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“Lightning Bugs Jazz”  – Our Man Lump Sum Tom painted this [oil on tin] while in quarantine waiting for COVID test results, which take more than a week where he lives. We think it has a good dose of Jiveyness. Results came back negative.

——–  …and in a barely related note, this chuckle from a regular listener:

A chap I know from the central valley drops by. We get to jawjackin’ and he tells me that this pandemic thing is a Chinese bomb set off on purpose because we (the good ol’ USA) was doing so well. I said well geez, this is a worldwide plague, killing thousands worldwide. He shot right back, “Why do you think we have so many more deaths than any other country? China. They made the bomb that way…that’s the way they planned it.”

Not able to grasp the logic, I said that I’d heard of people who really believe the earth is flat and he says, “yeah well, are you gonna get a vaccine when they have one?”, I said yeah sure, I root for science in all cases. He said “Not me, no way.”. Are you an anti-vaxxer too, I ask. “Yep” he says. I couldn’t help myself and quipped, “well, as long as you’re the last to get a hospital bed and first in the grave, I guess that’s fair.” and he smiled and said “I got no problem with that.” We both smiled and parted ways.

I like this guy. He’s a nice guy. People believe every kind of thing. I’m just hoping I don’t fall off that big waterfall where the sun goes down.

Monday & Tuesday we had transmitter issues (96.5 Madras) and all day today it’s net connectivity issues between Madras and our streaming server in Illinois. Frogs are workin’ on it. As we often say in JiveLand…”PLEASE BEAR WITH US!”

One of our major folk heroes, Randy Newman, has penned another piece of his classic musical wit. Recorded in his house for a recent appearance on Colbert, he has released it as a fundraising tool. Follow the links and chip in a few clams whydontchya. Check it out >HERE<.

And HERE is another chunk of Randy with a rich one about Trump’s love buddy Putin.

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Randy Newman’s new song, “Stay Away,” a call for social distancing in the fight against COVID-19, is now available to download and stream. Proceeds support the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music ‘s efforts to broaden opportunities for underserved children and young musicians in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.

Various ways to buy/stream the song: https://smarturl.it/RandyNewmanStayAway

Donate to the Ellis Center: https://www.ellismarsaliscenter.org/donate

Well, the recent GD thread (below) has pushed along some more chatter from friends of the Jive on “The Betty Boards”. HERE‘s a nice piece on Betty from Relix fwd’ed by a Reno Jiver, which led to this good NPR read on Betty herself and some of the women behind The Dead: “Do you want to talk to the man-in-charge, or the woman who knows what’s going on?”.

For a taste of Betty’s work, here’s my pick for a mile-deep GD groove, this chunk of Franklin’s Tower from Buffalo, NY May ’77: https://archive.org/details/gd77-05-09.sbd.connor.8304.sbeok.shnf/gd1977-05-09d1t03.shn

As any Deadhead worth their salt already knows, the good ol’ US Library of Congress has massive archives that include master audio files [Betty’s direct mix in many] for dozens of their live shows. If you want to veer off into spinning around in the black lights while huffing on your bong, this is the place. Patchouli not included: https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead -click on: “Collection”

An interesting set of sessions with the band and Bob Dylan rehearsing pre-tour in San Rafael HERE.