Yes We Can ( Only Hope Hilary Doesn't Start Crying Again)

Heading into Tuesday here...

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

Danko Jones - Code Of The Road


Speaking of channel changing...


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

Gator Dash featuring Toires - Gator



Or how about this obscure, but certainly worthy Valentine's week nugget from my San Francisco based pal Bone Cootes...

Bone Cootes - No More Flowers


Bone Cootes – No More Flowers

To think, I was already hooked on this site long before the full length legal mp3 tunes showed up...

here's a few random selections more from the middle of the alphabet within the vast unwieldy last.fm free download archives...

Mika - Now I Know How Morrissey Felt (remix)


Mickey Dread - Positive Reality


Okkervill River - Our Life Is Not A Movie Maybe



Check out my own profile and faves at Last.FM at Last.fm/Dvoodoo

Cheers & Beers

Sunday Scrapbook : Political Soundclashes & Video Freeware

Hmmm....

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...

The Audacity of Hope

by Barack Obama

Download all 6 hours and 10 minutes of his ranting by clicking the pic at eMusic







I hear Amy Winehouse, who has 6 nominations, will be appearing via satellite...

and she apparently won something already...





I think I may just skip on over to the Rickshaw Stop here in SF to catch Bedouin Soundclash instead...

I was always partial to this version of "Waiting For My Ruca" on the Sublime tribute album "Look At All The Love That We Found" awhile back...

Bedouin Soundclash - Waiting For My Ruca

Here's a couple more from 'em

They are on a trek through the US this month, so keep yer eyes peeled kids


Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song

Bedouin Soundclash - Gyasi Went Home

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

Free-Video-Dub.htm

anyhow

I've got a lot of stuff to do tonight

see ya

fax-for-free-from-a-cell-phone? and other random revelations

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)

hey... why not try it...

it's free kids



http://www.qipit.com



Other stunning news updates of the day:
-------------------------------------------

Bay Area Green beats up old ladies

Here's a story about a dude arrested in string of attacks on elderly folks in Berkeley CA

Ladies & Gents meet Jahton Green...

He's not yer Nader type of Green either...

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:

American Music Club mp3 downloads

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.

What I'm saying is, The Ramones they are not...

AMC - Live In Pittsburgh

In the meantime, while you await the live show, here's a sample track from their new studio release

American Music Club - I Know That's Not Really You (mp3)



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

Chuck Prophet And The Mission Express Turn The Pigeons Loose

This album is also available in digital form at Amazon

Chuck Prophet - Turn The Pigeons Loose - MP3


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...





see ya'll