Music Therapy for pediatric cancer patients gets Nashville involved, and it turns out some kids who happen to have cancer can write songs like nobody's business. h/t Susie Madrak.

Open Thread below...

Tonight, we need music! The Standell's great Beantown number "Dirty Water." (1966) h/t Marc S.

Open Thread below...

So my goal this year was to do a best music open thread without mentioning Gagnam Style Parodies, Call Me Maybe, or Taylor Swift. Perhaps the Mayans were right after all. :D

I do like CityPaper's list, and particularly its criterion for inclusion:

We do this every year: Critics and other music dorks give me top 10 lists. I pop them into a spreadsheet and assign points to each album based on things like where a voter ranked it and where I rank the voter as a human. ... Eventually, a master list is printed out and given to our least reliable intern for safekeeping. A couple weeks later, we track the kid down ...and ask him or her to recite it from memory.

Included in the CityPaper List is this delightful band, Hot Chip, which somehow convinced Terence Stamp to do a rap interlude. The Mayans should call me. Maybe.

What music released in 2012 made your ears listen? Open thread below...

In Our Heads
	Artist: Hot Chip

Stephen Colbert (with the Roots) takes what is admittedly the worst song of the year, and makes it...special.

Miss Cellania has a list of lists for best music of the year.

What 2011 music caught your ear in 2011? And it's an open thread. Happy New Year!!!

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Last night at the closing keynote session for Netroots Nation, we were entertained by the fabulous singer-songwriter Jill Sobule (her official site is here), who wrote this song especially for the convention.

It's not safe for work. But it may well become a progressive anthem for the 2012 election cycle.

I met Jill briefly, and she said she's a big C&L fan. Well, here's back atcha, Jill.

Here's the lyric:

They say we want our America back
Our America back
Our America back
When they say we want our America back
What the f--k do they mean?

Remember the Garden of Eden
Before Eve hung out with that snake?
You could walk down the street
And not worry about thieves
All the kids could go trick or treating

Then those foreigners started comin' in
Like those Germans in 1790
Then the Irish arrived, the potato blight
The neighborhood started changing

Life was better
We lived right
Life had a paler shade of white
When they say we want our America back
We want our America back

Before there was Ellis Island
And that statue we got from the French
And that's whore's still alerting
The strangers she's flirting
Inviting them into our beds

The Guineas, the coolies, the wetbacks, the Jews
The gays and the terrorists
And who let in that woman looks after my kids
And the one who is cleaning my nest

Life was righteous
Life was clean
Send them back including me
When they say they want our America back
Our America back, our America back
When they say they want our America back
What the f--k does it mean?

Before the gays had the agenda
Before the slaves were free
Before that man from Kenya
Took the presidency

We want our America back
Our America back
Our America back
When they say they want our America back
What the f--k do they mean?

Arianna Huffington -- who represents the "professional left" about as well as anyone -- says the president is "not all that into" the middle class. I don't think she's being very original or very funny. Worse, I put that sort of rhetoric in the firebagger category, as it isn't useful. There is nothing anyone can do about the president until 2012 at the earliest -- and as I have said consistently throughout the body of my work, Congress is where most of the blame lies for any progressive disappointment.

Sorry if you're turned off by the music in the video; it's loud and angry because I want the righteous anger of the just focused where it belongs, which is not on the man least responsible for legislative reform. Much more after the jump...

Continue reading »

h/t Mike Finnigan: Showing Rainer Wehinger's 1970's visual listening score to accompany Gyorgy Ligeti's Artikulation.

Open Thread below...

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Family Values in Texas

Evil Slut Clique: Huge (un)ethical issues marketing to, and from, Mommybloggers.

Group News Blog: Lower Manhattanite is back, with a very long but very worthwhile post on Haiti.

The Black Snob: Something in R&B Music does not compute.

Rumproast: Republicans are weirdos.

Guest round up by Blue Gal; Mike returns tomorrow. Send tips to finnsagain AT aol DOT com

Last Thursday night I went to the Grammy Museum with Digby and Howie Klein to see the great Terence Blanchard do a Q&A and then play a short concert. It's an incredible venue to see a live event because the sound system is so sweet and with only 200 seats, it's a very intimate setting. I'm a member of NARAS and they often email events they have there but this is the first one I attended. Blanchard just released a new record called "Choices," and he was doing some promotion on his new amazing disc. He plays a magnificent trumpet and was accompanied by bass, piano, drums and a dynamic tenor sax. the record is unique too because it features the spoken words of Dr. Cornell West and he was a major inspiration to Blanchard's latest project.

West, who is a distinguished professor at Princeton, is best known for work that fuses civil rights and anti-war activism with a powerful moral and even religious social critique. Long a hero of progressives, he got into a much-publicized fracas with obtuse corporate shill Lawrence Summers, then serving, inexplicably, as president of Harvard. Asked about his collaboration with Blanchard, West defined Choices as being about "what kind of human being you’re going to be. How are you going to opt for a life of decency and compassion and service and love. What goes into that kind of choice. That’s the human challenge. To be part of this album is an unadulterated joy because no doubt about it, music for me is continuous of life-- to be able to live the kind of life that I live on the certain kind of Socratic calling of raising

unsettling questions. To be able to be in conversation and on an album with Terence Blanchard, that’s serious business... I mean, that’s... that’s a beautiful thing.”

You may know Blanchard's music because he has composed many music scores for Spike Lee including the haunting soundtrack of "When the Levees Broke," which documents the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. The event changed his life and he said something so simple yet so profound. "I didn't choose to be an activist, it chose me."

During Q&A sessions, I usually get bored and start daydreaming until the artist starts playing music, but I was riveted to each answer he gave. Terence is an educator who is the Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans and he answered each question decisively, majestically and honestly. He understands how important it is for an artist to imitate the greats of Jazz, but then develop a personal voice which might be the most difficult taks of all. In his early days, he broke in with Art Blakey and when he tried to play like Miles on "My Funny Valentine," Terence said that Blakey yelled at him. "Miles never played the melody. Play the damn melody." I laughed because Art was famous for that, but was also responsible for adding new voices to his band. He launched many careers in his time and when I used to see Art play in college, the talk was always, "Who's in his band now?"

Blanchard's voice floated through the hall like the mellow tone of a flugelhorn, but with a richness of sound that was magnetic. His passion for music reeled me in and never let me go. I related to his story because of his dedication to teach jazz to a new generation of musicians without the snobbery that sometimes gets passed down by the elder statesman so to speak. His explanations of his approach to teaching and playing that are such a deep and personal nature resonated within me. And then he took the stage and he let his music do the talking from there. It was a delicious treat and we're working on having him come to the LNMC for a live chat with our readers.

After the show my heart was pounding from the experience and I stood outside waiting for Digby to pick me up. When I got in her car a new experience was waiting for me and I'll let her tell you what happened.

Renewed Faith

I have,sadly, become something of a cynic in my old age and it's not a happy thing to be. The world is darker, inspiration harder to find and humans are constantly disappointing me. But today, my faith in the goodness of human nature was renewed.

Howie Klein asked John Amato and I to an event last night at the Grammy Museum, which is in downtown LA near the Staples center and the convention center. It was a fabulous Q&A and concert with the great Jazz trumpet player Terrance Blanchard and his band. Unfortunately, when I got back in my car after the event I found that my wallet was missing...read on. It has a happy ending.

Sparklepony is right. This flow-chart of the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is "totally why Al Gore invented the internets."

Open Thread below...