Author: Don Durito

It’s that time of year again. For those of you who remember this classic scene from WKRP in Cincinnati.

This will function as a new cafe/lounge for a few days. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Drop by and say hello if you get a moment.

Cheers!

Howdy!

Here’s an outake from the Bitches Brew sessions:

Cheers!

Howdy! It’s another midweek. I am opening with Gil Scott-Heron’s classic Winter in America:

Hang in there, everyone.

If you saw the film Civil War earlier this year, you heard this song. I still have Suicide’s first album. Brilliantly disturbing stuff.

I don’t know how you all are doing or processing this clusterf*ck of an election. I’m doing my best. Try to hang in there.

Howdy. We have one last Wednesday before election day, and then the turmoil that follows. I never know if this video will be an unintended harbinger of some sort, but one member of my family was drumming professionally in southern California back in the late 1980s up until about the mid-1990s, and Vinnie Colaiuta was one of her favorite drummers to watch perform live. We went and saw his band at the time play a gig at Catalina’s just days before the LA riots of 1992. Get past the tense atmosphere outside the club in that moment, Vinnie was in top form and was just amazing to watch. Here’s a video from 2006 at Catalina’s.

The bar is open and the jukebox is limited by your imagination. Hang in there everyone. Cheers.

Hi photo lovers.

I am seeing if I can post just a bit more frequently. The featured photograph this time is of some of the fall colors I have finally begun to encounter this season as I make my usual rounds. It’s kind of surreal to take a photo of vivid orange leaves near the typical end of the growing season while the daytime temperature is in the low 90s (Fahrenheit) and breaking records that stood for decades. Actually, given the persistent summer-like heat and the lack of rain for nearly a couple months, I wasn’t expecting much to photograph this fall. Thankfully the season isn’t a total loss. Given our changing climate, there may well come a time when the fall foliage season is a total loss in my neck of the woods. That’s not something I look forward to. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this photo as much as I do.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for almost six years. My original LG v40 ThinQ is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. My initial replacement had a similar fate. I bought yet another version of the same phone about a year and a half ago for hardly anything, as I simply didn’t have the time to really research a good permanent replacement. We will see how long this one lasts. I need more time to research smart phones, especially at the high end. I prefer to get a device and keep it for four or five years. Most of my family seems to be gravitating toward iPhones, but I am determined to avoid going that route. The newer Samsung phones look really promising. Given the times we live in, my default is to delay any major purchases as long as possible. So, unless something really goes wrong with my current phone, I’ll stick to the status quo for as long as possible. Keep in mind that my last Samsung kept going for over four years (although the last year was a bit touch and go). Once I do have to make a new smart phone purchase, the camera feature is the one I consider most important. So any advice on such matters is always appreciated. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters commandeered it. Presumably she’ll return it before she moves out. So it goes.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Howdy. It has been one heck of a week, and I imagine things are only going to be more hectic and tense. I have some theme music from David Bowie’s Scary Monsters LP:

It’s No Game is the same song with the vocals changed and some facets of the instrumentation (including who plays the guitar solo – Fripp for Pt. 1 and Alomar for Pt. 2). Parts 1 and 2 serve as bookends for the album. The intensity that you feel in Part 1 is replaced with an air of resignation in Part 2. In some ways, that makes Part 2 the more disturbing version.

I know – we probably don’t need any more nightmares right now, but the truth is that it’s no game and we’d best not pretend otherwise.

Cheers.

Howdy! It’s been a long week. I know – it’s only Wednesday. So let’s have an extended Miles Davis jam from one of his last gigs of the 1970s:

The bar is open and the jukebox is limited only by your imagination. Cheers!

Howdy! I hope you all are well. This week’s post will feature a track by Miles Davis, as a tribute to my dad who would have turned 91 today. Thursday would have been my parents’ 60th anniversary. My dad introduced me to a lot of culture for which I am still grateful. That included music. He and I shared an appreciation for the work of Miles Davis. We both gravitated toward different eras of Miles’ work, but let’s face it – that signature trumpet style remained recognizable regardless of the era.

Flamenco Sketches is a good choice because my dad and I both enjoyed Kind of Blue, and also because this song invites contemplation. Take care.

Howdy! I hope you are all doing great. This week, I’ll get things started off with Nico appearing at CBGB back in 1979, singing an old song originally recorded during her brief stint with the Velvet Underground:

In some of my circles in college, she was considered one of the greats. I happen to concur. She may not have a lot of vocal range, but she wrings a lot of meaning and emotion from the songs she’d perform. Arguably, she was goth before goth.

Okay. The bar is open and the jukebox is limited by your imagination.

Cheers!