Tag Archives: Rock 'n' Roll

Blackwater James: aid-worker style shout-out & album review

27 Apr

If you’ve been following Tales From the Hood for very long, you already know that I’m devoted fan of hard rock and heavy metal more or less in the mid- to late-1980s stylistic vein. The three (or is it four?) of you who have been following for a really long time may even remember when the tag line on this blog included “rock music”, along with “motorcycles” and “parenthood” in the list of things I might rant, rave and confess about.

Music is one of more colorful threads in the fabric of society. I really believe that. I also believe that most everything really worth saying has already been said in the lyrics of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s just a matter, now, of finding the right song. Which is why, even on a blog about humanitarian aid, I repeatedly look to rock ‘n’ roll music for inspiration (and frequently personal solace).

So, I’m sure you can understand why I was totally stoked a couple of weeks ago when for the first time ever, a real, live rock ‘n’ roll band started following me on twitter. And reading my blog.

Awesome!!!

Blackwater James is a Nashville-based hard rock band who described themselves to me on twitter as a mix of The Black Crowes and Guns ‘n’ Roses. Coming from most others such a claim would equal presumption, but their most recent full-length, self-titled release pretty much proves that they’re not just frontin’. Which, for me, is saying something, considering that I don’t care what soundscan has to say about The Beatles or Michael Jackson: AC/DC’s “Back in Black” is, hands down, the best album ever recorded. I’m digressing, but you get the point. Blackwater James is the real deal.

My personal favorite rock legend of recent memory is the one about The Offspring brutalizing inflatable punching balloons made to look like the members of N-Sync during performances. I’d love to see what these guys (and one chick) would do to an inflatable Justin Beiber…

And not to put too fine a point on it, but just so we’re clear, gentle readers, they’re not some pubescent existential angst indie band trying to pass off inability to tune a guitar or keep up with the click track as “creativity.” No, Blackwater James – the band and the album (available on iTunes) – is straight up badass electric guitars through large amplifiers, heavy drums, and wailing vocals about such erudite subject matter as being wasted, how awesome rock ‘n’ roll is, situations going from bad to worse, and women who look like trouble. The show will not be particularly child-friendly, so you might as well book the babysitter now and plan on riding your Harley.

I’ll be adding Blackwater James to my own “music to wage humanitarian aid by” iPod playlist as I head down to Haiti (again – dammit) in a couple of weeks. Especially “Scandalize” (there’s the ‘women who look like trouble’ theme), “Roses and Rain” (for my money this is the most GNR-esque track on the album), and my personal favorite so far, “Stand Up”, just because it’s put together so well.

You can check out the Blackwater James website: http://blackwaterjames.com/

“Like” them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BlackwaterJames

Find out about concert dates, etc. on their Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/blackwaterjames

Or follow the band on Twitter: http://twitter.com/blackwaterjames

Each of the members has an individual twitter feed as well: Christopher, Deanna (chicks who rock on the guitar = HAWT), Josh, and Todd. Check ‘em out.

Whether you’re about to deploy for a few months of misery in some place that ends in “stan”, girding your loins for another week of life-saving meetings in an HQ somewhere, or just sick of Shakira, stop by iTunes and pick up your very own copy of Blackwater James. You won’t be disappointed (and no, you won’t find a pirated version in the market in Jakarta. At least not yet…).

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“God gave rock ‘n’ roll to you…”

10 Oct

Mo-ha-med’s tweet of 24 September kind of cracked me up…

It’s a reminder for me that the most amusingly surreal moments in my life as an aid worker have involved music.

I’ve already blogged about the house band in Phnom Penh, wading through their rendition of Pink Floyd… to this day, whenever I hear the line, “…just a little pin prick…” I chuckle involuntarily.

There is also the vague recollection of a Chinese restaurant in northern Bangladesh where the staff insisted in playing a Michael Jackson mix cassette every time I ate there. Or of being dragged onstage at a Can Tho nightclub to sing the only English song in the house band’s repertoire: Love Potion #9.

Somehow music, more than many other things, has the power to inadvertently transcend cultural boundaries. It boldly goes where angels fear to tread. Or something like that…

* * *

So, several months ago I’m riding across the countryside in another country with a mixed group of colleagues mainly from around Eastern Europe and the Middle East. There’s a mix-tape of western 80’s/90’s vintage pop/rock. It’s hard to hear over the road noise, but I thought I recognized Aerosmith. I asked the Canadian woman next to me if she knew what it was, but before she could answer, the Iranian guy sitting ahead of us turned around and said, “That’s ‘Angel’ from the Permanent Vacation album.”

Turns out my Iranian colleague knew a lot about western hard rock and heavy metal. We spent the rest of the trip talking about bands that we liked in common: of course Aerosmith, the Scorpions, The Best Ever To Record On Vinyl… The best was when he asked, “Do you know the KISS?” (“… the KEEEEEESSSS”)

Hell yeah, I know ‘the KISS.’

I’ve met some interesting characters in my time, but an Iranian guy who knows all of the words to “Cold Gin Time Again” is definitely a first.

Even more amazing, though, was the story he told about what it was like exchanging contraband pirated tapes of western rock music as a high school student in Tehran. I mean, he could have spent time behind bars, as could have his parents.

And it seems somehow amusing and surreal and also – well – wild that my Persian friend once defied the Revolutionary Guard Corps, all for a dose of ‘the KISS.’ That is dedication beyond what even Paul Stanley imagined when he wrote the lyrics to “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll to You.”

* * *

I don’t know if any of you have heard of Salman Ahmed.

No? I hadn’t either until just a few days ago when I saw this little news clip about him.

And he’s pretty good on the guitar!

Decades of “win hearts and minds” strategies or attempts to co-opt foreign aid as extensions of foreign policy have not made the hoped-for progress towards the world being a better, more stable place. After all of the scholarly analysis and dissertation writing and research, we’re now finally to this: The US Government (among a few others, apparently) are backing Salman Ahmed. He’s going to wage “rock ‘n’ roll Jihad.”

* * *

One way or another, whether as one more option for achieving world peace, or simply as the source for more amusing surreal moments; somewhere between the mental image of a bunch of Arabs shouting “Mazel Tov!” (thanks @TravellerW) and the memory of ”Love Potion #9″, I’m beginning to think that maybe Paul Stanley was on to something:

“Put your faith in a loud guitar…” 

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Season ticket on a one-way ride…

9 Jul

I won’t lie to you. The past several months have been tough.

It’s been a combination of things. Heavy workload, heavy issues to deal with, some troubling uncertainty around different aspects of the in-house NGO world that I inhabit. I’ve been working through a number of things personally, none really negative, but requiring effort and focus and introspection.

Although it seems somewhere between self-centered and immoral to complain about it, Haiti took it’s own kind of toll as well on myself and my friends involved in the early weeks of that response. On top of that, my travel schedule has been quite heavy the past several weeks, and as fun and exciting as that life sounds to some and sometimes even is in fact, it can also be very draining.

All to say that I arrived a couple of days ago for a short week of life-saving meetings in – get this – Phuket, Thailand, feeling basically worn out and grumpy. I was not exactly thrilled to be getting on an airplane again so quickly, nor was I particularly thrilled to be headed to Phuket. For as much time as I’ve spent in Southeast Asia, I have thus far managed to steer clear of Phuket. Until now. And FYI, it’s “pooo-KET.”

For as basically optimistic as this work requires us to be, there are moments when it can incredibly difficult to lift one’s gaze beyond the tyranny of the immediately urgent and imminent, and to get bogged down in all that’s going wrong at the moment, whether in our personal lives, in a country that we support, or with our finance department.

* * *

My first evening here, deep in the throes of jet-lag (I’ve been in jet-lag solid for the past four weeks) I had dinner with a close aid-worker friend. He was as tired and cranky as I. Our conversation: reflecting on the fact that none of the older (than us) aid workers we know have actually retired and gone on to a “normal” life. They all a) died young; b) went crazy or are very clearly headed in that direction; c) are about to die of old age, but still trying to pull off hardship post deployments; or d)  b + c.

We moved on from there to something we’d both read about the leading causes of death among aid workers. Nope, it’s not getting shot by militants or inadvertently stepping on landmines. It’s not encephalic malaria or meningitis or hepatitis C. The top two leading causes of death among aid workers, in order, are motor vehicle accidents and drowning. And according to the study, drowning in particular happens in the context of aid workers getting drunk and then falling into the pool or ocean. If I can ever find the article online I’ll link it.

That’s certainly one way to put an early damper on after-workshop evenings at Thai beach bars.

* * *

But then last night, after the first day of the life-saving meetings, the same guy, plus one more old friend aid-worker and I threw caution to the wind. We walked a few blocks down the motor-vehicle infested street for dinner and a few Singhas at a little bamboo bar within sight of the ocean (they didn’t have Beer Lao – I asked…).

After eating we tried another bamboo bar or two, and then eventually ended up in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying. The lobby band – for that evening only, a lone young woman, a microphone and a computer (it was the guitarist’s night off) – was just getting going.

* * *

The lobby singer – her name turned out to be “Geng” – sang an awesome set of classic rock just for the three of us that evening. (And when I say “awesome”, I mean we had a great time, not that she ever sounded anything like the originals.) But the real highlight was a cover of the best band to ever record on vinyl, her rendition of the consummate aid worker anthem.

It was so fabulous I had to put it on YouTube: Check it out (you can even hear a few aid workers, a bit off-key, singing along on the chorus).

I’ve said and written many times that AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” is the consummate aid work anthem. And it totally is. But I have to say that Geng’s cute-dimple ponytail-swinging uber-cheerful rendition is the best, and as I think about it, the most apt for aid work, that I’ve ever seen.

As she air-guitared her way through the bridge I began to feel… better. The angst of recent weeks and months began to wane. Aid work, at least for me, is a one-way ride. And that is definitely something to be cheerful about.

Sure, times might be tough. Certain aspects of the future may be hard to see. I feel worn down. Maybe my friends and I will end up like our older(er) friends – crazy or dead. Maybe we’ll end up in some kind of hell. Maybe that hell will be a life of cubicles or a really socially toxic team house. Maybe it will be some kind of metaphysical retribution for bad past bad choices, promises made but not kept, decisions made the wrong ways and realized too late.

Whatever. So long as there’s beer, we’re near water… and Geng is in the house band.

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