Hurricane Mike Thompson

Subject: RE: Hurricane Mike Thompson
From: flattop
Date: 07 Apr 01 - 10:34 AM

Why do I make changes as I post and only see te typos later?

Is should have read like the message below. Would one of the Joes please blow away the original posts.

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Somebody else seems to have zapped one, and I got the other. --JoeClone

Subject: RE: Hurricane Mike Thompson
From: flattop
Date: 07 Apr 01 - 10:35 AM

Hurricane Mike Thompson, playing for skinny money, sang at the Corner Café in Newmarket last night. Accompanied by half-a-hobo, Mike MacDonald, Thompson and MacDonald played the blues standards you would expect from white boys singing the blues. They played several originals as well.

Besides his tributes to Howling George Hooligan, Hurricane played the best rendition of Cocaine Blues that I ever heard, indolent and painful. You could watch every hurtful note as he picked around the C chord, dropping to E, to F, back to C, singing 'Come here Momma, come here quick, that ol' Cocaine about to make me sick. Cocaine. Run all round my brain.'

His voice sounded lighter and more fragile than on his CD, Hurricane Mike Thompson - Voices From Other Rooms (which I'm playing as I write this.) Between songs and while he was packing up his equipment he told stories in a slightly discouraged but humorous way. For example, the HMV record store manager in downtown Toronto told him that they sold out of his CD and they are not going to carry it any more. Go figure. What's the business rule here?

No one wanted to leave when Hurricane played Muddy Waters' I Feel Like Going Home so he stayed and played a blues version of Buddy Holly's You Don't Matter Anymore. He played it tenderly letting us pretend that we really did matter even if we didn't.

Perhaps the most moving songs that Thompson sang was an original song about a homeless guy. A lot of performers do songs like this these days, but Hurricane's song had empathy and understanding that many others don't. He either spent time under the stars himself or talked to enough homeless people to accept their point of view. The song was full of feeling and gut wrenching images; sleeping with your shoes under your head to keep them dry, eating sidewalk sausages that others had discarded, taking the belonging of someone who'd died in the cold. One verse captured the anger of being homeless.

Mike MacDonald turned out to be a cowboy singing the blues. He played blues and rock riffs and rhythms on his acoustic guitar. This half-a-hobo was really hot by the end of the night when Thompson got his mojo working and got the crowd hollering along.

Subject: RE: Hurricane Mike Thompson
From: flattop
Date: 07 Apr 01 - 07:46 PM

Thank you Joe Clones. And that should have been 'It Should' not 'Is should.'

Subject: RE: Hurricane Mike Thompson
From: hesperis
Date: 07 Apr 01 - 11:41 PM

Cool. If I'd known, I might have gone... maybe. I'm kinda into staying close to home right now.