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07 November 2010
05 November 2010
TGIF Rock-n-Roll Oldies: The Band 1968
Original members of The Band first worked together as they joined Toronto-based rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins' backing group -The Hawks- from 1958-63 then onto The Levon Helm Sextet/Levon and the Hawks. They also released a single under the name Canadian Squires, but returned as Levon and the Hawks for a recording session later in 1965.
At about the same time, Bob Dylan recruited Helm and Robertson for two concerts, then the entire group for his '65 US tour/'66 world tour. With Dylan, they played a tumultuous series of concerts marking Dylan's final transition from folkie to full-electric-rocker.
These historic appearances were also met with the heckling of folk purists. The Band was used to an audience looking to have a good time, so being rejected on principle was a bizarre, unexpected experience. Levon Helm was so affected by the negative reception that he left the tour within three months and sat out the rest of that year's concerts, as well as the world tour in 1966... then spending much of this period working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
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| Dylan with The Band 1966 |
Then in July of 1966 while on a break from touring, Bob Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident, and retired into semi-seclusion in Woodstock, New York. For a while, the Hawks returned to the bar and roadhouse touring circuit, sometimes backing other singers (including a brief stint with Tiny Tim). Dylan invited the Hawks to join him in Woodstock, where they recorded a much-bootlegged and influential series of demos, subsequently released on LP as The Basement Tapes.
Because they were always "the band" to various frontmen, Levon Helm said the name "The Band" worked well when the group began recording their own material. They created two of the most acclaimed albums of the late 1960s: their 1968 debut Music from Big Pink (featuring the single "The Weight"- featured below) and then 1969's The Band.
The music fused classic country music and early rock and roll with a rhythm section reminiscent of a Motown beat. Every member was a multi-instrumentalist. There was little instrument-switching when they played live, but when recording, the musicians could make up different configurations in service of the songs.
Their rich harmonies blended together not sweetly but in an informal, flowing manner that gave them a unique sound, and their image and lyrics -steeped in traditional American culture- was also unusual, running counter to the hippie and psychedelic themes of the day. Levon Helm's drumming was often praised: critic Jon Carroll famously declared that Helm was "the only drummer who can make you cry."- and along with The Byrds this trailblazing group created a genre for later country-rock superstars like The Eagles.
Trivia: 70s Scottish hard-rockers Nazareth (Love Hurts, This Flight Tonight) named their own band from the first line of this song, "The Weight"... a favorite of theirs, and definitely one of mine, here performed live at Woodstock in the Summer of '69...
Kieth Olbermann Suspended by MSNBC
Donations to Democratic candidates violated the network's ethics policy... (I didn't know they even had one!)
First his "Worst Person in the World" bites the dust... walls closing-in fast now on this talentless hack Kieth Olbermann:
Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay from MSNBC for making donations to three Democrats in violation of NBC's ethics policy.
"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night," Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."
Olbermann, who does not hide his liberal views, has acknowledged donations of $2,400 each to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords during this election cycle.
h/t American Spectator... More at CBS News Online
And btw, he was great in Omega Man... or didn't you know?
Looks Like Somebody Called the GOPs...
'bout time this town got itself a sheriff
The incoming Republican House Ethics Committee is already telling the Obama Administration to prepare to be investigated (highlights mine/WOIA via Lonely Conservative)... it's a whole different ballgame now:
The San Antonio, TX Congressman who is in line to become chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee is promising 'a number of investigations and oversight committee actions' which he vows will 'hold the administration accountable,’
Veteran Republican Lamar Smith, a Yale graduate and social conservative who grew up in the brush country of south Texas which is now transit point for illegal immigrants and drugs, said in a news conference that a number of issues will come into the sights of his committee when he takes the chairmanship in January, from cracking down on child pornography to taking the Obama Administration to task for failing to do enough to protect the southern border.
Smith says it is his Constitutional duty. "Part of that checks and balances is in fact holding the administration accountable, is in fact insisting on more transparency, is insisting on more honesty, and getting the facts," Smith said. "Right now, because of the one party monopoly, the Administration has been able to dodge any kind of supervision, any kind of oversight committee action, and they refuse to testify, and that is no longer acceptable."
And on the verge of the GOP obtaining something they haven't enjoyed for years -congressional subpeona powers- the Chicago racketeers currently occupying the Oval Office have already been warned don't even think about shredding any docs...
The Hill via Weasel Zippers:
Republicans are likely to urge the Obama administration not to shred documents as they transition to the House majority. Before the election, GOP officials on Capitol Hill privately discussed the issue but refrained from publicly tackling it, not wanting to assume what would happen on Election Day.
Now that Republicans will control the House, the shredding matter will move front and center. …Darrell West, a political scientist and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said Republicans likely will formally ask the administration not to shred or delete any relevant documents that could be requested in a congressional probe. “That’ll happen right away, because they want to make sure that the documentary record is preserved so that they have something to investigate,” said West.
So at long-last let justice -and papers- be served!
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04 November 2010
And Finger-Pointing Hilarity Ensues...
"Success has many fathers- but failure is an orphan" -prov
The knives already out on Capitol Hill... and like all fun-to-watch wars, this one has multiple factions- according to Moe Lane:
The ‘moderates’ blame the liberals for walking all over them; the liberals blame the moderates for going along with passing bad ideas like the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and Obamacare; the idiots (this may be a subgroup: there’s a bit of an overlap here with the first two groups) are claiming that this entire problem would have gone away with a little more marketing; and everybody blames the President.
Because really, why not? It’s fairly clear by now that being on Barack Obama’s good side is not exactly inherently valuable.
They’re all right, of course: the Democratic debacle in the House represents a perfect storm of legislative cowardice, political greed, a grotesquely flawed group understanding of proper civic policy, and a White House that routinely demonstrates the organizational and administrative core competency that normally one associates with opium-raddled Victorian expatriate remittance men.
None of which helps them right now, of course; but it’s a lot of fun to point out.
As to solving their problem… well, even if I wanted to I couldn’t. Congressional Democrats are only going to be united by one person - the President - and just in case there’s still somebody who hasn’t noticed by now: the President is incompetent at leading people in directions that they don’t already want to go. Which is not what the Democrats need right now.
So there’s no solution in sight, unless of course the President wants to start learning all of those boring, practical political skills that he should have started picking up a couple of decades ago…
Bitter recriminations from all sides, but most in the end blame the radical and incompetent Obama... as did retiring ole blue dog Senator Evan Bayh (D- In) online as the epic scope of the Democrats' catastrophe unfolded...
“It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a ‘political realignment’ and a ‘new progressive era’ proved wishful thinking,” the retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh wrote in a New York Times op-ed posted online as the scope of last night’s losses became clear.
Bayh called the decision to focus on health care in a bad economy “overreach." “We were too deferential to our most zealous supporters,” he wrote.
Bayh spoke for a wing of the party that had been, before the election, reluctant to criticize Obama’s management of the government, but which on Wednesday spoke loudly.
So then who does the President blame?
Ingrateful idiot voters, of course! The ever-wise and clairvoyant Obama even warned us of our shortcomings as citizens and subsequent errors in judgement prior to Tuesday's vote: we're too stupid and frightened to know what's good for us. Anybody can whine about being out of work for 20 months and losing his house... it takes some real intellect to adopt a more nuanced view of Dear Leader's towering greatness apparently.
So the average American's taste for hyper-liberal regimes has some ways left to mature: as it is, we're just not worthy. To our credit -since us clingers are unable to appreciate it- at least we had the good grace to turn down a second helping of Obama's gourmet socialist slop lol.
John Kerry and Bill Clinton agree... there's got to be something wrong with us to reject Obama's steamrolling of this society...
Andrew Klavan (highlights mine):
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who also knows a thing or two about losing elections, had this to say to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce: “We’re in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don’t weigh in.” Kerry also told reporters: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”
Then finally there was one of the great Democratic politicians of our time, Bill Clinton, who said of Harry Reid’s close race in Nevada: “The only reason this is a tough race is because it’s a tough time. People are having a tough time and they’re frightened and confused and they’re mad. It’s hard to think.”
So there’s the Democratic explanation: their perfect storm of 2008 victory blew itself out in an ill wind of defeat because Americans are scared, unreasonable, unscientific, uninformed, inattentive, confused, and mad.
It’s one point of view. Of course, there is another. It could be—it seems just possible—that the “truth and science and facts” that these Democrats talk about are really only schoolhouse theories that have no bearing on reality; that they are tried-and-failed progressive fairy tales that could only continue to be believed by people who have spent most of their adult lives glued face-first to the public tit.
It’s possible that the best-informed populace in history has risen up in a truly spontaneous grassroots movement deeply connected to the nation’s founding principles and prudently given the heave-ho to a bunch of spendthrift, incompetent, supercilious, and self-deceived buffoons who mistook their college degrees for wisdom.
And then yesterday the freshly-dethroned Queen Nancy blamed Republicans and their "outside groups" money while expressing "no regrets" for leading the lemmings over the cliff and losing that gavel she was shaking in our face while marching up the Capitol steps cackling just eight months back.
But was there any voter message in her losing 60 seats for her party? According to Pelosi, indeed there was: they didn't spend fast enough. Meanwhile back in reality, the country is broke-as-a-joke and recklessly printing billions in funny money to scrape by. For the Pelosis of the world, though, somehow the ruin never can come quite fast enough. And thus, this spendthrift kook -who bears almost as much blame as Obama for Tuesday's debacle- has been relieved of her duties as Speaker.
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