"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"
Friday, January 23, 2009
News Flash!
"The Revolution Will Be Streamed" is now available in the United States as an MP3 download at Amazon. Go there and listen at your leisure to samples or tune in to Radio Woodshed starting Monday when I and a few other bloggers will be playing the playing the album in an endless loop all day. It should be available by Feb. 23 on the U.S. and Canadian itunes stores as well.
Come back on Monday and I'll have a whole bunch of information about the artists involved --and the great big virtual release party we're planning in Second Life.
Despite the best efforts of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales to try to weasel around it, waterboarding is torture. Failure to prosecute for torture is itself a war crime. Obama has no choice -- he must order the Justice Department to investigate and charge people where appropriate.
That there is the cover of the MP3 album I have spent the last month putting together. And man, is it suh-weet! 14 tracks of great music and all the money goes to Netroots Nation in Second Life. And I'll send a free copy to whoever is the 50,000 visitor to the blog, which should be sometime today -- if you think it's you, leave an email address in the comments so I can send you your prize.
I'll be putting the album into heavy rotation on Radio Woodshed when it shows up for sale on Amazon.com as an MP3 download soon -- it should be on itunes in Canada and the US in February. In the meantime, here's the liner notes and song list:
As the famous anarchist "Red" Emma Goldman may or may not have said: "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"
There are few things more popular in Second Life than music and dancing. After all, in a virtual universe, we are all young and fit and we can all dance like the genetically cross-bred children of Martha Graham, Fred Astaire, Alvin Ailey, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and Gypsy Rose Lee. But while we dance, we talk, and as often as not, we talk politics.
And you can't dance without music, whether it's the hot salsa of Los Gatos, the sunny folk-funk of Richard Maynard-Langedijk, the brooding, country-flavored power-pop of Calliope's Radio or even the off-beat satirical stylings of Billy Bob Neck -- it's all here.
The proceeds from this album will go to aid Netroots Nation in Second Life in its efforts to support progressive politics through online activism, networking, advocacy and work on behalf of progressives running for elected office. We are grateful to the artists for the donation of the their inspiration, creativity and hard work. And to you, the listener for contributing to this worthy cause.
Special thanks to all the artists who contributed, Gen. J.C. Christian, Jillan McMillan, Jane2 McMahon, Rocky Torok, Michele Migrish, Jackson Street Books, and all the regulars at Cafe Wellstone, the Lonely Yak and the Red Zeppelin.
Check out the website:http://www.nninsl.org/
The Revolution Will Be Streamed
1. So Glad - Richard Maynard-Langedijk
2. My Strange Love - Brian Lillie and the Squirrel Mountain Orchestra
3. Super Evil - Spoon Spatula
4. Arianara - Los Gatos
5. Hank Paulson's Blues - The Black Tie Martini Club
6. Gimme a Job - the Extras
7. Jesus: The Anti-Rap - Billy Bob Neck
8. Endless Night - Richard Ainslie
9. Zumbro Valley - Zathras Afarensis
10. One More (Land of Beginning Again) - Katherine King Segal & Charlie Brown
The rest of you will have to make do with this video of the closing track for the time being, but the album should be available at Amazon within a few days and on itunes next month
The piece lauds Bush for all same things that about 75 percent of the electorate criticism him for; the war in Iraq, the establishment of the national security torture state apparatus, the erosion of the public school system, the baby steps toward banning abortion, the administration's response to the financial catastrophe. It stops short of congratulating him for drowing all those annoying poor people in New Orleans, but maybe that is just part of his "record of unparalleled success that will be increasingly appreciated in the years to come."
Given that the author of this hagiography is none other than Marc Thiessen, Dubya's own speechwriter and former apologist for Jesse Helms, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But most newspapers didn't ask Joesph Goebbles to write Hitler's obituary in 1945 or G. Gordon Liddy to reflect on the legacy of Nixon on the day he slunk from office.
Of all the dumbass, pig-ignorant, petty, moronic, pissy, neocon attempts at revenge, this is one of the most ill-timed. No, I don't think border services called Steverino up at 24 Sussex for marching orders, but I do know that to be denied entry you either have to arouse suspicion in the border guard that inteviews you or have you name on a list somewhere. So either the border guard involved is a FOX-watching nitwit who thought he was doing his job and "teaching those pinkos a lesson" or the someone more senior in the relevant ministry made a completely tone-deaf and idiotic decision, likely in the belief that they were doing their job and "teaching those pinkos a lesson."
"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender"
Pete Seeger was born in 1919 and has been a lifelong political activist. He and Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and Alan Lomax - all friends - pretty much invented American folk music. He was jailed in the 50's over his refusal to testify at the McCarthy Hearings. He put out his first studio album in 12 years a little while ago. Short of digging up Martin Luther King, I can't think of anyone better suited to preside over leading a half a million people in song on the Mall in Washington on the occasion of the inauguration of the first African American President.
Just look at that old rascal grin.
"In the square of the city, in the shadow of a steeple,
by the relief office, I'd see my people,
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
The sign was painted, it said 'Private Property'
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
Nobody living, can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me"
I noticed the HBO version of this was taken down at You'Tude within hours of being posted. Some thoughts on certain copyrights:
"This song is Copyrighted in the U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a durn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." --Woody Guthrie
I know, I know, you read it and you think "Wow, the Onion is really pushing its luck." I wanted to invoke Poe's Law , but I checked it out and it seems to be a actual organization that is run by and caters to people who really need some professional psychiatric help. Seriously, the reeducation camps cannot open soon enough. The somewhat popular diabolical conservative ridicule machine has more
Friday, January 16, 2009
The mind reels while Tom Waits
David over at Jim Dandy Goodness has thrown down the gauntlet, declaring that he does not like Tom Waits. I, therefore, in the spirit of Sam-I-Am, must poke, prod and otherwise annoy him until he gets his mind right.
Sure there's the music,
which continues to get more avant-garde
and the hypnotic and sometimes hyper-strange videos
But really, its the total package: the persona and the performer
and only Waits or Bob Dylan is the kind of subversive genius that would come up with this:
Yeah, yeah I know, "Second Life -- geez, what a geek!" Well, you know what? Me and my cartoon friends have more fun hanging out in virtual space for an afternoon than you do in real life in a month, so just bite me. I get to hang out with Gen. J.C. Christian, Shini, Bookem & Dano Jackson, Deesue, Avedon, and many, many more from all over the world - play music for them, dance with them, plot revolution with them -- all kinds of fun stuff. And we're all young, good looking and thin in SL. And I get to live in a big scarlet dirigible, fly and wear a fez. How's your meat-space weekend looking now, reality slave?
William Devereux Zantzinger, whose six-month sentence in the fatal caning of a black barmaid named Hattie Carroll at a Baltimore charity ball moved Bob Dylan to write a dramatic, almost journalistic song in 1963 that became a classic of modern American folk music, died on Jan. 3. He was 69.
Obviously, the song and the six months he served had a major impact on Zantzinger
In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won. He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail. Information on Mr. Zantzinger’s survivors was unavailable. Though he long refused interviews, he did speak to the author Howard Sounes for his book “Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan” (2001) , telling him of his scorn for Mr. Dylan. “I should have sued him and put him in jail,” he said.
In case you can't be bothered with waiting for it to come up on the playlist on Radio Woodshed, here's the Dylan song with some other primo protest music.
As Dubya slithers from the White House, one vital question remains: Will there be any consequences for him or any of his evil, incompetent cabal of ignorant, blood-fattened henchmen?
The soon-to-be ex-president has asked for some television time to give a farewell address Thursday in which he will do his best to find a silver lining to the hurricane of the last eight years and try to burnish his legacy, using the blood and tears of Iraqi children and American soldiers to polish the turd that has been his presidency. "I've kept you safe" he'll bleat "I've fought the terra!" ignoring the fact that if he'd paid attention his national security briefings in 2001 he might well have really kept America safe and that for the last seven years he's been unable or unwilling to find a six-foot-seven dialysis patient in an area not much bigger than Rhode Island.
Thursday's speech will be all about trying to salvage some sort of credit, and I'm not really interested in listening to that crap. No, what I'm waiting for is the announcement to the press on Sunday or Monday about the pardons. Bush supposedly is generally loathe to pardon people, but I'll give you 10 to 1 that there are blanket, pre-emptive pardons handed out for misdeeds that "may or may not" have been committed in the service of the Bush administration. The only question is who gets one and who doesn't.
As has been pointed out in many places this week, the few decent, competent career civil servants who have survived the last eight years of relentless dimwittery and hyperpoliticization are bound to have amassed container-loads of smoking gun memos documenting the both the petty douchebaggery and massive criminality of the likes of Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Monica Goodling, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, Michael Brown ----oh, the list goes on and on and on. Can Bush afford to leave his people exposed to the possible rigors of justice? Is he confident they won't turn on him? How low on the totem pole will the whitewash brush be applied? Will he pardon the torturers or just their bosses? Or will he throw his underlings to the wolves and scurry off into the sunset with just his inner circle granted immunity?
And if he has the hubris to declare that neither he nor his minions have done anything wrong, will Barack Obama do anything about it?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
What part of 'crazy' didn't they understand the first time?
Andre Thomas is clearly not quite right in the head. How else would you explain the horrific crime that landed him on death row in the first place? As if tearing the hearts out of his estranged wife, and young son and daughter wasn't enough to get him an appointment with a shrink. while in jail awaiting trial he tore out one of his own eyes and started spouting Bible verses.
But since this all happened in Texas, and folks there wouldn't want a little thing like being crazy as a shithouse rat to get in the way of a good execution, Thomas was sent to death row rather than a mental hospital. In fact, he's apparently received little or no psychiatric care whatsoever during the last four years he's been on death row. Until last month that is, when he plucked out and ate his remaining eye.
Life imitates Seinfeld, not that there is anything wrong with that. I wouldn't normally post an entire article like this, but the archives are not always open, and I would want to lose this gem. You think you know the people you work with. You think you know the kind of organization you work for. Surprise!
The funny part about this story is that it appeared in the Japanese media's bastion of conservatism, The Yomiuri Shimbun. I imagine the equivalent would be George Will or Robert Novak enthusing about their favorite pair of stilleto pumps or lace panties and how wearing them made them feel "pretty." Again, not that there's anything wrong with that-- consenting adults, whatever floats your boat and so on. You have to admit, it would certainly raise a few eyebrows to see a columnist at the New York Times or Chicago Tribune, to say nothing of a staid conservative publication such as the National Review, Washington Times or Wall Street Journal not merely publically embracing transvestitism, but giving it a hearty reccommendation.
Killer cops strike again
Police respond to a report of a brawl on a train platform in Oakland on New Years Eve. In the process of rousting a group of young men, the cops take one man, who is telling is friends to settle down, lay him down on his belly, and somewhere along the line shoot him dead.
What is really chilling in this video - and there are several others out there on the internet - is the total lack of reaction by the cops to the gun shot. For the most part, they don't even bat an eye. If the shot was accidental, what was the cop doing with his gun out in the first place? The man who was killed, 22-year-old Oscar Grant, was clearly not resisting. Even if, as some have suggested, the officer, Johannes Mehserle, a two-year veteran of the Bay Area transit police, was reaching for his taser not his gun, what the hell was he doing reaching for a weapon at all?
How long will police officers continue to be given the benefit of the doubt when they assault or even murder people -in front of dozens of witnesses in this case- simply because someone challenges their authority or otherwise annoys them?
Update: This case isn't going to go away. Over 100 arrests were made at this protest-turned-riot Wednesday night in Oakland. Reading the newspaper accounts, it sounds like coverage of the Watts riots.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
On the air -- Now 24/7!
As you can tell from the big thing over there on the right - I am now a radio station, at least on the internet and Second Life anyways. Click the radio picture to listen on your computer. We will not be broadcasting 24/7 just yet, but and I can promise you a couple of things - live broadcasts on Sunday nights from 8 p.m. to past midnight EST/ 5 p.m. to 10 p.m PST and the tunebot that lives in my electronic record collection playing stuff at random over the weekends. Starting NOW!
Update: Thanks to everyone for tuning in on Sunday, sorry about the technical meltdown that occurred at about midnight EST -- apparently someone forgot to put fresh hamsters on the treadmill that powers the servers at Shoutcast. Better luck next time, I guess. Leave comments/requests in the comments if you so desire and keep listening, this will get fixed in time.
Upperdate: thanks to the patience of Mr. PB Recreant of Second Life, the stream is fixed and Radio Woodshed is now a going concern 24/7!!
Friday, January 02, 2009
Every picture tells a story, don't it?
Crappy Rod Stewart tunes aside, check out the best photos of 2008:
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