I just noticed Wade Tatangelo's "5 Heatwave acts not to miss'' in tbt, the freebie tab published by the St. Pete Times.
I am a fan of Wade's, in fact I hired him as music critic at the Bradenton Herald a few years ago. He had been freelancing around the Tampa Bay area and was looking for a regular gig (steady paycheck with benefits -- always a good thing).
Anyway, it proved to be a good move. Wade's a fine writer, and it certainly didn't hurt that we have similar musical sensibilities. He wrote about subjects that I was interested in. The only issue, really ever, with Wade was how he would straddle and occasionally cross the line of good taste. In other words, enter the Forbidden Land of Bad Taste.
I always respected Wade's spirited challenges, but in end it was my responsibility to keep F-bombs and other objectionable language out of the paper. So we'd go at in my office, lobbing back and forth a few of the very same expletives that were rarely, if ever, going to appear in our community paper.
Wade wound up leaving, on perfectly good terms, to write music for the alternative weekly Creative Loafing -- a better fit for him. And he did a good job for them, too, until last fall when he became a budget casualty.
I would always pick up the Loaf to see how he was doing. That meant checking to see how high in a story he might get an F-bomb. And I am still astonished to report that he was once able to make it the third word of a story.
Anyway, I'm happy to see him writing a Barfly column for tbt. And this week's bonus entry was his Heatwave Top 5, which I am now dutybound to share:
1. Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue
2. Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express
3. BeauSoleil
4. Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles
5. David Dondero
It is also my responsibility to report there were no F-bombs in his story.
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