Rolling down the river...

I don't pay much attention to popular music but I've always supported local bands. So, I'm collecting links for a new section on the sidebar for my friends who are musicians. I was glad to find that The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band have a website. Googling around, it appears they're in the area these days. Maybe on a street corner near you. If you see an old black guy with white hair and a washtub bass, give him a hug from me would you?

I almost forgot that Madi, one of their former members, is famous now. She has a real slick site of her own, complete with a video and she even has a wikipedia entry.

I know these guys through my virtual brother. They all stayed with us for a while when Mark and I were housemates. The houseboat at the shore is the Big Maybelle. She's docked in Conflans on the Seine. I spent a night there once. We got really drunk on wine that night. I don't usually drink wine cause it dehydrates me but what the hell, I was in France. I figured I should drink wine.

Bad choice. I woke up so hung over and dehydrated I thought I was going to die and there was not a drop of potable water on the boat. We had to walk to the center of town in the blazing sun and up about 2000 stairs to get to the store. When we got there, it was just closing up for siesta or something and they wouldn't let me in. I have never felt so devastated in my life. I couldn't speak the language to communicate my desperation so I flung myself bodily onto the sidewalk and started crying hysterically.

My friends pretended not to know me and casually walked across the street to the bar. The storekeeper however either took pity on me or decided he didn't want a wailing American lying in the front of the store for the next hour. He sent a clerk out to give me a liter bottle of water. She wouldn't take any money for it. I didn't understand what she said, but I'm pretty sure it was something like, take the damn water and get out of here.

I downed the whole thing in about five seconds. Water never tasted so sweet before or since. I did my friends a favor and waited outside the bar so they wouldn't have to acknowledge me. Some of them had to live there after I was gone.

After a couple of drinks, my friends thought it was pretty funny. They came and collected me and we went on to Paris to get a hotel room. Living on the river was clearly not for me but it was worth it to spend a night on the legendary boat that I had heard so many stories about.