July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
A crazy end to the day (5/7/03)
Dear Reader
The band is playing "Crazy."
Nothing could be more appropriate.
I'm sitting alone at a table for two at a place called "Stetson." It's on Furmanov, about mid-way between my hotel and the opera house in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
It's cousin to a number of other places I've had dinner on a lonely night in the former Soviet Union.
They bear names like "Cactus" and "El Paso," and they offer up a mix of everything from pseudo-TexMex to pseudo-Cajun. If you don't mind a side order of beets with your chicken fajitas, then this is your kind of joint.
"Stetson" is not bad of its kind. The name apparently comes from a bunch of cast-off Stetson hat advertising posters which line the walls. A "Marlboro" cactus neon sign hangs near the stairs down to the restrooms. Rocks, complete with fake petroglyphs, have been cemented to the walls about halfway up. The tables are appropriately rustic, and the chairs appropriately uncomfortable.
But, ultimately, at the "Stetson" in Almaty, it's the band which makes the moment.
Four Kazakh guys in blue jeans are working through their repertoire. They're on "All of Me" right now, apparently marching through the Willie Nelson songbook.
There's a fiddler who is darned good, with a real "Austin City Limits" sound to him. The same goes for the guitarist, whose work is understated but polished.
At the piano, an old upright with kitschy Russian carvings, is a little guy with flying fingers. What attracts your attention — aside from his ability to give a bluesy feel to one song and a polka flouris to the next — is his hat. His cowboy hat. It's too big and pushes down on his ears.
All four band members — there's a bass player too — wear cowboy hats, or the Kazakh version of a cowboy hat. For all I know, they could be real Stetsons, a dose of authenticity in a faux landscape.
Surreal as this scene may sound, it's the TVs which take it over the top. There are two of them. One's a Sony big-screen on the floor. The other's smaller and is mounted directly above the Kazakh cowboy band. Both are tuned to some European version of MTV.
So while the boys in the hats are fiddling and plucking their way through "King of the Road," the television screens around them are giving us images of rap singers and young women shaking what has come to be known in the vernacular as their booty.
And you thought you had a strange day.[[In-content Ad]]
Nothing could be more appropriate.
I'm sitting alone at a table for two at a place called "Stetson." It's on Furmanov, about mid-way between my hotel and the opera house in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
It's cousin to a number of other places I've had dinner on a lonely night in the former Soviet Union.
They bear names like "Cactus" and "El Paso," and they offer up a mix of everything from pseudo-TexMex to pseudo-Cajun. If you don't mind a side order of beets with your chicken fajitas, then this is your kind of joint.
"Stetson" is not bad of its kind. The name apparently comes from a bunch of cast-off Stetson hat advertising posters which line the walls. A "Marlboro" cactus neon sign hangs near the stairs down to the restrooms. Rocks, complete with fake petroglyphs, have been cemented to the walls about halfway up. The tables are appropriately rustic, and the chairs appropriately uncomfortable.
But, ultimately, at the "Stetson" in Almaty, it's the band which makes the moment.
Four Kazakh guys in blue jeans are working through their repertoire. They're on "All of Me" right now, apparently marching through the Willie Nelson songbook.
There's a fiddler who is darned good, with a real "Austin City Limits" sound to him. The same goes for the guitarist, whose work is understated but polished.
At the piano, an old upright with kitschy Russian carvings, is a little guy with flying fingers. What attracts your attention — aside from his ability to give a bluesy feel to one song and a polka flouris to the next — is his hat. His cowboy hat. It's too big and pushes down on his ears.
All four band members — there's a bass player too — wear cowboy hats, or the Kazakh version of a cowboy hat. For all I know, they could be real Stetsons, a dose of authenticity in a faux landscape.
Surreal as this scene may sound, it's the TVs which take it over the top. There are two of them. One's a Sony big-screen on the floor. The other's smaller and is mounted directly above the Kazakh cowboy band. Both are tuned to some European version of MTV.
So while the boys in the hats are fiddling and plucking their way through "King of the Road," the television screens around them are giving us images of rap singers and young women shaking what has come to be known in the vernacular as their booty.
And you thought you had a strange day.[[In-content Ad]]
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