Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

I do not dedicate this song to the royal newlyweds. But it is not because of any malice in my heart. I do dedicate this song to you, though, who choose their blog-reading material with care, intelligence, and taste. More specifically, I dedicate it to those of you who have a sweety pie, a libido, appropriate precautionary technology, and a pure heart.



Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes stuck with the style of music, which was what originally made me a Springsteen fan for a short time. Dig Springsteen's sustained "altissimo" vocal note near the end. "The Fever" is a Springsteen composition, but I always knew it as a Southside song. I wish the sound were better in this clip so we could hear the full power of the horns and their slinky accompaniment. As heard from a good audio source, this tune is a tour de force. But at least on this video we can enjoy Clarence Clemons lumbering around the stage, without his tenor but clad in a very tasteful yellow jumpsuit and giant Panama hat, grabbing the mike on cue to belt out his profundo embellishment on the refrain. It's fun!

The Fever, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, with Bruce Springsteen (1978, live performance at the Agora Club, Cleveland, Ohio), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

I just have no opinion

*

Greetings from a member of one very small minority lurking at the edges of The Global Village. I'm speaking of me, part of the community of people who have no opinion about the Royal Wedding that was executed and consummated on 29 April 2011 in Merrie Olde England. I can cook up nothing whatsoever to say about it, even knowing that civilization has been waiting for me to weigh in on the topic. I do apologize, and thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

As an indirect comment, though, I do express hope that Marginalia and his clan thoroughly enjoyed the day, whether sentimentally preoccupied with the majesty of the event, or festively stumbling through a series of pubs with or without the wedding in mind, or acting out bawdy parodies of certain events likely to have happened in the royal wedding chamber at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, here in that Shining City Upon A Hill, what thinks it don't need no royalty stuff because some guys dumped tea into a harbor one time, operatives for America's corporate pride and joy---Facebook, Inc.---helped the British Establishment to celebrate Wedding Day by eradicating 50 protest groups from their special cloud (via BoingBoing). Here's the damage:

Open Birkbeck, UWE Occupation, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Camberwell AntiCuts, IVA Womensrevolution, Tower Hamlets Greens, No Cuts, ArtsAgainst Cuts, London Student Assembly, Beat'n Streets, Roscoe 'Manchester' Occupation, Bristol Bookfair, Newcastle Occupation, Socialist Unity, Whospeaks Forus, Ourland FreeLand, Bristol Ukuncut, Teampalestina Shaf, Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut, No Quarter Cutthewar, Bootle Labour, Claimants Fightback, Ecosocialists Unite, Comrade George Orwell, Jason Derrick, Anarchista Rebellionist, BigSociety Leeds, Slade Occupation, Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Firstof Mayband, Don't Break Britain United, Cockneyreject, SWP Cork, Westiminster Trades Council, York Anarchists, Rock War, Sheffield Occupation, Central London SWP, North London Solidarity, Southwark Sos, Save NHS, Rochdale Law Centre, Goldsmiths Fights Back 

Mark Zuckerberg is American royalty, by the way, or at least he must think he is.

Paging North Carolina

*

I hope the onslaught of storms over the weekend spared The 59er and his acquaintances. Can't remember exactly where you are located in the Carolinas, Sam. Please post something here when you get a chance so I (we) know you and your town are OK.

"Hold it! Next man makes a move, the 'nigger' gets it!"

*

Today the Standard & Poors "credit rating agency" borrowed a slick comedy move from Bart, Cleavon Little's character in Blazing Saddles. Specifically, S&P made a hollow threat to cut the rating of U.S. Treasury securities this morning---in effect, Wall Street holding a cap gun against its own head---which I assume is supposed to scare the President and the Democrats into doing whatever the right-wing deficit peacocks demand, such as abolishing Medicare and Social Security so rich assholes can have more tax cuts.

Right on cue, naturally, lame duck Senator Joe Lieberman was on my car radio this afternoon spewing turgid nonsense about the existential threat posed by current US debt levels and why it's important to cap federal spending at some absurdly low percentage of Gross Domestic Product. (I can't find a link to this, so you don't have to listen to his putrid, quavering voice here.) Why do I call it "turgid nonsense"? Because like most talk about federal deficits and debt in the corporate media today (including NPR), the somber generalities preached by deficit peacocks immediately break down to gibberish when real macroeconomists insist that the discussion include valid historic data, meaningful contexts, and other scary evidence-based features.

Nobel macroeconomist Paul Krugman, for example, quickly authenticated this S&P stunt as another episode of Wall Street's tiresome Saturday matinee serial entitled Uncle Sam and the Phantom Bond Vigilantes. It's fair to ask why I might put stock in anything Krugman and other neo-Keynesians say. My reason is simple: because his analysis have been consistently correct (i.e., consistently predictive about what would happen to the economy in the future) since I started following his New York Times blog 5 or 6 years ago, around the time he was was warning readers about the runaway US housing bubble and related phenomena. And he always backs his arguments with verifiable economic data and simple numerical models that every economist and most people with a high school diploma can understand.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Who ever said we couldn't have a multimedia fish fry on Saturday Night? Not me!



This 1933 Betty Boop cartoon from Fleischer Studios has so much going for it that I'm not sure what to start with. Almost always, Fleischer cartoons are about world-class Depression-era animation and backgrounds. But for a short time right after sound was wed to film action, the Fleischer Brothers collaborated with some of the greatest seminal northern jazz big bands to create extraordinary modern art. So I'll start with the music.

Don Redman was one of the giants of early jazz, probably much more important as an arranger than as an orchestra leader. But here he is, with his orchestra, getting top billing before Betty Boop herself in this short. I Heard presents a medley of three Redman compositions (with collaborators) that are all included in an out-of-print 1990 Redman collection called Don Redman And His Orchestra, 1931 - 1933 (1990, Classics 543). My favorite is the opener, called "Chant Of The Weed" (1931), which is based on a very unusual set of changes that quickly alternates between a major key and its relative minor (I think), the minor being remarkably avant garde and the major being a classic, upbeat jazz-age sound. The version in this cartoon is much more intriguing to me than the Classics reissue, which is faster and somewhat mechanical sounding. But in addition to the musical intro, look at all the work the Fleischers put into Redman's backdrop: a theatrical flat of Betty Boop's Saloon (it's called a Tavern in the actual cartoon) replete with live animated cutout cartoon animal heads!

Chant melds into "How'm I Doin' ? (Hey-Hey)," with the voice of Boop, Mae Questel, sharing the vocals with Redman (who also blows alto sax in addition to directing the band). As coal miners go, these fellas are really lucky: their lunch spot is, by night, a Hot Jazz club. The waiter (Redman's voice) advertises La Boop's after-hours shows to the guys, then gives 'em a taste of Betty whilst they feast on species-specific entrees.

Finally, the "story" transitions to the surreal sequence accompanied by the title piece, again with vocals by Redman and Questel. As purposely gimmicky as her voice is for these cartoons, Questel has an impressive mastery of rhythm; listen how she works ahead of the beat like a wired tommy gun during the telephone sequence.

But what you really should do, in my opinion, is just feast your eyes on everything. This world is bursting with action, visual puns, audiovisual synchronicity, violence, and the macabre. And there are plenty of the famous visual hi-jinx that characterized this series before stringent Hollywood censorship began cramping Betty's style in 1934. These include the usual mix of phallic symbols, lechery, and Betty's tendency to lose her clothing at least once per episode. To pointlessly state the obvious, these cartoons were always aimed at teenagers and adults, not the kiddies---like [adult swim] for Depression-era moviegoers.

I Heard, Betty Boop cartoon series, featuring Koko The Clown and Bimbo (1933, Fleischer Studios and Paramount Pictures, directed by Dave Flesicher, animated by Willard Bowsky and Myron Waldman), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

John Mayall twin spin twin spin twin spin DOINNNGGG!!!



Marginalia wrote from across the deep blue sea to give us a few more details about Mayall's 1960s British R&B laboratory, the Bluesbreakers, which served as a training ground for British pop music royalty, including Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, and many others. With hindsight it seems sorta weird to me that Mayall wasn't much bigger in the United States, at least in the late 1960s. Don't think I ever heard a peep about him from the Beatles, either---also strange considering their own reverence for American "roots" music and Mayall's role as a champion of it.

This cut is the opening track on The Turning Point; the YouTuber clipped off a portion of the band introductions, but the song is intact. It's a standard 12-bar blues construction, but that easily cliched form doesn't jump right out at me because the arrangement is so interesting. It's a good example of how the band uses their instruments so effectively to make percussion unnecessary. The harp is sharp as razors, the bass bubbles and pops along, and the tenor works as a rhythm instrument while infusing the sound with the jazzy warmth that is so important to this quartet's sound. There's also a bit of mouth percussion on the track, which is the central feature on "Room To Move," another track you can find on YouTube.

To my ears, Mayall on this album sounds like a graduate of the Dudley Do-Right School of Voice. I don't mean that in a mean spirit at all, but that association baked itself into my skull upon first listening. And I call this a "school of voice" because I've heard it in a number of other places; the one that comes immediately to mind is J.W. Hodgkinson, who was lead vocalist for a unique-sounding UK band called If. I have to wonder if they're emulating the style of an American blues hero I'm not aware of.

One other distinguishing aspect of this cut is the lyrics. It's an unusual protest song that invokes the memory of American free-speech hero Lenny Bruce, who fought obscenity charges in the courts for the better part of two decades. He was also a pot smoker and a junkie. Mayall makes the case that weed should be legal, but since it's not then you shouldn't blame cops if you get busted for possession---you should respond with political activism, instead. I remember thinking the lyrics were somewhat "square," but not really objectionable. Looking back, I think Mayall's presentation was remarkable during an era when the terms "police" and "pigs" were synonymous with many, many youth in the United States.

Acknowledgment: I thank my old friend Gurlitzer, known to some people in southwest Cook County as Janet, for scraping up the catalog information.

The Laws Must Change, John Mayall (1969, "The Turning Point," Polydor Stereo 24-4004), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Silly me

*

My firm prediction that the government would be shut down for between 5 and 7 days, not published here but explicitly stated to friends, was based on my certainty that Republicans needed a face-saving play to keep the tea bag caucus on board with Boehner. My guess was that this would come in the form of a short-term shutdown to satisfy the 'baggers, followed by an appeal to higher authority, such as reopening the government to restore "market confidence." Then we'd get a GOP declaration of victory, and their own well founded faith in having the history rewritten by party propagandists and broadcast on Fox.

Well, I believe I got the "face-saving" aspect correct. But I truly did not predict that it would be Harry Reid and Obama who would give Boehner his political cover, and also several extra billion in cuts to sweeten the deal. Silly me.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

This may sound like too laid-back of a band to call "experimental," but that's what I'd call it anyway. Listen to John Mayall's impressions, jamwise, of California.



This four-piece string-driven band was recorded in 1969 and released on Mayall's album The Turning Point. It was a Easy Rider-era favorite amongst the high school outcasts who started growing our hair about then since we didn't fit in with any other group and couldn't get near girls except in marching band.

I don't know much about Mayall even though he was so influential in the British blues scene, and his Bluesbreakers band was a proving ground for many players I admired in other settings, including Sugarcane Harris and Aynsley Dunbar (violin and drums, respectively, with Frank Zappa), and Dick Heckstall-Smith (reeds with an under-known British jazz-rock band called Colosseum). (I'll bet Barry or Sam can offer some interesting facts.)

Anyhoo, although it's somewhat subtle, one will notice that this combo uses no dedicated percussion instruments. The guitars, bass, and Mayall's impressive harp-sucking are deployed throughout the album in highly rhythmic and percussive ways, yet the overall sound is predominantly mellow. In addition to that innovation, Mayall added a straight-ahead jazz component with Johnny Almond's sax and flute. Almond isn't that dazzling, technically speaking, but he really doesn't have to be---it's a goddam blues band, after all. Listen how the crowd responds when Almond hits the altissimo register at the end of his tenor solo; it doesn't require virtuosity, but he uses the sound to excellent climactic effect.

Altogether, what impresses me most about this band is how well everyone fits with everyone else. I think this is a sound that has been under-explored over the years.

California, John Mayall (1969, "The Turning Point," Polydor [catalog information not available because I can't find the damned album in my junk]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Betting against my own predictive prowess tonight [updated x2]

*

Up until a short time ago I was certain that there would be a government shutdown at midnight tonight because I assumed that the lugubrious Speaker of the House (Boehner) has much more to lose by compromising than by standing with his tea bag coalition. I would have staked my prognostication credibility on it, and in fact I think I did with a few friends at work.

But today, Herr Karl Rove, "presidential hopeful" Mike Huckabee, and "whatever she is" Michele Bachmann all announced that the wisest course for Republicans would be to take the money and run. Like Josh Marshall says, this might mean that the House 'bagger caucus has been convinced by leadership behind closed doors, accurately, that it would be stupid to hold out on the Planned Parenthood assault when they've already completely rolled Obama and Reid.

By reaching this "compromise" to rob social programs at no negative political cost to themselves, the GOP can frame their Planned Parenthood "giveback" move as a "diplomatic" and "adult" contribution to the national welfare (no pun intended). Meanwhile, President North Star and Reid stand there pretending they haven't been sprayed down in shitmist.

I didn't put this together until I read on TPM that Bachmann had expressed her opinion on the matter. If she brings the 'baggers around, then her status is significantly elevated in the GOP.  If that is in fact the case, then Boehner still looks weak in terms of House majority leadership and is vulnerable to a challenge by Eric Cantor, for example, the Majority Leader. And if that happened, Bachmann might come out of it in the future with a deputy-whip-type position or even shot at Republican Conference Chair, movin' on up to the East Side so to speak, George Jeffersonwise.

Editor's note: for purposes of Truth In Blogging, RubberCrutch discloses that he is employed by a small agency inside a larger one buried deep inside a cabinet-level department that is very good at blowing up things.

Update: if this (from TPM) is true about a three-day continuing resolution in the works, then Obama gets rolled in another way. He said he would not approve any more extensions. Yes, I know that he has to do this if there's an acceptable deal on the table---acceptable to himself and the invertebrate caucus, that is---but it will still be painted by triumphal Republicans as "further evidence" of Obama's weakness. I don't think Democrats could negotiate a discount on a Cabbage Patch Baby at a DuPage County flea market....

Update x2:  TPM sez the pending deal includes two fucking billion dollars more in spending cuts plus a "symbolic" floor vote on the Planned Parenthood attack. If true, then a total win for GOP, plus the corporate media will surely give Republicans all the credit for the "compromise." And I don't have any convincing reason to think this floor vote is necessarily destined to fail. Altogether, a fate worse than a gigantic rogue asteroid smashing up the joint in terms of what this means for the system of government under which we were privileged to be born. Democrats give away the farm and provide political cover for a cabal of thugs. Plus, I was sort of looking forward to having Monday off....

Also, "Afghan Spring"?

*

General Petraeus, correctly, does not think the smoke from burning Qurans in the spring smells like victory:

"We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran," said the statement issued by military commander Gen. David Petraeus and the top NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill.

Maybe because:

The Taliban said in a statement emailed to media outlets that the U.S. and other Western countries have wrongly excused the burning a Quran by the pastor of a Florida church on March 20 as freedom of speech and that Afghans "cannot accept this un-Islamic act."

Neither US "hawks" or "doves" have anything to cheer about apropos of an "Afghan Spring" of violence by religious zealots there, as ignited by religious zealots here. Neither do General Petraeus or the population of Afghanistan. The only two gaining parties are the Taliban and "Pastor Terry Jones."

I've noticed that mainstream reports like this one in the New York Times bury the identity of the Quran desecrator way down in the column. Suppose Minister Farrakhan publicly roasted a Holy Bible during a Friday afternoon prayer meeting, and that it drove the "good Christian people" of Chicago, for instance, to firebomb Arab nation consulates (because they are perceived to be less dangerous to "good Christian people" than local Nation of Islam properties): does it seem likely that we'd have to wait until the 10th paragraph to find out the identify of this "individual in the United States"?

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway...



This version of "Penny Lane" was first sold to fans on a US-issued 1980 Beatles anthology called Rarities. This recording dates to 1967, like the original single and album releases of the same track, but differs (very significantly, to my ears) in that it includes a piccolo trumpet flourish in the final measures. This is the version that many, but not all, radio stations played in spring 1967---the version that all of us who couldn't afford to buy records grew up with. Years later, when I finally bought Magical Mystery Tour, I thought the album version of this song had somehow been stunted in production because of how the tune ends in an anticlimactic instrumental drone with a weak drizzle of cymbals.

I first learned that the "trumpet ending" was an actual rarity when Rarities was issued. If I remember the story correctly, the trumpet ending didn't make it to the pressing of the commercial 45 rpm single, but Paul for some reason intervened and had it included on the promotional version of the record that was distributed to US radio stations, both aired by them and given away at radio-hosted "sock hops" and the like.

Today is a sunny but frustratingly chilly early April day, like weekends I remember in April 1967 when Chicagoland was slowly ascending from a brutal winter. "Penny Lane" was in solid rotation then at both WLS-890 and WCFL-1000, with its merry, surreal narrative beaming through the "blue suburban skies" on a 50 kilowatt AM signal.

Penny Lane, The Beatles (1967, Capitol promotional 45 rpm single P-5810), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Apropos of nothing

*

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!



Greenie Stickum Caps!!!

Via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Tiresome question of the week

*

"Why aren't we bombing Bahrain, too?"

It's all over the place. And I'll admit that I, too, have asked it. But rhetorically. Facetiously. It's easy to concoct your own variations on the question: just substitute "Ivory Coast," "Syria," even "Zimbabwe" if you want to get a little obscure.

Colonel Qaddafi was a bastard 40 years ago, and he was a bastard 20 years ago, and he was a bastard less than 2 years ago when Senator John McCain was a guest at Qaddafi's Libyan "ranch" and "discussing a military equipment deal" with this "interesting man." (Senators Olympia Snowe and Joe Lieberman were part of McCain's 2009 entourage.) And now Colonel Q is the facing a new "makeover" to append his previous one. They've probably already labeled the body bag. "They" who? NATO nations, which might in this case be considered client states for most of the "supermajors."

Even if there were a genuine humanitarian impulse behind this North African squirmish, the ways and means are all wrong for many of the reasons you've probably read about, the main one being that nobody outside of an Orwell anthology conducts humanitarian operations with heavy bombers. Libya is a sovereign nation, and it has not committed an international act of aggression against any nation in this new coalition of the willing. Past sponsorship of international terrorism is one thing that makes Qaddafi a bastard, but I'm pretty sure that is not the same thing in terms of international law as committing a current act of war.
But there is no humanitarian motive behind Operation: Odyssey Dawn during this so-called Arab Spring. This week President North Star had to wipe US fingerprints off the whole thing as rapidly as possible to create the illusion to the Arab world that the US did not leave its fingerprints all over the whole thing. I'm not promoting any imperialist "conspiracy theory," but just based on what shows from behind the curtain, the situation appears fairly straightforward: circumstances have put the sustainability of Qaddafi's authoritarian regime in serious jeopardy, so there is an irresistible opportunity to wrest power away from him, complete with a blue-chip "humanitarian" alibi for doing so. Why? Because Colonel Q is de facto boss of Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC). Regardless of which supermajors may now be making money directly or otherwise off Libya's "light sweet crude," it seems certain that all players---including NATO governments---should love to see NOC dismantled in a wave of Bush-style tsunami of peeance and freeance.

Disingenuous grandstanding

*

My congressman, Tim Johnson (IL-I5), is forced by circumstance to masquerade as a somewhat independent, somewhat moderate Republican because an important part of his district includes Urbana and Champaign, home of the University of Illinois. While this is, in my opinion, one of the most redneck Big 10 campus settlements, the university still exercises a liberalizing impact on civic life that Johnson cannot ignore. Virtually a straight party-line voter over the years, he has occasionally been permitted by GOP leaders to break party ranks on votes that might have a symbolic importance to the university community but whose outcome was not in doubt.

I'm not exactly sure what Johnson's motive is for leading an effort in the House to defund Libya military operations, but disingenuous grandstanding must be high on the bulleted list of possibilities. If you review Johnson's voting record, you can see that he's not been reluctant to vote for war funding during his first decade in Washington. I suppose he's trolling for some Tea Party cred. Oddly, any number of liberals and independents might be expected to strongly support Johnson's effort, but for different reasons than are motivating him.

One thing of which I am certain: if the current President were a Republican, we wouldn't be hearing a peep about Libya out of "The Honorable Timothy V. Johnson."

"Considering all options"

*

The Associated Press, via HuffingtonPost, reports that

the U.S. military warned Tuesday it was "considering all options" in response to dire conditions there that have left people cowering in darkened homes and scrounging for food and rainwater.

So a new Coalition of the Willing implements a no-fly zone over Libya by bombing the shit out of the country. Then, due to the "dire conditions" to which Operation: Odyssey Dawn must have contributed to immensely, the omnipresent "U.S. military" seems to threaten pretty much anything in order to make things all better.

I've already registered my complaint, and Gurlitzer's, about the name given to this humanitarian military initiative. Maybe they should have called it Operation: Hey Kid Stop Hitting Yourself Or I'll Kick Your Ass.

In front of our noses

*

In the comments section of last night's post about "Operation: Odyssey Dawn," Gurlitzer observed that the name of this military intervention may be more worrisome than inartful. The name pretty well literally means "the beginning of a long, complicated journey." I wonder whether that amounted to some kind of military Freudian slip or it actually was intended to convey the meaning that Gurlitzer pointed to.

This evening Josh Marshall posted about how many ways this adventure looks like a bad idea to him. As much as liberal-minded people want tyrants like Qaddafi to disappear, and think it's a noble idea to level the "playing field" for his internal enemies, we have many more reasons to reject this kind of thinking: three of the most compelling can be summarized as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Even if the US were the most nobleminded liberal democracy on the planet, it would still not be in our charter to try governing nations that we feel are being run by villains. Where we have national agreement that influencing certain outcomes is in the best interests of global tranquility, then the weapons of choice would be trade, foreign aid, diplomacy, and sanctions. These tools would be applied to help or hinder as required, and executed in the context of a broadly multilateral international consensus. Maybe everyone will be ready for that sometime in the 23rd century.

Another take on Operation: Odyssey Dawn is offered by Duncan Black (i.e., "Atrios"): wars are free, aren't they?! Also, "freedom bombs" may be good for the economy!

Finally, here's a post from Hullabaloo that better gets at the point pertaining to management of the public narrative that I was trying to make last night: they're using centrifuge-grade spin, but the issue is too important to greet with the knee-jerk cynicism we've been conditioned to react with.

Quaint ideas I have

*

It seems that I have a mistaken idea of what the term "no-fly zone" means. I'd understood it to mean that our UN heroes would patrol Libyan airspace and shoot down Colonel Qaddafi's fighters and bombers to prevent them from strafing protesters. But evidently it means that the US and British navies bomb the shit out of coastal cities with cruise missiles. And so begins Operation: Odyssey Dawn... which has to be the worst name given to any military operation in world history!

Setting aside the stupid name for the attack, I do understand the concept of disabling the dashing Colonel's antiaircraft batteries so UN air forces can patrol the skies. But I also understand that Qaddafi's air defense infrastructure is somewhat old and mediocre, and is not considered a high threat to Western nation's superior air power. Cruise missiles are an outstanding modality for causing "collateral damage."

Second-guessing military strategists is not my purpose, though; I'm more interested in the delicate pubic narrative versus the comparatively jarring reports arriving on our computer screens. We're told that the US has been very sensitive about being seen as the ringleader of this military action. In the same HuffingtonPost article linked above, Harry Reid coyly states

"I support the actions taken today by our allies, with the support of several Arab countries, to prevent the tyrant Moammar Qaddafi from perpetrating further atrocities on the people of Libya."

as if the United States has confined itself to cheerleading in the bleachers.

In other news, where the Kingdom of Bahrain and its subjects are concerned, it appears that the United States and European democracies have not even bothered to set up the bleachers. I wonder why.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

I do not wish to lead our British Cousin, Marginalia, down another maudlin path with this evening's musical selection, like I did last time. So tonight I humbly put forth a more robust offering from the spoiled-romance department.



Now I, myself, never had a problem with my girlfriends' "mamas"---they always seemed to adore me...more than their fucking daughters did, actually! In fact, it's too bad that they didn't have "cougars" back then, because I might have made it once or twice! Anyway, I consider this jaunty tune to illustrate another case of a missed Frank Zappa opportunity for a hit radio single. True, the "kill your mama" meme would probably have sent 1970 broadcast sensors into a tizzy, but maybe he could have gotten airplay with it on FM "underground" stations. In my opinion, this track has it all: an aggressive beat, great lummox-rock riff, a zillion instruments on its jazz-rock chart, and humor in both lyrics and arrangement. In a more perfect world, this song---not the embarrassing and tiresome Dinah-Moe Humm---would have been his concert encore crowd-pleaser.

The cover art of the album from which this track is extracted, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," is also worth remarking upon, and I'm delighted that the YouTuber who posted "Guitar" included it as the visual channel. I remember "freaking out" when I first saw this hilariously creepy cover during the summer of '70, on an excursion to an incense-fogged record store in Piper's Alley, Old Town, in Chicago. Sight unheard, so to speak, I eagerly dug out my $3.25, which was plucked from my hand by a greasy longhair with 8-inch dingy yellow fingernails that sickly curled toward the palms of his hand. (What a jagoff!) Fortuitously, 40-some-odd years later it came to my attention that this album jacket artwork was inspired by the cover of a postwar pulp men's magazine. Scroll down below the song credits to see it, and note the inconspicuous article title at bottom right of the cover.

My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1970, from"Weasels Ripped My Flesh," Warner Bros. - Reprise - Bizarre MS 2028), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"Calculated risk"

*

"It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now."

That's what a high-ranking US official told ABC News about the deteriorating nuclear reactor situations at Fukushima.

The difficulties caused by the evacuations were blamed for "escalating" the chances of a meltdown.

"They need to stop pulling out people -- and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the unnamed U.S. official was quoted by ABC as saying. 

Yes sir, those "Japs" had better step up to the plate and get crackin' on that suicide mission of theirs so that anonymous high-ranking US officials, not to mention senior samurai at US Westinghouse, may sleep a little easier.

You see, they-all do the calculating and we-all do the risking.

Brutal.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

A rarely heard Beatles slow-dancer; one of my favorites of the era. I don't really remember it charting, possibly because there was too much competition from other Fab Four hits at the same time.



My clearest memory of it is from a 6th grade party in Nicky Bajovich's basement, spring 1965, dimly illuminated and with a certain amount of Crazy Foam being sprayed about for poorly understood psychosexual stimulative reasons. (It was a sweetly innocent era, and rapidly drawing to a close.)

The song was mainly composed by Lennon, and it was one of his least favorites. I disagree.

Yes It Is, The Beatles (1965, B-side of 45 rpm single Ticket To Ride, reissued 2009 in "The Beatles In Mono" box set, Mono Masters disc 1, track 17, EMI LC 0299), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: the YouTube version posted here is from the "Past Masters" compilations, but I cite the mono digital remaster that I have in my library. Six/half-dozen, etc....