Circa 1898. Colonel Peter A. Walter I and Rabbit in New Orleans, Louisiana during Ralph Benedict's Bayou Music Festival.Greetings Future Anniversary Show Attendees,
Headlining this new posting is an old picture I found of my very great uncle, Colonel Peter A. Walter I, and Rabbit at Ralph Benedict's Music Festival in New Orleans, sometime in 1898.
This annual festival no longer takes place, the last one in 1916, just before WWI swept America in, but Mr. Benedict's reputation as a man of a thousand talents in both music and the universe was held in high regard by the Walter family for years. I remember meeting him when I was just a baby, and the memory of his unique appearance and his attention-demanding presence is forever inscribed in me!
A wild young man filled with wild tastes who lived an eventful life for...hm. Well, no, that doesn't really make any sense. I couldn't very well have met him if he was putting shows on in 1898 now could I? He would have been quite old by the time I met him. Hm. Perhaps the childless universal man somehow had a childless life blessed with generations of childless universal un-boys. A sort of heritage of fatherless universal un-men. Sorry, er. I mean un-fatherless, universal un-men.
As it were, I do recall the dixie sound and the jazz which flows through the bayou's rich history. The robots played down on Mr. Benedict's Steamer well before my time, but subsequent visits to the south from my family and the robots birthed classic SPG songs such as "Suspender Man" and "Steamboat Shenanigans." What a treat it was hearing those tunes down in Louisiana as a boy and imagining the what must have been wild nights at the Bayou Music Festival, floating along on Benedict's steamboat and being engulfed by the blazing southern music.
Unfortunately the old steamboat has long since become wreckage in the swamp these days. It never did recover when the music got so hot and loud it burned right through the deck. They say Ralph Benedict's tuba exploded and it rained fireworks for days.
Must have been pretty.
Scary and dangerous,
but sure pretty I bet.
As we approach the 114 Year Anniversary of Steam Powered Giraffe, I invite you to join us the evening of January 22nd, 2010 at Queen Bee's Art and Cultural Center where the robots will play some of your favorite tunes and your most hated.
For more information, please visit the robots' main website at: http://www.steampoweredgiraffe.com/
Love,
Peter A. Walter VI
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