Firefox Hot - Bush Not - Racist Wax Cylinders - Cheap Holiday Tricks etc

Firefox is Hot - Racist Wax Cylinders - Cheap Lohan Tricks & Other Random Revelations
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Firefox 1.5 : Latest Volley in The Browser War:

Firefox 1.5 web browser is out ! Following more than 100 million downloads of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0, the latest version is available now as a free download ( look for links to free download on right column & bottom of this page).

According to the Mozilla team, Firefox 1.5 has been enhanced with a new "drag and drop" feature for tabbed browsing, an improved pop-up blocker, improved Live Bookmarks feature, and easier to adjust browser settings.

The browser moves ahead of Microsoft's security compromised IE browser & promises improved performance with a new generation rendering and layout engine that speeds navigation between previously viewed Web pages through caching and more accurate display of complex Web pages.

With Firefox 1.5 Mozilla developers continue their partnership with Google, and have also added new capabilities contributed by IBM, that make it easier for the mobility and sight-impaired to navigate the Web. The browser can now be used with technology that reads Web content aloud; allows users to navigate with keystrokes rather than mouseclicks; and reduces the tabbing required to navigate documents such as spreadsheets.



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The early years of racist recordings:

The history of audio recordings basically begins with the New Jersey genius Thomas Edison whose early innovations made the technology available to consumers. Among his first finds for his new format of entertainment were two characters who had an instinctive knack for tapping into "popular culture" and in turn made history while vocalizing some of the era's basest insights.

wax cylinder:
ARTHUR COLLINS & BYRON HARLAN were white ragtime minstrel's who started recording "coon" songs on Edison's wax cylinder's in the early years of recordings in the late 19th, and early 20th century.

Collins first went to Edison's West Orange NJ labs on request in May 1898 and eventually laid down hundreds of recordings including such now tasteless gems as "Every Night I See That Nigger Standing Round", "I Don't Allow No Coons to Hurt My Feelings" and "All Coons Look Alike To Me". Collins was the baritone voice, and rather prolific as according to one account recorded

"from 1898 to 1912, no fewer than 227 solo two-minute cylinders, including both brown wax and the louder and less fragile Gold Moulded type, introduced in 1902....the team Collins and Harlan recorded approximately 65 Blue Amberol duets."

The earliest Collins & Harlan recordings were sold on Thomas Edison's wax cylinders, but by 1912 the cylinders had mostly been supplanted by the 78 rpm discs that were first made in the 1890s by Emile Berliner who owned The National Gramophone Company. In addition to recording for Edison's National Phonograph Company, Collins also appeared on releases from labels like Columbia ( now Sony), National Gramophone, and his "plantation songs" were amongs the first recordings for the new Victor label (slogan : "His Master's Voice") many pressed at the Oakland CA Victor pressing plant.

Collins, an ex-sailor, was the son of a devout Quaker and preferred to be called "the King of Ragtime Singers", although trade publications of the day still called him a "coon singer".

Here's a few typical numbers & skits with his partner Harlan, featuring plenty of references to a sunny life down south in Alabama with lazy forgetful african americans shunning cotton picking, dancing on one wooden leg, sleeping & enjoying watermelons, hams & yams ...

Collins & Harlan - Alabama Coon Song

Collins & Harlan - Cotton Blossom Time

African American customs weren't the only thing that was funny to these recording stars, and here the "honest" American Indian "Chief Coca Cola" of Broadway is portrayed in a night of downtown caberet hopping with authentic war whoops...

Collins & Harlan - Honest Injun

Here they project a festive mood, and relay a little innuendo as to the pleasures of jiniteras in the early 20th century Cuban sex tourism industry, proving that this interest predates Castro's control and that the island has long lured male American tourists with images of cheap cigars, rum, and easy loving.

Collins & Harlan - Cubanola Glide

Not content to stereotype Latin American, Native American and Black culture, NJ's finest singing "comics" took the lead in audio exploitation of anti-Asian American sentiment as a subject as well. They happily sing with derision about finding "gambling politicians", "oriental misery" and mocked the "snaky" voices of residents.

Collins & Harlan - All Aboard For Chinatown

This style of music, and it's less than polite racial implications gradually fell out of favor, with the last known Collins & Harlan performance in December 1925 in Muncie, Indiana, "under the auspices of the Edison store." Edison stopped production of cylinders as the Great Depression came on. Collins died a fairly wealthy orange grove owner in Florida in 1933, whose recordings were mostly out of print, but as late as 1941 Montgomery Ward's kept a popular Collins recording in print in it's "rural" music catalog.

The Collins & Harlan records chould be construed as cruel out right racist attacks, but they are interesting to judge through the lens of historical perspective. Maybe they should be considered as the potential Lenny Bruce, Denis Leary, David Allen Coe or Dave Chappelle's of their era. They were show people, who used shocked value, travelled and entertained audiences by poking bawdy fun at various ethnicities, cliche's and practices, whether their targets were stereoypically Black, or Irish, they were always outlandish.

Here, Harlan does a 1904 comedy sketch routine that pokes fun at two "Rubes" a.k.a unsophisticated country hicks...

Bryan Harlan & Frank Stanley - Two Rubes At The Vaudeville

here's some influential tracks in which these pioneers make possibly the first mentions of New Orleans Jazz on commercial recordings.

Collins & Harlan - "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland"

according to music historian Tim Gracyk this track for Victor from 1916 is a fairly important record, and he has a nice essay on it at his site...

excerpt:

Byron Harlan playing the female in minstrel show fashion. He asks a question that musicologists have tried to answer for years:

HARLAN: "Say, Henry, what is a jas band?"

COLLINS: "Why, a jas band am essentially different from the generalities of bands."

HARLAN: "In what particularity, Henry?"

COLLINS: "Oh, in many ways, Mandy. Now, for instance . . . " [A slide trombone roars]

HARLAN: "Lordy, lordy! Is that one of the ways?"

COLLINS: "Uh-huh. And another is . . . " [Clarinets play]

HARLAN: "Is there any more, Henry?"

COLLINS: "Oh yes, and it goes something like . . . " [Drum roll, bugle call, crashing of cymbals]

HARLAN: "Well, I must say, Henry, your explanation am lucidiously comprehensible!"

COLLINS: "And does you like the jas band, Mandy?"

HARLAN: "Ah sure do."

COLLINS: "Then we'll sing some more."

other related tracks worth noting:

Collins & Harlan - Everybody's Jazzin' It

Collins & Harlan - Abba Dabba Honeymoon

Collins & Harlan - Old Black Joe

footnotes :Thomas Edison did not perfect the lightbulb alone, but hired a self taught black inventor who was the son of runaway slaves named Lewis Latimer who was designing better lightbulb filaments than Edison out of bamboo. Latimer worked in NYC away from the main Menlo Park NJ lab. A self taught draughtsman, Latimer actually drew A.G Bell's telephone patent and was a key figure in Edison's patent defenses & supervised installation of street lighting in NY, Philly & London U.K. Over the years Latimer aided other black inventors, and his diaries occasionally complained of racism working for Edison Electric. Ironically, Edison unsucessfully sued and later tried to buy out telegraph patents owned by a black inventor named Granville T. Woods.

Incidentally, Edison's motion picture company and patents were challenged in the courts under Anti Trust legislation and his company was dissolved and he was fined 20 million for having an illegal monopoly in 1915.

WFMU has a program that's available online called Edison's Attic featuring rare old recordings from the Edison archives in West Orange New Jersey

---- Speaking of Science : Didja know Bush Hates Science ? ----

this web page lists a number of specific cases in which the Bush admin has ignored or distorted science that it didn't like. it only starts with the stupid aluminum tubes in iraq... it goes much further and for those who are truly ambitious, there is an in depth report available under the 'related links' sidebar on this page.

here's a topical / historical intelligently deigned song that I suspect Bush might have on his I-Pod

Vernon Dalhart & Texas Panhandlers - John T Scopes Trial

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Smokey Hormel played with Beck's band for awhile, and now has a loungey act all his own with a former member from Cibo Matto.


Smokey & Miho - Blue Glasses


Nina Gordon is an LA based chanteuse who has been lurking on the edges of the music industry, and made a minor sensation earlier this year with her version of NWA's Straight Outta Compton

Nina Gordon - Straight Outta Compton

Nina Gordon - 18 & Life ( Skid Row cover live at Largo)

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The teen queen w/ new boobs and mysteriously starved for our attention pays tribute to Cheap Trick. The strained vocal delivery is a bit lacking at times, although I doubt I could do it any better. From a recent appearance on MTV's TRL, let's let lil' Lindsay speak for herself.



Lindsay Lohan - I Want You To Want Me


X-Mess Section :

The daughter of West Coast Latin music legend Pete Escovedo, and sister of former L.A punk / respected Americana bluesman Alejandro Escovedo, here's lil' sis and former Prince sidekick Sheila E...


Sheila E - Santa Baby ( from Playboy's Latin Jazz Xmas)


From tonight's tv special "Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer", an animated broadcast that's been popular for well over 40 years...

Burl Ives - Holly Jolly Christmas

firefox is hot racist wax cylinders

psst .... looking for this ?



http://lilmikesf.blogspot.com/2005/11/firefox-hot-bush-not-racist-wax.html

Radio Piece on The Ferris State U -" Jim Crow Museum" -

here listen to my latest posted tuneage

Washington X Mess

Ahhh, the holidays are coming, a chance to reflect on what is good in the world. Things like our national commitment to human rights as exemplified by Porter Goss, the U.S CIA Director who this week called torture "debriefings" with "good results".

Meanwhile Germany requested Condoleeza stop by and discuss the use of bases in Germany to transport torture subjects... The U.S State Dept. calls it a chance to "highlight the enduring importance of transatlantic relations" , and " to continue the excellent cooperation we have had in a variety of different areas with Germany", added a spokesman. Astute political observers say otherwise, and that discussions may become complex, if not tense.

Heck , even Andy Rooney has stopped worrying about inane things and is exposing the military industrial complex. Dwight D. Eisenhower of course was on this story almost 50 years ago, but we'll give cranky ol' Andy credit for finally running out of trite topics and overturning that huge rock. The guys got nerve even if he is half senile, and half as relevant as he used to be...

Sadly, it took me two months to find out about Andy's outburst. He probably woulda generated headlines a decade or two ago, but thanx to a million other channels, the web, video games etc and the fact no one I know under 60 really watches 60 Minutes regularly anymore, it went practically unnoticed. So, in the interest of historical value here's a transcript form a recent segment from a show that at one time, set agendas & kinda mattered every week...

Andy Rooney Transcription from Oct 2 2005:

I'm not really clear about how much a billion dollars is. But the United States, our United States, is spending five billion, six hundred million dollars a month ($5,600,000,000.00) fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into. We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today. Almost 2,000 Americans have died there. For what?

Now, we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way that our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China. Another way the government is planning on paying for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like medicare perscriptions, highway construction, farm payments, Amtrak, national public radio, loans to graduate students. Do these sound like things you'd like to cut back on to pay for Iraq?

I'll tell you where we ought to start saving, on our bloated military establishment. We're paying for weapons we'll never use. No other country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year, Japan spent $42 billion dollars, Italy spent $28 billion dollars, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion. We have 8,000 tanks, for example. One Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford stationwagon. We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. Enough to destroy all of mankind. We're spending $200 million dollars a year on bullets alone. That's a lot of target practice.

We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women, and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five enlisted soldiers what to do. We have 40,000 Colen and 870 generals.

We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President, and on leaving the White House in 1961 he said this:

"We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disasterous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

Well, Ike was right. That's just what's happened.

Video - Andy Rooney On Military Industrial Complex (6 MB .mov)

Audio - Andy Rooney On The Military Industrial Complex Taking Over The U.S. ( 4 MB .mp3)

Quicktime video & MP3 excerpt links provided by LisaReinsRadar.com
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anyhow, speaking of non news stories about general conspiracies that no one cares about:

This summer when I got the new Black Eyed Peas CD, I was driving around digging most of the tracks on the disc until I hit "My Humps". It's so bad, I almost ran off the road, and for some reason it's so weak, it sorta makes me feel old & prude and basically humorless...

These are easily some of the worst sexually stereotypical & materialist lyrics I've ever heard, and if it was an unknown act maybe desperate for attention ala say Kelis w/ Milkshake it might even be understandable. But they are already hugely successful and don't know the meaning of irony or innuendo. The track basically just fills the minds of their impressionable youth fan base with some base pitiful dreck. Indeed it makes me wonder about those rumors that the Peas are crack smokers...

Bypassing Madonna & Gwen Stefani's lame material diva fixations, here's the new gal on the block Fergie (who recently signed a solo deal.. I can't hardly wait). In this verse she details her numerous material gains extracted from her sexually frustrated male suitors...

"I drive these brothers crazy/I do it on the daily/They treat me really nicely/They buy me all these ice-ys/Dolce & Gabbana/Fendi and then Donna/Karan, they be sharin'/All their money got me wearin'/Fly gear but I ain't askin'/They say they love my ass 'n/Seven Jeans, True Religion's/I say no, but they keep givin'/So I keep on takin'/And no I ain't taken/We can keep on datin'/ I keep on demonstrating."

It feature's a crib from a cult group called "Sexual Harassment" from a 1982 club track "I Need A Freak" and gets beyond clever into a dumber than dumb, bling bling & body objectifying mood. If I had kids, this would certainly be the type of infantile song I'd be hesitant to have them cranking on their lil' boom boxes or nano-pods...

How about rapper Taboo who shuns spending money on his ho, by adding such insights as

Lets spend time not money/I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff/Milky, milky cocoa/Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky right.

But what could ya expect from the group that brought us "Let's Get Retarded in Here"...later changed to "started" for commercial reasons at behest of the NBA for use as a pre-game theme.

The track is so embarrassingly trite, I couldn't even put it into rotation at RubyDolls, the exotique boutique in North Beach where I program the tunes...

Ironically, the tune is a big hit across the country, and of course on stage with the "gentlemen's club" dancing girls who frequent the stripper clothing store where we refused to play it...

In interest of good humor, fairness and hopes that it's been "improved", here are some remixes.

Black Eyed Peas - My Humps ( DJ Redz Remix )

I'm sure Lil' Jon will bring some legitimacy to the proceedings...

Black Eyed Peas - My Humps ( Lil Jon Remix )

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as long as we're discussing bling bling, howz about the song that is all about fake bling bling teeth...

Nelly - Grillz

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This years, possibly decades darlings of the whiter than white college rock hipster elite...move over Wilco, here's some rare Death Cab For Cutie tracks

Death Cab For Cutie - Crooked Teeth ( live MTVu )

Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark ( live on kexp )

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retro corner

He had a 40 year career from the early 50's recording blues for the Bihari Bros. to his death in 1996, here is a founding father of funk, who played with folks like Larry Williams & even Frank Zappa. Lately has been sampled by Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, and Redman. This track is from his now re-released 1980 album "Love Jones"

Johnny Guitar Watson - Love Jones







holiday bonus tracks :



Loretta Lynn - Silver Bells



Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through Christmas



Louis Prima - What Will Santa Claus Say When He Finds Everyone Swinging ?



South Park - Lonely Jew On Christmas


Capitol Steps - All I Want For Christmas ( Is A Tax Increase)

Random Revelations

Kinda melancholic day here.... and i ain't moving much w/ sky gray, and my foot in a cast...

just found out that LINK WRAY is dead , apparently gone since Nov 5th in Copenhagenat age 76... hey I know it sucks, and even more...I'm weeks late ...but damn... you can scroll down and hear some tracks from the late, great WrayMan...

Anyhow, I have compiled a random playlist that has no theme, much like my life today... or if there is a theme, i don't know it yet... go figger...

Was having troubles w/ my printer... not just the Canon & his dead Epson & Hewlett Packard buddies in the corner...but my affordable color printing solutions provider...

anyhow... magically I got someone on the 800 number and with the handy three day turnaround... viola ... I assume the missing biz cards are on there holiday way...

anyhow...

*Hey ! As of January 1st, Sirius Radio will also no longer air any FOX News programming. Please let Sirius know how you feel about this change.*

Let us give thanks at Sirius.com.

tuneage:

he was the duke of distortion, with his 1958 instrumental 'Rumble' being his best known hit... along the way he influenced a generation of rockers including Neil Young, Little Steven, David Bowie & Pete Townshend who once wrote: "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar,'" in a liner note on one of Wray's albums.

Link Wray - Deuces Wild

His rebel image & sound became a precursor to the later metal & punk scenes, and

Playing with his bros. he established himself as a western swing musician in North Carolina and played in southern towns like Fredericksburg & Roanoke Va. and poked a pencil into his tweeters to create a unique sound. He had hits with not only Rumble, but Rawhide as well .

Link Wray - Rumble

Part Cherokee Indian, Link laid low as the Beatles took over & retreated to playing sets a small bar in Maryland throughout the hard rock and psychedelic era. He eventually resurfaced through Quentin Tarantion soundtracks & I recall a few years back he was still touring, and playing around with guys from the local SF band Dieselhed...

Link Wray - Switchblade

----------------------- other stuff -----------------

a UK group circa 1965 cover John Sebastian's hip NYC village based group the Lovin' Spoonful

The Pack - Do You Believe In Magic ?

new electro trash heroes from NYC ,

Group Sounds - Uncontrollable Urge ( Devo Cover )

The Stylistics were a hit early 70's soul group produced in that Philly style by Thom Bell & Linda Creed, here's their hit that Prince later used in the late 90's to rejuvenate his lagging career

Stylistics - Betcha By Golly Wow

Here's the purple one and an original track with lots of old school influence from his latest effort

Prince - Musicology

Going back ten years ago or more, a studio opened up in a garage on Divisidero in SF and recorded lots of good records in a short period of time. Now that I think back, it was sorta like the grunge version of Sun Studios or something... Melvins, Sister Double Happiness, Witnesses, Helios Creed, Clutch, Autopsy, Consolidated, Neurosis etc...

I dropped by from time to time when friends of mine were recording in the sparse to tiered white walled room... to watch a litle knob twiddling, drink the coffee or stand outside for smoke breaks with the likes of Jawbreaker during the making of Bivuoac, along with pals from bands like Bomb or Mike from Steelpole Bathtub. Billy Anderson recorded a lot of stuff, as did Jonathon Burnside.

Later on Fat Mike from NOFX bought the studio and brought in in-house producer Ryan Greene to work with bands like Tilt, No Use For A Name, NOFX, Lagwagon and dozens of other faceless pop punk acts etc. Greene later moved the studio of Divisidero to Bernal Heights, and now has since relocated to Arizona where he has recently started Crush Recording ( contact Greene at recordingyou@yahoo.com)

The main producer of record I recall during SF's late 80's early 90's Razor's Edge era there was Jonathan Burnside, who recorded porn soundtracks during the slow hours, and has since moved to Australia. Here's an .mp3 interview from earlier this year in which I discovered he'd also been behind the Sleepy Jackson record from last year or so...

Jonathan Burnside - Interview w/ Australian Radio

discussing his studio work with Nirvana, The Melvins, Sleepy Jackson, Dwarves, Fu Manchu, etc. Daniel is pictured below in the foreground with Danny Pearson & Gary Floyd.

Australian faux country rawkers get the 1983 style remix treatment from BassClef

Sleepy Jackson - Good Dancers (remix)

The Melvins w/ Mike Zeigler - Smells Like Teen Spirit

A power trio influence on the Melvins, from Tejas, where they do it big... these 3 guys did it bigger than most, here's a mid 70's classic

ZZ Top Tube Snake Boogie

Here's one that has some U.K tekno-fiends remixing a respected reggae band for gawd knows what evil purposes...
Thievery Corporation vs Black Uhuru - Boof n Baff n Biff

here's a track that sprung forth from that DJ behind the Gray Album , juries still out...u tell me...

Dangermouse & Jemini - What U Sittin On w/ Cee-Lo & Alkaholiks

I caught this upcoming hit hip-hopper on a late night tv show the other day, and he wasn't all that innovative, or even related to Carlos, but I'll pass this hit east coast tune onto you to decide

Juelz Santana - There It Go (Whistle Song)

Here's a syrupy pop track one from Carlos Santana from his hit Shaman album

Carlos Santana w/ Michele Branch - Game of Love

since we've got Michelle going on the vocals. how about some other chick voices to fill out the set...

No Doubt the dancefloor gets busy when that L.A.M.B lady gets remixed

Gwen Stefani - Luxurious (remix)

Double Diva Duty as Mariah Carey who seems to be worried that you'll forget about us

Mariah Carey - Don't Forget About Us

Scottish frontman Jim Kerr was just one of Chrissie Hynde's many beau's, perhaps that's why he's worried about making the list

Simple Minds - Don't You Forget About Me



bonus excerpt = Grandmaster Clash -

Grandmaster Clash - Guns of The Message

p.s

Cheney's Poll Numbers Make Bush Look Good

Walkin' Blues

Owww ! Damn, Hey... I just broke my foot...

...while slipping and getting out of a Hot Tub !

X Rays prove it !

...hows that for fat stupid unnecessary bloated American Thanksgiving Weekend frivolity...

now I can barely walk... have crutches and am missing work, right before my rent is due !

more on this later in the week I suppose when it all sets in...


DOH!!!!

right now seems like a good time to eat a painkiller,, watch old blues documentaries and get lost on the net

Fox New's Bill O'Reilly recently issued a fatwa against San Francisco

...and has suggested on air that Al Qaeda blow up our landmark firefighter's memorial Coit Tower.

Here are some photos of O'Reilly making an appearance in San Francisco, I found em at Insane Reagan.com

other insane US news:

Black Friday Consumer Frenzy Results In Arrests, Injuries @ Wal-Marts


Bio-Diesel imports cause controversy



Abramoff Investigation Picks Up

Alabama beating of gay man not considered a hate crime

Justice Dept. plays down internal findings on disenfranchisement via GA voter ID plan

73 yr Old Pat Morita of 'Karate Kid' & Happy Days Dies

anyhow





here's some music for ya:

In honor of my lack of mobility, the late Mississippi Hill country singer lays it down in the Fat Possum style...

R.L Burnside - Walkin' Blues

R.L died in early September, here's one from his big seller album, "Ass Pocket of Whiskey"

R.L Burnside - Shake 'Em On Down

from his "Wish I Was Heaven, Sitting Down" LP

R.L Burnside - Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues




here's Blondie's big hit redone by my ol' pals in S.F's Waycross

Waycross - Hanging On The Telephone



from 1964 , here's a young Arhoolie Records artist named Alice Stuart and a B-side not on her debut album :


Alice Stuart - Follow Me Honey, I'll Turn Your Money Green(1964)

here's the contrast of time , with a redone version from her "Can't Find No Heaven" CD in 2002


Alice Stuart - Follow Me Honey , I'll Turn Your Money Green ( 2002 )


kudos to mister Frank S. Hurrat for emailing notification that this track is actually a Furry Lewis composistion, which he cross referenced from another cover of it on an old Pentangle LP. Furry was born in the 1890's & was a one legged liquored up boozy bluesman legend of Memphis until his death in 1981. He was a musician and a colorful character, whose life provides a fountain of stories, including his links to medicine shows, Memphis Minnie, W.C Handy and even a bit part in a 1975 Burt Reynold's / Jerry Reed flick called W.W & The Dixie Dance Kings.

Furry Lewis - Why Don't You Come Home Blues Another Ironic tie-in abounds, in that Waycross, who are linked above, feature singer Caroleen Beatty who covers a Pentangle tune oon her new "solo" album, backed by Mushroom.
bonus beats

The Golden Age - Dirty Bird

The Golden Age - My Work Is Done

a couple tracks from a Sydney Australian based band who've released their debut "Mexico City Bees" and been compared to both Pavement & The Cars


well

that'll have to do for now...

check back later for perhaps a more coherent report...
my takeout order of gumbo has arrived...

I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide

Hey what's this ? reads like Congress was almost brawling lasterday...things got a bit ugly when the newest member of Congress, a female Ohio Republican baited Dem Rep. Murtha, the elder Pennsylvanian Congressman who served in Korea & Vietnam and has now called for a troop withdrawl from Iraq. This story bit from the L.A Times makes it sound like a Detroit Piston's bench ...

At one point, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee and other Democrats surged toward the Republican side of the chamber, after Rep. Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican, suggested that Murtha — the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee and the recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star — was a coward.

Democrats erupted in boos and shouts. "You guys are pathetic! Pathetic!" yelled Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.).

"Take her words down," other Democrats cried, using the parliamentary language to demand that she retract what they considered a deep insult. "Take them down."

Schmidt stood up after several minutes of frantic negotiation and retracted her remarks.

"This war cannot be won militarily. It has to be won politically. We ought to give Iraq back to the Iraqis."

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.)

Gee, sorry I missed the rhetoric-o-rama...

likely because yesterday I was out buying strobe lights & new x-mess Cds and running errands & later installing some new cable internet and playing with the connection all night...

So far it seems much more reliable than that old crappy DSL dis-connection shit that was bringing me down daily... f*ck SBC and their beyond lame customer dis-service...

After spending literally hundreds a month on the multiple lines we maintain around these parts, they wouldn't even honor a simple service request for over two weeks... in fact, the handy operator informed me my issue was dropped from the queue because they had called once, and no answered...

oh like, I get it, you have a virtual monopoly & now you just assume since I can't complain at ya daily, that I must be satisfied... i guess, the customer has the burden to literally beg & scream at em 24 - 7, so that some headset wearing idiot can hang up when ya finally get through their labyrinth of loops & prompts...

I'm sure Comcast will be no better some day, but for tonight... for now, I'm in broadband heaven.

Some of Today's News :


The US used & lied about chemical weapons in Iraq

ex-Senator outlines pre- Iraq War intel flaws

German agents say U.S exaggerated claims of Iraq informants

'They couldn't take my dignity' Four former U.S Guantánamo detainees discuss their experiences w/ Amnesty Int'l. MP3 Audio: Moazzam Begg MP3 Audio: Ustad Badrauzzaman Badr UN denied access to detainees UK Guardian Special report: Guantánamo Bay

SF Bay Area busses to finally coordinate 24 hr BART station service

Terrell Owens argues his suspension with arbitrator

New Orleans Levee Warnings Went Unchecked By Army Corps.

St. Louis has worst gonorrhea rate in nation, 2nd in Chlamydia

Canadian's Get "Barenaked On A Stick"

Philly Third Grader Is Handcuffed, Drugged At School

Elvis' impersonator gets 15 years for holding hostages

Little Rascal to owe $30 million for Wife's Death
72 year old Robert Blake finds out murder ain't cheap, after being acquitted in criminal court, a civil jury finds him liable for the death of Bonnie Blakely...




so anyhow, to celebrate my getting uninterrupted access to the net, and finding out I've had over 20,000 page view over the last 6 months, here's some random tunes y'all...

This touring Texas trio of two beard-os and a guy named Beard have been choogling around all year, and of course crowd pleasing' em everywhere they go...



ZZ Top - I'm Bad , I'm Nationwide

ZZ Top - You Got Me Under Pressure



Listen as a still somewhat strapping young Ozzy rocks a loud New Jersey crowd, circa those crazy powdered daze of yore, just prior to the relase of the Sabotage album ...

Black Sabbath - Snowblind ( live 1975 in Asbury Park NJ)

Black Sabbath - War Pigs ( from same show originally recorded for King Biscuit Flower Hour Aug 75)


The photos are from SabbathLive.com and show the actual marquee from the date at the venue on the old boardwalk where Black Sabbath played in the summer of 1975. The grainy pic below was captured on a Kodak Instamatic by Kevin Papa - www.newjerseyrock.com

We'll change it up here, with a cut from a recent collection of jams with Reggae legends, in which the U.K based group named after an unemployment form brings in the legendary leader of The Maytals

UB40 w/ Toots Hibbert - C'est La Vie



Before he reclaimed his ancestral Mellancamp moniker, he was just a hungry rocker mis-managed by Tony DeFries' Mainman , the agency that raked up all the Bowie & T-Rex money, snorted it away and dubbed an Indiana boy Johnny Cougar...


here's his 1983 breakthrough hit that had an MTV video full of biker sleaze and white trash flava

John Cougar - Hurts So Good


Mr. Beam gets down with Covertino and crew to bring a little of that Nanker Phlege magic to life from an Oct 22 05 stop in Seattle

Iron & Wine w/ Calexico - Wild Horses






Here's another cover , from a music veteran of a modern day classic tune I suppose, a real multi-generational dancefloor crowd pleaser as I suspected. This was confirmed through a test when I DJ'd a wedding recently... and as the sonic serendipity of a memorable moment from the late 20th Century drifted over the revelers, all was well and everyone was "entertained"...

Paul Anka - Smells Like Teen Spirit

East Bay Platinum Pop Punkers from their Nimrod album...

Green Day - Nice Guys Finish Last

Recorded live by the BBC at Glastonbury in June 2005, here's Meg & Jack White doing a little Dolly Parton number for the pleasure of several muddy tens of thousands in attendance, and now yers as well...

White Stripes - Jolene

And our last tune of the day feature's the Chocolate City's reigning Go-Go King who is apparently a country boy at heart...


(Chuck Brown - Country Boy





hey, enjoy, cuz I'm busy here, and gottta go !

A Tisket , A Tasket , A Multi-tasking Basket Case

So do ya like music?

There's some of that Madonna for ya here somewhere... just gimme a minute kids...

Pretty busy as usual today, in fact as I write all 800 or so of ya trolling nebbishes, I'm simultaneously video-taping three ongoing events, setting mics and cameras, giving tech advice, running up and down stairs, and whatnot...

and, looks like I likely won't be getting off work and done here until way past happy hour... mine will have start circa midnite it seems...

But that don't stop one monkey... I'll multitask for y'all

look at Madonna, she can multitask like no one's business...

Mom, Kaballah Practioner, Mega Star... you know it just ain't easy...

here's a few mixes for yer perusal of her her new single from her new album

Madonna - Hung Up [Groove Remix Edit Version]

Madonna -Hung Up [SDP Extended Mix].mp3

Madonna - Hung Up [Stewart Price Vocal Mix].mp3

speaking of potential star power...



14 year old violin virtuoso and "Teen Strings" cover boy, Antonio Pontarelli plays George Harrison's classic

Antonio Pontarelli - While My Guitar Gently Weeps.mp3

but with violin, not guitar, get it? he must be looking for publicity...


Definitely looking for publicity is up and coming West Coast Rapper Yukmouth, who namedrops Hurricane Katrina and perhaps has created a minor beef, or at least would like one with multi-millionaire 50 Cent. A new gangsta track from Yuk ( I can call him that) is called "Get Rich Or Die Snitchin' ", features female backing vox yelping "weee don't don't give a fuck about yoouuu..." while Yukmouth brags of packing guns at award shows to shoot certain wealthy east coast rappers. It can be heard on his new Smoke A Lot Records DBL CD "Million Dollar Mixtape". The jams feature numerous guests like Kanye West, Lil' Kim, the late Mac Dre', and many many more ...

Yukmouth - Get Rich Or Die Snitchin'




Sometimes publicity can be a bit much, and one wonders how Murder Inc rap label honcho Irv Gotti feels about all the hoopla surrounding his trial that's under way in NYC. The Village Voice ( now under corporate umbrella of New Times ) is covering the matter day by day ... You get the scoop of the courtroom flow, sightings of Ja Rule, and Ashanti and the rundown on Chris & Irv Lorenzo's big time lawyers jousting with scrappy Federal prosecutors going against some of East Coast rap music's biggest names...

Irv Gotti looking foxy (courtesy The Smoking Gun)

here's an ol' Irv production done for Crooked I , back before the Feds started draggin' him down...

Crooked I - Boom Boom Clap Hella Tight Remix




Our bored buddy Ozzy, no stranger to publicity seeking, apparently mooned an awards show audience in the UK lasterday... he claimed the ceremony featuring other UK lifetime achievement award winners like Joy Division & Pink Floyd needed a bit of livening up...

So here's a lil' Ozzy for those of ya who just can't get enough of him...

Ozzy Osbourne - Shot In The Dark

Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train

and for those of you who need a knowledge & chatter fix, a lo fi podcast from a web focused U.K research group. They feature a discussion w/ retailers from Virgin, and others on the future of internet music distribution, probing matters like will music subscription services and opportunities for independent web sites in the music sector...

Netimperative - Music Download Roundtable

hey speaking off web geeks etc.

Didja know there's a new plug in for Firefox that enables text to speech?

uh...similar to the long popular stand alone AT & T Natural Voices, this is now enabled right into your favorite brower.

check it out...a new Firefox Browser Plugin adds a TextAloud toolbar to the popular open source web browser, thus allowing users to listen to web pages read aloud on their computer. Also, users can easily convert text from emails, newsites and internal documents to audio files for portable listening. This addition not only works with Firefox, but compliments the Outlook and Internet Explorer toolbars to make audio browsing of the internet easier than ever.

Here, You Can Download A Free Trial Version

If your still using Bill Gate's clunky pop-up attack prone IE browser, perhaps you've never tried FIREFOX ? This mozilla.org designed baby has all the bells & whistles, open source plug-ins galore, encryption, built in google search, and handy tabbed browsing etc. It will even import all your favorites, so you won't miss anything you are used too...

try it ... cuz it's free ! ( Firefox download link along my righthand sidebar somewhere)


anyhow

maybe i'll be back with more over the weekend... maybe not... so feel free to troll my voluminous archives ...as there's plenty of tunes and tales within...

outta here fa now ya'll ...

See That My Access Is All & Political Grave Is Kept Clean

If you're a media-spheric news junkie I'm sure ya noticed the funky footnote that the Washington Post's famed writer Bob Woodward, now an Assistant Managing Editor himself has apologized to the other editors for failing to reveal he was another media insider in on the leaked identity of Valerie Plame. Woodward, says it was only to protect his sources, and seems guilty of the type of behaviors jailed former NY Times scribe Judith Miller was accused of. It could be argued that Woodward, in pursuit of "access" has perhaps cozied so tightly with administration officials to get scoops, that he has become the story. Incredulously, despite knowing he too could be subpoenaed, he has gone on t.v appearances to deride the Fitzgerald investigation, saying stuff like "the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful" and is a sort of a “junkyard dog”.

Media watchdogs are aghast, such as Rory O'Connor who calls it a grave error in judgement...

This much at least is clear: Woodward’s testimony changes key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald announced when indicting Libby; Woodward’s unnamed official is now revealed to be the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter; and Woodward is that reporter…

Others note that Woodward's chronology hardly excuses Libby, nor negate's Fitzgerald's indictment, merely adds an interesting sidebar. AS Matthew Yglesia's notes at TPM CAFE:

One must be very careful in reading how Fitzgerald parsed his words about who may have been the first official to have told a reporter. Following is from the Fitzgerald press conference transcript:

Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.
But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Note the word "known" highlighted in the third paragraph. Add to that the fact that Fitzgerald never said whether or not the investigation was completed.

Greg Anrig Jr notes in a conclusion for a post to TPM CAFE, he utilizes a prescient sample from a 1996 NY times article in which Joan Didion handily and thoroughly critiqued Woodward's already well known heroically tinted D.C backroom portraits in six books about Gov't officials as "political pornography".

Woodward's peerless solicitousness toward his sources has made him rich and famous. But now that his deceit in attacking the Fitzgerald investigation without revealing his own role in the story has been unveiled, how can the Washington Post continue to assure its readers that they can trust him?

The Woodward saga has seen him go from hero to zero, and he now looks like he has made is way into Washington's elite by working his way up from hungry Watergate whistle blower of 30 years ago to a greedy ego inflated "info-crat" content with coddling powerful figures.

I see him almost like a palace portrait artist in the royal courts of yore, patiently waiting for a sitting with the great leaders who will buy the glowing portraits he paints of their greatness . Indeed that backslapping bourgeois banter he specializes in has irked former fans for years, and now he seems revealed as some sort of deposed truth juggling charlatan, holding back his judgement & the juicy stuff. More interested in peddling his pandering books than working a beat, he keeps his name entrenched on the masthead of the Nation's Capital daily paper so he can keep collecting his checks from the Post and stay in the Beltway loop...sad Bob, just sad.

Editor & Publisher print Woodward's Larry King transcript

meanwhile in other media-centric news:

Google has gone live with it's

http://base.google.com/ which helps users upload bulk lists of items, and aid in selling items and services in a way that could compete with E-Bay and other e-commerce search engines. Meanwhile the Washington Post has had excerpts of the new book by staffer David Vise about Google and the 100,000's of computers they utilize to build their empire and tap the net for all it's worth.

The Google Story

You can Read Chapter 26, "Googling Your Genes," from "The Google Story."

Ya like web enabled info?

Check out this :

You can now monitor the daily measurements of tropospheric NO2 above Europe. Blue indicates low NO2 levels, red high and grey no data. The south of the Netherlands is one of the most polluted areas in Europe. Only on Sundays the levels are lower.

In other web news Yahoo is adding blog content from Gawker site feeds to it's news page, "Yahoo has developed a certain weird geek chic," says Gawker founder Nick Denton, adding that "...This is the same younger audience that responds to 'The Daily Show.' "

A startup called Navio is hoping to break Apple's stranglehold on music downloads and is signing up companies like Sony BMG and Fox Music to its "rights-based" distribution technology that will let them bypass Apple and distribute through thousands of Web affiliate sites.

In other yik yak, looks like the Republican controlled Congress is getting ready to off load some of the "this land is your land" land, for a quick buck

According to the L.A Times : Slipped into a massive budget-cutting bill late last month by the House Resources Committee, headed by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), the provision has been eclipsed by higher-profile battles over two other controversial plans that would expand oil drilling offshore and allow it in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Those proposals have been dropped for now, but the land-sale provision remains.The bill would lift an 11-year-old moratorium on the patenting — or sale — of federal lands to mining companies for a fraction of their mineral worth. While the patent fees would rise from $2.50 or $5 an acre to $1,000, the price would continue to exclude the mineral worth, which can amount to billions of dollars. In a rewrite of an 1872 mining law that reverses long-standing federal policy that the government keep public lands, the proposal also orders the Interior Department to sell land adjacent to mining claims for "economic development."

anyhow, here's some tunes for ya:

from one of the founding fathers of the American Folk Music Revival , a hero of the blues and beyond...Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly.

Who was Leadbelly? Born in 1888, but only recorded late in life by Alan Lomax in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison in the early 1930's, it became apparent Huddie was a talented and magnetic performer. The man had such a way with song, and in fact, legend has it twice he was able to get his prison sentences shortened by writing tunes.

Here's a tune decrying the conditions in an Alabama jail

Leadbelly - Birmingham Jail

Another that just can't be stopped...

Leadbelly - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

here's a song that still describes Washington D.C to this day

Leadbelly - Bourgeois Blues

Lord, it's a bourgeois town

I got the bourgeois blues

Gonna spread the news all around

I tell all the colored folks to listen to me

Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC

`Cause it's a bourgeois town

Supposedly written in 1938 after he and The Lomax's were kicked out of one place after another in Washington, D.C., where the management didn't permit interracial parties.

Leadbelly was no stranger to political material , even composing the 1940's crowd pleasing Hitler Song

LeadBelly- Hitler Song

Onto a folk band that at one time was America's biggest selling act, a group so popular that they were able to invest in some famous San Francisco real estate...

The Sentinal Bldg, now owned by Francis Ford Coppola, this green copper tinted North Beach landmark was once the mid 1960's home to the Kingston Trio's offices & recording studio...

Right across the street from the Purple Onion, this is the hood, where the band learned & laid down some of their biggest hits...

Here are the boys doing one of Woody Guthrie's most important & patriotic numbers...

Kingston Trio - This Land Is Your Land

and here's another track you can't help but love, especially in these war ravaged times...one that Dolly Parton is resurrecting doing a great job with on her new album & tour incidentally

Kingston Trio - Where Have all The Flowers Gone

now for something completely different:

here's a tune from a UK act that samples John Coltrane's version of "All or Nothing @ All"
...
Vanishing Trick - When The Sky Is Falling

& lastly

In honor of Dick Cheney's much hyped "Energy Commission" howz about the much hyped power thrust of Soundgarden's Chris Cornell & Rage Against The Machine

Audioslave -

Gasoline

that's all fer now folks...

here try Some Recent Archives
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005

Cities On Flame With Rock N Roll

Thanx to a link in a post from Homercat's Good Rockin Tonight, I am inspired to bring thee music from the band that brought you more cowbell...

Blue Oyster Cult formed on Long Island in the late 60's and hit their stride with Buck Dharma joining by the early 70s... emerging from Long Island's suburban heavy acid rock scene that also spawned Vanilla Fudge, The Good Rats,Leslie West's Mountain, Eddie Money's high school act The Grapes of Wrath, Billy Joel's early metal band Attila and DUST ( which featured Gene Simmon's guitar tutor Richie Wise and the future Marky Ramone).

It was a fertile scene for working class teenage rebels tired of tract housing and looking for escape. The boys had a vivid imagination, and their pal Richard Meltzer who wrote for an influential rock zine called Crawdaddy,introduced them to a fellow student and contributor at Stony Brook College named Sandy Pearlman.

Pearlman coined the fledgling act Soft White Underbelly, and began getting them gigs opening for The Grateful Dead, and a showcase before Elektra' Records' Jac Holzman. Elektra signed the band in 1969 and then promptly dropped the act with it's unstable lineup. In an effort to escape any lingering bad press, Pearlman now dubbed them Blue Oyster Cult as they got a new lease on life with Columbia Records circa 1970.

Their debut album finally hit the racks in 1972, and the lead off single was Cities On Flame ...

here it is some 30 years later

Blue Oyster Cult - Cities On Flame ( Live 2002 in Chicago ).

This track also coincidentally comes off a recently released live DVD recorded in a city famous for it's fire, on The Navy Pier in Chicago...


The Navy Pier in Chicago was was a relic of the 1920's that fell into disrepair by the early 1970's. It was used occasionally for Chicago Fest from 77-82 and reopened with fanfare in 1989 with a 15,000 seat amphitheater known as Skyline Stage open May - Sept... incidentally the Navy Pier had long been a great spot for outdoor summer concerts in that town, I recall seeing cool vids of Cheap Trick as well as Blondie ( w/ newbies Duran Duran opening) shot live there when I was a kid in the 1980s...




click for hi rez Navy Pier pic

Now Back to My BOC Rant

...



They earned their keep on the road throughout many long tours, finding a way to combine showmanship into the act in order to keep up with headlining acts they were supporting like Alice Cooper and Slade. Imagine spending yer New Years Eve 1973 into '74 catching B.O.C with Kiss and Iggy & The Stooges at the Academy of Music in NYC.

They still play 80 - 90 dates a year just like the old days, albeit at smaller venues with the name Tavern, Casino or Fairgrounds in the title instead of Bowl, Arena or Coliseum as in their heyday...

more BOC here, including a video excerpt ... and a great U.K tribute site here

B.O.C was of course huge in the 70s & 80s, I remember their Black & Blue Tour with Black Sabbath was the stoner event of the year 1980 when I was in Jr High...

Pearlman went on to help manage 415 Records and become producer of The Clash's Give Em Enough Rope LP, as well as LP's by The Dictators, Dream Syndicate and World Entertainment War.

Of course BOC & Pearlman are now known to a new generation as the "More Cowbell" guys from the Will Ferrell & Christopher Walken skit on SNL from April 2000. Ironically the cowbell on the track really was an afterthought of producer Sandy Pearlman, who got the bassist's brother to add it after the song was already recorded. According to former bassist Joe Bouchard his bro "Albert thought he was crazy," Bouchard told the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press in 2000. "But he put all this tape around a cowbell and played it. It really pulled the track together."

try out this Cowbell heavy mash up remix if that's yer thang...

SNL Oyster Cult - More Cowbell ( Coventry Mix w/ Christopher Walken)

Aside from the Don't Fear The Reaper bit, it's also got a featured lick from fellow Long Islander band Mountain's Mississippi Queen, plus tasty licks from Joe Walsh, Nazareth and others for a big greasy comedy 70's rock n roll travelogue...

Now, Clint Ruin of Foetus & Lydia Lunch once covered that same tune to it's own end, and I imagine instead of cowbell, they'd have preferred a human skull or something equally gothy... why the mp3 itself it's hosted from Phish.com I have no idea, but this is a creepy 80's visionary cover version for shizzle...

Foetus - Don't Fear The Reaper



and because that was so cool & we are well into the chill of fall, and just 40 or so shopping daze til X-Me$

Here's B.O.C's main man Buck Dharma with his wife Sandy doing

the wintery classic Baby It's Cold Outside

Buck & Sandy Dharma - Baby It's Cold Outside

if yer a real glutton for punishment , check out Buck's personal site, where he webcasts his own personal show ala The Osbornes, except it's like home movies, with psuedo Lucy & Ricky of the Catskills comedy family webcast production values...

Here's Blue Oyster Cult'ds fairly big 1983 radio track, one that got them onto MYV and kept them going strong for a bit longer...

BOC - Burnin For You



anyhow

gotta go... speaking of classic crusty rawk shtick, I be headed out to see The Naysayers




rawk on...

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis

Enable me this

Last night I was heading out the door for the first show I've sang original material at in literally 15 years... so I was listening to some windbag lecture his students while I couldn't wait to get a beer on... and calm the ol' nerves...

threatening to be heckling me in big payback mode was Pete Simonelli... who won his tickets on KALX he told me circa bar closing time early that same morning...

Pete actually showed up, but was polite, and was very well behaved... quitely listening to some fine acoustical music from folks like J Neo & Ed's Remaining Qualities...

He was so well behaved in fact that he didn't even take me upto join me on my late night drinking binge, which resumed at the 500 Club after the gig at The Rickshaw Stop... Pete mentioned something about getting some "rest", a strange scientific theory which I seem to know less and less about...

I figured I had to squeeze a lil post gig nocturnal mayhem in, since I'll be busy a lot this weekend...

In the next 24 hours I might get the last real sleep I'll see fora few days..after I get out of work at make a wedding rehearsal dinner at McCormick & Kuletos at Ghiradelli Square...
.

oh well...could be worse duty, like waking up to go buy a tuxedo, and get to the actual wedding by 3:00 p.m and then DJ the reception until the wee hours...


which is a party going down at one of SF's finer residences...

then after the hoopla I somehow gotta be up circa 6 am so I can make it to my 8 am work gig...which 9 hours later leaves me time to get to my , egads bartending gig... yikes !

So in honor of my busy schedule here's a rehash of a portion of a posting from a while back where I explored Pete's band, the Enabler's shtick in vague detail, all cuts featuring Simonelli's stylistically trademarked vocal exorcisms ...

plus, as a bonus, check out the new unreleased mp3 from a recent show the band did on WFMU in Jersey awhile back...

First there's a triple threat of darkly atmospheric .mp3 tracks with haunting narratives from SF based band thee Enablers.

These are from their debut release

Enablers - Glimpses, Audio: Driving Late

Enablers - About Last Night

Enablers - Pauly's Days In Cinema

The band is a lanky erstwhile pedigreed bunch featuring dudes who've done time in The Swans, Toiling Midgets, Tarnation, Nice Strong Arm and TimCo. The musician's instrumental skills work the room, scrape, tug, yank, build high tension wire strung platforms that arise behind the dry babbling wordsmith up front. The band members honed themselves for over a year, performing as "Touched By A Janitor" before finding the meandering maintenance man of their dreams. That would be vocalizer Pete Simonelli, a character I've long referred to as the world's youngest grumpy old man...

But, with two tours of duty overseas completed, all the stage time has lifted our irrascible neighborhood bartender/poet into a league of ranters and ravers ala Saccharine Trust's Jack Brewer, but perhaps shy of the show biz big leaguers like Jim Morrison & Hank Rollins and the mighty Nick Cave...

Enablers page at Neurot...

here's a bonus MP3 from their live on WFMU set...

Once again the mighty Mike Lupica knows how to pick 'em... and gets the band into the studio on his show this past September...

Enablers - For Jack (A Phillipic) MP3




anyhow, enjoy the tunes... life's good and I gotta get my butt going y'all...

a couple more classic tunes for the road...

The Knack - Good Girls Don't

Curtis Mayfield - Keep On Keeping On ( Curtis link courtesy Of Mirror Eye)

Contempt Is The New Bitterness

Been busy over the weekend, was working, and creating Kodak moments, see pic for proof...

oh, and I also was preparing for a show on Wednesday night at The Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco... The first attempt I've made at doing some of my own original material onstage in about 15 years...

Awhile back I got a call from Dan Strachota, the former music editor at the SF Weekly whose now booking shows at some new hipster hotspot off Van Ness on Fell St. He wanted to feature some bands that were playing around when he first moved to town circa 1990 and I got hoodwinked into not only hosting, but playing a tune or two myself...

uh, I Musta said yes I guess... cuz the next thing ya know, it's listed in the paper and it's on...

Since I no longer have an ensemble of top notch troubadours like my old band the Bedlam Rovers at my beck and call, at least I have the mighty J Neo...

He's taken me under his wing for a couple quick rehersals and beers, and thanx to some spare copies of old out of print CDs I was on, I was even able to salvage the lyrics and chords from some old tunes I wrote as a pubescent rapscallion...

here's the gig details if you're in the neighborhood and would like to check it out the showbiz hoopla, and our cheezy Martin-Lewis lounge lizard routines we have in store for folks...

Wednesday, November 9, 2005 - 8:00 PM

Remember the bad ol' daze when Bush was President and his White House cronies like Colin Powell & Dick Cheney thought it was a great idea to invade Iraq?

The economy was in the toilet, with unemployment and gas prices "higher" than you were...

Republican creeps were on the ropes facing numerous charges of illegal backroom shenanigans?

The steadily sucking MTV and radio were chock full of pre-fab boy bands and increasingly crappy corporate mainstream music ?

But, creative underground local bands provided some of the only solace in the sea of cultural complacency?

Well it's 80's Deja Vu all over again here in the Aughties...

& We Celebrate The Return of The Past With...

Best of BAND CLASS REUNION NIGHT @ THE RICKSHAW STOP !!!


Come down and see some of the bands that helped get this town through the late 80s & early 90's. These are the musicians that shucked & jived through sets at now defunct venues like the I-Beam, On Broadway, SF Music Works, Lipps Underground, Chatterbox, CW Saloon, Klub Komotion and infamous Albion Backroom...

Wednesday, Nov. 9 - KALX Co-Presents :

Rickshaw Stop's inaugural episode of CLASS REUNION NIGHT

a very special showcase of some beloved Bay Area bands that basically went bye bye...


Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell St
SF
8 p.m.
$7

"Class Reunion" is a monthly series of shows highlighting the
awesome talents of Bay Area artists from the late '80s
and early '90s. For this first show, we've got the
remaining members of Ed's Redeeming Qualities, plus
the current musical incarnations featuring of ex-Catheads, Spot 1019, Wannabe Texans, and Tarnation.

Plus, our hosts will be showing rare videos, telling tall tales and playing a few oldies from their own bands, X-Tal and Bedlam Rovers.

tix at door are just $7 , but adv tix are avail for $8

... all ages welcome apparently, so feel free to bring da kids...

what's in store?

well according to Neo:

Dani Leone and Carrie Bradley will revisit their catalog of great Ed's Redeeming Qualities songs. If you don't know ERQ, you may know Dani as the Bay Guardian's Cheap Eats person and Carrie Bradley for her exquisite violin contributions to everyone from the Breeders to Jonathan Richman (and the Content Providers too). But Ed's is where they first endeared themselves to our fair city with their sweetly warped tunes, and any chance to catch them doing it again is not to be missed.

She Mob: A longtime favorite band of mine who started up in the 90s, but whose roots go back much farther. This show is also a CD release party for their new shiny disc, Not In My World. Sue, Suki, Alan, Lisa and friends have returned from the wilderness with their most twisted, experimental sounds yet, heavily influenced by the Oakland noise-improv scene but still with their impeccable tunefulness and wit intact. "Expired Cough Syrup (Don't Drink It)" is currently in heavy rotation on Ear Candle Radio.

Hobbit NYC: I don't know these guys too well, but they feature ex-members of Spot 1019 with ex members of The Wannabe Texans like the East Bay's reigning recording engineer and guitar hero Wally Sound, and with a pedigree such as this, they must be marvelous, so I look forward to seeing them.

We have KUSF/Noc Noc DJ Stereo Steve (who has lent his instrumental talents to the Content Providers and the Experimental Bunnies) spinning the finest in sounds from the era.

And we have yours truly hosting the show with founding Bedlam Rover and local instigator of fun Li'l Mike. We plan to alternate our yakking with a few musical numbers of our own between sets.

It's all happening at the Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St. on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 8 PM. Be there!

------------- in other news ------------------

The L.A Times tells of a church whose pastor made a comment about President Bush from the pulpit and now finds the IRS on his case...and threatening the tax exempt status of the church...

L.A Observed reports that Beverly Hills is soon to to lose it's most classic Hot Dog stand... say it ain't so ?

/>

In another entry they tell of the So-Cal car dealer in Westlake Village who has over 300 unsold gas guzzling SUV's & Hummers hidden near his lot behind a Hyatt.

The L.A Gossip galore includes the nugget that Mark Romanek & Marty Scorcese's agent John Lesher is leaving his agency and taking a job at Paramount, the studio that also just dumped 1.2 million for a script called "Cockblockers".
Here dig my tune of the similar name...

This is a raw ugly lil' track I concocted with some comrades that highlights the social isolation, depravity, drugs and alcohol abuse of a wild weekend with some stolen electricity in a Pomona Ca boarding house circa 1994.

Lil Mike & Inland Hemporers - Cockblocker

---- uh what else...let's see...

in other areas of the blogosphere...

Rory O'Connor writes about the moral case against western corporate complicity in human rights abuses. He cites Google's deal with the Chinese to keep "subversive" news off it's news page, and Yahoo's collaboration with Chinese authorities that got a dissident jailed for the contents of his email earlier this year.

Editor & Publisher's report on newspaper circulation shows the paper I love to hate, the notoriously weak west coast waste of newsprint known as the SF Chronicle lost over 16% of it's readers in the last 6 months...hmmm, can't imagine why...


Congress is ignoring real problems and it seems, their email too...


The volume of email and postal communications received by Congress has skyrocketed from 23 million to 109 million in the House and 30 million to 91 million in the Senate since 1995, according to a new study from The Congressional Management Foundation

here's some useful

Links to The Most Useful Web Sites for Reporters.



oh hey,
if yer a frequent vistor to my humble site, and ya like the stuff I dig up... I recommend ya check out Newsdesk.org and their regular newsletter called "News You Might Have Missed"... it's a great weekly compendium of stories that creep by in the media stream, interesting stuff that often with little or no follow-up in the mainstream press. Check out some of the recent tales they alerted me too ...




U.S. passports to receive electronic identification chips"
Washington Post, October 26, 2005
http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/000356.php

Starting in 2006, passports will have radio-frequency ID chips
that critics say can be intercepted and used to track people.



"Battle-hardened Indian villagers take on Coke"
Reuters, October 28, 2005
http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/000352.php>

A shuttered Coca-Cola plant that protesters say polluted the
water supply remains a flashpoint for conflict in India.




"West Virginia residents oppose DuPont permits"
Sunday Gazette-Mail (WV), October 25, 2005
www.newsdesk.org/archives/000353.php>

West Virginians protested DuPont\'s state-sanctioned dumping of a
toxic chemical in a landfill that leaches into the Ohio River.

SUPPORT PUBLIC-SERVICE MEDIA
Newsdesk.org and News You Might Have Missed are commercial-free, and
available at no charge. They welcome you tax-deductible contributions:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=695

............................................................

now some more sonics for y'all...


Willie Nelson - discusses bio-diesel on the Dakota Blue Podcast

Six Six Nine - Stone Dead Lee Roth ( one last one from me, a deep, dark and danked out dawn improvisational verbal sneak attack, live from Millbrae w/ help from the mighty and mobile 669 and a whole lotta evil nefarious nocturnal nuisances & mysterious motivations )


Here's an MP3 of a song by my old band that I'll be doing on Wednesday night, sans the vexing violin it appears now since our gal Wig , has wigged herself out of this mess...

The Bedlam Rovers - Wishing Well

that's from the circa 1990 Subterranean Records release "Devouring Our Roots", a benefit CD-LP-K7 for Food Not Bombs...

here's one from the aforementioned Ms. Wigginton, who was heard on the last track, from her current band that keeps her busy enough, The Bermuda Triangle Service

Bermuda Triangle Service - Motel 5

Spot 1019 rare radio archive of 1/2 hour 1987 live set in Austin- ( 20 meg download !)

and here's some introductory mp3'z from one of the fine bands playing the show I'm helping host on Wednesday Night...She Mob. Most of these are from their new CD...


She Mob - Botox Party

She Mob - Expired Cough Syrup ( Don't Drink IT)

She Mob - Contempt Is The New Bitterness

She Mob - Why Did I Become A Teacher ?

Renders Obsolete ... Renders Quaint ?

Yesterday, while nursing a horrific Halloween hangover and the Senate was in closed session, I got a chance to check out a lecture by Phillippe Sands.

He's a noted legal scholar, and author of the book that helped blow the lid off the Downing St. Memos. Entitled "Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules", it provides a hard legal analysis of the Bush & Blair administration's patently illegal warmaking & torture activities, and why this endangers us all. ( some release excerpts were published in the UK Guardian newspaper )

Having litigated before various International Courts and Tribunals, Prof. Sands sees a situation that will come back to haunt the participants, not so unlike the legal travails of leaders like Milosevic, Pinochet, or even Saddam Hussein. The knowing commission of an aggressive war was the principal war crime that put the Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg, and if such a climate of international justice still exists, imagine the things that could still be coming for British and even American officials.

The legal doublespeak of the Bush admin to justify war & torture on it's perceived enemies is especially troubling, especially for anyone attempting to imagine a so-called "civilized world". A world with mutually agreed upon standards, is important and Sands spoke of the type of agreements FDR negotiated for back in the 1940's when trying to end WWII.

here is a passage from his "Lawless World" book...

Imperfect as some of the international rules may be, they reflect minimum standards of acceptable behaviour and, to the extent they can be ascertained, common values. They provide an independent standard for judging the legitimacy of international actions. I do not think recent events have changed these basic assumptions or created a new paradigm.

However, he sees the dismissing to these standards when not convienent for the U.S a stupid move. Especially when we hypocritically expect our trade partners and other nations to respect our intellectual property or turn over criminals to our court system for trial. The very act of ignoring international laws has now provided opportunities for other rogue nations to act as they want, and is in fact making this world a more dangerous place, not safer. With multiple sources confirming that the Bush Administration's policy of detainment stretches far beyond Guantanamo, the U.S has detained many in "black site prisons."

When it came to detaining the prisoners that Bush called "unlawful combatants", the US military's own lawyers originally argued that the long standing principals of the internationally recognized Geneva Conventions applied regardless. However, in a hyped up post 911 climate, the rightwing U.S leadership basically said all the gloves are off, the rules no longer apply. White House General Counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, in 2002, that the war on terror "…renders obsolete the Geneva’s strict limitations on the questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions…"

Renders Obsolete... Renders Quaint ? ? ?

Characters like White House legal attack dogs Gonzalez and Ashcroft, Tate (and one must assume favored personal White House counsel Harriett Miers) all assisted Bush & co. in the quest to ignore any troubling treaties or precedents in their way. The lawyers themselves held the administrations hand as they cut outside the bounds of any obligations to abide by international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention Against Torture. Recently the Washington Post editorial page even called Dick Cheney the "Vice President for Torture .

Sadly, we can clearly see a circumvention of our own US restrictions on torture, where US Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee offered a novel interpretation of torture in which anything less than causing death by "organ failure" would not be consdered torture. Bybee also helpfully advised that Congress had no power to limit the president’s decrees with regards to acceptable interrogation procedures.

Even Colin Powell, who had stood by the admin and argued under a theory of "pre-emptive" self defense for invasion in Iraq, also argued that the only legal interrogation techniques were those outlined in the Army Field Manual.

2005 Report From Human Rights WATCH - Bush Administration and Torture ( 5 min mp3)

According to Sands, the legal ramifications and facts of an unwarranted act of aggression are indisputable and once rational unbiased minds interpret these haste actions taken by officials, these agressions are clearly outside the scope of international law and are in all probability criminal.

While the U.S seems to think itself immune to legal ramifications, other countries sometimes call this opinion into question.

The Iraq war’s legality was at least early on, an issue for Tony Blair's government, not due to any real respect for international law, but because it feared future prosecution. Sands' book reveals that the U.K's prime minister was conscious that the invasion, as an act of preemptive aggression, had little or no basis in international law but was determined to join with Bush and proceed regardless.

Lord Goldsmith, the U.K's Attorney General and top legal advisor, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair on 7 March 2003 of the illegality of the Iraq war without a second UN resolution sanctioning military action.

On 18 March 2003, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Deputy Legal Adviser at the Foreign Office resigned her post because she believed the war was illegal. Two other high profile British leadership officials, Foreign Minister Robin Cook and Development Minister Clare Short, along with several junior ministers and government officials, also resigned because they felt the war was illegal.

Apparently UK military officials also were wary, “I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was behind bars,” U.K general Mike Jackson was quoted saying in the Guardian newspaper “I have no intention of ending up next to him in the Hague.” This is a probability , as unlike the rogue nation known as the U.S, the U.K is a signatory to the I.C.C charter ( see: International Criminal Court ).

With the U.S having likely already given Blair a due date for war, he was forced to gather support for participation despite not having the proper requirements, or justification for participating in the invasion. With just days left before the invasion, Lord Goldsmith, under great pressure, was forced to change his legal opinion, and provided a quick analysisthat neglected to describe how his previous opinion had been invalidated.

As Sands describes it:

“The ministerial code of conduct requires the full text of any advice to be made available in papers to the cabinet. None was provided. There was no discussion, and no minister raised any question as to the basis upon which the prime minister had decided that Iraq was in material breach of ( U.N) resolution 1441.”

Here's a piece of Goldsmith's now publically released memo to Blair:

...the argument that resolution 1441 alone has revived the authorisation to use force in resolution 678 will only be sustainable if there are strong factual grounds for concluding that Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity. In other words, we would need to be able to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation.

This is essentially Goldsmith explaining we can't just b.s our way into a war , we need facts sir...

Euan MacDonald got all this analyzed months ago in his TransAtlantic Assembly blog, excerpted here:

Lord Goldsmith concludes his advice with a reminder of the requirement of proportionality, noting that, even if Resolution 1441 was alone sufficient to revive the authorisation in Resolution 678, any force used must be proportionate to the legitimate objectives in order to be legal. The force thus:

- must have as its objective the enforcement the terms of the cease-fire contained in resolution 687 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions;
- be limited to what is necessary to achieve that objective; and
- must be a proportionate response to that objective, i.e. securing compliance with Iraq's disarmament obligations.

He concludes by noting that regime change could be legal “if it can be demonstrated that such action is a necessary and proportionate measure to secure the disarmament of Iraq. But regime change cannot be the objective of military action.” Again, given the now widely-acknowledged fact that Iraq had no WMD to disarm, it is this kind of statement that may come back to haunt Blair. At the very least, it allows us to track the shifting justifications used in terms of the war: initially WMD, then, when the truth about their absence began to emerge, a refocusing on humanitarian concerns and on regime change itself as a legitimate objective. It is also interesting to note that, in the same breath as acknowledging humanitarian intervention as a legitimate basis for the use of force, Lord Goldsmith adds that “know of no reason why it would be an appropriate basis for action in present circumstances.” Therefore, while the “reasonably arguable” condition for legality would seem to absolve Blair from any suggestion that he acted contrary to legal advice, or in full knowledge that the war was illegal, there is still more than enough in this briefing to deeply embarrass him; and rightly so.

The U.N Security Council resolution 1441 referenced here specifically & deliberately refused to include a provision for military action, but the officials in question went ahead and utilized their own interpretations and pasted in parts of older resolutions 678 & 687 from 1991 dealing with the previous decades lovely Kuwait/Iraq conflict.

Unfortunately, this time around Blair's hard evidence was little more than a fabricated “dossier” on Iraq’s WMDs, which was apparently plagiarized from a ten year old doctoral thesis right down to some of the misplaced punctuation.

but ... with proper spin, legal adjuncts & a PR campaign... it's

Voila !

A NEW IMPROVED premptive invasion and takeover of a sovereign country... now with justifiable haste !!!

NEW E-Z FORM FORMULA !!!

Now your legal team can get things done with no more political difficulty than downloading and editing the proper form off our website !!!

Just Add Your Own Military ( and a few dozen billion$ worth of handy-capable defense contractors ... )

Why Wait !?! ... Why Weapons Inspect?!?

Reason Is 6/7th Treason and All This Can Be Yours !!!

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Which in the case of making a lame case for the War in Iraq:

It's clear why yesterday the Senate was finally called into closed session to discuss what was needed to get the ball rolling in the lacksadaisical investigation so far

It becomes apparent why discrediting Joe Wilson was so important to Cheney...and ultimately ends in the indictment of Libby late last week...

Because Joseph Wilson showed that these guys were ignoring the facts, they were shaping and misrepresenting the evidence, and essentially they were not interested in any one's opinion other than those reinforcing their own.

They didn't care about what U.N inspectors like Hans Blix or Scott Ritter had to say... They were not interested in Joseph Wilson's analysis, or even that of many in the CIA, they wanted "slam dunks".

F*ck finding the available truth, when they had their particular branded flavor of the truth to sell in the back...

Now A Message From Your Friendly Neighborhood WAL MART !!!

Robert Greenwald who has made the films Outfoxed & Unprecendented has a new flick coming this week, and the world's biggest retailer is fighting hard against this one...

The Ny Times on Tuesday reported about the PR War Room that Wal Mart has created in Bensonville full of Clinton & Reagen White House PR vets as corporate image hacks.

I checked out the websites like Wal Mart Watch, and soon found discussion boards that were forums for disgruntled employees, and activists but also ended up being peppered occasionally by uncensored and staunch Wal-Mart defenders.

I find the apologists for Wal Mart’s well known behavior particularly intriguing. For example “David in Zack AR” mentions a child labor investigation against the company in which he says :

“The report said it found no ev idence of violations of federal loaws or regulations.” (sic)

This is a distortion of the investigations findings and the incidents that prompted such an investigation. The federal investigation did find Wal-Mart had allowed youth workers in three states to operate hazardous equipment…

Wal-Mart agreed to pay $135,540 in fines, provide training on child labor laws to store managers, and post visible warning signs indicating age restrictions on all company-owned hazardous equipment.

Wal-Mart though used this challenge as an opportunity for it’s lawyers and lobbyists to foist a deal that weakens federal oversight of workplace issues in the future.

After the Jan 11th "child labor" settlement, a report was later issued by the Department of Labor’s inspector general that scolds the DOL’s internal agency Wage and Hour Division (WHD) for reaching an unprecedented sweetheart compliance agreement with the massive retail chain that offers Wal-Mart 15 days’ written notice before any future WHD inspections of Wal-Mart stores. It precludes inspectors from making impromptu visits and essentially let’s the fox guard the henhouse, it is an outrage…

Wal-Mart was not required to admit any wrongdoing, and the retailer, consequently, has denied the Labor Department’s allegations.

The DOL inspector general complained the deal showed “serious breakdowns” in the way DOL’s WHD crafts such agreements, without guidelines or oversight. Since the Jan 11th deal, on June 27, the DOL issued a new set of procedures and
guidelines for developing, negotiating and reviewing settlement agreements.

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Interesting factoid in a Sunday NY Times magazine piece excerpted from the upcoming book by Maureen O'Dowd...

A study by "Four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise."

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so d'ya get board of my recycled rants, furtive fact finding & would ya just like some music ?

I bet ya do...

o.k then...

In honor of the Bush admin's belief the world spun off it's axis and international law was obliterated on 9-11-2001...

Here's politically fired up Alabama born & based bluesman Willie King...

He lives in Freedom Creek AL, has battled social injustices since the 1960's civil rights movement and keeps it relevant, raw and real. His tune "Terrorized" puts in bluntly...

Talk about terror/Peoples I been terrorized all my days. . . . You took my name and you know you left me in chains/Wouldn’t let me go to school/And you know I couldn’t read or write. . . . They gave me the news/And they called me a fool. . . . You know they come around and hung me/Hung me from the tallest oak tree/And you talk about terror?/I been terrorized all my days."

This tune here, the lead track off the same album, is a bit more thankful, hopeful & sentimental, and takes that groovy country preacher vibe into a sweet loving space replete with a fluid sax riff...

Willie King & The Liberators - Living In A New World (2003)

Here's the first song off the freak folk EP that came out from Mr. Sam Beam (a.k.a Iron & Wine) earlier this spring on Sub Pop.

Woman King
Sub-Pop 0665

Iron & Wine, “Woman King” ( 2005)

Chicago's Bloodshot Records has snagged the watery domestic rights to push the sounds of Michigan's fine garage rock champions known as The Detroit Cobras...

Detroit Cobras: "I Wanna Holler (But The Town's Too Small)"

If you are a fan of indiscriminate governemnt sponsored torture, you'll no doubt recall the epic & darkly brilliant Terry Gilliam film of the same name, and you'll know doubt recall the classic theme sung by Geoff Muldaur. Here's the queen of ethereal doing her thing to the Michael Kamen (r.i.p) score, a version that never made the film, but appears on the soundtrack !!!

Kate Bush - "Brazil " (1985)

Influential U.K bluesman Long John Baldry died this past summer after a 45 year career, but his website lives on... Here's an acoustic duet taken from vinyl with the former singer of his 1965 era Steampacket blues band, who by the time this track was recorded had since become a star with The Faces.

2nd from left is Long John, and on the right... we speak of a Scotsman known as Rod Stewart...

Long John Baldry w/ Rod Stewart - "Mother Ain't Dead" (1972)

and here's one more for the road from the guy that the Rolling Stones opened for on their first ever gig, and whom gave Elton John & Rod Stewart some of their first shots at performing live in his band...

from a 1993 live album, his first ever, called On Stage Tonight , Baldry's Out

Long John Baldry - It Ain't Easy

Patriotic bonus - Louie plays the "Name That Torture" game on Air America

Hey Dig Into My Recent Posts If Ya Have The Time

• Federally Funky Friday !
• @ White House Powell "cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet"
• Undertone Underdog Commission Mush Up
• Hump Night Iraq News Blast Etc
• West Memphis 3 Update
• Do Not AS I Do
• Thank You Very Much For Everything, I Like You !
• Here Comes The Wannabe Judge
• LET ME DOWN EZ
• Ryan Adams, Buddy Guy, Tweedy etc set for NYC FREE NOV SHOWS