Everything went dark, and then that goofy orchestra started in ...

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

It started out as a casual evening on the town, just me and Lydia the tattooed lady. She was recovering from a tonsillectomy and had a bad case of the San Francisco blues. I needed a break from Minnie the moocher. Minnie was my main squeeze, but once she had squeezed out all my paycheck, she tended to drift off.

So the two of us, Lydia and me, hung out. We walked down to the corner bar and swilled some cheap beer with salt peanuts. A hot band was playing, so we got off our barstools and did the fat man boogie and the choo choo ch'boogie.

Somewhere along in there we began to feel the fever. I was like a Boy Scout from Switzerland, and Lydia played in another league altogether, but we both could sense that old black magic at work.

We didn't say so out loud, but we both knew that the mooch was out of the picture, at least for one night, and so was her ex, who had left her marooned in a blizzard of lies. How could she believe him, he had the gall to ask, when she knew he'd been a liar all his life. Tryin' to keep that hungry man at home, she said, was like pushin' sand. He had a handful of keys that didn't fit their front door.

The dive we were in wasn't exactly designed for romance, so we split to find a classier joint. On the way, I stopped at a flower stand and bought her one of those yellow roses from Texas. We found a quiet little place where the piano man played Tchaikovsky. We ordered cocktails for two and danced the minute waltz, and finished it off with bloody marys and cocktail stalks at midnight.

By this time, Lydia's tattoos were swimming in and out of focus. But I felt like a power- house and was ready to rumble, rumble, rumble - her place or mine.

But when we left the lounge and stepped out into the last traces of an an orange-colored sky, we remembered where we were. Not a good neighborhood to be in when the sun went down. The hair on the back of my neck rose like weeds on a back lot. I just knew that someone bad, really bad, was lurking 'round the corner.

I prayed it wasn't Mack the knife.

Figuring there was safety in numbers, we hustled uptown to the Shedd Concert Hall and bought tickets to a concert by the Emerald City Jazz Kings. The marquee said something about humor in music.

We could use a good laugh right then, so we plunked down our money, went inside and plunked our butts down in our seats. While the Jazz Kings warmed up, I checked out the program. I'm not much up on music, but somehow these song titles rang a bell. I counted 23 that I knew, 23.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Steve Stone and the Emerald City Jazz Kings

What: "Cocktails for Two: Humor in Popular Music & Jazz," featuring tongue-in-cheek numbers by Spike Jones, Stan Freberg and Cab Calloway

When and where: 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Florence Events Center, 715 Quince St., Florence; 7:30 p.m. May 19 and 2:30 p.m. May 22 at the Shedd Concert Hall, 285 W. Broadway; and 7:30 p.m. May 20 at LaSells Stewart Center, 26th Street and Western Boulevard, Corvallis

Tickets: $19 in Florence, $16 to $28 in Eugene, $17 in Corvallis

CAPTION(S):

Spike Jones' wacky antics will be celebrated in four concerts this month by the Emerald City Jazz Kings.