I did an interesting gig yesterday: I played at Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino resort (near Casa Grande, AZ) backing up The Dixie Cups.

What? You’ve never heard of the Dixie Cups? I hadn’t either. But if you live in the Western Hemisphere (or have seen Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride”), there is a 99.9% chance that you have heard their biggest hit: “We’re going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married…” Yep, “Chapel of Love” was theirs, written by Phil Spector, recorded in 1964. Another factoid that I didn’t know until yesterday was that they wrote and recorded the song “Iko Iko”, which I first heard on the soundtrack of that 80’s film classic Rainman. That song has been covered by - well, everyone, even Cyndi Lauper! But they did it first.

The Dixie Cups are from New Orleans, and they did some of the classic N.O. tunes, including “Bourbon St. Parade”, “When The Saints”,”New Orleans Ladies”, and others. But there were some sad reminders of what Katrina did last summer: The bass player and musical director recounted that his house was in 10 feet of water for three weeks, and he lost all of his musical equipment and instruments. Also, some of their original charts and classic arrangements were lost in the disaster. At one point in the rehearsal, one of the Cups turned around and sang the missing horn line, and I had to pick it up and play it from memory. Music students, keep paying attention in ear training! It will come in handy.

If you are reading this, and have been here before, then the new look will be obvious. I will be tweaking it in the coming days, and am still learning my way around the various WordPress configuration files. Bear with me as I customize the site further, and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think! I will be focusing more on green solutions, environmental issues, and Tucson, and I wanted to design the site to reflect this future direction.

Suggestions Welcome!

Forgive my blogging delinquency - I am back in Tucson from extended travels through the Midwest. Trying to get caught up on the latest news, but will return to green-themed blogging in short order here. In the meantime, I just read about the new laws put into place in the Netherlands and Portugal designed to reward consumers who buy hybrid vehicles and make it more difficult to purchase gas guzzlers. Check it out.

Ann Midgette wrote about the release of the Mode collection of Berio’s Sequenzas, along with the recent Naxos set, in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times.