Sunday, November 20, 2011

A little holiday cheer

15 comments:

Gary and Susan Mullen said...

Looks like a late show audience at The Paradox...Moooooo

Rik Elswit said...

OK, that made my morning. The tuba player just kill, by the way.

Gary and Susan Mullen said...

Gary and Susan Mullen said...
This post is udder brilliance. Next.....

Diane Smith said...

Believe it or not (no, I'm sure you will believe it) when I was about 10 years old, I played my uncle's old accordion out by the fields where the milk cows were kept. They too all came to the fence to listen.

My first and only standing ovation.

Cowabunga!

Rik Elswit said...

Diane, I reposted that on Facebook (crediting you with the catch), and Bob Henke, one of Hook other guitarists (we called him Willard), posted this little bit in the thread:

Wild Willard: My friend Jon Parry was playing his fiddle in the yard where he lived in NW Washington State. It happened to adjoin a large pasture. As he was playing some fiddle tunes he noticed that the cows in the pasture were coming to the fence and congregating there.

Soon he had fifty or more cows standing at the fence intently listening to him play. He stopped and was wondering what other kind of music the cows might like so he tried playing some bluesy fiddle for them. As he started to wail away on the fiddle the cows became very agitated and turned away from the fence and started to run away as fast as they could. Jon described it as a stampede.

He was genuinely concerned about there well being because the other side of their pasture was Puget Sound! He said they looked as though they were going to run right into the water. Of course he thought this had to be some kind of fluke occurrence so he went back to playing the country style fiddle tunes and lo and behold, the cows started to come back to the fence. In no time at all, he had the herd at the fence intently listening to him play his fiddle. Truth is stranger than fiction!

Diane Smith said...

What a great story! Perhaps he meant sweet music and a savage beast?



Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!
'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.
Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night
The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King;
He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd
Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.
Why am not I at Peace?

Rik Elswit said...

Hard to say. Do you have savage breasts? That could be a problem.

Diane Smith said...

Did I ever ask for that one.

Gary and Susan Mullen said...

Great name for an all girl rock band.

Diane Smith said...

That's actually a brilliant name given the origins.

Shey Hyatt/Sherry Miller said...

Ah, another great post to enjoy at midnight after a rough day -

Anonymous said...

Now you take the Happy California Cows and you would get a totally different result.

Rik Elswit said...

As I told my vegan friend, if god didn't intend for us to eat cattle, why did he make them out of steak?

Anonymous said...

If I lived on a farm I would have to be a vegan, but buying steak in small impersonal neatly wrapped packages keeps me from seeing the whole picture.....sound like a political statement doesn't it..........

Rik Elswit said...

Most of the Vegans I know work the casinos.