Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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If you have about 8 minutes to spare, go grab your earbuds, jam them in your earholes, and give this a listen.



The personnel and sound of this ensemble are so different from the original lineup that it always seemed odd to me they would retain the name King Crimson. (Compare it with this sound, which I posted last year.) It's an assemblage that might still be considered experimental today for its combination of Mellotrons, other deftly deployed electronics, violin and viola, and more percussion devices than you can shake a stick at. And that's not to mention Robert Fripp's guitar, John Wetton's vocals, or drums by Bill Bruford, who flew the coop from Yes as that group was stagnating into a mess. King Crimson can and does sound sweet, dense as a rainforest canopy, art-rocky, fraught with portent, and even lummoxy in turn, as they please.

"Exiles" and the tune that precedes it ("Book of Saturday") comprise the "pretty" passage of the album, with moody but heartfelt lyrics about loss and healing. This one begins with a swelling, impressionistic collage of electronica that evokes the narrator's "banana boat ride" from the prior track. The "actual song" begins about 2 minutes in. Every musician stays in his own register, integrated well enough to sound whole while clearly conveying the sense of isolation that the lyrics paint.

There's much, much more to this album, though, and I wish I could play the whole thing for you, loud as hell, in hi fi, with a nice pair of Sennheiser cans clamped to your skullbone.

Exiles, King Crimson (1973, from Lark's Tongues in Aspic, Atlantic SD 7263), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first, a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



I say "alternate" because Camel studs were only my second choice of smoke back when I was immortal. At heart (and lung) I was a Philip Morris Commanders man. Pall Malls were inferior to both, but acceptable when Commanders weren't available. Luckies, however, were the only cigarette that burned your mouth even before you lit the goddam thing.

What Americans think about "big government"

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Steve Benen, who writes the Political Animal blog for the Washington Monthly, pointed the other day to an opinion polling question that probably doesn't get asked enough in an impartial way---and certainly the results of this question rarely emerge from the black hole of corporate newsrooms. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asks this of its respondents:

“I’m going to read you two statements about the role of government, and I’d like to know which one comes closer to your point of view: ‘Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people’ or ‘government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.’”

If you click through to Benen's post you'll see the responses provided in this poll as graphed over time (1994 to the present). From the early Clinton years through 2007, the trend lines for both responses are clear, and track in opposite directions as you'd expect. I have no idea what might have happened starting in 2007 to ratfuck the trends, or why the stats today haven't reverted to their 2007 peaks (considering what the crash has done to employment and the safety net), but the basic reality is clear: a majority of Americans want government to do more to solve problems experienced by ordinary people.

I suppose the tangle of trend lines at the end of the record might make fodder for some informed speculation, but I'm just not feeling that well informed this pee em.

In my opinion, though, the significant datum here would seem to be the fact that we never hear a whisper by US corporate media (including NPR) about this curious fact that most Americans want the government to do more to solve the nation's problems.

All of us can have a good laugh about what Jon Stewart confronted Chris Wallace with on Fox News Sunday last weekend (i.e., that the Fox News Network is Lies, Inc.). But the "polite" corporate media are the most important perpetrators of misinformation about public affairs in the US. They do it by ignoring whole swathes of reality. I'll have some more examples in a few days because it's somewhat off-topic here.

(Incidentally, if you look at the Stewart clip at the second link in the previous graf, the apology he offers at the beginning was unnecessary: Politicfact "factfuct" him.)

RIP Clarence Clemons

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Yikes---the E Street Band's imposing saxman, Clarence Clemons, died of a stroke yesterday in Florida. He was 69. I did not know he was that old---an age that is not that far in the future of any Baby Boomer, but pretty old for a touring rocker in a rowdy band. Live performances by Bruce Springsteen can never be the same, in my opinion.

I was privileged to see Clemons twice in during fall and early winter of 1975 at the Auditorium in Chicago, when for a brief period a sort of SpringsteenMania swept the nation (for young adults, at least). Apart from Springsteen, Clemons was the salient presence on the stage and in the music. This 1978 clip gives a few glimpses of the Big Man and what he contributed to the lineup.



10th Avenue Freeze-Out, Clarence Clemons with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (19 September 1978, videotape transfer of live performance at the Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Has this ever happened to you?



It didn't happen to me, exactly. However, my 7th grade teacher, Miss Kilmartin, left the employ of Woodland School, Illinois School District 152 and a half (no joke!) around Thanksgiving 1966. Coincidentally, it was about that same time I'd laid my hands on a copy of Playboy (stole it from Timmy Rogers big brother, if I remember correctly) and what to my wondering eyes appeared but a Playmate falling out of her sweater who was a dead ringer for Miss K. I was preoccupied with this mystery for a few weeks late in 1966. My dad, who was a member of the school board during that era, might have shed some light on the subject for me, but I couldn't think of any way to approach the subject with him.

Ahem. Anyway, "Chicago's own" Cryan Shames never hit the charts very hard in other parts of the country, but "the Shames" were one of the Windy City's big three rock bands in terms of local pride during the mid-1960s. In my personal mythology, the golden age of Chicago pop bands (including the Buckinghams and the New Colony Six) was 1965 through about mid-1967, with the Shames coming on fast in 1966 and then pretty much finished along with The Summer Of Love.

That's too bad; I wonder why. It's easy to hear that this band had a lot going for it in this 2-minute gem. Listening to it tonight I was surprised how "California" it sounds, with impressive four-part harmonies like the Beach Boys, jangly Byrdslike guitars, and the peppy good-clean-fun pop sound of The Turtles. Very catchy; very slick. A flawless piece of pop that totally flashes me on getting too much sun during the summer of '66---heard it coming out of transistor radios everywhere.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the story of which band member was infatuated with which model from which magazine, or if he ever got his gal. Probably not. But feel free to chime in if you know the tale.

I Wanna Meet You, Cryan Shames (1966, 45 rpm single Columbia 43836), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

You've been having more fun than me lately

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About half a year ago I made the ace move of overcommitting myself editorial work that competes with the important things in life such as booze, pills, and frails.

In particular, an oversize chicken came home to roost earlier this month in the form of an upbraiding from an author with whom I'm working---completely understandable and justifiable on his part, incidentally---with respect to my epic procrastination on a book manuscript I'm editing. In terms of my professional craft, it's an interesting project, but my procrastination hasn't been along my usual lazy lines: I've been about two-thirds baffled by this job, which involves converting a web site about construction management into a dummies-style text for general contractor types. But since I'm a fucking genius, as all my dear friends know, I've made great strides over the past 2 weeks to tame this monster. But it has left me depleted in terms of fulfilling my duties to the Fifty50 community.

I've found this state of affairs to be intolerable, so I'm trying to wade back into it now. But the water feels a bit cold. (Deep, too.) Posting may be light through the end of the month, but not if I can help it. Please stand by, and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Saturday Matinee!

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This nut may prove dangerous.



Here's a nice cartoon to let all my babies know I didn't abandon them! This is the very first Superman animated cartoon, dated late 1941, produced by the Fleischer Brothers. Dumb plots told in a setting of gorgeous eye cocaine. Unfortunately, this transfer is "ass," but there are a few affordable DVD collections that are very faithfully restored, and the visual style and animation "physics" are still astounding.

Let's say this cartoon is a parable. What do you think it's about? (Audience participation time!)

Posted quickly; will follow with information on provenance later. RubberCrutch is a busy man these days.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Here's something out of the ordinary for this place. I first heard this track playing in the defunct and missed Record Service in Campustown almost 20 years ago. I bought the album without hesitation. Being out of touch with emerging pop music styles back then, I wasn't really sure what the hell I was listening to. The kid in the store told me.



The Digable Planets made liberal use of samples from jazz classics, which was what immediately caught my ear in juxtaposition to the rap setting. But throughout the album the Planets repeatedly profess their adoration of Jimi Hendrix... and yet, no Hendrix samples are used anywhere. Their lyrics were readily intelligible to me, which has been a relative rarity throughout my entire life when listening to rock, blues, or soul (ear dyslexia?).

On every track, the lyrics present vivid impressions of black urban life; not always pretty (but, then, often they are), and there's not one word dedicated to misogyny or glorified violence. The difficulties of urban life come through loud and clear, though, without sweetening.

The trio delivers psychedelic hiphop poetry in mellow rap cadences, with some kind of backstory involving extraplanetary aliens, bugs (or alien bugs), and Hendrix. (Yes, the album has many amusing facets, too.) The horn sample used on this featured song was lifted with permission from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; other tracks borrow from Sonny Rollins, Curtis Mayfield, and the Crusaders among others.

There is one problem with this otherwise-tight video, though. Someone in postproduction seems to have overdubbed highly "stereoized" synth fills in places, and they sound kind of ridiculous and out of place. I can listen through that, though, because before tonight I'd never seen a video of this group. I think they're cool. I hope you like it.

Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat), Digable Planets (1993, from "reachin' [a new refutation of time and space], Pendulum Records 61414-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Soon it can be told

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What happens when a 3/32 in. titanium hex-shank drill bit goes through the heavy-duty washer cycle with a large load of cotton knits, that is.

Happy Beer-D to you!

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Yes, it's that time of the year again---the 140th day of the year, to be precise. On this day in history, a green morsel of life emerged into the world, both bilious and blue. The folded ears made me think I'd spawned a Vulcan Emissary (details not clear). The little fellow took to the soil quickly, though, and honors us with his presence for the 27th year in a row, excluding gestation.

As befits a gentleman whose breakthrough appearance into the world was fraught with thrills and peril, like being the 10 cm peg wrenched from a 9 centimeter... well, you understand... May 20 throughout history has exuded a certain black-metal miasma.

Who among you wouldn't want to have been born on the same day as the Cambodian National Day of Hatred, I ask you? Not brutal enough? Then how about the 1940 Grand Opening of a certain unspeakable enterprise in Poland? (Too metal?) Something more slapstick, maybe, like that time in 1896 when a six-ton chandelier at the Paris Opera fell on a crowd below, the bad news being that one person died and the good news being that only one person died. (Had it been an Acme safe, no lives would have been lost.)

But would a bunch of lightweight entertainers really be preferable to the commemoration of evil and mayhem, if it were you who was born on this day in history? Well, pick your poison: David Hedison, 1927 (Captain Crane on the Seaview); Ron Reagan, 1958 (son of That Guy); or Bronson Pinchot, 1959 (nuff said).

No, that can't be nuff said: there are Jimmy Stewart, 1908; and Honore de Balzac, 1799 (badass French realist author).

Now, the boy has only himself to blame for these birth date historical associations. He insisted on prying his way out 3 weeks early. Had he waited until June 10, as expected he'd have less ignoble birthday mates, such as Gustave Courbet, The Howlin' Wolf, Saul Bellow, Maurice Sendak, E.O. Wilson, and Judy Garland (as opposed to Cher). But Beer-D has a highly developed sense of the unjust and the absurd, so I think it's likely that he planned it this way and he likes it just fine. Happy Birthday, Little Man.

Predator on the premises

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I've been watching this impressive little raptor this spring as he has scouted my bird feeders for victuals. Two weeks ago he, or someone very much like him, slammed into my house---the siding, I believe, not a window---presumably while trying to pick a morsel off the two-prong pole near the back of my house. When I got to the back window to investigate, I saw some feathers swirling around and a hawk standing on the ground between the house and the feeder. He hopped to the top of the pole, then flew away, probably embarrassed with himself. Didn't get a good look at him then, though.

Then, a week ago, I came upon this guy with a freshly caught juvenile starling in its talons. He hopped over the fence for more privacy, but I went around and was able to observe him for several minutes at a distance as he picked at his still-living captive.

Today, interrupting myself from a writing task upstairs, I saw him perched atop the two-prong feeder near the ground-floor back windows. I observed him for probably 5 minutes total. Only after about 3 minutes, when he hopped first to the ground then farther away to the patio, did it occur to me to grab a camera. The best I could do was the Sony F717, a fairly high-end older point-and-shoot setup with a fixed Carl Zeiss (i.e., high-quality) zoom lens. I fumbled with it just to find a suitable auto configuration and managed to snap five or six frames while he perched on the arm of the heavy-duty captain's chair normally reserved for Rudy. I wasn't optimistic by the results, but was pleasantly surprised to see the large-scale snapshots. This is the best one, cropped at full resolution but compressed somewhat as a jpeg file. If you click the picture, you should see a decent enlargement with a critical detail for identification purposes.

I am officially identifying this creature as a juvenile or near-adult Sharp-Shinned Hawk. I'd been thinking he was probably a Cooper's hawk, but he is smaller than one I saw last year, and based on previous glimpses he appears to be more aggressive than Cooper's are reputed to be in chasing prey into foliage. The telltale clue is the yellow eye, which aren't found on Cooper's hawks. When comparing this picture with photos on Cornell's bird website, All About Birds, I was satisfied that his head configuration and feather patterns match those of the Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

Beer-D and I call this guy "Omar," in tribute to the oddly ethical "stick-up boy" from HBO's series The Wire. I can't actually verify his gender, but we choose to consider Omar to be a male unless the contrary is proved by an ornithologist.

My lesson learned for the day was to move my Nikon D80 from the closet to a hook by the back windows, set to fully automatic mode with a freshly charged battery and a zoom lens attached. Duh. (Slow learner.)

Telling on himself

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FireDogLake has a small post about an unwisely candid remark by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

When you do something together, the result is that it’s not usable in the election. I think there’s an understanding that if there’s a grand bargain, none of it will be usable in next year’s election.

That's what all these Gang-of-whatevers in the Senate are really about. A small group of members from both parties collude in closed meetings to strike a "grand bargain" on a major issue. These bargains reflect implement the goals of powerful elite interests at the expense of ordinary Americans. On their behalf, elite political commentators lecture us all about how we must swallow our medicine, like big girls and boys. Even when a grand bargain is highly unpopular, voters who want to punish the responsible party have no practical recourse. Politicians know this, and that's why these "gangs" emerge from the mud as predictably as locusts. And most politicians know not to actually admit to this. But not poor Mitch McConnell.

Saturday After Hours (Prayer Meeting)

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That's death
That's what all the people say

On this day in history, 14 May 1998, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra flew the coop (i.e., this mortal realm) with the parting words to his wife, "I'm losing it...." (I believe the Wikipedia account of this is incorrect or incomplete based on my memory of news coverage at that time.) But tonight I will bypass the obvious choice for commemorating the occasion---"That's Life"---and defer to my ultimate Sinatra cut.



For my money, his phrasing on this is perfect---immaculately understated, which often it was not when he felt the urge to play the aging ring-a-ding hipster or just goof around in live performances. As much as I esteem the vocal, I feel that the real star of this cut is the Nelson Riddle arrangement and the way he conducts his orchestra through it. It sparkles, reflecting the interplay of reedy cross-breezes both near and distant, with clear water surfaces lapping easily at beachfront sand. I've never been able to describe to myself in words what I find so artful and organic about this chart, where string tremolos emerge at the end of a jaunty, muted-horn line and muscular but laconic reed figures leave holes for the similarly reedy organ in the higher registers. Speaking of the organ, the way it is "stopped" fascinates me. In any other setting I think it would sound cheesy and trivial, but here it supplies an essential vibe to the entire mix; the sound would be impoverished without it.  (Editor's note: Mr. Crutch does not consider this to be an adequate verbal account of the "feel," but he tried nevertheless. Please make a note of it.)

As an aside, I don't think it's too geezerly to argue that in 1966, in Chicago and all over America, both radio (AM!) and pop music were much richer and more urbane than they ever were again. It was the closing of a sort of innocent era in broadcast mass media, where the music sales charts weren't fragmented ad infinitum by age group, region, race, and purchasing power for the benefit of advertisers. "Top 40" really did mean "Top 40," and it didn't matter whether the performers on "the survey" were the Stones, or The Four Tops, or Simon and Garfunkle, or Sinatra, Roger Miller, The Sandpipers, Dusty Springfield, Ramsey Lewis, or Mitch Ryder, the Hollies, Martha and the Vandellas, or... Nancy Sinatra. If you listened to WLS or WCFL during this brief era, you heard it all on an equal footing, presented by trusted curators such as Dex Card and Ron Riley. Sure, a kid wouldn't necessarily admit to his friends that he liked "A Walk in the Black Forest," by Horst Jankowski; or "Sweet Talkin' Guy," by The Chiffons, but many of these sounds wormed their way through his tender little auditory cortex to next in the memory stacks, there to vibrate deep within for decades or more.

Anyway, back to the libretto: here's hoping that Frank didn't really lose it on that 14th day of May. And as for the sarcastic-seeming epigraph at the beginning of this post; no disrespect is intended. I intended it as a tribute of sorts to Sinatra's legendary crudeness on and off stage, well documented in Kitty Kelly's biography of him. These things about Sinatra you have to take alongside the pensive stylings of this gifted, juvenile, complex, and often-tortured guy.

Summer Wind, Frank Sinatra with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1966, from "Strangers In The Night," Reprise Records, catalog information not available), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Pauper wages

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I saw the video embedded below linked on Eschaton by one Avedon Carol (an Atrios confederate who lives in Merrie Olde England). I'm certain it's worth 13 minutes of time to anyone who tiptoes around an inner dread about America's future---especially the health of the economy for ordinary people and the outsized influence of excessive wealth on public policy.

The "hook" for this interview is that the marginal income tax rate on top earners during the Eisenhower administration was 90%. I'm certain that fact would shock the vast majority of Americans today, especially with a general knowledge of how prosperous America was during that era. As you watch the video, consider whether Michael Hudson's words, as alien as they are to the conventional wisdom today, are relevant to your everyday status as a wage-earner, provider, and citizen.

Take note of the term "pauper wages" to roll around inside your noodle next time you hear news about the extermination of the nation's few remaining viable labor unions. To whatever extent Hudson is correct on this topic, it should be difficult for any American worker to understand how he or she will benefit from government-driven downward pressure on union pay and benefits; or from creating trillion-dollar federal deficits by cutting taxes on the wealthiest (and most powerful) Americans.



The gist of Hudson's viewpoint expressed here is that two dominant beliefs central to free-marketeer conventional wisdom are demonstrably wrong. Those two beliefs are that (1) higher wages reduce worker productivity and (2) higher taxation of top earners hurts the economy.

For supporting evidence, Hudson refers to readily accessible data and asserts his credentialed perspective on classical economics as founded by philosophers like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill). And further, he makes an unexpected statement (to me at least) that doesn't sound completely outlandish: that modern free-market "neoliberal" economists have falsely co-opted Smith and his successors while ignoring major aspects of classical economics that don't fit neoliberal ideology. That's an argument I've never heard or read in either corporate-sponsored news media or public broadcasting. In fact, the first hint of that idea only came to me this morning when reading this blog post by Paul Krugman.

As a wildly alternate viewpoint on the timely topic of US wages and taxation---at least compared with Beltway conventional wisdom---Hudson's words express a general and consistent logic to my ears. Nothing he says strikes me utterly at odds with either reason or observable reality, and the sources he refers to can readily be checked by anyone with the time to look at public economic data and read a book or two by the founders of modern economics. You and I don't have that kind of time or intensity, though, so we have to rely on the interpretations of others, and fair argument between alternate viewpoints.

Before this afternoon I'd never heard of Hudson. More importantly, I'd never heard this particular point of view expressed with this level of clarity on the radio or any corporate-sponsored news outlet. On the rare occasions when a genuine liberal or progressive point of view is even examined on air, a competent spokesman for that point of view may not be present in the studio. And meanwhile, the mouthpiece for the standard neoliberal viewpoint---who happens always to be present---is allowed by the moderator to rebut the alternate perspective simply by branding it as "liberal" or "socialist."

It really doesn't matter whether you and I are persuaded by what Hudson has to say here. What does matter is that content providers are deliberately shielding news consumers from important, credible ideas that seriously challenge or even explain away the conventional wisdom that happens to be failing most ordinary working people today.

And I quote:

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"She has her head up her ass so much she might as well hang a makeup mirror in there."

---RubberCrutch, Champaign, Illinois (13 May 2011), discussing a sociopathic former program manager with the current one, who is now responsible for undoing 3 years' worth of damage done by the former one. Thanks for asking!

Friday after hours

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If memory serves me correctly, there is a birthday boy out there on the World Wide Web tonight (May 6) who isn't me, yet shares a birthday with those two international icons of love: the Eiffel Tower (1889) and Rudolph Valentino (1895). He has a number in his pseudonym, and this song is dedicated to him. "Blue Turk" is the touching story of a young man who gets all wound up on booze with a babe, and then discovers both delusional wicked delights and the true meaning of post-coital depression.



From one of my favorite albums, and not performed in a musical style that most people would associate with Alice Cooper.

Blue Turk, Alice Cooper (1972, from "School's Out," original LP release Warner Bros. Records BS 2623), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Further wise sayings

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Direct from Cowboy Monkey, Champaign, Illinois, by RubberCrutch to his entourage:

"There are probably a dozen 58-year-old motherfuckers in here that look stupider than me!"

Wise sayings

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Direct from the Cowboy Monkey, Champaign, Illinois, by Rudy:

"Long face, deep throat." [Wise nod.]

Guantanamo grapevine

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As it turns out, nuclear blowback evidently has been discussed by US authorities as one possible retaliation mode in the event of the hypothetical---now real---capture or killing of OBL.

I don't claim any particular knowledge of international security issues, but it does seem farfetched to me that AQ, even with sympathizers in high places, could have a nuclear weapon deployed in Europe, let alone America. I can imagine no coherent "conspiracy theory" that would have US national security personnel turning a blind eye to this sort of infiltration even given the bale of unanswered questions and unresolved contradictions that linger a decade after September 11 itself. Many, many of those questions seem to plausibly address some kind of heinous untold story about that day. (You'd have to read the book to know what I refer to.) The idea of a foreign nuclear weapon being deployed on US soil doesn't remotely have the same ring of plausibility, conspiracywise. The same goes for Europe, I think, because their secret security agencies have been working the terrorism beat for decades.

Nevertheless, that leaves a lot of real estate in the world to cover. Anyone who thinks about it could come up with scenarios that involve, say, a corrupt Pakistan (with either an internal target or with India in the crosshairs); Iran (located in quite a target-rich region with a lot of US interests); and The Desert Kingdom itself (where it's apparently an open secret that radical members of the royal family have been financing AQ for a decade or more).

Sensational and speculative? Yes. But a nihilistic force with a sense of moral infallibility and no fear of death (i.e., insane by a reasonable person's standards) could concoct dozens of justifications for a paramilitary nuclear attack that would shred the global status quo.

All things considered, I think these idle speculations at least provide one more good reason why we should avoid celebrating the assassination of OBL with a Super Bowl party.

Now, this

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Today I read about a lot of celebrity Republican politicians---both of today and yesteryear---praising President Obama for "wisely" following the lead of George W. Bush's antiterrorism strategy in order to bag OBL.

Steve Benen of Washington Monthly has, in response, provided a nice collection of linked articles documenting the lack of concern Bush and ultraconservative personalities publicly displayed about OBL's whereabouts and significance dating back to March 2002. (!)

For a "bonus level," Benen throws in a link to a 17 April 2002 Washington Post story about bin Laden slipping through Tora Bora to Pakistan in December 2001 thanks (reportedly) to strategic cockups by Bush's Afghanistan operations chief, General "Tommy" Franks. I leave it to the reader to assess any potential relation between the 2001 Tora Bora failure and Bush's cavalier attitude toward OBL in 2002.

So, no: if you are among those who think the world is better off without Osama bin Laden, you owe precisely zero thanks to George Walker Bush for the terrorist's demise.