[Landline] Real ones

Ocotillos, old Mad magazines, Dickey Betts, Cindy Lee, Mark Knopfler, Florida men and a room that mattered

1. HOME

Spring!

Overjoyed wild ocotillos, photographed earlier this week at an undisclosable location somewhere in southern Arizona.

2. MIGHT’VE BEEN NICE TO KNOW DURING THE PANDEMIC

William Shakespeare as daily comic strip cartoonist from MAD magazine No. 48, July 1959.

Had a major realization the other day that (of course!) every issue of Mad magazine is available digitally for free. I'd seen some of this stuff before, but only as covers or stories or panels isolated from the rest of the issue they were initially published in. Amazing to see them in a digital approximation of their original, comic book magazine form. High point of American culture, here.

(If you can’t locate the Mad Magazine #1-550 archive via google, reply to this email and I’ll try to remember who can help you out.)

3. FLORIDA MEN

Keep coming back to this sad image/video/situation from earlier this week, for some reason…

4. WE LOST A REAL ONE

I was born in 1970, so cut me some slack, but still, I stupidly did not see the Allmann Brothers, the quintessential jam band I’ve always liked much more than the Grateful Dead¹, until 2003, three years after guitarist-singer Dickey Betts had been fired by fax. I didn’t ever consider seeing him with his own band.

So I never witnessed dude, who died a few days ago in Florida at the grand and utterly unlikely age of 80, conducting live fire. But other people knew people who did. Like this guy…

And Dean Ween, who met Dickey in an elevator…

Sniff, right? (sorry)

Ramble on, Dickey. You were loved.

5. MIGHT HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE ENDNOTES

Good news! Silver Lake institution Cafe Tropical, which played a large role in my life from 1995-2008 (as partly detailed in a recent Landline) was resurrected under new ownership in late March of this year after collapsing last winter.

I haven’t visited the new Tropical yet—it’s a 494-mile drive, come on!—but initial reports have been very positive. Besides bringing back the crucial cafe con leche and sandwiches, the new people have brought back veteran employees.

And—this is so important!—they have brought back the legendary, pivotal room in back that has been dedicated to AA meetings for decades. AA doesn’t work for everyone, I know, but the list of people whose lives where changed for the better in that room is pretty long.² You can’t say that for many rooms!

6. BEING OLD SUITS HIM

How...comforting?...it was to hear this lovely, dignified, intriguing new Mark Knopfler album for the first time the day with my first cup of morning coffee. Missed that humble, rumpled voice, that humane perspective.

Had no idea the now-74-year-old Knopfler has been, relatively speaking, pumping out song-based albums for the last 20 years. Gonna have a lot of pleasant catching up over here for the next few weeks! In the meantime, filing this one near J.J. Cale, Ry Cooder, Tinariwen, Bombino, etc.

7. ANOTHER REAL ONE

“Diamond Jubilee” by Cindy Lee: I started listening to this free dream-out-of-time album maybe a week before Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush gave it a big rave at a high-profile website. Glad it’s getting out there. Somebody somewhere said this is like hearing everything great about the last 50 years of weird nighttime rock ‘n’ roll in a single two-hour album and, well, I can’t beat that description at the end of a long work week.

Cindy Lee, we salute you!

See you outside,

Jay Babcock

Arizona

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1. It’s not a horse race but still, in this house?: ABB>Dead and Peach Corps>Deadheads.

2. Writer friend RJ Smith wrote this on facebook: