Winner!
I am not a winner. I never win anything. Actually, that's not exactly true. Once when I was about 1o years old, I was at a fundraiser for the SPCA, and there was a raffle. There was a huge jar of jelly-beans, and every entry would let you guess how many jellybeans there were inside. My mother, being a teacher, showed me a very logical method for figuring it out. (no, not opening the jar and counting them! Not that logical.) She counted how many there were on the bottom of the jar, and then counted how high they went, and then she did something in her head (I think it was magic), and came up with a number. I don't remember what number that was, but it ended in 20. If I were to take a guess, I think she said 320. Yeah, that sounds about right. Anyway, I thought to myself: "Sure, that fancy magic may get you an actual figure, but that can't be exactly right". I was much smarter than that, even back then. So, I decided to not make it an even number, and I wrote down "316". I felt pretty good about my chances, and sure enough the next day I got a phone-call. Yes, me, a 10-year old got a phone call. It was exciting. It was the SPCA, and they told me that I had won! I was a winner! She told me that my guess was the closest to the actual amount of jellybeans in the jar - 320.
For a while, I wondered what my prize would be. Perhaps a new bike, I thought. Well, no. When I got my prize - the same jar of jellybeans - it sudddenly didn't seem like such a "huge" jar anymore. So that is about the extent of me winning anything, and even then, it was my mother's magical powers that made it happen. She was kind enough to let me keep the jellybeans.
That is why, last week, I was very surprised to get an email saying I had won tickets to see Yellowman. Now, I often enter into a draw for free tickets to concerts through a reggae website in Holland, without much regard to who is playing. But Yellowman I knew through the curse of the compilation CD. Basically, I knew who he was, what type of music he plays, and one or two songs. I am more a reggae kind-of-guy, and Yellowman is one of the legends of dancehall.
Here is one of the more reggae songs from the set he played:
In fact, I won two tickets, and so I posted this message on the facial-books to see if anybody would want to join me:
"Any Elephant Man fans out there willing and able to go to his concert on Saturday in Eindhoven? I won two tickets, is all. Oh wait, I should write this message in cool dance-hall lingo... Big up dem massive! boo-yaka sha! Me dem ere getty dem tickats two ta si Elephant Man! Giv tanks an prase! Holla mi bak."
Did anybody notice something strange here? Yes, dancehall is so far out of my musical range that I got Yellowman mixed up with Elephant man. Silly me, mixing up an albino dancehall star with one who has elephantisis.
Okay, Elephant man does not have elephantisis as far as I know (which obviously isn't a lot), but seriously, Yellowman is an albino. One of his songs, and I'm not making this up, is called "Mi Yellow like Cheese". I have never seen such a wierd looking man. Google image this guy with precaution. He looks like Grendel from Beowulf. As Stewie Griffin once said "I feel bad for looking without paying." And since I won the ticket, I felt bad for looking.
But me going on about his looks is pretty immature and a dick thing to do of me. After all, he is also a cancer survivor. Besides, he has done immense good for our type: albinos. And since he is thought to be one of the most sexist recording artists of all time, I think he is perfectly comfortable with who he is.
So, since I had him confused with Elephant man the week before the concert, I had been refreshing myself with the wrong music, and when I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised at the reggae-ness of the band. See, early dancehall is still very reggae. In fact, such as in the above song, they often use the same song to sing over. I prefer reggae, but dancehall does sound so much better live. And I loved the effort of a 53-year old cancer survivor, with the biggest pelvic thrusts I've ever seen. His 4-piece band was tight, they played a good range of classic reggae (including covers) and dancehall, and even a cover of Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill. It was the best free night's entertainment I've had in a long time. Unfortunately, the concert was in Eindhoven, which was the villian in the story when I fell asleep on the night train. It was a 2-hour train-ride home, and I wasn't going to risk being stuck at a station at night. I left the small concert hall regretfully, as Yellowman was still going strong after 90 minutes on stage. At one stage he said "Yellowman guarantees satisfaction, satisfaction guaranteed" and "The reason I was put on this earth is to make sure you all have a good time." After what I saw, I believe that he believes that.
So while it wasn't exacly my thing, I saw a living legend in the Jamaican music scene and had a genuinely good time, and I learned that perhaps albinos can be winners after all.
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