Open Thread & Music Posted by spyder, 20 Apr 2007 10:21 am

Open Thread (#4)

Life Changing Moments of Highs and Lows
{in praise and thanks to Amanda French}

This has been one hell of a week (the last seven days). From the IPCC report, released in its toned-downed version and yet still deeply troubling and downright scary, to the questioning of the US Attorney General, withering under the surprising assault of his own party faithful for his complete dereliction of duties and gross mismanagement of the Department of Justice and the US Constitution (perhaps it was only just neglect and endangerment, but still, if this had been a hearing in family court, the judge would have immediately revoked his visitation privileges). Sandwiched in there were some great professional sports moments (the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s taking the field for the boys in blue), some environmental fun (the Great Turtle Race {and yes I am cheering for Stephanie Colburtle), and hideous evil acts of violence.

In the spirit of this past week and this upcoming weekend, and in the hope of inoculating some sort of anti-despair vaccine, the old cynical me will take a brief respite to talk about seeing the highs through the lows and the music that helps make that so.


This week reminded me so much of the winter/spring of 1969/1970. That particular winter had ravaged and savaged CA in powerful and destructive ways. 1969 had begun with the Santa Barbara oil spill, spewing ugly vile thick crude oil along the shorelines of the coast and coastal/channel islands, killing and destroying wildlife, biomes, and whole ecosystems. If that wasn’t harsh enough, several summer wildfires throughout the state removed the plant life that the hillsides and mountainsides needed to stay vertical. Then came the rains and the winds of winter. CA became a quagmire of detritus and debris. Whole coastal bluffs collapsed on highways, pushing out against the shoreline; large powerful waves chewed up the coast and somewhere in between homes, piers, roads, and so forth were washed away. And floating all over the ocean was oil, tar, garbage, and lots and lots of sewage. An environmental nightmare of devastating proportions and people angry made for a not-at-all silent spring. Somewhere in the middle of all this Nixon decided to mine harbors, and bomb countries other than Vietnam.

April 22, 1970—That day became a beacon of hope and call to embrace action. Instead of just the hippies and yippies running around yammering about the tragic collapse of environmental integrity, full tapestries of diverse populations came out and celebrated the demand for action. Earth Day was born amidst so much heartache and bleak despair (adding of course to this was the idiocy at Altamont on 12-06-1969). Millions of citizens of the US came out in cities and towns, villages and crossroads, bringing their voices and concerns together in a harmonic choral arrangement singing a lament that “We are better than this!” Hanging around tipis that Stewart Brand has arranged to bring to Golden Gate Park, the mantle of the bad winter was being lifted off of my shoulders, the shroud of despair and gloom wafted off like the rising fog with the music of joy and celebration. All could be better indeed.

May 4, 1970– Two weeks later hell on Earth returned with a vengeance so hideous and so evil that none of us could have even begun to think it possible. A crazed, lone-gunman is one thing, the US military aiming, firing, and killing students on college campuses who were exercising the First Amendment rights is something entirely different. Kent State and Jackson State should be constant and daily reminders for all of us. What had happened to all of that wonder and glory of two weeks before? How could so much positive light energy be transformed immediately into such dark malevolent muck?? How could any of us get past that day, that week, that month?

Well, my good friends, colleagues, associates, readers, commenters, et al, it is the music. The sweet, sweet music that fills the air with renewal and tranquility, bringing with it all that can still be possible, while embellishing and honoring the suffered and suffering—the music makes it better. Out of May of 1970, came songs and music that demanded our spirits, our human beingness, to rise up and lift our voices against these tides of the dark forces. If you have a chance, get a copy of Neil Young’s 1972 release Journey Through the Past and just listen through “Find The Cost of Freedom” bridging directly into “Ohio.” These were recorded during a CSNY concert at the Fillmore East on June 5, 1970. That summer tour was the vaccine, the antidote, to despair and nihilism, that empowered and inspired the next three years of kick-ass activism against the war and for the planet. I whip that CD on and feel all of those raw beautiful emotions as if they are fresh and now; and they are unfortunately fresh and now still. There are so many others too from the Jefferson Airplane/Starship (Volunteers and Blows Against the Empire, David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, Country Joe and the Fish (and just Country Joe’s environmental releases), the Beach Boys Holland album, and so many, many others. For me personally, and semi-professionally (as I prepare to embark on yet another summer rock-n-roll tour—we are calling this year the grandparents tour), the two releases by the Grateful Dead that year, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty turned the out-of-control burning rage into a white hot furnace of activism. Robert Hunter writing about the potential impact of Workingman’s Dead:

I saw that photo, and that was one of the few times I ever really asserted myself with the band and said ‘No - no picture of the band with guns on the back cover.’ These were incendiary and revolutionary times and I did not want this band to be making that statement. I wanted us to counter the rousing violence of that time. I knew that we had a tool to do it, and we just didn’t dare go the other way. Us and the Airplane: we could have been the final match that lit that fuse, and I went real consciously the other way.

So, what are your musical motivators to turn the tide against this wave of evil and despair? What were your choices of background music to watch the Senate Judiciary Committee grill the incompetent and nefarious US AG A. G.? Leave some thoughts and links so that we may all enjoy a weekend of dance and song, melody and tonic and even atonal cacophonies (hey, Ornette won a Pulitzer for his new album). Cool??

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Responses to “Open Thread (#4)”

  1. on 21 Apr 2007 at 6:48 am 1. Seattle said …

    Gayne’s Adagio

  2. on 21 Apr 2007 at 9:00 am 2. spyder said …

    Words to the weary and the wise: go out and celebrate Earth Day with your neighbors and communities today and tomorrow. Sing, play, listen, dance, harmonize, clap, beat, and all the more, to music that feeds your soul and spirit. Exhale some aums of compassion for all the suffering that is occurring; and choose, in at least one moment, to help someone else, even if that help is just the merest and simplest gesture of acknowledgement.

  3. on 21 Apr 2007 at 9:14 am 3. Jams said …

    Satire works for me.

  4. on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:17 am 4. The Constructivist said …

    I’ve always found that juxtaposing Tool’s apocalyptic “aenima” (scroll down to track 13) with their post-apocalyptic “schism” (scroll down to track 5) is oddly inspiring.

    I’ll try not to break the internets with YouTube embeds, but you can see the video for the first song here here and the second here.

  5. on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:28 am 5. The Constructivist said …

    Since my last went straight to spam/moderation, here’s Tool’s Parabola to tide you over until it’s rescued.

  6. on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:44 am 6. The Constructivist said …

    And since the last was a bit uplifting for Tool, here’s a perhaps more visually than musically successful critique of the media: vicarious, which I think should be understood as their sequel to a perfect circle’s Counting Bodies.

  7. on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:52 am 7. The Constructivist said …

    Which segues right into Rage Against the Machine’s Sleep Now in the Fire.

    Have I mentioned I haven’t listened to my favorite music much since my girls were born? Can’t wait till their old enough to start indoctrinating them in my musical tastes!

  8. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:06 am 8. JP Stormcrow said …

    You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever

    I am going to go back two years to 1968 which was a milestone year for me in terms of both overall political awareness and music. (I know - welcome to the club.) Before that I had pretty much outsourced my musical taste to my older sister, but that year I went out and purchased my first album, Disraeli Gears by the Cream. Though not really my listening taste today, it certainly helped carve deep blue fissures in the tissues of my mind as musical accompaniment to the political events of that summer unfolding before an astonished 14-year old. (In particular, I recall staying up and watching the events in Chicago, and wanting someone to help me understand just WTF was going on.)

    So here is a sequence of poster and album art set to Strange Brew and Tales of Brave Ulysses and then some interviews on the making of Tales of Brave Ulysses.Embedded as an experiment - please report any Internet breakage…but I think we are OK this time…

  9. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:19 am 9. The Constructivist said …

    To which Radiohead offers 2+2=5 and Sit Down. Stand Up.

  10. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:28 am 10. christian h. said …

    I interrupt with a rendition of The Internationale at a SSP congress. Drab? Yes. Nevertheless, uplifting for me. At least in some places, there are still workers parties not only in name.

  11. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:32 am 11. JP Stormcrow said …

    Can’t wait till their old enough to start indoctrinating them in my musical tastes!

    I have had mixed success with that. Best “hits” were getting my daughter at a very early age to go whole hog on Phil Ochs and R.E.M. (Yes, I am a creature of the past.) and more recently Dylan and then a big bullseye with Surrealistic Pillow this past Xmas. Others attempts have languished.

    I’ve always been a lame-o punkass when it comes to music (after a promising start I went off on a Nerdboy Core ProgRock bender for a few years - I confess I own Brain Salad Surgery on vinyl..), so these days I have pretty much followed the lead of my kids, WYEP and various insufferable Internet music snobs like Roxanne. (writing this while enjoying TC’s Tool cuts..)

    The kids have led me to Gorrillaz, White Stripes and reignited The Offspring for me.

  12. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:34 am 12. christian h. said …

    ProgRock? Are you related to The Editors?

  13. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:42 am 13. The Constructivist said …

    …and get inspirational (for them) in Pyramid Song and Airbag.

  14. on 21 Apr 2007 at 11:48 am 14. The Constructivist said …

    Here’s Cake at SF playing I Will Survive. Sorry to go on and on and on here–there was a time in my life when this music and golf was all I thought I had.

  15. on 21 Apr 2007 at 12:00 pm 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    ProgRock? Are you related to The Editors?

    Yes, I saw and recognized that whole thread…

    But gosh, if only everbody could actually see Keith Emerson stabbing his organ with a knife live during a concert, … then they’d understand, … then they’d know …

    As an antidote - here is a choppy, grainy but interesting documentary focusing on the convention from the Universtiy of Illinois Chicago Circle (they later shortened their name and ran Somalia for a while.) About an hour long - but some pretty interesting footage - I like the Anita Bryant “Happy birthday to You” for Lyndon Johnson myself.

  16. on 21 Apr 2007 at 12:24 pm 16. The Constructivist said …

    Resisting the temptation to go to Rush. Here’s The Fire Theft with Chain.

  17. on 21 Apr 2007 at 12:45 pm 17. The Constructivist said …

    The Tea Party takes you to Babylon, then sings you a little Lullaby. But Sister, Awake.

  18. on 21 Apr 2007 at 1:01 pm 18. The Constructivist said …

    While we’re waiting for The Tea Party to get out of moderation, you MUST see this version those damned blue collar tweekers from Primus (San Fran band) at the much-maligned Woodstock ‘94, with a brief cover of Hendrix’s national anthem in the middle.

  19. on 21 Apr 2007 at 1:02 pm 19. The Constructivist said …

    Sorry for the typo and non-link.

  20. on 21 Apr 2007 at 2:08 pm 20. The Constructivist said …

    At the Drive-In focus on the 570 unsolved maquiladora women worker murders near Juarez as of 2001 in Invalid Litter Dept..

  21. on 21 Apr 2007 at 2:22 pm 21. The Constructivist said …

    And we’ll close this episode of Radio Free Constructivist with Tool doing 46 & 2 live in 1999. “Listen to my muscle memory” is one of the most inspiring lines in music–go to track 5 here for the lyrics. BTW, when I saw them in Buffalo, Maynard had more clothes on, but did the bebop thing and never faced the audience.

  22. on 21 Apr 2007 at 3:18 pm 22. The Constructivist said …

    The Editors have one just for JP.

  23. on 21 Apr 2007 at 3:38 pm 23. spyder said …

    Have I mentioned I haven’t listened to my favorite music much since my girls were born? Can’t wait till their old enough to start indoctrinating them in my musical tastes!
    My poor kids didn’t have that choice. Each of the five (even from three different mothers) spent womb time and most of their early years at live Grateful Dead shows and on tour. Of course they also were inundated with lots and lots of other live music as well. And they seem to have come away from that experience with an appreciation for diverse genres, forms, and styles. That be good.

    damned blue collar tweekers from Primus
    but they are way beyond blue-collar and tweeking; more a purple-collared, pink-polkadot flannel, coral boa draped, in-bred freakazoids. Les still mines for gold in them thar hills in the summer.

    I know this takes signing in to get to the good stuff, but if you want the best and most easily accessible source to great live 60’s and 70’s music (including live CREAM shows) then you gotta dig in Wolfgang’s Vaults!

    My personal playlist has a couple of hundred tracks and over 24 hours of music to soothe my amurkin-damaged soul. And yes there is almost something for everybody; and lots for us old hippies.

  24. on 21 Apr 2007 at 8:38 pm 24. James Killus said …

    I was a committed listener of “progressive format” radio during the time in question, particularly my own college’s station, WRPI, which I later joined as a DJ, then member of the programming staff:

    http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.james-killus&artnum=76&FontSize=2

    There are all sorts of theories of personal philosophies of music (begin: brief aside):

    http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.james-killus&artnum=218&FontSize=2

    (end: brief aside)

    One of the common ones is the difference between “familiar music” and “the new sound.” Another is the music of our youths vs ongoing curiosity. Sometimes, this ongoing curiosity winds up connecting to the music of other peoples’ youths.

    I usually bang three of four albums together and set phasers on stun, I mean, the iPod on shuffle, but sometimes I make an ordered playlist and burn it onto a CD, for old times’ sake. The current burn goes overtime, so it will be seveal CDs:

    Name — Artist — Album
    Dreaming In Colour — The Art Of Noise — The Seduction Of Claude Debussy
    Man From Mars — Artie Shaw — Artie Shaw And His Orchestra [Disc 2]
    St. James Infirmary (Instrumental Version) — Jack Teagarden — The Complete Roulette Sessions [Disc 2]
    There Would Be Hell To Pay — T-Bone Burnett — The True False Identity
    Desert Train — Kimmie Rhodes — Windblown
    I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry — Cowboy Junkies — The Trinity Session
    Apocalypso — Jimmy Buffett — Fruitcakes
    Nagasaki — Don Redman & His Orchestra — Don Redman: 1931-1933
    Foreign Accents — Robert Wyatt — Uncut: The Best of 2003
    Na Na Na — Yuki — LOVE
    Song Of The Traveling Daughter (Chinese) — Abigail Washburn — Song Of The Traveling Daughter
    Speedway At Nazareth — Mark Knopfler — Sailing to Philadelphia
    1996 — School Of Fish/DADA — Back 2 Back Hits - School Of Fish/DADA
    Tahitian Moon — Porno For Pyros — Tahitian Moon
    Philosophers Stone — Van Morrison — Back On Top
    Because The Night — Patti Smith — Arista: A 15 Year History Of Rock
    Oh Well — Joe Jackson — Laughter & Lust
    Daddy Go Down — David Byrne — Feelings
    Nikki Don’t Stop — The Low Millions — Ex Girfriends
    Why Don’t You Do Right? — Sinéad O’Connor — Am I Not Your Girl?
    Doin’ The New Low-Down (Vocal) — Don Redman/Cab Calloway/The Mills Brothers — Don Redman: 1931-1933
    Soft Hand — Willard Grant Conspiracy — Uncut: The Best of 2003
    The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) — Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks — Beatin’ the Heat
    Play Something We Know — Adam Hood — 6th Street
    Brown Eyed Girl — HBS Heard On The Street — Airtime
    I Scare Myself — Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks — Beatin’ the Heat
    El Macho — Mark Knopfler — Sailing to Philadelphia
    Straw Hat And Old Dirty Hank — Barenaked Ladies — Born On A Pirate Ship
    Trip Like I Do — The Crystal Method — Vegas
    The Sailor Song — The Toy Box — Toy Box - FanTastic

    “Yuki” is, I think, a Taiwanese artist, not to be confused with Yuki Isoya, who is Japanese. It’s a tad difficult to tell sometimes, when one reads neither Japanese nor Chinese, and the CD is purchased used, with practically no English (or even Roman characters) on it. It is, however, a great version of “Kiss Him Goodbye.”

    It’s an interesting question as to whether or not being faithful to the spirit of one’s youth means faithful to the quest or the fruits thereof. Moderation in all things, even moderation, and it’s pretty obvious on which side I err. There’s some pretty good hip-hop on Yuki’s CD as well.

  25. on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:29 pm 25. spyder said …

    That is a songlist that makes me think of an old beach buddy from SoCal. Tom Schnabel created a program he called “The Morning Become Eclectic” for a local beach community college station. His diverse interests and wealth of musicological knowledge was a huge source of great pleasure for us. Tom has gone on from radio now, to become the music director of World Music for the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

    My own music education was hugely enhanced through my taking Paul Tanner’s Development of Jazz course (Music 132 A/B) at UCLA in the late 60’s. Paul is most well known for being a trombonist in Glenn Miller’s band, and for developing and playing the electro-theremin on several recordings including Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. But Paul was also Professor Tanner, and his two-quarter course was the most sought after 8 units any lucky lottery winner could take. The class was so large that it often met in Royce Hall to listen to Paul’s friends, the living legends of Jazz, perform live renditions of their material as examples of this or that strand or direction. On days without live music the class met in Schoenberg Hall, to listen to disc after disc after disc of Professor Tanner’s immense vinyl collection on a Vern Knudsen-enhanced, state-of-the-art, sound system. Those 24 weeks were, without question, the best educational experience of my life. I look up at James list, recognize Artie Shaw (one of my heroes) and remember his days of performing in Tanner’s class. Jack Teagarden, Don Redmon, Cab Callaway, the Mills Brothers on a set list? Absolutely!!

  26. on 22 Apr 2007 at 10:31 am 26. Sven DiMilo said …

    I used to volunteer for Schnabel’s morning show in the mid-late 80s. Tom had excellent, and extremely wide-ranging, musical taste (as judged by me), but he could be kind of a dick on a personal level. Other times he’d be a great guy, giving away CDs and even getting me into jazz clubs I couldn’t afford. He programmed the show by stream-of-consciousness whim, suddenly getting an idea of what song to play next and dispatching me to the station’s (astonishing) music library to pull the CD or (still, in those days, mostly) vinyl within a minute and a half, or whatever. I remember when I finally succeeded in getting him to play the Dead, when Without a Net came out and I could point out that Branford Marsalis sat in on one tune. He was unhappy to learn–too late–that it ate up 15 minutes of his show though.

  27. on 22 Apr 2007 at 10:39 am 27. spyder said …

    but he could be kind of a dick on a personal level. Oh really, hehehe. Yes there is that aspect of his personality, but as you point out there were other moments too. We had some fun times playing music in the SaMo parking structures at three and four in the morning (Tom played eclectic flute stylings). His darksyde has much to do with his family upbringing, and stories that must go unmentioned.

    Damn it, now i am pissed at Iggy. He has just set the bar way too high last night, for this year’s summer grandparents tour. As reported by the AP last night:

    Iggy Pop marked his 60th birthday on Saturday just like any other respectable senior citizen would. The eerily athletic “Godfather of Punk” stripped down to a tight pair of blue jeans and dived off the stage into the arms of his adoring fans during a concert in San Francisco with his reunited band the Stooges. Towards the end of the 80-minute show, the crowd at the Warfield theater sang along as his bandmates struck up “Happy Birthday,” and Pop was surprised as balloons bearing his image dropped from the ceiling. Pop no longer carves up his chest with a steak knife, rolls around in cut glass, smears himself in peanut butter, or follows a drug regimen that makes Keith Richards look like a choirboy. But the Michigan trailer-park kid otherwise outruns rockers one-third his age.

  28. on 22 Apr 2007 at 1:25 pm 28. spyder said …

    TC efforts should not go unacknowledged, and so i offer some 30 year old video (thirty years ago this coming Thursday actually) of one of the more jazz-based pieces (in 7/4) performed by the Grateful Dead.

    And with respect for TC’s animated treasures he has provided for us, both here and at Mostly Harmless, i feel obligated to link this one as well.

  29. on 22 Apr 2007 at 9:08 pm 29. Oaktown Girl said …

    spyder - I’ve thought and thought about it, but I guess I don’t have any songs that I specifically call upon to lift me out of emotional dispair against the tide of evil - and boy is there a lot of evil. I think it’s because that’s how I consciously utilize just about all the music I listen to, so maybe there’s just no separation for me.

    One thing I will say is that I miss how popular music was not nearly as divided and segmented into genres and different groups of followers as it is now. Up until the early 70’s, on you could hear on AM commercial stations everything from heavy funk to hard rock, and most folks were groovin’ on all of it. Good times.

    Here’s a song I’ve always loved from a 1971 album that my parents played all the time when I was a kid, right along side Miles Davis and BB King and Roberta Flack and the Rolling Stones and…

  30. on 22 Apr 2007 at 10:56 pm 30. spyder said …

    Aaaaahh Janis is good for everyone’s sense of wellbeing (except maybe her own).

  31. on 24 Apr 2007 at 12:04 pm 31. The Constructivist said …

    This is for James at #24 (based on his aside)–Hem, “Half-Acre.” Got one for imoto, who turns 1 on the 27th, coming.

  32. on 24 Apr 2007 at 12:23 pm 32. The Constructivist said …

    And this and this are for Oaktown Girl and spyder. Going by teh YouTube stats, folks are more likely to already be fans of Portishead, but what with the orchestra accompanying them during the famous Roseland NYC recordings, how could I not add them to the mix?

  33. on 24 Apr 2007 at 12:42 pm 33. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks, TC.
    I look forward to hearing it tonight when I get home. I don’t have speakers on my work computer yet.

  34. on 24 Apr 2007 at 2:32 pm 34. Oaktown Girl said …

    [After hearing ESPN radio on my lunch break while the Randi Rhodes show was at commercial.]

    Sweet Lord Astaroth, can the media please pause and take a recovery breath from all the hyperventilating over A-Rod’s record-breaking April personal stats?

    Yes, for those of you who haven’t been following along, you read that correctly. I said “April”. You did not accidentally oversleep and wake up in September, or even July.

    Is it interesting? Yes. Noteworthy? Of course. Exciting? Absolutely not. Even if I were a Yankee fan, I wouldn’t find it exciting because guess what? The team’s not winning. It might qualify as “exciting” if the team itself were about to set a win record for the month of April. But that’s not the story. The story is A-Rod about to be crowned Mr. April. I’m sure that’s just what he’s dreamt of his whole life.

  35. on 24 Apr 2007 at 3:19 pm 35. christian h. said …

    Sweet Lord Astaroth, can the media please pause and take a recovery breath from all the hyperventilating over A-Rod’s record-breaking April personal stats?

    Word! This hyping of individual athletes and coaches, and their short-term feats is totally out of control.

  36. on 25 Apr 2007 at 9:35 pm 36. The Constructivist said …

    Yeah, I hate it when people do that!

  37. on 26 Apr 2007 at 5:16 am 37. christian h. said …

    OK, well, Golf is different - it’s not a team sport. Plus, women’s sports need exposure. So I’ll let you off the hook this on time.

  38. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:44 am 38. The Constructivist said …

    Christian, I consider myself lucky! (And this is the birthday-for-imoto post I threatened promised a few days ago.)

  39. on 20 May 2007 at 11:17 pm 39. The Constructivist said …

    Jesus’ General’s readers have put together a playlist.