OXY MORONS

Zohydro and The Oxy Morons

Leave it up to the American pharmaceutical industry. 
After the big song and dance about getting rid of Oxycontin, the FDA has just approved Zohydro, a new "extended release"  Hydrocodone pill.
Courtesy of a company called Zogenix, this one does away with that pesky buzz killing Acetaminophen and gives you the full-on, toe curling rush of up to five 10 mg Vicodins slamming into your central nervous system all at once, if used incorrectly.

Weeee Doggies!!!!!!!!
Zo High Dro indeed..

This little Ticket To Miseryville comes in  Light, Middle and Heavy weight strengths.

The jolt from one of the Heavyweights,  used "incorrectly" correctly will be about that of your standard Heroin fix, maybe even a tad stronger.
Having battled perscription narcotics for much of my adult life, I can tell you that time release drugs like this are every addicts' wet dream, these fiendishly strong little pills bankrupt lives,perpetuate addiction and kill more of us than all the bad Heroin in the world. It is good news for those of you still in active addiction. If you've going broke from  being forced these days to pay outrageous prices now that they've clamped down on the Oxys, stock up on some ZoHy 50mgs before the ER's start filling up with Hyrdo casualties, and double your money if you can resist them..

If you're not an active drug addict, you need to know how serious this drug is, and add it to the list of pills for you to worry about your twenty something kids and grand-kids getting a hold of.
Am I being over dramatic?
Note that this drug was approved despite stern warnings from several advisory panels to not do so, why it passed is anybody's guess.
If anyone tries to give you or a loved one this drug, be aware of how extremely addicting and dangerous it is, get a second opinion, and beware of  the those Oxy Morons.

That's what the Rev Sez.

THE REV'S APRIL DATES SO FAR........

REV. BILLY C. WIRTZ 

APRIL DATES:

(More to follow, please check back for further details).

Friday, April 4

8-10 P.M.

Ellas Americana Cafe

Tampa, Fl.

Sunday, April 6

8-11 P.M.

BB King's

West Palm Beach, Fl.

Thursday, April 10

Southland Ballroom

Raleigh, N.C.

Details TBA

Friday, April 11

8 -11 PM

Acoustic Stage 

Hickory, N.C.

Saturday, April 12

9-12 PM

Lulus

Richmond, Va.

Sunday, April 13

Showtime TBA

Clementine's

Harrisonburg, Va

Saturday, April 19

Showtime 6 PM

The Turning Point

Piermont, N.Y.

Sunday, April 20

6 PM

House Concert (sold out)

Bethlehem, Pa.

Sunday, April 27th

8-11 PM

BB King's

West Palm Beach, Fl.

REV. BILLY'S UPDATED SCHEDULE

REV. BILLY C. WIRTZ 
MARCH 2014 SCHEDULE

SUNDAY, MARCH 2
8-11 P.M.
BB. KING'S 
WEST PALM BEACH, FL.

FRIDAY MARCH 7 AND SATURDAY, MARCH 8
6 -10 PM
PARADISE BAR AND GRILLE
 PENSACOLA, FL.

SUNDAY, MARCH 16
1-3 PM
ELLA'S AMERICANA CAFE
TAMPA, FL.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22
THE YARD
TAMPA, FL.
DETAILS TBA

SUNDAY, MARCH 23
8-11 PM
BB KING'S
WEST PALM BEACH, FL,

SUNDAY, MARCH 30
1-3 PM
ELLAS AMERICANA CAFE
TAMPA, FL.

Almost Famous Amos

Slipped Discs
Almost Famous Amos

“Jack That Cat Was Clean”
- Dr. Horse from his song of the same title.

January, 1948
Wynonie was assaulting someone outside a gig in Florida; Big Jay McNeely, Pied Piper of the Screamin’ Tenor, was being arrested for “inciting Mexicans” at a drive-in in L.A., and meanwhile:
The Crown Jewel of the R&B Kingdom, The House That Jordan built at 125th &Lenox in Harlem, The Apollo Theatre, was busier than a brothel with bunk beds, adding an extra Saturday matinee to accommodate the Bobbysoxers flocking to see Amos Milburn, a.k.a. “The Chicken Shack Boogie Man,” a twenty-three year-old piano player with a thundering left hand, from South of the Slot*, in Houston, Texas.
Although Wynonie’s antics may have garnered him more coverage in Jet andSepia magazines, Billboard voted Amos Milburn R&B Artist of the Year in 19’48 and ’49.
Google “Amos Milburn+images” -  Zero in on those buffed and polished nails, the gleaming process, and the absolutely, sharp-as-Stagger-Lee’s-straight-razor beige suit and perfectly knotted tie.
Clean?
The nails alone might cause permanent retinal damage.
Amos Milburn had just finished a four-year hitch in the Pacific, coming home with thirteen Battle Stars for Meritorious Service.
He came back to a country ready to party, and party hard.
The war was over, but bars and clubs still overflowed nightly with returning vets and working folks. The working folks, most of them from the South, lured by war-time industries to far away places like California, had left home by the thousands, and now had more money in their pockets, thanks to overtime hours, combat pay, and survivors’ benefits, than they’d ever had before or would have since.
“In The Mood”?
Sure, as long as that mood included continuous drinking, screwing, and an occasional chair-busting brawl or two. These twenty-somethings, born in the Depression, coming of age during a war, and shaving for the first time on a beach in Guadalcanal, were cutting loose for the first time in their short and harsh lives, and required music that reflected their mood.

“You Can Even Get the Last Part That Jumped Over the Fence”
Amos Milburn was born on April Fool’s Day in 1927. His early years have a familiar ring.
Artist is born into poor family, family gets a parlor piano or pump organ, child shows a fascination with the instrument at an early age, and picks out a tune that surprises everyone (In Millburn’s case, it was “Jingle Bells” at age five)…young man hears Boogie Woogie (Meade Lux Lewis) and R&B (Louis Jordan) from local juke joints and learns to play boogie at home….figures out early on that playing music beats the shit out of picking cotton, working in a mill, or wildcatting oil…Kid runs off with a road band much to the horror of God-fearing mother worried about “Devil‘s Music“…son comes home the next Christmas wearing alligator shoes and driving a Packard, God-fearing mom reconsiders her moral absolutes.
Well, the last part was a little artistic license but you’re still reading, so anyway:
Amos went into the studio in November of 1947 and recorded a collection of twelve-bar homage’s to hedonism that reverberate off the walls of blues bars sixty-five years later.
Some of his favorite subjects:
Rough Sex: “After Midnight” (No, not the one by Clapton)
Kinky Sex: “Pool Playin’ Blues”
Risky Sex: “It’s A Married Woman”
Automotive Sex: “Drivin’ Blues
The Latest Dance Craze: “Jitterbug Fashion Parade”
Juke Joints: “Down The Road Apiece”
(Possibly) Lifestyle-Friendly Juke Joints Specializing in Home Cookin’: “Chicken Shack Boogie”
Drinking: “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer”
Lots Of Drinking: “Let Have A Party”
Way Too Much Drinking: “Bad, Bad Whisky”
Intervention Level Drinking: “Vicious, Vicious Vodka”
White Chip Time: “Milk And Water”
Plus a couple of great Christmas songs: “Let’s Make Christmas Merry, Baby” and “Christmas Time Come But Once a Year.”

“Let Me Go Home Whisky”
Fortunately, Amos’ tunes are still available at most good shops and online sites. If you really want to go berserk, there’s an out-of-print box set on Mosaic (THE most exclusive reissue label in the world) for just under five big ones, otherwise, find a “Best Of” with some of the above tunes on it.
Sartorial splendor aside, Amos played one hell of a piano, and hugely influenced such legendary elephant’s toothbrushers as Fats Domino, Jerry lee Lewis, and Little Richard.
In modern times, he dominates the style of almost every living blues piano player. Marcia Ball, Gene Taylor, Mitch Woods, Your Truly, Victor Wainwright, Eden Brent, Honey Piazza, the legendary Jane Vasey, David Maxwell, everyone, everyone, everyone, owes and acknowledges a debt to the Chicken Shack Man.
Don’t take my word for it, request one of his tunes, and notice the immediate, gleeful response you get. Amos ranks up there with Otis Spann, Albert Ammons, and Professor Longhair; he was all that, and a Krystal Burger Combo Meal.
Unfortunately, Brother Milburn took the words of his drinking songs to heart and shortly after recording a last album with lifelong fan and friend Johnny Otis, left for that eternal Chicken Shack at the age of fifty-two.

When Amos Milburn joined the navy, he knew his mission, and performed it with bravery and honor. When he arrived on the music scene, he realized that young Americans were ready to cut loose and shake something, and it was his mission to show them where the tail feather was located.
Mission Accomplished.


* Note: South of the Slot: An old hipster expression for wrong side of the tracks.

Black and White Blues

Black and White Blues
My Fascination with Film Noir

It’s often called:
 “The Dark Side of American Cinema.”
Someone else asked if Film Noir was another name for those shoot-em-ups like “Little Ceaser” with James Cagney talking about “You dirty rats.”
Well yes, Film Noir is often confused with Cop and Robber flicks of the Forties and Fifties, where the bad guys are all bad, the good guys squeaky clean, and truth and honesty ultimately win out.
In Noir, not only do the good guys often lose, by the end of the movie, you’re often rooting for them to do so. No one’s all clean, everyone’s a little dirty, no one gets out alive.
Movies like “The Set-Up” stand as monuments to sleaze and corruption, the underlying moral being: “Everybody has a price.”

In post WWII America, Hollywood was hard at work painting a reality that reinforced a rigid status quo.
Around the edges, there were some different postcards turning up.

Double Indemnity

Ten years before he became America’s favorite single parent, Fred McMurray made one of the greatest, seediest films ever shot.
“Double Indemnity” stars Fred and the original Black Widow Her- Own- Bad -Self, Barbara Stanwyck.
It seems that the two of them, he, the sleaze ball insurance salesman, and she, the sleaze ballet (not bad, Wirtz) wife of an oilman, upon seeing each other, develop such a mutual case of the Whoseyerdaddies, that they are willing to sell her emotionally unavailable, closet alcoholic, physically abusive husband, an insurance policy that pays big cabbage should his Cruise Ship head down The River Styx ahead of schedule, in the hopes that indeed it will.

. 
 Fred And Babs cook up a scheme to speed up the process, and increase the odds of said accident, hoping to make it look like Jerk Wad (whom by now, you really don’t like) falls off the back of a train.
Meanwhile, they strangle him.
Not only that, but Miz Barb seems to be er, enjoying herself, while it’s occuring.
(Another, often not discussed characteristic of the Noir genre is a serious element of thinly veiled S/M. )
From there, it gets dark.
Made in 1946, directed by Billy Wilder, it brought attention to a style which up until then, had been more of an underground style known as “Thrillers”. There’s not a drop of blood,  curse word, or naked breast, but, trust me, “Double Indemnity” is indeed a serious f-cking Thriller with dialogue  written by number –one bad-ass hard-boiled writer, Raymond Chandler 
Indeed, Film Noir often features screenplays written by such huge talents as James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler and the legendary Jim Thompson. If some of these names aren’t immediately familiar, imagine screenplays written by Stephen King, George Pelacanos, Sue Grafton, Lee Smith, or Clive Barker, you get the idea.) 
While America tried to convince itself that all was clear cut and understandable in  the Post War World,, these great writers, along with onscreen talents like Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, and directors like Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, and Anthony Mann, reminded us that Good and Evil are rarely Black And White, but more often shades of Grey.

Further On Up The Road

 (Note -this was written June 25, 2013, the day after Bobby Bland passed away)


I’m gonna play the high class joints, 
I’m gonna play the low class joints’
And I’m even gonna play the honky tonks.”
From “I’m Gonna Play The Honky Tonks” by Bobby Bland

Further On Up the Road
A Farewell to Bobby “Blue” Bland
By Rev. Billy c. Wirtz

He never became a household name like his best friend and former band mate B.B. King did.
Ask folks on the street and one in fifty might know the name, but one of America’s greatest singers and Blues artists passed away last night at the age of 83.
Bobby “Blue” Bland was born Robert Calvin Bland in January 16, 1930 in the crossroads town of Rosemark, Tenn. 
His musical career began like most Black singers of that era in the church. Till the end of his days he would still love the hard driving, impassioned screams of Archie Brownlee and The Original Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi and the transcendent, other-worldly harmonies of the old school quartets  like The Highway Q.C.’s, The Caravans  and The Soul Stirrers (the group that gave us Sam Cooke and Johnny Taylor).
His own career began with The Beale Streeters (a group that included Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon and B.B. King!!) in 1952 with I.O.U. Blues.
Back in the early fifties when he first recorded, Blues was still characterized by a coolness and detachment on the part of the singer. Bland brought the fire of the pulpit to the stages of the Apollo, The Howard and a thousand forgotten juke joints along the Chitlin Circuit. 
He would go on to record a string of number one hits through the fifties, sixties, seventies and even into the eighties.
As Rock historian Bill Dahl says: “He earned his enduring blues superstar status the hard way: without a guitar, harmonica, or any other instrument to fall back upon. “All Bland had to offer was his magnificent voice, a tremendously powerful instrument in his early heyday, injected with charisma and melisma to spare. Just ask his legion of female fans, who deemed him a sex symbol late into his career.”
(By the way, melisma (muh-liz-muh) is the singing of a single syllable while moving between several notes.)
Melisma is THE essence of Soul music, the old Gospel and Blues singers would call it “worrying” a word.
No one ever worried a word like “Blue,” listen to his version of the classic “St. James Infirmary,” and see if chills don’t run down your spine.

His Style
Bobby Bland’s characteristic “squall” came as result of his devotion to the preaching of Rev. C.L. Franklin whom he listened to  Sunday nights on radio station WLAC from Nashville, Tn. back in the day.
Franklin used the squall to dramatic effect on his legendary sermon: “The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest.” Not only Bland, but the legendary Joe Ligon from the Mighty Clouds of Joy would incorporate it into their own styles with great success.
You can hear it on such classics as “Turn on Your Love Light,” “I Pity the Fool,” and “Further on up the Road,” songs that remain as a benchmark by which great Rhythm and Blues are measured. 
Bland was not only a talented singer, he was an artistic visionary; his album “Two Steps From The Blues” recorded in 1961, stretched the boundaries of, and brought a sophistication, to a music thought by many, to be a simplistic throwback to the old days and old ways.
The cover itself, with the green Gator kicks, and that million dollar process defined a lifestyle for young Black men in the fifties and sixties. Bland sang the Blues, but he sang them with class.

Later Career
Unlike B.B. King, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, Bland as not often cited by the  Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and the other British revivalists of the sixties as being influential, and around that same time his own hits began to fade.
He struggled along through the seventies and eighties, but managed to hang on long enough to benefit from the second great Blues revival of the late Eighties.
Along with his lifelong fans in the Deep South, he made new ones at major festivals, was inducted into the Rock ‘N’ roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and starred on the weeklong Legendary Rhythm And Blues Cruise in October of 2011.
He passed away Monday at the age of 83.
-Bobby “Blue” Bland:
 -Took the old time country Blues and dressed in a sharkskin suit. 
-Took the spirit and fire of Sunday morning and sang it in places that were open on Saturday night.
-He warned us: “They call it Stormy Monday (But Tuesday’s Just as Bad);” a cold shot of reality in the early Sixties world of The Singing Nun.
Legacy:
He made countless great records, singing everything from Country to Pop to  Blues, he delivered them with a feeling, passion and world weariness that told you he’d been there.
The Blues has always been Black America’s street philosophy, from Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters to Bobby Bland; it’s a simple style often masking much deeper truths in the lyrics of everyday life. It’s often called the original music, a universal language, simple and at the same time and profound. Its rhythm reminds us of how wonderful is to be human, and the words, especially when sung by artists like Bobby Bland, help us to make it through another day.