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(Arthur Lee and Love - It just wouldn't be L.A. without them)
Anybody who grew up in L.A. and was old enough (or look old enough) to get into any of the clubs lining the Sunset Strip in the 1960s remembers Arthur Lee and Love. They were such a fixture to the L.A. scene that it was hard to separate the two. They were just synonymous with everything L.A. was all about during those days,
And if you were in a band, you knew "7&7is" by heart and played it every time you got together. It became the anthem of every garage band from Santa Monica to Palm Springs.
But Love were so much more than a garage band's garage band. They were smart, innovative and above all, constantly evolving.
One of their classic albums was Forever Changes from 1967. In a year of pivotal albums from the rock world in general, Forever Changes stands out as one of the great ones. It has never faded, it has never become a curio of a bygone day and it has never lost its beauty.
This track, The Red Telephone has always been a favorite of mine.
If you haven't heard it lately, check it out for a few.
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(Fala - Resented the right wing smears he heard nightly on the radio)
Take heart. When you think the insanity, the attacks, the lunacy have gotten out of hand, there is always more. There always was. In 1944, at the height of the Presidential election, FDR observed a new low had been reached.
FDR: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or on my wife, or on my sons. No. Not content with that. They now include my little dog Fala.”
And so little Fala, the White House dog, was not immune to the brickbats, smears and innuendos.
Looks like Taitz-Tanic is going down, but that said, there is something very Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" about Orly that I can't put my finger... Oh yeah, they both make me gag.
There's a joke hidden in this joyful music: Henry Purcell was the composer for Queen Mary and this 1694 composition (Come Ye Sons of Art) was written for her birthday. His court band had two trumpeters, brothers, whose last name was Shore. This section's lyrics read, "Sound the trumpet, 'til around, you make the list'ning shores rebound", But this is the only section of "Come Ye Sons of Art" that has no trumpet part at all, so the Shore brothers had to sit there mute while the rest of the company sang "Sound the Trumpet... listening Shores" dozens of times over.
And yes, those are male countertenors singing. Frankie Valli eat your heart out.
On the day I was born, said my father, said he
"I've an an elegant legacy waitin' for ye.
'Tis a rhyme for your lips and a song for your heart
To sing it whenever the world falls apart. "
Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow it over the hill and the stream
Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow the fellow who follows a dream.
For those of you who are younger, who may not quite get exactly what the Kennedys meant to us, this lovely piece from Bob Herbert explains it well - they made us feel better than we were, and made us want to be better people. He suggests that their theme song, rather than "Camelot," should instead be "Follow the Rainbow" from "Finian's Rainbow":
The Kennedy message was always to aim higher, and they always — or almost always — appealed to our best instincts. So there was Bobby speaking to a group of women at a breakfast in Terre Haute, Ind., during the 1968 campaign. As David Halberstam recalled, Bobby told the audience: “The poor are hidden in our society. No one sees them anymore. They are a small minority in a rich country. Yet I am stunned by a lack of awareness of the rest of us toward them.”
Bobby cared about the poor and ordinary working people in a way that can seem peculiar in post-Reagan America. And his insights into the problems of urban ghettos in the 1960s seemed to point to some of the debilitating factors at work in much of the nation today. Bobby believed, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has noted, that the crisis of the cities ultimately came from “the destruction of the sense, and often the fact, of community, of human dialogue, the thousand invisible strands of common experience and purpose, affection and respect which tie men to their fellows.”
Kennedy worried about the dissolution of community in a world growing ever more “impersonal and abstract.” He wanted the American community to flourish, and he knew that could not be accomplished in an environment of increasing polarization, racial and otherwise.
“Ultimately,” he said, “America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”
Like his brothers and sisters (don’t forget Eunice Kennedy Shriver and the Special Olympics), Bobby believed deeply in public service and felt that the whole point of government was to widen the doors of access to those who were being left out.
“Camelot” became a metaphor for the Kennedys in the aftermath of Jack’s assassination. But I always found “Finian’s Rainbow” to be a more appropriate touchstone for the family, especially the song “Look to the Rainbow,” with the moving lyric, “Follow the fellow who follows a dream.”
That was Ted’s message at Bobby’s funeral. The Kennedys counseled us for half a century to be optimistic and to strive harder, to find the resilience to overcome those inevitable moments of tragedy and desolation, and to move steadily toward our better selves, as individuals and as a nation.
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I spent all day traveling yesterday, so I wasn't able to get this up, bu Darcy Burner's keynote speech at Netroots Nation on Saturday night was classic Darcy: concise, but compelling. Especially the heart of the speech:
So President Clinton -- how many of you were here for President Clinton's speech the other night? -- President Clinton did something very interesting in his speech. He delivered two fundamentally contradictory messages. He said, support the health-care legislation no matter what it is. That was one message he sent that he delivered quite clearly. But the other message that he delivered was that "Don't ask, don't tell" became policy even though he knew it was the wrong thing, because, he said, we didn't support him and make him do the right thing. That second message, that we have to make our leaders do the right thing was raw and true.
We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans. It's our obligation. And to be perfectly blunt, I consider it my obligation for Henry.
The vehicle we have for change is the people we have elected, and we have done, collectively, a tremendous job of electing people to office in this country. We have taken back the House, we have taken back the Senate, we have taken the presidency of the United States.
But that is just the beginning of the battle. There are a lot of people -- mostly not the people in this room, but a lot of people who thought that was sufficient and have stopped. We have to help the people that we have elected. And to be perfectly blunt, we have been asked to.
I have been working for the past several months with the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- eighty-three of the most progressive members of the United States House and the United States Senate -- and the message that I get from them consistently is: "We are doing everything in our power to make a difference. But we have to have the support of the grassroots. We need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots applying pressure."
In the health-care debate that's going down right now, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did something absolutely revolutionary in March -- which is that in March Congressman Raul Grijalva, the newly elected co-chair of the caucus, whipped the progressive members of the caucus and got enough of the members to say, "We will not support any piece of health-care legislation that doesn't include a public option."
That the progressives were able to then send a letter to President Obama and to Nancy Pelosi and to Steny Hoyer saying, "Guess what? You want health-care legislation? It isn't the Blue Dogs you need to be worrying about. You need to talk to progressives, because we are drawing the line, and we are not going to back down."
The next day I heard it being bandied about that Darcy suggested caving on the public option. As I told my friends, that wasn't what I heard. And if you watch the video, I don't think it's what you'll hear either.
Michigan native Brendan Benson has been making compelling and charming power-pop records since 1996's One Mississippi, but for better or worse he's best known as being one half of the singing/songwriting part of The Raconteurs along with better-known Michiganite-by-way-of-Nashville Jack White. "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" is an adorable song with an adorable video.
Every Monday night, C&L's Late Nite Music Club showcases an act from every state, alphabetically by state, as part of LNMC's 50 State Strategy. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com. Next week: Minnesota.
In 2007, actor Heath Ledger approached Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock about directing a music video for them. He got started on his video for "King Rat" but it was left unfinished when he died of an accidental overdose in early 2008. The Masses (Ledger's production company) finished the video in his honor, and today the band premiered it.
"Always one to operate from his heart and take a stand for what he cared deeply about, Heath's intention was to raise awareness on modern whaling practices through a potent visual piece without having to say a word. It was his way to let the story, in its candid reversal, speak for itself."
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(A little close to home)
I think I heard this song once when it first came out in 1970 and only on an FM station. Needless to say, it didn't race up the charts.
From the best I can figure out, Fresh weren't actually a real band, but the brainchild of producers Ray Singer and Simon Napier-Bell, producers responsible for a lot of 60's hits in Britain. The musicians listed were Roger Chantler, drums Kevin Francis, bass and Bob Gorman, guitar. There were only two albums issued by this "group": Fresh Out Of Borstal and Fresh Today. And then nothing.
So Stoned In Saigon was an anti-war anthem that came out just around the time anti-war sentiment was at a high. In 1970 we had the invasion Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State and word back in the states was drug use was rampant in Vietnam.
So needless to say, I think the song's heart was in the right place, but it's sentiment was probably a little too close to home for the casual Rock Radio listener.
The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it," Mullen said.
Didn't the Bush administration and all their flunkies, including Newt Gingrich, say that you can never go against the military or you hate the troops?
REP. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, there were over 550,000 troops who served in Iraq. I'm sure you can find one to agree with you.
OK, I guess Newt only likes troops who agree with his positions, and I guess Admiral Mullen is one of those troops too. Well Newt, are you now putting all your hate on the members of our armed forces who want to close Gitmo?
The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it," Mullen said.
REP. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, there were over 550,000 troops who served in Iraq. I'm sure you can find one to agree with you.
OK, I guess Newt only like troops that agree with his positions and I guess Admiral Mullen is one of those troops too. Well Newt, are you putting all your hate on the military now who want to close Gitmo?
Ann and Nancy Wilson are pissed at the Republican Party and have fired off a cease and desist letter to the McCain/Palin campaign.
Specifically, the Heart women are upset that the GOP has used their classic "Barracuda" as a theme song for Sarah Palin. TMZ obtained a statement from Heart's rep, who says "The Republican campaign did not ask for permission to use the song, nor would they have been granted that permission."[..]
UPDATE: Twenty minutes after we posted this story, the GOP ended the evening after McCain's speech with the song, "Barracuda."
