Blue in Green: Public competes with plants to hear duo revive ‘old women’s’ music at Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg
By Mark Sabbatini on October 27, 2017
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(Dark Season Blues festival blog by Staff Writer Marion Prudhon, 4 p.m. Saturday): No stage here, just two chairs and a display of old vinyl from blues legend Jessie Mae Hemphill serving an artel altar for Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey’s source of inspiration.
Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey perform acoustic blues at Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg on Saturday. Photo by Marion Prudhon / Icepeople.
Indeed, they started by referring to Hemphill, presented as the queen of the hill country blues, then to Janis Joplin. Both musicians spent their Saturday afternoon concert at Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg narrating the story of old women’s blues between songs that they performed in turn or together.
Standing out among their repertoire was Janis Joplin’s “What Good Can Drink Bring,” complete with a circumstantial reference to their locale.
Mary-Ann’s winter garden restaurant was full and public had to compete with the plants when bringing in extra chairs. The venue was fitting for the two blues women who managed to get the crowd out of those seats and clapping in rhythm, even singing with them.
I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation.
Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads.
But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation.
Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads.
But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
Icepeople is again facing an immediate existential crisis due (of course) to hardships largely inflected by the pandemic. In short, 1) the website needs $22 U.S. (190 NOK) to stay online for another month and 2) the editor needs any and all help possible to avoid homelessness in the middle of polar winter (not that it’s legal here any other time of the year).
So if you appreciate Icepeople for its unique stories about Svalbard and/or critical news during these critical times, as well as its features about the more colorful aspects of life here (today’s feature about the upcoming Polarjazz festival is for the event that first drew our editor’s attention to Svalbard way back in 2008) please do whatever you can during what are admittedly incredibly harsh times for many.
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