In your ear - Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau Trio

IN YOUR EAR


Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


Norah Jones
Feels Like Home
Toshiba EMI, 2,427 yen


How do you follow up a debut album that wins eight Grammy awards and sells 5.1 million copies? Do you try to catch lightning in a bottle a second time or move in a different direction to avoid comparisons with the previous platinum standard?

With her sophomore effort, Feels Like Home, Norah Jones has done a bit of both.

All the things that made Come Away With Me a massive hit are here: The same simple, sparse, mid-tempo arrangements, warm jazz-inflected vocals, and relaxed, romantic atmosphere inform every track. While her debut album leaned heavily toward light jazz while giving a nod to folk and country with songs like "Lonestar" and Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart," Feels Like Home plants a foot firmly in the country while still demonstrating jazzy roots.

It's debatable whether an album that includes guest appearances by Dolly Parton and The Band's Levon Helm and Garth Hudson can really be called jazz, but what else can you call a cover of Duke Ellington's "Melancholia" (with lyrics added by Jones to become the 2 a.m. heartache torch song "Don't Miss You At All")?

If we reject such artificial pigeonholing in favor of Louis Armstrong's maxim that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad, Feels Like Home must unequivocally be considered good.

Top-notch guitar work by Adam Levy and Kevin Breit give a rootsy feel to tunes like "Toes" and "In the Morning," with Jones' piano spotlighted on "Carnival Town." Jones and her bandmates have clearly grown more confident as songwriters--of the 14 tracks on the album she had a hand in five and six were written by members of her band. Their compositions hold their own against the aforementioned Ellington adaptation, a catchy cover of Tom Waits' "The Long Way Home," and a country-blues version of Townes Van Zandt's "Be Here To Love Me."

This is truly adult contemporary music--not the tuneless schlock usually associated with the term. It has none of the tawdry, tacky, MTV-driven, image-making fluff and in-your-face attitude normally associated with the latest in pop music. It is tasteful, timeless, modern and mature music by and for grown-ups.

Brad Mehldau Trio
Anything Goes
Warner Music Japan, 2,520 yen


Anything Goes, a collection of straight-ahead instrumental jazz covers by the Brad Mehldau Trio--pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy--offers few surprises and breaks little new ground, but delivers 10 tracks of virtuoso playing by a trio so tightly coordinated they must be reading each others minds.

Mehldau is an outstanding technical player with a fast, fluid Charlie Parker-like ability to play twice as many notes as anyone else while never sounding busy.

The songs are mostly standards like the Cole Porter title track with a few curveballs --Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" and a wonderfully nostalgic version of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years"--thrown in for variety.

Slower ballads such as Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" counterbalance the barely contained exuberance of Thelonius Monk's "Skippy." The angular, outside, bop arrangement of Harold Arlen's "Get Happy" still manages to swing and the Charlie Chaplin chestnut "Smile" is rescued from sentimentality with Grenadier taking the melody line on bass while Mehldau holds down the bottom end with his left hand

Musical ideology
Here's an interesting and thoughtful article from jazz pianist Brad Mehldau on jazz politics and ways of looking at music. See this space in a few days (or the Daily Yomiuri on Thursday) for my review of his latest album.


from Jazz Times Magazine December 2003

Ideology, Burgers and Beer

When I was first living in New York in 1989, a bunch of us musicians used to head over to the Corner Bistro in the West Village after the gig around 2:00 AM for their character-building half-pound burger and draft beer, accompanied to music from one of the best jazz jukeboxes in Manhattan. I think it was the drummer Joe Farnsworth who thought up a ridiculous but irresistible kind of word game that we often played there. The idea was to think of pairs of jazz musicians throughout history with the same first name or last name, pit them against each other, and then pick the greater.

Around the table we would go, taking turns as one person would formulate a pair, and then the rest of us would choose our favorite. Examples would be: Elvin Jones or Joe Jones? Wynton Kelly or Wynton Marsalis? Paul Chambers or Paul Gonsalves? (There was one night when this doubled as a drinking game. The rest of the table had to go bottoms up if someone could think up an adjacent last-name/first name two-gender pair —Shirley Scott or Scott Henderson?) As the night wore on and the dollar-drafts kept flowing, the game usually degenerated into random pairings that spread out into all realms of culture — Greg Brady or Greg Osby? Lonnie Plexico or Lonnie Anderson? Keith Jarrett or Keith Moon? Then it became a typical Gen-X affair, and we got a kick out of yoking the jazz musicians and pop-culture figures together as an end in itself.

The game had a certain purity precisely because of its inanity. How could you choose one person over another in an arbitrary pair like that? It was impossible! Joe was always there to remind us, though, of the simple conditions of the game: “You have to choose one.” Another rule that was almost always enforced: After you make your choice, own it with no apologies or explanations. Likewise, no one else was allowed to comment on your pick any more than a monosyllabic groan or grunt. It was onto the next person immediately. The effect was sublimely ridiculous – a rapid-fire barrage of written-in-stone value judgments against the absurd backdrop of matching first and last names.

The subtext of the game was that making comparative value judgments always smacks a little of the absurd. “Player X is more important in jazz history than Player Y,” is a ‘substantive’ statement, following legal and political commentator Stanley Fish’s gloss on that word. This kind of statement implies that further debate is redundant and worthless, although, alas, not everyone will grasp that implication. A real-world analogous statement is, “Every unborn child should have the right to life.” Fish’s point is that you don’t waste your time trying to argue against this kind of belief or reach a consensus with the person voicing it. If you disagree, your best tactic is to put your own view forward just as unapologetically, and lobby even stronger for its application.

How analogous are political and aesthetic substantive claims? In our game, we were poking fun at the overblown seriousness that surrounds aesthetic judgments. We were being contemptuous of the political tone of these ‘who’s the greatest in the history of jazz’ discussions. Why all the gravity? You’d get someone proclaiming that Wes was the end-all on guitar, everything after him was shite, and these new players today were desecrating the legacy of jazz guitar. It wasn’t so much the statement itself; it was the tone —all the tragic resignation of a Trotskyite who saw his original dream go up in smoke. I mean, we’re not talking serious world affairs that will affect humanity here. It’s just music! Right?

On one particular night, though, we fell into one of those dead-end ‘who’s better’ discussions. Lapsing into grave, weighty tones, we became the butt of our own joke. The pair in question was Sonny Rollins/Sonny Stitt. It was a perfect specimen of the game - apples and oranges, completely useless and ridiculous to pick one over the other. Regardless, the majority of the group went with Rollins, but a few chose Stitt. This was one of the few instances where we broke our no-explanations rule. A long, protracted discussion followed over just what the criterion for everyone’s choice was. My camp maintained that Rollins beat out Stitt. Undoubtedly, he’s one of the greatest improvisers that jazz has ever had. His winning greatness for us, though, was his double attribute: Not only are his improvisations so inspired, but Rollins’ solos often have a compositional logic that compels you to listen in a different manner. He pioneered that approach on the classic ‘Blue Seven’ from ‘Saxophone Colosssus’. There’s an organic way in which the motifs generate themselves out of each other. His opening melody drifts seamlessly into the solo; it’s all one large idea. Rollins wasn’t just blowing an inspired improvisation. He was building an edifice, erecting something that would stay standing through time because of the internal logic holding it together. To cement our argument in favor of Rollins, we dropped the big ‘P’ word: Profound.

The other guys maintained that Stitt was the greater because he was just a player — pure, unadorned great bop. As the discussion went on, it turned out that the whole ‘compositional’ approach, represented by a host of icons including Monk himself, lacked greatness for these guys. My camp was outraged, seething. What the heck did they mean? We had a strange feeling of disorientation, like on a Twilight Zone episode — were they the same musicians we had just been gigging with? Who were they, if they couldn’t get with Monk? Or maybe they were just trying to be provocative.

We quit the name game at that point and got all serious. The binary here was ‘more compositional player’ vs. ‘just a blower’. Example: Monk vs. Bud? Their answer unflinchingly: “Bud.” Note that the word ‘just’ was not pejorative for them. On the contrary, to be just a blower, albeit on an inspired level, was what jazz was all about.

Bird personified that. Those solos on live records like ‘Bird With The Herd’, when he sat in with the Woody Herman Band, or a record like ‘One Night in Washington’, are dangerously, menacingly good. ‘Just blowing’ was what made jazz more punk than any punk rock band could ever be. To be able to blow a solo like Bird — profound, gripping, full of urgency and beautiful mortality — but to do so, like him, with the casual ease of someone standing at a bus stop — well, now that was something that might be called ‘great’.

That ease couldn’t be hindered by compositional elements, because ‘composition’, was, in their line of argument, anathema to jazz. It was everything that Bird was escaping from; it was what made his music so free and joyous. A Bird head like ‘Anthropology’ was something that came more out of his improvisations. It was pasted together almost as an afterthought from the most inspired bits of his solos.

Building too much compositional logic into your solo was a flaw for the Stitt camp — an affectation that got in the way of the flow. It implied pretentiousness and an overly apparent intellectualism that wore thin and didn’t stand the test of repeated listening. Bop was Mecca for the Stitt camp, and Bird was the prophet. Their favorites followed in his footsteps through the hard-bop era: noble, unaffected players who were usually more obscure, like Tina Brooks, Ernie Henry or Bill Hardman.

Monk’s improvisations were informed by his compositions; Bird’s compositions were informed by his improvisations. In that assessment, they couldn’t be more opposite, and lumping Monk in willy-nilly with a ‘be-bop revolution’ is misleading to a point. He has a very different kind of genius than Bird – more a composer’s genius. One might put him in a lineage that includes Duke Ellington.

That would also be limiting, though. Monk, like Sonny Rollins, was also an incredible improviser who soloed with that same ‘waiting at the bus stop’ nonchalant greatness as Bird. His solo on ‘I Mean You’ may refer to the melody of the song, take it apart, and reconstruct it. But that was within the context of an improvisation, one that had the same killer casual profundity of Bird. Monk was certainly not getting caught in the net of his own compositional logic; he was just being a genius.

These guys were stubborn, though, and wouldn’t back down; neither would we. We finally sulkily ‘agreed to disagree’. A distinctly ideological strain had infected the discussion, killing our buzz.

In politics, ideology is dangerous – from 20th Century examples down to the present ‘Washington Consensus’. Ideology pastes what appears to be a thought-out argument onto a substantive claim that is more animalistic than logical in nature: “Because of facts A, B, and C, we should all band together in a tribe and demonize those other people.” Ideology uses logic selectively, in a sneaky, backhanded manner. Its aim is that we actually suspend our sense of logic and, with it, our moral radar. Then we’ll be in mute complicity with what’s to come.

Musical ideology is similar in that it asks us to suspend our aesthetic judgments and acquiesce to its claims. It collects facts and interprets them broadly in the same manner: “You cannot dig this music as much as that music because…” Why do we often identify practitioners of jazz ideology as conservative? It’s because of the parental, Old Testament ring to their utterances. Those utterances are analogous to the quasi-religious words of the Bush administration, spoken to us as if we are children who still believe in Santa Claus. Because of the specious, ideological tone, though, we cannot trust this parent and do not look up to it. We don’t like being told what to enjoy musically anymore than we like being told what constitutes being patriotic.

There’s another kind of musical ideology, though, that’s more self-imposed and private. I can identify it in myself, although it’s hidden under a veneer of it’s-all-goodism. I think many of us carry around some kind of ideology about jazz to varying degrees, because its marginalized status in American music stokes our partisan fury that much more. (See: Ken Burns documentary.) This kind of ideology bothers me because it’s intractable. It hasn’t been imposed on me by some outside authority; it’s my own personal dogma. Is it perhaps steering my whole aesthetic sense covertly, calling the shots from behind a curtain in the shadows of my Id?

For instance: Is my lack of enjoyment of most of what’s called pop music these days simply because it sucks, or is it because I’m unwittingly locked in the grips of a musical elitist ideology? Maybe I’m missing something vital; maybe I’ve become the proverbial old fart! Where does the ideological baggage stop and the real pleasure begin? Is there a hard line between the two, or are they all mixed up in each other? Perhaps they’re not entirely severable.

I have music that I love, and ideology is a weapon that I might use to defend and argue my love, which is tempting but absurd. After all, how do you defend a gut level emotion? What’s more, why would you? Kierkegaard writes wisely, “To defend something is to disparage it.” It’s the mantra of the high road. If you love something, you should be all quiet and spiritual about it, not needing to justify it, right? Wrong! How could we survive without the bitchy, bickering fun of polemics?

Maybe we get defensive over our various musical loves because they define who we are. Love is exclusionary. You can’t love everything, all the time. That goes for a critic or layman, and also for musicians. When you build your identity as a player, you do so in part by excluding a bunch of other identities, at least temporarily. That process of exclusion is determined by the gut, not the intellect. It’s tied up in the murky morass of subjectivity – early musical and non-musical experiences, innate personality traits, etc…

We laid that process of exclusion bare as we played the name-game. The arbitrary humor of the game was a salve, a way of keeping our own self-irony lest we lapse into ideology like we did that one night. At the end of the day, we all dug Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins both. It was a name pair that just shouldn’t have been uttered in the first place.

Whatever the case, I’ve discovered something great about listening to music and playing it. You may necessarily exclude great chunks of music in the process of building up your aesthetic. You can always surprise yourself later on, though, when music that you weren’t initially ready for reveals itself to you in all its beauty.

If only our government would surprise itself and us in the same way. At its present course, it is opting for the exclusionary course, guarding its belief with a desperate, violent love, full of folly. It is truly disparaging the thing it defends.

© Brad Mehldau, September, 2003

Hey Mr. Daley has his own very slick looking site -?@see his blog at http://www.mikedaley.net/blog.htm
I'm still working on adding a proper permanent link and putting him back up on the roster

In Your Ear -Ani DiFranco, Asylum Street Spankers

In Your Ear






Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


ANI DIFRANCO


Educated Guess


Victor, 2,400 yen

The Little Punk Folkie That Did is back. After a decade of making albums with a backing band and producer, Ani DiFranco holed up alone in a New Orleans shotgun shack with an eight-track recorder and emerged with Educated Guess, a 14-track one-woman effort for which she did everything but personally stuff liner notes into CD cases.

Educated Guess marks a return to DiFranco's roots as a solo performer armed only with her acoustic guitar, her taut, airy, potent voice and lots of attitude, but also shows far a greater degree of musical and social sophistication and maturity than early albums.

The anger, militant feminism and strident liberalism of the early years is still there, but the bull in the china shop has become a matador, cloaking the sharpest lyrical steel in a velvet cape. She's still in your face, but you can never be sure whether it's to plant a kiss or an uppercut until the lyrical jolt has been delivered. Songs such as "Origami" and "Animal" demonstrate that DiFranco has not mellowed with age, she's just gotten craftier.

The layered, ringing guitar on Educated Guess shows off some impressive technique and compositional chops. DiFranco may not be the fastest or fanciest on the fretboard, but she is certainly one of the most original.

On first listening, the high-pitched chirps, wails and echoes of the backing vocals DiFranco has laid down seem superfluous, distracting and at times even grating, but repeated listenings show them to be the key to the deeper inner funkiness of "Bliss Like This" and an appropriate accent to the minor key mournfulness of "Bodily" and "You Each Time."

Three tracks are poetry recitations with accompanying soundscapes, ranging from the short personal "Platforms" to the longer sly broadside of "Grand Canyon."

DiFranco's all-too-brief tour of Japan--one show each in Tokyo and Osaka early next month--is not to be missed.


The Asylum Street Spankers


Mercurial


Buffalo Records, 2,099 yen

Hot on the heels of the release of their concert DVD Sideshow Fez late last year, the acoustic daredevils of The Asylum Street Spankers are back with Mercurial, a studio album of covers that have been a staple of their unbelievable live performances.

The band that has audiences on three continents asking "What the hell was that?" serves up smooth old jazz (Ivory Joe Hunter's "Since I Met You Baby") and smoking traditional blues ("Got My Mojo Working") straight up, with a chaser of hard-to-believe covers of The Beastie Boys, The B-52s, Black Flag and Jazz Butcher. Gangsta rap meets the Grand Ole Opry on "Hick Hop" and kitsch meets cool on "Shine on Harvest Moon."

The Spankers are far more than a simple though deeply weird comedy or novelty act. Veteran jazzman Stanley Smith's cool clarinet accents and Nevada Newman's slide guitar solos alone more than establish the Spankers' music credibility. Singer Christina Marrs could make the pope kick a hole in a stained-glass window with her frankly erotic version of Bessie Smith's "Sugar in My Bowl," while the antic efforts of violinist and dobro player Korey Simone and singer, harmonica player and general ringmaster Wammo are best described as acid burlesque.

In the unlikely event that this album alone isn't enough to make you smile, during March, Buffalo Records is giving away copies of a 17-track CD label sampler (including tracks by the Spankers, Hot Club of Cowtown, Ryan Adams and String Cheese Incident among others) with the purchase of any of the roots label's CDs--while supplies last.

Vietnam War hero's platform lacks detail

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America


By John Kerry


Viking, 202 pp, 24.95 dollars


Written as a campaign book by the four-term senator from Massachusetts, A Call to Service is unlikely to win any awards for the quality of its prose. Simply put, this book is a short but dull read that seems to be compiled from fleshed-out campaign speeches. Imagine a 200-page campaign leaflet without any gaudy photos or distracting colors.

While it might be naive to assume that John Kerry's incessant mentions of his Vietnam service have nothing to do with comparing his impressive record (four years of combat duty, one of them commanding a 50-foot river patrol boat, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with combat V and three Purple Hearts) to the somewhat dubious wartime record of his Republican rival, it is clear from reading A Call to Service that Kerry's war service and subsequent time as a leader in the antiwar movement were the defining experiences of his life.

Those hoping to read the nitty-gritty details of Kerry's Vietnam exploits will be disappointed as the author only alludes, albeit often, to his adventures there. Policy wonks seeking a chance to examine the senator's proposals on education, health care, environmental protection, energy, defense and the economy also will come away virtually empty-handed. The second most frequently used phrase in the book--after "When I was in the Navy in Vietnam"--seems to be "While the proposal is too detailed to explain, let me give you the basics."

This is paraphrasing of course, but Kerry seems to start every explanation of his presidential platform by telling the reader that the proposal is very detailed and has been carefully worked out, but that we don't really need to know the details, just what the result will be.

On the surface, the proposals contained in A Call to Service seem reasonably progressive: increased funding for education while ensuring schools remain accountable, a return to legislation and budgeting to provide for the general welfare of the nation as opposed to aiding special interests, tying international trade treaties to human rights and environmental protection, and making the U.S. federal government's employee health insurance system accessible to uninsured citizens. The lack of nuts and bolts details provided is a little frustrating and makes it harder for Kerry to prove such policies are viable.

As mentioned earlier, Kerry constantly alludes to his service in Vietnam, but rarely dwells on it and never attempts to make it the basis for his credibility. It is simply that his service seems to be the crystal through which he views his life since then. Kerry says "when I was in Vietnam" much the way a newly arrived expatriate is apt to start sentences with a phrase like "back home" or a recent graduate might say "when I was in college."

An interesting aspect of the book is the number of times he stresses his personal friendship and good working relationship with former Republican presidential candidate and fellow Vietnam veteran, Arizona Sen. John McCain. The introduction to the book is such a ringing endorsement of McCain that it seems to belong at the front of McCain's Faith of Our Fathers instead of Kerry's campaign manifesto.

Such a lack of real substance is sadly typical of most campaign books, which seek to present an attractive picture of the candidate without providing too much detailed policy for opponents to attack. In this regard the book, like the candidate, is standard Washington issue.





Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun

I've seen the best minds of my generation

(...and most of them are stone drunken hophead freeks!)
Ginsberg is still something to "Howl" about 50 years later

Stories you'll never see in the Daily Yomiuri, --- Part 73

Tokyo Lets Loose Lapdogs of War
Dominated by the U.S., officially pacifist Japan charges into the Iraq quagmire
Stolen from the LA Times
COMMENTARY

By Chalmers Johnson
Japan may have regained its sovereignty in 1952, but the decision to dispatch Japanese troops to Iraq earlier this month has reminded many of its citizens just how little independence the country really has — and just how much control the United States retains.

If British Prime Minister Tony Blair is President Bush's poodle, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is his cocker spaniel.

"We are still occupied by the American military," said an acquaintance of mine who is a former official of Japan's Ministry of Education and now a university president. "We are a satellite. Our foreign policy revolves entirely around the wishes of Washington."

Like many other Japanese, he believes that Koizumi ordered Japan's first military sortie into an active combat zone since World War II because he was too weak to stand up to President Bush.

According to a recent Japan Broadcasting Corp. poll, 51% of the country opposes getting involved in Washington's war against Iraq, while only 42% supports Koizumi's decision. What's more, 82% of those polled said they did not trust the prime minister's explanations for marching into the Iraqi quagmire. Most believe that Koizumi had to go along with Bush or risk damaging the alliance with the U.S.

There's no question that the U.S. takes Japan for granted. The Bush administration likes to boast about how successful the U.S. Army was in democratizing Japan after World War II, and it likes to suggest that it will accomplish the same feat in Iraq. But it fails to note that the U.S. military kept the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa as a Pentagon colony for more than 25 years — until 1972 — and that the U.S. still has 38 military bases on that small island.

Okinawa is home to 1.3 million Japanese citizens who since 1945 have repeatedly had to bear the burdens of violent crimes by American soldiers, continuous environmental and noise pollution, hit-and-run accidents, bar brawls and behavior that would never be tolerated in the U.S. or the mainland of Japan.

The Washington official charged with keeping Japan in the U.S. orbit is Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. His name probably appears in the Japanese press more frequently than any other U.S. government figure. Armitage has been hammering Koizumi for more than a year "not to miss the boat" this time, referring to Japan's failure to support the United States militarily in the 1991 war against Iraq. (He has apparently forgotten that Tokyo bankrolled operations to the tune of $13 billion.)

After his reelection as prime minister in September, Koizumi railroaded a vote through the Japanese Parliament endorsing the dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq, even though he acknowledged that this was probably a violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.

Article 9, a key part of Japan's post-World War II constitution, prohibits Japan from using force in the conduct of its foreign relations. Koizumi tried to get around this by endorsing future efforts to amend the constitution and by claiming that the Japanese army would undertake "only humanitarian and reconstruction work" in Iraq.

But this is hardly a risk-free operation — militarily or politically. Domestic critics charge that sending the troops before amending the constitution suggests that Japan does not believe in the rule of law. Two former secretaries-general of Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, Koichi Kato and Makoto Koga, and the party's former policy chief, Shizuka Kamei, declined to vote for the troop deployment.

The first of about 1,000 Japanese troops arrived Feb. 8 in Samawah, 168 miles south of Baghdad. Four days later, they came under mortar attack. They've also been threatened by Al Qaeda for joining the U.S.-led coalition — and given that Al Qaeda delivered painful blows to the Turks in Istanbul after issuing similar warnings, Japan should be braced for military and civilian casualties.

Perhaps even more serious for the Japanese, Samawah was hit by U.S. depleted-uranium ammunition in both 1991 and 2003. A Japanese journalist, Mamoru Toyoda, equipped with a Geiger counter found radiation levels in the town 300 times greater than normal. The Dutch troops also based there have refused to remove or go near any of the radioactive debris in the area. Death and disability because of radiation sickness is a particular horror for all Japanese after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The British and Australian governments ignored their populations to join Bush's might-makes-right adventure, when they could have stood aside like France and Germany. It is too bad that Japan has now done the same thing, permanently destroying the idealism behind its antiwar constitution.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan Books, 2004).

Keep an eye out while you read this - 'the man' is watching


A nice pair of articles from Salon.com - if you aren't a member you should be. Great articles and comics and some good political columnists. And everytime you give them money, Rush Limbaugh dies a little inside.
These article deal with the White House's assault on civil liberties under the guise of the war on terror - which is rapidly becoming the war on anyone who disagrees with Karl Rove.

Part one http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/index.html
and part two
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/12/dissent_two/index.html


Obviously, the U.S. is trying to invade Canada via terrorist infiltration, that or this woman is too dumb to be allowed out of the trailer park. Tell me that the wife of a Canadian soldier who made the same kind of mistake going into the U.S. wouldn't have gotten a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.
Grenade found in car closes border

This one from the Associated Press really tell you that something is going serious Orwell when you can get arrested and convicted for planning to protest. Thoughtcrime anyone?

Five convicted of violating city ordinance

02/17/2004

Associated Press


Five peace activists arrested last year en route to a demonstration outside President Bush's ranch were convicted Monday of violating the city's protest ordinance.

A jury deliberated about 90 minutes before returning the guilty verdicts for the five on the Class C misdemeanor of violating Crawford's parade and procession ordinance.

"It's an overall picture of the complacency of our nation and how the president has this sort of no-protest zone around him at all times," Amanda Jack, 23, of Austin, one of the defendants, said in a story in Tuesday's Waco Tribune-Herald. "It's completely absurd that you can't even get near the peoples' president. You can't even petition your own government representative."

The Crawford ordinance required 15 days' notice and $25 before the chief of police could issue a permit to protest within the city. The rule has since changed to allow for a seven-day notice.

The five, who were given fines ranging from $200 to $500, plan to appeal.

Tricia Major, who was the first of the five arrested, wasn't surprised by the verdict.

"I think that we had a jury of people who live in a small town, so they're going to have to face their neighbors and their public officials and their law enforcement personnel every day," said Major, 43, of Dallas. "We're not the most popular people in this town, and it would take an enormous amount of courage to bring back an innocent verdict."

The attorney for the five said they were not demonstrating at the time of their arrests. They were stopped by a police blockade in May and some had gotten out of their cars to try to negotiate with the officers, according to testimony. Trip organizer Lisa Fithian had testified that some took out their protest signs to show them to the officers.

Tidmore testified that a person wearing political buttons without a permit could violate a city ordinance that requires prior notice before a protest or parade.

Dylan knocking on Paramount's door

Paramount Pictures has reached agreement with Killer Films and Wells Prods. to produce a film about the life of Bob Dylan.

The project, tentatively titled "I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan," is being scripted by writer-director Todd Haynes. Music rights to the production will remain the property of Dylan.

Specifics on the movie are sketchy, in an interview Killer principal Christine Vachon said, "The film is going be inspired by Dylan's music and his ability to re-create and re-imagine himself time and time again."

The film will have seven characters standing in for different aspects of Dylan at different points in his career, intercut with different historical moments in America. "And," Haynes adds, "it's about the history of the left."

Martin Scorsese, the executive producer of The Blues series, announced last year that he was planning to direct a documentary about Dylan and the influence of Dylan's early music on the cultural and political landscape of American and the world.

That project is being financed by Guy East and Nigel Sinclair's Spitfire Pictures, along with Thirteen/WNET New York and BBC Television.


Calling all Dylanologists! (This means you Senor Daley)
What are the seven stages of Dylan? Are they chronological (Folkie, Protest Singer, Poet, Rocker, Post Motorcycle Crash country boy,?@70's Rock God, Born-Again Christian, Reformed songsmith and travelling song and dance man?) Album based? Character based? Post your theories here!

The great rock & roll swindle

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


Never Mind the Pollacks


By Neal Pollack


Harper Collins,


259 pp, 23.95 dollars


Fresh from the satirical triumph of his first book The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, "America's Greatest Living Writer" Neal Pollack has set his sights on rock 'n' roll and the molehills-into-mountains pretentiousness of rock journalism.

As in Anthology, the author put himself at the center of the action. As a character, Neal Pollack is the bastard son of rock critic Lester Bangs and Forrest Gump and God's gift to music journalism.

He towers above the kingdom of rock criticism, which is clearly more important than the mere music itself, like an Ozzy-mandias. Women lust after him, men want to be him and there is no cough syrup so narcotic-laden that he won't quaff it with abandon.

Pollack's rock 'n' roll novel opens with august rock journalist Paul St. Pierre receiving the news of Pollack's death.

"He was, in many ways, the living, breathing essence of America's music, its dark Baudelaire Rimbaud genius, its Celine, its Brecht, the long crawl from the swamps of Louisiana to the halls of Dadaism and back again, writing with prejudice, but without mercy. At least I hadn't heard it first from Kurt Loder."

In a metafictive effort to chronicle Pollack the critic's life, St. Pierre traces the history of rock 'n' roll and Pollack's effect on it.

Not surprisingly St. Pierre discovers Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Bruce Springsteen, the Sex Pistols, and Kurt Cobain owe their careers to the influential and highly intoxicated critic, who in turn owes his staggering insight into popular music to his mentor, the shadowy bluesman and inventor of funk and hip-hop Clambone Jefferson.

The young Norbert Pollackovitz first hears Jefferson singing the blues on the streets of Chicago and again after moving to Memphis, Tenn., where he writes a song for next door neighbor Elvis Presley's first recording session at Sun Studios.

A few months after running over and killing young Norbert's authoritarian anti-music father, Elvis renames him Neal Pollack while performing at the young boy critic's 1954 bar mitzvah.

As the novel whizzes along we see Pollack stealing Joan Baez from the arms of Bob Dylan; Pollack introducing Lou Reed to heroin and Andy Warhol; Pollack turning suburban teenager James Osterberg into the force of nature that is Iggy Pop; Pollack seducing Patti Smith; Pollack working as an amnesiac roadie for Bruce Springsteen; Pollack as Smoky, the fifth Ramone; Pollack starting the Sex Pistols; Pollack educating the Minutemen; Pollack adopting a teenaged Kurt Cobain and introducing him to an unnamed-for-legal reasons soon to be widowed future wife; and especially Pollack stealing no fewer than three of St. Pierre's wives.

The history of U.S. rock music is all about Pollack and what he learns from the occasionally surfacing Clambone Jefferson.

While Pollack's constantly self-referential fantasy life can be a bit wearing at times, the writing is smart, funny and sharp edged as he punctures the high-falutin' pompous pseudointellectual pronouncements of rock writers.

The highlight of Never Mind the Pollacks has to be the Rutles-like song-genre parodies that Pollack manages to work in. The Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" becomes "My Vein." Bob Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol" get mixed together into "The Ballad of Emmett O'Donnell."

Pollack's Bruce Springsteen pastiche "Jenny in the Car, 1972" manages to work blue jeans, America, closed factories, New Jersey, highways, sex, the Bible and highways into a three verse song.

His punk/funk send up of the Minutemen ("How can you have a girl when there's a war in Nicaragua? Who's your president, Ronald Reagan or Che Guevara?) could almost pass for the real thing.

Some would argue that Pollack is a one-trick pony, only able to do self-aggrandizing satirical hatchet jobs on the careers of his betters.

That remains to be seen, but by his flamethrower barbecuing of sacred cows, he raises the vital question of whether such people should be considered anyone's betters.

Rock critics such as Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus who seek to elevate rock music to some sort of philosophical, metaphysical analysis of Western culture should beware.

After all, it's only rock 'n' roll and Neal Pollack likes it

An excellent, well sourced list of the real
State of the Union in the USA from the Independent in the UK

Dark horse candidate offers prayer for peace

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

A Prayer for America

By Dennis Kucinich

Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books

141 pp, 11.95 dollars


Among the recent crop of books written by, for or about candidates in this November's U.S. presidential election. Dennis Kucinich's A Prayer for America stands out for many of the same reasons that distinguish the dark horse Democratic candidate from his rivals.

Campaign books are usually penned to illuminate the political platform or personal background of a declared candidate, but in Kucinich's case the speech from which the book takes its name came first, and it provided the impetus for his campaign.

A Prayer for America is the title of a speech Kucinich, a U.S. congressman from Ohio, delivered to the Southern California chapter of Americans for Democratic Action in February 2002. His remarks electrified not only his partisan audience, but the American left in general, prompting writer Studs Terkel to urge him to run for the White House in a magazine article.

Born into a large and impoverished blue-collar family, Kucinich is a lifelong labor and social justice activist. He became mayor of his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1977 at the age of 31 following an election fought largely on the issue of privatization of a city-owned utility. While his refusal to sell the taxpayer owned MUNY Light nearly bankrupted the city government and got him turned out of office, a dozen years later the municipal council lauded him for his "courage and foresight" in refusing to sell.

Perhaps fittingly, the diminutive Kucinich's 141-page book is much shorter than most of the other campaign books.

It is not a biography, a policy paper or a campaign polemic, but a collection of speeches given mainly in 2002 and 2003, including the aforementioned speech that prompted his bid for the presidency. Unlike numerous other campaign books it is not ghostwritten or informed by a group of political advisers. Like most of his campaign appearances and past political activity, A Prayer for America is pure, unvarnished Kucinich. As with most political speeches of recent vintage, it is long on stirring rhetorical statements, applause lines and pie in the sky, but very short on nuts-and-bolts policy or practicality.

"I tell you there is another America out there. It is ready to be called forward. It is the America of the flag full of stars. It is the America which is in our hearts and we can make it the heart of the world," says Kucinich. Doubtless it makes stirring oratory, but on the printed page such lofty passages fall flat.

This reliance on abstract rhetoric and feel-good New Age mumbo jumbo ("Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends, to return to spirit.") robs the title speech's more worldly rebuttal to the present U.S. regime of much of its power.

A more reasoned, analytical approach to explaining some of Kucinich's progressive proposals--such as his idea for a cabinet-level peace department and his opposition to the war in Iraq--would have better served both the candidate and readers

"Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people
who can't talk, for people who can't read," - Frank Zappa

The Prayer
By Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! —then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!
With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation —"God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne—bearing a message from Almighty God!"
The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention.
"He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import—that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two—one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this—keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer—the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words.
Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory—must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
"We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
(After a pause)
"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said."
[Written during the America's miliary campaign against the Philippines (1899-1902), which left 4,600 Americans and 272,000 Filipinos dead.]

From the Anglican Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, those fine folks in the Sault who brought you the ban on Monty Python's life of Brian and Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage, , come a man so goofy even the Anglican church had to disown him.

Its.....Elvis Priestly

First anniversary for 'Elvis Priestly' church Last Updated Sun, 11 Jan 2004 21:57:32
NEWMARKET, ONT. - An Anglican priest who hopes to save souls with Elvis Presley's music celebrated the one-year anniversary of his breakaway church on the weekend.


Rev. Dorian Baxter

Rev. Dorian Baxter, known to followers as Elvis Priestly, had a falling out with his Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., diocese for imitating his idol during services.

When it demoted him to "priest-on-leave" and banned him from the pulpit, Baxter, 53, set up his own church in a legion hall in Newmarket, north of Toronto.

Ever since, he's been sporting long sideburns and crooning Elvis-style hymns, often on bended knee, to about 100 regulars every week.

Rev. Baxter performs his own version of the King of Rock's classic, Blue Suede Shoes: "Well it's one for the Father, two for the Son, three for the Holy Spirit and your life has just begun. Well you can do anything, but don't turn Jesus away."

He also uses the late singer's trademark line: "Thank-you, thank-you very much."

At least one bishop with the Anglican Church of Canada believed mixing Anglican worship with the gospel according to Elvis was inappropriate.

"He felt that Elvis was an evil influence and did not want his name even mentioned," said Baxter. "Most of my success in leading people to the Lord was in using Elvis as gospel music."

Baxter recently told a U.S. newspaper that he has gained legal non-profit status for his church.

Thank yuh, Thank yuhvermush

Absolutely chilling, and you needn't be a conspiracy monger to think the fix may already be in for 2004.
this article is just plain scary

there is nothing like reasonable, informed, logical political debate. Unfortunately in there doesn't seem to be much of that coming from the right in the USA at the moment. Take a look at the latest anti-Dean spot from the "Club for Growth"

Here's the script:

Male, physically imposing but clean-cut looking husband with wife walking from barber shop.
Announcer off-screen: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HOWARD DEAN’S PLANS TO RAISE TAXES ON FAMILIES BY NINETEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR?

Husband turns to answer with mildly annoyed expression.
Husband: WHAT DO I THINK?
WELL, I THINK HOWARD DEAN SHOULD TAKE HIS TAX HIKING, GOVERNMENT-EXPANDING, LATTE-DRINKING, SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, NEW YORK TIMES-READING . . .
Wife takes over in mid-sentence.
Wife: . . . BODY PIERCING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING, LEFT-WING FREAK SHOW BACK TO VERMONT, WHERE IT BELONGS.

Husband cocks his head.
Husband: GOT IT?

Flash effect to transition out of shot of couple, replaced by words on a screen.

“Say NO to Howard Dean’s GIANT TAX Increase.”

“PAID FOR BY THE CLUB FOR GROWTH PAC
NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.
www.clubforgrowth.org”
Announcer: CLUB FOR GROWTH PAC IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF THIS ADVERTISING




Salon.com's Joe Conason had this to say about the absurd attack ad, which shed a bit more light on just who pulls which strings in US politics
(start quote)
"According to club president Stephen Moore, this stream of invective describes "cultural elites across America who are the ones behind Dean," who are so unlike the "middle-class families with Middle America values, as in Iowa, [who] are going to be very turned off by Dean's economic program."

Moore and his club of corporate Republicans have a long history of stirring up Midwestern rubes with demagogic advertising, but this ad's script achieves new heights of hypocrisy. "Hollywood-loving?" Not long ago, Moore declared himself "honored" to accept an advisory position in the new administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor not known for his adherence to "Middle America values."
That's only the first layer of phoniness in Moore's attack. There is in fact nothing "middle-class" or "Middle American" about the Club for Growth, an outfit financed and operated by such wealthy ideologues as Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes, Richard Gilder and Lawrence Kudlow.

Rhodes spent nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs. Gilder has been a stockbroker since 1954 and operates his own firm. Kudlow, of course, is the genial CNBC host and Wall Street economist (whose style of Savile Row tailoring is rarely seen in the barbershops of middle-class Middle America). All three gentlemen reside in New York City, a place even more akin to Sodom than Burlington, Vt.

And let's not forget Club for Growth co-founder Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, where Moore himself is a senior fellow. What would Iowa's middle-class Middle Americans think of Cato's ongoing advocacy of full drug legalization? How would that couple leaving the barbershop feel about Cato's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, and almost every other exercise of American military power abroad?

Most Middle Americans might regard such hippie-dippie libertarianism just as grimly as body piercing, Volvo driving, latte drinking, and New York Times-reading. They also might not appreciate Cato's gay rights activism, embodied by executive vice president David Boaz. (Indeed, most of Middle America would probably be shocked by Boaz's views of marriage -- which he believes shouldn't be regulated by government at all.)
(end quote)

You can see the tv spot here:there is nothing like reasonable, informed, logical political debate. Unfortunately in there doesn't seem to be much of that coming from the right in the USA at the moment. Take a look at the latest anti-Dean spot from the "Club for Growth"

Here's the script:

Male, physically imposing but clean-cut looking husband with wife walking from barber shop.
Announcer off-screen: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HOWARD DEAN’S PLANS TO RAISE TAXES ON FAMILIES BY NINETEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR?

Husband turns to answer with mildly annoyed expression.
Husband: WHAT DO I THINK?
WELL, I THINK HOWARD DEAN SHOULD TAKE HIS TAX HIKING, GOVERNMENT-EXPANDING, LATTE-DRINKING, SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, NEW YORK TIMES-READING . . .
Wife takes over in mid-sentence.
Wife: . . . BODY PIERCING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING, LEFT-WING FREAK SHOW BACK TO VERMONT, WHERE IT BELONGS.

Husband cocks his head.
Husband: GOT IT?

Flash effect to transition out of shot of couple, replaced by words on a screen.

“Say NO to Howard Dean’s GIANT TAX Increase.”

“PAID FOR BY THE CLUB FOR GROWTH PAC
NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.
www.clubforgrowth.org”
Announcer: CLUB FOR GROWTH PAC IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF THIS ADVERTISING




Salon.com's Joe Conason had this to say about the absurd attack ad, which shed a bit more light on just who pulls which strings in US politics
(start quote)
"According to club president Stephen Moore, this stream of invective describes "cultural elites across America who are the ones behind Dean," who are so unlike the "middle-class families with Middle America values, as in Iowa, [who] are going to be very turned off by Dean's economic program."

Moore and his club of corporate Republicans have a long history of stirring up Midwestern rubes with demagogic advertising, but this ad's script achieves new heights of hypocrisy. "Hollywood-loving?" Not long ago, Moore declared himself "honored" to accept an advisory position in the new administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor not known for his adherence to "Middle America values."
That's only the first layer of phoniness in Moore's attack. There is in fact nothing "middle-class" or "Middle American" about the Club for Growth, an outfit financed and operated by such wealthy ideologues as Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes, Richard Gilder and Lawrence Kudlow.

Rhodes spent nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs. Gilder has been a stockbroker since 1954 and operates his own firm. Kudlow, of course, is the genial CNBC host and Wall Street economist (whose style of Savile Row tailoring is rarely seen in the barbershops of middle-class Middle America). All three gentlemen reside in New York City, a place even more akin to Sodom than Burlington, Vt.

And let's not forget Club for Growth co-founder Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, where Moore himself is a senior fellow. What would Iowa's middle-class Middle Americans think of Cato's ongoing advocacy of full drug legalization? How would that couple leaving the barbershop feel about Cato's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, and almost every other exercise of American military power abroad?

Most Middle Americans might regard such hippie-dippie libertarianism just as grimly as body piercing, Volvo driving, latte drinking, and New York Times-reading. They also might not appreciate Cato's gay rights activism, embodied by executive vice president David Boaz. (Indeed, most of Middle America would probably be shocked by Boaz's views of marriage -- which he believes shouldn't be regulated by government at all.)
(end quote)

You can see the tv spot here:http://www.clubforgrowth.org/

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

By Mark Twain

Read by Patrick Fraley

Audio Partners

6 CDs, 7.5 hours


The unabridged audiobook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer recently released by Audio Partners Publishing Corp. does exactly what a good audio book should do: It brings the text to life.

Admittedly, it would be tough to make as entertaining a writer as Mark Twain seem dull without doing a complete hatchet job, but voice actor Patrick Fraley makes the classic tale of 19th-century American boyhood gleam like the gem it is.

While Tom Sawyer is the poorer literary predecessor to Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is still more than worthwhile reading and listening. Using tales of Tom's comic mischief and imagination to illustrate the human foibles of conformity, pride, superstition, greed, jealousy and prejudice, the author offers his own ironic comments in a wry manner well captured by the reader.

Fraley, who has put his talents to use in numerous audiobooks, radio programs and cartoons, has clearly studied actor Hal Holbrook's practiced interpretation in cultivating his own. Fraley evokes Twain's Missouri drawl ably, though his take on the various character voices edges on the cartoonish at times, leaving the adult listener wondering if he has picked up something from the juvenile section.

While Tom Sawyer is suitable for children, Twain wrote it more with adults in mind. Fraley manages to capture the dry sarcasm of Twain's observations on human nature without milking it, and his leisurely pacing makes the entire 7-1/2-hour package a relaxing experience eminently recommendable as commuter listening.

--Kevin Wood





Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun

In Your Ear



Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Concert for George

Warner, 3,400 yen (CD)

Whether you view them as long-lost musical gems, heartfelt tributes or crass attempts to turn leftovers into cash, CDs and DVDs hitting the store shelves for Christmas this year prove that phony or not, Beatlemania has not yet bitten the dust.

Of the three items here, Concert for George is the only one to provide anything that approaches new music. A live two CD recording of a tribute concert held on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, the album provides a better musical look at the concert than the film of the same event, which cuts back and forth between rehearsals and performances by concert organizer Eric Clapton, former bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and others.

The first disc features Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, performing and conducting mesmerizing yet impressively energetic Indian music.

The second disc is more conventional rock written by the Quiet Beatle and performed by those who knew and loved him. While it suffers from some of the usual excesses of live tribute concerts, such as Billy Preston's overlong "My Sweet Lord," Concert For George provides a showcase for a terrific songwriter who was too often overshadowed by the Lennon-McCartney hit factory.


THE BEATLES

Let It Be...Naked

Toshiba-EMI, 2,667 yen (CD)

Let It Be...Naked is, in essence, something of a correction. The original album was recorded in 1969, before the lushly layered Abbey Road. The original intention was to rehearse a number of new songs with an eye to performing a live concert and to film the whole process with the concert providing the film's climax. The four lads from Liverpool were unable to settle on where and when the concert would take place, finally compromising on an impromptu gig on the roof of the recording studio.

The film was made and the tapes handed over to hit-making producer Phil "Wall of Sound" Spector, who added strings and choirs to the live recording and even slowed down the tape on "Across the Universe" to turn out a chart-topper.

The 2003 version is stripped of Spector's dross and uses different takes for some songs. Six of the 11 tracks are virtually unchanged, though the sound quality has been drastically improved. There are two good reasons to buy this release: to hear what "The Long and Winding Road" really sounds like now that it has been excavated from the mound of saccharin it was buried under for 30 years; and the inclusion of "Don't Let Me Down" not previously on the album.

The bad news is that the bits of studio chatter and telltale Beatles humor have also been stripped away. In Japan at least, an effort has been made to make up for this with a second disc of between-takes banter. "Fly on the Wall" really is only for the truly obsessive, but it does give a brief first look at a few songs that ended up on later solo albums.


JOHN LENNON

Lennon Legend,

EMI Records, 3,890 yen (DVD)

The latest attempt to stripmine the collective memory of John Lennon for cash, the Lennon Legend DVD, is surprisingly good. A number of previously unseen film clips, such as Lennon's last live performance in 1975, and bits and pieces from the family archives are included along with 20 song videos.

The gut-wrenching video that accompanies "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" will allow you to reclaim the song in all its idealistic glory.

Collectors should also note that a two-DVD set Ed Sullivan Presents The Beatles is also available.





Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun

I didn't even know he was sick

Some people have way way way too much time on their hands

http://uberkinder.5u.com/paul/index.html