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fishtown, forward into the past, moe, pictures, rev. chumleigh, snake suspenderz / alive

another enjoyable evening at chumleighland

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101030 monster mash posterso ¾ of Snake Suspenderz went out to Cholmondleigh-land (his actual site is here, but he’s got some sort of infernal device on his site that keeps crashing my new version of firefox – konqueror does okay, however, which makes me wonder what is really the problem). all in all, a quite enjoyable evening, although the hippie ineptitude factor seemed to be working overtime: we were consistently running late, and it wasn’t until 10:00 or so that we managed to get the live show over and start on the films. i managed to be able to break moe away from her homework and brought her along as well, which made the evening all the more enjoyable. we were joined on stage by the inimitable master payne and, of course, the reverend himself, although he didn’t “ascend a stairway of machetes, barefoot” because somebody ripped off all his machetes, so instead he walked a pathway of broken glass, barefoot. since the last time i was there, he has actually finished the rail-pup (a self-propelled closed-circut railway) which was even more fun in the dark – you’d be barreling along blindly, cranking to beat the band, and the track would suddenly curve and you’d be riding on two wheels trying not to fall over… not like the last time i was there, when the track wasn’t finished yet, and if you didn’t watch where you were going, you’d plunge off the end of the track into the undergrowth…

chumleigh and i have been doing what we do, more or less, for 35 years or so: in 1978 i was playing with a dixieland band, and we were playing for the last official “Fat Tuesday” celebration in seattle. unbeknownst to us (at the time), there had been a major riot in pioneer square the night before, so there were mounted police in riot gear everywhere, and most everyone else was sticking to the edges of pioneer square, and acting very dodgy, and here we were, this small band of incredibly young musicians playing happy music in the square, very surreal. then this guy came up to us and introduced himself as reverend chumleigh, and wondered if we had a job or worked anywhere, and offered us a job playing at the alligator palace in la conner. i was the only person that had graduated from high school at the time, but i didn’t know where la conner was, and ended up in bellingham. i didn’t actually meet him again until much, much later, in 2008. in the mean time, i worked as a fish packer, a migrant farm worker, a typesetter, spent two years in a tech school, and then worked as a musical instrument repair technician, as a typesetter (again) and as a computer geek before i had a brain injury and realised that what i really wanted to be doing all along was music, whereas chumleigh was playing with the flying karamazov brothers, being involved with the beginnings of the oregon country fair, and building a reputation as one of the biggest names in vaudeville…

definitely makes me wonder what would have happened to me if i had known where la conner was, back in ’78…

ETA: in poking around, looking for links to the alligator palace, i found this article from Frog Hospital, about fishtown, a place that i visited in the early 1980s, and another article, about robert sund, whose cabin i stayed in the first time i visited fishtown… which, while it doesn’t have much about chumleigh, brings back a whole bunch of memories…

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cholmondleighland

yesterday we played for the end of the workshop given by avner the eccentric at chumleighland. apparently cedarfest already happened this year, and the fremont phil apparently wasn’t invited this year, but the show last night made up for it. we got there around 4:00 and the show started at around 8:00 with a show by master payne – his other site is here – and then there was a long monologue by rev. chumleigh which culminated with his performing an underwater escape – being held upside down by four audience members with his head in a bucket of water while escaping from handcuffs. then avner came on and did his “Le refus de la gravité” routine, which was as awesome and as funny as ever.

i was somewhat surprised – well, i guess not that surprised really, more like caught unawares – that myron and marilyn, and macque and norma were there, along with katy and cedar who i sort of expected, and a bus load of circus folk from bellingham, who were all about ezra’s age, but didn’t know him. also, hokum w. jeebs was there, who i met at the white center jubilee days last year. we still haven’t had the band meeting to decide whether or not to break up the fremont philharmonic, but chumleighland is definitely a step in the right direction. as hobbit said, it’s all the best parts of the oregon country fair, and a big top and it’s local… 8)