G-Money

Since announcing last week that I’m shaving my head to raise money for child cancer research with a goal of $500 total, I’ve received $145 in pledges. 29 percent of the way to my goal in just four days. That’s awesome.

Let’s see if we can’t keep this going! Anything helps. $5, $1, 50 cents, whatever you can spare helps. Donate here if you feel so inclined.

Click here to read more about what I’m doing.

And a huge, huge thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

St. Baldrick’s

On July 12, I’m going bald.

I’m participating in the Sanford St. Baldrick’s event which will be held all day at Local Joe’s Tap and Grill.

For those of you who don’t know what St. Baldrick’s is, check out the link I provided. In a nutshell, you sign up to get your head shaved as a show of solidarity with kids suffering from cancer. In the process, you raise pledge money, which is turned over to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. The foundation provides money for child cancer research, and is a good thing all around.

My goal this year is to raise $500, and I’m hitting up all my blog buddies and anyone else who might be reading this thing. Can you pledge $5? $1? 50 cents? Please do. The money will all go to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation and forward the cause of ending cancer among children (and everyone else).

I don’t talk about it a lot, but this issue is pretty important to me, as I lost my mother to cancer in 1994. She wasn’t a child, but the sentiment is good enough for me.

I’d also encourage anyone who doesn’t mind losing their hair to sign up as a shavee. Tony Chilton, one of the event’s organizers, said his goal is to have 100 shavees. So far, there are 33, including at least four women with guts enough to drop their hair for a great, great cause.

If you don’t want to shave your head, it’s not a problem, but I’d encourage anyone who cares about this sort of event to come and enjoy some food and drinks and the sight of me losing my mop (again the event is Saturday, July 12 from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.). And if you’re so inclined, donate a few clams to the cause. You can do so by clicking here.

You can find more information about the event (and sign up to be involved!) here.

I’m sorry

I’ve been a terrible blogger. 20 days without an entry, meaning I never wrote anything about my recent Dr. Powerful trip to Philadelphia, like I promised I would.

My bad.

Anyway, today I made my first foray into broadcasting, appearing with my editor Billy Liggett and colleague Jon Owens on Billy’s new radio show The Rant, which you can now listen to weekly at 8 a.m. Wednesday on 90.5 F.M. WDCC in Sanford.

I’m listening to a podcast of it now, and while I’m not very pleased with my performance (the recorded sound of my own voice makes me cringe), I’m going to do it again as often as possible and think I’m capable of getting a lot better at it. It was a great time.

So, my bad on the lax blogging. Check back tomorrow for an entry about something real important that I’m going to be involved with next month.

More tour diary-ing

My band, Dr. Powerful, plays the City of Brotherly Love (that’s Philadelphia, in case you somehow never heard that term) tomorrow night and Durham on Saturday. Another mini-tour!

Our Philly show should be exciting, it’s at a venue called the North Star, which I’ve heard described as “the Cat’s Cradle of Philadelphia.” A Friday night show in a venue like that with three local bands means we’ll probably have a chance to play for lots of folks. Plus, I’ve never been to Philadelphia, so it’s exciting whether we’re playing or not.

Saturday we’re playing a garden party at our drummer’s sister-in-law’s house. Durham folks have always been awesome to us. Since there aren’t many options for us in Sanford, shows in the Triangle are about as close as we can get to hometown performances.

After promising a tour diary the last time around and discovering how hard it is to blog from the road, I’ll just say that I’ll tell the story when I get. If I have time, though, I’ll try to update this site (for anyone who cares) while I’m away.

Sunday I’m going to start looking at buying a new car. Not looking forward to getting badgered.

You my boy, Blue

I’m a little late in announcing this, but as you can imagine, it’s been a little stressful: My Ford Ranger of 8 years died a grisly death Sunday afternoon on the side of U.S. 1 in Raleigh. Not grisly in the sense of a wreck or anything like that, but grisly in the sense that the poor girl’s insides just boiled away, leaving her incapable of running any further.

I got the then brand-new pickup in May of 2000, during my second year of college. Despite some recent worry about gas inefficiency in these crazy times, I think the truck served me well. I drove it twice all the way to Canada and back (with stops in Indianapolis both times), as well as trips to Richmond, Washington, D.C., and even New Jersey. And there were countless jaunts to Wilmington, Greenville, and other closer locations. 130,000 miles in all. The truck holds a lot of memories for me.

So while part of me is excited to be getting something new that will get me around for less money, it’s always hard to part with something that you’ve owned for that long. Thanks for the memories!

Bo Diddley is Dead

News just broke that Bo Diddley, one of the more influential American purveyors of blues and rock and roll, died today at 79.

A lot of people remember Diddley as the guy who played second fiddle to Bo Jackson in those “Bo Knows” Nike ads of the early 1990s. Those were funny and all, and to be honest my age means that those ads were the first I myself had ever heard of Bo, but his musical legacy is a lot more than a few silly shoe commercials.

Diddley was known in some circles as “the Originator,” which is a pretty strong testament to the unique sounds he was able to bring out of a guitar. A lot of it might seem kind of cliched today, but I, for one, have a hard time imagining what hearing “Roadrunner” for the first time in 1962 would have felt like. Much like a band like Black Sabbath, or Led Zeppelin, or even someone like Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley’s art is best understood (and appreciated) if you place it in the context of what else was happening around it.

But he wasn’t just a timepiece. A paragraph from Diddley’s wikipedia entry also shows how widespread and lasting his influence has been:

The Bo Diddley beat has been used by many other artists, notably Elvis Presley (“His Latest Flame”); Bruce Springsteen (“She’s The One”); U2 (“Desire”); The Smiths (“How Soon Is Now?”); Roxette (“Harleys And Indians (Riders In The Sky)”). Dee Clark – A former member of the Hambone Kids (see above) (“Hey Little Girl”); Johnny Otis (“Willie and the Hand Jive”); George Michael (“Faith”); The Strangeloves (“I Want Candy”); Guns N’ Roses (“Mr. Brownstone”); David Bowie (“Panic in Detroit”); The Pretenders (“Cuban Slide”); The Police (“Deathwish”); Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders (“The Game of Love”); The Supremes (“When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes”); Jefferson Airplane (“She Has Funny Cars”); The White Stripes (“Screwdriver”); The Byrds (“Don’t Doubt Yourself, Babe”); Tiny Letters (“Song For Jerome Green”) and The Stooges (“1969″). The early The Rolling Stones sound was strongly associated with their versions of “Not Fade Away” and “I Need You Baby (Mona)”.

Other songs that Bo wrote which others made popular include “Before You Accuse Me,” “Who Do You Love?,” and “I’m a Man.”

It’s also pretty cool to note that the first time The Clash toured the U.S., Diddley was their opening act. Time-stamped, dated music my foot.

Anyway, I probably can’t say much more that won’t be said better elsewhere, but I’ll leave you with a few clips of Bo performing, mostly in a time when rock and roll was still something that encouraged spontaneity and not something that was planned out at every turn.