Martin Fierro 1942-2008

Left: Martin Fierro, photo by Robert Minkin, from Dead.net.

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Music fans and Deadheads everywhere have suffered a great loss, with the passing of mighty saxophonist Martin Fierro. He died of cancer yesterday, surrounded by family and friends in Marin County, California.

Martin is known to Deadheads primarily for playing flute and saxophone on the 1973 Grateful Dead album Wake of the Flood. He also played with several of Jerry Garcia's side projects, including the Legion of Mary.

Martin was born in Mexico and moved to El Paso, Texas, at the age of 10, where he played saxophone in his high school marching band. Then he heard music by Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and others, changing and rearranging his world, as the music did for so many other young people of the era. Martin's music took him to new places and new syncretic combinations; a new musical synthesis. He was a fixture in the Bay Area jam band scene of the late 60s/early 70s, sitting in with bands like Mother Earth, Sir Douglas Quintet and Quicksilver Messenger Service.


Left: Jerry Garcia birthday concert poster, from Honest Tunes. (2006)

Dead.net reports on Martin after the breakup of The Legion of Mary:

Martin had no trouble finding work following the dissolution of the Legion of Mary; indeed his tenure with Garcia was like a springboard to an expanded fan base and many new opportunities. He continued to play on and off with Merl Saunders—a lifelong friend—and he also played often with various groups led by John Cipollina, including a marathon stint in the great Bay Area jam band Zero. His association with Zero also led to an enduring musical partnership with Steve Kimock, as well. In fact, the last time I saw Martin play was with a re-formed Zero (with Kimock) at Wavy Gravy’s birthday benefit at the Regency Ballroom in SF in 2007. Over the years Martin also sat in with many other jam bands, from String Cheese Incident to Dark Star Orchestra. “I just love to play, man,” he told me, “I’ll show up and it’s, ‘Oh, Martin, you gonna play with us, right?’ And I say, ‘Well, I do happen to have a horn with me…’” he laughed.

When we spoke, he joked about how he had cheated death on numerous occasions: “The worst was a surfing accident in Hawaii [in the late ’90s]. I broke my neck and my back, man. I was dead for close to ten minutes and they brought me back, and then they thought I was brain damaged or I’d be paralyzed. The next day I played a gig with Zero!” He laughed heartily—as he often did. And whether there was a touch of exaggeration in the tale or not doesn’t matter. (He did, in fact, carry a lot of physical pain with him, from that and other episodes) But it shows his zest for life, which he retained until his final days on earth.

Another one gone too soon.

Yes.

Our prayers and Deadhead love go out to Martin and his family.

**You can share memories and leave messages and memorials at martinfierromusic.com.

Odds and Sods - "Say WHAT?" edition

Rachel (at Rachel's Tavern) asks the pertinent question:

So far [Obama] is the candidate who is leading in the most number of pledged delegates and states, but we’ve gone from him waiting his turn to taking second place? What is it with Hillary Clinton Feminists who rationalize their vote by employing racist narrative?

Rachel refers to Huffington Post columnist Roseanne Barr, who wrote the following directive to Senator Obama (titled, if you can believe it, "Bow to the Woman"--with no sense of how, um, unpleasant that might sound):

Premiere Hillary represents the soul of the Democratic Party: the women who support her, Latinas, Latinos, 30 percent of the black voters, the blue collar worker, male and female, as just proven in Ohio, and the Baby Boomers...quit bitching and moaning and whining now! Be a man and take vice, bow to the woman who is the last vestige of the New Deal which represents universal health care. You can't win without the votes of the people who support Clinton. You do not have the working class vote; you do not have the majority on your side even with independents. The states you win are not swing states or even Democratic states. You are a spoiler and your campaign is alienating the Clinton vote. Many of Clinton's backers are turned off due to the shrillness of the attacks your campaign has let loose on your opponent.

This is directed to the person who is ahead, mind you. You know, the person who is WINNING?!?

Why is HE expected to back out, while he's winning? Why doesn't SHE back out, since she is the one behind?

And why does anyone take such a dopey statement seriously enough to enlist a TV star to write it on a top-ten blog?

The sheer sense of entitlement of the Clinton gang, never ceases to amaze me.

~*~

Left: Bob Marley, photo from Swingin the Blues.

Iriegal writes that Rita Marley will produce Bob Marley's life story -- can't wait for this one:

Rita Marley is executive producing the first-ever biopic of her late husband Bob Marley, and if she has it her way, the reggae icon's daughter-in-law R&B singer Lauryn Hill will play her on screen.

"No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley," a chronicle of the musician's childhood and their tumultuous 15-year marriage through his death from cancer in 1981.

~*~

If you've been keeping up with the whole sordid Eliot Spitzer scandal, please check out Amanda's excellent posts at Bound, Not Gagged, for some much-needed balance and perspective on the prostitution angle:

A pen-pal wrote me: “They keep saying things along the lines of “He wasn’t a guy who had issues with women”, as if any man who spends time with a call-girl (which seems to be the preferred word on NPR) must.” I hope NPR got a hold of some sex workers who could tell them that just because a man sees a female sex worker does not mean he has “women issues.” In fact, it takes a measure of self-honesty to respect a woman enough to pay her for her time/services, instead of assuming it’s her God-ordained female role to do it all for free.

I heartily dislike the use of the phrase “prostitution ring.” It was an agency and a very well-managed one at that. No “ring” about it. It was a business, people. Kind of like saying Congress is a “governmental ring” or police stations are “authoritarian rings.”

She also has a great round-up of Spitzer-oriented links, for those interested in expanding their consciousness around this particular witch-hunt.

~*~

Lotus - Surviving a Dark Time comments on something scary called "Coplink" (even the name is a trifle unnerving, no?):

[The commercial data-mining system] Coplink, now used by over 1500 jurisdictions, [puts] connections among the mass of data inputted by police and gathered from other records by Knowledge Computing, Coplink's makers and marketers, into the hands of cops everywhere - and, of necessity, into the hands of Knowledge Computing.

Apparently, after running your name through the invaluable Coplink, any inquiring party will know everything about you, forever and ever, amen.

[We] are forgetting all the lessons painfully learned about what happens when you turn cops, prone to think every non-cop person is a suspect and every non-cop thing is a threat, loose with virtually unsupervised abilities to collect and collate personal data. And we are apparently not only supposed to embrace this amnesia, we are supposed to do it with a "Wow! Way cool stuff!" grin.

Yes, I find that very "unsettling."

I'm with you, dude.

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Listening to: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Two Trains Running
via FoxyTunes

How to survive your root canal

Looking up ENDODONTICS brings up some horrifying reading, and just look at those DRAWINGS! (screams)

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The first thing you notice when entering any specialist's office: how nice everything is. My god, the money. It radiates. My fashionable endodontist (herein known as FE) has beautiful framed jazz posters in his office, what looked to be a Keith Haring coat rack (I didn't have time to inspect it carefully), and in the ladies' loo, beveled mirrors and a solid glass washbasin. The tiles are lovely, and look like marble or stone. I helped pay for all this, I thought.

Baby boomers' bad teeth--all that Dairy Queen crap, Hostess twinkies and Coca-cola, has paid for this pricey office.

I always demand gas forthwith, shocking most dental assistants with my fortitude (pump that UP, girls! MORE!) and astounding ability to withstand copious amounts of nitrous oxide. I assume there is a notation in my file (which I am told is one of the largest in the practice--ta dum!) that specifies "She likes a lot of gas!" or something like that.

FE has weird space-age, scientific tools that he employs, one of which looks like he is in a space capsule, wearing little goggles and looking through a microscope that sits right on top of your face. Meet George Jetson! I always bring some music along, and during this particular sequence I was listening to the Delfonics' "Didn't I blow your mind this time?" ...which, along with the gas, made it somewhat otherworldly and fun, for about 10 seconds or so. It hurt like a mofo, but I really couldn't differentiate the pain of the root canal itself, from the pain I have been experiencing for the past week--all sensation tends to run together into a steady stream of pain, worthy of MARATHON MAN. (Is it safe?)

Left: Fancy George Jetson space-age endodontics microscope.

The noise is positively harrowing, reminiscent of chain-saws and coffee-grinders; then you smell something burning and ... Clorox? Just close your eyes, and concentrate on the Delfonics. (Daisy's advice: nitrous and music, can usually get you through it. No strange or odd music; something familiar.) The filing of the root is where you start to feel, well, nauseated. WHAT is he doing? Oh my GOD.

Apparently, my infection had something to do with the bone (the WHAT? the BONE? Oh, holy Jesus, Mary, Joseph) and might get worse before it gets better. It could become re-infected, since the bacteria in the bone doesn't get oxygen and can multiply quickly, or somesuch thing. As FE patiently explained, I felt dazed. (Bone? Did he say BONE?) I kept thinking about how I'd like to just pull it out, but I couldn't say this to color-coordinated FE with his designer scrubs and shoes. He'd wrinkle his nose at me and make me feel low class. He'd be right, too!

~*~

This round, at least, is over.

Can anyone guess the price? The winner gets a free Daisy's Dead Air Bloglines subscription! HAHAHA!

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Listening to: Yo La Tengo - Moby Octopad
via FoxyTunes

Obama updates

I've received hundreds of hits on my Is Barack Obama the antichrist? post... does that worry anybody?

Meanwhile, the Hillary campaign is eating Barack for dinner, and I hope he gets a grip pretty soon. I don't think he expected a shark attack. For example, check out these new shenanigans (via Talking Points Memo):

Hillary: Pledged Delegates Can Switch Candidates
By Eric Kleefeld - March 9, 2008

A few weeks ago the Clinton campaign shot down a report that they would seek to entice Barack Obama's pledged delegates into flipping over. Now the idea is being floated again — by Hillary herself.

"There are elected delegates, caucus delegates and super-delegates, all for different reasons, and they're all equal in their ability to cast their vote for whomever they choose," Hillary told Newsweek, when asked how she can win the nomination despite the current delegate math.

"Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to. This is a very carefully constructed process that goes back years, and we're going to follow the process."

(Via Mark Halperin)

Late Update: Hillary spokesperson Phil Singer e-mailed Election Central to say that his previous statement on this — that the Hillary camp has not and will not pursue Obama's pledged delegates — is still operative and that there's been no change of position. It's worth noting that in the Newsweek interview, Hillary didn't say outright that she would be pursuing them, and merely stated what the rules governing the delegates are (which can be read as implying possible pursuit of them later, of course).

On a humorous note, Larry David writes in the Huffington Post:

Here's an idea for an Obama ad: a montage of Clinton's Sybillish personalities that have surfaced during the campaign with a solemn voiceover at the end saying, "Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?"

How is it that she became the one who's perceived as more equipped to answer that 3 a.m. call than the unflappable Obama? He, with the ice in his veins, who doesn't panic when he's losing or get too giddy when he's winning, who's as comfortable in his own skin as she's uncomfortable in hers. There have been times in this campaign when she seemed so unhinged that I worried she'd actually kill herself if she lost. Every day, she reminds me more and more of Adele H., who also had an obsession that drove her insane.

A few weeks ago, I started to feel sorry for her. Oh Christ, let her win already...Who cares...It's not worth it. There's not that much difference between them. She can have it. Anything to avoid watching her descend into madness. So I switched. I started rooting for her. It wasn't that hard. Compromise comes easy to me. I was on board.

And then I saw the ad.

I watched, transfixed, as she took the 3 a.m. call...and I was afraid...very afraid. Suddenly, I realized the last thing this country needs is that woman anywhere near a phone. I don't care if it's 3 a.m. or 10 p.m. or any other time. I don't want her talking to Putin, I don't want her talking to Kim Jong Il, I don't want her talking to my nephew. She needs a long rest. She needs to put on a sarong and some sun block and get away from things for a while, a nice beach somewhere -- somewhere far away, where there are...no phones.

He had me at the reference to Adele H!

And finally, thanks to Iriegal for bringing us this fantastic reggae song titled BARACK OBAMA by Jamaican artist Cocoa Tea:

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

Who Should Paint You: M.C. Escher

Open and raw, you would let your true self show for your portrait. And even if your painting turned out a bit dark, it would be honest.

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

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Listening to: Nirvana - About a Girl
via FoxyTunes