Neck playing and beatbox at the Bullock

Music Under the Stars was a bit of a misnomer this week, as the show started around 5:30PM at the Bob Bullock Museum. As usual, the hat lady was around, sticking stickers on everybody she could reach. Apparently the museum requires that people have stickers to be allowed in the museum, despite the fact that it is free during these events. So, everyone gets a useless sticker. At least the hat lady is cheerful about it, very cheerful. She usually dances up a storm.

There were a couple of acts on Friday night. John Pointer was the first, and quite original. He played a lot of neck guitar, accompanying himself by beat-boxing and stomping on the stage. He was very entertaining, and a crowd of kids gathered in front of the stage to wiggle and dance.

At the end of his act he spent a few minutes teaching kids and audience members how to beat-box. Apparently the trick is "Mississippi." You start out by saying Mississippi Mississippi. Then you progress to changing the ss's to tt's: Mittittippi Mittittippi. Then the second "M" becomes a "K": Mittittippi Kittittippi. Then you swallow the K: very difficult to put into print! And so on... You can understand the concept quite easily, but it doesn't prevent you from being tongue-tied. The rest is just making noises like drums, etc. And stomping. Like I said, original.

I must be getting spoiled. The next group up, Charanga Cakewalk, was also very good. There are just a ton of really excellent musicians down here. Cakewalk, for short, was a Latin band. It had an accordion, and a zizzer (that round thing with ridges that they zizz a stick up and down on for rhythym). The music was dance-able, leading us back to jealousy of people that actually can dance.