Last week I interviewed progressive Texas Rep. Rick Noriega. He's running for the U.S. Seante against the absolute worst, rubber-stampingest and most reactionary senator from anywhere, John Cornyn. Tomorrow, Jane and I will be hosting Rick over at FDL at 11am, PT (1 pm in Texas). Come over and meet him; he's really an extraordinary guy-- one of the most outstanding political figures I've ever met in my life.
As a kind of cultural touchstone, John and I asked him to host tonight's CLLN Music Club. He and I immediately bonded because of our shared affinity for Clapton's "Change the World," which I was busy releasing on my label, Reprise, while he was listening to as he was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan. Other songs that Rick considered for tonight were "Let It Be' by the Beatles, "Imagine" by John Lennon, Sting's "Alien in New York" ( "I used this all the time for my background music for my presentations to groups when dealing with immigration," he told us.) He works out to "Everything Is Coming My Way" by Santana and a special love song for his wife, "Yellow Rose of Texas." But tonight's featured song is "Justicia, Tierra y Libertad" by Mana, a song Rick and two of his legislative colleagues, Joe E. Moreno and Jessica Farrar, used to always listen to while driving from Houston to Austin to try to deal with Tom DeLay's shenanigans around the Texas redistricting session.
"While I was in Afghanistan Joe died in an auto accident. I was like losing a best friend and a brother but I was in a combat zone and couldn't get back to bury him. This was the song we shared."
