Ruminations on music, culture, America and the world stage
This is how. One thing I wonder about is how all those little kids who were in her class and liked her so much are reacting to the reaction of their society to her.
Murtha returns from an Iraq trip and says it looks to him like the surge is working. Yo, congressman, have a briefing session for Mama Pinkster Cindy.
Waylon Jennings from 1966, doing songs from the movie in which he starred that year, Nashville Rebel. (I was actually looking for footage from that movie, but it seems there’s none on YouTube.)
Wouldn’t this have been about the time he was sharing an apratment with Johnny Cash? Hoo boy, I’ll be that was some crash pad.
I just watched the slate of GOP presidential candidates at their debate in Florida field a question from a citizen about whether they take every word of the Bible literally. It was interesting to watch the candidates who offered answers dance around the question and still strive to be forthright. Even Huckabee pretty much said that certain passages and stories in the Christian holy scripture can be interpreted as allegory. I did think he effectively brought that debate segment to closure by saying that we are still woefully short on compliance with the clear and simple teachings such as doing unto the least among us as we would to the Nazarene, and that the sticky points can wait.
The most naked display of freedom-hatred to come out of an FHer presidential candidate so far in this campaign. It’s good that he did say it. Now the other FHer candidates will have to specify exactly how much choice, if any, they are talking about.
Forty lashes for the British schoolteacher in Sudan for naming her class’s teddy bear Mohammed.
Looking for some new musical sparkle for your seasonal soundtrack? Permit me to recommend The Perfect Gift by Sarah’s Swing Set. SSS is a trio – Sarah Flint on vocals, Bob Stright on vibes and vocals, and Ron Kadish on bass. They’re buds of mine. I occasionally perform with Ron and Sarah. They’ve put together a festive, cozy record that goes quite well with egg nog, hot buttered rum or mulled cider.
Mrs. BN and I are seeing our routine for the upcoming showcase take shape. It’s helping me to visualize the sequence of steps and moves away from the dance floor, like when I’m sitting here at my desk. I can get through the whole thing, albeit with a few spots that still look kind of rough. (That toe-heel-cross-pop thing is a lot for my brain to process in the space of a few seconds.) Now I have to focus on cleaning up each move.
We go for private practice with our instructor for a half-hour on Monday evenings, and then we have couples class immediately following. This month in that class, we’ve worked on hustle and rhumba.
I work on those hustle moves and I’m a little bit worn down and in overload, and I think, how did the disco people back in the 70s do that fancy, fast-paced stuff all night at Studio 54? I guess that’s what the amyl nitrate poppers, cocaine and speckled birds were for. But didn’t that stuff exacerbate the dizziness induced by all that twirling and twisting?
In several previous BN posts, I have pondered how the mind of W works. He’s been far from my ideal president. In fact, he routinely frustrates the hell out of me. In fact, I may be able to count on one hand the things he’s done right. Two things redeem him in my eyes: the fact that the handful of things he did right were big things, and the fact that the alternatives, in 2000 and 2004, would have been pathetic jokes.
I guess his enthusiasm for Condi’s summit fits with the overall pattern of his sadly inconsistent ideology. For years, he’s shown a touch of that Wilsonian by-golly-I-believe-this-world-is-brimming-with-goodwill-and-can-be-made-safe-for-democracy sentiment. (Bill Sammon, in his new book says that’s due to W’s evangelical brand of spirituality.) It’s a bit surprising, given that the ultimate in ugliness directed at this country happened on his watch and, at least in the first few years, he dealt with it realistically and forthrightly. But as I say, I long ago gave up expecting consistency from the guy.
What about Condi herself, though? Has she always been this way, and it’s a case of present circumstances bringing it out fully?
Put more succinctly, what in the hell is she thinking?
Hamas won a popular election among the Palestinians. Then, the amount of power that gave them didn’t suit them, so they violently routed Fatah from Gaza.
Meanwhile, Olmert shows himself to be far and away the most fuzzy-minded and incompetent leader Israel has ever had, squandering the chance to fully quash Hizbollah in the summer 06 conflict. Abbas likewise can’t control his own Fatah security forces in the West Bank.
Israel does summon the collective clarity of mind to zap the Syrian reactor, but that incident brings to light two facts that ought to shape everyone’s thinking in the West: Syria is looking into nukes, and getting North Korean help.
Meanwhile, speaking of Syria, pro-Western members of the Lebanese government continue to get assassinated.
So what is Condi hosting tomorrow? A confab to which Syria is invited not only to attend but to insist on return of the Golan Heights, to which Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are invited, leaving Israel in the same postion at tomorrow’s negotiating table that it is in geographically across the ocean – tiny and alone amidst a huge number of countries that will not state unequivocally that they are okay with its existence.
And Condi and W are going to push said tiny, alone country to give up various things that comprise the essence of its identity. In other words, the United States is not participating in this get-together as the beacon of Western principles, but rather a party driven by some vague and dangerous notion of “peace.”
Freedom-Haters love to talk about American arrogance, how the United States rides roughshod over the “international community,” calling the shots and dictating the terms of world affairs. I disagree with the situations in which the FHers claim that to be happening, but it sure looks like that’s what we’re doing in regard to one of the best friends we’ve ever had in the middle east or the world at large.
This thing Condi’s putting on tomorrow is going to be most unpleasant and distressing to witness.
How’s this for thought-provoking? “The Torah’s prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible.”
This lengthy article, in a Catholic journal, interestingly enough, is full of great insights. Here’s one: Judaism was the first religion to have a creation story that wasn’t sexual.
Powerline posts some graphics, info, and the sound clip of Scott Joplin’s 1916 player-piano roll of “Maple Leaf Rag” on the occasion of what has long been considered the birthdate of this pioneering American composer. At Scott Joplin.org, however, there is some research presented that disputes this date. In any event, if it’s been a while since you’ve heard this classic piece of American music, listen to the clip at Powerline.
I teach various music-history courses for one of our state universities. Sometimes my course titles get me into fairly specific areas, but suffice it to say that I teach jazz history, blues history and rock & roll history. Whatever the course title, I always make sure I give due attention to the ragtime phenomenon. Ragtime gave syncopation to American music. That is to say, that’s where we got our funkiness. Will Marion Cook, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Chuck Berry, James Brown, George Clinton, Terence Blanchard – and, dare I say, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams – all owe a huge portion of their overall thrust as artists to this art form so exquisitely refined by Scott Joplin.
We’re big on America here at BN. Do a little celebrating of your freedom and our collective greatness by checking out this jewel.
Saudi Arabia will attend the Annapolis summit, but they’ve made it clear they’re there to breathe down Abbas’s neck and make sure he settles for nothing less than shrinking Israel to pre-67 borders. And they won’t be shaking any Zionist hands.
Lebanon is experiencing a power vacuum, with the pro-West side and the pro-Syria side eager to fill it. Time ran out on Parliament for deciding on a new president.
6:20 AM – I’ve had Randy in the oven for about forty minutes. (I try to choose gender-generic names for holiday birds, since I usually can’t determinte whether they’re toms or hens.) Got up at 4:20, went down to the salon and got all the dressing and stuffing I made yesterday, the pies, and Randy out of the fridge there.
For the second year, I’ve made pancetta, prune and chestnut stuffing. I got the recipe out of the November 2006 issue of Gourmet. It should be a whole different ball game this year. Last year, I couldn’t find chestnuts, so I substituted, I don’t know, pecans or walnuts or something. But the other day I came across peeled, canned (preserved in water) chestnuts at Sahara Mart in Bloomington. I think it’s going to really change the character of the stuffing.
The next task is to trim a mountain of green beans. I’m gonna chill a while first.
I’ll post pix of the finished product later.
Of course, the Colts play today. I’ll have to plan my inevitable crash (I didn’t get to bed until 11, after playing guitar at a funeral downstate in the morning and cooking all afternoon and evening.) around that.
12:10 – I have Randy resting under foil on the counter. The last few times I’ve roasted turkeys, they have gotten done considerably earlier than I’d estimated. This is one done bird, for sure. If I give the legs one more wiggle, they’ll fall off.
4:00 – Randy wasn’t the most photogenic of turkeys. I’m afraid. This business of getting done faster than expected caused skin peelback. Sure was tasty, though. And there’s a veritable ocean of the most gorgeous gravy you ever saw left over. Repeat dinners for the next week!
There’s some doubt. And some relief, given that a fiasco might make matters worse afterward.
I give a lot of thought to why I find old, old-school R&B so moving. It’s technically a type of rock & roll, about which I’m having ever-more mixed feelings the older I get.
There’s something about it that resisted the juvenilization that beset most other forms of rock that have come down the pike since 1951. Beginning with the jump blues of Louis Jordan, Johnny Otis, Big Jay McNeely, Tiny Bradshaw et al, continuing through the great doo-wop of the early-to-mid-50s – The Robins, The Clovers, Billy Ward and the Dominoes, The Moonglows, The Drifters – and on into the golden age of soul – Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, O.V. Wright, Sam & Dave, Ike & Tina, etc. – it sounds like music made by men and women, human beings who have not only accumulated some experience, but felt that experience work a lasting effect on their worldviews.
The gospel rasp that comes through all this music ties it to the sanctified strain in American music, so that there’s an undeniable acknowledgement of spirit in even the most secular, slinky, grinding examples of it. Its fervor is the most direct and raw articulation of that tension between the devil’s music and the inclination toward the sacred that had characterized blues going back to the days of Son House and Ishman Bracey.
It’s unmistakably American music, in a way that does us all proud. For all its immersion in a particular ethnic identity (something that was achieved without any self-consciousness or political overtones), there’s a white contribution to it that infuses it with a backwoods twang. See my Suite 101.com article “What Country and Southern Rock Owe To Classic Soul Music” for an in-depth look at this. Syd Nathan, Jerry Wexler, Sam Phillips, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, Quentin Claunch, Chips Moman and Steve Cropper were as important to the making of this music as anybody.
Finally, it’s one of the last forms of American music that is rooted in a sense of community. For all the waywardness and antics of many of the genre’s most legendary figures, they lived and worked in a milieu still defined by standards and norms tha came from bedrock civic institutions, beginning with the family (a much more intact unit in those days), and including the church, the school, and the neighborhood YMCA.
In my novel, High C at the Sunset Terrace, there’s a scene in which the protagonist, Marvin, is back in his hometown, off the road for a couple of days for Thanksgiving. He and his nephew Donny are standing in Marvin’s sister’s kitchen after the holiday dinner:
“So, is New York happening? A lot of good times?” asked Donny.
“What do you mean?” asked Marvin.
“Well, like parties, you know, lots of people, like The Avenue, only bigger,” replied Donny.
Marvin looked at Donny. “If you mean can you get anything you want any time of the day or night, the answer’s yes. But you need to know that most of it’s no damn good for you, and the rest of it yu need to keep a level head about. Now, I hope that answers your question.”
“Yes, Uncle Marvin.”
So the music is a thread in a social fabric. It doesn’t lend itself to solitary ipod consumption.
Oh, to see that kind of groove return to our culture.
