Over, Under, Sideways, Down

Odds and Sods #56

Do you believe this is the 56th installment of ODDS AND SODS? I say this as an excuse for running out of snappy titles for them. (I promise, I will have one by next time!)

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Garry Wills' incisive piece in the New York Review of Books, perfectly titled Contraception’s Con Men, is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the naked propaganda-war that is going on right now:

The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a “conscience exemption.” It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.

Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden. Catholic authorities themselves say it is a matter of “natural law,” over which natural reason is the arbiter—and natural reason, even for Catholics, has long rejected the idea that contraception is evil. More of that later; what matters here is that contraception is legal, ordinary, and accepted even by most Catholics. To say that others must accept what Catholics themselves do not is bad enough. To say that President Obama is “trying to destroy the Catholic Church” if he does not accept it is much, much worse.

To disagree with Catholic bishops is called “disrespectful,” an offense against religious freedom. That is why there is a kind of taboo against bringing up Romney’s Mormonism. But if Romney sincerely believed in polygamy on religious grounds, as his grandfather did, he would not even be considered for the presidency—any more than a sincere Christian Scientist, who rejects the use of medicine, would be voted for to handle public health care. Yet a man who believes that contraception is evil is an aberrant from the American norm, like the polygamist or the faith healer.

Good reading, and an impressive 212 comments, also worth your time.

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On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone In Conversation was surprisingly watchable, informative and free of dogma:

Filmmaker Oliver Stone and author and filmmaker Tariq Ali present their thoughts on the politics of history and what they consider to be hidden aspects of American history. Their discussion ranges across several topics, from American involvement against the Russian Revolution to a profile of the labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World. Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali speak at the New York Public Library in New York City.

(You can watch it here.)

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Media Matters reports: Rush Limbaugh Issues Statement Regarding His 3-Day Misogynistic Attack On Sandra Fluke. Meanwhile, one of Fluke's opportunistic classmates saw her big chance for blogger fame, and decided to pile on. Conservative suck-up Angela Morabito of The College Conservative proudly announces that Fluke "doesn't even speak for all skanks! She only speaks for the skanks who don't want to take responsibility for their choices."

Hm. Is she actually calling herself a skank in that sentence, or is she just a lousy writer? You decide.

~*~

William Burroughs, photo from Start With Typewriters.



Upon reading William Burroughs on Led Zeppelin (reprinted from the legendary CRAWDADDY, 1975), the first thing any writer thinks is DAMN, I wish I could write like that guy.

Some of the best bits:

Leaving the concert hall was like getting off a jet plane.

...

From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war or riot is accidental. There are no accidents in the world of magic. And will is another word for animate energy. Rock stars are juggling fissionable material that could blow up at any time… “The soccer scores are coming in from the Capital…one must pretend an interest,” drawled the dandified Commandante, safe in the pages of my book; and as another rock star said to me, “YOU sit on your ass writing–I could be torn to pieces by my fans, like Orpheus.”

I found Jimmy Page equally aware of the risks involved in handling the fissionable material of the mass unconcious.

...

Jimmy told me that Aleister Crowley’s house has very good vibes for anyone who is relaxed and receptive. At one time the house had also been the scene of a vast chicken swindle indirectly involving George Sanders, the movie actor, who was able to clear himself of any criminal charges. Sanders committed suicide in Barcelona, and we both remembered his farewell note to the world: “I leave you to this sweet cesspool.”

I told Jimmy he was lucky to have that house with a monster in the front yard. What about the Loch Ness monster? Jimmy Page thinks it exists. I wondered if it could find enough to eat, and thought this unlikely–it’s not the improbability but the upkeep on monsters that worries me. Did Aleister Crowley have opinions on the subject? He apparently had not expressed himself.

...

We talked about Wilhelm Reich’s orgone accumulator, and I showed him plans for making this device, which were passed along to me by Reich’s daughter. Basically the device is very simple, consisting of iron or steel wool on the inside and organic material on the outside. I think this was highly important discovery. Recently a scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced an “electrical cell” theory of cancer that is almost identical to Reich’s cancer theory put forth 25 years ago. He does not acknowledge any indebtedness to Reich. I showed Jimmy the orgone box I have here, and we agreed that orgone accumulators in pyramid form and/or using magnetized iron could be much more powerful.

Yes, it's all like that. Read the whole thing.

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Assorted:

Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Virginia kills "Personhood" bill (Lotus - Surviving a Dark Time)

Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the Providers, Red States Are the Parasites (AlterNet)

'Snob' control: Karen Santorum guides husband on gaffe (Politico)

Notorious Nigerian witch-hunter to preach in the US (The Humanist)

March Forth With Hope (March with Hope Foundation)

Odds and Sods - down to the wire edition

Politico says McCain is getting hosed by the press. (Obviously, they haven't been watching Faux News.)

John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei write:

Reporters obsess about personalities and process, about whose staff are jerks or whether they seem like decent folks, about who has a great stump speech or is funnier in person than they come off in public, about whether Michigan is in play or off the table. This is the flip side of the fact of how much we care about the horse race — we don’t care that much about our own opinions of which candidate would do more for world peace or tax cuts.

If that causes skeptics to scoff, perhaps they would find it more satisfying to hear that the reason ideological bias matters so little is that other biases matter so much more.

This is true in any election year. But the 2008 election has had some unique — and personal — phenomena.

One is McCain backlash. The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his “maverick” days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics.

Now he is paying. McCain’s decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout.

Since then the media often presumes bad faith on McCain’s part.

Some of us regard this as a CORRECTIVE to all of the mindless media fawning over McCain that I mentioned here.

Meanwhile, piggy Michael Savage said on his radio show yesterday:

[Barack Obama] benefited from affirmative action, stepping over more qualified white men, I actually lost as a result of affirmative action, many times in my life. ... [W]e have America's first affirmative action candidate about to become president.

I would answer with that famous punchline: Whatcha mean WE?

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Excellent feminist campaign reading:

Check out Blowing the "Sexism" whistle (mirabile dictu)

Bint shows compassion and understanding in her post How Many Times Should John McCain be Allowed to Mention he was a POW? (My Private Casbah)

Season of the Bitch addresses the topic of Obama the Socialist Boogeyman (Global Comment)

I have been terribly delinquent in my lack of coverage regarding California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, so you might want to have a look at Stand Up Against Proposition 8 for more details, with linkage. (The Curvature)

And The Girl Detective tells us about her Phone Banking Adventures (Modern Mitzvot)--she ALMOST got to talk to Zach Braff!

EDITED TO ADD:

Sarah Palin: Marxism For Me, But Not For Thee (bastard.logic)

What the Election Means (elle, phd)

~*~

Speaking of elections: GOT NERVES?

Note: I have not been paid for this commercial. As Lily Tomlin's housewife-character (Mrs Judith Beasley) used to say: "I am not a professional actress, I am an ordinary citizen like yourself."

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If you are a nervous wreck waiting for Obama to win---check it out! ;)

~*~

Settling an argument with Mr Daisy regarding exactly WHO is playing on the original TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN, and I find this very weird, stylized excerpt from Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up--which yes, shows us that BOTH Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page are playing. (Now, was this true for the studio recording, or did the original Yardbirds get together for the movie? Does anyone know? Comments and trivia welcome.)

Weird = EVERYONE IS STANDING SO STILL. This is the YARDBIRDS, people! How can you stand so BLOODY STILL, I thought this was SWINGING LONDON in the 60s and all like that? And they are just looking comatose. Was this some direction of Antonioni's? You know: Look alienated and bored! You are not in touch with yourselves, be postmodern! Same reason David Hemmings brings that enormous PROPELLER back to his flat. Heavy symbolism, whammo, over the head. (I liked him better in Barbarella!)

In any event, Jimmy looks like he needs a shave. Who knew he would go on to form Led Zeppelin in a few years and become richer than God Almighty?

Jeff finally smashes up his guitar (he's no Pete Townshend) as the band continues playing, seemingly not even paying attention. More alienation! When he throws guitar-detritus to the audience, they suddenly come alive and dive for it, like piranhas. Keith Relf looks half-glazed over as he continues singing without a pause, may his soul rest in peace.

Hemmings battles the crowd for a shard of the guitar, is chased out of the club brandishing it like a weapon. When he gets outside, he looks at it, puzzled, and throws it down. Then dashes off.

An onlooker pauses, picks up the guitar-piece for a second, then also throws it down.

Genius! Weirdness and heavy symbolism or not, I've watched this hypnotic clip about a half-dozen times now. This short sequence sums up our love of novelty, glitz; our infatuation with NEWNESS for its own sake... this kind of existential brilliance is obviously how he got to be Michelangelo Antonioni.

Borrowing and appropriating

Left: The CREEM magazine logo, which I loved and have been waiting for an excuse to use on my blog!



The newest scuffle in Blogdonia concerns Big Blogger Amanda Marcotte liberally ummm, borrowing from another blogger, notably a Woman of Color. And blogging about issues she usually doesn't know much about, that Brownfemipower has been blogging about since day one and in fact, presented in a recent speech (about feminism and immigration) at the Women, Action and Media conference. It's Led Zeppelin all over again!!!

Background: As a fresh-faced hippie tyke, I wrote record reviews for underground/alternative publications nobody remembers. (The most famous of these would be CREEM, where I only got three paragraphs.) Lots of these were leftist publications such as Detroit's RED TIDE and New York City's OVERTHROW. Imagine my shock when hard-core lefties jumped me over my blues-ignorance. Didn't I know that Led Zeppelin, Spooky Tooth (does ANYONE remember Spooky Tooth?), Humble Pie, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Cream, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, et. al. were doing OLD BLUES MUSIC, written and first performed by southern black delta folk?

My reaction: Huh?

And in fairness, this was the 70s, way before the internet. Nowadays, one could simply type in PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND and learn all you needed to know about the early influences of these bands. But at the time, I actually had to study and go to the library. I felt like a fool; these were bands and musicians I idolized, and I didn't know squat about the actual roots of the music they were playing. Yet, I felt qualified to opine about the quality and the musicianship of their records. And I was published, too, as countless other clueless white rock critics were.

Paul Butterfield went to Woodstock and appeared in the subsequent hit movie. Albert King did not.

I am pleased to report that I learned from my study. I am one of the few people who have heard the original recording of When the Levee Breaks by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. And you know what? I prefer LZ's. But I always refer to it as "the Led Zeppelin remake of the Memphis Minnie/Joe McCoy recording"--I never refer to it as a Led Zeppelin song. Ditto Whole Lotta Love--a morph of Willie Dixon's You need love.

Of course, they aren't exact replicas. Zeppelin was trying something novel--a sort of psychedelic bombastic blues. They succeeded, but they also 'forgot' to put the names of the original authors of the songs on their work, and that's why they ended up in court. The operative term is BLUES, which was invented by a certain group of people in a certain cultural moment and location. Yes, you get credit for the psychedelic bombast, but the blues came from someone else. (As much as you have, can't you give credit where it is due without going to freakin COURT????)

Unfortunately, we now have Amanda, doing what I would call a Led Zeppelin: What, me, worry? And let me make it very clear: I love Led Zeppelin. I refer to a whole process of cultural and racial appropriation, and how deep and insidious it is. As white people, we ARE largely unconscious of it, at first. That is how people like Amanda get by with the innocent routine, just like me at RED TIDE and Jimmy Page in court: Huh?

Hopefully, that time has passed. Huh don't cut it anymore. Huh is extremely fucked up. You have the ease, comfort and availability of the internet; you don't have to traipse across town to the library or earnestly trek to the local blues-hound's apartment and beg for copies of tapes, the way I did, and for that matter, the way Jimmy Page did. IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS.

And giving credit, too, is just as easy. You might try it.

Be still my beating heart!

Photo at left from The New York Times.


The Songs Remain the Same, Just Played a Little Slower

By BEN RATLIFF, The New York Times
December 12, 2007, Music Review

LONDON — Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they perform their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain reality of aging — all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass — and a hard block against a band’s lessened cultural importance.

But Led Zeppelin slowed its pace down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first full concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with his son, Jason, as a natural substitute — the band found much of its former power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to that on the group’s studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl.

It all goes back to the blues, where oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. The band’s singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that: He introduced “Trampled Under Foot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog: “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying.”)

Ahmet Ertegun, to whom the concert was dedicated, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of Southern black music to American culture. Mr. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England and Turkey, his homeland.

By the end of Zeppelin’s more-than-two-hour show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings — a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — who all had recorded for Atlantic under Mr. Ertegun.

There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well rehearsed, for one thing: Planning and practice have been under way since May. The band members wore mostly black clothes instead of their old candy-colored wardrobes. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“There walks a la-dy we all know ...”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.

As for Jimmy Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.)

John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Jason Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove.

And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert on his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from some small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour, and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working.

Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985 and at Atlantic Records’ 40th anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one it had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.”

The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected.

As we all should, of course!

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Listening to: Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused
via FoxyTunes