Little Dinks Reunite! Listener beware

Struggling with The Little Dinks.

Struggling with The Little Dinks.

I hate to call attention to it but forewarned is forearmed.

 

The dreaded Little Dinks are making a reunion appearance at the Club Congress for the first time in five years(and the second since the group disbanded in 1996) on September 6.
Saints be hosed!
Rehearsals are underway and are going about as they always have. Our first rehearsal some weeks back involved beer, laughter, and the assembly of an “official” list of material to perform. And some more beer. No music was practiced. Things ended peacefully.
On our second rehearsal, we had some beer, whittled the list down to something more doable, and promptly added as many songs as were removed from the original list.
We rehearsed a little.
 We struggled some.
That word has double meaning with the Little Dinks. “Struggling” is both an accurate description of the music making and a term chosen to describe a certain type of rhythmic improvisation using thoroughly-untunable kids plastic guitars. Struggling has mistakenly been used synonymously with “Mississippi Bela Bartok music,” but the latter term refers to strictly-instrumental abstract improvisational struggles. General struggling is the instrumental technique, and struggling often accompanies covers of such tunes as “El Paso,” “Come Together” and “Born To Be Wild,” adding to the horror of the listener?
By the third rehearsal we were somewhat ready to get down to work, after some beers. And it was awful. We couldn’t remember crap. The Little Dinks has always billed itself as “the floor from which all others rise,” but even for us, this was an embarassment.
The next rehearsal we got a little more serious about it. After some beers. We added a new song (top secret – SHHH!) and IT was awful.
We tried to reserrect an Imo original but couldn’t remember the choreography. But at some point we figured out a real workable sequence of what to do and figured the rest can’t get much worse.
And by the next rehearsal it was all a little better. Not much, but it was inching toward being better. Admittedly, “better” is a subjective word. But all of us were practicing in between. Arrangements started being spread via cell phone videos.
Still drinking a bit.
Our next rehearsal is Sunday and it will still be dreadful, but a little better than that week. And by showtime on September 6 (TBA), everything should tank again completely.
So now you know.
Act responsibly.

~ by Daniel Buckley on August 14, 2015.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *