Nate Wiley, R.I.P.

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.


Nate Wiley, saxophonist and bandleader of the incomprable Nate Wiley & The Crowd Pleasers, died last week. He was 83.

I had only seen Nate perform once, this past April when my friend Matt took me down to Bob & Barbara's for a quintessential Philadelphia experience--to drink some PBR and Jim Beam and listen to this modest little combo lay down the funk (It's the MPLS equivalent of taking an out-of-towner to Nye's to watch Lou Snider play the piano). We sat at the bar, surrounded by a pirate's booty's worth of Pabst paraphenalia, and Nate Wiley, this classy man in a smart suit, started playing his funky horn accompanied by an electric organ. I remember thinking, "This is so incredibly badass."

And yes, I can admit that it was one of those moments that ultimately snookered me into moving to this town, because I thought that if there are places like Bob & Barbara's that exist in Philadelphia, with men like Nate Wiley that exist within them, then perhaps Philadelphia is a town that I should take a chance on. Perhaps Philadelphia is the place for me.

So, thanks, Nate. I had a wonderful time, and I'm really glad I got to witness a Philly institution when I had the chance.

Tryptophan Hangover

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I presume that I wasn't the only one last night who laboriously lumbered, staggering to the couch for the annual postprandial veg-out session. Undid my belt and watched the universe unfurl before my very eyes.

Not that I didn't have visions of little turkey sandwiches on white bread (with mayo!) leaping over fences to aid my sleep -- or maybe that was just a hallucination. I was moaning in bed like a beached whale in a cholera ward.

You know it's bad when food starts giving you the spins. God bless America.

Here We Go

Okay. So, I'll readily admit that I was in a prolonged funk after watching my beloved Twins make an early exit from the playoffs this year, and then I got off track, getting preoccupied with things like, uh, getting acclimated to my new adopted home. (That, and doing my small part to administer the long awaited and glorious "thumpin'" to the Republican Party. Woo hoo!)

Anyway, it's high time to get back on the blogging mechanical bull and start recording my observations of Philadelphia and the wider world. Expect more to come very soon.