“You Can’t Win” is the 1926 autobiography of a petty criminal whose career spanned from reconstruction to the depression. Fun and colorful writing, great stories, lots of lowlife flavor.

It’s moralistic and dire in a Victorian way, true to the 19th century sources. But it also glories in the noir crime style that was just taking off around the 1920s.

Here’s an excerpt describing rock bottom bars around the turn of the 19th century.

The show at Where/MMM on Friday was pretty much empty, I have to admit. I really owned the responsibility, because I didn’t inject energy into the whole situation by getting a flier made, nudging the bands to promote their sets, and doing promotion for my own set.

But it turned out to be a fun time anyhow.

Homesick Elephant‘s style is built on creative things to do with counterpoint and structure, and the space was perfect for getting to listen closely because it’s a comfortable room where you can concentrate. Also, they’re getting married in a month and you can hear romantic chemistry in the way their lines intertwine. Here are photos:

And then Siggy came up with a lot of anarchic energy and created a happy group of listeners. There was even moshing. Well, the moshing was me and the guitarist’s girlfriend.

Tomorrow I’ll be playing in the hospital for sick children. Like, at their bedsides.

And then Friday at happy hour I’ll be at Cinema Bar in Culver City, playing for the drinkers after work. Same thing pretty much.

Musicians gotta play. The point of playing is the music, and the way to get it good is to do it a lot.

I’m playing tonight in Silverlake at the Where/ Meet Mix Mogul coworking space in Sunset Junction, at the intersection of Griffith Park and Sunset, next door to the Mornings/Nights coffee place.

1519 Griffith Park Boulevard 90026

Also on the bill will be Homesick Elephant:

And Siggy:

Homesick Elephant is a couple who do countryish harmony singing. Very upstanding. But not without knowledge of evil. They’re smart.

Siggy is a four piece band with a mopey raw rock sound. What I love about them is that they are very much a garage act, but they’re not kids. I’d guess the youngest person in the band is 40. It’s very bad ass to get up there and pull it off.

Doors open around 9 and close around 1.

Gurdonark posted an ambient patriotic song for July 4th, with singing by SackJo22 and a guitar solo by me.

His mix is under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license. My own parts are Creative Commons Zero, aka public domain. Here are stems of my parts:
lead 1 (MP3),
lead 2 (MP3),
lead 1 (AIFF),
lead 2 (MP3).

Gurdonark’s liner notes:

This is a re-creation of a public domain 19th Century patriotic song.

Sometimes people speak of the commercialization of Christmas—the sense that its spiritual values get lost in a commercial blur.

I speak instead of the jingo-ization of the Fourth of July—the need to keep and universalize what really matters in the American independence day. I think that this holiday gets lost in sloganeering and military marches (and I say this despite being a J.P. Sousa fan).

I respect deeply those who sacrifice for our country. I learned last night that an old friend just retired from the Marines after receiving major shrapnel wounds in Iraq. My heart is with he and his wife and son, and I appreciate his courage.

We don’t forget those who sacrifice. The Fourth of July is not a celebration of a battle or a paean to American supposed “superiority”. It is a time to celebrate a declaration by people who wrote that people have inalienable rights which should be respected. We celebrate the values worthy of these immense sacrifices.

The Fourth of July is a holiday to celebrate what is wonderful about the American experiment. I believe these core values should be freedom, a respect for the rights and dignity of others, a just and righteous rule of law, and the ability to spread peace, liberty, and universal friendship.

John Sullivan Dwight lived from 1813 to 1893. Although he trained and served for a time as a Unitarian minister, he joined the transcendentalist movement and discovered his true vocation as a music teacher and writer.

“Dwight’s Journal of Music” became the most influential music publication of his era. Mr. Dwight receives credit for first introducing an appreciation for Beethoven’s work in this country. He served on the teaching faculty for the school at Brook Farm, the high-minded but ultimately failed utopian community

He wrote the lyrics to “God Bless Our Land”, which is about the country I wish to see born and reborn:

“God bless our land, may Heaven’s protecting hand, still guard our shore;

may peace her power extend, foe be transformed to friend, and all our rights depend, on war no more.

May just and righteous laws uphold the public cause and bless our name; Home of the brave and free, stronghold of liberty, we pray that still on thee, may rest no stain

And not this land alone, but be thy mercies known, from shore to shore, Lord make the nations see that men should brothers be, and form one family, the wide world o’er”.

My hope is that the Fourth of July becomes a celebration less of the might of nations, and more of the possibility for freedom and friendship for which men and women who sacrifice their energy and sometimes their lives.

I’d like to tell you about Helena Hill Weed. She graduated from Vassar College and the Montana School of Mines. She was a geologist by trade. She was “from the right family”: the daughter of a congressman and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Yet as a woman she could not vote.

She had an Independence Day story. On July 4, 1917, she picketed in Washington, D.C. for women’s suffrage, carrying a sign that said “”Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”.

For her patriotism, she was arrested and served three days in jail. The source of her sign, of course, was the American Declaration of Independence. She and others like her continued their peaceful protests, and helped get the vote for women in her lifetime.

I’d like to tell you about Lou Gehrig, a great baseball player who contracted the fatal disease ALS, which is sometimes colloquially called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”.

on July 4, 1939, he gave his farewell speech in front of his fans marked with courage and humility. But he was not just a go-along guy, saying what pleased the crowds. He also said “”There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all.”

Finally, I’d like to tell you about July 4, 1997. This is when the Mars Pathfinder probe landed on Mars, beaming back pictures from an alien world far from Earth.

We can achieve equality and progress. These are our Independence Day ideals.

I believe in Independence Day as a day to celebrate the universal hope for freedom, friendship and equality, and as a day for the re-commit of efforts to help fulfill that hope for all.

The tune here is “The Italian Hymn” by Felice Giardini. Felice Giardini was born in Turin in 1716 and died in Moscow in 1796. He was a child prodigy as a musician and a prolific and capable composer. Music did not earn him the living he hoped, despite his great skills and imagination. Yet his songs live on, and serve as the basis for this new version of JS Dwight’s hymn for peace.

I love the expressions on this couple’s faces.

Dick and Jane playing at the lounge at REDCAT. Normally Jane curses like a sailor while she’s singing, but she kept it clean because of the kids there.

Mini-Sausage Grinder playing jug band songs, early blues, a little bluegrass. These guys are good musicians without being showoffs, and for once I could hear all the fine details in their lines.

Notice these two photos are in totally different places in the bar. That was to enable one band to set up while the other was still playing, so that each band could start their first song right as the last song by the previous band stopped, like in a playlist.

The night of music at the downstairs lounge at Disney last night was an improbable success.

Factors against it — weird architecture; no walk-in traffic; venue that people aren’t used to going to; time slot right after work in a part of the city that few people work in.

So how come it worked ok anyway?

• The people were a good mix who gelled socially. If it was a party folks would have been gabbing away.
• The musicians (Dick & Jane, mini-Sausage Grinder, Triple Chicken Foot) were all excellent. As much as it’s a pleasure to be so close to players when they’re good, it’s painful when they’re bad and you can’t escape.
• The acoustics were round, warm and clear. I could hear every detail of the sound, and the sound was beautiful. It was a great listening experience.
• I tried to get musicians to start and end sets flush next to each other, with no break in between to fuss with the setup, like songs in a playlist. To do that I had two different playing areas, aka “stages”, so that one band would set up in one while the other was playing. In a couple spots this way of doing things was really magical, for example when Triple Chicken Foot’s first song started and the sound just opened up. (I don’t think this idea specifically made the good vibe, I think it helped establish a feeling of energy).
• The quality of the artwork for the flier (by Angelina Elise) created a sense that this was a worthy event.

• Because the space isn’t a bar and because it wasn’t late, there were kids around. They did a lot to make the atmosphere feel open and direct in way that a rock club never is.
• The main room is on the small side, so it doesn’t take a lot of people to make it feel full.

Thanks to Aaron Drake at REDCAT for making it all happen.

In the future I’m going to try to incorporate kid musicians into the show, doing one song at a time. I think that will create a friendly and homey feeling towards all the musicians and the event as a whole. Not sure how I’ll find em, though. If you’re an LA parent with a kid who plays guitar, give me a ping.