So I'm on a mini-Chris Knox kick. He's special. This might be what you could call Beatlesque, and there will be people who will have a problem with that. Not me. "'Cause it's you that I love/And it's true that I love/It's love not given lightly." Named New Zealand's 13th best song all-time.
Chris Knox in a 1978 punk rock mohawk. The Enemy were one of the first punk rock bands from Dunedin, and for some mark the beginning of the "Dunedin sound"; New Zealand's indie rock sound documented and spread by Flying Nun Records. Very crude live recording. A guy in the band, probably Knox, complains about not being ready to play for the people who traveled a 100 miles from Christchurch to see them. Flying Nun was formed in Christchurch. Proto-NZ punk rock.
Bonus: Knox's next band, Toy Love, was definitely ready to play. A power pop songfulness pokes out of their headstrong noize.
And about the onslaught of racist and misogynistic attacks Harris will face from here on out:
"There is no question that racism and misogyny are real and rampant in this nation where women couldn’t vote until 1920 or get their own credit cards until the 1970s, and Blacks were enslaved until 1865 and legally deprived of their rights for (at least) a century-plus after that, the American people are also not fond of liars, crooks, rapists, cowards, bullies, Kremlin assets, Epstein associates, wannabe strongmen, and dictator-fluffers."
The cops are endorsing Grump, NBC
And we're not talking about endorsing him in 2016, which was dumb enough, or in 2020, by then obvious he was in fact an active threat to public safety and national security. But, now, in 2024, when we know Trump is the first convicted felon candidate for president in American history. We know he allied with Putin, a murderous dictator hostile to the US, in attempts to cheat in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, and was impeached for the second attempt. We know he instigated a violent failed coup attempt against the capitol police, injuring over a hundred police officers. We know he stole and refused to return boxes of top secret national security documents. We know his entire business empire is built on financial fraud.
And, most directly relevant to the jobs of the police, we know Trump spreads violence against government officials, judges, election workers, immigrants, BLM protesters, LGBTQ+ people, anyone who opposes him politically.
Of course the police, charged with protecting and serving public safety, should not be endorsing a violent criminal and an active threat to public safety and national security like Trump. His alliance with the police is a terrifying cliche of fascist movements since Mussolini.
Okay, so defunding the police was not a good idea. Still weird how that one bad idea has seemed to scuttle and push aside entirely any of the great push for police reform in the summer of 2020. Especially when an action like this by the police screams out how badly we still need that police reform.
We should assume that the cop who killed Sonya Massey, a cop who reportedly had worked for six different law enforcement agencies in the previous four years, and during which time he was charged twice with DUIs, was in good standing with the police union, right?
New Birth, funky Motown spinoffs. Included Marvin Gaye's buddy Harvey Fuqua. Reached number 4 on R&B chart and number 35 on Hot 100 in 1973. Readymade for the discos.
Bobby Womack's "I Can Understand It" original, 1972. Proto-jungle-stomp-disco.
“Only 35 percent of wealthy Americans support spending what is necessary to ensure good public schools,” Daniel W. Drezner notes [from The Ideas Industry], “a sharp contrast to 87-percent support from the general public.” The wealthy also support cuts to government spending and social programs much more strongly than the rest of the public—which fits with their compulsion to spend millions on trying to buy academic legitimacy for unregulated capitalism."
See The New Republic story for more:
The Rise of the Thought Leader, by David Sessions.
The Thought Leader replaces the Public Intellectual. The TL has a big platform on a major media outlet, social media, a popular substack page, etc, and, the point, is sponsored at least in part by plutocratic money that wants to propagate the ideas and values of unfettered capitalism. The Public Intellectual, in the past, was more independent, protected by academic freedoms in a university or educational settings, and/or by popular free press platforms more viable before the rise of Google and social media. Sessions might be overstating the relative independence of former PI's but the plutocratic tilt (spending supports) for ideas that protect private equity/corporate profit seeking interests and refute, or more often obfuscate, criticism of these economic arrangements is obvious and troubling.
Should have been called "No In-Between," reflecting the song's uncompromising romantic intensity. In the 1980s the Wedding Present were associated with the C86 indie rock label in the UK. David Gedge, WP's only constant member (at least 28 others have played with him), is a bonafide two-way player-- i.e., he plays guitar with ferocious speed and drone pop grandeur and matured into a master of punk rock heartache and melodramatic love songs. Gedge lived for a spell in the 1990s in Seattle but never succumbs to grunge's dinosaur rock bombast. In the long run carving his own hard jangle punk pop path proves to be Gedge's superpower. The classic sound of the Wedding Present is terse, frenetic, buzzing with thick feedback energy, and ringing with dissonance and harmony. Noise pop. (And another fundamental inspiration to 1990s shoegaze.) The backup singer echoes Gedge, as if to soothe his restless mind with her soft banter. Even if the bad romance gets old the roar of the careening guitar noise never does.