A True Pervert

I love my brother. I love the institution from which he's completing his doctoral thesis. I love most of its history. I don't love its former senator. I know that my friends Steve and Chris do. They love him so much they've dedicated something to him, though I'm not sure (nor are they) just what exactly it is they've dedicated to him. All I know is that "it" is called the "Santorum" in honor of Pennsylvania's fallen protector of families, idiots, morons and hypocritical homophobic religious intolerants (gentlemen, please chime in). Why don't we let Rick tell it best here.


Now, this.

And this.

Finally.


I'm late for work, so I'll comment tonight. Also, some new music - jazz, pop and country.

Why isn't anyone going to see the A's play? Maybe because ticket prices are so outrageously expense, regardless of their near-first place rankings. I'm not paying $30 to sit in the back of the first level past the third base line. Sorry; the view from my couch is much better for that price. Drop your price by half and I'll buy an extra beer while in the stands.

Sydney Pollack passed away this week. Sad news for good moviemaking. Check out his performance in the oft-ignored Husbands and Wives.

A Lion In Winter

Watching a Frontline episode on the current state of the media. Must remember to show this to students next year in government class. Fascinating. Go to the program's website and watch the show on line.

Barack having a good day today here. However, what we're watching unfold is a desperate Republican Party grasping at straws to hurt the Democratic Party and Senator Obama. Senator John McCain is erasing his entire senatorial career in his quixotic quest for the White House; he can't help but contradict himself daily when discussing Iran, foreign policy in general, economic policy or what have you. My support for Obama needs to do nothing but grow simply by shaking my head at the hypocrisy of the McCain campaign. History will show that the Republican Party platform is nothing now but a litany of fear mongering tactics. I believe that intelligent Americans will agree come November.

A sad day in the Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy being an icon of liberal values, has created a history greater than either of his brothers in public office. He will be long remembered as one whose values are those of the majority of Americans. Attack him for whatever reason that one will, Kennedy, in his ensconced position in Boston, has used most of his career for the good of the nation. Not too many others one can say that, especially of a forty-plus year career.

Check this out. Cruising through this, I was proud this morning to say that I have twenty of these albums and another twenty by the artists, just not those listed. I've been listening to jazz non-stop, especially after last week's NY'er article on Schaap and his passion for Charlie Parker. The jazz I purchased in the last couple of weeks has been spinning non-stop. The Art Farmer classic hard bop is wonderful. The Horace Silver is quite amazing. The Tyner record now seems to be a document of the '06 Yoshi's run, though it isn't hitting me between the eyes like the first two performances I caught in the previous two years' runs.
I forgot to mention that I finally found an album I've written about previously, only at my loss. Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer is a simple treasure. A record of standard Americana records and a couple of modern country songs, Helm's Dirt Farmer captures the same emotions that The Band's music did nearly forty years ago. Some songs, in fact, sound like outtakes from the group's second record. Helm's voice, bedraggled and weary, is as timeless as his old band's music is; it is also a testimony of perserverance and time. Helm takes us back decades to older, slower and in many ways, truer times of balladry. Basic humanity sung in three and a half minutes with wooden instruments and no flash: sheer beauty, American Beauty. The last song, a cover of a Steve Earle tune, maybe now in my top ten songs I want played at my funeral. This record won't be remembered as a classic; in fact, it will probably be forgotten quite quickly. At our loss.

The A's are slipping. They were in first and now two games back. Maybe I'll have the chance to catch a couple of games as soon as school gets out. ? Fingers crossed...

Off to bed. Tomorrow, we are checking our oldest child into his new nursery school for the fall. My children continue to amaze and humble me. How can I parent and discipline and lead other humans into, hopefully, making good decisions and into becoming good people? I still tremble at my responsibility. I pray nightly for my success...

Back In the Saddle

Barack Obama won the endorsement of former Senator John Edwards today, moving ever closer to the party nomination. Hillary Clinton is bragging about her decisive victory in West Virginia, a state that Obama conceded before the primary date took place. Troubling is not Obama's loss but Clinton's taunting and the press's idiotic analysis of it. Clinton was proud to win the state and take the blue-collar uneducated working poor who questioned Obama's ethnic background. The press sees this as a HUGE rift now among the party faithful. Remember, West Virgina has a whopping five electoral votes. And one of the highest rates of everything bad: teenage unwed pregnancy, poverty, lack of high school diplomas. The only thing that West Virginia has that makes it matter is a huge reserve of coal, which has been touted by energy experts that love carbon emissions as the next best thing. As far as things look, Clinton can have the George Wallace vote.

I've broken my dry spell on music. After the Replacements cd (which has immediately gone back on the shelf), I've hit the jazz bug, with a little rock thrown in there:

Art Farmer - Farmer's Market
Sarah Vaughn - Sarah Vaughn
McCoy Tyner - McCoy Tyner
Horace Silver - Song For My Father

All fantastic, classic-era jazz. The Sarah disc is great loungey stuff with Clifford Brown, one of my favorites, on trumpet. McCoy is the live Yoshi's gig that I missed in '06. The Silver disc is an amazing spread of various styles, none pushing too hard but all expanding mid-60s jazz into styles artists were just beginning to absorb. The Farmer cut is fantastic bop that I can listen to just about forever. The rock:

Van Halen's first record - had a jonesing for Eruption.
Jackie Greene - I can't even remember the name of this disc, it's made such an impact on me. I was leveled by his previous disc, American Myth, in '06 and it remained in heavy rotation for well over a year. This disc hasn't quite piqued my interest, even as many of the songs are of the same rock-country-jazz-folk vein. Either this disc will hit its stride or wind up in the used bin.

My father is visiting my brother and his family tomorrow. He'll be there for a week. In June, my brother and his family will come stay for a week. I'm taking him to see the Drive-By Truckers. The show will smash him in the head, it'll rock so hard!!!

Can This Be It?

Can liberals, progressives and others who care about the direction of the nation claim today as the day of new beginnings? For the last three weeks, the media, the Nazi wing of the conservative party and Clinton supporters have all, misguidedly and disingenuously, attacked Senator Barack Obama for his personality. In typical American election fashion, politics and policies have taken a back seat. Hillary has been drinking beer by the pint to show she's "one of us", the oft-used rouse to make one appear to be an "average" American. Last week, uber-racist Pat Buchanan questioned "Is Barack one of Us? A nativist race-baiting bigot who wrote speeches for Richard Nixon through the nadir of the Watergate scandal the average American? Then let's hope Barack Obama isn't one of "us". I'm proud to claim that I'm not one of "us", either. If you're a card carrying member of the John Birch Society, then maybe ol' Pat is one of you. Newsweek's cover story was Obama's lack of connection with the "common" American since he's wealthy and educated. All of which leads back to the half-century old thesis posed by a then -graduate level student in history, Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter's thesis evolved into his first book, one, though written in the 1950s, simply needs a quick update to remain totally relevant in today's society: the values of the "average" American are those of conservative, racist, anti-educational positions; that to be average and common is the goal of most Americans, even those who are in the ruling class and the elite classes. Religion over science, party over policy, military action over diplomacy; Hofstadter's book makes one who simply opens the front cover above average. The seeking of truth, knowledge and factual information is all it takes to make one uncommon. To strive for self-improvement and personal gain (not simply financial) is elitist? Maybe that's why so many of my students are what they are: work hard at stregthening who you are and not what you are and this nation owes you everything. Those policies have failed, as we have seen over the last four decades. Is one who is educated an elitist? Is one who wishes to lead as a consequence of natural leadership ability and the support of others elitist? Is one who obtains a college education elitist? Is one who wishes to see his or her children live a more privileged life than him or her elitist? Call Barack Obama an elitist and me as well.

Tonight's results of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are hopeful for the Obama campaign. Hillary's only chances of gaining the Democratic nod is to hijack the convention, something that I wouldn't put past her. Only anti-democratic means will grant Clinton her wish; like it or not, Obama appears to have the nod. Of course, Gore could still possibly show up in Denver and change the whole situation but may not need to at this point based on how John McCain is campaigning right now. How can one be the un-Bush Republican? It's pretty difficult, considering McCain's need to keep the conservative social base, monied interests happy with permissive Republican regimes and the religious Right. Then, McCain's got to win over the majority of people in his own party who want the hell out of Iraq. He hasn't been helping himself with the whole "stay there for a hundred years" statement along with the quote that the Iraq War was primarily to guarantee cheap gasoline. Then there's the economy, which is where it is based on a whole culture of Republican-based greed and corruption. Every position that McCain took prior to running for president this cycle has been abandoned, whether it's campaign finance, the Mexican border and immigration, Iraq, gas tax policies or economic stimulus plans. If McCain's such the maverick who is willing to buck the party, he has missed the fact that his radical ideas aren't supposed to line up exactly with the party he's claiming to buck. But I rant and ramble...

I've been in a sad and angry mood since yesterday afternoon when I learned that the singer in my band is quitting. I didn't write about it but the band's last performance at Tailgater's was a smashing success. We pushed the place to capacity a half-hour before we began playing and there was more than a forty minute wait during our first set. Even with some technical glitches (we blew a fuse with our lighting truss), we kept the people dancing, drinking, staying and having a good time. I thought we played well and solidly delivered a good two and a half hours of music. Our last hour, from 12:15 to 1:20 in the morning was good but we were tired and the crowd wanted a DJ. Still, we held ourselves and everyone else together, ending on a high note before collapsing from exhaustion.
Our singer was the glue for many members of Funk Shui; as we're attempting to meet tomorrow to determine the fate and hopeful direction of the band, I'm forseeing other departures. I guess it's inevitable and maybe even positive. Those willing to remain can forge ahead in a new direction. The musicians and singers that remain make up a damn good band as it is and either way, I'm hoping to sling guitars for the band.

This just in: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are headlining the Not-so Strictly Bluegrass festival this October! I'm on holiday so I would like to make it back there, the first time in five years. This concert season looks pretty bleak, except for the Drive-By Truckers next month. Yoshi's has been a dry well for quite a while and I'm not up for catching the has-been circuit playing at nearly every venue in the area. The Allman Brothers appear to be skipping California on their perennial tour; Derek Trucks is playing the night before the first day of school in July, so that's out. Sheryl Crow in August, maybe John Mellecamp and Lucinda Williams; we'll see. I'm not going to pay the $250 for the SF Outlands concert in Golden Gate Park, especially as it's calling itself the spirit of the Bay's music scene.

Last week, after twenty-one years, I finally bought the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me, an album I've always wanted simply because my best friend from childhood had the poster on his door. I thought the cover cool; I couldn't have named a song by the band. Last week, I thought that I would find a long-lost treasure of my youth and the late 80s rock scene. Not sure I found it though as it's not hitting me as I had hoped. Is there a mid-to-late 80s band that can still possess the power to knock me out with a timeless sound? I'm open.

Happy May Day

It's been a while since I thought of anything worth recording. I've been busy; school's taking on its usual Springtime madness with testing and next-year planning. My babies turned a year old last week and I've really enjoyed spending time with all of my children, seeing them grow and mature into young individuals who love life, their parents and hopefully the God that has given them life.

I reeled at the death of Dan Federici and spent a good week musically mourning his passing. While the early E Street records gave a glimpse at the "glory days" of the band, the records that really defined Dan's role in the band are "The River" and "Born in the U.S.A.". I listened to the former two or three times for the simple, sparse and yet moving organ parts on side four of the album. There, one can find the voice of sadness and dispair that flies under the radar of the anthems of hope and redemption. "The River" doesn't offer hope as much as it presents the compexity of growing up and seeing life as it is: morally vacuous and simply present. It is the individual's role in this life to take the steps that lead down a particular path, either of safety and security or that of perdition. Musically, the simple one- and two-note chords Dan played on Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, Wreck On the Highway and even Ramrod are sadder yet. "The River" launched Bruce and the band to megastardom and yet, as I've said before, is probably the most misunderstood record as its image is one of a rockin' good time. The next E St. record suffers a bit from the same ails as "The River" and yet I can not help myself from revisiting it with a feeling of nostalgia and determination. While the first side's great, it's a bit disparately assembled, with no running theme. Side Two, as one flips the record over, finds the messages that Bruce and the Boys had been delivering for a decade prior: faith and strength in the face of adversity, loss and lonely life itself. To me, this is where Dan's contribution as a player abounds: No Surrender, Dancing In the Dark and the seemingly cheesy chords of Glory Days, one of my favorite songs on the album. A very simple song, one that should be discarded along with most of the 1980s for meaningless banalities, except for those stories of the people you know and struggle to avoid and yet, still resemble and eventually fall towards: "I hope I don't sit around talkin' about it, but I probably will/Just sit around, tryin' to recapture a little of the glory-a/but time slips away and leaves you with nothing, Mister, but boring stories of..." And here I am, doing just that.
Bruce's eulogy was beautiful, one for the ages, and the tour has exploded in beautiful sadness, a tribute leg for a fallen brother. Loss and sadness often strip people to their core beings; musically, the E Street band has been playing as if the collective lives of its members depend on an authentic tribute to a life member. Seeing the setlists and reading the reviews, one can only wish for a similar tribute for themselves.

Let's not start talking politics here. I've had it with the whole damnable process.