now THIS is how it's supposed to work

last night was a tuesday. by 8:30pm, carl johnson and arte k were underway at voices rock club. by 9:30, the two of them were joined on stage by peter lavender. by 10:30, the house was coming down.

meanwhile, back at furey's, justin burns, andy els-o'brien and kevin roche were warming 'em up and knocking them down with a mix of standards and reverend jj originals, and they were still going strong when carl, arte and peter rolled in to catch the end of the set. moments later, fresh from rehearsal, melvern taylor and bob nash strolled in as well.

the only thing missing was someone taking justin up on his offer to keep the mic running for more music.

yes, i'm name-dropping, and that much bragging is not attractive, but i just had one of those "best music nights" last night of which there aren't nearly enough in this town, (still isn't a room that's consistently got both the music and the crowd to make it THE go-to place, as opposed to "a" go-to place, though, as mentioned above, we've got some pretty good options from time to time, nonetheless), and i wanted to tell you about it because chances are you weren't there, but it would have been nice to see you. ;-)

zach deputy was over at gemstones, which was the one performance i missed, but that's the way it goes some days... feast, when the next night is famine. (well, i'm playing soccer and then treat her right is at the lizard lounge tonight, so i'm not suffering today, either). there are a lot of people putting forth a lot of effort to make this a musical town once again, (i've heard so many stories of the way it used to be), and the one element more of which is always needed are the people to come out and support the music. you know i try to do my part, but you also know that i get far more back from the effort than i ever put in. as melvern would tell you, you should totally give it a try.

"consumer, business confidence both weaken"

since when? friday???

for the past couple weeks the bulls have been out kicking the dow up an easy +500 points, (+800 if you go back 30 days), and the only thing remarkable about that is that the bears had spent the last couple weeks before that dropping it -600, and it's not really clear what, if anything, is fundamentally different, and the long-term average is a decent illustration of the point. we're going nowhere.

let's face it--we're still bankrupt as a nation, pouring good trillions after bad down the three-holed sewer of un-winnable foreign armed conflict, socialist corporate bailouts and political pork, aka "stimulus", and unworkable, indecipherable "health care" programs that, in the end, benefit only big pharma and the doctors who stand to prescribe from their catalog to an ever-widening pool of people, and are completely confusing (and of questionable overall value) to most folks. (i can just see the medicare questionnaire now: "tell me, has your confidence been strengthening or weakening lately?") did anyone catch jon stewart's montage of congressional news, intermixing the "this actual piece of real legislation that was just rejected" news stories with video from the capitol hill floor of them approving things like the "10th anniversary of the national book festival"?

here's the actual list, verbatim from the daily show:

* 9/23: - failed to move forward on repealing don't ask don't tell
* 9/14: + commended the university of southern california trojan men's tennis team
* 7/30: - failed to give health care coverage to 9-11 first-responders sickened by dust at ground zero
* 9/22: + acted to issue a multinational species conservation fund symposium stamp
* 7/30: - failed to get the small business bill past a procedural vote
* 9/16: + recognized the 10th anniversary of the national book festival
* 7/14: - failed to pass the defense supplemental bill before breaking for the july 4th holiday
* 9/22: + commemorated the 75th anniversary of the blue ridge parkway
* 7/08: - failed to extend jobless benefits to 2.1 million unemployed americans before taking their summer break.

yep, there's a pattern.

i'm figuring, if you stick a polling thermometer up the collective american poop shoot, all you're ever going to read these days is "we're in the shit", and until 1 out of 7 americans are moved back even to the poverty line, and until the vast millions of people who have been out of work for years can find some, that reading ain't gonna change.

too bad the financial news is written and reported about and for the top 1% of americans who own fully 42% of everything in this country. (the bottom 4 out of 5 americans, one of whom is likely to be beneath the poverty threshold, altogether barely own 15% of the wealth in this country--that's right, 80% of the people get barely 15% of the stuff, while the top 1% has essentially three times that much.

or, put another way, 2 out of 100 of us owns just about as much as the other 98 combined, and if you think those 2 are in any way hurting right now in this economy, you haven't been paying attention. it's the other 98 of us who are getting screwed. (actually, it's the bottom 80, and, speaking for the 18 of us with decent-paying jobs, alimony notwithstanding, we're still holding heads above water for now, but it's trending the wrong way, and it's only a matter of time until national insolvency knocks the pegs out from under us, too).

or, put another way--that 1.5 TRILLION of your and my dollars that we gave to those big banks cuz they said we had to? six of 'em hold 60% of the entire US GDP, and, instead of failing and fire-saling those assets back to the people who paid for them, they're operating with the full faith and tax capacity of the american public behind them, and we're never gonna see even a nickel. seriously--do you think those banks are going to be paying the taxes that pay back those trillions to the treasury? nope, that's on us. just us. meaning, the banks stole 1.5 trillion, and then held us up for another 1.5 trillion of our lunch money to pay it back, and we went for it.

short answer is that the headline, that "consumer, business confidence both weaken", has to be a boldfaced lie--zero confidence cannot weaken.

sapere aude.

music

i'm often joking about the tendency for musicians not to vet their personal schedules with me before booking their gigs, (it's a real problem for me!), and tonight, a tuesday night of all things, is a classic case in point.

in reverse order of proximity, (if its played outside of lowell, can anybody hear?), there's a little something at the foundation room of the house of blues in boston that sports local lowell legend frank morey and his band, (scott pittman and matt murphy), along with jen kearney and two thirds (three fourths--mark mullins, are you in the house?) of her lost onion, (pete maclean and claire finley, and, as the baseballers are fond to say, a guitar player to be named later). meanwhile, back at shangri-lowell, there's the fabulous, talented and knows-more-musicians-than-you carl johnson, who is featured at the top of a ridiculous bill of all-star talent that's been assembled at the proverbial last moment by the crew at voices rock club to make this one of those proverbial nights to be there and remember. in the past 24 hours (a last-minute gig that shows off the power of the internet to bring people together--just the rumor that carl has the voices stage and everybody wants to be there, too) the rumors have gone from arte k and peter lavender (they're confirmed, and if you haven't seen their bands, you haven't seen lowell rock!) to now include the possibilities of steve esposito and justin beaulieu (would that make it more the arte k band, or are we entering red devil lye territory, or with peter L would this just be the birth of lowell's next supergroup???). observing that melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones' weekly rehearsals conclude nearby well in time to make the later set(s), there's as good a chance tonight for a bob nash sighting (kinda like the proverbial blue moon he is) as you'll get that's not on a thursday at toad, and when you add it all up, you've got something well worth the investment of an early lowell evening to see. (the music starts at 8, so you could catch the first set and still be home in bed by 9:30, and there's no excuse for you not to, and you know it).

of course, though we've just reviewed the headline of the evening, we've not completed the list of the rest of it. yes, carl and arte and steve and justin and peter are as good as it gets, and i know that frank and jen write a few songs too, but get ahold of arte's "be a man" and peter's "never now"--i bet if you ask nicely tonight you can find someone to sell you a copy or two--and then after you pick your musical jaw up off the ground, check out the liner notes to see who's playing on 'em and where and how they got recorded, and you'll notice there's a common thread among ALL the best of lowell, including jen's best record, the year of the ox, and melvern's, who doesn't have one best record because he's they guy who has FOUR, and it's either or both of carl johnson (on guitar, singing backup, arranging, etc.) and bob nash (playing drums, singing harmonies, and sitting behind the knobs at wonka sound, which is itself a lowell institution to stand among the best of all of them, for sure), and then look up at the stage at voices because there they'll be, right there in front of you). seriously--i have to pinch myself to believe i'm actually going to get to see it all tonight, and more. yes, more.

because, as our walking tour of lowell wends its way back across the river from voices to the downtown area, there's this little rough sketch of a bar down on fletcher street called furey's that'll have both the BEST burger in town broiling on the grill (they cook 'em all night there--you can ALWAYS get one, and how awesome is that) as well as justin the reverend jj burns and andy ells-obrien playing just so. (the last time i was there they played COMPLETELY acoustic, with a banjo, guitar, and justin's un-amped vocals and harmonica, and it was amazing. really, really good). not sure how late they'll be going, and if the jam at voices will carry on late, (one can only hope), but it's on the itinerary for sure.

then, last, and perhaps least cuz he's not a local lowellian, but not least because he's zach deputy and he's awesome and the whole thing is literally across the street from my house, and how beautiful is that, there's the show over at gemstones that will cost me my one and only natural fan if i should be so blessed as to be invited to join a number or two over at voices. (she loves zach, and how can a ukulele player compete with that?) it would take a miracle for me to get there in time, but in that case i can say that i'm missing better music tonight (frank morey on the front end, and zach deputy on the back, and even jen kearney in the middle like the world's most beautiful sandwich, and if you've ever seen her play, you know exactly what i mean) than most people see in a year.

but, on the other hand, i'm going to get to see the BEST lowell has to offer--carl johnson, arte k, peter lavender, (fingers crossed), steve esposito, justin beaulieu, bob nash and everyone else that is going to be down at voices after 8pm tonight, plus get a shot at a furey's burger and a little jj and AEO on the side for a nightcap.

it just doesn't get any better than this.

i know, i know--it's the hyperbole that leaves you unconvinced... but, and i mean this earnestly and sincerely, if you come down to voices at 8 and just take in 20 minutes of the music, you're going to understand a little better why i'm like this about it. i'll even buy you a beer.

real things

i was surprised to inadvertently touch a conversational third rail today with a friend i respect and admire by using the word "real" in a sentence in modification of a shared love. it was, unfortunately for the conversation, describing only my particular view of the world and what's real in it, and like is so often the case with so many things, from PC operating systems, to music, politics and religion, things didn't seem to go very well from there.

in the end, i have only my own perspective with which to live, i guess, and i certainly would have chosen a different word had i known, but i didn't, so i didn't, and now here we are.

i am sincerely sorry...

but beyond who is sorry and who is offended, what, after all is said and done, is actually real? (after all, it's all only about right answers to the engineer).

in this case, i'd say it's everything we each believe, and, i guess because of that, neither. at the very least, i can speak from current experience that it's possible to be completely sorry for the hurt caused, yet not so much moved in opinion by it nevertheless, nor confused about what i remain to believe is real.

let's just say that it's a very sad day all around.

the whole thing wouldn't be worth dwelling upon, except that my day began causing hurt over my peculiar perspective on veterinary medicine, (do not expect any time soon for any pet of mine to receive a joint replacement, cardiac surgery, or chemotherapy), that never fails to wound those who devote more extreme care to their animals. (and i use the word "extreme" advisedly, because, just like "real", it's the one that always gets 'em going). it's the last thing i'd want to do, (i.e. stir up further painful emotions in someone currently beset by the painful emotions surrounding an ailing pet), but it seems to be the first thing i'm compelled to do...

behind all of it today--every short word, and ill-chosen--is the hole in my heart where my friend used to be, who would never have said either or any of it to anyone.

damn it all.

it hurts most to be humbled by the truth that i'll never be the man he was or that i wish i could be, and this world loses better each and every day than i can aspire.

i'm sorry, and it makes me both sad and frustrated.

but not confused--what's real is what we feel.

buy local

from vegetables to dry goods, it's always smart to buy local, and for a multitude of reasons:

economically--when community money is kept in the community, everybody benefits. if a dollar keeps changing hands, (maybe first for a cup of coffee, next for the coffee shop to pay a local roaster for their beans, next for the local roaster to pay their employee for roasting 'em, next for that employee to buy another cup of coffee, etc.), everybody it touches is enriched. but once that dollar goes out of town, it's not as easy to get it back.

conveniently--if you'd like to have the option to pop down to your corner store on a whim for anything at all, you're depending on that corner store to be in business to sell to you. if you don't do business with that corner store every day for your staples, it won't be there every day when you'd prefer it to be for your whims.

pragmatically--local stores stocking local goods are immediately sensitive to local needs and wants, and not overstocked with nonsense that's popular in other parts of the country while bereft of what's needed on the spot. (ever notice that walmart always sells out of snow shovels whenever it snows?)

ecologically--it's a lower carbon footprint to sell local stuff in local stores, and not ship and store and etc. all sorts of stuff everywhere across the globe. sure, it's nice to be able to get chilean produce in the dead of winter--this isn't the point--but see the next point below about quality.

qualitatively--if they grow corn on the cob down in littleton at springbrook farm, and it's the BEST corn on the cob on the planet when it's fresh and picked the same day its sold, (which, by the way, it is, and i'd love for you to try to prove otherwise because either it can't be done, or something is better, in which case, i'm all for it), why the heck would we want to be buying dried out and flavor-less and who-knows-how-many-days-old florida corn from market basket?

and, when it comes to music, all the previous rules certainly apply.

carl johnson is headlining over at voices rock club on tuesday night this week, and rumors have it that a top-notch lineup of friends and musical masters are possibly going to be making appearances. (no telling what and who carl will choose to put on stage, but it's always awesome).

1) it's an investment in our community
2) it's an investment in our musical convenience
3) it's an investment in our musical preference (request something!)
4) it's a carbon-neutral quick-trip destination (i walk there)
5) it's the best music around (boston ain't got what we've got here, and i speak from considerable experience)

and, besides all that--gary is the best host by whom you've ever been welcomed for a night out, and it's a ball.

but, don't take my word for it--come on down and see for yourself!

papelblown

i work in a global company for which diversity is a touchstone. we have every nationality, faith and orientation you could name on the payroll, even, (as i'm aghast to admit to you), yankee fans.

so it is to you this morning that i relay the truth that each and every one of those loathsome pinstripe lovers with whom i'm forced to work enjoys a pavlovian salivary response to any sight of #58 warming up in the bullpen, and they're never shy to talk about it in the morning.

insult to injury, in addition to enduring such correspondence, i'm now reading the new england cable news recap of the past evening's inevitabilities and choking on my cheerios to see that pap (or pap smear, if you'd like the politically incorrect version of things) has seen fit to blame the umpire for his giving up three hits and a walk over the course of a single inning comprised of 30 pitches-worth of work, of which, it should be mentioned, that fully half of those pitches (15--you can count 'em) were called to be a ball, suggesting to me that either this was the most egregious lapse of officiating judgment, or, perhaps, that it's the most whining and peevish hissy fit tantrum that we've seen from pap since, well, since he blew his last one.

"i'm not blaming the umpire", pap backtracked, just moments after saying "it was tough considering the fact that i was not only pitching against their lineup, i was also pitching against the ump". yup, he's not blaming the umpire...

i love watching minor leaguers kick the yankees' ass. i just can't stand watching an overblown meathead piss it all away and then blame everyone but himself.

"sun seeks freelance writers"

of course it does.

recently, the sun laid off a bunch of folks in order to cut further back on its fading local coverage, and save a few bucks in the process. items on which the sun continues to spend its dwindling dollars include the twice-weekly peter lucas column in which we can never read anything reasonable, let alone anything that has anything at all to do with lowell proper, but, of course, as usual, i digress.

i had to laugh at the help-wanted blurb today, observing that it expresses a preference for news-writing experience and a college degree in journalism or communications. it's hard to believe they're serious. they eliminate professional positions on their paper, expressing as eloquently as is possible their derision for professional news-writing experience, not to mention the educational backgrounds of their fired employees, and now they want us to think that they really give the slightest damn if a cut-rate report gets filed for the first time in a correspondent's life or the hundredth?

oh, i'm going to miss the comedy.

let's call this spade a spade. they can't run their paper, so now they're asking us to run it for them--or at least fill its pages with the stuff that's worth reading so it'll coincidentally be worth buying. this, actually, is a HUGE step forward, observing as we all can the wealth of recording devices carried around our fair city by virtually everyone, (my cell phone has a camera with video, and i know i'm by no means rare in that), and the potential for tapping into that for the benefit of all. but here's where i realize exists the fatal flaw. they can't run a website. (have you tried dealing with their blog for comments, or even just for reading?) they can't even run a printed paper, filling it as they do with completely irrelevant nonsense like my pet kicking-rock, peter lucas, and both of these talents would be necessary if any of this is to be successful.

the first outfit that gets it has my subscription--collect news from the people who are part of it. compile it, edit it, and distribute it for all to benefit. finally put this dinosaur out of its death-rattle misery.

going off the grid

a good friend of mine is being chased from among the ranks of those who give a crap about their credit score (once you go to zero, what's to care?) and is likely to be living off that particular grid for the proverbial future and duration. (long story involving everything that you read about in the newspapers, and kudos to warren buffet for calling this spade a spade).

the irony is that, once you take that (huge) leap of faith, it's really not that big a deal on the other side, and, truth be told, actually a whole lot better when you get right down to it.

sure, there are challenges with credit checks and such for getting yourself on a lease for a new apartment if you need one, but, once you're in, you're in, and having a friend or two with the cred to sign for just about anything is one way to get around that inconvenience. (there are plenty of others, and clearly one out of seven americans can tell you all about it).

trust me, i'm not trying to make light of how hard this is--it's BRUTALLY hard, but i AM trying to encourage #6 and maybe even #5 on that list of americans teetering just slightly above that hypothetical poverty line to wake up and smell the opportunity.

credit card debt? just walk away. behind on your mortgage? just walk away. owe the irs and/or the dor? just walk away. yeah, it's more expensive to declare bankruptcy than it used to be, (you can thank dubya for that), but it's short money to get there. (maybe you can even take a cash advance on your credit card to raise the funds that'll offer you the opportunity not to pay any of it back, and there's a phone book full of lawyers standing by to help you with the details on that).

is this unamerican of me to say? is it unpatriotic to sell out the banks (and even the national treasury) and encourage those dispossessed to give the proverbial financial finger to the man?

daniel shays says no, and in my long list of great american heroes of the eighteenth century, he's certainly prominent among them.

indentured servitude gets it's mention right there in our Constitution's 13th amendment (capitalization for respect, yo): "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the united states, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".

so consider compound interest, and enforcing it upon the backs of those being chewed up and spit out by this jobless "recovery" we are now funding via the organized criminals in congress. your bank--you know, the one to whom you owe all that money--got the big handout (one and a half TRILLION enough for you?) from your government, and you're still getting jack. (actually, you're getting less than jack--you're getting the bill to pay for the racket to which you're indentured, which is, if you ask me, the ultimate in "insult to injury", but, then again, what do i know). if that's not the essential definition of "indentured", then i can't tell you what it.

there's a parallel in this for me, and it stems from considering all the ways a person can unplug from a broken system, and step out into the relatively fresh air of a new one. in my case, it's only the simple tether of my lowell sun subscription, (over $200 a year, so not as simple as it ought to be, but, thanks to the salaries of peter lucas et al., it is what it is), but as i watch honest, hard-working reporters laid off, and the paper more and more bereft of the local coverage for which its sole value to me and to the rest of the community is derived, i have to ask myself, what's that $200 for if it's for opinion pieces on five presidents and nearly 40 years ago?

i'm thinking, in solidarity with my friends who have been busted, and my local reporters who have been forced to seek work elsewhere, that it would be the least i could do to stop providing the perverse financial incentive (aka my subscription) to people who don't give a crap about either.

not that i expect anybody at the sun will care, but if they have any sort of explanation for why i should reconsider, i might be interested to hear it...

the work of a coward

friday's fishwrapping from the loco-emotive was a nonsense piece taking sides in the carter vs kennedy debate now taking place posthumously in an empty room near you, closed by a crack about "the work of a coward".

want to know what i think is the work of a coward?

continuing to be paid to write columns about anything but anything that has anything to do with lowell in the local lowell newspaper while reporters and other employees are laid off to make room in the budget and the newspaper real estate for pure tripe is the work of a coward. surely it is.

i can't say what sort of sweetheart deal brought this nonsense to my home town rag, but i can say that it's exactly the sort of thing that will lead me to happily ignore the next subscription notice i receive.

in solidarity with those laid off, if for no better reason.

i'm so lonesome i could cry

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry -- Hank Williams
Arr. Dave Norton & Ed Lyons

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry


G_________Bm_______Em______G
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
___G__________Bm______F____G7
He sounds too blue to fly
____C________Cm_______G_______Em
The midnight train is whining low
_______G________D7______G
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry


i apologize for my inability to format the font so that the chord notations appear directly above the proper syllables without cheating a little bit--i hope you can figure it out via the underscores. i have a copy of the original recording dave and eddie made of the arrangement, which i'll try to figure out how to put online so i can link it here. it's all one take, with dave on acoustic guitar and vocals, with ed on acoustic with nashville tuning (thanks, dave, for explaining how it was accomplished in the studio). google can be your friend if you want to find out more about the tuning, but listening to ed and dave play it is the best way to feel it. stay tuned.

i'll also mention, as seems to be the case with so many miraculous angles of this universe in which we live, that the changes eddie and dave arranged positively sing from the strings of a ukulele as if they were written exactly for it. there's no mistaking the brilliance of the piece for rhyming guitars, and there's no way i'll ever be able to do it justice all by my lonesome, to coin a phrase, but this is a gift that i'll always treasure, as if it was handed to me special, because, in the way that music is, it was.

thank you, eddie, for everything.

it's time

dick howe performs a public service in one of his latest blog postings by amplifying comments made by michael luciano.

as per my comments to the post, i take exception to two things about this piece: first of all, i would put it that he should be fired, not that he should resign. second of all, the basis for that opinion is not be the inanity of the opinions, but, rather, the irrelevance. in an era when the paper continues to have to fire reporters doing actual work increasing whatever of value might be left at the paper in an increasingly quixotic quest to seek profitability, it's unconscionable that they waste money and column inches on things that have no value whatsoever to this community. it's a waste of money, number one, and a lost opportunity to recover any reason why the community would subscribe to the paper, number two.

either way, michael's closing line is a keeper: "it's time to put peter lucas out to pasture".

as low as it goes...

loss seems only to become harder, never easier.

a very sweet and dear man, whose kindness and warmth always outshone everything else in any room he was ever in, has passed.

ed lyons, for everything, for your warmth, for your talent, for your friendship, for everything, i'm grateful. it was exactly 70 days ago (couldn't help but need to count) i sat on the patio at moonstones in chelmsford and discovered i had so much in common with you, and so much to learn, and so much for which to be grateful.

it's hitting me hard tonight. i don't want you to go...

so low

youtube has started topping it's "suggestions" with a "featured video", which is just another way of saying paid commercial advertisement, and though it's usually innocuous enough, i just can't let today's link go without a snipe and a very loud WTF.

today's adventure started with a friend's link to a dolly parton video (i love dolly, and i'm not going to defend myself or excuse myself or feel bad about it either--if you don't love dolly, you just aren't paying attention) to which i could not resist replying with linda's collaboration with dolly off her simple dreams album. (i never will marry). well that much is neither here nor there, but from there i became compelled to follow the hyperlink breadcrumbs to more of linda's now-40-year-old film clips from the glen campbell, johnny cash and other tv shows, (classics all), and began to notice that the top "suggestion" on every single page was to an amy winehouse selection. (you know that you're no good).

the rationalist in me wants to believe that the coincidence of linda's first huge hit (you're no good) and the winehouse title caused some sort of colossal electronic coincidence, but i can't also help but be deeply offended by the likely truth that so many people who have heard, loved and respected amy winehouse have no idea the full breadth and depth of linda ronstadt's career, and her influence on popular music in general, female singers in specific, and each and every one of our lives. (hyperbole? how can it be, when, before linda, there was no such thing as a truly solo and independent female recording artist of any impact or import?)

i need to calm down, yes i know...

anyway, there is NO WAY to single out a single performance and have it stand for all of it, so as much as by lottery as anything else, i'm going to give you this one, and say that there has been, nor will there ever be, another one like linda. to have anyone mistake amy's creditable, prodigious, even, yet positively uni-dimensional talent for linda's, is to entirely miss a very, very important boat.

i love amy winehouse. i'm blown away by her talent, and know she's head-and-shoulders above any of the posing, pretending chart-toppers of today who pretend to be her. but i'm old enough to have known the fuller truth, that there was once, and still is, a voice that could do it all. oh, maybe she can't touch ella fitzgerald at the standards, or quite be aretha (she knew enough not to), but across genres from country to pop to rock to everything in between, there's never been one like linda. she's the one pop princess respected enough to share a stage with lowell george, and rocker talented enough to sing harmonies with emmylou harris (yes, and dolly parton!), and country girl who could take a buddy holly song and make it rock like it was meant.

take a test for yourself: consider ALL the patsy cline covers that have ever been attempted. then ask yourself how many people have caught even ONE of 'em right, let alone all that linda has. (crazy... i fall to pieces...) linda even looks a little bit like patsy... or vice versa...

somebody has got to go tell youtube that they can take their "suggestion" and stick it somewhere else while they try to do better for next time.

music

melvern skipped a week, meaning that he's actually skipped 3, (that every-other thing), so this thursday's show at toad is the first in just about a month. (serious bob nash fans got to "give the drummah some" a couple thursdays ago at tammany hall in worcester, but for most this will be the first listen they'll get to melvern, matt, dave and bob in the proverbial forevah). i know, i know, gp will want to remind me that i shouldn't be giving away my 20 like this, but you know where i'll be.

friday there's a little sumthin for local too-young-to-be-a-legend dee tension over at major's pub. it's the scene to make this week. ayuh.

whatchoo got?

the fighter? nah. i know the movie they OUGHT to make about lowell

these feds! one month they're carrying boxes out of city hall, and the next they're sending letters to folks about their "intercepted" cell phone conversations.

the "real" FBI has always been a mystery to me. my first exposure, like many other folks of a certain age, was via a "quinn martin production"--efrem zimbalist, jr. in "the f.b.i.". (legend has it to be j. edgar hoover's favorite tv show, and, why shouldn't it be, as he was a series consultant right up until his death in '72). this was great television, and everybody loved the "most wanted" segment at the end, but it hardly gave you that warm fuzzy feeling of cinema verite, despite the "based on real cases" claim they touted every week. (did you know that, under recent federal freedom of information inquiries, it's been discovered that the fbi maintained casting control over the show? how great is THAT!!!)

(oh, and the other recently-unearthed factoid is that mark felt, aka "deep throat" himself, was an unpaid technical advisor to the show, and used to hang out with efrem on the set).

anyway, it's fair to say that the other formative fbi experience shared by those of that infamous certain age around here was and is everything to do with the whitey bulger saga, and his handler/stooge john connolly. you gotta tip your hat to whitey, leveraging the fbi to eliminate your competition for you, (il patrone kicked it in '84, and the nightly news just hasn't been the same since), and, no, they just don't make patriarcas like they used to, (sorry, ray jr.).

so now we have this. city hall corruption. sweetheart business deals. investigations of local media movers and shakers. all the elements of a great little noir potboiler. call clooney. it's on.

coincidence?

two things happened today that have nothing, yet everything to do with each other:

first of all, mahmoud ahmadinejad (i love it when craig ferguson calls him mahmoud ahmadinnerjacket) addressed the UN and predicted the "inevitable defeat" of capitalism, and called for the overhaul of "undemocratic and unjust" global decision-making bodies, and a return to "the divine mindset", and a "monotheistic world view".

second of all, italian police had to raid the vatican private bank and confiscate $30M for violations of international money laundering regulations. (no word on whose behalf the transfers were originated and intended).

you remember the vatican private bank, don't you? the one implicated in one of italy's largest-ever bank fraud cases back in the 80's? (causing the failure of banco ambrosiano, whose chief executive, roberto calvi, was found hanging from blackfriar's bridge in london back in 1982 under circumstances that to this day remain unclear, while his family insisted on the implication of mafia involvement, though the 5 defendants in the case were acquitted in rome in 2007). yeah, that bank. the one that agreed to pay $250M to banco ambrosiano's creditors, even while they insisted they had done nothing wrong, and whose head at the time, archbishop paul marcinkus, fled his roman villa 2 hours ahead of his would-have-been-arrest raid, and hid out at the vatican and claimed sovereign immunity from prosecution, which was granted by italy's constitutional court, so he could live out the rest of his life in freedom until he died of natural causes in 2006...

you know how the OECD divides countries into three lists, depending on whether they 1) adhere to international rules on financial transparency, 2) SAY they plan to eventually adhere to international rules on financial transpareancy, even though they haven't yet, and 3) those who refuse to step back from their banking secrecy? (which, as we all know, makes those countries favorites for drug runners and terrorists, among other trendy jet-setters). curiously enough, the vatican bank doesn't appear on any one of them... hmmmm... i wonder why that is...

anyway...

since any dedicated fox news viewer knows that catholics are more honest than muslims, (since, ipso facto, all muslims are dishonest terrorist sympathizers, if they're not outright terrorists themselves), i can only imagine how corrupt a monotheistic muslim financial institution might be...

ok, that was unnecessarily snarky.

my point is, "monotheistic", or any other adjective for organizations that are themselves above the law, whether religious or otherwise, is just another name for criminal. it's just too bad that zealots on both sides of the jesus/mohammed divide refuse to see the blackness of their own pot/kettle when excoriating the other, since, while rome and other financial centers are burning through all your and my hard-earned cash, they're still fiddling away calling each other names so that we won't notice the hand in our pocket. (3 card monte dealers can tell you how such works).

hopefully, there are still some reasonable people left in this world who can see the corruption for what it is, and will resist all flavors equally. the real danger isn't new. currently, we're being sold "terrorists", whereas before that we were being sold "communists", whereas before that we were being sold "anarchists", and before that we were being sold "papists" (wait, that one still seems to have some currency today) and before that we were being sold "heretics" and before that... you get the picture.

as walt kelly once said, "we have met the enemy, and he is us".

either somebody needs to stop the propagandists, (which won't happen, because they happen to have all the money, and control of the media outlets), or we all need to stop listening without thinking. you know how crazy mahmoud sounds, right? well, i've got news for you--the folks he's arguing against sound no saner--it's just that we're not tuned into it well enough.

we're being robbed here. everybody is arguing about prayer spaces. it's a ruse. get it? all both sides care is that we pick one, because, that way, they both get to go on forever. (kinda like dem's vs rep's in the us congress). see any RC cola lately?

sapere aude.

patriette's

i didn't watch last week's win over cincinnati, but i will admit to having spent time this sunday in front of this week's genuflection to the 0-1 ny jets. the short answer is that i didn't have anything better to do, though, in retrospect, i'm thinking that scheduling a colonoscopy or something else like that would have qualified if only i had been thinking ahead.

the nfl is truly the "no fun league", and watching these completely random penalty flags fly around between referee trips to the replay booth just about covers all the bases as far as i'm concerned. it's pretty clear to me that football used to be something it's now not, and i'd say we're all dupes for continuing to fall for it. (EVERY TIME i clicked on the tv between 1 and 4 to check on the other games, there were commercials running on BOTH networks that carry the NFL games, which is a pretty sobering thought when you consider how little time you actually get to watch football when you sit your ass down for 3 hours in hopes of at least seeing a little).

baseball is wrapping up with an amazing division race in the NL west, and a pretty good run to the wire between the rays and yanks, who play each other a TON down the stretch. our sox still have a week or so until mathematical elimination, so there's that to enjoy, too. and the nhl starts its season in three weeks. (TUUKKA!)

who needs the nfl???

not me.

simple math on why terry francona should be manager of the year, and theo epstein should be fired

john lackey, free agent acquisition extraordinaire, has personally lost 11 games so far this season, and carries an ERA of somewhere around 4.63. to put this in some sort of perspective, at eighteen million seven hundred thousand dollars, john lackey is the highest-paid player on the second-highest paid ball club in all of major league baseball, and he's playing like a minor leaguer. insult to injury, setting aside the four yankees making more money than john lackey does, (arod, cc sabathia, derek jeter and mark teixeira), there aren't even better than half a dozen players in the entire league who make as much. oh, and do you know what the average ERA is for a major league pitcher this year? it's 4.10. that's right, more than a full half run better. and that's the AVERAGE. hundreds of pitchers have better stats than mr. lackey, many of whom make the league minimum salary. but, thanks to theo epstein, we're paying this guy 18 million smackeroos. ("smackeroo" is the sound the ball makes leaving all the bats to which mr. lackey pitches).

amazingly enough, john lackey has won 12 ballgames this year. to paint a clearer picture, in 2 of those wins, the opposition scored six runs, and in 3 of them they scored 5. or, put another way, among john's 11 losses, the sox scored as many as 9 runs on their way to defeat. in other words, if a merely average pitcher had been pitching for the sox instead of john lackey all this season, probabilities insist that the team would have easily have won a couple of those games that they lost. (let's say 2).

did you think i was forgetting terry francona? be patient...

case #2 in point today is daisuke matsuzaka, the sox third-highest paid pitcher. dice-k, as he's called here, has an ERA this season that is worse even than john lackey's. (4.82). he's only lost 5 games, but in those 5 losses the sox have scored a total of 24 runs, (an average of just shy of 5), which should have been good enough to win at least ONE of them. (we don't even have to count the no-decisions that turned into losses in which the sox scored as many as 9 runs, just like with mr. lackey). folks should recall this was supposedly one of theo's big signing "coups" over the yankees and everybody else. think anyone else would take dice-k and his contract now? (so let's add 2 to the previous 2 and count 4 so far).

so now w'ere down to case #3, which would be the sox second highest paid pitcher, josh beckett, whom theo epstein favored recently with a 4 year, 68 million dollar contract extension. josh beckett has an ERA of an astronomical 5.71. i'm too lazy to find out how many starting pitchers have a worse ERA, and i know there are a few, but i would say precious few who are signing 68 million dollar contracts for their "service". (the sox should be asking the opposing hitters to pay his salary, and i bet you they'd all happily take 'em up on that kind of offer). josh beckett hasn't even been able to start 20 games yet this season, but he's been able to see that the sox lost 8 of those, 5 of which were directly charged to him. yep, josh has one of those sox-score-9-but-still-lose games, and can be personally charged with 2 shoulda-woulda-coulda games, in addition to a third that i'm going to give him for forcing the team to start pawsox pitching in his place while he was out. (which makes 4, when then added to the previous 3 is 7).

so, what is it about terry francona, you say?

take those 7 games that 45 million dollars worth of pitching couldn't win for you, but any average journeyman could, and take a look at the mlb standings this morning. give the sox those 7 wins (that any average MLB arm WOULD have given you) and take away the 7 losses that they endured instead, and, lo and behold, you'd have the MLB-leading record, tied with the vaunted yankees, and a half game ahead of the rays. oh, but wait!!! know to whom daisuke lost his 9-11 game by giving up 7 runs even before getting out of the 5th inning? that's right, those very same ny yankees. take one away from them, and here you would have the sole possessor of first place in all of major league baseball, your very own boston red sox.

so now take a look at the injuries. ellsbury, youk and pedroia for starters. take talent like that out of any other lineup, and do you think such a team would be contesting for the best record in the entire league? nope. no way. but terry's boys are exactly the team that could have done it, with only AVERAGE pitching. and they WOULD have, if theo wasn't such a poor judge of pitching talent, and tito wasn't forced to try to do all this with suck-ass pitching.

look, i don't want to resurrect the dan duquette arguments, even though i sort of am here. epstein apologists may want to blame danny boy for josh now, but, see, when dan signed josh beckett, he was building the team that won the world series twice. all theo did, really, was clean nomar out of the clubhouse in time to let dan's team win it all. TWICE. cuz, seriously, almost all the real talent in the clubhouse today came from dan's watch, with the single possible exception of adrian beltre this year, and you can tell theo i told you so.

and you can tell the guys who vote on the manager of the year award, because, seriously, what terry francona has done with absolute crap this year has been monumental.

get real (estate)

they say when left and right both go to their utmost extremes they meet again on the other side, and i think it's true...

the latest US poverty figures show that 1 in 7 americans is living below the euphemistic and evermore ubiquitous "poverty line", which, if you need context, is right now arbitrarily set at an income of just over $10,000 per year for a single person, or $22,000 if you're trying to feed and house a family of four. (i don't know about you, but if i had to try to make both rent and food on $200 per week around here, i'd consider myself pretty impoverished, since, basically, around here, i'd already be homeless, which calls into question how many of those other 6-of-7 people are in similar shape, but lets not digress, shall we?).

in any case, a bleeding heart left-wing socialist would be up in arms about this, and ready to tear down society to right this wrong. when 1 in 7 people can't feed themselves and secure adequate shelter, that's a serious socio-economic problem that needs fixing, right?. ESPECIALLY if ever any significant portion of those 45 MILLION americans were to conclude that, as paddy chayefsky wrote it, they were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, and might take any of these matters into their own idle hands and see what working in the devils workshop might pay as an alternative.

but i'm not a bleeding heart left-wing socialist--i'm one of those closet NRA types who believes in self-reliance to the extreme, and in ensuring that the government goes no further than the proverbial level playing field. i'm a fiscal right-wing capitalist who is up in arms about an entirely different thing, which, if you might give me a moment, you might see has more in common with the lefty sociopaths than is comfortable to consider.

take bank of america. i can speak a little bit about bank of america because i've seen both the inside (software is everywhere) and the outside of this classic american behemoth. (friends with BofA mortgages, i don't know how you survive it). if ever there was a bank that a dyed in the wool, staunch and resolute right wing capitalist had to INSIST be allowed to fail, this bank is it. so what does our (supposedly) republican prior presidential administration insist we do? they insist we bail them out to the tune of 138 BILLION dollars, and, (and i have absolutely no explanation for this next bit), their democrat successors fall all over themselves to agree and keep signing the checks.

138 BILLION. if you don't think democrats and republicans agree on anything, you aren't paying attention. 138 BILLION. right now congress is debating whether or not we can afford $50 billion to fix our entire national infrastructure, but one single bank ate up almost THREE TIMES that amount in one stroke of a pen, and if you're reading business week or willing in the least to take what i have to tell you at face value, that $138 billion was already lost and gone the second it was handed over. this is a FAILED bank that only keeps operating because you and i paid dearly for it. (almost $500 out of the pocket of every single american man woman and child). and it still will likely fail without more help. insane. that's more than half a months wages for folks who aren't even below the poverty line. and i don't know about you, but i actually could use another $500 right about now.

and all this bailout bullshit for what?

i'll tell you what.

there are more empty condos here in downtown lowell than is pleasant to consider, and none of them are selling (i've looked at a TON that have been on the market for over 6 months, and the prices have been dropping like crazy, and they're still not selling) because, among other things, none of them are priced where your average $200 a week american can afford one. and another reason they're still not selling is that banks like b of a won't sell the ones they now own due to foreclosure (lest their balance sheets have to actually show what they're worth), which, if you think about it, represents the ruination of at least one american life already, so the market stagnates, nobody sells, and nobody can afford to buy even if they wanted to.

and what would have happened had b of a been allowed to fail? well, first of all, you and i would still have our $500. second of all, all that overpriced real estate would have been fire sold at auction for prices that would have imploded to the point where $200 a week americans could have afforded them.

so now we are back to where the nut job socialists and i can agree.

we're being sold a crock of shit by our government, at the behest of criminal bankers, (fraud is a crime--i looked it up, and if you don't believe b of a's books are a fraud, then you're not paying attention), that we can't afford to let these banks fail.

want to know the truth?

the reason we can't afford our homes is that these banks haven't failed.

the sooner they're culled from the herd by resurrecting an actual capitalist, rather than socialist (dubya and the big o, meaning obama, not oprah, are both socialists and their bank bailouts prove it) fiscal policy, the faster all sorts of people won't be living below the poverty line, and, (here's the part i like best), those of us who work and pay our bills on time will find our standard of living goes way up because we're not being taxed to death to pay for being screwed.

but this, of course, is just one man's opinion.

where's the zep?

15 in 15 was all about albums, so some pretty remarkable names never came up. led zeppelin, for example. and why might that be, might you ask?

well, my first listen to led zeppelin's first album was through my older brothers' closed bedroom door, (so mom and dad wouldn't complain so vociferously), and i wasn't old enough to head down to paul's mall with them to see the show. (i was 8 fer chrissakes). i heard "communication breakdown" so many times i think it's in the running for individual song i've heard through from start to finish the most in my life, but it wasn't an album listen for me until almost 10 years later when i got to dig through the used record stores and recover for me my past. and, by then, i was completely immersed in my little feat and my elvis costello records that it wasn't quite the same as discovering something for the very first time, and having it burned into your soul. no, not because led zeppelin isn't burned into my soul, but because, by that time, there was houses of the holy and physical graffiti and that iconic fourth album of indeterminate name and so many other zep songs that it was an OUVRE, not an album anymore, and it gets consumed, therefore, in an entirely different way.

so, no sam cooke. no buddy holly. (before my time). no beatles (same) and no stones. no eric clapton, because, as was observed before, he ain't all that, really, regardless of when his records came out. no whole lot of other chart toppers (e.g. fleetwood mac) and no whole lot of other incredible musicians who should have could have been. and no bob dylan. that was someone else's scene.

mine was discovering planet claire and heading to my own private idaho with the B52's, and ripping the plastic off each successive rancid record like my life depended on it. (screw the clash--rancid so completely kicks their ass).

and, the best part? unlike my dad's old 78's, my 33's sound BETTER than what the kids have to listen to these days, and, happily, i still have the equipment on which to listen to them. no, it's not furniture like my grandparents' old victrola, but it's an heirloom just the same.

15 in 15

somebody on facebook (yeah, i know) started a meme about everybody taking 15 minutes to list the 15 albums that will always stick with them. well, maybe such a question might take some people 15 minutes to answer, but--you know me--i was done in 3, so it gave me a little bit of time to contemplate the process as well. (i had to check to see if it was "THE" ramones, or just "ramones" for one thing, or it could have been done in 30 seconds).

my first thought is that such things are just as much a computer virus as the software kind, in that they eat up time and resources for little to no productive purpose. perhaps this one isn't malicious or damaging to anything but ones immediate productivity, but on the good side, it does provide plenty of opportunity for reflection. my second thought is that such musical lists are always an opportunity to become confused between what is true, and what we might want the rest of the world to believe is true about us.

take a for instance: a lot of people seem to like and respect bob dylan. i own blonde on blonde, among many other dylan records, and have always liked it. such a coincidence might reflect better on me to those people than the coincident fact that i also own queen's a night at the opera, (it was the first album i ever bought for myself), and let's just say, as much as so many folks think of freddie mercury and the boys, the public perception of the "critical acclaim" isn't quite the same between the two. to be clear: my list contains queen's a night at the opera, and doesn't contain any bob dylan whatsoever. it's not because i don't like bob dylan, it's because the question was about me and what has stuck with me, and i have to say i have never ever for even a nanosecond stopped being completely in love with a night at the opera. (see there? see what you made me do? i just had to start itunes so i could cue up the intro to "death on two legs"--and, to be further clear, part of the reason i love my mp3's of a night at the opera so much is that i ripped 'em straight from the turntable, not via the cold digital versions they've sold since, and it still contains every pop and skip i knew and know by heart, along with the best approximation of how great it sounds straight from the vinyl that's not straight from the vinyl, and there's nothing like it). that's sticking with.

so where was i?

of course, there are some albums that pass both the "stick with" test, as well as carry the sort of critical approval and relative obscurity that makes it utterly convenient to include them. (ramones, no "the", for example). these are even better picks for those wanting to appear as a non-poser, because nobody can accuse you of pandering to the general public perception, cuz they didn't really make a dent in that. (ramones topped at 111 on billboard--i looked it up). in this category i could also include warren zevon's warren zevon--that didn't even pretend to show up on billboard, selling only 80,000 copies. (i looked that up, too).

once you're on that "honest" roll, that eschews your beatles and stones and eric clapton records, (face it--that guy ain't all that), you can go straight for the records that you know by heart from end to end, where the end of any song on the radio gets you humming the start of the next one in a way that today's ipod kids and their shuffle play just can't comprehend. anyone ever heard of doctor buzzard's original savannah band? i can go even more obscure than that! populuxe, into an american evening... (ellipsis included).

of course, the third rail becomes big chart-topping artists who have slid from their pinnacles of public appreciation to a sort of limbo status, where everyone has heard of them, they're just not quite sure whether or not they should admit to liking them so much anymore. into this box i'd have to toss linda rondstadt (heart like a wheel) and jackson browne (jackson browne, NOT "saturate before using", even though everybody mistakes that because of the album cover). all i'd have to say to folks concerned about either of those picks is that you'd have to listen to heart like a wheel and jackson browne and get back to me whether or not you're concerned anymore. masterpieces, both, and jesse davis' guitar solo on "doctor my eyes" is exhibit A as far as i'm concerned. (songwriters covered on heart like a wheel include clint ballard, paul anka, anna mcgarrigle, phil everly, lowell george, james taylor and hank williams, yo, though the favorite of the collection for me is the one by paul craft (who?) called "keep me from blowing away", which is the first song i ever taught myself from end to end on a guitar).

add B52's, elvis costello, donald fagen, bodeans and james hunter, and you're rolling. toss in ac/dc and rancid, and you're REALLY rolling. start the list with little feat's little feat, and you're there.

but i'll close by going deep in every single conceivable direction to say just five words yet again: doctor buzzard's original savannah band.

amiestreet audit

in three years on amiestreet.com, i spent a grand total of $562.50 on recorded music. (2,230 individual purchases). estimating--given albums usually have around 10 songs each, plus all my single song purchases--this represents over 3500 songs, at a cost of around .15 each.

compare these figures to itunes: on itunes, you, me and everybody else pays at least .99 cents per song. out of that buck, .35 goes to apple, and .65 goes to "the music industry", which is a polite way of saying that the record label pockets another .55, leaving around .10 for the artists. (my breakdowns are courtesy of NARIP, aka national association of record industry professionals).

amiestreet returns .70 of every dollar to the artists directly.

so, $562.50 times .10 with apple, (aka $56 for musicians), and 560+ songs for me, or $562.50 times .70 with amiestreet, (aka $393.75 for musicians), and 3500+ songs for me. you tell me which one is a better deal for both me and the musicians?

of course, some people like to believe that the amount of money that musicians make on their music would be less under the amiestreet model, since they're only making around .10 a song once all that $393.75 gets divided up. (.7 x .15). oops... that's exactly what they have left after apple and the record companies get done screwing them over under the itunes model.

so, you tell me. i'd have had to spend $3900 at apple in order to provide the same amount of support to the musicians i like if i were to try to equal the same benefit that $562.50 provided to them via amiestreet. and my ipod would be no better off.

amiestreet, we miss you already.

how it should be done

chris donoghue (or was that eileen doherty?) ran a spirited and decidedly rancorous primary campaign and came up quite a bit short, and there's something very satisfying about that, even if you don't have a horse in that race. (which i, as an unenrolled and wholly disaffected voter who remains adamant that public sponsorship of private party primary elections is an absolute abomination, happily did not).

along the way, i happened to catch a local endorsement for eileen doherty (or was that chris donoghue?) that struck me for its supreme sensibility, and i wanted to pass it along in thanks to its source (cobblestones restaurant, aka, i'm thinking, scott plath) for all the sense it makes. it's a perfectly positive reflection on both the candidate, and the candidate's endorser(s), and i'd like to think not uncoincidental to the candidate's primary election victory yesterday.

here it is:

"a business that survives by seeking to not alienate anyone (see "the customer is always right") we generally steer clear of politics. that said, although we find most of today's candidates likable for one reason or another, we hold a special affinity for eileen donaghue who has supported our restaurants, and small business in general, for many years now. (especially at a time when "our" survival has become so much more difficult, and legislation seemingly only continues to add to that burden). we wish eileen good luck and invite any of her supporters to her post election reception being held at cobblestones this evening."

if i were voting yesterday, which i most definitely was not and did not, i would have had no hesitation to pull the lever (or, more accurately here, fill in the black oval) for eileen donoghue. (see how much respect? i'm even putting her name right, finally).

depending on the unenrolled challenger(s) that may appear on the final ballot, i will not have any hesitation to vote for her when the REAL and only election takes place in a few weeks. politics needs more of this.

dregs

ironic, but the "tea party" (whom i'm reminded by its apologists is not a national movement at all, despite the national pot o' cash they dole out to their pet national office candidates) has successfully destabilized a number of republican party nominations across the country in yesterday's primaries. in their "divide and conquer" ethos, they feel it most appropriate to field candidates in the republican primaries, ostensibly because that's where their misguided messages of increased government spending on "homeland security"--the tag team of foreign power projection and absolute border control (aka "show me your papers") along with increased government trampling of individual rights (aka "we don't care if you were raped by your father, we get to know everything you say to your doctor, and get the last word on treatment or prohibited lack thereof") play best.

gutless, as far as i'm concerned, and stupid, but, hey, it's a free country.

the original "tea party" idea was based, supremely ironically, on, go figure, REDUCED government spending, especially on follies like our "war on terror", (which is, inarguably, doing for terrorists what our "war on drugs" has been doing for drug cartels, which is, make them more popular and populous than ever, though there's a digression that could go on for weeks), and REDUCED government intrusion into our personal lives, from first amendment protections for insensitively-placed-and-proposed islamic prayer spaces to women's bodies to whatever have you.

so how did we get here from there???

i'd be the first one waving a flag at the head of the procession if we truly had an independent movement focused on individual rights and smaller government. instead, we have a loose collection of nut jobs and gadflies who feel it important (apparently) to nominate certifiable head cases like sharron angle, who may very well be the only human being in north america capable of giving harry reid a shot at retaining his senate seat, in place of other candidates who were, ironically before they beat them in the republican primaries, closer to their own ideals in many cases than they are.

i'm wondering if anyone has learned anything at all from scott brown's bearding the democrat (i.e. free spending, nanny state proponent politicians) lion in its own den? sure, there was national tea party money involved there, but this guy essentially did what he did all by himself, (the national republicans certainly never gave him a shot for the longest time), and he was smart enough to keep his powder dry until he came up against the real foe, which is the unholy combination of unbridled government spending on top of all the worst sorts of nanny legislation.

if you're for government intrusion into our personal lives, even if only on the issue of abortion, you ain't "tea party"--you're republican. if you're for any sort of extended government spending, even if only for action in iraq and afghanistan and at border checkpoints everywhere, you ain't "tea party"--you're republican. if you can't understand that personal liberty and small government is anathema to BOTH MAJOR PARTIES equally, then you ain't "tea party"--you're republican.

and, if you're a republican, you can just drop that "tea party" nonsense that you keep spewing, because you ain't for what you ought to be at all. you're for politics as usual, and you are part of the problem. (and, not for nothing, but harry reid thanks you from the bottom of his wholly misguided heart).

unenroll.

sapere aude.

while i'm on this roll...

they've recently ("they" being people appointed by other people who belong to major political parties which are all bankrolled by the corporations we will be hearing about in my next breath) changed the penalties for murder where corporations are concerned, so it's only slightly less financially inconvenient to pay the fine for causing the death of another human being. this all seems highly ironic to me, vulnerable as i would be to serious penalties, including death, for causing same, that these corporations also have been granted the license to spend as much as they want on political ads and such because, for whatever reason, the proverbial "they" have decided that corporations somehow need to enjoy all the perks and benefits of the bill or rights as do other individuals, who, as it's been noted here a moment ago, do not themselves enjoy nearly any the additional protections enjoyed by corporations owing to their oh-so-generous political sponsors. right--completely unregulated speech, along with almost completely unregulated license to kill people. what a country.

don't get me wrong. i work for a very successful corporation, and i'm indebted to the concept for my livelihood. however, i see no productive public purpose to encouraging my corporate masters to have further influence over the laws of this land--as if they need more and better ways to make money.

want to know the truth? if my corporate masters find more and better ways to make money, i don't get a raise, and neither do my customers get a price break. my corporate masters get themselves an expanded stock ownership plan and even higher executive compensation, and, if you don't believe me, you just need to look at the way things have gone over the past 20 years since reagan first convinced us to take the governor off such things. (CEO's now make more times the salary of the average worker than at any point in recorded history).

don't get me wrong--i'm all for healthy and profitable corporations. it's how i make my living.

but, geez. are we really as an electorate too stupid to see the hand-off of all the cash between the robber barons and their political patrons?

we need a flat tax, restrictions on corporate speech, and enforcement of legal responsibilities where murder and other corporate malfeasance is concerned.

thank you for listening.

enough, already

i start from a disposition of frustration that my tax dollars are already subsidizing major political parties to have their little referendums on their little jr. racketeers (or sr. racketeers, in the case of the incumbents) every couple years, but these incessant calls phone are the straw that breaks my camel's back.

first of all, to all those campaign strategists who dream up these abominations: i do not for a second believe that scott brown, or whichever lady from umass lowell, or any other politically motivated and inanimate voice on the phone for that matter, cares one little bit for me beyond my potential vote, meaning that i would be the worst sort of fool to ever reward such base duplicity with said vote. besides all that, it's fair to say that i'm truly LESS likely to vote for any candidates for whom those calls have been placed after i receive those calls than i ever would have been beforehand. are these political people too stupid to know even that much of perverse human nature? i know so. yet they're not, apparently, as stupid as the people whom they coerce to vote for them, so at least they have that much in their favor...

second of all, and this is not an insignificant point--i'm a proudly unenrolled voter and there is less than zero chance that i will bother to waste even an instant of my tuesday to tramp down to the polling place (that i have been forced to pay to keep open so that the political equivalent of organized criminals can somehow feel themselves better supported) in the first place to become complicit in their racket. to be fair, however--the first primary candidate who proposes that we CHARGE all the freeloading political parties for the expense of holding their primaries on the public nickel gets my vote, and i'll gladly take the extra time to come down, enroll briefly in whichever party they are from to give them my big black X in the little oval, and then re-un-enroll to put my conscience and my karma back to rights. it's the least i or anyone else can do to try to recover some of the billions that these organized politicians have stolen from our public treasury. (and the last candidate who subjects me to these incessant robo-calls cannot possibly come too soon).

truth is, i could not possibly care less whether or not eileen doherty or chris donoghue is my next democrat candidate for state senate. in fact, if they put a donkey on the ballot against either of them, as long as said donkey was not a democrat donkey (or a republican one--they're just as criminal), i would happily mark my big black X in the oval for said donkey without ever having heard another thing about that donkey, knowing as i do what donkeys eileen and chris must think me and my fellow members of the electorate to be, that we'd be voting for either of them after all the crap to which they've subjected us these past interminable weeks.

of course, if that donkey robo-called me beforehand, all bets would be off...

amy, what you gonna do

apologies both to amy, and to pure prairie league who wrote it "amie", but this past saturday's show at ants (andover newton theological school) proved once and for all that some people have so completely lost their memory for real sound that i'm fearing that we may very well be on the verge of losing it for good.

it was so very well intentioned--put an incomparable talent like amy speace in a well-dimensioned room with great acoustics for an evening, and magic will ensue. of course it will. and amy was, of course, magical. but the proof to that pudding was how she ended the evening, unplugged and right in the middle of the audience with just her beautifully-sounding heirloom gibson acoustic guitar, and her supremely beautiful voice. (and her accompanist, adam michael rothberg). the moment was pure beauty, and it cried out for both being so beautiful, and being so remarkably improved from hearing both of those (three if you count adam, and four if you count his mandolin) pumped through their little PA system there. if only they had performed the whole evening that way!!!

seriously, i'm no audiophile--i'm a rock and roll guy, remember?--but the ubiquitous hissing of the room's sound system was so intrusive to the point of near-distraction (though nothing can distract once amy is singing) that it made you want to get up out of your seat and rush the stage so you could rip the wires out of the back of all the speakers just to be rid of it. (or maybe saying that, i really am an audiophile?) any way you look at it, worst of all, and you could hear it so clearly once amy was free of its limitations, the sound system did NOTHING to convey the performance. nothing. it was just more noise added to less performance. and it was really kinda sad.

if you're tempted to see jesse colin young or some of the others they have slated to play there over the coming weeks, i'd seriously recommend checking around to see if you can hear them elsewhere. it might very well be a great room under all that, and it most certainly was a great performance from amy, but until they figure out what real sound sounds like, and arrange a PA system to respect that, they're never going to get it, and neither will their hopeful audience.

(making a mental note to consider sound engineering classes with bob nash at middlesex community college towards a potential retirement career, cuz if that's the bar, it won't be any trouble at all to get over it)

RIP YER MAW

it's there in black sharpie on the little white disc--"RIP YER MAW"--and when you toss the biscuit into the tray and press the little triangular button, something truly awesome happens.

the incredible casuals have been playing every sunday at the beachcomber in wellfleet for THIRTY YEARS. (this is not a typo). 30 years. tired? not by a long shot. and you can hear it for real on this here disc, and you have to get your hands on it. somewhere back in 2005 they plugged a serious, quality recording system into the board, and started grabbing what was going on straight from the source. the results are right there on the incredible casuals rip your mother live at da coma 2005 - 2010, and it's hot. scorching hot.

they cover andy partridge (sonic boom) and camille bob (loaded) and they blow the roof off their own stuff, of course, like don't tell me, and i wanna play loud, and they throw in some classic stage banter, like exhorting the crowd to support the "buy our drummer a drink foundation", a la jamesons for rikki bates. it's classic casuals, and it's raw and real and exactly the way rock and roll was and is meant to be.

most remarkable of the entire collection is a 1983 rendition of let's go to the hop again" that puts the bookend on everything. it's real. it's been going on for years. rock and roll ain't dead.

it's in da coma.

RIP YER MAW!

nowt THAT's a scotch egg

i was lured (under what turned out to be false pretenses) to a "best of boston" type place along the washington street corridor between the south end and the back bay a few months back, and treated [sic] to a surprisingly mediocre dining experience that left a definite divot of disappointment. the prices weren't unreasonable, which is, i suppose, one good thing to be said about the gallows, but the food was hardly what the raves were raving about, and i can only attribute this to the lure of novelty, and the behavioral peculiarities of human gastronomic sheep. the gallows' attention-getting dish, besides a decent and wholly undeserved reputation for poutine, (and you know how i feel about that), is the "scotch egg", but let's just say after eating there that i never considered that i'd ever had one. until today.

today, a good friend took me for my first time to thwaites market in methuen, and i will always remember, as one always does, my first time. deep fried. succulent sausage. with a sublime egg in the center. perfection.

of course, they also had a breathtaking array of homemade sausage and other butcher shop specialties, (including real homemade english polony, which i will have to try on a future trip, but lets not get sidetracked), and the largest selection of meat pies, just like yorkshire along the merrimack, that i've ever seen in my life. the aroma in the shop made it irresistible to leave with less than a half dozen, on top of the scotch eggs and other stuff that i happily stuffed into my bag. $1.99 for each. incredible.

i don't know what you're eating for lunch, but my lunch is kicking yours's ass so hard YOU won't be able to sit down.

amy speace!

last minute booking--stoddard hall at the andover newton theological school in newton center--saturday night at 8pm. i've got four in the 4th row. whatchoo got? :-)

RIP, amiestreet

amiestreet.com is being subsumed by amazon.com in two weeks, and it's the end of an era. no other source deserves better credit for the bursted seams on my 120gig ipod, and for all the music i've discovered there, i just want to say THANK YOU, and you'll be missed.

sadly, the amiestreet premise seems to have been misunderstood by both musicians and fans from the start, and i'm hoping there'll be a whole new chapter in the next edition of freakonomics to help explain it to everyone who ultimately never got it. far more musicians make far more money when music is closer to the costs it takes to distribute it, (which is very little), but everyone seems to focus on the itunes .99 cent paradigm and ignore the fact that nobody speculates on music when it's $10 a collection. (let alone $12 or $15 or more as most cost these days). i would have said $10 a CD, but, let's face it, not many people are buying those anymore these days.

ask a musician these days how much money they make on recorded music. it's an even steeper pyramid than guys who make money playing professional basketball. you're either wealthy, or ostensibly unemployed--the few bills you'll make playing out at a bar notwithstanding. but amiestreet led me to happily spend hundreds of dollars every year on music i'd never heard before. dan tharp. robinella. populuxe. amy speace. yoni gordon and the goods. grant langston. the star spangles. amelia. jay johnson. the knees. dick prall/starch martins. liz larin. glasgow tiki shakers. neon weiner and the vast delicatessen. sharon jones and the dap kings. the weepies. (sold out at the tupelo music hall, but i've got my front row seats already). none of these bands i'd have known if it wasn't cheap cheap cheap to buy in, and now i'm buying everything they're putting out the moment they put it out. how does that model not make sense to people???

oh well...

support the troops?

i'm offended most by politicized bullshit masquerading as patriotism. (samuel johnson nailed it 235 years ago--"patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"). when original iraq war opponents, whom it should be noted had the constitutional requirement for war to be declared only by congress right on their side, were branded unpatriotic, non-troop-supporting al qaeda sympathizers by those trying to sell that crock of "iraqi freedom" shit to us at the time, my blood boiled because those same assholes were the ones sending all those supposedly supported troops into a combat area rife with IED's without either armor on their humvees, nor their bodies. who does something like that??? i surely wanted to be supporting the troops, but it was impossible to figure out which could possibly have been less supportive--sending them there ostensibly naked, or sending them there in the first place.

now today the radical islam-hating right has their poster child in "pastor" terry jones, who is adamant to burn copies of the quran/koran/q'ran on the anniversary of 300 muslim's death on the world trade center towers alongside the 2700 other innocents at the hands of "religious" zealots who are anything but religious in their actions, nor any more representative of any particular faith than the pedophile priests continuing to be excused and coddled by the vatican, or, say, a nut-job "pastor" who believes that insulting someone else's religion is any way to get them to understand or respect yours...

general petraeus, for his part, wrote his note to the AP and suggested such would "undoubtedly be used by extremists in afghanistan--and around the world--to inflame public opinion and incite violence", but, i guess, general petraeus now joins the ranks of those of us who "do not support our troops", since he's going soft on al qaeda himself with that sort of appeasement rhetoric.

let's get it out in the open--some people here believe we should be at war with the most populous religion on the planet, and they'll stop at nothing until every last billion of them are drawn into the fight, because, i guess, it just isn't challenging enough to battle a few hundred supreme wack jobs all by themselves without giving them the aid and comfort of a billion backers.

myself, i'm satisfied with going after the actual criminals and leaving the practice of religion to everyone in their own way, just like my constitution was fought and died for to ensure. the romans tried to eradicate christianity, and it became the state religion. i can't imagine these nut-job book burners really want to test the hypothesis that history has a funny way of repeating itself should people fail to learn from it.

where is the treason tribunal when there ought to be one? if this burning isn't the "aid" part of "aid and comfort", i don't know what possibly could be.

the big trouble lounge

it's most frequently said among local musical cognoscenti that the one thing lowell lacks is a good downtown music club. well, it's just over the river so it doesn't quite satisfy the geographical fine print on such an observation, but voices rock club does it every other way it can be done with the SINGLE exception of a quality line-up of draft beers (where's my harpoon IPA???) and people who can tell the difference are starting to tell the difference.

voices rock club has the sound system that stands apart and alone in the merrimack valley. it's the place that charlie farren tells jon butcher they have to play when they play out just the two of them (ok, plus danny kenney, but you can even ask danny--it's not called FBI for nothing) and it's the place that can put the proverbial pin dropping right into the middle of a full mix, and you have to hear it to believe it. (ironically, gary is still not satisfied, and rumors are that there are even more newer and better sonic toys to be added to the toybox this fall, and that's just off the charts and you can tell him i said so). it's such a hidden audio gem that it's hard to believe when you walk inside the beautiful and beautifully re-done main room that this is a neighborhood club with a neighborhood club's attention to making sure that EVERYONE who visits is treated like a regular, and everyone has the best seat in the house for the best sound in the city. (and by best i'm not even talking about loudest--i'm sure it goes way past the proverbial eleven--but this is QUALITY sound, not quantity, and it's the real deal).

worth visiting is the upstairs pool and leather sofa lounge area with the largest armchair in the city (i'm not joking--it's like edith ann's) named after the band that christened the club on its recent opening, big trouble, who, it should be mentioned, play a standing residency gig the first tuesday of every month, which, by no coincidence, since i'm looking forward to it right now, is TONIGHT! (carl johnson takes care of the other tuesdays with other bands of his which are also always a good listen, but, it's the first tuesday, so it remains all about big trouble as far as i'm concerned, and so should you be!)

so set your wristwatch alarm clock for 8:30 tonight, and take a short walk over the aiken street bridge to the corner of lakeview, and take in the best sounds in the city. tell gary what you think. introduce yourself to folks, and see if you aren't as taken with the place as i am.

it's a beautiful thing.

el tiante

contemporaries and should-have-been hall-of-famers, bill lee and luis tiant were for my money the best and most entertaining left-right, one-two, top-of-the-rotation all-stars in the history of baseball. if you want to know why i love the red sox, you can forget all about carl yastrzemski and even the '04 and '07 glory years--it's the spaceman and el tiante for me, first last and always.

luis never got his world series ring, nor (yet) his ticket to cooperstown, but his countryman and rival in the greatest world series ever played, and hall-of-famer himself, tony perez, once said of luis that "when i was a boy growing up in cuba, luis tiant was a national hero. now i'm 36, and he's 37".

in boston, el tiante was stogies bigger than red's, and a competitive fire that only bill lee could resemble. carl yastrzemski himself, himself no stranger to fenway adulation, said about the stadium chants for LOUIEEE! LOUIEEE! in those days that "i've never heard anything like that in all my life, and i'll tell you that tiant deserved every bit of it".

only five major league pitchers have ever pitched four or more straight shutouts in the history of the game, and don drysdale, bob gibson, orel hershiser (each with five) and gaylord perry are the other four.

want to know the best part about the game last night? i saw el tiante on the mound again for the first time in 35 years.

LOUIEEEEEE!!!

bill lee

by warren zevon:

you're supposed to sit on your ass and nod at stupid things
man that's hard to do
and if you don't, they'll screw you
and if you do, they'll screw you too

when i'm standing in the middle of the diamond all alone
i always play to win
when it comes to skin and bone

and sometimes i say things i shouldn't
like...

"baseball is a very simple game. all you have to do is sit on your butt, spit tobacco, and nod at the stupid things your manager says"

and sometimes i say things i shouldn't
like...

"most of the managers are lifetime .220 hitters. for years pitchers have been getting these managers out 75% of the time, and that's why they don't like us."

don zimmer's lifetime average is .235.

yesterday, at age 63, bill lee pitched a baseball game for the brockton rox, and, besides proving the age-old adage that if you're left handed and can throw strikes, you'll have a job as a pitcher in baseball as long as your arm is attached to your body, (nods to mike cole), he won. steve henson in his recap of the game also included one of my favorite bill lee quotes of all time, which, besides being profoundly true, also helped me get through the worst days of my former life, and for which i will always be eternally grateful:

"i think about the cosmic snowball theory: a few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull, and the earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. when that happens, it won't matter if i get this guy out."

after the game, bill signed autographs for four hours at mulligans, telling stories and further living the life of a complete man. we should all strive to become so lucky.

ukulele love

did you know you can use google alerts to set queries against RSS feeds (of which all of craigslist is one) and get emails whenever someone posts something of interest to you for sale?

the jackpot for me this week is a republic resonator ukulele at a bargain price which is currently in line for the full carl's custom ukuleles i mean guitars treatment. (needs new tuners and strings, along with a pickup and strap button for starters).

can't say for sure it'll be ready for the carl johnson, arte k and peter lavender bands show at tammany hall in worcester this coming thursday night (9pm--be there!) but i'm fully intrigued as to what the horn lead line from peter's "back to normal" might sound like screwed up to the proverbial 11 on such a beast. (a ukulele 11, even with a resonator, being a relative thing, mind you).

i'll post pictures when it's ready--until then, color me happy.

lemme get this straight

let's say you're riding in a bus, and the person you elected to drive it chose a route that, for one reason or another, finds you barreling off a cliff, perhaps through no fault of the original drivers' own, but off a cliff nonetheless. and let's say you and the other passengers elected a new driver who wants to turn the wheel and try another route than the original. (seems reasonable, right?) so what would you say to people who start clamoring NOT to turn the wheel from the original drivers' route, since the reason the original driver turned the wheel that way in the first place surely was not to have you barreling off a cliff, even if you might be today, so what if altering the course will send the bus even further off that very same cliff off of which you're already barreling, through no fault of the original drivers' own, or anyone else's for that matter?

dubya-sponsored tax cuts on the wealthy are due to expire soon, and such is the discussion now among legislators who are afraid of rocking the imperiled bus, that they don't want to be stained with the ugly "tax" word while desperately trying to figure out a way for our national bus not to wind up at the bottom of this cliff on which we continue to find ourselves.

what i want to say is, what the EFF???

the country is insolvent, so you want to make sure we take in LESS money?

putting aside how we got to be insolvent in the first place, how does refusing to assess taxes to pay for our congress thieving away the treasury possibly make things anything but worse??? and putting aside the fact that tax-cutting our way to prosperity surely hasn't coincidentally caused any prosperity (except to the bailed-out bankers, but that's another story for another time) even though of course it's POSSIBLE (not probable, but i'll still allow possible) that things would be worse if we were collecting more taxes from the wealthy, though i have a hard time figuring out how exactly, i would still want to ask why it is that we aren't talking about cutting the federal budget by huge amounts to put it back in line with all the money that we're not taking in?

what i fear we have here is a collection of would-be bus drivers (aka party politicians) who don't care that the bus is crashing, as long as they're getting their pork (and their golden parachutes from their pork patrons) while they can.

and i think it's gutless for any of them to fear raising taxes when they have never quailed from spending, spending, spending, spending, spending, spending (thirteen trillion times spending).

stop me if you've heard this one before

a gulf of mexico oil rig exploded and is on fire.

i can't help but feel a parallel between recent mumblings from both the administration and the oil company criminals about things being back under control, and standing in front of a declared-victory banner on an aircraft carrier saying much the same nonsense about won-peace in the middle east. (it's not quite as photogenic as a burning plume of raw oil, but palestinians and israelis in the same room together these days gives off much the same effect).

i'm sure we'll, in a few days, be hearing lots of self-congratulation about all of this again.

it's like a heatwave

searing heat, a hurricane, and then sun again within a 48 hour period were my previous weekend, but they're also today's weather forecast. i'd say interesting and varied beats just about anything else, so bring it!

i'm still not sure what to do about saturday night (clearing on the weather map, but musical hurricane as far as i'm concerned) when southside johnny makes landfall at boardinghouse park, while jen kearney and melvern taylor are blowing the roof off of the blue mermaid in portsmouth. a guy can't be everywhere at once, but, if he could, here are two places to start.