ARTS & FARCES internet

About this time last year (Summer 1997) I’m standing outside in what thankfully passes for heat and humidity in Minnesota listening to a scorching blues set by Jimmie Vaughan at the last day of the Mill City Music Festival. Rain has been threatening throughout Vaughan’s set and it looks like it just might blow over. My wife and our friend ask me what we should do if it rains. “Get wet I guess.” It wasn’t appreciated, but it seemed like an appropriate response. Robert Cray and B.B. King were scheduled for the rest of the evening and I had no intention of leaving. At the mention of even the possibility of leaving before the festival was over, our grown son—home for a visit—gave us the high sign, said he’d catch the bus back to Saint Paul if he didn’t catch up with us later, and disappeared into the crowd, headed for the foot of the stage.

Jimmie decides it’s time for a tribute to his late brother, Stevie Ray, and lit into the hottest version of “Texas Flood” I’ve heard in a long time. On cue, the rain and lightning came hard with the first few guitar licks. I figured if Jimmie Vaughan was willing to play, I could by God get wet and listen. Rain in Kauai is soft; rain in Minnesota is hard as rocks.

I wasn’t disappointed. It was an amazing thing to witness the synchronicity of Vaughan’s guitar work and the lightning. Philosophers can get their minds twisted all they want around the notion of a guitar player that closely attuned with the environment, but I don’t care. This wasn’t about new-age bean sprout granola and crystal gazing; this was all about electricity. Nobody’s that fast and I had a real good time.

Box of Rain was the name of my first print column (back in the days of MACazine, if you’re keeping score). My directive was to write about anything I liked in half the column; the other half was about shareware and freeware. I’d been thinking about reviving the column title for quite a while, and even announced it with the third ARTS & FARCES internet redesign. As I was listening to Vaughan’s searing treatment of “Texas Flood” I became aware that it was time to move forward with publishing this column.

That was about a year ago. When Robert Hunter agreed to write the foreword for Information Eclipse, I realized it was high time to get on with it.

What I have in mind is a regular (or maybe not so regular) column about whatever happens to strike my interest at that point in time. It might be a neat Web site or a concert, movie, software, or book review. It might be an essay about the distribution of wealth in the United States or an editorial about the sad state of the publishing industry.

Whatever Box of Rain is or becomes, it will be personal and hopefully you’ll get wet, with your reactions running the gamut from anger to amusement to hope.

[Editor’s note: This material has since been integrated into ARTS & FARCES internet and subsequently into michaelfraase.com]