Political Sig of the Night

"Let's shrink Grover Norquist down to where he can be drowned in the bathtub."

- jazzmaniac on Daily Kos

First Ever Listen: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

This is the shit. I guess you can say they sound like Talking Heads crossed with Modest Mouse, but that says nothing about how beautiful their music is: beautiful like "This Must Be The Place" and "Once in a Lifetime." Wow what a perfect slightly sad autumny day album. (Maybe play back to back with The Magnetic Fields.)

I think liking those bands is what I did instead of liking The Smiths. (I always got Johnny Marr, though.)

Higher Standards

...at least, for shareholders.

Duh Headlines 2

"Fabricated Links?"

- Newsweek Online, 10/26/05

Way to stay right on top of the news!!!

Why Great Leader's Fellow Rulers May Sometimes Fail to Discern the Wisdom of His Rule

"It's hard to sell shit."

- Lawrence Wilkerson, former head of the Marine War College and Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on Condi Rice's difficulties in dealing with foreign governments unaccustomed to the Bush Administration's foreign policy (must watch stupid ad to read full article)

Politix Tonite

This man is God.

No, this one is. (At least his post is godhead!)

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility 6

'Cause he was doing a hell of a job.

A New Culture of Fiscal Responsibility

Republicans: the party that cuts by spending more. Simple, and so much better than that pesky reality!

Great Leader's Party of Compassionate Conservatism 2

Jeez, like that cripple knows from politics!

Tide is Turning? Watch

Well, I'll be damned--Great Leader caved!

Every Great Leader Has Loyal Lieutenants Who Help Him Implement His Noble Visions for His Subjects 2

Yeah, it'd be nice to see whatisname, but you know, I got a lunch date!

Great Leader's Faithful Lieutenants Discuss His Masterful Strategy for Achieving Political Domination 2

From one beloved leader to another--feel the love!

Energy Companies Have Only the Well-Being of the American People At Heart

I love this "we're all in this together" line they're taking. Sorta like wolves and sheep are all in the the Great Cycle of Life together.

Every Great Leader Has A Great Communicator Who Helps Him Spread His Noble Visions for His Subjects

And communicates the Vision truthfully and faithfully.

Every Great Leader Has Loyal Lieutenants Who Help Him Implement His Noble Visions for His Subjects

Collect them all!

http://www.slate.com/id/2127974/?nav=navoa
http://www.slate.com/id/2128535/?nav=navoa
http://www.slate.com/id/2128748/?nav=navoa

Heroine of the Week

If someone on the Seattle Storm did something similar, it might not have been such a big deal. (We're a pretty tolerant bunch up here.) But for someone whose audience/market is Houston, this seems to me a pretty courageous step.

We Love Great Leader! 23

Because he stands up for what he believes in.

Listening: James "Blood" Ulmer

Odyssey (Columbia) Hadn't heard this in a long time and put it on the CD rotation. I'm reminded just what a beautiful, rocking, open-sounding record it is, how amazingly and unselfconsciously Blood transfromed his sharded, bluesy style into something more like dulcimer music played on an electric guitar, while the violin uses wah-wah for texture. People admire Blood's old boss, Ornette Coleman, for his unique, structured-but-unstructured way of composing and improvising with others. But what they love is that his music is playful and direct and very beautiful, and that's the happy lesson Blood and his crew absorb here. Mark's review ****

Duh Headlines 1

Damn right rich people look at poverty differently from poor people. That's like saying veterans think about warfare differently from civilians. In most areas of life, people's opinions are valued in direct proportion to their experience with the subject. I wouldn't go to a plumber for advice on a medical condition or to an auto mechanic for help with a legal problem. So I wonder why people who've more than likely inherited or otherwise lucked into large sums of money (and yes, I count myself among those) feel qualified to comment on people and conditions they know only from the prejudices of their fellow class members?

Oh, wait--I forgot about the American national religion. That's spelled with a capital "$".

Every Great Leader Has A Great Strategist Who Helps Him Implement His Noble Visions for His Subjects

"Rove is routinely described as 'the leading architect of White House political and policy plans.' At the moment, that's like praising Thomas Andrews for his fine work as architect of the Titanic."

- Bruce Reed, "Post-Rovism," Slate, 10/20/05

Actually, a pretty cogent analysis of where Big Karl is steering the GOP's ship onto the shoals.

Hey, Dawg!

Now this is a K9 I can really get behind.

Political Labeling

A really interesting post on why Dems' attempts to move to the center are politically wrong--and how important branding of ideological descriptives like "liberal," "convervative," and "moderate" (vs. the ways political junkies define those terms) is.

We Love Great Leader! 22

When he says, "Jump!" we ask, "Over which cliff?"

Junk Science and Winger Heroes

I suppose our era of political control by "values voters" was bound to result in jokers like Charles Murray getting resurrected again for the "courage" of their "scientific findings." I think this article, which traces the roots of Murray's argument (and alot of citations) to a bunch of eugenicists funded by a foundation run by a proto-Nazi, does a pretty good job of blowing that argument up.

Art is Power

One reason I liked this article was that it reminded me that artists on one fringe caused people on the other (convervative, religious) fringe to freak out long before Karen Finley and Andres Serrano. The other reason is that it tells me that art matters. Maybe not in the way soccer moms and music teachers and enlightened liberals think. But when masters of realpolitik like Dwight Eisenhower recognize art as a weapon in the war against The Dark Side (because it reflects a culture we want to show off: liberal enough that you can even do art this crazy if you want to), you know that's a power.

Very first listen: Kanye West

Kanye West, Late Registration (Roc-a-fella) Man, this really is the shit...!

Listening: Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols, Odditorium or the Warlords of Oz, and it works the same four or five drone-o rock moves from the drone-o rock bag of tricks in skillful and varied enough fashion that you'd almost think Capitol isn't throwing their money away. (They say they're huge in Europe.) Besides the drone-o hooks, I like how sex goddess and new mom Zia McCabe is the most delightfully extraneous bleep and bloop keyboardist since that weird guy in Pere Ubu. (Also the most important tambourinist since Ringo.) And on this one how they figure, what the hell, they make music for druggies so they let the songs jam on in dubwise psychedelic fashion for 7 and 8 minutes at a pop. With a guy that sounds like Miles on a hundred Quaaludes playing trumpet! Mark's review: ***½

Sleater-Kinney

I'll tell you why I love this band. I love this band because it sounds desperate and unhinged and really puts out there how scared everyone is watching all the militarists and Christofascists taking over. And makes it okay to throw all that fear back at them as pure punk rock fury, with your guitars up loud and Corin (next greatest punk rock singer after Poly Styrene) howling at the moon.

Eric Artzt, because he is a man of sensitivity and also the most rock and roll human I know gave me a t-shirt from their last tour for a birthday present. He knows!

God, I read they're curating one day of All Tomorrow's Parties in the UK. Is there any way they could be any cooler?

Pop Culture!

Go ahead, click here and laugh yourselves silly.

Annals of Capitalism 2

Remember, it's all about the shareholders.

Suckas!!!!

We Love Great Leader! 21

Because we know he always tells the truth. (Pointed by Salon/War Room--must watch stupid ad to view.)

Fall movie I gotta see!!!!

"You listen and you feel yourself getting stupider."

Tax Policy (R) Style

Well, about time they came clean about the kinds of "cuts" they plan to make to pay for their little war. Oh, and for those other tax cuts that went 90% to millionaires+. Gotta balance that budget somehow, you know?

Support Our Troops! 3

At least, those who recognize the glory of their mission, reflecting the greater glory of Great Leader.

What conservatives mean by "strict constructionism"

"I wouldn't mind putting a retarded chicken on the Supreme Court if I knew for a fact that that drooling moronfowl would simply vote whatever way Scalia told it to."

- Conservative blog Ace of Spades HQ, quoted in Daou Report on Salon (must view stupid ad to read)

Headlines that make your blood run cold

I guess this is their reward for doing a hell of a job on Katrina.

WWJD 4

Giving a whole new Christian meaning to the term "Focus on the Family."

Annals of Capitalism 2

Love it how the executives who landed the company in Chapter 11 get bonuses while all those greedy line workers are about to have the hammer dropped on them.

Greatest radio on the Web (or the Air)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: WFMU-FM, East Orange, N.J., greatest, most out there radio on the planet.

First Listen: Dave Douglas

Dave Douglas, The Infinite (RCA) Listening to this low-key but involving album, I was reminded of someone, and the reviewer for the All-Music Guide got it: Miles Davis' bands around the time of Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro, when the piano changed to Fender Rhodes more often than not and Tony Williams was still driving the band. Interesting that since Miles' '65-'69 band has been the template (via Wynton Marsalis) for half the young jazz bands in the last 20 years that Douglas would build on another of the many styles Miles tried on and grew out of.

Fact is, I think in terms of bandleading, of a lifetime new ideas one after the other, Miles is up there with Ellington and Strayhorn. Which leads to an interesting dichotomy in jazz: people who seemed to arrive fully formed and basically refined their personal art/sound their whole lives, vs. people who kept on evolving. Former category: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor. Latter category: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock. I'm sure jazzbos can come up with plenty of their own!

Oddball Cinema

Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Greendale (DVD: Sanctuary Record Group, book: Sanctuary Publishing Ltd., CD: Reprise) After listening to this album the first few times, I threw up my hands at how crude and just plain endless it sounded. And this was Crazy Horse without Frank Sampedro, so it didn't even rock that hard. But Sundance Channel was kind enough to show this film a couple of times during September and I'm sure all 164 people who saw Journey Through the Past and certainly the 22 who loved it will love Greendale, as well. The trick with the music is that, like the music for Journey Through the Past, it's a soundtrack, meant to be heard along with a visual track. Viewed that way (with the cast members lip-syncing and, in one case, band-syncing the songs) the album makes perfect sense--repetitions fit the repeated shots, solos delineate actions on the sceen. And though I don't think Steve Soderbergh is fearing for his job yet, I did remember that Neil strips the Horse down to two pieces (plus him) when he wants to make a "significant" statement (cf: Time Fades Away, Tonight's The Night, On The Beach, Eldorado). And that these long, winding, topical songs remind me a lot of the long, winding, topical songs Bob Dylan was writing forty years ago.

Listening: Monk/Coltrane

Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, Live at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note) Just wanted to put in a good word for this wonderful CD, one of the two big archival discoveries (the other being Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker's Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945) this year. I'm probably in the minority, but I've always thought the two studio albums Monk and Coltrane made together sounded tentative. On Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane Coltrane is up to his usual play-every-note-alteration-and-substitution-for-every-chord mode, which suits Monk's music less ideally than a melodist like Sonny Rolllins does. (Which doesn't mean Monk didn't like super-fast, super-harmonic tenor players in his band--cf. Johnny Griffin.) And on Monk's Music, much as I love the ancestor/descendent pair of Coleman Hawkins and Coltrane together, the number of instruments on the date make the ensembles sound looser than I'd like. Live is another story: this band is playing together, Coltrane adapting his sound to the angles and contours of the pieces, all of them swinging their asses off, making for some of the most exciting Monk music I've heard on record. So the word from here is, for heaven's sake, buy!! Mark's review: *****

Common Ground 2

We're not really enemies, even though leaders want us to be to preserve their power. (Must be Salon subscriber or watch stupid ad.)

Why is dancehall...

...despite its obvious cultural baggage (macho, explicitly anti-gay) one of the few fun electronic (or reggae) styles these days? One answer is that a new generation of mixers came along who learned how to harness digital technology for a uniquely sample-based dub style. Another is that hip hop and dancehall (and even--see Gwen Stefani, M.I.A.--pop) have had a powerful cross-fertilization in the past three years. (That's in the rapping as well as the beats and riddims.) (thoughts listening to dublab.)

The Red Whore of Babylon

Brother Dan sent me this one. It's interesting to ask:

• What effect will this have on the religious conservative coalition of conservative Catholics and fundamentalist Christians? (I've often wondered about how reliable the Mormon/fundie alliance, too, given the amount of smack the latter talk about the former.)

• What effect will this have on the growing split between Vatican + very conservative (though I don't think Vatican-recognized?) Mel Gibson-style Catholics on one hand and more progressive Catholics on the other?

A New Culture of Personal Responsibility 5

We want to extend special thanks to those brave civil servants who let Great Leader down...I mean, who continue to keep America safe from bad people with Arabic surnames!

Another virgin bites the dust

But I'm sure she can become "born again." And not a moment too soon--I've been in deep mourning ever since I found out Britney was no model of purity but just another trailer skank.

Update: Did I say "trailer skank"? I meant "trash ho." Sorry for any confusion.

Albanian rap?

Would I kid you about something like that??? (Need something that plays MP3s.)

That'll fake 'em out!

Those Xtians--so sly in their attempts to introduce their beliefs into the science curriculum!

Station ID of the Day

"You're listening to the only station that doesn't make me physically
ill."

- Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, for KEXP-FM

Enjoy those Expeditions and Yukons and Hummers...

...suckas!!!!!!!!!