After being outed by a blogger, a Senior White House aide has admitted to plagiarism in a series of columns he wrote for an Indiana newspaper. Apparently Timothy Goeglein, 44, who'd been working in the Bush administration since 2001 pumping up conservative religious factionalism didn't know that even with God on your side, a simple Google search can unravel a retarded ruse...
What's interesting, the now notorious columns that have disgraced the good Goeglein family name he purportedly wrote weren't even paid gigs...
Congrats to blogger Nancy Nall who nailed the nerdy nincompoop after reading one too many arcane references in his banal blather in her local Fort Wayne newspaper...
In a column on the purposes of education, a reference to an obscure Dartmouth professor lead Nall to simply google the name "Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey".
Nall's simple search offered up verbatim chunks of Goeglein's text, but written by someone else in the Dartmouth Review a decade earlier. After Nall's post caught fire on the web today, within minutes other folks ran several of Goeglein's other columns through the plagiarism detectors and uncovered numerous other meretricious instances of tawdry word theft.
Leave it to the annoying Bush White House to have a special assistant "deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison" whose only intellectual capacity appears to be borrowing other peoples ideas and presenting them as his own.
"His behavior is not acceptable and we are disappointed in Tim's actions," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said. "He is offering no excuses and he agrees it was wrong."
Asked if he would keep his job, she said, "At this point we have nothing more for you on that."
But within a few more hours, Goeglein had fallen on the sword and his resignation was accepted post haste.
Ironically, or not, Nancy Nall herself was a former writer for the same newspaper Goeglein was a contributor too. Perhaps this piqued her curiosity into the pompous tone of this Rovian lapdog's agenda. The paper itself is now trying to distance themselves from the situation, saying they apparently just ran whatever unsolicited columns Goeglein submitted to The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel and never actually paid for them.
Oh I guess that makes it all like, o.k then...
Are they implying Republicans are cheap?
---------------- the sounds of the hour ------------------
Since it's a leap year and the final February Friday and the weekend is coming to take me away, I'm just gonna throw up a mutant mini mix for all those trolling by today...
Feel free to add to your own digital diversity collection by perusing the ye olde tunes I have gathered on yer behalf today...
To lead things off I'm gonna pay tribute to my favorite city.
Here's a tune by the late Mr. Turk Murphy, a trombonist who was a legend in Herb Caen's San Francisco for many years. Turk and his many musical cohorts were leading performers in a New Orleans jazz Dixieland revival that was popular here throughout the 1950's & 60's.
Here's a pic of Turk jamming away...
A veteran of Lu Watter's Yerba Buena Jazz band in the 1940's, by the 1950's Turk had his own band playing spots like The Tin Angel & a regular gig at the busy Italian Village at Lombard & Columbus.
In 1960 he opened his own club... Even after the mob owned strip clubs & punk rockers made North Beach nightlife a less wholesome affair, Turk kept at it, but left the neighborhood.
He kept his club Earthquake McGoon's going, but moved it to a spot near the Embarcadero, and lastly it's final resting place at tourist trap Pier 39, which stayed open until the mid 80's.
Joining on vocals is fellow horn player Bob Schulz who played with the group from 1979 until the end of the Earthquake McGoon's era.
Continuing on this wayback machine journey, I steer this post on down to the tropical isle of Jamaica...
We head into Sir Coxsone Dodd's Studio 1, where a Mr. Welton Irie gives up a classic track fer yer perusal, it's one of about 6000 recorded songs & versions laid down in that hallowed ground...
Just in case ya never heard of this Irie individual, here's a short video clip of him boasting and a toasting of hitting the White House one night and sleeping with the President's daughter...
Welton Irie was born circa 1960, and recorded at Studio 1 circa 1977 before Dodd split for NYC. This track is also sometimes listed as featuring both Lone Ranger & Welton Irie, but what do i know. Maybe you should ask him. Welton, while obscure, is still active and has a MySpace page where you can simply be his friend, or even book him for session y'all. Welton Irie - Chase Them Crazy
We continue drifting back into 1972, where a certain LA based latin rock group put their spin on a perpetually popular Van Morrison track...
I have had their groovy Viva Tirado LP for years, but this track also on the Kapp label is new to my world... and hopefully yers...
The band was called El Chicano, and they still play a few oldies gigs every year I believe El Chicano - Brown Eyed Girl
A year earlier than that last track was recorded, a UK band that was signed to the Harvest label released an album called Message from The Country. Their orchestrated psychedelic pop sound is notable, mainly because it marks the beginnings of a new group that would soon sell multiple millions around the world and remain popular for decades... that being the Electric Light Orchestra.
Here's an early effort from The Move featuring Bev Bevan, Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood. It's from a remastered edition of this group's 1971 album, plus bonus tracks that EMI has painstakingly reassembled from original master tapes stored at Abbey Road and in Don Arden's archives.
The Move, who eventually evolved into one of the slickest groups ever in ELO, were alos known for wild antics onstage, and had a crash about stage show that apparently rivaled The Who, and would not have been out of place in punk rock years later.
Here's a live Move track from 1968, a cover of a Love tune written by the late Arthur Lee. This line up predates Jeff Lynne's involvement... as he didn't join til midway through 1969.
While I wasn't even born when the Move were tearing it up, and I got to town a bit late to enjoy Mr. Turk Murphy live, I did get in my fair share of live entertainment over the years.
One of those entertainers still going strong is the lovely Miss Stephanie Finch, a school teacher that rocks.
I have had the pleasure of watching her play and sing around these parts for quite some time and she is perhaps better known to most in her role as thee Mrs. Chuck Prophet...
As seen supporting the man in action in this here live video clip I shot & edited awhile back...
Here's a little live sonic serendipity from the same folks, a random revelations rarity for y'all ...it's a nice clean recording of Chuck and his wife Stephie pulling off a delightful cover of an old Jerry Ragovy & Mort Shuman composistion. The original is best known as a song by southern soulman Howard Tate ...
This one was recorded in my old stomping grounds up in Sonoma County in 2003...
It's a look at some of the best in Brazilian music, an anniversary celebration of sorts for David Byrne's pet label which first began reissuing Brazilian stuff 20 years ago...
and what a long strange, wonderful trip it's been...
I myself have to thank Mr. Byrne for turning me onto to two of my favorite groups, the legendary psychedelic sounds of Os Mutantes and this fine featured performer...
Tom Ze'...
In 1990 Byrne issued a collection of rarely heard & mostly forgotten tracks that were a revelation...
I actually was lucky enough & got a chance to see the now 70 something Mr. Ze back in the late 1990's at Bimbo's when he was in his 60's and touring with the guys from Tortoise...
It was a quirky, uplifting, silly & really remarkable show, in which Ze wore coveralls, a construction helmet and played a variety of percussive devices, and mumbled many cute but mostly indiscernable sayings in Portugese.
I would gladly do it all again...or at least buy a video if such a thing exists... Here's a track that originally appeared on his 1975 album Estudando O Samba. Byrne's interest in Ze's obscure music rescued Zé from a job at a relative's gas station and enabled the artist to return to professionally making music. One of Luaka Bop's first releases was the Brazil Classics Vol 4 compilation, which reappropriated 9 out of print tracks from Ze's Estudando o Samba.
Well, why should we stop milking this classic from 1975 now ...
I am sitting here thinking I might go see the Germs movie tonight, What We Do Is Secret, but chances are it may already be sold out...
Actually that was then, this is now, and I'm happy to report I was able to get into the theater, and the very helpful ticket booth operator was Sunny and not the cranky nerdboy that I had spoken to earlier...
and despite my apprehension...
It turned out to be a great lil' rock n roll movie...
Ironically, or not, the film's cast and backers couldn't be farther from the real life of Darby Crash, amongst those appearing at the screening on behalf of the production were ER star Shane West as Darby, and film producer and millionaire scion of the SF socialite scene, Todd Traina. Other cast members up on the screen include the daughters of 60's & 70's music industry big wig's Lenny Waronker and Papa John Phillips, showing that a lil' nepotism is still hip in show biz.
These two pedigreed young ladies, Anna Waronker & Bijou Phillips, get to play the punky pioneering presences of Joan Jett and Germs bassist Lorna Doon respectively, women in reallife who weren't handed any family favors by the entertainment industry, gals that had to prove their worth in inexorably inhospitable conditions.
But who ever said Hollyweird was about "keeping it real..."
It's more about attempting to keep it "presentable"...
But how does one present the life of Darby, a junkie punk who has been dead for decades, and unlike Elvis, he was pretty much last seen in 1980...
Dying a day before John Lennon, he didn't even get the press, much less the dramatic rock n roll infamy he had in mind...
His punky little life story is one of a frustrated, needle freak street hustler and his obnoxious hardcore punk band breaking down barriers to blow minds (and ear drums) in L.A's monied moron moustache rock scene of the late '70's. Let's just say the Eagles, Stevie Nicks and the rest of the denim & diamonds crowd didn't look up from their mirrored coffee tables to notice the dirty din blasting out of the Starwood in Hollywood.
I wasn't expecting there to be much meat on the film's bones, and despite my snarky suspicions, it was really a great rock n roll movie.
One really got the sense the filmmakers tried to get to the core experience of being broke, and in a band in those heady times. I actually went in thinking I was gonna hate it, and it was way better than I anticipated...
The film has been in works for the better portion of a decade, and has already generated quite a bit of "alternative" press, even inspiring the surviving band members to reunite with lead actor West singing. If the crowd I saw at Oakland's Metro club on New Year's Eve is any sign, there's still quite an appetite for the Germ's uh, music today.
That's good news for my ol' pal and Germs drummer Don Bolles, who no doubt could use a couple royalty checks. Hell his last brush with fame was when Cops last year pulled him over on his way to an AA meeting and claimed his Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap was actually a date rape drug...
Poor bastard, at least the kind folks at Dr. Bronners helped defend him and show the cops testing kits are actually wack, not simply Don Bolles...
I'll never forget him hitting on the lesbian mother of the lead singer of the Rolling Scabs one night when she gave us a all a ride home from a keg party that her 12 year son had no business being at. The Rolling Scabs - My Mom Smokes Pot
I didn't recall having any high expectations for Don getting busy with the kid's mom, nor this film...
The reasons I didn't have real high expectations for the Germs film, are most music films suck, it's also the first effort from the director, Rodger Grossman, and it seems to have taken a roundabout route to get out to the public, and that is generally a bad sign...
The truth is that this film was a labor of love, that nearly collapsed in on itself several times during filming, but the fillmakers prevailed and made a remarkable document.
Im not sure the subject matter or plot points could sustain mass audience interest, but for a fan and participant in underground music culture like myself, it has depth, and few of the faux finish type flaws I expected.
Unlike so many of the crappy music films I've seen ( think Sid & Nancy, VH1's Def Leppard movie, or even Reese Witherspoon as June Carter...huh? ) this one seemed a lot more realistic than I expected. The story is as real as could be expected, and the times and atmosphere are portrayed very accurately overall.
The viewer is immersed in the era, and the sleazy rock club world of late 70's LA.
While some characters like rodney Bingenheimer are played for comic relief, the actor playing Darby never really crosses that paradoxical line where it becomes a parody.
I was sitting there right down the aisle to Penelope Houston, whose band the Avengers graced the soundtrack and aftwerwards she was as impressed as anyone else.
Word arrives that Buddy Miles has died at age 60 in Austin Tx where he had been living since suffering a stroke in 2005...
The Omaha Nebraska native is survived be his wife Sherrilae Miles, and many other family members.
In lieu of flowers; the family has asked to please make donations to the Jazz Foundation of America specifically in Buddy Miles' name to assist with funeral, and other expenses at http://www.jazzfoundation.org
The son of a jazz be-bop bassist, young George Miles ( aka Buddy) had an early interest in music, and had reportedly played drums on Otis Redding sessions, and done stints in Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots, Wilson Pickett and even the Delfonics while still a teen.
Best known as a member of Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsies, he also played with Santana, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Muddy Waters, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Barry White, Aretha Franklin, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Robert Lockwood, Jr., and so many others over the years.
Before hooking up with Hendrix and playing on "Electric Ladyland", Buddy Miles had already had his own group Buddy Miles Express, and also helped found The Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield prior to that. Sadly, all three guys I just mentioned in this paragraph were hugely talented musicians, who also developed giant size drug habits that more or less ruined their careers, some just went faster than others.
Here's Buddy from likely his best known solo album, one of at least 40 or so he's appeared on, it was the title track called Them Changes...
Buddy played this classic song at one of his last public performances, as a guest onstage with the New Orleans Social Club, at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Sept. 2006.
Here's a sorta superfluous, but none the less excellent quality 1994 recording produced by Bill Laswell of Buddy revisiting past glory, and his vocals are in great shape. The album released on Ryko was entitled Hell and Back.
I had a friend who worked at a pawn shop in Marin back in the late 80's and many of the 60's rock royalty living nearby were faded but still pretty strung out. They were often found hocking jewelry, instruments & guns for fixes on a regular basis at this spot. I hate to report that Buddy Miles, who'd been in & out of jail on drug charges throughout the late 70's & early 80's, was now a regular habitue, alongside David Crosby, and many others including the lonely gal pal of one Jerry Garcia.
One of Buddy's his biggest post-Hendrix gigs would be as vocalist for the California Raisins.
By the early 2000's Buddy had reportedly put his substance issues behind him, and was attempting to keep up a live concert schedule, despite having a serious back problem, and had been appearing at some shows in a wheel chair.
Here's one of Buddy's last known musical recording releases, an effort done in conjunction with bassist Billy Cox approx 35 years after they worked on the same material with Jimi Hendrix in the band of Gypsies.
Wacky Wednesday has almost passed, and Thirsty Thursday's almost here...
So I'm gonna keep it really random as usual, so I can make it out to get a drinkee...
Across the street there's currently a panel going on with minority lawyers, and down the street there's a town hall meeting starting at our local War Memorial based around the theme "Are Black People In San Francisco Becoming History?"
Over the past 40 years San Francisco has done a remarkable job of shedding members of the African-American persuasion from it's 49 square miles.
In 1970 San Francisco's census reported about 96,000 black folks living in San Francisco, but there's been a steady decline in those numbers, and as we enter the "Year of the Rat", it's estimated there's only around 38,000 black residents left. That's less than arrived here in the 1940's...
For all it's perception as a liberal melting pot, San Francisco has a nasty racist past that's never really completely been erased from the political spheres.
Since the first white settlers arrived, the policies have been somewhat barbaric, and have included hunting indians into extinction (and speeding it up by paying on a per scalp basis).
Asians who arrived to the Pacific coast were quarantined, burned, beaten, deprived of property rights and prevented from marrying for decades. Even while finally earning barely beyond basic rights in the mid 20th century, there's still a report of a lynching on Market St when a Filipino man was caught with a white woman in the 1950's.
As for blacks, San Francisco never really welcomed them in the first place, racism in pre-Civil War San Francisco had even led to an exodus of black settlers to Victoria island off the Canadian coast. Most blacks arrived 80 years later to a racially intolerant city only after a need to fill WWII factories in the early 1940's, and they soon found out they could not join white unions. They were only able to settle into empty housing in 1940's SF because it had once been filled with Japanese citizenry who were conveniently being detained first to racetracks and then onto bleak relocation camps like Manzanar in the middle of nowhere.
After the war, work at the many shipyards & war industries started drying up, and with that so did the hopes of the many southern blacks who'd moved here from Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and other places.
Blacks in San Francisco soon discovered that were not welcome at many workplaces, restaurants, hotels etc and were redlined from obtaining loans and owning homes in most neighborhoods. Just like in Jim Crow states in Dixie, it wasn't until the 1960's that any blacks found employment at major businesses like car dealerships, or SF's famous Palace Hotel who only succumbed after an ugly boycott and picketing.
Here's a song that manages to appropriately depict some of the race issues of the post war era...
When Willie Mays moved out here from New York in 1958 he was amazed to discover he was not allowed to purchase the home he wanted in a tony white neighborhood called Forest Hill, despite being a highly paid well known American hero. It finally took his sneaky jewish lawyer to construct a phony transaction & quiet property transfer to Willie that needed a mayoral intervention, and even then a brick was thrown through the window of his first residence.
At one press conference when Roger Lapham was mayor of San Francisco (1944-48). he came up to a black reporter and asked
"Mr. Fleming, how long do you think these colored people are going to be here?"
Fleming's story was that he said,
"Mr. Mayor, do you know how permanent the Golden Gate is?" He said yes. I said, "Well, the black population is just as permanent. They're here to stay, and the city fathers may as well make up their minds to find housing and employment for them, because they're not going back down South." He turned red in the face. That was the only exchange of words I ever had with him.
By the 1960's, city fathers were angry about the blacks who still remained in the area, and devised a plan to "redevelop" the Fillmore neighborhood in the city's Western Addition. Hundreds of beautiful Victorian homes were slated for demolition, and black businesses were shuttered & given worthless promissory notes that they'd be first to come back if and when the plans were ever finished.
Many blacks moved out to Bay View / Hunters Point where white highway planners had conveniently just built a freeway that bypassed this burgeoning black district.
The area has remained mostly abandoned by the city & government for decades, and after the contaminated Navy Base closed, often the only signs of government existing are occasional squad cars & ambulances passing through.
At one time it was predominantly black, but now a more mixed race population of Asians, White & Latinos dominate, most having swooped up previously black owned properties that are priced somewhat cheaper than in other areas of the city.
So, uh what do do but leave my visitors a mini mix to pacify them while I contemplate the meaning of all this...
I know that Black History month is February and it's almost over already, cuz February is the shortest month. A fact which black folks never seem to forget, go figger.
I can't stand it when people say stupid flat faced ignorant statements like " I Hate The Blues" or "I Hate Country Music"...
If these folks could only understand that most western pop music they adore really is just a rearrangement of the same basic chords & concepts of scales that have been going on for 50 if not 500 years, I doubt they would announce such ridiculous statements.
The blues are the basis for just about everything you hear on rock, pop pr top 40 radio, only that many dorky musicians & bands these days have been so removed from the sources of modern musical material they barely know this.
Many would do well to go back & study...
Although, what good would it do them if audiences don't know the difference either?
It's sad ironic daze indeed when in order for a jazz great like Herbie Hancock to gain attention he has to cover the least black sounding hippie chanteuse to ever shack in Laurel Canyon in order to beat out the blackest sounding junkie white chick in England for a Grammy Award...
Hoo Boy...
Anyhow
Let's get on with a black history month moment with a bit of some African blues for ya'll
Notable, ( and also Grammy winning) African guitarist Ali Farka Toure has a saying that goes, “America only have the blues leaves, the roots of blues are in Africa”.
This fact is corroborated by historians who acknowledge that blues had been introduced in America by the African slaves. The earliest known recordings of this musical style are oft nostalgic melancholic laments of the impoverished and downtrodden. These songs were rooted in expressions of the slaves’ desire for rebellion in North America, originally sung far from the master's quarters, in the cotton fields or in their shanty's after a long, hard day’s work.
Here's the late great Ossie Davis narrating some tales of singing slaves, from a reading of the letters of Frederick Douglass
The modern African blues I am familiar with are a rhythmic world removed from the often less complex slower country blues we hear in the southern US. Here's a singer that embodies the beauteous melodies I associate with African music. Salif Keita, whose been called one of Africa's greatest voices is an albino guitarist from Mali...
I bet if anything might give ya the blues, it could be being mistaken for a white guy in Africa...
Here is a track from a mixed race group out of Cape town South Africa, and basically one of the first African pop groups I had ever heard of...
Juluka, an 80's world beat band fronted by Mr. Johnny Clegg, a white jewish kid who had an interest in Zulu culture & music...
They become a famous & somewhat symbolic band that rode a tide of millions around the globe in the 80's who were rooting for the end of apartheid. This very commercial track is likely their biggest hit, or at at least the most well known internationally...
Long before Johnny Clegg brought African pop stylings to the world, Miriam Makeba & her former husband Hugh Masakela were making music that caught attention of western ears.
Makeba had a big hit with Click Song #1 in the early 60's, and ended up testifying about the bane of apartheid in front of the United Nations in 1963. That act of supposed treason on the world stage cost her citizenship in her home country. It took 40 years for the fall of the apartheid system for her to regain entry into her country.
Here's a remake of that first very vital hit song she did half a century ago, the 70 something singer recut it on her 2004 album Reflections that came out via Telarc...
I am no doubt, a big fan of black American soul music from the 1960's...
There's something so wonderful about the spirited sounds made by guys like Curtis Mayfield, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Little Jerry "swamp dogg" Williams. If I had to make a desrt island disc list, you know it couldn't be without something on the Stax label etc.
Unfortunately the 60's are over, and soul has given way to something radio programmers call "Smooth R&B", but there's nothing in it for me.
R. Kelly and a stretch Hummer load of whining modern chick singers backed up with an army of slick producers can't do with millions & all the studio time in the world what a handful of underpaid southern folks in Detroit, Muscle Shoals or Memphis in the 1960's could do in an hour before lunch.
Since I've already got most of the big hits from that era, I'm always on the lookout for undiscovered gems, b-sides, regional hit records and tunes on little labels that couldn't payola their way onto the Billboard charts.
One of the greatest re-issue labels going these days is Chicago's Numero Group...
These folks ccome up with the goods everytime, finding obscure stuff, often totally unreleased back in the day. Songs that shoulda, coula, woulda if only things had worked out differently.
Their latest vital work in the Eccentric Soul compilation series is called Outskits of Deep City. It was painstakingly compiled with the help of scenester Willie Clarke, and it covers the Miami scene of the late 60's & early 70's. There's some damn good soulful black music on this collection, and I'm gonna give ya just a tease from the set, the lead off track by the obscure group known as The Rollers, and immediately you know these are not the Bay City boys from Scotland...
Going into more contemporary time a bit, no look back into Black History, at least from the American perspective could exclude gangsta rap, and how would that be complete without including the saga of N.W.A...
Straight Outta Compton, these guys blasted through the 80's pablum with material that told of turf wars, beeeotches, ho's and dodging 5-0, all with a crazed non-Politically Correct bravado that could make Public Enemy blush...
And how about one more goofy white chick to finish off this post...
Last up is the latest retro sounding pop blend from a band called "She and Him", the collab where actress Zooey Deschanel plays Amy Winehouse to M.Ward's Mark Ronson...
Or hopefully not...
I get the feeling Ms Deschanel while not as alluring in that nasty way, is also a little better adjusted, having grown up in a Hollywood show biz family...
On her new album she goes gung ho for the classic cutesy Girl Group sound. One can only guess why she chose the mopey M.Ward to be her Phil Spector, but the results ain't bad from what I've been privy too. She even covers Carole King, and that means she knows the Brill Building from her BrylCream and respects the Mid 60's Motown-esque medium folks.
Either way, whether you care about that stuff or not, it's a fairly delightful sounding work.
General Johnson and The Chairmen of The Board have a long history, and the next time I have time I'll lay out a bit more of their legend. Let's say it's one that has the General interacting with everyone from the legendary Allen Toussaint and the ol' Minit Records gang in New Orleans on to Detroit's Holland-Dozier-Holland. Later he works with Honey Cone, and even Joey Ramone, and somehow becomes the classic elder statesman the Carolina Beach Music Scene.
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On this past Friday night I entered the West Hollywood nightlife scene briefly to check out a show at the Mint on West Pico. I was stunned to find a club that actually has a sign proclaiming they charge $75 for someone to videotape inside, but share none of that revenue with the artists being taped... hmmm.
I was considering passing on the opportunity to record the gig for posterity... and just then, oddly enough, while standing by the door, the bouncer alerted me that someone outside was looking for me about some video footage.
They said I had to go outside and sign a release. Huh?
Sure enough I poked my head outside and there was a filmmaker who'd tracked me down, and actually had paperwork for me...Wow!
LA is all business folks... and there's the proof.
And lawyers be damned it looks like an important music documentary I got involved with that's years in the making is heading into theaters finally, and indeed I'll keep y'all posted when i know more.
Anyhow, after that, I was privileged to see a fine upstanding rock concert of sorts, and I'll tell ya more about it...
I had just seen these guys a week before at a sold out show in San Francisco, and now I can testify that the Chuck Prophet and Mission Express touring band is in as fine a shape as can be expected considering he's had some lineup changes since his last album. The band's set only get's tighter as the feel gets looser...
Kevin T. White on bass holds down the bottom end along with drummer Todd Roper ( ex-Cake). New hotshot kid guitarist James DePrato is anything but depraved, and politely plays a supportive role, filling out the sound but never stepping on his master's toes. Chuck's wife Stef shines whenever she's given opportunity, currently it's during an old Gene Pitney cover that was written by Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams back in the Musicor days.
I'll feature a video of this cut soon, I promise y'all... it's truly a long forgotten but amazingly ripping tune... especially when this band builds up the tension.
Despite the fact that Chuck's van was seizing up & very ill in the parking lot, they ignored the pain, pumped up the volume, prevailed and pulled off a fine set. I truly wanted to drive up to Santa Barbara the next day to catch them on a double bill with the retiring country chanteuse Kelly Willis, but there was literally no room at the inn...
I checked dozens of potential motel rooms and nothing was available anywhere near Santa Barbara or even the coastal enclaves of Montecito, or Isla Vista.
It twas a shame, but damn if I'm gonna drive all that way to stay in a motel Carpinteria, Ventura or gawd forbid Santa Maria...yuck...
Anyhow, lucky attendees of Chuck Prophet's past few shows have been able to scoop up a certain collectors item that's in very short supply. It's a ltd edition CD with a phat booklet of which only a few hundred copies are circulating. They are all nicely hand assembled, bound and letter pressed by Bruce Licher of Independent Project Press, and the story of the music is as good as the songs themselves. Seems that last January, Chuck, his wife Stef, his old guitar player Max Butler, and another handful of fine local musicians got trapped in a local recording studio...literally.
No one knew the access code for the door, and no who did was answering the phone all weekend. With only a lone Waylon Jennings LP on a battery operated turntable to entertain them, they soon got a lil' stir crazy.
On the third listen through, someone suggested they simply re-record it themselves, and with nothing but studio time to kill they went ahead. The results are pretty amazing whether you like country music or not, and I'm gonna throw up one sample cut for those who'd like to know more.
The album is called "Dreaming Waylon's Dreams" and is a song by song extrapolation/tribute to Waylon Jennings 1975 masterpiece "Dreaming My Dreams"
( psst since this disc is basically sold out already and yer unlikely to score a physical copy - here's a special link available to download mp3 versions of all the tracks... here)
That would be enough sonic serendipity for ya folks but not on my two fer tuesday...
Here's another rarity...
I wanted to share a mix I whipped up just prior to Xmas...but never got around to sharing with anyone just yet.
Debbie Harry put out a new record late last year called Necessary Evil, and although she was playing in LA while I was there one night, I missed the gig but did get my hands on the 12" vinyl of her latest single while at an ice skating rink ( don't ask).
Anyhow, here's a special mix I made that involves mashing in some Moroder-cized bytes off the "Call Me" single from 1981. I guess you could say that this mini mix is three decades in the making...
It's a late Christmas present to all Debbie's fans, and even my cover art for yer iTunes "cover flow" comes in a vaguely X-messy color scheme.
Here's some more relevant music tracks for this greeting card industry staple holiday...
This next one came from a benefit compilation called Genocide in Sudan, which doesn't sound very romantic...but the hearts of the contributors was certainly in the right place I suppose. It was assembled by the Waxploitation label with help from Serj from System of a Down, and this instrumental probably won't grate much on yer valentine's nerves...maybe.
The compilation I got this track from is almost 4 years old, but like the Genocide in Sudan, is still mostly unheralded, and sadly fresh & relevant. Other contributors included The Pretenders, Jurassic 5, Danger Mouse/Murs, Jill Scott, Mark Farina, Thievery Corporation, Kinky, X-ecutioners, DJ Spooky, Tweaker, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra amongst others. Order the Genocide in Sudan compilation new for less than $12 at this url
This one is also from a compilation called Rhythms Del Mundo: Cuba
It also features a reinterpretation of a certain Coldplay tune featuring members of The Buena Vista Social Club and other Latin musical specialists getting down on modern rawk hits
I had never heard of it, or Maestro Demetrio Muniz who did the arrangements, but when I saw it in the window of a record shop next to my bus stop a couple years back I knew i had to have it. Why it wasn't plopped on the shelf at every frickin' Starbucks is a mystery to me...
Not only does it offer some palatable but not too spicy sonic tapas, it even includes the late Ibrahim Ferrer's last vocal recording done in Madrid of the Casablanca classic "As Time Goes By"
The the booklet is also chock full of info on global warming / climate change from folks like Al Gore etc... and even the mighty Sting is included.
it seems like a perfect match for the greedy yet guilt-free gravitas of corporate cafe culture...
My friend Kelley Stoltz ( he's the one in the picture that's not naked) has just released a doozy of a new disc called Circular Sounds on Sub Pop, and I wanted to feature a tune.
But then I thought, y'all should have no problem finding this in the hipper shops, or online stores, or even some tracks via the usual web sources.
But how many have heard Kelley doing his Lynn Anderson imitation?
Not too many I suppose...
It's a song perfect for a Valentine's day that is more honest than the usual hyperbole...
So for a few days, here's yer chance
It's also keeping with the crazed compilation theme I guess, this is a track from a Joe South tribute record assembled by "teenage" Rob Douglas a few years back. Joes South ( born: Joe Souter 1940, now 68 years young) is a great songwriter of course who penned some other nuggets you might know including Games People Play, Walk A Mile In My Shoes and Down In The Boondocks. Kudos for Rob getting a diverse buncha guys like Otis Clay, Paul Cebar, Chuck Prophet and Kelley all on one disc covering his past glories.
I also thought maybe, you'd all like to perhaps catch Kelley Stoltz on tour.
Especially relevant to those of y'all in Australia currently...
Feb 14 2008 9:00P Great Northern Hotel Byron Bay Australia
Feb 15 2008 9:00P Troubador Brisbane Australia
Feb 16 2008 9:00P Annandale Sydney Australia
Feb 17 2008 8:00P The Tote, melbourne, Victoria , Australia
Feb 28 2008 8:00P independent - noise pop SAN FRANCISCO CA
SPRING US TOUR
Friday, March 14, 2008 Bourbon Rocks, Austin TX (Sub Pop SXSW showcase )
Friday, March 21, 2008 Jake's Nightclub, Bloomington IN
Saturday, March 22, 2008 Mercy Lounge, Nashville TN
Monday, March 24, 2008 Hi-Tone, Memphis TN
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 AR Revolution Music Room, Little Rock AR
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 House of Blues (Dallas), Dallas TX
Thursday, March 27, 2008 Emos, Austin TX
Friday, March 28, 2008 Rudyard's British Pub, Houston TX
Saturday, March 29, 2008 One Eyed Jacks, New Orleans LA
Monday, March 31, 2008 Orange Peel, Asheville NC
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 Bottletree, Birmingham AL
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 The Earl, Atlanta GA
Thursday, April 3, 2008 Local 506, Chapel Hill NC
Friday, April 4, 2008 Sonar, Baltimore MD
Saturday, April 5, 2008 Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington DC
Sunday, April 6, 2008 Maxwells, Hoboken NJ
Tuesday, April 8, 2008 Cafe Nine, New Haven CT
Thursday, April 10, 2008 Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia PA
Friday, April 11, 2008 Bowery Ballroom, The, New York City NY
Saturday, April 12, 2008 Middle East, Cambridge MA
Sunday, April 13, 2008 Cabaret Music Hall, Montreal Canada
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Babylon, Ottowa Canada
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto Canada
Friday, April 18, 2008 Frankie's, Toledo OH
Saturday, April 19, 2008 Blind Pig, Ann Arbor MI
Now that we got that stuff out of the way, there's plenty more stuff going on to keep us distracted ...
My pals who works in the Yahoo music/media group is of course likely sweating bullets... as the search engine under siege lays off a 1000 and enters into talks with Murdoch's minions.
Geez... you know it's gotta be bad when merging with Rupert Murdoch is seen as the lesser evil.
Is Redmond really hell?
I was there earlier last year for a day and it seemed kinda quiet & sleepy to me.
I drank some decent beer, karaoked in two bars...even went to the farmer's market where I scored some fresh salmon & apples...
The day where I'm hoping that Hilary gets her ass kicked all over the Potomac region.
I don't even know what it is about her that irks me so much... I just fall into that pool of 48% of people that ain't down with her at all.
Hilary's negatives are driving her campaign into a corner, and if the Democratic bureaucratic bigwigs, and miscellaneous movers & shakers giving her more money can't sense this... they all deserve to lose, big , hard and hopelessly.
Sadly, they won't be the ones paying the price if the dangerously out of touch Dumb-o-crats stick to their consistently losing formula...it's America's rapidly endangered middle classes that will sting.
The poor and disenfranchised can take it, they've already been in a cloud of potent pain & rear fu*ked so long they'll barely notice anymore. Hell, they had candy coated candidate John Edwards running on their behalf, and like that did either of their causes a bit of good.
It's just bad casting...
John Edwards seems like a voice for the downtrodden as much as Marilyn Manson is ripe for the 700 Club house band.
Having John Edwards advocating on the behalf of the nation's poorest is like having Richie Cunningham running your guerrilla militant motorcycle gang.
Everyone knows it's better when "Charles is in Charge"....
Hell I'd vote for Chachi before I'd vote for Hilary...
Maybe if she had a silly VH-1 reality show I could relate too... Hell Chachi found a girl at 46...maybe Hilary could find an enthusiastic voting public.
They could call it Former First Family, I imagine Bill's at home laying on the couch with indigestion and a hot water bottle on his head from eating too much pizza & grits in Harlem with the interns. The laughs never end as she hustles donors, has her botox shots on camera, forgets to send flowers to Vince Foster's family on his birthday and blows off a Senate strategy session with Charles Schumer for some serious shopping at Wal-Mart. How about some shots of Hilary and Chelsea in the kitchen drinking Frappucinos, gal talkin' & giving each other backrubs...
That's the kinda change I wanna see...
Because a snoozer show like "Charles Schumer in Charge", that could be even worse than hanging in the Clinton's Crib...
that's the sound of America changing the channel...
I wonder if the Obama's might consider doing a show...
At least we could see if they're pulling out any prayer rugs 5 times a day, Barack might help dispel those muslim rumors he's been dodging...
Of course he's home less than a dozen nights a month, likely a lot less these days...
Maybe Barack is more a "Road Rules" kinda dude...
Kinda like Bill Clinton...
They could both probably get down to some NAFTA Canadian rock from Danko Jones
Like I mentioned in lasterday's post, The annual Grammy awards were on CBS last night.
As much as I meant to skip that, the phone rang and a tipster cajoled me to turn it on to see Keely Smith with Kid Rock doing that Old Black Magic.
From then on, I was hooked into the telecast...
Kid & Keely...
It was almost as good as the time Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr rocked the CMA's in 2002...
I uploaded this clip to YouTube awhile back and it's since gotten just shy of 300,000 views, ( plus the comments box gets all stupid ornery redneck vs detroit rock all day...)
Ah, The Grammys... it was like we were old, uh, not quite friends....
I recognized them, they ignored me...
Sitting through the boring Awards backslapping, the tributes & the ads & waiting ever so patiently for the Amy Winehouse satellite freakshow to arrive...
Indeed it did, our curious gal whipping up some frothy, somewhat off kilter interpretations of her own hits...
Aside from Amy's sly snarl, and pathetic pouty pleadings for her incarcerated junkie lover, I also noticed CBS amping up the promotion of it's Last.FM service... Acquired last year for approx $180 million, the money sucking app that tabulates online spins of tunes seemed an odd choice for the media behemoth.
here's my Last.Fm top ten
But the radio industry giant has recently begun rivaling Pandora, Napster & Real's paid Rhapsody services by giving up legal streaming songs in 128 kb mp3 format...
The thing that's most surprising though, is Last.fm is all free for now... with no DJ's or annoying audio adverts inserted into the streaming audio feeds.
The subscriptions of yore seem to be gone, and yer now in a world of music picking & recommendations tailored to your tastes.
Another cool feature is the option of downloading selected tracks from indie acts like this cool dub track
Looks like the most recent returns show Barack Obama with Hilary backed into a corner, and the Clinton's are rearranging the deck chairs...
Tonight is the increasingly irrelevant spectacle of the Grammy awards... As if to prove this, here's actual nominees the Shins doing the "Boy-Band" photo op thing, ...
The awards are not even immune from primary fever, and somehow presidential aspirant Barack Obama was a Grammy winner, again...
It's his second audio book, and his second Grammy award winner...
both of these last two songs songs were from their 2004 release "Sounding A Mosaic", they have a 2007 release called "Street Gospels" but I didn't have any of that handy...
When I have a minute, I've been messing about with some video editing lately...
here's a couple recent vids I've posted on the You Tube fer yer enjoyment...
This one is a mini-doc on my pal Kal...
He's a San Francisco based founder of kinetic pyro performance pranksters The Seemen. Beginning with a clip shot in Austin TX from Richard Linklater's cult classic "Slacker", we enter Kal's offbeat artistic world. Enjoy some interviews and footage from the late 1990's of Kal's SRL inspired interactive fire spewing toys from "Machines for Removing Desires". There's a bit ofan interview with Dana King on "CBS Eye to Eye with Connie Chung", and even an obscure Russian TV show.
I guess the Russian tv show is obscure to me, but some 5 million people saw this when it aired.
You'll basically get a glimpse of the man, his machines and bits of the philosophy behind his performances. Footage includes interviews from his Butchertown live/workspace and The Lab. It runs about 7 minutes I think...
I have a love hate relationship with video editing...
It's oft a tedious, time consuming process, and generally no matter the computer I attempt to muck about with, the processing power can be lacking, and my Adobe software isn't the latest version...but I'll be damned if I'm gonna go dump a few more G's to keep up.
Whenever I do, I get outmoded just as fast...
But I recently came across a little freeware solution, that does some basic stuff for those that would like to make a go of it without spending $4-$5 grand like I did stupidly a few years ago... Here's a little app for cutting up files quickly that was just released
Gotta make this quick tonight, cuz I'm in a hurry to head home to watch Chuck Prophet on the Carson Daly show in a a little bit... more details down below...
While perusing the web tonight, I just discovered a pretty cool free & potentially useful service ...
I was recently looking for a way to fax something via an online service and most all the free services I could find were really weak ad supported crap or some were charging high monthly subscription rates for something I would rarely need...
If only I had known about QiPit... ( pronounced Keep It... get it ? )
cutesy stupid short dot com name but great service for free it seems...
ya can upload a jpg,
or even send a pic directly from your mobile phone,
and they convert it to PDF & will either fax it, or email it for you (or even insert it into your blog)
He's just Jahton Green, likes to party & beat up old people...
I mean really old people , linked to at least 8 attacks on elderly folks...
He recently pummeled the shit out of a 93 year old man and stole his money...
But being as clever as he is, he unwisely decided to use the credit cards of his victims, which finally lead the cops to him after months of similar attacks.
Otherwise he'd still be out there beating up grammas...
Way to go Jahton!!!
The City of Oakland is certainly proud of you... at least you did your crimes in Berkeley. We can all appreciate the subtlety of that.
I'm sure the Dellums administration will write a letter in support of you...
...
promo pic courtesy Berkeley Police Department
music stuff:
------------ American Music Club ----------
They're back...
Hey did Mark Eitzel get hair transplants?
Or is that Vudi holding the big black cock?
Actually I understand that to be the handsome new AMC bassist Sean Hoffman...
and the rest of the dreamy guys appear on the flip of the disc...
Looks kinda like AMC is being repositioned as a boy band...
it's like they stole the Chuck Prophet "You Did" video concept
(as seen below)
and Vudi got the Natalie Wood/Dennis Wilson part
Apparently Danny Pearson & Tim Mooney, now that they are both fathers are out of the touring biz these days...
The revamped band's newest record "The Golden Age", their 9th full length, is out now on Merge in the US & Cooking Vinyl in the rest of the world...
Look for these fellas on tour in Europe right now through late March...
07.02 - Newcastle, UK - The Cluny 08.02 - Glasgow, UK - Oran Mor 09.02 - Nottingham, UK - Rescue Rooms 10.02 - Birmingham, UK - Glee Club 12.02 - Brighton, UK - Concorde 2 13.02 - London, UK - Dingwalls 14.02 - Amsterdam, Holland - Paradiso 15.02 - Brussels, Belgium - Ancienne Belgique 16.02 - Den Bosch, Holland - W 2 17.02 - Groningen, Holland - Vera 18.02 - Koln, Germany - Gebaude 9 20.02 - Gijon, Spain - Acapulco (Casino) 21.02 - Madrid, Spain - Caracol 22.02 - Bilbao, Spain - Kafe Antzokia 23.02 - Barcelona, Spain - Apolo 24.02 - Bielefeld, Germany - Forum 26.02 - Hamburg, Germany - Fabrik 27.02 - Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega 28.02 - Malmo, Sweden - KB 29.02 - Oslo, Norway - John Dee 01.03 - Gothenburg, Sweden - Sticky Fingers 02.03 - Aarhus, Denmark - Voxhall 04.03 - Berlin, Germany - ColumbiaClub 05.03 - Leipzig, Germany - Nato 06.03 - Frankfurt, Germany - Brotfabrik 07.03 - Weinheim, Germany - Cafe Central 08.03 - St. Gallen, Switzerland - Palace 09.03 - Zürich, Switzerland - El Lokal 11.03 - Turin, Italy - Spazio 211 12.03 - München, Germany - Registratur 13.03 - Wien, Austria - WUK 14.03 - Ebensee, Austria - Kino 15.03 - Geislingen, Germany - Ratschenmuhle 16.03 - Diksmuide, Belgium - 4 AD 18.03 - Paris, France - Divan Du Monde 20.03 - Norwich, UK - Arts Centre
They'll be in the US in April & May. If you want to hear the band live, check out the live set A Toast To You, recorded live at the Rex Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA in 2004.
Link to download AMC live tracks below:
Mark & Co usually deliver a passionate set, even if it's done at a tortuously slow drawn out pace. I think that must be part of the appeal for most folks, the sonic equivalent of the pensive hanging chad...with the same disatrous results.
Speaking of live tracks vs studio, not a lot of people know about Chuck Prophet's 2001 live album called Turn The Pigeons Loose, and like rival SF band AMC's latest, it was also released on Cooking Vinyl...
While Chuck churns out effective studio records every couple years, he's also a more than competent live performer...something I'll be affirming this Friday night at Cafe DuNord in SF and again in LA at The Mint on Feb 15th...
I recently dug through my massive & unwieldy live tape collection and unearthed the video from the night he recorded Turn The Pigeons Loose in San Francisco in the summer of 2000.
Here's a video I put together using my footage of the show, and an mp3 of the board recording to augment the shitty sound I normally pick up in the room...
A marriage of brute force multimedia formats ... plus below I included a link so you can download the mp3 tracks from either Amazon or eMusic...
Used copies of these older discs are listed on Amazon for over $100 each, but cost me less than $4 in digital form from eMusic.
I highly recommend the eMusic service as it's got access to wide variety of DRM free mp3 indie music ( 3 million tracks) for a much lower price point than the other legal download sites. With my subscription I get about 40 downloads a month, plus all the various daily freebie downloads they toss in.
Meaning I am getting lotsa music for less than .25 cents a song.
eMusic also has some exclusive tunes, live material etc, like for example Mr. Chuck Prophet has two out of print albums, that as far as I can tell, you can only get in the US through eMusic.
Check out Chuck's live album at eMusic here
This album is also available in digital form at Amazon
Here's that Chuck Prophet You Did clip I mentioned above that AMC cribbed for their new album cover...
or maybe not
Well enuf lo-fi videos
Are you thinking of checking out U2's new 3D concert movie...
If it was good enough for Hannah Montana, why not Bono? here's a little look at the technology that went into producing it...
Anyhow, with Presidential pony race fever still engrossing our delegate distracted country, I thought I'd close with this video below.
It's a video from Stanford's Lawrence Lessig who attempts to justify his campaign donation to Barack Obama in this 20 minute video that explores Obama's character differences vs Hilary Clinton.
Kinda interesting, in a liberal elite academia way...
Did anyone in Tinley Park Ill, regret not going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, instead of getting pinned down in the crossfire at the plus size ?????????
Police investigate the scene of the shooting that killed 4 iat a Lane Bryant store at the Brookside shopping center in Tinley Park, Ill., Saturday, Feb 2 2008.
As much as I love a good strip mall story, not to mention bloody shooting spree...
Interestingly enough, back in October the Illinois State Rifle assoc. focused it's sights on the village of Tinley Park because they were enacting stricter gun control laws.
The pro-gun lobbyists were up in arms at supposed "Enemies of Freedom" that would dare mess up Tinley Park by restricting firearm ownership.
Well, I bet those pro-Gun boys are truly happy today to see freedom for firearms being exercised so damn freely in the local shopping plaza. With no enemies of freedom in sight, the shooter was ale to take out plenty of folks in a powerful display of the American Way, and just drive off.
Is this a great country or what?
Here's a relevant tune that somewhat captures the day's emotion...
It's the earliest Mardi Gras in years down in Louisian this year, and I imagine the wet weather & winter chill is keeping breast displays down to a bare minimum...
But there's still prolly a lot more titty & goodtimes to be had than in the Tinley Park strip mall today...
Here's one of my fave New Orleans artists, doing up a bit of Mardi Gras music for y'all
Here's two more cuts from Ruffins... the first from his album "Live At Vaughans", one of the best selling CD's at the annual jazzfest, It's raucous live sound perfectly captures the ecstatic energetic & casually contagious New Orleanean funk fervor to be found in a Ruffins set.
Kermit Ruffins' spirited jazz trumpet playing and showmanship have seen him compared to the legendary Louis Armstrong, and no trip to the city is complete without a stop in the Bywater at Vaughan's where he generally can be found every Thursday for the past 15 some years.
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some o my recently played tracks
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"Mã"
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Here's one of Buddy's last known musical recording releases, an effort done in conjunction with bassist Billy Cox approx 35 years after they worked on the same material with Jimi Hendrix in the band of Gypsies. 
Buy at 
Buy at 
Buy at 
Here's a remake of that first very vital hit song she did half a century ago, the 70 something singer recut it on her 2004 album Reflections that came out via Telarc...
Their latest vital work in the Eccentric Soul compilation series is called 
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