Category: Music

Saturday Matinee – Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, The Damned and Dirty, and The Nick Moss Band

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials have been killing it for almost five decades. The band consists of Lil’ Ed Wiiliams / vocals, slide guitar; Ed’s half-brother James “Pookie” Young  / bass; Mike Garrett  / guitar, and Kelly Littleton / drums. Lil’ Ed and Pookie learned from their uncle,  J. B. Hutto.

The Damned and Dirty formed in Zaandam, Netherlands, in 2012; in 2024 they won the Dutch Blues Award for Best Blues Act.
“Kevin de Harde (vocals, harmonica) and Micha Sprenger (guitar) holed up in an Amsterdam-Noord studio for two days and cut a lo-fi delta blues album. Thirteen songs, self-released and free online, meant to stand alone. Then it won Best Dutch Blues Album, and the bookings started rolling in. The follow-up won too. So did the one after.”

The Nick Moss Band: Chicago native, guitarist and vocalist Nick Moss and New Jersey native, harmonica player and vocalist Dennis Gruenling, with Rodrigo Mantovani on bass, Taylor Streiff on keyboards and Pierce Downer on drums. Moss was named Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year at the 40th Blues Music Awards in 2019, and the follow year the NMB (with Dennis Gruenling) won two Blues Music Awards for Band of the Year and Traditional Blues Album of the Year.

News of the Week: Post-election political infighting is underway in both the Democrat and Republican sides of the aisle. The SS United States was scuttled off the coast of Florida, a tanker rammed and capsized a docked river cruise boat in NOLA, and airports shut down nationwide due to a Microsoft update error. A NYC apartment building collapsed into an adjacent construction excavation, and measles are doing measle things again.

Rain is due and I’ll be on the porch regardless. Any time is a good time for porch time, and this time it’s tomorrow. Be there any time after the crack of noon time.

Pantosophical Hot Links

Berry’s Blues (Jacquet Blues), Emmett Berry’s Hot Six (1946)Emmett Berry, trumpet; Illinois Jacquet, tenor sax; Bill Doggett, piano; Freddie Green, guitar; John Simmons, bass; Shadow Wilson, drums. The tune was recorded simultaneously by the Illinois Jacquet Band sextet with the same musicians.

BOB.

Hanks.

Romance.

Fins.
More Fins.

Fly through.

Chatbot fun.

Tortilla Time.

The Scribbler.

Biscuit Rigsby.

Deer memories.

Haitian zombies.

Misirlou revisited.

Specific purposes.

Impossibility math.

The long way to Prague.

Free lookout tower plans.

Catalonian human towers.

Impressive Hickshit™.
Less impressive Hickshit™.

Photos from Shelley Beach.

14,000 trails [via Memo Of The Air].

Best New Black Artist Nomination 1979.

Coffee and a hotdog [via Everlasting Blört].

Places to go in Norway [via Thompson, blog].

Brits getting drinks in the ’90s [via Sloth Unleashed].

[Top image: Colorized photo of 1915 London found here.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

Saturday Matinee – Lettuce, Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations, Selwyn Birchwood, and Max Hightower

Lettuce [aka Lettuce Funk] is a six-man combo that combines retro-future funk with soul, jazz, rock, and hip-hop, and it works.

Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations are an eclectic blues band from Wichita, KS, playing a mix of Delta roots blues, honky tonk, Stax soul, and country. (Arbuckle was half of the now defunct team of Moreland & Arbuckle.)

Selwyn Birchwood is an American blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter from Tampa, Florida. He plays what he calls “Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues,” and was the winner of the Blues Foundation’s 2013 International Blues Challenge (band category), as well the winner of the Albert King Guitarist of the Year award. [Wiki]

Max Hightower is a multi-instrumentalist (harmonica, guitar, bass, piano and vocals), writer and producer, and a founding member of Plate Full O’ Blues.He has toured across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, performing alongside greats like Hubert Sumlin and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Born and raised in Upstate South Carolina, Hightower was inspired by a Muddy Waters cassette when he was 12.

New of the Week: The midterm elections were a wondrous mix of surprises, anomalies and statistical impossibilities. Aside from that, a lot of other stuff went down that I don’t recall.

Remind me tomorrow, on the porch, at Porchtime o’clock. Be there.

Día de los Muertos Hot Links

Cumbia Triste, Bronco (2022)

Masks.

Bottles.

The Gate.

Traumatic.

Underwood.

Make it gray.

Beachhouses.

THIS TABLE.
THIS SPIDER.
THIS PENGUIN.

Exotic horrors.

Forgotten arts.

A gift for Frank.

A rejected comic.

Togas of the Dead.

Roundhouse kicks.

Dogs of Halloween.

The Singularity is now.

The Bahamas were closed.

Ben and Zara had an argument.

Cráneo Votivo [via Everlasting Blört].

Model sheep set [via Memo Of The Air].

Jeannie, pumpkin shoplifting, and more.

Rising, falling & rising timelapse [via Thompson, blog].

[Top image: .Gif created from image found somewhere in here.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

Halloween Jukebox

Miscellaneous earbone stimulation for throwing treats at the little ghosts and goblins. [Image found here.]

[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of these recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only.]

Quisquilious Hot Links

“Head in the Clouds” by Jill Garrett. 2nd Place, Studio Category, 2026

Skokiaan, Louis Armstrong (1955)
“Skokiaan” is an illegal self-made alcoholic beverage in Zimbabwe.
From Crime in South Africa, L.F. Freed (1960):  “Isikoivane (skokiaan) appears to be a general term used for all drinks other than the traditional beer sold in municipal beer halls. But these drinks are sheer poison in that they are mixed with blue stone (copper sulphate), tobacco juice, dagga, methylated spirits, snakes, carbide, rats, beetles – anything to give a kick and a bite.”

Flying T.

Bus stop.

Suck it up.

Birdhouse.

The rescue.

Dark Metro.

The t-word.

Vintage jazz.

Pluto Lamps.

HR training vid.

DANGE KEEOUT.

Las Poquianchis.

One-way coaster.

90% of the reason.

About pet costumes.

An honest candidate.

Electronic Tachometer.

The Midnight Parasites.

Airboat harvested is best.

Jaw jammer [via Thompson, blog].

Knit Bone Kitty [via Everlasting Blört].

The Bizarre Ways Cephalopods Make Bebes.

The Worm With 100 Butts [via Memo Of The Air].

[Top image: 2nd place winner of the 2026 Dog Photography Awards, Studio Category. This one and others found at My OBT.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

Saturday Matinee – Tommy Castro & the Painkillers, The Danielle Nicole Band & The Nimmo Brothers

Tommy Castro & the Painkillers play a mix of blues, soul, R&B and rock. Castro began his career in the 1970s performing in cover groups in and around the San Francisco area, and has led his own bands since 1991. In 2010, The Blues Foundation awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B. B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.

The Danielle Nicole Band: Bass player and vocalist Danielle Nicole Schnebelen is an American blues/soul musician born in Kansas City, Missouri. She began her career with her brothers Nick and Kris in the band Trampled Under Foot, receiving local and international recognition. Since going solo, she was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame and earned eight Blues Music Awards

The Nimmo Brothers cover The Allman Brothers‘ cover of the Elmore James classic. In 1995 guitarists Stevie Nimmo and his brother Alan formed the band in Glasgow. Performing here with Matt Beable on bass and Craig Bacon on drums.

News of the Week: Iran’s IRGC are still being d-bags and there are rumors of a pending firestorm. Meanwhile “student protesters” are still burning down France. Midterm election season is in full swing with reports of a surge in early voting; California is already facing accusations of fraud. There was much rain and flooding in the western states.

Tomorrow seems like a good day for Time on the Porch. If it’s missing from the itinerary, show up at the crack of noon anyway. If you don’t see me, just stomp a few times.

Aischrolatric Hot Links

Zoot Suit, The High Numbers (1964)Zoot Suit was the first single by The Who, who recorded it under the name The High Numbers in an attempt to appeal to a mod audience. It was a ripoff of

Misery, The Dynamics (1963)

Dog.

Cake.

Go fish.

Teléfonos.

Teddy said.
More Teddy.

Dolly & Carl.

Glass towers.

Impressionism.

The dog in Mad Max 2.

Guess where you’re going.

Brakes are good, tires fair.

35 years ago [h/t Bustednuckles].

Window dogs [via Memo Of The Air].

70 whistles [via The Feral Irishman].

The fate of the Zénith [via Miss Cellanea].

Geometric livestock [via Everlasting Blört].

Relativistic Asteroids [via Thompson, blog].

The contents of a ±96 year old ostrich stomach.

[Top image: Skin 2, a sculpture created in 2010 by Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal, originally installed in Chaudfontaine Park, Liège, Belgium.
Found in here.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

Saturday Matinee – Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado, American Standard, and The Guy Forsyth Blues Band

“This is the sort of band that gets booked by unwary festival promoters as an early evening support only to discover they’ve stolen the show by 8 pm.”
Since their beginnings as a Copenhagen bar band, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado have been dubbed Denmark’s premier roots rockers. The septet has performed in Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, the US and Asia for the past twenty years.

Hard to find info on the Wisconsin band named American Standard, but it was a side project of The Chris Aaron Band, both fronted by Chris Aaron Shoemaker. Shoemaker passed away in 2014 due to a heart attack. He was 44. “Aaron was one of Wisconsin’s most prominent blues musicians, based for much of his career in the Fox Valley but playing regularly all over the state. He fronted a number of bands, from the Chris Aaron Band to American Standard to National Standard, and played often with other notable blues artists.”

(This video has an annoying smoke alarm beep at 2:15. Ignore it.)
Blues legend based in Austin, Texas, Guy Forsyth has a long resume of recording and performing around the world, with many awards to boot. He’s got a knack for storytelling also, as evidenced in his bio.

News of the Week: Iran’s IRGC is still dicking around, Volod Zelenskyy got bitchy during peace negotiations. An armed civilian took out a 16 year old school shooter in Oregon. The Russian plague is MIA, but there’s a brain fungus on the loose, and Elon launched a Tesla.

I may not have covered everything, but it’s hot, dry and windy here and I get easily distracted. Besides, there’s porch time to take care of whenever you get here. See you tomorrow.

Jactitational Hot Links



I Wouldn’t Come Back, Mask Man & The Agents (1966) Harmon Bethea, Tyrone Gray, Johnny Hood and Paul Williams had performed and recorded throughout the 50s and early 60s as The Cap-Tans (and later L’Captans). The R&B quartet had little success until Bethea put on a Lone Ranger mask and renamed the group.

OPEN.

Birdies.

A close call.

I saw a sign.

OORUTAICHI.

Corn weasels.

High contrast.

It’s Crisis Season.

Orange & avocado.

Tactics instruction.

Cool camera effects.

Mouse trap for sneks.

Two acres of bargains.

Rare photos [via Miss Cellania].

Crazytrain425 [via Neatorama].

Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance.

Old little cars [via Everlasting Blört].

Cyberdemonics [via Memo Of The Air].

Reparations & a lighter [via Thompson, blog].

[Top image: Retro wall art by Rzaidcraft, found here.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

The Once A Year Bunk Drive – WP forced me to either upgrade, cull the archives or close down. I chose to shut up and pay. Any amount helps offset the cost, and thanks in advance.