By the time the 1970's rolled around, a new and experimental phase of Rock that began life as a hybrid between Psychedelia, Classical and Free-form Jazz in the 60's, burst on the scene and took Europe by storm. In the States, it took a while. Shrugged off in the American press as pretentious, sterile and overly-intellectual, the genre had to find its audience by almost by word-of-mouth.

With such bands as Yes, The Nice (in the later 60's) and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, inroads were made that bridged the gap between a skeptical press and an eager audience. But still, the overwhelming majority of bands in the Prog-Rock genre were the exclusive property of "that" side of the Atlantic.

Genesis had been around since the late 1960's. With one early album (From Genesis To Revelation) showing promise, but lacking that winning spark. They eventually signed with Charisma Records, founded by former Manager-turned Label owner Tony Stratton-Smith and their fortunes soon changed. Getting a word of mouth and popularity in England and all over Europe (especially in Italy), they secured a license deal with Dunhill Records in the U.S. - they had made one or two brief tours of the U.S., primarily in the Northeast and, almost unbeknownst to the U.S. record industry, Genesis were gaining a huge popularity. When Charisma struck a label deal with Atlantic, and their maiden album with the new arrangement, Selling England By The Pound was released in 1973, Genesis took the record industry big-wigs completely by surprise and sold out every venue they were booked in during their first cross-country U.S. tour. Word-of-mouth paid off with dividends.

Tonight it's the opening track from that milestone album, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight.

Maybe you remember it - and maybe you've never heard it before.

Pull up a chair and have a listen for the next seven minutes.

h/t Democracy for America's Facebook Page. Open thread below....

Another tune from the way back machine. 1968, The Doors, When The Music's Over.

And dang, our sister site Newstalgia has Siouxsie and the Banshees covering The Beatles' Dear Prudence.

Enjoy..

We've had an unusual spike in gun fatalities here in Peacenik Seattle this spring -- twenty-one since January, compared to only three such deaths at the same time a year ago. Everyone is trying to figure out why. And after yesterday, it's not just a rhetorical question.

Because this one was a real wake-up call:

A man described by his family as "angry toward everything" went on a deadly shooting rampage in Seattle on Wednesday, killing five people and critically wounding another before turning a gun on himself hours later as police closed in.

Ian L. Stawicki, 40, was identified by family and law-enforcement officials as the man who shot five people just before 11 a.m. at Cafe Racer Espresso in the University District — a hangout for a tight community of artists and musicians.

Four of the cafe shooting victims died. A fifth victim was fatally shot near Town Hall in downtown Seattle.

This happened not very far from where I live. At the park where my daughter's classmates were playing at their recess, the police came and told everyone to go back to their school and stay inside. Schools closer to the crime scenes were locked down entirely.

Everyone wants to know why this is happening. It isn't hard to figure out a couple of things that were clearly at play here: We're now a society awash in guns at unprecedented levels. And we're also awash in an increasingly untreated population of mentally ill people.

Over at Slog, Jonathan Golob explains:

In Washington State, it is exceedingly difficult to involuntarily commit mentally ill individuals—particularly for extended periods of time—unless someone is an imminent threat to themselves or others. Individuals with illness severe enough to be committed to a mental health facility in other communities are—by plan—allowed to try to integrate into the community.

In place of (costly and arguably inhumane) warehousing of the mentally ill, the plan for decades in Washington state has been to provide aggressive outpatient case management. Psychosis, bipolar disease, depression, anxiety and others are all treatable diseases. The notion—and it's not a bad idea at its core—is to use an army of social workers (state employees) to keep mentally ill people in the community engaged with treatment and the community safe.

Over the same decades, our investment in social services has dwindled. Right-wing propagandists like the Seattle Time's editorial board, Tim Eyman, and everyone you know who has uttered the phrase 'a more efficient state government' are directly responsible for our social service network being gutted, the many safety nets being left tattered and unmanned.

The reign of radical right wing financial policy in Washington State has left (the richest of) us with some of the lowest tax burdens of any community in the United States. The cost is a day like today.

But we haven't only government-gutting conservatives to thank for this problem. Because we can also thank the far-right paranoid gun nuts who run large national "gun rights" organizations for having gutted any kind of reasonable restraints on the public's access to guns.

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As part of a broader assault on the voting rights of Floridians, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill in 2011 that placed severe restrictions and penalties on third party groups that attempt to register new voters. A federal judge ruled Thursday that the law was unconstitutional.

The second, less-well-known effort, is a new set of Florida state rules that make it very difficult to register new voters, and create severe penalties for anyone who doesn’t precisely comply with them. These rules are so onerous that many groups that formerly routinely ran voter registration drives, like the League of Women Voters, stopped doing it because they found the new rules were impossible to comply with.

Now, thanks to a lawsuit by the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, and Rock the Vote, a federal judge in Tallahassee, no hotbed of liberalism, has issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of key parts of the voter-registration-suppression scheme:

"The statute and rule impose a harsh and impractical 48-hour deadline for an organization to deliver applications to a voter registration office and effectively prohibit an organization from mailing applications in. And the statute and rule impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional even to the extent they do not violate the [National Voting Rights Act]."

Read the full ruling.

Via press release, numerous groups applauded the ruling:

“Today’s ruling is a clear victory for Florida voters,” said Lee Rowland, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, one of the attorneys who argued the case for the Plaintiffs. “The Florida legislature has tried repeatedly to stifle access to voter registration opportunities. By halting onerous provisions of the law, the court has stood up for voters and for civic groups across the state helping Floridians register to vote.”

The Brennan Center for Justice, which represented the groups in the lawsuit, will hold a media conference call at 4:00 PM EST to discuss the decision. Please dial 800-651-2087, and use the passcode 32594759. Representatives from the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, and Florida PIRG will also be on the call.

“For over 72 years, League volunteers have faithfully and successfully helped to register eligible Florida voters,” explained Deirdre Macnab, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “We are hopeful that this ruling will enable us to continue this important work. Florida’s anti-voter law creates impassable roadblocks for our volunteers, who are simply trying to bring fellow citizens into our democratic process. We are grateful the court recognized that the Constitution does not tolerate these types of barriers to civic participation and voter registration.”

“As the nation's largest young voter organization, we've dedicated more than two decades to educating and empowering young people to participate in our nation's democracy,” stated Heather Smith, President of Rock the Vote. “Rock the Vote has encouraged hundreds of thousands of young Florida residents to have a voice in their community and country. Today’s ruling is a victory for them, and for our democracy. We will quickly assess whether this ruling will allow us to restart our critical voter registration work on the ground in Florida.”

“Our representative democracy relies on an engaged citizenry, yet voter turnout in Florida remains far too low,” added Brad Ashwell of the Florida Public Interest Research Education Fund. “That’s why we work to sign up thousands of first time voters across the state each election cycle. We are pleased the court froze the majority of this law, so we can continue to fulfill this mission.”

“We are pleased that our clients and civic groups all across the State of Florida demonstrated the intimidation and threat of punishment created by this unconstitutional law,” said Robert Atkins, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP representing the plaintiffs.

“This is a resounding victory for the Constitution and Florida citizens against a clear attempt to suppress political participation,” added Howard Simon of the ACLU of Florida.

As Heather wrote earlier this week, John Stossel did an hour-long special on poverty to prove that our social safety nets are just encouraging slackers. In Stossel-like fashion, he went to a food line and surveyed people waiting for food assistance to see if they owned refrigerators, cell phones and TVs.

Evidently in Stossel-land, you're not truly poor unless you're eating off the sidewalk with no roof over your head, no telephone, no refrigerator, and especially no car, which is an exceptionally cynical view to take. Without a car and without a phone, there will be no jobs. Without a refrigerator, there can be no food. Televisions are cheap.

Poverty should not be defined by electronic device ownership, but Stossel intimates that somehow it's bad and wrong for someone who is standing in line at a food bank to own a cell phone or a car. Anyone with half a brain watching this special has to conclude that what Stossel is really doing is simply trying to reinforce the right wing trope that people of color are lazy moochers who will suck whatever resources they can from the government. To anyone actually familiar with the challenges of poverty, Stossel's report strikes all the wrong notes about what does and does not define poverty.

Which is, apparently, what John Stossel intended. During his appearance with Billo Tuesday night, Stossel admitted the whole report was just a TV stunt.

O'REILLY: What did you learn about poverty that surprised you in this whole big thing?

STOSSEL: Nothing. It's just a TV stunt. I'd done the research.

So, folks living in poverty, how do you feel about John Stossel using a bunch of one-line interviews for a "TV stunt?" How do you feel about being shamed for having tools that are essential to communicate, to try and lift yourselves out of poverty?

Here's what annoys me most about this whole "report" of John Stossel's. It focuses on material items as a measure of poverty. Lives can't be measured on the basis of what people have. Why not ask those people how many family members they've lost to street crime? Ask them what opportunities they believe exist for better jobs. Ask them about why their neighborhood schools lack the same educational quality and opportunity as the schools on the other side of town. Those factors are far larger measures of poverty than whether someone has a DVD player or a cell phone.

But then, as Stossel admits, it's all a gimmick to push the idea that we could all prosper if we'd just let the oligarchs have most of the wealth in this country. A contemptible but wholly predictable premise for Fox News to pimp.

Good god Michelle Malkin really is a nasty piece of work. Sean Hannity invited her on his show on Fox this Thursday evening to make ad hominem attacks on how First Lady Michelle Obama supposedly "hasn't been vetted yet properly" and to paint her as some corrupt political operative who is heaven forbid, doing things like trying to get our school children to eat healthier.

I don't often agree with too many of the authors over at Mediaite, but Frances Martel actually did a pretty nice take down of Malkin for this segment here. As she noted, sadly they were reaching back to the 2008 campaign and her remarks that “for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country,” and blasting the mainstream media for heaven forbid giving her friendly interviews.

I'm not going to copy and paste their post and anyone who wants to read more specifics on the interview that doesn't have the stomach for watching it can just go read it here: Michelle Malkin’s Crusade Against ‘The Bitter Half’ Michelle Obama Hits Hannity.

Media Matters flagged this clip as well tonight and as they reminded readers in the related links to the video, this isn't the first time Malkin has called First Lady Michelle Obama the president's "bitter half." And as they linked in their post, here's more on Malkin's book she was hawking again and some of the lies in that book: Malkin distorts Michelle Obama biography to attack her and her father as corrupt.

The First Lady has approval ratings at 66 percent favorable according to the latest poll by Gallup. I'm not sure what Michelle Malkin thinks she's going to accomplish by trying to rake her name through the mud now, but all she managed to do here is make herself look spiteful and petty. The only people these sorts of attacks are going to resonate with are the racists that Malkin and her ilk feed off of that have been ready to lose their minds ever since America elected a black man to be president in the first place.

With all of the other ad hominem attacks we got from her here, I'm surprised Malkin wasn't still threatening to produce the infamous, non-existent "whitey tapes" these right-wingers were promising we'd get to hear years ago. And if Malkin would like to know what the definition of "bitter" is, all she needs to do is go take a look in the mirror.

In a groundbreaking ruling, a First Circuit Court of Appeals panel struck down DOMA, ruling that the federal government does not have authority to deny same-sex couples benefits if they are legally married in a state.

What makes this ruling different from others is the composition of the panel: Two conservative judges, one liberal. The author of the opinion, Judge Michael Boudin, is a well-respected Bush appointee who, according to ThinkProgress recommends clerks for Supreme Court clerkships.

Chris Geidner:

Judge Michael Boudin, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, wrote for the court: "[M]any Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."The decision follows oral arguments that were held in the cases on April 4. Today's decision upholds U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro's July 8, 2010, decision finding the federal law defining marriage as consisting of only one man and one woman to be unconstitutional.

As ThinkProgress and Geidner note, the panel was unwilling to step on states who have amended their constitutions to ban same sex marriage:

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Realizing just how much the world changes in a period of fifteen years, the world of 1957 was considerably different than the world of 1942 on this day. In 1942 Russia was an ally against Germany and the Axis plague eager to dominate Europe. In 1957 a divided Germany was now our ally against the "evil empire" of Russia and the Soviet Union.

So in 1957, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited Washington in an effort of seek continued support from the Eisenhower administration and to bolster Adenauer's position with the West during the upcoming elections in West Germany. Facing a bitter election fight at home, Adenauer was keen on receiving assurances from Washington that support, economically as well as militarily would continue and increase. And also some sign, however small, that the possibility of reunification of the two Germany's would become a possibility.

Commenting on the meeting as well as an observation over the upcoming British Elections was Cedric Foster, a regular newscaster/commentator for the Mutual Broadcasting System on May 31st, 1957.

Mitt Romney's campaign aides said on Thursday that they kept the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's visit to a bankrupt company secret because they worried the White House would conspire with local officials to block the event.

CNN's Jim Acosta explained that the trip was "steeped in secrecy and mystery" until reporters were told at the last minute that Romney would be boarding the campaign bus and traveling with them to Solyndra, a San Francisco solar energy company that went bankrupt after receiving over $500 million in government loans.

According to ABC News, Romney's aides were asked if they were being "paranoid" by suggesting that the "Obama administration" would prevent the candidate from visiting the company.

"He is the president," one adviser reportedly replied. "I mean, they could work with town officials to deny us access."

"We knew, if word got out, that Solyndra would do everything in their power, and the Obama administration would do everything in their power, to stop us from having this news conference," the aide insisted.

During the press conference, reporters also asked Romney why the event had been kept a secret.

“I think there are people who don’t want to see this event occur, don’t want to have questions asked about this particular investment," the former Massachusetts governor replied.

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told Talking Points Memo that the campaign's conspiracy theory was "bizarre."

"I don’t want to use the term ‘weird,’ but I dont know where he would get that idea from," he said.

Another Democratic aide called Romney "delusional."

Republicans have been trying to tie President Barack Obama to the company since it failed in August 2011, but the White House has pointed out that the loan program actually began under President George W. Bush.

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)