8

years in that casino. It was kind of cool that my ill-timed hit at a blackjack table made one drunk redneck lose a grand, though.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND 1997
Readers of GW understand our fondness for the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, so you can understand how a more ideal combination would be hard to come up with: The Thinking Fellers were to play the Shangri-La Shindig in Memphis this year —at Green's Lounge, no less! It was Steve Decon's turn to come to Memphis with me, and he'd just returned from his summer in Mexico, so I figured this trip would help ease the shock of his return to the U.S. The actual show was really interesting. While we were sitting around outside, some guy was babbling on and on about Princess Di, then he pulled out a printout from some internet news site that proclaimed her death. Then we rocked out. The advertised "Hippie in a Cage" turned out to be GW friend Dave Dunlap, who was penned up in the corner behind some chicken wire, taunting the audience. His shirtless, body-painted, joke-crackin' self whipped the audience into a frenzy. An angry frenzy. I truly love Dave's near total disregard for punchlines — I think he's avoided the pitfalls of "humor" that bog down many lesser comedians.

Then the Thinking Fellers played and were pretty good, although their sound isn't so hot in a little concrete box. They played that Butthole Surfers song they cover, the name of which I can't remember right now. That damn band is one of the few reasons I like music right now. They are capable of expressing themselves in a very subtle manner, something to be missed when every stupid band thinks they have to hit you over the head with a goddamned mission statement. Banjos and mandolins are terrifically underused in the rock idiom these days, and their presence in the Thinking Fellers' music isn't anything but vital. Really, when have you ever listened to a Thinking Fellers record and found an element of excess present? Doesn't happen.