Democracy for New Mexico

Saturday Music Hall: Melissa Etheridge

I thought I'd feature Melissa Etheridge because we just saw her in concert at the Sandia Casino outdoor amphitheater last week. Above, she's giving her first performance in 2005 after going through chemo and radiation treatments for breast cancer, which she's since beaten, at least as far as anyone can tell at this time. She's doing a Janis Joplin thing with Joss Stone at the Grammy's, shaved head and all. Very powerful.

I've seen Melissa many times over many years -- throughout her long and pioneering time in the public eye -- and I have to say she's always been one of the most vibrant and exciting live performers I've ever experienced, whether it's just her and her Ovation or she's touring with some of the best musicians in the business. Three hour shows are the norm and she gives her all every time. Every time.

I admit I missed her very first performance in Albuquerque, which was at Corky's, the notoriously wild women's gay bar that was on San Mateo just South of Menaul for many years. She and her acoustic were joined by, of all people, a female sax player. By all accounts it was an impressive performance and the cassettes they sold were all over the Albuquerque lesbian community in no time. Melissa, seeking out free hospitality, slept on the floor of a local massage therapist's home. She was the talk of the town.

I saw her the first time at a now-defunct music club in Santa Fe sometime in the mid-80s. She looked like she does in the video above. Come on, admit it, many of you had hairstyles in that vein in that era. Wow. The crowd was unfamiliar with her and we were all amazed at her talent and the wild abandon of her performance. I recall she got three or four encores, with people standing on their folding chairs, going wild. It was smashing. One of those memories locked into my brain in high definition.

I've also seen her perform at the Kiva, Tingley, in Boston at the Berklee and Orpheum, in Denver at what was then called the Fiddler's Green and some others I can't even recall. Melissa's latest is "I Need to Wake Up," which she wrote for Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth." It can be heard at the end of the movie. A just released video for the song can be found at her website.

Saturday Music Hall: NOLA Edition

A wide variety of coverage of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29th has already begun. I thought I'd focus one of the most incredibly valuable contributions of the unique N'awlins culture -- its music. Above we have a long clip of jaunty, just-right jams by Harry Connick, Jr., Branford Marsalis and local musicians in New Orleans supporting the Musicians' Village by Habitat for Humanity or New Orleans. All that brass makes me want to toss some chickory into my coffee this morning.

To remind us of just what the folks are up against in trying to rebuild their lives and their city, check out video of the state of the Ninth Ward six months in accompanied by John Mellencamp's Pink Houses. Video matched with Steve Goodman's song City of New Orleans, sung by Arlo Guthrie, checks in with the and Lakefront districts about ten months after the flood. (I have a special bond with this song because I used to ride the Illinois Central railroad's City of New Orleans between Chicago and Champaign-Urbana on its way to New Orleans and back in my college days. Its club car scene and general atmosphere were special indeed.)

If you've got some wandering and meandering time on your hands this weekend, enjoy more of NOLA's musical treasures and then throw a few bucks in to help:

One of NOLA's most beloved musicians, Louis Armstrong, scats about Dinah in a 1930s-era performance and offers a rather elegant rendition of When the Saints Go Marchin' In a little later in the century.

The master of New Orleans piano, Professor Longhair, runs through Tipitina in some rather rare old footage. Crescent City blues legend Irma Thomas belts out You Can Have My Husband with B.B. King. Fats Domino tickles the ivories and sings Walkin' to New Orleans.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band website has lots on the history of New Orleans jazz and its continuation today.

The website of the historic has video of many of the New Orleans musicians who have performed there including the Funky Meters, Neville Brothers, Wild Magnolias, Rebirth Brass Band and one of my favorites, Marcia Ball. They've also got extensive video archives and a podcast section. The also webcast many of their performances live.

You can find ways to help New Orleans musicians, most of whom aren't well known beyond the local scene, and many of whom lost their homes and their livelihoods because of the levy breaks, at the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund.

Then think about how the Bush administration's wholly incompetent, neglectful, corrupt, uncaring, cold-hearted, shameful and, to my mind, criminal response to this crisis continues today. And vow to do something, anything, to help get things on the right track and provide some real justice and help to the people and the city of New Orleans and beyond. This is not America unless we do.

Saturday Music Hall: Rain!

With the extraordinarily intense monsoon we've been having in almost all parts of New Mexico, I thought the time was right for a little Rain from the Beatles. What's a few more drops when you can hear the first record with backwards music on it?

If you're feeling a bit more moody than that because of the sudden and powerful flooding of streets, arroyos, streams, rivers and homes, try this Patty Griffin song, with a darker take on Rain.

Saturday Music Hall: Broken English

Any Marianne Faithfull fans out there? Not the As Tears Go By Marianne, but the Working Class Hero, Eyes of Lucy Jordan version -- the smoky-voiced chanteuse, world-wearily commenting on the human condition. Above, she does Broken English, with a video backdrop of warring war and protest images. Timely, indeed.

I know that Faithful can be an acquired taste, but I've always liked the in-your-face attitude and gritty tones of her post-60s-era persona. I only got to see her perform live once, at a small club in Boston in the early 90s. She charmed and challenged the sweating, clamorous crowd, puffing on a long, elegant cigarette holder like some modern-day Marlene Dietrich, growling out melancholy or dryly humorous anecdotes between songs. People brought her lots of bouquets. She bowed and bantered, with intelligence and wit. She brought the house down.

Official website.

Saturday Music Hall: Lives in the Balance

This is a video accompanied by Jackson Browne's song, "Lives in the Balance." It's been termed an animated editorial by its creator, Andrew Thomas . Although Jackson wrote this song during the horrors we helped perpetrate in Central America in the '80s (remember Iran-Contra?), the video uses images related to the neocons' Iraq War. Now that neocon forces are behind a widening of the war into Lebanon, and probably beyond, I thought it was time for another look.

Lives are definitely in the balance all over the world and the dogs of war are ferociously hungry for blood. It can sometimes be hard for me to believe that so many still believe military power can produce "victories" in this era of guerillas vs. high tech machines. Minds and hearts don't change for the better at the point of a gun barrel, facing a tank barrage or exploding under a 500 pound bomb dropped from the skies. And when people have been so manipulated by power brokers that they have nothing to lose, "rebellions" will always, always erupt against the perceived oppressors. You'd think we'd know better by now and fix the root causes of these problems, but of course that wouldn't produce many profits for those who call the shots. And the rest don't seem to have the gumption to stand up to the war propagandists.

Below are the lyrics from another song off the same 1986 album by Browne. When you think of it, we have been "at war," whether cold or hot, for most of the time since WW II, haven't we? Meanwhile, billmon believes there may not be a way out of the gathering clouds of WW III, given the proclivities of the neocons and, yes, the Dems. Unfortunately, I have to agree with him for the most part. He claims the only forces that might have a chance to stop the attack on Iran reside within certain cliques in the Pentagon and deep within the CIA. If that isn't depressing, I don't know what is.

FOR AMERICA

As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown

As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you

The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation's blank stare
We better wake her up this time

The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can't let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found

Saturday Music Hall: Bring 'Em Home

Just in time for the tragic and misbegotten escalations of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Gaza, Bruce Springstein performs a somber version of the historic protest song "Bring 'Em Home," with his Seeger Sessions band. Springsteen's latest album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," is comprised of a number of songs written or made popular by folk singing legend, first amendment rights champion and anti-war, pro-labor, pro-environment activist Pete Seeger.

Below, Pete Seeger does his original version of the song, which he wrote during the Viet Nam war. He's still singing a version of this song today, at 87 years of age. In 2003 he re-recorded it with Ana DiFranco, Steve Earle and Billy Bragg. You can listen to that version here. And NPR has an interview and other broadcasts with or about Pete.

It never ends, does it? This myth that military aggression can solve every problem? Instead of fighting other humans with high-tech weaponry, we need to fight our real enemies -- poverty, sickness, ignorance, hunger, greed, selfishness, exploitation, intolerance, violence, dishonesty, hypocrisy. As Seeger sings, we're not using the right weaponry for these battles. They can't be beaten with bombs and guns.

As Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." Many long years after Viet Nam, the battle for sanity, common sense, compassion and reason continues.

Seeger in 1944 singing at the labor canteen in D.C.

Another timely message from another of Seeger's antiwar songs, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy:

But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

Saturday Music Hall: Road to Nowhere

Given current planetary trends, it's a perfect time to indulge in some cosmic whimsy and wail courtesy of David Byrne and Talking Heads. First up, "Road to Nowhere" because it would be hard to argue we aren't heading in that direction. Nowhere here we come. If that just whets your appetite for more existential explorations, witness that "the world was moving - she was right there with it, And She Was." Or opt for a "Once in a Lifetime" experience, where "you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack, in another part of the world, behind the wheel of a large automobile, in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself - Well...How did I get here?" Ah, "same as it ever was...."

One of the best concerts I've seen in the last five years was David Byrne on his "Look Into the Eyeball" tour at Paolo Soleri Amphitheater (right) on a warm summer night in Santa Fe. Can any other venue match the organic architecture, sensitive acoustics, starry skyed setting and funky intimacy of the Paolo? Byrne was on fire that night, drawing off the high desert hum of the up-close crowd. I recall he had string players hired on the road, and a pile of percussionists. He did alot of world beat stuff, ala his label Luaka Bop, and revamped arrangements of his hits. It was August 2, 2001, right before "the world changed forever" on 9-11-01. We worked up a sweat together.

I think he's just right for today as we turn to one another and mutter, "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around...." Another take on Life During Wartime, as Bush's war on purpose keeps on a'widening. He and his war-mates have definitely decided to stop making sense. For real.

PS: I'm happy that Fan Man Productions has reestablished a summer concert series at the Paolo after several years of mostly downtime at the venue. Fan Man does a terrific job booking all kinds of music at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Opera and other venues as well. They need our continuing support.