Memorial Day 2009

Happy May Day!

"Who let the dogs out?"

Yeah, a few people complain about dogs on our local beaches. But this video shows one of the reasons I love living in Pismo Beach.

Songs of freedom, songs of revelation...

I’ve always done a pretty decent job keeping track of Jefferson Starship — in whatever configuration it’s taken. These past dozen or more years, though, have been particularly challenging. [Note: When I say “Jefferson Starship,” I’m referring to any music produced under the auspices of the great Paul Kantner.]

In the 1970s, I saw the “classic” band — Kantner, Slick, Balin, Freiberg, et a1. — play live a half-dozen times. And in the past few years, I’ve seen Kantner’s continually morphing group perform everywhere from House of Blues in Hollywood (1995), to Knott’s Berry Farm (1998), to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (2000), to seaside at Avila Beach (2005) — featuring, in various rotations, Marty Balin, Darby Gould, Diana Mangano, Jack Casady, Prairie Prince, David Freiberg, and bunches of others, but always with Kantner, the heart of the group.

I’ve kept up with Jefferson Starship’s sparse CD output over recent years, too — all the live CDs from independent labels and their fantastic 1998 studio release, Windows of Heaven.

But somehow, Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty, a new studio CD released last September, had slipped right past me. I found a lone copy last weekend while skimming through the music bins at Borders. The shame is I lost six months that I could have spent listening to and savoring it. But what the hell…

This CD is a folk collection, mostly acoustic covers, making it unlike any earlier album from the Jefferson Family. And it’s the most politically radical product to come from these people since maybe Airplane’s Volunteers in 1969, the sticker on the outside of the CD reading, “In the spirit of Jefferson Airplane, a clarion call of social conscience.” In fact, Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty opens with the first chords of “We Can Be Together/Volunteers” before launching into the Weavers’ “Wasn’t That a Time.” It raised a lump in my throat when I first heard it. These songs are anthems to rebellion, and I think they arrive at a very good time.

There are 18 tracks listed on this CD, only one of them a full original, Kantner’s “On the Threshold of Fire.” (There’s an Easter egg hidden on the album, too — a Sunfighter outtake from 1971 called “Surprise, Surprise,” featuring Grace Slick.) Even the covers, though, are not quite covers, each of them given such a unique spin that JS might arguably lay claim to them as their own. For example, John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” are cleverly blended together here and sung beautifully by newcomer Cathy Richardson. Likewise, Phil Ochs’ iconic “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” again with Richardson, boasts a new verse and a whole new “sound” for the song.

There are songs here by Woody Guthrie, Dino Valenti, Richard Farina, Richard Thompson, and Bob Dylan (this new version of “The Chimes of Freedom” is one of the most rousing I’ve ever heard). Plus there are some traditional old Irish and Spanish tunes. There’s a LOT more, too much to stuff into this little review. Just listen for yourself.

More than forty years after Surrealistic Pillow, it astounds me that so much vital music can still come from this group of musicians. Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty is one of the best new CDs I’ve heard in this decade.

"Chimes Of Freedom" - Jefferson Starship

The day the music died...

Buddy Holly died 50 years ago today (with the Big Bopper and Richie Valens). Rave on, Buddy!

Meet the new boss...

WilsonFest 2008

It’s been WilsonFest 2008 around here this past week. Brian Wilson’s new collection, That Lucky Old Sun, has played endlessly, and now I’ve added Smile and even Pet Sounds to the mix.

The new CD, like 2004’s long long long delayed (what, 38 years?) Smile, is really a suite of tunes hard to separate. You’re tempted to skip to track eight and listen right now to “Mexican Girl,” but it just wouldn’t be right. These songs work best listened to in context, not individually. For example, this bit from “Midnight’s Another Day” really nails my life of just two years ago:

When there’s no morning without “u”
There’s only darkness the whole day through
Took the diamond from my soul
And turned it back into coal

But it doesn’t work fully for me without this stanza from “Going Home,” two cuts and a few minutes later:

I heard my sound and found my smile
Living in love, yeah yeah yeah, it’s been a while

That Lucky Old Sun isn’t as ambitious or even as addictive as Smile. But it’s still joyous, a terrific follow-up, and a much-appreciated report from Brian on where his life is at the moment. It’s like oxygen to the brain.

"Good Girls Don't" -- The Knack

This video was recorded by Mark Frauenfelder at a free "concert in the park" last weekend in Woodland Hills, California. I think it's amazing. For two reasons. First, it's a great performance by The Knack, a band now three decades old. Second, the band's performing one of their all-time raunchiest songs to what appears to be a group of blue-haired ladies and little kids. Might not the song selection be a tad questionable, guys? Oh well...this particular crowd seems totally oblivious.

(Thanks to Boing Boing.)

Bo Diddley RIP

Hey, was that Sam Riddle?

An Inconvenient Opera

I am not making this up!

MILAN, Italy (AP) — First it was the film and the book. Now the next step for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is opera.

La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

OK…tomorrow, I begin working on Man, Economy, and State: The Musical.

DVD review: JOHN, PAUL, TOM & RINGO

I figger just about anything related to the Beatles is worth watching, so this week I Netflixed the two-disc DVD John, Paul, Tom & Ringo: The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. The set includes a program aired the evening after John Lennon’s murder in December 1980, which rebroadcast a 1975 interview with John (perhaps his last for TV), a 1979 interview with Paul and Linda McCartney, and an interview with Ringo Starr and spouse Barbara Bach from 1981. Almost three decades later, none of these shows reveal anything we Beatlemaniacs haven’t heard before. But it’s good to see the boys from back then and, naturally, the Lennon interview is especially bittersweet. The biggest problem with this set, of course, is the late Tom Snyder himself. His questions were usually vacuous and embarrassing, and it’s hard to watch these shows without thinking about Dan Aykroyd’s sidesplitting Snyder bits on SNL many years ago. Ah well. The set is only worth renting. On the other hand, the DVD sets of The Dick Cavett Show (from the early 1970s) that include an interview with George Harrison and extensive interviews with John and Yoko are worth adding to your home video library, if you love the Beatles as much as I do.

The Kinks - 20th Century Man

Ray Davies was the original Paleo-Libertarian Leftist. Listen.

Soundtrack to an Alien Invasion

Stevie K. Farnaby over at Broken Sea Audio Productions has produced a creepy sci-fi music EP called Electric Grasshopper – Soundtrack to an Alien Invasion. Here’s how the Broken Sea people describe it: “A unique and innovative form of story-telling, that combines elements of music and drama, to create an unnerving, disturbing tale of alien invasion, giant man-eating bugs, and hopelessness. Pure unadulterated atmospheric mayhem ensues…” Very cool. Kinda Robert Heinlein meets Brian Eno. You can download the entire EP here FOR FREE (two musical tracks and one of Farnaby talking about the music).

Roy Scheider RIP

Roy Scheider's greatest performance ever, in one of the half-dozen greatest movie musicals of all time, Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979).

Merry Anarcho-Christmas!

Written by the late Samuel Edward Konkin III…

Joy to the World
(Tune of “Joy to the World”)

Joy to the world,
The State is dead,
Let earth receive no king.
Let every heart, be unrestrained,
At last we’ve broken free!
At last we’ve broken free!
At last, at last, we’ve broken free!

Joy to the earth,
No monarch reigns,
No politician’s left,
We come to burn…the ballot box,
Far as the vote is found,
Far as the vote is found,
Far as, far as, the vote is found.

No rule on earth!
Now truth and grace
Are everyone’s birthright.
The market is free, and anarchy
Is found throughout the land,
Is found throughout the land,
Is found, is found, throughout the land.

No more let tax
Or tariffs vex
The workers or the boss.
Inflation is gone,
Our money is sound,
And freedom is our right,
And freedom is our right,
And freedom, and freedom, is our right!

Beatles Christmas Message 1963

A couple of months before they first came to the U.S. Very cool.

Ike Turner RIP

He wasn't a nice man, but bless him, he did bring us this...

It was 27 years ago today...

Bob Dylan: "Masters Of War"