OntheWilderSide

Buckle up kids.   I get an email out of the blue from Vincent Giordano of Wrong Island Records saying they had “organized a Voter Registration event on September 27^th 2008 at Sinclair’s Pub in West Babylon, NY” on Saturday night.  Well, I emailed him back and asked if it would be ok if we got some Green party people down there with Green Party and McKinney/Clemente stuff.  Vince said sure.  (And thanks to Vinnie for the shout-out on his myspace blog.)

I emailed out to our local Greens to see if anyone could get there because Kimberly & I were supposed to be at the PeaceSmiths‘ Garden Party.  The rain intervened. The Garden Party was canceled.

After resting up from the Smithhaven Mall anti-war demo, Kimberly & I loaded up the car with Green Party lit, McKinney/Clemente lit, and McKinney/Clemente stickers and sign.  Between the lit we had created locally and the lit that Roger Snyder had created for Huntington Presidential Candidates’ Forum we had quite a selection.

After a bad experience, with the Suffolk League of Women Voters giving out false information about not being able to enroll in the Green Party at the otherwise wonderful Haitian Voters’ Forum, Kimberly had come up with the idea to create a flyer explaining all your registration choices.  We brought those along too.

I didn’t realize where Sinclair’s Pub was until we just about got there on Little East Neck Road, and realized it was the old Character’s Bar right next to the Albert’s Pizza.  The first thing we found was Tammy at the table outside doing voter registration.  She gladly let us put the Enrollment Choices sheet on the her table since it help in her non-partisan mission.  We saved the Green Party and McKinney/Clemente for one-on-one talks and leafletting inside so as not to interfere with Tammy’s nonpartisan zone.

But before we got inside, out came Vinnie of Wrong Island Records.  Vinnie explained to us that Wrong Island is more of a musician’s co-operative, than a label.  They assembled bands together to book a night at a club with no one taking a vig, so the bands don’t have to worry about the selling tickets and the Long Island tradition of local bar music is re-invigorated.  Vinnie made Kimberly & Ian two of those “Hello my name is labels”  with “Green Party” on it so potential voters knew to come up to us with Green Party questions.

But those are not the titled “McKinney/Clemente” stickers.  Kimberly had made up “McKinney/ Clemente: Vote Green Party” stickers using Avery labels to bring to the last Green Party of New York State Committee meeting to give other Greens a DIY idea for spreading the message.  She had some left-over and brought them out.  So in the course of talking to different people Kimberly found out that members of The Last Internationale were interested in distributing Cynthia McKinney literature. In addition to taking 2 Cynthia signs, 3 out of 4 of them wore Kimberly’s McKinney/Clemente stickers on stage. Oh yeah, the music.   Last Internationale did a bluesy set that had us dancing.  But that is just one side of this band.  Their 3 song EP is on their myspace.  Their full album should be coming out in November.

There are photos of DRAGONEYESEVEN, The Kid Henry, and Da Voice below.  The Wasted Freaks and Beyond Redemption also played.  More photos can be found on flickr.

(KW: This is where Ian left the story. I think I will let him finish. But, heck. We should put this up. Don’t think anyone else has photos up yet of this very cool event. More to come…)

Filed under: activism, events, local, long island, Long Island Music, News, original music, Photos Tagged: | dragoneyeseven, sinclairs, the kid henry, the last international, Voter registration, wrong island records