This is what it's all about: songs as we live them, trip over them, can't believe we could have ever lived without them when the chances of hearing them at all are so slim. -Greil Marcus
Proto-Punk Rock from the Pacific Northwest
"Baby, you're driving me crazy/I'm going out of my head/you turn me on/then you shut me down/PSYCHO!"
"Psycho," The Sonics (1965). Garage rock from Tacoma, WA and proto-punk rock before the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix & Dylan takeover. The musical inspiration is hard R&B. Richard Berry's original "Louie Louie," a proto-punk rock standard, sports an insistent Afro-Cuban beat; and was made a hit in 1963 by The Kingsman from Portland, OR. The Sonic's put a Little Richards' cover on the B-side of their first single. Honking saxes go back to the Wailers, also from Tacoma, and hot traveling '50s R&B bands. Chuck Berry was an iconic model, although Berry wrote songs about teenagers and these guys actually were teenagers or barely beyond that age. Anyway, they turn up the aggression, or sexual frustration, or spastic psychotic reactions like teenagers. And what they lack in the musical virtuosity of Berry (either one) or Richards they attempt to make up for by banging it all out with a giggly, brash, sneering, and slurring swagger. The pounding tempo or "force-beat" on "Psycho" is one bridge between the punk rock classes of '65 and '77.
Bonus track: "Kicks," Paul Revere & The Raiders (1966); from Boise, ID. First anti-drug and alcohol Straight edge punk rock song?! The British Invasion schtick can be a bit much but the cosplay, apparently, helped them get on TV and the Raiders were about as popular as proto-punk rock ever got. Originally the song was written for The Animals but Eric Burdon turned it down, which off-hand seems like poor judgment.
What's the Deal with all the Injuries in the NBA Basketball Playoffs?
Over the course of a season, 30.8 injuries occur for every 100 National Football League players, compared with 38.8 injuries in the National Hockey League, 42 in Major League Baseball and 72.9 in the National Basketball Association, according to a 2021 analysis of injuries across 13 seasons of professional sports from ...
The point of the story, apparently (the rest was behind a paywall), was that it isn't the frequency of injuries in the NFL that matter so much as the seriousness of the injuries. But, still, twisted ankles, knee strains, whatever, look at that comparative frequency number for the NBA?!
Discussing Sonia Sotomayor's retirement is not sexist-- it's strategic, says Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian
Okay, not necessarily sexist, but as strategy it is kind of doomy (it only matters if the Dems lose) and an irrelevant side issue, no? Why would 7-2 be much worse than 6-3? They're still winning every politically partisan decision either way. Yeah, hopefully Sotomayor is cognizant of what happened with RBG-- how could she possibly not be?!-- and is trying to be responsible about it.
Anyway, I like Arwa Mahdawi's column The Week in Patriarchy in The Guardian; smart, funny, likes to dish dirt, and is a hard-nosed commonsensical liberal left feminist, as far as I can tell. I try to read her column regularly.
My alternative question: How is Thomas not being recused with Ginni's involvement in Jan 6 and MAGA's attempts to overthrow the government?
SCOTUS is already gone, lost, being more lost is no welcome prospect, but reforming the Court and overturning Dobbs and reinstating basic women's rights with winning Democratic majorities is far more urgent than worrying about Sotomayor's retirement plans.
The Bothsides Argument Will Kill Us All By Rick Wilson
No, not every American — in fact, not even a majority — is locked in the day to day of political struggle. Yes, there are silos. Yes, the algorithmic hypnosis of social media is real.
I cede all those points. America is a nation filled with hundreds of millions of people who aren’t partisan jihadis, left or right. There really is a desire for basic decency, decoupled from political rage, induced or not.
They’re [Axios story is] not wrong to make these points, and the America they describe is one we should crave—not being involved in politics every moment of the day is a luxury only present in stable democracies.
But they ignore the existential issue underpinning this all.
We aren’t in a nation where the sensible center will survive if Donald Trump wins.
Only one side of the political argument wants their president to govern like a dictator. Only one side believes that the President is above the law — if his name is Donald Trump. Only one side of the political equation mounted an armed attack on the United States Capitol.
Only one side has welcomed the “no enemies to our right” philosophy, which means their party winks and nods at the alt-reich, the white nationalists, and the rest of the Daily Stormer crowd. Only one side is banning books, diving deeply into the seas of culture war cruelty and persecution.
Only one side backs America’s enemies abroad and promises to hand Europe over to Vladimir Putin on a plate. I could recite the Bill of Condemnation all day, but you understand the point.
The political movement that embraces the aforementioned horrors is MAGA, and its sole leader is Donald Trump.
Supreme Court Hearing on Grump's Criminal Immunity
Just for all the MAGA death threats against public officials, election workers, and members of the legal system alone, if the electorate had an iota of common sense, respect, or pride they'd reject with grievous dispatch this massive human wrecking ball loser once and for all.
And then there's the Robert's Court?! Ack!
Anyway, whenever the news is so upside-down stupid and wrong that I'm reduced to ranting and sputtering like this, too often in the OFCB era, I turn to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo for perspective. He's talked me off the is-this-fascist-America-takeover-thing-really-happening ledge, so to speak, many times:
Peering Into The Corrupt Court's Pretensions and Corruption
"Papa Was A Rollin' Stone," Temptations (1972)
A prototype of the extended play disco mix several years before club DJs prodded the industry into actually producing 12" dance singles. "Papa" doesn't have the love train locomotive drive of the O'Jays proto-disco stereotype but works a slower, simmering, bubbling gumbo funk groove, exquisite in all its musical parts the way Detroit still turned it out in those days. It models the disco song as an epic dramatic journey; churchy handclap breakdowns, doowop vocal group blues choruses, "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone/wherever he hanged his hat was his home," and inadvertently works as a early gay dance club anthem. Early disco DJs wanted longer songs for the dancefloor and Motown and Philly International delivered them. I remember an old rocker friend, a musician, once complaining to me about the monotonous repetition of dance music. I knew what he meant, I mean, I know monotonous examples of dance music, but when dance music works, moves you, the repetition is in fact the essential appeal or hook. It feels like the funky groove line could go on forever and you want that, you never want it to stop. The repetition in the groove is precisely what many people crave most in dance music. TGIDF.
The seven minute single:
Here's the 11 minute album version:
Remix set to visuals from a film called Wattstax (1972):
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)