaraderie:

We came in spastic like tameless horses
We left in plastic as numbered corpses
And we learned fast to travel light
Our arms were heavy but our bellies were tight

… We had no cameras to shoot the landscape
We passed the hash pipe and played our Doors tapes
And it was dark, so dark at night
And we held on to each other
Like brother to brother
We promised our mothers we’d write

As I imagined what it was like for these men hunkered down in the midst of war, I passed the Jackson Hole Airport, where Air Force Two was parked on the runway. How fitting, I thought, that the great warrior Dick Cheney is resting comfortably in Jackson Hole for Memorial Day weekend, while the 150,000 or so U.S. troops he foolishly sent to Iraq are fighting for their lives.

Like many in east Jackson, I had been awakened around 7 a.m. by Cheney’s convoy of Blackhawk helicopters thundering over town. As if the luxury vacation weren’t infuriating enough, the thought of burning aviation fuel to go fishing or play golf was like injecting Napalm into one’s veins.

We all go down together, right?

An adult circus came to town Saturday, as the Yard Dogs Road Show mixed music and theater in a saucy revue at the Jackson Hole Playhouse.

Gypsy burlesque drew nearly a full house. All weekend, from the Whodunit? show at the Art Association to the Pangea video campfire at LMC gallery, found people thirsting for art in all its forms. Mountain dwellers are restless for spring, even if Mother Nature is not.

The Road Show’s vaudeville was perfectly tailored for the Playhouse, a fantastical theater straight out of the Old West. Here is a slide show from the performance.

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The 39th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival closed Sunday with a homecoming, as the Neville Brothers, the city’s first family of funk, returned to perform together for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

Sunday was also “family day,” as the preceding acts on the main stage were bands fronted by Carlos Santana and his son, Salvador, and Ivan Neville, son of the gospel brother Aaron Neville.

Jazz Fest is all about moments, and together these musicians produced an historic one, as the Neville Brothers were joined by the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians, younger generations of the family and a host of friends and former band members. One of those friends was Carlos Santana, who joined the brothers for “My Blood” and “Ain’t No Use.” Fiery licks erupted from his guitar as he moved like a cat on stage.

It was a joyous finish to a festival that left me, well, overjoyed. Here are a few of the other peak moments, in words and in photos, from the second weekend, as well as scenes from around the city. Click on any image to enlarge and begin the slide show, and navigate using the arrow keys. (All photos © Jim Stanford)

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