THE BLUES

The St. Louis Blues Festival takes place tonight and tomorrow. I hope to go by and get some images of the musicians. This is from a few years ago, someone playing a blues harp, a harmonica put to special use. I’m shooting the first show of the St. Louis Fringe Festival tonight.           

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

Something easier to read from the newly repainted section of the flood wall. The stylized STL on the top of the box is part of the logo for the baseball team, the Cardinals. The bowl and spoon are full of little cardinal heads, the winged blue note of the hockey team, little arches and, um, bullets. That's a very serious issue around here. The gun violence in parts of the area is appalling.

Gods of the air willing, I'll see the Atlantic Ocean by this afternoon.         

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - ENEMY TERRITORY

This is a pretty big, intense city. We are staying in the North End, the traditional Italian quarter. The streets are as irregular as the oldest parts of London, laid out on old cow paths. Pretty quiet. It's too irregular for noise.

We have to be a bit circumspect. The finals of the North American hockey championship between the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins is tied at two games each. It takes four victories to win. The fifth game is tomorrow night here in Boston. No desire to meet these people in the truck.

                

CITY DAILY PHOTO JUNE THEME DAY - PINK

Your city may have a monumental statue of a politician or general, the figure of Liberty or a battling bull and bear. We have Erwin Wurm's Big Suit in Citygarden. I find it ambiguous, subject to many interpretations. Many years ago, though, I had a pink seersucker suit. No idea what got into me.

It's going to be crazed around here this weekend. The baseball Cardinals' arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, are in town. That always draws thousands of out of town fans. The third game of the Stanley Cup finals is Saturday night, with our Blues and the Boston Bruins tied at one game each. Is it coincidental about Cubs and Bruins at the same time or is there deeper mystical significance? I think the authorities should just turn Market Street into a river of beer and the rest of us should stay far away.             

A Larger Instrument

A National Park ranger plays the trombone on the Arch grounds. The whole area is a national park, technically the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It's about the 1803 purchase of a huge tract of land west of the Mississippi from France (including St. Louis)  by President Thomas Jefferson. It nearly doubled the size of the U.S. Napoleon needed money for his pastimes.

A trombone is rather less subtle than an blues harmonica but has more power. The ranger did a pretty good job.        

The Blues

No, nothing to do with the hockey team, which has been quite successful in the first round of the playoffs.

There was a blues band playing in the new extension of the Arch grounds. This man was easily the most visually interesting. He is playing a harmonica, a blues harp in musical terms. The sounds he could make were quite amazing.         

Bluesweek

More like Bluesweekend. This event took place on Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday of our Memorial Day long weekend. We've had blues festivals in different formats for years. This version is, in part, to promote the National Blues Hall of Fame, under development here.

At lot of local events that are behind a barrier (because of alcohol sales) have a "no professional cameras" policy, enacted just to annoy me, I'm sure. Turned out not to be a problem yesterday but I took my little Olympus E-M5 just in case. These pictures were all taken with it. Stunning quality in a little package. Right, Grace?        

Blues For 2011

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More entertainment from First Night, the very hot but oddly named Blues Inquisition (All right! Let's give it up for Torquemada on lead guitar!). They played contemporary work, Bo Diddly and a slow country-blues version of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction that kept everyone guessing until the lyrics began. The performance was given in the sanctuary of the grand Third Baptist Church, a place I have never had the opportunity to visit. The show gave new insights on the nature of the sacred and profane.

We got day-glo office buildings today on Downtown St. Louis 365.

The Blues

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From the St. Louis Festival of Nations. American blues certainly counts as part of the spectrum of international musical art. This picture is one of the early shots in my hands project. Those arched fingers cover a harmonica, a blues harp. So simple an instrument, yet so capable of the sound of human melancholy.

TOMORROW: K KK KK KK Kat... (guest photo). Time to head way, way east. No Arch picture this week.