Dave Alpert: I Know Where You’re Going with That

Yup.  This is my second post about hair in less than a week…

Where do I begin?  Back in 1997, the soul patch (or fanny tickler, pussy mop or liptee as it is sometimes called) was put on the endangered facial hair list; by the turn of the millennium, it had all but disappeared.  Originating with the jazzers and beatniks in the 1950s, musicians like Ray Charles and Stevie Ray Vaughan had kept the little tuft of hair alive through the 1970s and 80s (and even 90s).  Steve Vai below…

Anyway, last week I saw THREE soul patches in Cambridge.  I gave guy number one a pass.  He’s like 70 or 80 years old and has probably been wearing that thing since he smoked pot with Allen Ginsberg in the 1950s.  I gave guy number two a pass because he’s a bass player and you have got to give the guy credit for trying to bring some style to his otherwise non-descript visage.  No.  It’s guy number three that I’m really worried about.  He looked more like an accountant, and he wore the biggest, puffiest soul patch of them all.  I believe he’s bought into all that “re-population” stuff they encourage on the Endangered Species List web site.  But some extinct life forms aren’t meant to resurface.  Does anyone else remember Jurassic Park???

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under City Life, Music, Massachusetts, Boston, Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.