(no subject)

Last night my friend Bazooka Joe took us to a strange little basement American Legion Hall in Harlem where very natty old black men in suits wail on the saxophone and Hammond organ. I think Joe described it best when he said it was "some old time 50s stone cold boogaloo shit." It was all wood paneling and christmas lights and stiff jack-and-cokes, crowded and warm and the music never stopped, new guys would jump in all the time. Like being in New Orleans. Also there were straight-up Bryan Ferry-style ambiguously gendered dandies in dove-gray suits and ascots with cigarette cases sitting right up front.

Joe is funny because 90% of the time he responds in monosyllables, but if it has to do with music he busts out with stuff like "This Burmese Spice Girls remix sounds like the intro to that hot 1972 Henny Preston b-side, the one with the python on the cover, you know?" Also he wears sunglasses all the time, even indoors at night, and says things like "In Vegas all Cokes are bottomless, man" because that's where he's from.