TWGB: Who is the Fairest One of All?

 

Donald Trump is very jealous that Taylor Swift is prettier than him and has a football player boyfriend and is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. And she did it all herself.  So he wants to send his flying monkeys to let her know he IS SO more popular than her. He was president once you know, and probably still has papers in his possession that prove it! He's still BIG. It's just the Deep State and the Lying Media's fault he looks SMALL. 

He'll show them! He's ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Just, maybe not so close. And with a bit of a filter, And with so much makeup it looks like he's applying shoe polish to his face. 

Deciding he needs to go after a female pop star just after a hefty defamation decision against him sounds like just the sort of beef he would get into. Being appalling to women is one of his hobbies, after all. And consider that it's women who are or would be giving and have given him the most trouble. The nasty Hillary Clinton, who first pegged him as a national security threat and his followers as a basket of deplorables. Nancy Pelosi of the two impeachments. Letitia James. Fani Willis. Nikki Haley. Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, Tanya Chutkan... 

You First, Assholes

 

“People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands”

“Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about” pic.twitter.com/vnGna7jkzo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 2, 2024

Maybe Fox News pretend analysts need to shut up--at least long enough to hear what others are saying.

Actually, successful rock bands are political analysts or at least, seize the zeitgeist and appeal to people because they enunciate feelings other people can vibe with.  Are people really sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands--or is it that something they say resonates and that's why they have a following? I mean, songs like "For What It's Worth", or "Ohio" or "Southern Man" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Eve of Destruction"--the "freedom rock " Woodstock era stuff I heard as my early lullabies, weren't any more neutral than the "Ballad of the Green Berets" was. 

Now, whether I listened to the Dead Kennedys or INXS or The Clash, I heard politics, even as a kid. I don't understand people who ever listened to the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine and never understood what the machine was. Was it a soda machine? Were they just mad they couldn't get their Barq's root beer jones on?  Of course, they were political. 

Look, one of my ear-influences is Billy Bragg. Punk as fuck. Not punk as fuck--slipping in your old age and deciding Trump is punk. Trump is The Man that fighting the power has been about since, whatever. 

And Green Day's "American Idiot" was explicitly a political album. Just like Neil Young's "Living with War."  Bob Dylan--political. Bruce Springsteen--political. Patti Smith, Bikini Kill, Hole, Pussy Riot. 

Fox News talking heads are not political analysts.  They are propagandists. Who knows what ass they pull what they say from? They aren't musical, they aren't artful, they aren't well-informed, and they say whatever the network wants. Conservatism isn't edgy when they go against the mainstream--mostly they are just counterfactual and fronting for some paymaster--the dead opposite of the punk ethos.

Or to put it in rank Gen X terms--they are sell outs. They want you to dismiss what you are hearing because "you can't handle the reality of it". But you totally could get "woke" if you listened to the lyrics around you.  Fox News "analysts" are fake and don't represent anything going on in the real world. If they want someone to stop talking about politics--instead of shutting up artists who care about the world, they could shut the hell up because they just care about payday. 

Maybe the Boomers who listen to Fox should go ahead and re-listen to that "freedom rock" I teethed on as a kid. It was politics. And a lot of it was dead-on. 

Smash Mouth - Walkin' On The Sun

If you want to know where the Generation X anthems went, why we weren't political enough and didn't do movements, the reality was they all got commercialized and co-opted and we were trying to make money to just not be fucking tragic. And a lot of us took shit tons of drugs and booze along the way. Not for creativity. But to be a little less real. To not feel the reality of what we were about right now. Some of our mamas felt the shelter of mama's little helper, We blasted Yagers and downed fifths like they were pints. We rolled tight jays in borrowed station wagons. 

But the future loomed:

It ain't no joke when a mama's handkerchief is soaked

With her tears because her baby's life has been revoked

The bond is broke up, so choke up and focus on the close up

Mr. Wizard can't perform no god-like hocus-pocus

So don't sit back, kick back and watch the world get bushwhacked

News at ten, your neighborhood is under attack

Put away the crack before the crack puts you away

You need to be there when your baby's old enough to relate

Bitch, DARE had nothing on that. We all needed to see what was coming--the storm despite the apathy. 

Don't delay, act now. (I always repurpose "Walkin' on the Sun" to do with climate change in my head. It makes sense that way, you know. RIP, Steve Harwell. We probably didn't have a whole lot of political overlap but shared a generation.) 

We also lost Gary Wright (I had "Dream Weaver" on a K-Tel compilation to play on my little turntable as a wee kid).  

Fly me high through the starry skies

Maybe to an astral plane

Cross the highways of fantasy

Help me to forget today's pain

And Jimmy Buffet and I don't know. (Yes "Come Monday" speaks more to me, by goodness. It's a fin romantic ballad). There's an uncool era of drinking shit well drinks and listening to popular music that spoke to not fucking around that personifies just wanting to, yearning to, love and live. Because otherwise, we were in the shit. 

I don't know how these guys hang together in my mind, other than all recently passing, except they also do. A couple songs loved and lived deeper and more meaningful to my generation and our consciousness. Part of an ethos of wearing our skin and drinking it in over again. 

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (Official Audio)

A real bard goes forth. The man did some classic lays, genuine remembrances passing into folklore. His songs have been covered and admired by the absolute greats he has shared this timeline with. He did really good.  Just beautiful poetic work. 

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

 

 I have explained the terrible compulsion behind some of my posts--unless I post about whatever stupid thing is gnawing at me, I don't get to move on to other business--and here this weird thing is, still nibbling at my neocortex:

A queer music artist did a dance performance in a devil Hallowe'en costume and right-wingers decided Hollyweird was shoving Satanism down their throats. 

There's a long history of regarding Satan and music, especially popular music, as connected and it's certainly been written about before, so I don't need to hash out the secular and profane aspects of modern music. But this isn't really about that, or not quite.

In a climate that has tried to start a "satanic panic" over Drag Time Story Hour that has since boiled its way down to getting books banned and even removed from schools--it isn't Satan that's the problem. Sam Smith isn't a satanist, they are queer. And it isn't Devil's Advocacy on my part to point out what I think is the real problem folks like Matt Walsh or Ali Alexander have: The real problem is they are homophobic, transphobic grifters--the hate dollar keeps them going.

It's the funniest part of the culture war--on our side, we talk about Poe's Law, where outrage among the religious right is so daft you can't tell parody from their actual genuine product. But I always suspect it's because the genuine product itself is so adulterated with self-conscious schtick. 

On their end, they think we are feeding babies to Satan (allegedly) when most of us cultural left folks really don't believe literally in the biblical bogeyman. The saying that the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist isn't quite right. The greatest trick ever pulled was telling people there was supernaturalism behind their actions, and therefore they had to listen to priests and other jumped-up demagogues instead of thinking for themselves. 

Our sin is scoffing at their "deeply held beliefs"--which is their only basis for anyone going along with them. And I also scoff at them for getting all exercised over a singer in a shiny little top-hat with  horns.

Give me a break!

Fleetwood Mac - You Make Loving Fun

The amazing quality of Fleetwood Mac to have two great female songwriters has had my admirations since, I dunno--kindergarten? Whenever songs from Rumors hit the car radio where I first listened to music? But let me just talk about Christine McVie's voice for a minute: the positive vibes of her lyrics, the golden warmth of her no-doubt grown lady alto. 

I'm not comparing my love for Stevie Nicks with Christine McVie--my god, "Rhiannon" was the first song that took my little ass out and made me want to understand how to vocalize, how to lay down personal things in verse. But looking back on songs like "Everywhere" and "Little Lies", I'm hearing a such perspective. 

Of course, "Don't Stop" became a 90's anthem for the Clinton era. But the depth and the emotion she could manage, as if it was easy. 

I loved her voice, and her lyrics. I want her voice to woo me until the sun comes up and say that she loves me. Because I loved hearing her. 

Sometimes a Flute is Just a Musical Instrument

 

Sometimes I struggle with the diagnosis of being "terminally online". I prefer to think of myself as only "critically online". What I do know is, as a blogger, I don't love that my blog muses occasionally insist on my dealing with whatever messed-up thing is going on with the Online Discourse. 

I try: "Please," I bargain. "Let me do other stuff. The Discourse sucks. The people are terrible. I hate it here."

And the answer I get is hollow, mocking laughter. "This is the price you pay for your remit: the culture, white supremacy, radicalization, misogyny. Do your thing here, or we won't let you do the other stuff." 

And there I am. 

So, for some reason, the right wing online freaked out because Melissa Viviane Jefferson, an American musician and actress known for her ability to play the flute, was invited to play a 200-year-old crystal flute once owned by James Madison that was being stored at the Library of Congress. That's right, a modern popular musician who has done as much for the flute lately as, I dunno, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull or Chris Wood of Traffik (look, folks, I am not young anymore and rock music only ever does so much flute) played an instrument that it would be a damn shame to never get played again, and the racists got all up in arms. 

My "favorite" dumbass comment is probably this one from some guy I never heard of named Pedro who was just openly racist:

He said "The thing that is obvious but people don't want to say is that this is about humiliating white people, about desecrating American history and heritage. That's what you do when you're a conqueror. Humiliate the conquered."

It isn't obvious. This wouldn't humiliate white people who weren't unrelenting racists. She's literally a musician playing a musical instrument. She's an American, She's respecting the awesomeness of playing an antique historical artifact. There was no conquering or desecrating. She just played a flute. It was made to be used by musicians. The entire world this terribly online creature lives in is grievance-based and for no reason at all. 

What he's saying is: she used the wrong water fountain. She sat in the wrong bus seat. He wants to take her existence as an accomplished musician receiving the opportunity to handle a unique object as an affront, but by doing so, can only point to her race as the reason for his discomfiture. Because that's all the outrage is. 

Bella Ciao

 

Persian version of the 19th century Italian protest folk song, Bella Ciao. #MahsaAmini #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/DZq4MHJbbU

— Habib Khan (@HabibKhanT) September 24, 2022

Bella ciao,

Ukrainian soldiers singing the the Italian anti-fascist resistance anthem 'Bella Ciao'.pic.twitter.com/918S2NQK9o

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) September 28, 2022

Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao.

UPDATE: So, I have always associated this song with anti-fascism, but there is some historical doubt whether the Italian antifascisti used it during WW2 (it certainly became a thing afterwards), but I came across this neat thing when checking Wikipedia about the melody:

A possible origin of the melody was identified by researcher Fausto Giovannardi, following the discovery of a Yiddish melody (Koilen song) recorded by a Klezmer accordionist of Ukrainian origin, Mishka Ziganoff, in 1919 in New York. According to the scholar Rod Hamilton of The British Library in London, "Koilen" would be a version of "Dus Zekele Koilen" (The bag of coal), of which there are various versions dating back to the 1920s.^[13][14]

So, in being sung by the Ukrainian soldiers, it was like the song found its' way home. The song Italians know as being a song that was about field workers in Italy, is in Yiddish about finding coal to heat one's home because without it, it means disaster for everyone's health. 

And Russia is threatening Europe about interrupting a part of their winter heating supply in order to try and gain some kind of leverage they have no business asking for over other peoples' freedom and right to choose their government.  It is beautiful to me that this song has been used by movements for human dignity all over the world. Because what it speaks to, in the Italian lyrics, is resistance. It means there are conditions under which no one would want to live, and the fight against the intolerable.

My support is always with those who fight for their dignity, and against the oppressor. Fuck Putin. Fuck the Ayatollah. Fuck Christian Nationalism. Fuck every death-dealing oppressor of the human spirit and denier of human dignity. 

My Nostalgia Is Acting Up

Eminem defies NFL and kneels in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick during Super Bowl halftime show https://t.co/XDI07ULqDk

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 14, 2022

They told Slim Shady to please stand up, but Slim Shady said God sent him to piss the world off.

There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about how this half-time show was about my generation, and frankly, we never did say we were going to die before we got old. We said don't you forget about me. And we are getting old, and I wish more of us were getting wise. 

The fucking kids aren't all right. Charlie Kirk thinks the half-time show was full of sexual anarchy. This dumb man-baby must have been peeing in his diapers through the Janet Jackson and Prince half-time shows. He literally comes off like John Lithgow's character in Footloose.  That's two Footloose references I've made this month. I may be getting old. I repeat myself. Matt Walsh, middle aged but younger than me, doesn't know "woke" means aware, and Marshall Mathers is aware he's a white guy who owes a fuckton to Black music and Black people. That he's supposedly making amends for anything else is Walsh's own bullshit. 

I'm glad the convoy asshats didn't come to LA to fuck with the Super Bowl despite what loons like Wendy Rogers and Senator Rand Paul wanted. That would have been a shitshow--all those Confederate flags in LA. I don't think those two remember how things could go, because they forget that urban America is also real America. They think it would scare the shit out of people who live in the cities that right-wing dumbasses think have been burned down by BLM. They forget riots that have happened not even thirty years ago. 

I don't, The truckers don't, either, and they probably know that unlike Ottawa or Windsor, if you go to LA or NY or Philadelphia, you might meet with an entirely different atmosphere that isn't going to wait for police action because nope. Residents will find a way. People have turned out en masse for deceased kids they didn't even know, and some jackasses want to disrupt the shelves at Acme and whether our own kids get fed--are you for real? 

December is a Dark Month

 

 I haven't posted about the suckularity lately because to me, living in "pandemic time" only meant becoming wrapped up in the passing of so many lives and I never wanted to turn the blog over to obituaries and eulogies, but December hits hard, sometimes. Harry Reid, George Madden, April Ashley, bell hooks, Joan Didion, Mike Nesmith, even Bob Dole. Anne Rice, E.O. Wilson, Sarah Weddington. I note their passing, but just can't bring myself to write the damn things about them. 

Their time and mine intersected, and for their merits and their flaws, you can look anywhere, but as for me, it's memento mori as much as anything else. We carry the good in our memories and follow their positive example. 

That's all I've got.

Little Richard - Good Golly Miss Molly Live 1964

If he wasn't always considered the King of Rock and Roll, then Little Richard was clearly the Architect of Rock and Roll; the protean spirit of the sound that influenced generations. Vibrant and virtuoso, spiritual and sexual, he did and was an awful lot. He made history, and will be remembered well, and lives on.

Badder Than Tay

Name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift 😍😛😤 pic.twitter.com/AkSyQBUIME

— Nutella (@xnulz) November 10, 2017

This is not about putting down Taylor Swift, because I appreciate her talent and "Bad Blood" is one of my favorite videos and tearing down a woman to uplift other women is actually sort of shitty, but somebody went too far and asked "Name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift." And the Twitter response was actually...

Really freaking inspirational. Because there have been some absolutely amazing badass women in the world who should be recognized as heroes of their own life story. The resulting Tweets were stories of great-grandmoms and grandmoms and moms and historical warrior Yas Queens! and survivors and makers and doers. There were athletes and soldiers and bandits. There were educators and activists. There were journalists and programmers and astronauts. There were women of color and women who were marginalized.

And we need these stories to get made into books and movies and get this part of history reclaimed. I would spend that talking picture money I'm not investing in the local mining concern and watch all the movies about these people, right here.

UPDATE: And Taylor Swift was also a silence breaker. And she was right to be angry--if someone is going to manhandle Taylor Swift, what would that same person do to some low-paid or unpaid intern(s?) in the radio industry? She had the means and put them to good use.

Tom Petty RIP

So, in the course of events the other day, Twitter informed me that Tom Petty was found unconscious after a heart attack at the age of 66, which is a thing people in their sixties often do survive, and then, news came about that he was taken off life support, and then, he was dead, but then again, we got told he wasn't dead yet, and then, no, he was. Which was a kick in the gut, because Tom Petty is right up there with Warren Zevon and a damn few others in my musical pantheon. (Bowie. Leonard Cohen. Protective light and health vibes around Pete Townsend, Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney, etc.)

The thing with Tom Petty is that he didn't write any bad songs, but some just stood out as being especially good. "American Girl" is like that. "Raised on promises" suggests the "American Dream". She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more life, somewhere else. She was ambitious because of her upbringing. Some people see this as a song about suicide--not me. "And if she had to die, trying, she had one little promise she was going to keep" tells me this girl wasn't fixing to die, but to do something she promised to do. She had a "desperate moment there", but she got the hell over it.

Tom Petty painted pictures, and familiar scenes, with his songs. I guess that might be why some of his late '80's and early '90's work like "Last Dance with Mary Jane" (hello, necro!) and "Yer So Bad" made such odd great videos.

I don't know--he wasn't just a great songwriter and performer, but he passed that craft down and went out never having done any music that sounded like bullshit.




He had a perspective about music and the rest of it.

His voice was unique and I will both appreciate the way it stays with me, and miss how it won't say anything anymore, except in retrospect.

I Will Miss Chris Cornell

David Bowie, RIP

Logging into Twitter first thing this morning, I was almost sure Bowie's passing had to be some kind of uncool internet hoax until I saw it in regular news media. I don't think current music would be much the same at all without him. He was a one-of-a-kind and will be very much missed.

Been Spending Most Our Lives in A GOP Grifters' Paradise

I'm trying to get how a rap radio ad became a thing for the Carson campaign. Part of me wants to believe Austerity Mascot, sorry, Aspiring Mogul, just decided to write a song for Dr. Carson because he likes what the guy has to say as a rare bear among conservatives.
Why can't "Carson" rhyme with "awesome" in a world where struggle rhymes with trouble? Never mind. We'll fill in the lacunae with jazz flute and some Carson riffing. It'll sound like music.

But there's just this part of me feeling like some strategist was wondering what the kids these days liked and someone else said "the rap music" and that that's how we got here.

I'm just saying motivational speaking isn't necessarily enhanced when someone drops a beat behind it.

But after all, the Carson Campaign is so miles more professional than what the Founding Fathers had, and they managed, right?  Which is how we even ended up on the moon.  Because we don't need aliens if we have God. And I don't know how all of that is motivational speech, but maybe they could add a little more cowbell?

Kids love cowbell. It's a fever.

R.I.P., Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger presents us with an interesting case: there is no doubt he was outspoken (but always seemed so soft-spoken--I could never believe he'd go after Bob Dylan's amp cables with an axe) and was a gifted and expressive songwriter and performer who showed you could do more with six-strings than six-guns, but I think the time he embodied what's best about the First Amendment was when he didn't speak (or rather, didn't let words get put in his mouth). His refusal to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee showed, I think, steel in the backbone, not just the banjo strings. And he was right about those questions being wrong--freedom of assembly and expression are right there in the Constitution, and HUAC were the ones not displaying particularly "American" activities.  The next time his silence was louder than words was when CBS cut his performance of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" from The Smother Brothers program (which got the song more attention than had it just quietly aired in the first place).

Charles Pierce's tribute is more eloquent about Seeger's activism and music than I am--you go read him.

Donna Summer--RIP

My mind has been replaying so many of her songs since I heard she passed on.

RIP, MCA

I don't do nostalgia and whatnot. But the Beastie Boys were part of my life soundtrack.

People in Norway are Pretty Awesome, but Anders Breivik really Sucks

I've been following the news from the trial of Anders Breivik with a deep disgust--I know that I am not in a position to judge the sanity or stability of another person, but the more I learn from this trial of the events that Breivik orchestrated, the more it seems to me that Breivik was operating under a certain logic--a horrible and misanthropic logic.  He does not seem to me to have been deranged, only very full of hate for his fellow human beings. That said, I'm proud of the response by the people in the above video--about 40,000 people gathered just blocks from where Breivik is being held to sing a song that the killer despised as "Marxist propaganda".

OSLO — Up to 40,000 Norwegians staged an emotionally-charged sing-along in Oslo on Thursday near the court house where Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for the murder of 77 people in a protest organizers said showed he had not broken their tolerant society. 

“It’s we who win,” said guitar-strumming folk singer Lillebjoern Nilsen as he led the mass sing-along and watched the crowd sway gently in the rain. Many held roses above their heads, and some wept. 

The protest followed several days of defiant testimony from Breivik who has admitted he killed his victims in a blood soaked attack on Norway’s multicultural society, but denied criminal guilt, saying he did so in self-defense.

Breivik himself has said that considering him insane is a calumny intended to delegitimize his intelligence and his message. I am inclined to take him seriously--his beliefs are shared by others; he only differs from the garden variety nationalist racist fuckwit in putting his ammo where his mouth was. He probably is too dull to realize, however, that in trying to demonstrate that multiculturalism is dangerous because people who are different are a threat, he showed that the neighborhood Nordic numbskull living in Mommy's basement can be as bad or worse. Sadly, people who write gunmetal poetry are often irony deficient.  This musical opposition, which I'm sure he must have heard, however, should have informed him that he is the outsider. He was the one who did not belong, and his thoughts and actions don't have a place in a peaceful and decent society.

Good on them for expressing it in just this moving, beautiful way.