"The Lady in the Front Row,' Redd Kross (1993)

 

I became a fan of Power Pop very early on; Beatles, The Who, Badfinger, the Guess Who, like that. My young love for the stuff peaked in the late '70s with Cheap Trick; their album Heaven Tonight (1978) is a platonic ideal of Power Pop in my book. So a version of Beatlesque remains a constant to this day in my affection for the stuff but with a few formal refinements to the prototype formula. Ringing guitars are good but more important than whatever instrumentation is the uptempo insistent and urgent (with the occasional heartbreaker slow one) Mod or rocker-like '60s tempos; The Shoes, The Records, The Bangles, The Veronicas, all still power pop. To be honest, I often find a lot of latter day power pop, neo-Power pop or Pop Punk, too formulaic. But it's still power pop. Power pop doesn't have to have a British accent for me either; although an accent, say, Big Star's Memphis drawl does add welcome flavor. My bare minimum for power pop rests on vocal group harmonies, even if mostly the creation of studio multitracking. I want a group of voices blended together in big chorus harmonies and sing-along hooks. Power pop has to have stacked vocal group harmonies and be semi-fast or hard; not hard like hard rock hard but hard like a Jolly Rancher. So important are the harmonies that they often put over otherwise by-the-numbers 1980s-1990s neo-power pop like this Redd Kross single from their album Phaseshifter (1993). It's those bubblegum sweet rave-up harmonies. Still works for me. 

Grump vs Musk: The King vs The Tech Bro

"Any eulogy for this relationship [ Trump and Musk] must first and foremost be a eulogy for the United States of America. An amoral billionaire who by rights should have been impeached and barred from running for office for life became president again—legitimately this time, as far as we know—put the world’s richest multibillionaire in charge of a sensitive task that he oversaw with the delicacy of a hyena stripping a wildebeest carcass clean. Their efforts have already resulted in deaths around the globe and will cause untold harm in this country over time.

And now they’re engaged in a “substantive” argument that can be summarized like this. One, Trump wants a bill that is the usual Republican recipe for fiscal disaster—massive tax cuts for the rich, cuts to programs that help working and poor people, huge deficits and debts as far as the eye can see. The other, Musk, at least professes to care about the deficits and debt, but he’s totally chill with the massive tax cuts for the rich. He’s just against the “pork,” which is rich-man speak for things that might actually benefit people and communities.

It’s tragic that working Americans are held hostage to this madness."

Michael Tomasky @ The New Republic 

Amen. But this analysis goes on to suggest Musk can bring down Trump if he likes? The case is that Musk can bring down Grump with X/Twitter. I am willing to entertain evidence Musk's X/Twitter won the election for Trump. I expect it exists. But the proposition that Musk can bring down Trump by tweaking the algorithms at X/Twitter and trash-talking Grump with an army of troll-bots into being impeached strikes me as a bit of a stretch. We'll see. 

Musk's Starlink satellite system and Space X remain Musk's greatest leverage over the gov; the former is apparently essential now to national security. Tesla, on the other hand, might already be irrelevant. Anyway, the gov needs Musk, Starlink, and Musk needs the gov to fund his tech interests in AI, a Mars mission, and protection from China's superior models of EVs.

One ironic turn in this saga might include Trump. He just threatened-- I know, so just as likely more TACO-- to end all government contracts and subsidies going to Musk. Besides being impossible in the short run for national security reasons already stated, if Trump were to go nuclear because that's the kind of crazy he is, watching Musk twist in the wind articulating his new position on the constitutional importance of the anti-Impoundment law will be a special treat. 

More likely, Musk returns to his front row seat and settles for mouthing off now and then about how he's going start a new political party for the middle 80%. And Trump blunders on building his golden parachute and Project 2025's Christian Nationalist surveillance state, or until a serious economic recession sets in and the electorate realizes they've been had, again. 

And then again, if running the country with X/Twitter isn't cartoon evil enough for you, here's a snapshot of the whole "Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment" conspiracy theory, which Musk apparently reps for when he wears his Dark MAGA black hat:

— There’s a “Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment” conspiracy theory going around where Musk destroys Trump and he and his tech bro buddies take over our democracy. I’ve written before about the “Dark Enlightenment” movement that’s all the rage among tech billionaires and followers of Curtis Yarvin. The basic theory is that democracy is “out of date software” that needs to be “rebooted” by replacing our presidency with a CEO-style dictator (Yarvin says we must “get over our dislike of dictators”) drawn from the ranks of tech billionaires. Elon Musk and JD Vance are both apparently proponents of the concept, so the theory going around is that they’re conspiring to get Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declare Trump incompetent, and remove him from office, putting Vance in charge of the country. Vance will then bring in the tech bros to replace the Cabinet, expand the DOGE project, deconstruct our New Deal/Great Society social safety nets and rule of law, and turn America into an authoritarian state that runs with greater efficiency and productivity. It sounds nuts, but these people are apparently dead serious about it, as David Gardner writes over at Daily Beast. He notes that Musk wears black MAGA hats as a signal to the Dark Enlightenment advocates, and their goal is pretty clear: “Federal employees would be fired in such quantities that the government would no longer be manageable. Elections would be deemed obsolete. Policies would engender fear and distract the population. The Dark MAGA or Dark Enlightenment theory says it is the remit of the tech billionaires to run the world because they are the only ones with the resources and the know-how to fix it.” Will the Musk/Trump falling out speed up this project or slow it down or even kill it? Stay tuned…

The Hartmann Report

We must get over our dislike of dictators, because Big Tech CEO dictators are how we get things done! Strikingly similar argument to to the one Putin makes for his takeover in Russia in the '90s; or so that's my memory of Masha Gessen's account in The Future is History from 2017. Democracy means chaos and conflict; my dictatorship will make the trains run on time again, etc. And all rolled up in a snowball of media hype about foreign threats and internal enemies; immigrants of color, Nazis, Trans, homosexuals, the liberal rule of constitutional law, etc. 

And Big Tech as "the only ones" that  "know-how to fix it," by nearly all accounts, are deeply into hedging their bets that the earth, only they can save, is in fact un-savable, and they are busy, Space X and Blue Horizon, innovating ways for people to live off world, in giant space stations, or on Mars. Okay, so invest in their space exploration; some competition for NASA is probably a good idea. But when was it ever a good idea to let guys like these, Trump, Musk, Tech Bros, all conservative republican billionaires, run the world? 

Absolutely never. 

John Maynard Keynes: 

"How could I bring myself to be a Conservative? They offer me neither food nor drink-- neither intellectual or spiritual consolation. I should not be amused or excited or edified. That which is common to the atmosphere, the mentality, the view of life of-- well, I will not mention names--promotes neither my self-interest nor the public good. It leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard; it is not even safe, or calculated to preserve from spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained." From "Am I a Liberal?" 1925

"The Host, The Ghost, The Most Holy-O," Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band (1982)

 Why, not even a rustler'd have anything to do

With this branded bum steer world

This pirate flag headlong disaster course vessel

Misguided charted this nautical numbskull hull

Sink in silence smoke - blow your chest out in hope

Sits spread-eagle on poor men

Piled high on truth mountain - last speak in clarity's chain

You'll not be thrown but dive and sink

Your pockets filled with earthly burdens

When they could be filled with light and back with wings

The sky is dark in daytime

And still the blackbird's beauty lyrics clean

Sing ye brothers and end this miserable thing

And brush the dark sky in light

And let the moon bell crack and ring

Upon the mast of mercy

For she is a beautiful thing

I watched her cut with clarity

The sea of satan's red rolling water

That stung my eyes with vile vile brine

And clung to the vine that choked mary's only son

God in vain to slaughter

I can't darken your dark cross door no more

The light lovely one with the nothing door

And oh that pours life water

"Everyday People," Sly & The Family Stone (1968)

 

The one song for us all? Rolling Stone had this at 145 on their list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004; up to 109 on the 2021 list. That's the right direction but when I saw Sly deliver this at the end of Questlove's Summer of Soul in 2021 I cried. I am sure it meant a lot in 1968 and 1969. It's regarded as one of the most popular songs of the 1960s. Now it feels like manna from heaven, "We got to live together." Shaking his afro, rocking his freak flag, Sly: "Iiiiiiiii am Everyday People." Yes you are! And you and you too! 

"Off off off with your head/Dance til your dead"

"Heads Will Roll," Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2009): I think YYY's fan base sneer at this as desperate late career stab at commercial success; selling out their underground rock cred. But by far the best thing I know by them. Maybe they ought to have sold out sooner? Hard to think of a bigger gothic disco statement this century: "The men cry out the girls cry out. Oh no." Karen O as Ice Queen dominatrix. I'm not entirely sure of her intent when she asserts, "Off off off with your head" ("Free your mind and your ass will follow"?) but it sure does sound sexy and a little pushy scary the way she says it. Shivers of psychedelic bliss and raunchy guitar riffing elevate the chorus. Heads are still rolling.   

"Beautiful Gardens," The Cramps (1981)

 

"Vampire lesbos are after me." In the beginning The Fall were Manchester cousins to The Cramps, without the monster movie getups. A stylized version of primitivist rockabilly. Do the frug in a beautiful garden! The Cramps made great dance music. Your moment of zen. 

The Plot Against America: Building Out Techno-Fascism

Musk finally leaving the government was a big story this past week. A theme of good riddance prevails in what's left of the credible press, naturally -- so outside his Tech Bros and gamer foot soldiers, anyway-- but in various takes there also appears, and I share, a note of incredulousness. 

"The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”

Letters from an American Historian

Specifically, an unelected billionaire relentlessly disdainful of any government service, all of which he apparently understands as reducible to standing in line at the DMV, condemning all the wasteful deficit spending by the government. But makes no mention of his own massive tax cuts and his own government contracts in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Is he leaving because he's finally being driven out for his callous inhumanity and destructive incompetence,* as he should be, or did he just finish his phase of the campaign, a blitzkrieg (which, more or less, appears to be his celebrated business mode of operations; a Nazi military strategy, "move fast and break things"; known in tech business circles as Blitzscaling), leaving the independent departments of the US government in disarray and so ready to be reorganized by his brother in digital arms, Peter Thiel's Palantir; ready to be reorganized into a fascist surveillance state apparatus? 

(I know I'm a crazy paranoid with TDS. I hope you're right.) 

"The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.

Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said."  

NY Times on Trump's Big Database

I've always thought that I was for expanding database links across administrative bureaucracies in our communities and government. Hell, one of my first jobs in Seattle was setting up a paradox database system for an energy assistance program at a local non-profit. My own budding techno-optimism going all the way back to the 1980s. To this day it feels backwards when I encounter a lack of such links in the health care system. It came as a humiliating slap in the face when I finally learned after my sister's death that the missing person's reports my family filed in Oregon and Washington, many years before, were completely inaccessible to missing person searches in any of the other 48 states, including California where she ended up. And I was astounded to learn some years ago that there is not only no national database tracking guns and gun violence but the NRA has consistently and successfully lobbied to thwart any efforts to develop such a database for decades. Moreover, conservatives like to complain about election integrity, without any evidence let's stipulate, and then use their scaremongering to create greater obstacles to voting. Why not establish a national database for all eligible voters? For one reason, of course, because conservatives really don't want to solve the problem but actually suppress the vote. But why not make it easier for all eligible voters to vote in elections? Or so I've always thought. But all these reflections are based on my perhaps naive assumption that we live in a functioning democracy with laws and basic legal protections for individual privacy and human rights. But when the two billionaire technocrats behind the development of these new proposed national databases are, in fact, openly and flagrantly disdainful of democracy and the rule of law and basic human rights, one cannot help but think this big database they are building cannot be good. This whole AI project evokes Skynet more than good governance or a public service; apparently, even many people working for Palantir think so.  

*-"Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication." -HCR