Democracy for New Mexico

Saturday Music Hall: Beware of Darkness

Given all the dark energies swirling in and around the White House and zigging zagging out into the wider world these days, I thought we could all use a little George Harrison to help help us keep our spirits strong. Here he is in 1971 at his Concert for Bangladesh.

Saturday Music Hall: California Dreaming Edition

Denny Doherty of the 60s group, the Mamas and Papas, at 66 of kidney problems following abdominal surgery, so I thought I'd feature some of their harmonic convergences today. Sweet harmonies. Besides filling a pop music niche before folk rock and psychedelia completely took over the music scene, the Mamas and Papas were also among the organizers of one of the very first rock music festivals -- Monterey Pop in 1967 -- that was the national launching pad for many including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding. David Crosby of the Byrds sang with Buffalo Springfield. Other performers included the Mamas and Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, Laura Nyro, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Country Joe and The Fish, Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Canned Heat, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Steve Miller Band, and The Blues Project. During the Summer of Love.

The video above captures their lip synching of California Dreaming on the weekly rock music TV show Hullabaloo -- shot in perhaps the only era that could accommodate a music event with go go dancers springing out of old fashioned claw-foot bath tubs.

Here they are closing out Monterey Pop with a live rendition of Martha and the Vandella's hit, Dancing in the Streets. By the way, it was Mama Cass Elliot who first got the members of CSNY singing together. She passed away way too soon of a fatal heart attack, at age 30 in 1974. John Phillips died in 2001 at 65, so Michelle Phillips is now the only surviving member.

Here's a triplet shot of some of their hits -- California Dreaming, Monday, Monday and I Call Your Name, again with the bath tubs. I have no idea why the tubs were such a theme, but you have to admit the impact of the clothes ensembles bests that of even the tubs in this vid.

As we move deeper into a time of neocon danger and confusion, settle in and enjoy the light-hearted silliness of the Mamas and Papas as we did back in the day, before the more serious and cutting edge aspects of the era settled over us.

My memory bank on this band includes my freshman year at the University of Illinois, living in one of the women's dorms, sharing a small room with 2 other plaid skirt wearing, knee sock donning coeds. Champaign-Urbana had lots of infamous beer only bars on or near campus that served the students, regardless of whether they were 21 or not. Some of them had been in existence since the 1920s, when the U of I created the rituals of college Homecoming and The Galloping Ghost, Red Grange, played halfback for the Fighting Illini football team.

You weren't allowed to have a car on campus or live in off-campus apartments until you were 21, so there were few student DWI problems. Female students, however, had to be back in the dorms by 10:30 PM on weekdays and 1:00 AM on weekends. Male students had no hours. We also were required to wear skirts or dresses to class. And don't even ask about sleeping with rollers embedded in our hair. Ah, the changes to come.

Once in awhile, usually during election time, these student ghetto bars were "raided" by the cops, but only after we were forewarned they were coming. Underaged drinkers were instructed to put their beers to the center of the tables and to order cokes for sipping while the police strode about. They usually arrested one or two rowdies, then left, and the underage drinking continued, with the university's unofficial blessing. Seems scandalous indeed in this era of police state control and safety at any cost lawmaking.

Anyway, one of the traditions of my freshman year was returning to the dorm with a definite beer buzz, hooking up with like-minded returnees from the bars, and singing harmonies to the Mamas and Papas playing on mostly mono record players, candles burning. It was a time. And it changed quickly into something much more complex and layered. But for those couple of years when the Mamas and Papas were all over the radio, everyone I knew in the flat cornfields of downstate Illinois sang along and smiled, dreaming of California.

Go Ahead, You Deserve It

Take Five (1961). With so much heated energy flying around these days, I thought it was time for something COOL like the Dave Brubeck Quartet for today's Saturday Music Hall. More Brubeck performances: St. Louis Blues (1961) and Blue Rondo a la Turk (1959). You dig?

Saturday Music Hall: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha Franklin says sock it to me. And we say sock it to us. A little R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that is. That's what voters are asking for this time around. Take it seriously. We mean business. We want change, real change, in Iraq, in the economy, in education, in healthcare, in ethics, in energy, in how elections are conducted. We demand that you start representing the people's interests over the narrow, bottom-line interests of your big donors. Period. Or you'll be out too when election time rolls around again. Aretha provides the perfect sounds for our mood. Listen up, politicos (and try to ignore the hairdos).

I also wanted to honor Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ahmet Urtegun today, who passed away recently at age 83. He was the founder of the fabulous Atlantic Records, and signed Aretha Franklin, CSNY and many other musical luminaries. Unlike today's music conglomerate executives, Ahmet loved music, lived music, breathed music, discovered and nurtured musicians. First hooked by early jazz artists and what used to be called "race records," he was a seminal influence in recording and promoting jazz, rhythm and blues, soul and rock, bringing the music into the American mainstream. The son of a Turkish diplomat, he was mesmerized by old 78s he managed to hear in his native country. Later, he haunted the jazz and r and b music stores, clubs and theaters in Washington DC and later NYC. He helped found Atlantic on $1000.

Other artists Urtegun either discovered, signed, produced, distributed or helped popularize include:

Leadbelly
Sonny Terry
Professor Longhair
Joe Turner
Ruth Brown
The Drifters
Ray Charles
Bobby Darin
Duke Ellington
Archie Bell and the Drells
Wilson Pickett
Otis Redding
Booker T. and the MGs
Percy Sledge
Mary Wells
Dusty Springfield
Ben E. King
Sam and Dave
Roberta Flack
Sonny and Cher
The Temptations
Young Rascals
Bette Midler
Cream
Led Zeppelin
Buffalo Springfield
Crosby, Stills, Nash (and convinced them to add Neil Young)
Rolling Stones
Allman Brothers
Stevie Nicks
John Coltrane
Charles Mingus
Ornette Coleman
Erroll Garner
Dizzy Gillespie
Sarah Vaughn

Saturday Music Hall: It's Comin' on Xmas

While I was having my coffee this morning Joni Mitchell's song, River, came into my conciousness -- the one that starts out, "It's comin' on Xmas, they're cuttin' down trees, they're puttin' up reindeer and singin' songs of joy and peace." So I searched YouTube for the song but couldn't find any videos of Joni herself performing it.

The vid above has Joni singing the song, but features clips from Gus Van Zandt's film, My Own Private Idaho, with the late River Phoenix. Next best thing. Beautiful images in its own right. I also found the vid below, with Sarah McLachlin performing another luscious version of the song, which is a cut on her new album of holiday music called Winter Songs. The holidaze season is indeed upon us. Let's hope it brings some peace, or some peaceful beginnings, or at least some peace in our hearts.

Saturday Music Hall: Graceland

Given the midterm election and my illness and recovery cutting into the time I can devote to this blog, our Saturday Music Hall entries have been neglected for some time now. I'm pleased to report I'm feeling better each day, although the fatigue and pain still linger. I'm back at it, but still running on just a few cylinders.

During my recovery I've been hanging out on the daybed in our den in front of a TV tuned mostly to Turner Classic Movies. I mean it. I've been too spaced for reading novels and don't have the energy to do much else. Thankfully, I've found It a perfect channel for sickies, one that takes me back to well worn Hollywoodland images and celluloid dreams. No blaring ads. No yelling or extreme violence. No fast-cut camera angles. Instead I've been comforted by all those mostly black and white, often cornball images so familiar to my subconcious from childhood and beyond.

I've found it easy to fade and in out of sleep not caring how much I've missed in the storylines populated by Clark Gable, Betty Davis, Spencer Tracy, Kate Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Barbara Stanwyk, Gary Cooper, Joan Blondell, John Wayne, Eva Marie Saint, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra and many more. There are also the entertaining shorts from the 30s with awe-inspiring performances by costumed dogs, dead-end kids and wealthy debutantes in formal wear. You could say that old movies have been my graceland over the past several weeks. Which brings me, in a round-about way, to today's music video by Paul Simon.

Not only did I get a chance to see TCM's screening of The Graduate -- Dustin Hoffman's career-making movie with Anne Bancroft, accompanied by the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack that sold millions of records in 1967 -- I got to see Paul teamed with Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michael on the excellent Sundance conversation series, Iconoclasts. It made me remember how much I've loved Paul Simon's music over the years, his musical imagery traced into my subconcious as strongly as those flickering images from Hollywood in its heyday. He's been producing creative, intelligent, innovative music since the long-ago days when I was buying 45s for my mono record player. I hope you enjoy him doing a live version of Graceland backed by a contingent of fabulous South African musicians. I'm outta here and back to my tv lair. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are calling me back to Hollywoodland, to Graceland.

Saturday Music Hall: Our Land

With all the freedom grabs being instituted by George Bush's neocon nightmare team, I thought I'd feature a song that urges the people to take the freedom highway all over this American landscape. No trespassing my eye. This land -- this freedom -- was made for you and me, not for the greedy conglomerate builders, not for the property rights at any cost bunch, not for the police state thugs. This is Woody Guthrie's old song performed by Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen,Taj Mahal, Emmylou Harris, Little Richard, Bono and John Mellencamp in a 1988 tribute to Woody, who had a sticker on his guitar that said "This machine kills fascists."

Saturday Music Hall: Have You Had Enough?

This ditty, performed by Rickie Lee Jones and  former members of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, is about throwing Repub Speaker of the House Denny Hastert out of office and voting for his Dem opponent. Of course, here in New Mexico's first congressional district, we can't directly vote out Foley-enabler Hastert. However, we CAN vote out Repub incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson -- another Bush rubber stamp who's still refusing to call for Hastert's resignation despite his improper and dishonest handling of the Republican scandal.

Recall that Wilson served on the Page Board from 2001 through 2004 when warnings were reportedly flying about Rep. Foley's tendencies to come on to the underage pages. Of course, like almost every other Repub in Congress, Wilson claims she saw and heard nothing about it. Either she wasn't paying attention to her responsibilities on the Board, or she was (and is) in denial. Either way, we need a real change. We've had enough!

Wanna get rid of Hastert, Boehner and the rest of the sleazy Repubs who've been running things into the ground in leadership positions in the U.S. House? Volunteer, donate and vote for Patricia Madrid for Congress in NM-01. Remember, if Dems win back the House, we'll have subpoena power, we'll have Dems running the House committees and we'll have an opportunity to try and find out what's really been going on with the Iraq occupation and much, much more.

Note: The performers have made versions of this song available to other Dem candidates. The blog Down With Tyranny explains why.

Saturday Music Hall: Save the Country

Rare footage of one of my all-time favorites, the strange and beautiful Laura Nyro, singing 'Save the Country' on a TV performance from 1969. The video and audio is not the best, and does little justice to her singular voice. But I think the sentiment is more timely than ever as we see our government taking up the tactics and values of tyranny, right out in the open, almost nonchalantly. "I've got fury, in my soul ...."

I got to see the legendary Nyro live many times over the years, including on her very first tour and later, when she periodically emerged from a retreat into private life with renewed touring and new music. I saw her in large venues and a number of small, intimate clubs. I saw her with a variety of backing musicians and on her own, singing solo and playing keyboard. I savor each experience. Magical. Sadly, Laura passed away way too early, from cancer, in 1997.  If she had lived, I imagine her music might have had something compelling, arousing and even comforting to say to us as we suffer another cycle of mindless war and authoritarian abuse.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Laura Nyro. Can you surrey?

Saturday Music Hall: Still Effin' Peasants

With the release of the new movie The U.S. vs. John Lennon (see the trailer), I thought a little Working Class Hero would be right on time. The ongoing onslaught of corporatism, jingoism, aggression, greed, torture, dishonesty and almost complete disregard for human rights and the natural world are enough to make anyone cynical. How long will we allow them to keep putting profits before humans, deluded imperialistic hubris before common sense compassion, economic "growth" (for some) before human rights, nature, justice and just about everything else of genuine value?

Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and TV. And you think you're so clever and classless and free. But you're still f***ing peasants as far as I can see.

... There's room at the top, they are telling you still. But first you must learn how to smile as you kill. If you want to be like the folks on the hill.

The fools on The Hill are now smiling while they torture. Smiling while they occupy. Smiling while they lie. Smiling while they steal. Smiling while they kill. Most of all, smiling about how easy it is to fool us, the f***king peasants. And we are letting them do it. Still.

Let's start making sense, as Molly Ivins recommends. It's up to us now. Again:

Now, in addition to the slightly surreal awakening to find we live in a country that’s having a serious debate on a torture bill, can we do anything about it? The answer is: We better. We better do something about it. Now, right away. What do we do? The answer is: anything ... phone, fax, e-mail, mail, demonstrate—go stand outside their offices or the nearest federal building in the cold and sing hymns or shout rude slogans, chant or make a speech, or start attacking federal property, like a postal box, so they have to arrest you. Gather peacefully and make a lot of noise. Get publicity, too.

How will you feel if you didn’t do something? “Well, honey, when the United States decided to adopt torture as an official policy, I was dipping the dog for ticks.”

Or staying drugged not only on our religion, sex, TVs, but on our iPods, our cell phones, our computers. Maybe, most of all, on our lazy cynicism. More fodder for stoking our motivation? Go read the Glenn Greenwald pieces listed near the top of the 'Must Read & See' links on the left-hand side of our main page.