Photographs by David Swift © 2008. Click to enlarge.

I defer to Jim Stanford’s ample research for specifics about The New Mastersounds, even if he has yet to establish whether or not the band’s name is intended to be ironic.

I’m not sure why they blew me away — why, that’s the very definition of art! — but there I was, dragging myself to the Moose well after bedtime Friday to catch their second local show after NMS had rocked Driggs Thursday night. Because there is plenty of room on the Internets, allow me to dwell on what makes The New Mastersounds one of the best live bands I’ve ever heard.

1. They’re better than tight. Well-rehearsed bands are nice. Everyone knows his part; competence prevails at every gig. Once tight, better bands proceed to loosen. It’s like what Picasso said of himself: Once he had learned to draw like a master he spent the rest of his life trying to draw like a child.

NMS is über-tight and as loose as good luck. Their phenomenal rhythm section (drummer Simon Allen, bassist Pete Shand) parks itself in the pocket with enormous spaces between notes into which the better dancers groove-lock. NMS arrangements are more like conspiracies, with lots of wiggle room and numerous well-timed back-to-the-Ones — that moment of familiar return designed to produce squeals of delight. (There is much to be said for spending two evenings indulging in whatever causes squeals of delight.)

2. NMS connects. If you happened to be tourist who wandered into Driggs, Idaho, last Thursday night, whatever preconceptions you showed up with were exploded into many tiny bits. Live concert on Main Street? How quaint! Gotta check out some of that Prairie Home fiddle’n'banjo crap.

Instead, while you were chowing down on the finest $7 meal ever but on a stick, Bill Boney’s Mongolian Kebab, your body started automatically moving out from underneath you before your brain caught up with the body’s will to dance. That’s the New Mastersounds funk talking, and there’s far more than mere funk. We’re not in Idaho anymore.

Good dance band. Check. However, NMS has a secret weapon: showmanship. Not tired flying-hair wheedley-wheedle-rowwwr-sponk! guitar-solo showmanship. I mean the kind where the guys with the mics say funny, intelligent things to the audience, set up a one-on-one feeling of mutual appreciation. Once, Simon the drummer stopped the proceedings to ask the hundreds of Driggsians to pose for a photograph. Simple, sweet, potent stagecraft.

3. Their style of music is, you know, New Mastersounds-ish. You can call NMS a funk band although rock, fusion, soul and other genres work equally well — in that no genre sums up what these guys are up to. Like Beck, Gnarls Barkley, and for that matter another Driggs act that night, Moses Guest, NMS came of age in the CD and mix tape world. Willing listeners could absorb into their DNA every musical style from any era. A generation ago it was, “Wow, they blended bluegrass and jazz? I am totally blown away by such liberal application of modernity!” Today, the Becks of the world readily cleave four decades of pop to pan-global obscurities in a single cut — without being obvious or even cute.

In fact, in two NMS shows I identified 238 distinct strains of popular music spanning a century. Eddie Roberts, the guitarist, is comfy whanging out punk power chords and cozy jazz arpeggios that Django, from his cloud perch, is thrilled to hear again. Chicken-plucking? You know it. While their shows had the shape of a rock gig, much of the NMS set is structurally based on what the heppest jazz combos of 50 years ago perfected: what’s known is the beginning, the end, and where the choice hooks happen. The rest, well, listen closely because it’ll come out this way exactly once.

4. Eddie Roberts is bit of a genius. We’re a few thousand guitarists down the road yet here is an original, one of those rare cats whose every follicle and limb exudes as much music as his instrument. Roberts is capable of wailing, high-fret solos but I get the sense he’s happiest hanging back on crisp wah-chukka-wah rhythm bits while the keyboardist, Joe Tatton, goes long.

The man beams constantly as if a philosophical ideal has been attained. At Driggs, he (and everyone else) was tickled by the family vibe, especially the dancin’ gymnastics by throngs of little girls in feral face paint. At the Moose, the girls were older and genuinely feral. Like a good-bad magician, Roberts explained to the crowd that he was about to perform the trick of “tension, release . . . tension, release.” A jam ensues, masterfully spiced with tantric interludes. Eddie Roberts throws his head back and laughs, and he wasn’t the only one laughing.

The New Mastersounds continued their conquest of America with two gigs in the Tetons, kicking off a spree of music that arrives at just the right time.

On Thursday night the booty-shaking Brits rocked the free Music on Main concert in Driggs, an event that quickly has mushroomed into a pillar of community. (Jackson Town Council, are you listening?)

Last night the lads from Leeds conducted an exercise in “tension and release” at the Mangy Moose. Borrowing from The Meters, Sly and the Family Stone and, if I’m not mistaken, even Lionel Richie, the group let loose and turned what could have been a slow night before a small crowd into an outrageous funk party. The release was akin to the Snake River pouring through Jackson Lake Dam.

With a full moon shining over the mountains, and shooting stars streaking across the sky, it was a perfect summer night (even if some yahoo dancing with a beautiful girl got a little too carried away with the tambourine at the end).

Today the festivities hit full swing at Targhee Fest, with Grace Potter, Taj Mahal and Emmylou Harris on the bill, and Tony Furtado hosting a late-night jam in the Trap. For those with the stamina of a bull elk, moe. caps off the weekend of music Sunday night at the Moose.

Earlier this week, I listened on Jackson Hole Community Radio as “The Nick” played a Taj Mahal song about wanting to know that “joy can still be found.” (Pardon my ignorance on not knowing the title, but I’ve been mining his catalog, and it’s rich; a Web search proved surprisingly fruitless.)

Just about anytime Taj takes the stage, there is joy to be found. But with so much great music at the height of summer in the Tetons, opportunities abound.

From Talking Points Memo, another gem from the esteemed senator from the Gem State.

Drill it, mine it, log it, dam it. How this clown continues to wield any clout is a tribute to the state of the U.S. Congress.

Edward Rothstein of The New York Times writes a thoughtful essay about his visit to the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Rothstein probes the meaning behind pastoral depictions of wilderness:

There is some fantasy in this, a simplification that can lead the way
into kitsch. But if taxidermy, hunting and painting are modes of capture, they are also modes of tribute. The moose heads mounted on walls or sold for thousands of dollars in souvenir shops in Jackson are affirmations of the hunter’s power and prowess. But like many paintings at this museum they are also monuments to a particular kind of encounter with the wild, in the wild. Environmentalism and hunting and painting become strange bedfellows.

Rothstein more vividly experiences the wild from the trails of Grand Teton park.

I’ve added a link to the new Jenny Lake climbing ranger site, where mountaineers can get updates on popular climbing and hiking routes in the Tetons. There’s also a lot of information about backcountry camping in the park. (Alas, no permits online.)

DG at The Snaz has the scoop.

Hard to believe we’re a week past the Fourth of July, and still so much snow in the mountains. Won’t be long before it begins piling up again.

I’m holding onto summer as long as I can.

Gary Strieker is using new media to spotlight critical environmental issues.

Tonight the Jackson Hole Film Institute and Pursue Balance are sponsoring a free talk and screening of some of Strieker’s films from 7 to 9 p.m. at Teton Mountain Lodge. The filmmaker will be on hand to answer questions.

Strieker is a former award-winning international correspondent for CNN who went on to found the Environment News Trust, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to producing video news reports. His short films can be viewed at the Assignment Earth home page and via Yahoo! video, as well as on a new half-hour program on PBS.

Recently Strieker has worked with Jackson journalists Melinda Binks and Rebecca Huntington on stories such as coal-bed methane drilling in the Powder River Basin, delisting of bald eagles and depleted trout stocks in Idaho.

Binks, a videographer who owns Fall Creek Productions, and Huntington, the former ace environmental reporter for the News&Guide, also will show some of their work.

Strieker will screen “Mountains of Coal,” a feature about hilltop mining in West Virginia, and the short films “Mexican Wolves” and “Smuggling Apes.”

Devious Dick is back in Jackson Hole for Fourth of July weekend, according to well-placed sources. He did not attend the parade this morning (where he might have faced a mob), but perhaps he’ll be ferried by chopper to the Music in the Hole concert, of which he and his wife are fans.

Since we’re such patriotic, freedom-loving Americans, we thought we’d celebrate this Independence Day with some ol’-fashioned Communist bashing.

Oops. Turns out the military trainers the U.S. government sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002, under the direction of the Creep Veep, gave our soldiers a lesson in torture tactics pioneered by … the Communist Chinese during the Korean War.

The Chinese used these tactics — sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, standing for long periods of time — to “obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners,” the New York Times reports.

The trainers based their lesson on a chart the U.S. Air Force developed during the 1950s as it sought to train our soldiers to resist the very same techniques.

“The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: ‘Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance,’” the Times reports. Nice work, keystone commies.

[In case anyone is wondering whether waterboarding, another of the tactics implemented by the Bush administration, is, in fact, torture, a journalist we admire greatly, Christopher Hitchens, says there’s no doubt. Hitchens, bless him, subjected himself to waterboarding and wrote a piece about it for Vanity Fair.]

Happy July Fourth, Chairman Cheney!

Fawning profiles in the local media nonwithstanding, there has been a lot of grumbling about Barron on barstools and coffee counters, owing mostly to the new parking garage and the rapidly changing face of downtown.

Another lawmaker ripe for a challenge is state Rep. Keith Gingery, a Republican who owes his election in 2004 to GOP gerrymandering. Gingery has rankled his constituency in Jackson by sponsoring abortion bills and his flip-flop on a secrecy bill that made correspondence between lawmakers and lobbyists off-limits to the public.

I wasn’t surprised to find him running unopposed because the Wyoming Legislature is an unpaid job that requires a lot of travel around the state and spending several weeks in Cheyenne each winter.

Should either of these pols be coasting to another term?

We who feel the issues merit more rigorous debate than a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire from the local papers have another option: a write-in campaign.

It is remarkably easy to get a write-in candidate on the general election ballot for November, when turnout is expected to be high for the presidential race.

To challenge Mark Barron for mayor, a person would need to receive just three write-in votes during the Aug. 19 primary. To challenge Keith Gingery, a candidate would need 25 write-in votes.

The opportunity exists to draft a worthy candidate by writing in him or her on the primary ballot. (That person later would have to consent by registering to run.) For the first time in recent memory, the Democratic primary has an important contested race — for county commissioner — and turnout should be high.

So who’s going to step up and press one or more of the unopposed incumbents?

———————————
Notes:

— Keith Gingery lost Teton County to Democrat Mike Gierau in 2004 but eked out a narrow victory thanks to a landslide in Dubois, which was dubiously grouped with Jackson when voting districts were redrawn following the 2000 Census, a process overseen by Gingery’s political progenitor, state Sen. Grant Larson.

— The secrecy bill, sponsored by Larson, was vetoed by Gov. Dave Freudenthal, but Gingery, despite his earlier opposition to the legislation, voted in step with the Republican Party to overturn the veto.

— Link to Teton County election dates

I was back on the river yesterday, after a week’s layoff due to foul weather. The flow in Grand Teton National Park is surging, with the sudden arrival of sunshine finally triggering a melt-off in the high country.

Earlier I wrote about the experience of exploring the river in the park, and that’s the way spring has been: abundant wildlife, elk sightings nearly every trip, the uncertainty around each bend of not knowing just what you’ll encounter.

Last night, on the last of my three trips, I rowed into a small side channel. It’s quiet, and a good place to see wildlife up close, when animals happen to be there.

Within minutes I had spotted what looked like a large dirt clump on the side of the river. It was too large to be a beaver, but it wasn’t moving. We floated closer. A tourist asked me a question, and the brown shape slowly roused, turned around and looked at us with sad eyes.

“It’s a grizzly bear,” I said, and the tourists screamed.

If you want to see the visage of pure jubilation, put a tourist in front of a bear. This was the second sighting of the cub on my boat this season; the first time, the mostly foreign passengers nearly jumped into the river they were so excited.

Anyhow, the bear just looked at us last night, a little puzzled and groggy perhaps. It had been sleeping on a log. We floated slowly past it, and it never ran but just gazed at us from 20 yards away.

I radioed the guides behind me, and two other boats also took the channel and watched the grizzly. Best we can figure, it’s one of No. 399’s cubs, recently turned loose by its mother and tasked with having to fend for itself.

The bear looked really small, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. Anyone who’s ever seen a bruin at close range and watched its behavior recognizes that bears are not very far down the evolutionary ladder from us humans.

Maybe it’s naivete and anthropomorphism on my part. Maybe the bear is blissfully happy on the banks of that little brook. After all, I did spot an elk calf barely able to walk, much less run, in the same area a few weeks ago. Maybe the little griz is well fed and just laid down on the edge of the water for a nap.

One of the best things about a river trip for me, particularly a kayak run, is getting off the water and having the motion of the river stay with me. I laid down to sleep last night still bobbing in the waves, looking into the eyes of the grizzly.

Below, these photos were taken earlier this spring of what we believe to be the same grizzly family, before the bears split up. Click to enlarge and use arrow keys to navigate slide show. Photos © Sue Cedarholm

If you’re likeable, recently deceased and have been on TV a lot, you’ll get rave notices. Tim Russert certainly is getting his air time, right up there in Anna Nicole Smith territory. MSNBC seems to have instantly commissioned “Dirge for Tim for Lone Plaintive Horn” and repeats it often.

What, exactly, did Tim Russert offer to our needy nation? All the grim lamenters, on TV and in newspapers, agree. He was “the real deal.” He was “the ultimate dad.” An unending variety of accolades repeat the same sentiment: Russert was a regular guy who loved his family and remained faithful to the Buffalo Bills.

Anything else? Oh, yes. Apparently Tim Russert is considered a monument to the gathering and dissemination of information crucial to maintaining our democracy. All this praise for Russert’s “journalism.” Al Hunt, a longtime Beltway insider, called him “the best political journalist in America.” Wow. Russert must have really brought down some bigwigs! Weirdly, neither Al Hunt nor anyone else seems to have come up with single Russert scoop, or an example of how Russert’s no-holds-barred grilling under the hot lights had flushed out a culprit.

Let’s see: Torture. The loss of habeas corpus. Rampant kleptomania in Congress. Rampant kleptomania in Iraq. The illegal politicization of all government agencies. Widespread incompetence. Billions funding private armies. Thousands of creepy W-worshipping youngsters in civil service, unqualified and toting dubious Bible college diplomas. Anyone recall Russert revealing any aspect of this systematic destruction of America’s legal and governmental foundations? A teensy bit, even?

In fact, Dick Cheney’s handlers consider “Meet the Press” an ideal place to “control the message.” Like most of the pundit and news class, Russert’s clique included the authorities he should have been examining in our behalf.

He was subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame scandal, where he suddenly suffered memory lapses just like so many Bushies do under oath. In his testimony Russert revealed something shocking for a so-called journalist: When he gets a phone call from a big shot, “off the record” is his default mode.

Let us lament the death of a good and generous man who was quite talented at that amiable horse-race chit-chat we call political coverage. Tim Russert was an engaging TV entertainer. Let’s not pretend we lost someone who comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.