does provide credibility in the music scene. It also seems to have spurred a new consistency in Scott’s band. It has developed into a tight group musically but, more importantly, it gives Isaac the kind of support he needs. He says, “When I go up there, it’s not just my show. We’re a unit, family.” And it takes family understanding and dedication to work with Scott. He demands perfection and a lot of things are unspoken, so the band has to be tuned in. For instance, there’s no set list to work from. Isaac calls the tunes off the top of his head. This kind of spontaneity can wreak havoc with an unseasoned band, but it’s important for Isaac to have this free rein. He says, “When I go up on stage I stand there and look at those people. I see all kinds of moods and weird spirits. I can see when somebody’s down or depressed the minute they walk in the door. And I know just what’s gonna lift ’em.” But Isaac says, “ It doesn’t always work. I've sang until I almost passed out and it didn’t work. Every night is not your night to get over, so you just ease up on it.” He relies a great deal on audience approval. He says, “ It’s important for me to get up there and always get over to the people.” When he doesn’t get over, he retreats into his guitar, playing long renditions of slow songs that seem more appropriate for rehearsals than live performances. He becomes moody and automatic. He admits the moodiness but sloughs it off, saying, ‘Tm a Gemini; my moods change 25 times a day.” Tony Thomas, bass player, the only other black member in the band, sees the moods as an impetus. “Every now and then a different character pops out on stage and intensifies it. It makes us push a little harder.” This kind of support and respect gets Isaac through the hard times and makes the good times a blast. The gigs are regular, the pay is getting better, and Isaac says he’s happy. “What I’m doing now is what I’ve always dreamed of doing.” But he hasn’t reached all his goals. He’s ready for another album and there’s plenty of material for it, much of it his own original music. He would like to do a video tape. He wants to do more touring, even though his experience has made him wary of music business types who exploit him because he’s black and blues. He says, “I got tired of what my mom used to call ‘fattenin' up frogs for snakes.' Oh no, give me some of the action too.” He’s also a little worried about extensive touring because of his diabetes. But Collins told him, “Isaac, you need to go to Europe. Put the doctor’s prescription aside and go. They’d love you over there.” And Isaac says he will take that advice when the opportunity comes. Yet when pressed about the future, he retreats into one of those quiet moods, falls back on that basic faith and says, “I suppose they will come in due time.” It’s a religious understanding, but it’s also germane to understanding the long process involved in being a bluesman. There are no overnight successes. Mark Dalton says, “Isaac is still a young man [late thirties]. The beauty of the blues is that you’ve got that time to develop your own style.” The beauty for the audience is being a part of that process — watching Scott grasp that power and crank it out in an accomplished but evolving blues style. And if it’s one of those good nights, you know that no matter what goes down, Isaac will be playing, getting paid for it, and people will be listening. When he is on, Isaac Scott is a gut emotional experience. The weekend after Albert Collins was in town, Isaac had a gig at Seattle jazz venue Ernestine’s. It’s kind of a snobby posh club that very seldom features blues. But that night Isaac pulled out all the stops and had the audience testifying. A woman interrupted him during a tune to tell him it was her birthday. Isaac picked right up on it and got down for her with a wild screaming over a cool and haunting guitar. It was a case of chills and fever. Or take a good packed night at Seattle’s Jolly Roger Roadhouse. Isaac is doing Elmore James’ “ It Hurts Me Too.” He throws back that head and from deep inside comes the mellowest pain you’re ever gonna hear. It’s a gospel lick on a hurtin’ tune. Everybody’s yelling, “Tell it.” Isaac Scott has gone cosmic. He has taken it back home, back to the gospel arena which he says he never completely left. r Roberta Penn is a Seattle writer. "LAUGH YOUR BRAINS OUT” L "H O IGH O C K O Y ME H DY E . . R . E! Northwest funny pages by Eric Scigliano Eric Scigliano, Seattle Weekly GO OUT AND Mark Christensen, BUY IT NOW! 11 Willamette Week WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A PLACE TO be declared a world capital o f cartoon art? Maybe the Northwest is getting close: those long gray slug-belly days inspire all sorts o f skewed, inward comic and graphic visions. Anyway, three o f the Northwest’s finest have books out just in time for the Christmas season, sized just right for you to stuff your stockings with funnybone food. A note on the brains behind Brainstorm. Gideon Bosker is a Portland physician and writer on pop culture and architecture. He conceived the notion o f a book on brains and some o f the gags. Jim Blashfield is a madly inventive Portland filmmaker and animator (his most notable film. The Mid-Torso o f Inez, Miss Monroe, I almost had it !” Was there ever a better graphic representation o f the mind’s inner workings? Lot o f panels are punnish, sometimes silly riffs on the shape o f the organ: brain as wrecking ball, brain with rubber nose affixed, and the literal storm o f brains on the cover. The book ends with a pretty lame sci-fi mock epic. But even the goofiest gags point up the essential mystery behind the book: how can, and why should, a lumpy blob o f atoms and jelly contemplate the good and beautiful, build toaster ovens, fall in love, tell jokes, or for that matter write and read book r ® j ^ ^ I f Dali and Bunuel had s e g ^ ^ ^ ^ might've made Un C h i e n ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ E Get the book “. . . quirky, outrageous ways of representing life . . . all you can do is Vaugh.” John Strausbaugh, City Paper, Baltimore, Maryland BRAINSTORM, two brains have run imely loose, and the result is funny suite appealing." L Bob Hicks, The Oregonian Brainstorm by Jim Blashfield and Gideon Bosker Marble Press, $4.95 paper < Beyond the Far Side by Gary Larson Andrews and McMeel, $3.95 paper being out of their minds, k these guys are very funny!” L Bill Plympton, -—'fe lted cartoonist Big Ideas by Lynda Barry Real Comet Press, $4.95 paper ‘If you don’t like this \book , you 1will have / wasted recalls Alain Resnais’s cinema o f memory), and the designer and a co-editor o f the Clinton Street Quarterly. He wrote the book with Bosker and drew it. An odd combination, but i f a doctor and an avant-garde filmmaker are going to do a book together, it ought to be about brains. Brainstorm is, in a loose, unforced w ^ a a . old-fashioned scientific essay on and ways o f the brain. Blashfir’^ r ^ ’ . neutral outline drawings, at o n / clinical, further the impres«o| treatise. But he develops the A with each panel playing again well-cut footage. One episode, maybe the would even make a d a n d » * * ^ \ . flip book with a l i t t l y lF • is shown floating; b / glasses, hammer, w hamburger, french, fl | buretor linkage, aSid I f f ( Ji in school. The b r a i ^ \ / / assemblages o f f io l \ 11 bulbs, and indeciphc^r ■4 toward an answer (tB I tongue out), all o f whid / limp rubble as the bra X November 9-Novetf I white reads s ® marks tW stand. A® daily fu n l across the ^Hicludirig irnahs! ue and Js—bene^ grown be? 4c variety; I Ikeyed I turns a iau^ B l . — ms (love,. so takes some into childhood,, hell, and o H a ^ d p ful beauty hints, f I your \ money!” J ) Lynda Barry BY JIM BLASHFIELD & GIDEON BOSKER PUBLISHED BY MARBLE PRESS • $4.95 —• Z / • DISTRIBUTED BY PACIFIC PIPELINE & FAR W E S T _ ^ 5 ^ ^ , / 12 Clinton St. Quarterly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz