Training Days
I’ll be heading to New Orleans for JazzFest in a couple of weeks. It will be my first time traveling in the Dirty South and from all the accounts I’ve heard of the festival, my time there will be an around-the-clock, non-stop musical exploration. It will be an endurance test of epic proportions. A musical marathon. And like any marathon, one needs to train. So this weekend I laced up my sneakers extra tight and went off to see as much music as I could fit into 48 hours, with an end goal of still having enough energy for Sunday Easter activities and Twins baseball/Masters Championship television viewing. I’ve still got a lot of work to do. After this weekend I’d give myself a strong B- for my performance. Of all the good music taken in, the surprise hit was this amazing beat box gentleman named Kenny Muhammad who opened up for Squarepusher. Check out this video of him playing with the New York Philharmonic.

For Easter there was trip to the Minnesota Zoo. Some new arrivals were on display for persons of all ages to ogle and manhandle. My favorite part of the zoo is the decent into the nocturnal animal cave. The decent into the cave has that classic Zoo/Science Museum vibe. You know the one, where it gets all kinda dark and the ambient museum music (mixed with nature sounds) comes out of little speakers and a gentle narrator walks you through the mysteries of time, space and beast? Man, that never gets old. Pure nostalgia. Speaking of nostalgia, I miss the old Minnesota Zoo identity with the old moose logo. I wonder why they got rid of that.