Harmonica Headliner

The 17th annual Bowlful of Blues, a viable alternative to the end of baseball and the beginning of college football, will be held Saturday at its traditional location, Libbey Park Bowl in Ojai.

This year’s eight-hour epic will feature, as usual, national touring acts as well as plenty of local players.

Harmonica hero Billy Boy Arnold will headline this year’s wingding, sharing the spotlight with the likes of Fruteland Jackson, Paris Slim and Finis Tasby, and Rob Rio is plotting his escape from the Valley long enough to do his boogie-woogie piano thing.

The locals will be represented by the Jim and Mario Calire Sextet, Mahli McGee, the Bob Jones Trio and the band with the best name, Steve White & the Barstool Pigeons. The latter band will also play a gig across the street at the Ojai Art Center after the Bowlful.

At the park itself, there’s plenty of room to dance in front of the stage should the spirit insist. Bench seating is available under the giant oaks for the less energetic, and there’s festival seating on the lawn behind. Low-back chairs, blankets, coolers and picnic baskets are allowed, and food will be available.

As usual, no audio or video gear is permitted, nor are guns, knives, rocket launchers, dogs or bad attitudes.

The sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages also is taboo in Libbey Park.

Older than the Beach Boys, the sixtysomething Billy Boy Arnold is a certified harmonica legend. He’s played with everybody who’s anybody and recorded a bunch of albums, including his latest, “Eldorado Cadillac.”

Born in Chicago in 1935, Arnold made the move to harmonica for practical reasons.

“I wanted to be a guitar player, but you know, those things cost a lot of money, so I took up the harmonica,” Arnold said. “They cost about 20 bucks now, but they only cost about two bucks back then.”

For a bluesman, living in Chicago in those days was about as sweet as a sugar junkie getting a job at the Hershey factory. Arnold was well aware that all those old famous blues guys making those cool records actually lived and played in the Windy City.

When he was a youngster, Arnold called on his idol, Sonny Boy Williamson.

“I was about 12 years old and I found where he lived, so me and a couple of other kids went over there,” Arnold said. “We knocked on the door and this man answered and I said, ‘I want to see Sonny Boy Williamson.’ He said, ‘Here I am.’ ‘We want to see you play the harmonica,’ I said, and he let us in and played for us.”

Just try that at Madonna’s house--once you get out of jail, there’ll be stories to tell.

Arnold later introduced himself in a similar manner to Bo Diddley after noticing the young guitar player sitting in a restaurant. Arnold ended up playing with Diddley for a while, mostly on the corner of 51st and Prairie in Chicago, but he wanted to be the front man and not a sideman. By the time he was 20, tall and baby-faced, Arnold was making hit records.

Bluesmen such as Arnold make their living by touring because they generally don’t sell zillions of albums, since they don’t get much airplay. Arnold mostly stayed in Chicago through the ‘60s, but made his first tour of Europe (where indigenous American music--blues, country and jazz--is revered) in 1974 and has been going back regularly ever since.

“I think the blues are getting bigger--it’s international now,” he said. “It used to be a regional or a local thing, but it’s international now.”

A career of music has taught the bluesman to keep things as simple as a harmonica.

“Don’t drink. Don’t take drugs. Keep a level head,” he said. “That’s about the best advice I can give.”

DETAILS

The 17th annual Bowlful of Blues with Billy Boy Arnold, Fruteland Jackson, Steve White & the Barstool Pigeons, Rob Rio, the Jim & Mario Calire Sextet, Finis Tasby, Paris Slim, Mahli McGee, and the Bob Jones Trio at Libbey Park Bowl in Ojai, Signal Street and Ojai Avenue, Saturday, 2-10 p.m.; $23 in advance or $25 at the gate; 646-7230.

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Insane Clown Posse, a pair of clowns laughing all the way to the bank, will bring their brash testosterone-heavy rap show to the Ventura Theatre for a Saturday night engagement.

Every night is Halloween for these clowns--Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J--who, along with their typically outrageous stage show, the so-called Dark Carnival, are touring in support of their just released fifth album, “The Amazing Jeckel Brothers.”

Insane Clown Posse, you may recall, was just another struggling rap act from Detroit featuring a couple of 20-something high school dropouts, Joe Bruce and Joey Ulster, trying to make it in the music biz.

Enter the Walt Disney Co.

Then, better yet, exit the Walt Disney Co., which dropped Insane Clown Posse from its Hollywood Records label over “inappropriate lyrics” on its fourth album, “The Great Milenko.”

Due to all that negative publicity and surprising no one, the group joined Island Records and the album went platinum.

The new one features guest appearances by a noted rap sheet of rappers, among them Snoop Dogg and the Jerky Boys. Described as a cross between the Beastie Boys and KISS, the ICP duo are master marketers who also sell comics, dolls, and lots of CDs to their legion of fans, known as Juggalos.

According to Violent J: “We’re getting better. This is the best album we’ve ever made. This is an album made by Juggalos, for Juggalos, and I know they’ll be happy with it.”

DETAILS

Insane Clown Posse and Twiztid at the Ventura Theatre, 26 Chestnut St., 8 p.m. Saturday; $20; 653-0721.

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Apart from the fact that the good guys won, one of the few good things about World War II was the music, but not German music.

To that end, the “Swingtime Canteen” will bring back pleasant memories of World War II Thursday night at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks.

This “star-spangled musical comedy” is a collection of hit songs that helped Americans make it through the war as performed by an all-women USO group created to entertain the troops with a live radio show.

The canteen show features more than 30 classic songs, including “Don’t Fence Me In,” “I’ll Be Seeing You” and a dozen-song Andrews Sisters medley.

The musical comedy has been performed more than 300 times off-Broadway in New York.

The show originally was inspired by actress Marian Ames, who in 1944 took a number of her musical girlfriends from the world-famous Hollywood Canteen and headed to London to entertain the soldiers.

The result is a celebration of women during the war, complete with time-warp traumas such as mock air raids. But, fortunately, the S.S. won’t be coming to town.

DETAILS

Swingtime Canteen at the Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks, 8 p.m. Thursday; $20, $30 and $35; 449-2787.

’ I think the blues are getting bigger--it’s international now. It used to be a regional or a local thing, but it’s international now.’