Digby had a piece this week in which she used used quotes from a Guardian article about what Trump supporters at the Nazi rally in Phoenix this week thought about Der Fuhrer--I read the first sentence, surmised what it was about, and scrolled right on through the rest. Frankly, it's become official--I just flat don't give a fuck what these people think. I mean, for fuck's sake, Trump supporters would prefer racist traitor Jefferson Davis to Barack Obama 45% to 20%--how in the fuck can the national media possibly take these people seriously? It's like asking an elephant what he thinks about rock and roll--the elephant obviously has no clue so why fucking bother?
Though if they really insist on knowing what despot supporters think, maybe they can round up a few Hitler supporters roaming around Argentina. Or they can find Stalin supporters by just asking Putin supporters. Or what about Mao Zedong supporters? Or Idi Amin supporters? Or Pol Pot? Or Nicolae Ceausescu? Or Slobodan Milosevic? Or...
Just because a fool and his opinion are soon imparted doesn't mean we need to actually listen to the idiot.
If anyone ever compiled a top ten list of lines you'd never guess would be in a pop single, I'm pretty sure "Get crazy with the cheese whiz" would have made it--though in all honesty, pretty much every line from this week's tune probably would have made the imaginary list.
If I had to describe the music of Beck Hansen (heretofore simply Beck), I think I'd say it was commonly eclectic (if ever there was an oxymoron...)--he somehow manages to be creative and experimental while fusing multiple musical styles and still make it sound catchy for simple folk like me who grew up on Top 40 radio. And while I haven't followed him every step of the way on his musical journey (Rolling Stone put his Odelayalbum in their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and I hated it), he's certainly been worth the effort. He's also made quite a career of it--he's released 12 albums (with a thirteenth to be released later this year), been a critical darling since time immemorial, won five Grammy Awards (including album of the year for Morning Phase), numerous other awards (too many to mention), sold millions of records and concert tickets, and still found time to produce other artists as well as collaborate with a who's who of popular music. Not too bad for a guy who for all intents and purposes was homeless when his first single became a surprise hit.
Originally released by Bong Load Records (now there's a name) in 1993, "Loser" originally garnered airplay in Los Angeles (so many cool kids in California), moved on to Seattle (more cool kids), and by the time radio stations in New York (even more cool kids) started requesting it, Bong Load couldn't keep up with the demand. A bidding war ensued for Beck among major record labels, Geffen won, and re-released the single and put it on his Mellow GoldLP. It would reach #10 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and launch Beck's musical odyssey.
Beck freely admits that the lyrics to "Loser" are gibberish (he's even stated that if he'd known it was going to be such a big hit he would have made the lyrics more substantial), so it'll spare you my half-assed attempt at figuring out the song's "meaning," but I will say this: gibberish or not, the lyrics are unforgettable. And when you add in a wicked slide guitar, funky drums, and a touch of sitar (hello, George Harrison!), you end up with a brilliant slice of pop music pie--and that's even before I mention the We Share the Sentiment sing along chorus, and especially its first incarnation, which Beck beckons (such wordplay!) with a wondrous "Yo...cut it!" Even though it's been almost twenty-five years since it's release, I've spent the last two days singing it over and over, enjoying it as much as when it was still brand new, and my youngest son finally asked, "Dad, what the heck is cheese whiz?" Beautiful...
Fun Fact: Beck came up with the "Loser" part of it because he thought his rapping of the song's lyrics sucked and he was a loser because he couldn't rap better. I know--fascinating, my God...
Rap Sheet: "And my time is a piece of wax/Falling on a termite/Who's choking on the splinters..."
Paula White, another in a long line of pastors who got rich off the gullibility of others (which, one supposes, could be said about many a corporate CEO and Wall Street investor as well), said this week that resisting Donald Trump is an affront to God.
You know, if resisting the agenda of a man who coddles Nazis, equates peaceful protesters with white supremacists, wants to take health care away from millions of Americans, singles out Latinos as being rapists and murderers, thinks he has a right to sexually assault women, has been caught in well over a thousand lies just in the seven months he's been President, threatens to get us into a nuclear war over a pissing contest, and is enriching himself and his family at the expense of American taxpayers (among many others) bothers God, well then frankly God can kiss my ass.
Never in the history of civilized man has there been a God more pathetic than the God of American evangelicals.
Two minutes and twenty-one seconds--that's how long it took for this week's tune to lash out at class warfare in America with a resonance that extends to this day, maybe even more so. And after seven months of an orange Nazi in the White House, it's brutally obvious that the hubris of the wealthy elite, as angrily expressed by a band that was one part Bruce Springsteen and one part The Who, hasn't alleviated one iota in the past fifty years.
Creedence Clearwater Revival formed in 1959 and bounced around the San Francisco Bay Area for several years before getting their first big break in 1967 when they were offered a studio recording opportunity--if only they'd change their name from The Golliwogs (probably a good career move). They settled on Creedence Clearwater Revival (check the Wikipedia link--the name's origin is not as interesting as you might think), and the rest is history. Led by lead vocalist and lead guitarist John Fogerty, over the next five years CCR would have five top ten singles and six top ten albums before it all came crashing down. The band had an acrimonious break up (Fogerty's brother Tom left the band first, and the brothers never really reconciled, even before Tom's death in 1990), followed by years of lawsuits and Fogerty's refusal to play with the two still living bandmates at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and are one of the few bands to have never had a reunion. Fogerty went on to some success as a solo artist, the other two band members (Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, not that most people really care) continue on as Creedence Clearwater Revisited. Still, their legacy is as one of America's great rock and roll bands (Rolling Stone listed them as the 82nd best rock act of all time), and they are still a staple of FM album oriented rock radio (if there's still anyone who listens to FM radio).
Released on their LP Willy and the Poor Boys(great album title, by the way) in 1969, "Fortunate Son" was actually the B side of "Down on the Corner" (back in the day it wasn't unusual for record labels to release two sided singles) and would eventually reach #3 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. Its debut came at the height of Vietnam War protests and it was quickly adopted as an anti-war anthem (which it most certainly is) but I think that just calling it an anti-war anthem downplays its inherent theme of the rich getting richer while the poor shovel all of their shit. Opening with thumping drums and an ominous guitar line, Fogerty literally tears the roof off the house with his fuck you vocals as he works his way through a series of scenes, each depicting the let them eat cake views of America's rich. Fogerty saves the coup de grace for the chorus in which he lets it be known that he ain't like them, and unlike these fortunate sons, he's had to fight for what is his. Much like Springsteen, CCR never lost sight of its working class roots, and the result was a masterpiece (#99 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time) of political vengeance--we ain't like rich folk and because we ain't, America is the better for it.
Fun Fact (Well, maybe not for you): Outside of San Francisco radio (another hotbed of cool kids), the first radio station to play CCR in heavy rotation was WLS in Chicago...which just happens to be the station that was my introduction to rock and roll's top 40 in the mid 70's. Fascinating, my God....
Lyric Sheet: "It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no..."
Have you ever noticed that you never hear about people in Germany protesting the removal of monuments to Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler? That's because the good folks in Germany had the sense not to erect statues of cretins who were a stain on humanity.
Too bad we can't say the same about our neighbors in the American South.
Can we stop pretending that Donald Trump is the first racist republican we've had in the White House? From Nixon's Southern strategy, to Reagan's welfare queens, to Bush II's start of voter suppression tactics and callous response to Hurrican Katrina, the republican party has been at war with people of color for the last fifty years.
We'll spend another week in pop heaven as FNJ features a song by an artist who hails from my adopted home--and one who offers proof that Michigan has produced many a talented musician, and not just twits like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.
I recently read someone who said that if we lived in a just world, Marshall Crenshaw would rule the airwaves and I nodded in agreement. After spending his formative years here in the suburbs of Detroit, Crenshaw began his career as an understudy playing John Lennon in Beatlemania. After eventually taking over the role and touring the country, Crenshaw left the troupe and formed a band in New York City and began his solo career in earnest. In 1982 Crenshaw released his debut album and first single to critical acclaim--both would go on to be the most commercially successful of his career, though they were moderate sellers at best. Crenshaw has gone on to release nine more albums, six EPs, wrote a book about rock and roll in the movies, and still plays 40-50 shows a year, most within driving distance of his home. He's known for playing a mean guitar, too.
Every now and again you'll hear a song for the first time and think "Holy shit, what was that?" Invariably, it's a song you'll love for the rest of your life--and such was the case with "Someday, Someway" for me. Released as the initial single from his very aptly titled first album, Marshall Crenshaw, it garnered enough airplay and sales to reach #36 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. Opening with what a friend of mine called jangly guitars (if there was anything the 80's was good at, it was jangly guitars), Crenshaw forays into a power pop plea to the love of his life to tell him what's making her so sad--alas she won't and Creshaw is left to hope that someday, someway he'll understand and be able to return the love she has given to him. Throughout, "Someday, Someway" swings and sways, a little rockabilly, and is given a pop sheen through Crenshaw's sincere vocals, power drumming (provided by Crenshaw's brother Robert), and a melody that I'm sure Jesus Christ himself would be humming for days if he'd ever heard it. It's primal pop for people who worship at the altar of rock and roll....
Fun Fact: Crenshaw was often compared (favorably) to Buddy Holly early in his career, and eventually would play Holly in the movie La Bamba. Cool!
Lyric Sheet: "Now after all you've done for me/All I really want to do/Is take the love you brought my way/And give it all right back to you...."
Take a good look at the picture at the top--it's a shot from yesterday's White Nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in protest of the removal of a statue of a traitorous racist, Robert E. Lee.
It is also a picture of today's republican party. Not sure about that? Among the people "representing" us in Washington, D.C. are a man voted down for a federal judgeship because of his racist views (Attorney General Jeff Sessions), a White Nationalist (Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon), and a Nazi sympathizer (Trump adviser Sebastien Gorka). We also have Trump, who singled out Latinos again and again as being murderers and rapists.
Still don't believe it? Watch how many prominent republicans (McConnell, Ryan, virtually any Senator, or former major candidate like McCain or Romney) condemn an overtly racist rally.
There will not be a single one--because they don't want to piss off their base.
Losing elections to these people is not an option.
News that half of republicans would support Donald Trump postponing the Presidential election in 2020 is somewhat alarming until you realize that republicans make up approximately 40% of our electorate and half of that would be the 20% in favor of dictatorship--if someone told you that a poll showed that one in five Americans was batshit insane, you'd probably shrug your shoulders and say "Eh, close enough."
Still...what does it say when you know that America's truly great leaders--Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, Johnson, Obama--and their supporters, no matter how rabid, would never have even pondered such an undemocratic action, such an affront to the promise that is America?
You really have to wonder just how bad the coming shitstorm is going to be.
Your average Trump supporter after the shit hits...
While most of my brain thinks the American military will be prescient enough to cut Donald Trump down at the knees with his threat to unleash "fire and fury like the world has never seen" on North Korea, there's also a part that thinks America has finally jumped the shark and is now living in Nutsville and they just might be crazy enough to let the orange clown do it. Still, after I read his comments yesterday the first two thoughts I had were...a) do we have enough food in the house to survive for a few days if it does happen (yes), and b) if the dumb bastard decides to do it while I'm at work, how the hell will I get home in all the chaos (no fucking clue).
Really, what does it say that after 58 years on this planet I'm contemplating scenarios that I've never considered before , under any President, even the doddering old fool Reagan and the imbecilic George W. Bush?
To quote a phrase, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."
I'm not generally a fan of live versions of songs--they sound great when you're actually at the show, but on vinyl or disc they often sound tinny or just a bit flat compared to the original. Not so with this week's tune on Friday Night Jukebox--it's one of the few instances were a live version takes on a whole new life and becomes better than the original.
Cheap Trick was formed in the thriving metropolis of Rockford, Illinois in 1973, and their "cheap trick" was to be a band formed of two cool cats (lead vocalist Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson) and two dorks (lead guitarist and chief songwriter Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos). Something for everyone! They released their first album in 1977, and their second later that same year, and in an oddity of sorts, while the band met with little success here in the States, they exploded in Japan (to a point where their success in the Land of the Rising Sun was compared to Beatlemania). They recorded a live album in Nippon for release only in Japan, but sales of the import here in the States were so strong their label released a domestic version--and the rest is history. It would go on to be Cheap Trick's best selling album, and forty-four years after their inception, Cheap Trick has released 18 albums (two of which are on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time"), had a #1 single ("The Flame"), performed over 5000 concerts (you read that right: 5000), been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the list of artists influenced and naming Cheap Trick as among their favorite bands is literally too long to list (check the Wikipedia link above). They're still going strong, too--I saw them a couple years back on Live from Daryl's House (Daryl Hall from Hall and Oates food and music show) and they absolutely killed for a group of old farts older than this old fart.
For a pop music aficionado such as myself, I could easily write a dissertation on the brilliance of "I Want You to Want Me." Originally released in 1977 as a single from their In ColorLP, the song failed to chart. Released again in 1979 on their Cheap Trick at BudokanLP, the live recording become Cheap Trick's best selling single, rising to #7 (you bet your ass with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and taking Cheap Trick from up and comer to massive commercial success. Until I did my half-assed research for this week's tune, it'd been years since I heard the studio version of "I Want You to Want Me" and was surprised to find it sounding much better than I remembered. Still, the focus of this week's FNJ isthe live version from Budokan, and what a joy it is. Opening with Zander enunciating the song for his non-English speaking fans, the song breaks into a short drum solo from Bun E. Carlos before Rick Nielsen's screeching guitar conjures images of pop heaven. And from there...it never quits. It's just pop music nirvana after pop music nirvana--from Zander's heartfelt vocals, the sweetness of "shine my old brown shoes" lyric, the rat-a-tat-tat of the "didn't I"'s, and the non-stop driving of Carlos' drumming and Nielsen's guitar playing. It's power pop at it's finest--and another in a long line of songs from the 70's that those of us who love the music that came out of the 1970's point to and say,"See--now that's what I'm talking about!"
Fun Fact: When Nielsen wrote "I Want You to Want Me" he actually set out to do an over the top pop song with a heavy metal sound as a kind of joke--and the simplest thing he could think of was wanting something. He's probably spent a good deal of time over the years wishing he could find that particular magic again...
Lyric Sheet: "I'll shine up the old brown shoes/Put on a brand new shirt/I'll get home early from work/If you say that you love me...."
While at Politicon (a non-partisan political forum) this past weekend conservative nitwit Ann Coulter was asked for her thoughts on the legalization of marijuana and Coulter responded that marijuana was making people "retarded."
If that's actually the case, one supposes that Coulter herself must be smoking kilos of it.
One of the great lessons learned from the 2000's was that Corporate America and Wall Street weren't quite the well-oiled machines far too many Americans had thought they were--and one of the great lessons we can learn from electing the orange clown is for all those clown lovers on the right who have been screaming for years that we should run government like a business: we are right now and it isn't pretty (here in Michigan we have been running the experiment for almost seven years now and what we have are thousands of poisoned children in Flint, a middling economy, crony capitalism,and a new corruption scandal every other day). Businesses are run by bullying tyrants who don't have to answer to voters and don't have their every move scrutinized by the press and the American people--and it's easy to see why the orange clown is pissed off on a regular basis.
When we don't like what he's doing, we can tell him to fuck off--and he can't fire all of us. Plutocracy ain't all it's cracked up to be.
When I was in college I was a business major for one semester (Zzzzz--enough of that!), and among the first words a professor I had spoke to us was that business was in business to make money, Government is in place to take care of the needs to its people--and ne'er the twain shall meet.
Electing a businessman to run America was never going to turn out well--electing a failed one (numerous times) was always going to make it that much worse.
One hopes enough eyes will be opened and we don't make this mistake again (see also, Mark Cuban).
Catherine Templeton, a candidate to be the next governor of South Carolina this week announced in her first campaign stop that she was "proud of the Confederacy." Which got me to thinking...what do you suppose she's proud of?
That they fought for the right to own other human beings and keep them in slavery?
Or that they fought for the right to tear children out of their mother's arms to sell to other slave owners?
Or the fight for the right of slave owners to rape any female slave they owned?
Or maybe she's proud of the Confederacy's leaders--all of whom were just as traitorous to their country as Benedict Arnold?
I'll give you two to one odds and bet you that she's proud to be a Christian, too.
While I understand that this week's tune may not be everyone's cup of tea, for me, it's one of the many reasons that my love and fascination with pop music has never died. It's an out of left field masterpiece, and nearly twenty-five years from the first time I heard it, it still amazes me with its compassion and surprises me with its musical nuances.
Like the sexual proclivities of many a young American teenage boy, the Crash Test Dummies met with much more success in their native Canada than they ever did here in the states. Starting out in Winnipeg, Manitoba as a bar band circa 1988, within three years they released their debut album which went gold in Canada and won them a Juno for group of the year. While the only constant in the band has been lead guitarist and vocalist Brad Roberts (though several other band members stuck around for the first 15-20 years), the band has been recording studio albums off and on since its inception, now numbering nine. They went on to receive ten more Juno nominations, and were also nominated for three Grammys. Interestingly (or not). though the bulk of the band no longer records together, they keep in touch, and most of them are busy raising families and working regular jobs (even Brad Roberts taught school for a while in the 2000's). I guess it ain't all party, party, party if you're a rock and roll star....
Released in 1993 on their God Shuffled His FeetLP (which is probably in the running for one of the ten best album titles ever), "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" would reach #4 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 in Germany and Australia (surprisingly, the song only reached #14 in the band's homeland). The song is comprised of three vignettes (a boy whose hair turned bright white after a severe auto accident, a girl with birth marks all over her body, a boy whose church's members throw themselves about on the floor) about kids, who through either accident, birth, or fate are outcasts of a sort who find themselves trying to explain the unexplainable. The song is sung by Roberts in a bass baritone (thank God Wikipedia knew what his vocals were called because the best I would have come up with was...bizarre? different? ominous?) that really sets it apart from just about any other vocals you've ever heard, and the music is, well, understated but like a clock reflecting the time, it underscores the sorrow at the heart of the song. In the end, I'd be hard pressed to name a song that was more compassionate, both for those with an unplanned lot in life and those of us who watch them with a quiet awe as they push ever forward.
Fun Fact: Roberts hummed the chorus (and didn't write any lyrics) because he thought it sounded more resigned than if he had sung it. Proof that sometimes, despite what Mr. Edison said, genius is 99% inspiration...
Lyric Sheet: "But both girl and boy were glad/'Cause one kid had it worse than that..."
The average American gets paid just enough so he doesn't quit his job, and works just hard enough so he doesn't get fired.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." Source unknown
Uncle emaycee Wants You For the Coming Class War! Enlist today....
Capitalism: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you can exploit his labor, become filthy rich, and keep the poor bastard living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of his life.
