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!!!