Happy Valentine's Day!

Oh My Love - John Lennon

Cee Lo Green Changes ‘Imagine’ Lyrics during New Years Eve show

... and in doing so, has pissed off everybody.

From Yahoo News:

R&B singer Cee Lo Green prompted a rush of anger for his New Year‘s Eve performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in which he swapped the lyrics “no religion too” to “all religions true.”

Green performed the famous ballad shortly before the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square. It was broadcast during NBC‘s New Year’s Eve special and CNN carried a portion of it as well.

The full line Green changed was: “Nothing to kill or die for, And all religions true,” prompting a flurry of angry reactions from atheists and Lennon fans alike on Twitter.

According to the Huffington Post, Green himself took to the site to defend his performance and responded to several profanity-laced messages. All of Green’s tweets were deleted from his account Sunday morning.

“Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all,” Green wrote in one now-deleted message.

That didn’t stopped the barrage of outraged tweets, many of which accused Green of committing “blasphemy” by altering Lennon’s song.

More about the incident:

Cee Lo Green changes lyrics to Lennon's Imagine to include pro-religion message enraging fans (UK-Daily Mail)

Fans angry that Cee Lo changed 'Imagine' lyrics (MSNBC)

Cee Lo Green Changes 'Imagine' Lyrics To 'All Religions' From John Lennon's 'No Religion' During New Year's Eve Show (Huffington Post)

Song lyrics are changed all the time and few people seem to care. I am startled (and pleased) that this lyrical-alteration has garnered so much attention.

And I hope everyone else had a Happy New Year!

Jill Johnston 1929-2010

At left: From Jill's website.





I started getting a buncha hits on Jill Johnston, whom I have mentioned only twice on this blog. I didn't realize she had passed, on September 18th.

Quite honestly? I was not a fan of her feminism, but her writing was wonderfully loopy and totally terrific, like merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels. She temperamentally seemed to be in direct opposition to the often-rigid, dogmatic 70s lesbian-separatism she championed. She did not become well-known until writing LESBIAN NATION: THE FEMINIST SOLUTION and decreeing that all women were lesbians, they just didn't know it yet.

And so, zany Jill, friend of Andy Warhol, Yoko and the Yippies, became a poster-girl for lesbian separatism, which was bloody weird.

The New York Times obit:

Ms. Johnston started out as a dance critic, but in the pages of The Voice, which hired her in 1959, she embraced the avant-garde as a whole, including happenings and multimedia events.

“I had a forum obviously set up for covering or perpetrating all manner of outrage,” she wrote in a biographical statement on her Web site, jilljohnston.com.

In the early 1970s she began championing the cause of lesbian feminism, arguing in “Lesbian Nation” (1973) for a complete break with men and with male-dominated capitalist institutions. She defined female relations with the opposite sex as a form of collaboration.

“Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person,” she told The Gay and Lesbian Review in 2006. “Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination.”

At a debate on feminism at Town Hall in Manhattan in 1971, with Germaine Greer, Diana Trilling and Jacqueline Ceballos of the National Organization for Women sharing the platform with Norman Mailer, the moderator, and with a good number of the New York intelligentsia in attendance, she caused one of the great scandals of the period.

After reciting a feminist-lesbian poetic manifesto and announcing that “all women are lesbians except those that don’t know it yet,” Ms. Johnston was joined onstage by two women. The three, all friends, began kissing and hugging ardently, upright at first but soon rolling on the floor.

Mailer, appalled, begged the women to stop. “Come on, Jill, be a lady,” he sputtered.

The filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the event in the documentary “Town Bloody Hall,” released in 1979. Mary V. Dearborn, in her biography of Mailer, called the evening “surely one of the most singular intellectual events of the time, and a landmark in the emergence of feminism as a major force.”

Now, was that a fabulous Yippie action or wasn't it?


Photo of Jill Johnston from culturevulture.net


Johnston also wrote a famous article in Ms magazine, basically trashing gay men and proclaiming drag was "mockery"--unfortunately, she was the one who started that whole meme. This was when I parted company with her, Yippie roots or no, because it seemed to me, drag was subversive and pro-feminist.

Johnston later became obsessed with locating her father, which I found rather bizarre for a separatist. In fact, let me be clear: it pissed me off. Someone who rants and raves about men for a decade, gets all gooey over DAD?!? You gotta be kidding me.

And she never seemed to see any inconsistency in that. Thus, I lost respect for her as a feminist, but never as a writer.

NYT again:

Ms. Johnston continued to write on the arts but took a strong political line with a marked psychoanalytic slant evident in “Jasper Johns: Privileged Information” (1996), which explored the artist’s works as a series of evasions and subterfuges rooted in conflict about his homosexuality, and in the two volumes of her memoirs: “Mother Bound” (1983) and “Paper Daughter” (1985), both of them subtitled “Autobiography in Search of a Father.”

Jill Johnston was born on May 17, 1929, in London and taken to the United States as an infant by her mother, Olive Crowe, after her father abandoned them both. She was reared by a grandmother in Little Neck, on Long Island.

Throughout her childhood she believed that her parents had divorced, but in 1950, when The New York Times ran a short obituary about her father, an English bell maker named Cyril F. Johnston, she learned the truth.

Her mother informed her that she and Johnston had never married. A lifelong fascination with this absent figure, whose company, Gillett & Johnston, supplied bells and carillons to churches and cathedrals all over the world, motivated her to write “England’s Child: The Carillon and the Casting of Big Bells” (2008), a biography of her father and a history of bell making.

Note to Jill: fascination with papa is not feminist. And why are you allowed to get all sentimental about daddy, but *I* am not supposed to like drag or sleeping with men? Hmph.

But there is still the art and the ego that obviously made the art possible:

She developed a singular prose style — what the writer Pattrice Jones, writing in the Web magazine LesbiaNation.com in 1999, called “part Gertrude Stein, part E.E. Cummings, with a dash of Jack Kerouac thrown for good measure.”

One 1964 column began: “Fluxus flapdoodle. Fluxus concert 1964. Donald Duck meets the Flying Tigers. Why should anyone notice the shape of a watch at the moment of looking at the time?”

Ms. Johnston would soon shed this style and her amorphous politics, which she described in “Lesbian Nation” as her “east west flower child beat hip psychedelic paradise now love peace do your own thing approach to the revolution.”

In 1969, members of the Gay Liberation Front, correctly intuiting that the unidentified companion on her weekly adventures, chronicled in The Voice, was a woman, invited her to a meeting. Her political conversion began, and “Lesbian Nation” was published in 1973.

One of the best things I ever read about fame, was Johnston's account of her friendship with Yoko and John, and how Yoko couldn't go anywhere without John and vice versa. Jill wrote (paraphrasing) that if one was mega-famous, you could only be entirely yourself with people you loved and trusted, and then, you needed them around you all the time to remind you of who you really are.

I think of this concept often, whenever I think of the lack of privacy of the very famous. As a kid, I had wanted to be famous (like so many people) and after reading that passage as a teenager, changed my mind. It brought fame up close and personal to me, and I decided I didn't want any part of it.

Jill demystified and debunked FAME for me, and I owe her for that. That is why I am writing this.

Jill is survived by her spouse Ingrid Nyeboe, 2 children and 4 grandchildren.

Rest in Peace, Jill.

War is over, if you want it

Best thing I've heard today: Gloria Allred canceled her press conference with her stunningly-attractive client, Rachel Uchitel, just as Uchitel was poised to Tell All about her "relationship" with Tiger Woods.

Scandalmongers everywhere sobbed; Gloria never lets us down. This is a first!

After the cancellation, Allred's daughter, Lisa Bloom (yes, intrepid Court-TV junkies and scandalmongers love Lisa almost as much as we love her mom), announced on several news networks that mom would never cancel a press conference, except for one reason: Mr Green has arrived.

Mr Green! Love it.

And I'd love to know what kind of Merry Christmas the Uchitel family will have this year; something tells me the presents under the tree will be first rate indeed.

~*~

More scandals! DEAD AIR can barely keep up. As Renee reported, actress Meredith Baxter has come out as gay.

I first became very interested in Baxter when she dated... David Cassidy! Yes, I kept careful track of all the Cassidy-women: Meredith, Susan Dey, Judy Strangis, Robin Millan, and his first wife, the totally fabulous Kay Lenz. Embarrassing but true.

Camille Paglia once wrote the following about Baxter, which I found rather puzzling at the time... but now, suddenly makes perfect sense:

Baxter's 1992 performance as a real-life San Diego murderess in the two parts of "The Betty Broderick Story," "A Woman Scorned" and "Her Final Fury," remains one of the most impressive pieces of work by an American actress in the last 20 years. Though I've watched rebroadcasts of that tense docudrama times without number, I still thrill with admiration at Baxter's tough energy, pinpoint vocal work and insight into both sexual relations and American character. "The Betty Broderick Story" should be required viewing at every acting school.

Um, say what?

Of course (it should go without saying!), I enjoyed the Betty Broderick mini-series as much as the next scandalmonger... but hey, Meredith Baxter isn't Meryl Streep, okay? I wondered if Paglia (with whom I share my special great love for Elizabeth) had gone off the deep-end, or was possibly in love with Baxter.

Ha! Was I right or what?

Now that we know, I am wondering if they have actually dated or possibly got real friendly on one of those hot lesbian cruises.

It's interesting that Paglia lets her emotions interfere with her critical sensibilities, although she loves to accuse feminists like Naomi Wolf of doing the same thing. Paglia is always proudly blathering that she has "a male brain"; I wonder if effusively gushing over her favorite lady-friends is what she means by that?

(giggle)

~*~

Raleigh Demonstrators against Cliffside, from October 29th demonstration. Photo courtesy of the Canary Coalition.


On a political note, Duke Energy is still attempting to destroy the Blue Ridge Mountains with a coal-burning power-plant, smack-dab in the middle of one of the most beautiful areas in the world. I have covered this previously, and the brawl continues, with protesters busted this week also.

Jeanne Brooks writes, accurately:

Although coal-burning power plants are the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., that’s not the only concern. In August, U.S. Geological Survey research tested fish in about 300 streams across the nation and found every fish contaminated with mercury.

The smoke-stack emissions of power plants are a major source of the mercury, the EPA said, along with trash burning and cement plants.

Tiny particulates, associated with heart attacks and asthma, among other medical problems, are another power plant emission.

Removing mountain tops by detonation in central Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky to mine coal is an additional, and ugly, factor. The debris has ruined and buried miles of streams.

STOP CLIFFSIDE!

~*~

Pausing for unpaid commercial for the wonderful MOMMIE DOTS line by Augisa & Co. All of their vegan, cruelty-free skin-products are terrific, but this one deserves a special shout-out.

I just sent the awesome Mommie 2 Be Bellie Butta to my daughter, as her pregnant self expands. Bellie Butta is made of aloe, chamomile, lavender and organic coconut oil; highly recommended for you future-mamas out there.

~*~

Locally, the Sara Lee factory is closing and laying off 200 workers. Our warmest positive thoughts, deadhead vibes and heartfelt novenas are with all the folks losing jobs at Christmastime, which just makes me wanna cry:

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Officials with Sara Lee Corp. said 200 workers in South Carolina will lose their jobs when the company closes its bread factory in Greenville.

Sara Lee officials told the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg that they have to close the bakery in January because they lost a major customer.

Spokesman Mike Cummins said the plant makes frozen dough and bagels for the food service industry. Cummins said a few workers may be offered jobs at other plants, but the rest will get severance packages and help finding another job.

Sara Lee began operating the Greenville plant in 1984 after acquiring it from King's Hawaiian Bakery.

We are with you, folks, and wish you all the best.

~*~

And speaking of Christmas, as always, I am currently inundated with endless holiday music at my workplace. (My definitive Christmas music post is here!) However, I have noticed that John and Yoko's famous "Happy Christmas/War is Over" is pointedly NOT one of the songs being played over and over.

Hmm.

Maybe because the war isn't over?

(If you want it.)

~*~

Speaking of Christmas and capitalism, several different versions of the official DEAD AIR Christmas season kick-off tune have been yanked off YouTube already. Yes, boys and girls, The Grinch is alive and active and wants to CHEAT US OF OUR JAMS!

But I found one anyway, she snorted derisively. Listen now, before they yank this one too!

Come to think of it, they never play this one in public places either. ;)

Father Christmas - The Kinks

[via FoxyTunes / The Kinks]

Dead Air Church: Learning from the Dead

Down the road from my house, in a peaceful meadow in the hollow of our hill, lies a small Catholic cemetery. It is set between our tiny golf course, pocked with granite boulders, and a track of houses. Many mornings, I walk our little dog along that road and pass the cemetery. Every time, I pause and think about the lives of the men, women and children buried there. I think of the complexity of their emotions and relationships, their efforts to find good work, make a home, and raise their children. I'm reminded of the shortness of their lives and of mine. I wonder about the mystery of it all and feel the bittersweet awareness of lives so engaged with the struggle to be, cut short by the inevitability of death. But my visit with them is always a happy one. I feel a conviviality there, a community with a history and a personality, people who laughed and enjoyed life. I talk to them and ask their help and offer my thanks for the generosity of their lives. It's a short meditation, yet for me it is a genuine spiritual practice. Do they hear me? Am I talking to myself? Does it make any sense? These questions don't come to my mind. I feel an invitation to open my heart, and I respond.

--Thomas Moore, CareoftheSoul.net

~*~

Instant Karma - John Lennon



PS--I need to pause for a decidedly unspiritual question: Is that a sanitary-pad wrapped around Yoko's head? (Hey, not that there's anything wrong with that, Yoko can do what she wants, I am just asking.)

Any major dude will tell you

I missed John Lennon's birthday, which was yesterday, October 9th (1940). He always told everyone (accurately) that he was born during the London Blitz.

I love this song, written mostly by John, but sung by George Harrison--assigned to give him confidence, so the story goes. (John sounded just like a boss!) This clip is from the film A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964). The song was written specifically for the movie AND for George. They all look beautiful!

Beatles - I'm Happy Just to Dance with You



~*~

Check out Donald Fagen's presidential endorsement!

And then, enjoy his band's old song:

Steely Dan - Any Major Dude Will Tell You

[via FoxyTunes / Steely Dan]

Dead Air Church: Tomorrow Never Knows

Welcome to all you intrepid explorers of the psyche, you mad adventurers of the gray matter, out there on Facebook and an unnamed message board, currently musing over my Dr Hofmann post. YES, this week, Dead Air Church is for you, you stratosphere-hopping maniacs!

Today, we feature Tomorrow Never Knows, the last song on the Beatles' influential Revolver. I was momentarily concerned that I had used a John Lennon song for Dead Air Church only a couple of weeks ago. And then I thought, wait a minute, regular churches uses the same prophets and mystics over and over again. I guess I can do the same here. I found a wonderfully appropriate psychedelic version.

Wikipedia gives us the background, as if you couldn't tell by just listening:

John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, closely adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, which they based on, and quoted from, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, with the understanding that the "ego death" experienced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is essentially similar to the dying process and requires similar guidance.

Peter Brown claimed that Lennon's only source of inspiration for the song came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which it says Lennon read whilst tripping on LSD. George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book. McCartney confirmed this by stating that he and Lennon once visited the newly opened Indica bookshop—as Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche—and Lennon found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, which quoted the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream". Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book.

That you may see the meaning of within: It is being.

~*~

The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

[via FoxyTunes / The Beatles]

Dead Air Church: Mother

Here at Dead Air Church, I'm in a fairly Freudian mood for Mothers Day and ready to agree with the futuristic drones in BRAVE NEW WORLD (as well as radical feminist Shulamith Firestone), that motherhood is a negative and anachronistic legacy of our backward primitivism, etc etc.

Then again, maybe not.

See, I can't make up my mind, as I sift through the many Mom videos on YouTube.

Runners up for this church service include Pink Floyd's Mother, especially this version set to images of nuclear destruction. I guess I ain't the only one with Freudian issues! (PS: Check out this stellar version by Sinead O'Connor, Roger Waters and the Band.) I couldn't find a decent version of Tracy Bonham's Mother, Mother, although truthfully, that one properly belongs to my daughter Delusional Precious and I won't encroach on her turf.

No, I decided to use the first Mother song I ever heard that completely took my breath away, that was in no way sentimental, but just tells the truth about how many children feel. John Lennon's mother, Julia, abandoned him for years; mine only left me behind for relatively short periods in comparison. But it hurt the same. My father totally abandoned me, as John's also did.

John was doing Primal Scream therapy at the time he wrote this song, so it devolves into several Primal Screams at the end. It bothered people a lot and they wondered if he had lost his mind. When asked, he said no, he was in the process of trying to find it. (He was always so witty.) I figure, you'll either get it or you won't. Strange person that I am, I've always loved the screams--they are perfectly integrated into this song and turn it into something... well, primal.

Several very nice Freudian touches in this video, which smartly features a juxtaposition of John's various mother and father substitutes in the Primal Scream finale--including Brian Epstein and Yoko Ono (should have included the Maharishi, but I guess that's quibbling). And then we see John with his own boys, Julian and Sean. He also abandoned Julian, imitating his own father. Julian was abandoned through the usual channels of divorce, relocation and remarriage--and we are sharply reminded that we often imitate our parents, like it or not.

And we realize all of us are abandoned by our parents, finally, by death. As little Sean was. As I have been. Some of you know the feeling.

Be kind to your momma today. Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

~*~

JOHN LENNON - MOTHER

[via FoxyTunes / John Lennon]

BRING THEM HOME NOW!

As I wrote on Monday, the Greenville Antiwar Society candle lighting took place on Sunday night, downtown at Bergamo Square. Below are some photographs of the event, which I am sharing here as my contribution to the Blogswarm Against the War.

In the center, there is a beaded structure, representing the Iraqi people--hundreds of beads symbolize the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. It would be impossible to light a million candles, so this is the best we could do.

Every candle bears the name of an American soldier that has died in this needless, senseless, evil brutality. Their names, ages and dates of death are listed. Of the candles I personally lit, the youngest was 19, the oldest 28. There are 3988, total.

The sheer number of names is overwhelming. Each small, flickering light--a life that has been extinguished.

In the sixth photo below, activists are singing the old Civil Rights hymn, This little light of mine/I'm gonna let it shine.

Yes, we have to do that, as hopeless as it sometimes appears.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

And as another poet once wrote: We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.

We must light the way with truth.

~*~

Happy Valentine's Day!

No video, just audio. But you don't need video.

Must be played very, very loud, for maximum benefit. Yes, all 7 1/2 minutes! (It's orgasmic, it SUPPOSED TO BE long, okay?)

And speaking of which... enjoy your evening, everyone! :)

~*~

I Want You (She's So Heavy) - The Beatles

[via FoxyTunes / The Beatles]