You want tragedy? I've got tragedy!!!

In other important news...

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility 4

Anyone ever hear of caveat emptor around here? Hell, I bet those ghetto rats don't even speak Latin!

Bonnie and Linda and Emmylou

Don't look now, but we're going through a small renaissance of women singer/songwriters. And I don't mean Aimee Mann or Shawn Colvin (or--Gawd!--Jewel). Tonight driving home listening to Sirius, and their "Sirius Disorder" channel played a few winners in a row--one from Bonnie Raitt's new album, one from Ronstadt & Emmylou's Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions. Formula ain't that hard: get roots music musician together with Tchad Blake or Mitchell Froom or one of those cool noise guys. But where they seemed to dilute what's greatest about Los Lobos (their instrumental firepower) while broadening their range of styles (hey, these roots rockers do electronica! just like Jeff Tweedy will!) , they seem to do wonders for making slightly weathered roots-based women singers sound newly creative and state-of-the art.

Anyway, I've always loved Bonnie's voice. No matter how bland the backing or the songs were, she sang and play with heart and soul and never ever showed off her chops. Conversely, Linda, who was only too happy to show off her chops, never sounded better than when she was showing off those chops along with Emmy's voice.

I Rite Inglish Reel Gud

From CNN.com Politics ("WITH FREE VIDEO"):

Miller agrees to testifies
After spending 85 days behind bars protecting a confidential source, New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before a federal grand jury Friday after receiving permission from her source to provide evidence to a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name.
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BILL BENNET
Former education secretary under fire for remarks

Time/Warner shareholders must be thrilled at all the money they're saving on copy editors!

Well, I'll be damned...

I guess the tide really is turning. (Linked by Kos, aggregated at Political Wire.)

First Listen: Big Star

In Space (Rykodisk) A perfectly nice pop record that sounds halfway like an Alex Chilton album from the past two decades (lots of goofy R & B and garage rock) and halfway like (pick your favorite Big Star derivative: Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Velvet Crush, Imperial Teen...). Which means that it's a Big Star record in name and half its personnel only--because what made Big Star unique was that they sounded a lot more desperate than perfectly nice while cranking out the indelible hooks. So don't necessarily avoid--but don't be disappointed if what you hear sounds nothing like Radio City and only a little bit like #1 Record.

We Love Great Leader! 20

Dancing and rejoicing in the streets as his loving subjects celebrate the nobility of his bearing and the wisdom of his...hey, wait a minute...!

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility 3

"I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it."

-- Former FEMA Driector Michael Brown, quoted by the AP earlier today at congressional panel where he blamed the poor response to Hurricane Katrina on state and local officials.

So...that must be why he's still on the payroll! (From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

First Listen/More Miles

Miles Davis: The Cellar Door Sessions (1970) (prerelease--Columbia/Legacy) These are the complete sessions used to construct about 2/3 of Live/Evil, the band where Keith Jarrett took over sole electric piano and organ duties, Jack DeJohnette rocked the drum chair, Airto made jungle percussion noises, and Gary Bartz played the voluble, high-end sax parts handled previously by Steve Grossman, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane in earlier Miles Davis bands. There's a great article about this band (along with Miles' other electric bands from the '70s) here.

Like the earlier full-archive The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, this one shows that Teo Macero's edits for Live/Evil tightened up the pieces a lot. At first listen, the complete recordings sound like a Miles live set, with very long, almost ambient stretches (see also: Panagea, Agartha, Dark Magus) interspersed with high-energy rockish vamps played with a lot more harmonic (but not so much more rhythmic) imagination. I'm listening to the side where John McLaughlin sits in, and he sounds a lot more focused in the edited version on Live/Evil.

So let's say Teo did a really great remix, and then Bill Laswell did another one, and the wonder of music like this (from 1970!) is there are so many scattered small genius parts that however you extract, loop, and mix them, you end up with completely different, interesting compositions.

Oh--and Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette play together all the time now in that wonderful trio with Gary Peacock. That's a lot of history!

Markie Goes Clubbing: Carla Bley and the Lost Chords, Jazz Alley, 9/20/05

Last week Scott and I and Barb and Fred saw Carla Bley at Jazz Alley. I'd seen her twice, which is apparently the only two times she's come to Seattle to play (one time in duo with Steve Swallow--about the time they released their first duet record--and once conducting a big band headed up by Jim Knapp (then head of the jass program at Cornish) playing her music. This time she brought a quartet, and it was amazing to hear what a telepathic degree of interplay they developed, even if Billy Drummond drowned things out once in awhile. Later I discover Carla and Steve have been playing with the horn player Andy Shepard for years and the trio actually recorded an album last year called The Lost Chords. Carla's written so many amazing pieces you can pick out any six or seven and have a great, varied, funny, touching set. in her playing (very compositional, subtly directive--this band's got each others' moves down col) and in several of the compositions she seemed to be exploring theme-and-variations (e.g., of "The Star Spangled Banner"--or "Three Blind Mice") pretty deeply. Funny, that's what Beethoven did too.

The Real Tragedy of Katrina 3

Shoot the looters, huh? These brave soldiers will surely be on the job if the bad guys try to escape by water! (Brother Dan does it again...!)

Wayne Shorter--And Miles

I'm reading Footprints: The Life and Music of Wayne Shorter this week. It's a fascinating book because Wayne Shorter is a fascinating man. For one thing, he's a master tenor and soprano saxophone player, and he's written a lot of the most beautiful and original compositions in the jazz book. He's also a devout Buddhist, and his practice has seen him through some big-time (i.e., not self-chemically-induced) tragedies in his life. I've loved his music since I first heard Weather Report (at my art teacher's place in '72) and In a Silent Way (at the house of Billy Jeralds, the guy who hosted practices, cobbled together amps, played guitar and sang). And the new acoustic quartet he's fronted since 2001 put on one of the most thrilling jazz shows I've ever been to a couple of years back.

Tonight I was listening to some of the later, post-Weather Report music he made before the new acoustic quartet between '85 and '96. (Unfortunately, Rhapsody only has the album designed to accompany the biography--which has a lo t of other nice Weather Report music besides.) It's fusion-y, all right, but that's as much a matter of the real smooth L. A. production and Shorter's choice of synthesized over "natural" instruments. Voiced or arranged a little differently, some of those pieces could be Henry Threadgill's--so I'm suspecting there's more there than the rather pleasant but unassuming music that first meets the ear.

Also tonight listening to Panagea as I type. Wow, Pete Cosey is a mad genius guitarist. He and Sonny Fortune really were the spark for this band's tinder. And they burned it down to ashes. Hey--just realized the long slow stuff on Panagea and Agartha is proto-ambient--just like "He Loved Him Madly" on Get Up With It!

The Real Tragedy of Katrina 2

Now that's just plain mean.

Woof! 2

Say--what the heck is it with the Bush Administration and veterinarians?

Great Leader's Faithful Lieutenants Defend the Wisdom of His Rule

Shoot the looters!!!!

Great Leader's Faithful Lieutenants Discuss His Masterful Strategy for Achieving Political Domination

"You've just defeated your opponent, and, you know, you take a 3-iron to the beehive. You go out there and whack the beehive, and you wonder why all these bees are buzzing around your head. And not only do you whack the beehive, but then you don't do anything [more] for two months."

Sen. Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum (R-PA) on President Bush's post-electoral strategy on Social Security

Support Our Troops! 2

Next in line after the millionaires. (Linked by Kos.)

Woof!

Damn women...can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. (Linked by American Prospect Online.)

We Love Great Leader! 19

Well, at least real, true-red-white-and-blue conservatives do--don't they? (Pointed by Kos.)

Well, that would explain the Time/Warner-AOL deal

Free enterprise, promoting the values that we hold most dear.

We Love Great Leader! 18

And our love is fair and balanced.

Christianity vs. Christofascism

How about that--a mainstream media post on Christianity that doesn't fall all over itself to kiss James Dobson's ass.

Weird Website of the Week

Note: you'll need some kind of QuickTime plugin to fully plumb the mystery.

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility 2

Someone else's, that is.

Great Leader's Lieutenants Work Tirelessly To Serve the People, Who Love Them 3

"I don't buy the 'revolving door' argument. This is America. We all have a right to make a living."

- Joseph Allbaugh, former Director of FEMA, current lobbyist for Halliburton, quoted in National Journal, 7/3/04 issue

Great Leader's Lieutenants Work Tirelessly To Serve the People, Who Love Them 2

"Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management. Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

- Joseph Allbaugh, President Bush's first Director of FEMA (and current Halliburton lobbyist), testifying to the U.S. Senate on why the agency needed downsizing, 5/15/01

Annals of Capitalism

Given the exemplary performance of these very ex-CEOs (maybe not the example they intended, but still, we live in the land of free enterpri$e), I'd run, not walk, out the door of any HMO they choose to sink money into.

Great Leader's Lieutenants Work Tirelessly To Serve the People, Who Love Them

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually
a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well."

- Michael Brown, Director of FEMA, 9/1/05

Great Leader also commends his brave and loyal lieutenants:

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

- President George W. Bush, 9/2/05

FEMA--For the Children!

Yo, dog! Git yo izzle out the hizzle! (Linked by Tapped.)

Great Leader Works Tirelessly for His Beloved People

"What didn't go right?"

- President George W. Bush, commenting on his Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, September 6th, 2005

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility

Can't those silly Negroes do anything right???

Annals of Transportation

Hey, at least this one runs on biofuels.

The Real Tragedy of Katrina

What--I'm still going to pay an estate tax??????????

I guess my side agrees (get password from BugMeNot):

The silence of many prominent Democrats reflects their conclusion that the president is on treacherous political ground and that attacking him would permit the White House to dismiss the criticism as partisan politics-as-usual, a senior Democratic aide said.

Frank Rich Tells It Like It Is

Man, this catastrophe brings out the great invective from my side. (Get password from BugMeNot.) My favorite quote:

Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.

The Buck Stops Way Over There

Silly Negroes! they can't do anything right.

Great Leader's Lieutenants Really, Really Care

About all those poor wet Negroes. Maybe we can move them to Texas!

Rant of the Day

Can I get a witness??? Can I get a big Amen???? (Courtesy of Kos via Taegan Goddard.)

We love Great Leader! 17

The great ones need their quiet time.

Great Leader Takes Command

Compassionate conservatism in full bloom.

The Blues

The Blues is happy. I spoke today with a young woman who didn't recognize his name. Which is kind of sad...I guess young people mostly hear old songs by old people like him in movies, or when their folks put on Creedence or Dark Side of the Moon. I think it's important to remember all the joyful music (to cite random examples: Louis Armstrong, Lee Dorsey, the Meters, Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Huey Smith, Professor Longhair, Wynton Marsalis) his hometown has inspired--when you talk about losing a city, it means losing a community of extraordinary musicians with a rich shared tradition of music.

And The Blues is sad. What I loved best about this guy is that he didn't mind mixing it up with crazy East Village boys and beat makers. Primal state-of-the-art styles = something interesting, usually. (See also: Ornette Coleman, J. Hendrix, Lee Perry, James "Blood" Ulmer.)