GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Chip off the old block

As I’m sure you all know, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins passed last year, probably the victim of an OD, after years of struggling with heroin addiction. So marvel as his 16 year old son (!) shows off badass, hard-hitting chops that almost have to be coded in his family’s DNA.

Yep, a hard-hitter for sure, just like the old man. Not my favorite Foo Fighters tune, unfortunately; myself, I wish they’d done “Monkeywrench,” but what the hey. As WeirdDave says:

Not only does he absolutely nail it, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a drummer play with such emotion. His anger, pain, rage and yes, love could be bagged and sold. The subtle support he’s getting from the rest of the band, “We got you buddy. You’re with family”, take the performance to another level. I’m not even a Foo Fighters fan, but this one put tears in my eyes.

I won’t go quite as far as all that, but it’s certainly something to see nonetheless.

Update! Just now thought to check it, and lo and behold, the BPs video link I left for Aesop in the comments was bad. Fixed now, sorry ‘bout that.

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He’s baaaaack!

Tucker Twitter Episode 2 (“Cling to your taboos!”) drops—11 million views in 2 hours, as of this writing. Probably be 20 mil or more by the time I finish this post.


The mass-communications revolution I mentioned yesterday continues apace.

Glen Campbell, overrated?

Not hardly, chump. UNDERrated, if anything.

Was Glen Campbell a highly overrated guitar player? Isn’t it true that country music is the least complex and simplest to play? The man certainly didn’t have the technical skill to play metal or anything more difficult. Do you agree?
When Eddie Van Halen asks for guitar lessons (via comments made directly by Alice Cooper), it’s a pretty good bet you have something significant to offer. Alice said that Eddie Van Halen did exactly that regarding Glen Campbell.

Glen Campbell was beyond impressive and nary a whiff of distortion to hide behind.

Also, you don’t play with the Wrecking Crew if you are overrated. Just sayin’.

True, dat. But who is/was this Wrecking Crew of whom he speaks, you ask? Oh, just this.

The Wrecking Crew were a group of all-purpose, highly revered studio musicians who appeared on thousands of popular records – including massive hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds and “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas And The Papas. The instrumental work by this group of session men (and one woman) defined the sound of popular music on radio during the 60s and early 70s, meaning The Wrecking Crew can reasonably lay claim to being the most-recorded band in history.

The exact number of musicians in the loose collective of Los Angeles session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew is not known, partly because of the informal nature of the hiring and also because much of their work went uncredited. Three of their key members were the magnificent session drummer Hal Blaine, bassist and guitarist Carol Kaye (one of the few female session players in that era), and guitarist Tommy Tedesco.

Among the leading musicians who were members at various times were: Earl Palmer, Barney Kessel, Plas Johnson, Al Casey, Glen Campbell, James Burton, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel, Jack Nitzsche, Mike Melvoin, Don Randi, Al DeLory, Billy Strange, Howard Roberts, Jerry Cole, Louie Shelton, Mike Deasy, Bill Pitman, Lyle Ritz, Chuck Berghofer, Joe Osborn, Ray Pohlman, Jim Gordon, Chuck Findley, Ollie Mitchell, Lew McCreary, Jay Migliori, Jim Horn, Steve Douglas, Allan Beutler, Roy Caton, and Jackie Kelso.

The great James Burton, just to home in one of those many standout names, was Elvis Presley’s lead guitarist for many years, and a total badass he was, too.

Burton plays better and with more precision behind his damned head than most of us do with the guitar in its usual position. Back before joining up with Elvis in the waning days of the King’s glory, of course, Burton also played on all those great old Ricky Nelson hits way back when, among an incredible roster of others. Happily, the Master of the Telecaster is still with us, alive and kicking at 83 years young.

James Edward Burton (born August 21, 1939, in Dubberly, Louisiana) is an American guitarist. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2001 (his induction speech was given by longtime fan Keith Richards), Burton has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. Critic Mark Deming writes that “Burton has a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest guitar pickers in either country or rock … Burton is one of the best guitar players to ever touch a fretboard.” He is ranked number 19 in Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Guitarists.

Since the 1950s, Burton has recorded and performed with an array of singers, including Bob Luman, Dale Hawkins, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley (and was leader of Presley’s TCB Band), The Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell, John Denver, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Claude King, Elvis Costello, Joe Osborn, Roy Orbison, Joni Mitchell, Hoyt Axton, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Young, Vince Gill, and Suzi Quatro.

Impressive credentials in anybody’s book—anybody who knows what the hell he’s talking about, anyway. But before I forget, let’s get back to Glen Campbell and his by-no-means-inconsiderable guitar-pickin’ chops.

Yeah, like I said: UNDERrated, if anything. With tasty, countrified-jazz riffage like that in his pocket, ready to be whipped out and sprayed across the landscape anytime he needed ‘em, Glen Campbell was about as “overrated” a guitarslinger as the incomparable Roy Clark was.

They just ain’t making guitar wizards like Glen or Roy anymore, folks, and that’s a crying shame.

Update! Well, I shoulda known such a thing would exist out there, but looky what just popped up coinkydinkally in my YewToob after the Roy Clark vids I was listening to as background music for post-writing were done.

I gots no idea why, but Campbell seemed to favor those weirdo Ovation electrics, like the 12-string he’s working over in the above vid. In fact, it appears that he had a longstanding endorsement deal with Ovation to produce a cpl-three Glen Campbell signature-model guitars. Bizarre, if you ask me. But then, I never have been big on them Ovations, and I damned sure ain’t no Glen Campbell, so what the hell do I know?

“Overrated”? In a pig’s eye. Pull the other one, bright boy, it has a big ol’ bell on it.

Wierderer and wierderer update! That mention of Alice Cooper in the Glen Campbell context above? Yeah, well, just get a load of this right here.

Campbell’s was a remarkable career but was not without its share of tragedy. His popularity both soared and waned. He battled the demons of alcoholism and drug addiction, only to emerge a better man. Illness eventually robbed him of his memory. But through it all, Glen was always revered by other musicians. One of whom was shock rock pioneer Alice Cooper. Campbell and Cooper became friends in the 1980s when both had moved to Phoenix, trying to escape destructive lifestyles. The two men remained friends for the rest of Campbell’s life. In this 2017 interview, Alice Cooper reflects upon the unlikely relationship and beautiful bond he had with his friend Glen Campbell.

“You think of Glen, country; Alice Cooper, rock and roll; we couldn’t have been closer.” Cooper elaborated, “It was unique in the fact that I was so far away from him in music, the character of Alice Cooper, and he was so far into the middle. Really mainstream rock and roll, you know. He could go hang out with the Rat Pack, or he could hang out with Donnie and Marie, or he could hang out with the Beatles or anybody. He was in that middle, he was that sort of all purpose, good-looking kid that could do anything. He was the golden boy. And yet him and I were like this when it came to sense of humor, when it came to golf, when it came to music.”

“It was one of those things where I’d be playing golf with him, and this was when he was in good shape, he was out touring, and he was playing guitar and he was playing golf every day, and he was doing Branson. Every once in a while, he would tell me a joke on the first tee. And then on about the fourth tee, he’d tell me the same joke again. And then about the 16th hole, he would tell me the joke again. And we would all just kind of go ‘well, maybe he’s just forgetful’. We could just see the beginnings of it, of him slipping a little bit.”

“We were telling jokes,” Cooper remembered, “I told him a joke, and he was laughing his head off. Came back about 10 minutes later and he says, ‘Tell me that joke again.’ I tell him the joke. He came back like five times.”

“Yet, you put a guitar in his hand, and he was a virtuoso. You would get him on stage, and he was automatic. I don’t care how much he had slipped; he was there. When it came to that, he was there.”

“We were both songwriters. We were both musicians. We were both in the business 50 years. So, we understood the business.” Alice would go on to say, “I loved being with Glen. I loved playing golf with him. He had a million stories about his world. And I had a million stories about my world. In other words, he would tell me a story about Roger Miller. And Bobby Goldsboro. And this guy, and this guy. And I’d laugh and I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you a good one on Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix’. We could both tell a lot of stories because we were both in those different worlds. And sometimes it crossed over. We did know all the same people. We knew the Sinatras, and we knew Elvis Presley. We both knew the Beatles so a lot of it was just telling stories about the stuff that happened to us. And Glen had some good ones. He got around.”

“I always said as an amateur, 60 yards in, the best player I ever played with. He was a master short game player. We had some really fun times. I played at least one or two times a week with Glen when he lived here.”

“You know if Glen called up and was like, ‘Alice, let’s play tomorrow?’ I’d go, ‘absolutely, let’s go.’” said Cooper. “I loved being with Glen.”

Whodaevvathunkit, huh? What an amazing, heartwarming story. Strange bedfellows, perhaps. But one can only be happy for them that somehow, against all odds, they found each other and developed such a beautiful friendship to gladden their hearts and lighten their burden just that little bit extra.

Deep dive update! Okay, I’m really down the rabbit hole here, but the mention earlier of the Wrecking Crew got me to thinking about some of the great session groups of yore: Booker T & the MGs, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the Mar-Keys, &c. To wit:

Session musicians (also known as studio musicians or backing musicians) are musicians that are hired to perform in recording sessions and/or live performances. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a recording artist on a tour. Session musicians are usually not permanent or official members of a musical ensemble or band. They work behind the scenes and rarely achieve individual fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders. However, top session musicians are well known within the music industry, and some have become publicly recognized, such as the Wrecking Crew, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and The Funk Brothers who worked with Motown Records.

Many session musicians specialize in playing common rhythm section instruments such as guitar, piano, bass, or drums. Others are specialists, and play brass, woodwinds, and strings. Many session musicians play multiple instruments, which lets them play in a wider range of musical situations, genres and styles. Examples of “doubling” include double bass and electric bass, acoustic guitar and mandolin, piano and accordion, and saxophone and other woodwind instruments.

Session musicians are used when musical skills are needed on a short-term basis. Typically session musicians are used by recording studios to provide backing tracks for other musicians for recording sessions and live performances; recording music for advertising, film, television, and theatre. In the 2000s, the terms “session musician” and “studio musician” are synonymous, though in past decades, “studio musician” meant a musician associated with a single record company, recording studio or entertainment agency.

Session musicians may play in a wide range of genres or specialize in a specific genre (e.g. country music or jazz). Some session musicians with a Classical music background may focus on film score recordings. Even within a specific genre specialization, there may be even more focused sub-specializations. For example, a sub-specialization within trumpet session players is “high note specialist”.

The working schedule for session musicians often depends on the terms set out by musicians’ unions or associations, as these organizations typically set out rules on performance schedules (e.g. regarding length of session and breaks). The length of employment may be as short as a single day, in the case of a recording a brief demo song, or as long as several weeks, if an album or film score is being recorded.

Thanks to my then-gf’s best friend Neil working out of Hit Factory, I got called in myself for some occasional—VERY occasional, they had plenty of bigger and better names than mine on the in-house Rolodex—session work there when I lived in NYC. It was…demanding, to say the very least. Extremely so, in fact. Nonetheless, I loved every minute of it; the pay was good (union scale, usually, which back then in NYC was 500/hr), and I was hugely flattered to even be asked at all. Quite the compliment it was, really.

The revolution is not being televised

It’s playing out on Twitter. At least, the mass-communications, Jurassic Media Vs New Media front of it is.

‘Curiosity Is The Gravest Crime’: Tucker Carlson Returns And Tears Media To Shreds For Ukraine Coverage
Former Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson brought his show to Twitter for the first time Tuesday by posting a monologue about the Ukraine war and how the media is covering it.

“This morning, it looks like somebody blew up the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine. The rushing wall of water wiped out entire villages, destroyed a critical hydropower plant, and as of tonight, puts the largest nuclear reactor in Europe in danger of melting down. So, if this was intentional, it was not a military tactic — it was an act of terrorism,” Carlson began.

The Ukrainian and Russian governments accused each other of intentionally destroying the dam as an act of sabotage, according to The Washington Post.

“Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more. And for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it. In December, The Washington Post quoted a Ukrainian general saying his men had fired American-made rockets at the dam’s floodgate, as a test strike,” Carlson stated.

Carlson transitioned to discussing The Washington Post’s story showing the U.S. knew about Ukrainian plans to attack the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline months before it was destroyed. The Post’s story was based on an intelligence leak on social media platform Discord.

Carlson pointed to the intelligence officer who blew the whistle Monday on alleged UFOs possessed by the U.S. government as a recent example of the pressing stories the media ignores.

“So if you’re wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason. Nobody knows what’s happening. A small group of people control accesses to all relevant information. And the rest of us don’t know. We’re allowed to yap all we want about racism, but go ahead and talk about something that really matters and see what happens. If you keep it up, they’ll make you be quiet. Trust us. That’s how they maintain control,” he continued.

Carlson concluded his monologue with a teaser about future Twitter broadcasts if the platform maintains its commitment to free speech under owner Elon Musk.

“That’s how most of us now live here in the United States — manipulated by lies, silenced by taboos. It is unhealthy and is dehumanizing, and we’re tired of it. As of today, we’ve come to Twitter, which we hope will be the shortwave radio under the blankets. We’re told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave. But in the meantime, we are grateful to be here. We’ll be back with much more very soon.”

I know the White Supremacist, ((((JOOOOJOOOOJOOOOOOO!!!!)))-obsessed loons out there despise Tucker as what they stupidly mislabel a “Cuck,” since he’s never frittered away a minute of his on-air time to rant about the “dire need” to unite with our natural allies in Iran, Yemen, and Ethiopa to finally destroy Israel once and for all, or the “inevitable” establishment of an exclusively White Pagan nation on the continental US, but nobody cares what those idiots “think” about anything anyway.

Tucker’s inaugural Twitter ep got over a million views in twenty minutes, and last time I looked a little while ago was closing fast on 90,000,000 (90 MILLION!) of ‘em. Hearty congrats to Tucker and Elon both; they’re at the forefront of a bona-fide revolution in communications media, and I for one am happy to see it. Oh yeah, the vid itself? Rat cheer, folks.


Chutzpahcrisy update! They wouldn’t dare, would they? Oh yes, they most certainly would.

REPORT: Tucker Carlson Accused Of Contract Breach By Fox News Lawyers
Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson was accused by Fox News lawyers on Wednesday of violating his contract with the network by launching his new show on Twitter, Axios reports.

Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar sent Carlson’s attorneys a letter shortly after his Twitter broadcast stating that Carlson “is in breach” of his contract, according to Axios. “In connection with such breach and pursuant to the Agreement, Fox expressly reserves all rights and remedies which are available to it at law or equity,” the letter reads, per the outlet.

His video racked up nearly 90 million Twitter views in 24 hours and immediately made Carlson a trending topic on the platform. At the end of the monologue, Carlson promised future Twitter broadcasts as long as the platform maintained its commitment to free speech.

Prior to his departure, Carlson was Fox News’ highest rated host and consistently achieved the highest ratings on cable news.

Carlson is also alleging breach of contract, with his lawyer accusing a Fox News board member of “engaging in an attempted smear campaign by illegally leaking information about Tucker Carlson.”

Whatever pitiful, tattered shreds of credibility Faux “News” had left with 90 million+ Real Americans, they just flushed down the shitter for good. Brilliant move, shitlib Sooperdoopergenii.

Thrilla in Manila

Inside dope on one of the greatest, most compellingly brutal fights of all time.

Did Muhammad Ali ever give any compliments to his opponents?
Ali on Joe Frazier, the morning after their brutal third fight – the Thrilla in Manila, which brought down the curtain on a legendary trilogy

“I heard somethin’ once. When somebody asked a marathon runner what goes through his mind in the last mile or two, he said that you ask yourself, ‘Why am I doin’ this?’ You get so tired. It takes so much out of you mentally. It changes you. It makes you go a little insane. I was thinkin’ that at the end. Why am I doin’ this? What am I doin’ in here against this beast of a man? It’s so painful. I must be crazy. I always bring out the best in the men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.”

Well, good for both of ‘em, then. Next question:

Did Muhammad Ali really consider himself the greatest?
Yes…with reason. He took the title from arguably the second greatest heavyweight ever, won it a second time against an all time top ten heavyweight champion and then defend(ed) the title in the golden era of the heavyweight.

He beat Sonny Liston…twice

He beat Joe Frazier…twice

He beat Ken Norton…twice

He beat Floyd Patterson…twice

He beat George Foreman

He beat Ernie Shavers

He beat Ron Lyle

He best Jimmy Young

He beat Jimmy Ellis

He beat Jimmy Quarry

He beat Bob Foster, the best light heavyweight of his day.

He beat Cleveland Williams, Zora Folley, Henry Cooper, Buster Mathis…he beat the great, he beat the damn near great, and he beat the very, very good.

He beat five world heavyweight champions (Liston, Patterson, Frazier, Foreman, and Norton) and he beat an undisputed light heavyweight champion (Bob Foster).

It was the Golden Era of the Heavyweights and he was King of the Hill.

Damn right he thought he was the best…so did they!!!

Just about any serious boxing fan would agree that if Ali wasn’t, as he loved to boast, “the greatess of all times,” then he was certainly well in the running. His balance, agility, and footwork; his ability to take punch after punch and still keep coming at you; the awesome power behind his own punches; his ability to intelligently strategize, to get inside the head of his opponents and manipulate their emotions to their own great detriment; there’s really never been anyone quite like him, with the arguable exception of Iron Mike Tyson—who, in addition to being an absolutely vicious, relentless opponent, was also a marvelously-talented boxer in his own right.

Ali also had a near-uncanny ability to get the spotlight focused tightly on him and keep it there, a star-quality that simply would not be denied, and is nowhere to be found in professional boxing today.

From the TiM Wiki entry:

Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier lll, billed as the “Thrilla in Manila”, was the third and final boxing match between WBA and WBC heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, and Joe Frazier, for the heavyweight championship of the world. The bout was conceded after fourteen rounds on October 1, 1975, at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines, located in Metro Manila. The venue was temporarily renamed as the “Philippine Coliseum” for this match. Ali won by corner retirement (RTD) after Frazier’s chief second, Eddie Futch, asked the referee to stop the fight after the 14th round. The contest’s name is derived from Ali’s rhyming boast that the fight would be “a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila.”

The bout is almost universally regarded as one of the best and most brutal fights in boxing history, and was the culmination of a three-bout rivalry between the two fighters that Ali won, 2–1. Some sources estimate the fight was watched by 1 billion viewers, including 100 million viewers watching the fight on closed-circuit theatre television, and 500,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO home cable television.

The first bout between Frazier and Ali–– promoted as the “Fight of the Century”–– took place on March 8, 1971, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Frazier was the undefeated champion and won by unanimous decision over the previously undefeated former champion Ali, who had been stripped of his titles for refusing to enter the draft for the Vietnam War.

Their showdown was a fast-paced, 15-round bout, with Frazier scoring the fight’s (and the trilogy’s) only knockdown, at the beginning of the final round.

When the rivals met in a January 1974 rematch, neither was champion; Frazier had suffered a stunning second-round knockout by George Foreman a year earlier,

Yeah, I just bet it was stunning at that. Anytime George Foreman landed one of those almighty bricks of his upside an opponent’s poor noggin, “stunning” would definitely have been the mot juste to describe the horrific experience. Onwards.

and Ali had two controversial split bouts with Ken Norton. In a promotional appearance before the second fight, the two had scuffled in an ABC studio during an interview segment with Howard Cosell.

There were controversial aspects to the fight. In the second round, Ali struck Frazier with a hard right hand, which backed him up. Referee Tony Perez stepped between the fighters, signifying the end of the round, even though there were about 25 seconds left. In so doing, he gave Frazier time to regain his bearings and continue fighting. Perez also failed to contain Ali’s tactic of illegally holding and pulling down his opponent’s neck in the clinches, which helped Ali to smother Frazier, and gain the 12-round decision. This became a major issue in selecting the referee for the Manila bout.

Ahh, those wonderful old verbal slugfests between Ali and Cosell—truly classic stuff, they were, and wildly entertaining, as Ali himself always was, both inside the squared circle and out of it.

When Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali were in a room together the two mega personalities produced countless magical television moments. The men constantly teased one another and often pretended to spar while wearing suits and ties, as The New York Times notes.

In one memorable moment, Ali threatened to pull off Cosell’s toupee. Another time, Ali was quoted as saying “Every time you open your mouth, you should be arrested for air pollution” to which Cosell responded “You would still be in impoverished anonymity in this country if I hadn’t made you.”

Still another time, Ali pretended to threaten Cosell. The sportscaster responded teasingly “Don’t touch me. I’ll beat your brains out,” via USA Today. The verbal sparring delighted audiences and boosted TV ratings. And, HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant described their back and forth as symbiotic. He said the boxer wasn’t threatened by Cosell and that Cosell realized how Ali was a one-of-a-kind athlete.

Howard Cosell’s daughter Jill told USA Today that her father never imagined the back and forth between the two men would become a sort of comic routine. She described Ali as funny, charming, handsome, and with a “big mouth.” She said Ali trusted her dad and that over the years their relationship developed into friendship.

While good-natured back and forth was so much of the men’s public persona, below the surface grew a deeper bond. After Ali changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, Cosell acknowledged the change while many others resisted. Cosell also defended Ali from critics when Ali refused to be inducted into the military over religious beliefs, via USA Today.

Cosell died in 1995 at the age of 77. His daughter Jill says Ali sat next to her at her father’s service with tears streaming down his face during the eulogy. And then, in June of 2016, Muhammad Ali died. The three-time heavyweight champion is considered by many to be one of the greatest boxers to ever enter the ring.

Another magical Ali moment came in 1996, when The Greatest sat down with Ed Bradley to be interviewed for 60 Minutes, a moment I well remember seeing when it originally aired.

Muhammad Ali’s tragic decline was already well underway by the time of the Bradley interview, as was heartbreakingly obvious in the unexpurgated broadcast version I watched back in ’96. When I found this the other day, it was the first time I’d seen it since then, but over lo, these many, many years I never have forgotten it. If you’ve never before seen the Thrilla in Manilla, the entire 14-round fight (an hour and twelve minutes) is available on YouTube. For any fan of the Sweet Science, it’s a must-see.

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NO Pride Month?

Go, Rangers!

One MLB team refuses to host LGBTQ Pride Night
June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. As a result, many Major League Baseball teams across the country are planning to host Pride Night celebrations at their ballparks – or similar promotions that celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. But one team has made it clear that they will not hold such a celebration: the Texas Rangers.

While every other team across Major League Baseball has held a Pride Night or similar promotional event, the Dallas Morning News reports that Texas Rangers have not hosted a promotion to welcome and celebrate the LGBTQ+ in over two decades. Back in 2003, the team did invite several LGBTQ+ groups to the ballpark, according to The Advocate, but it was not officially marketed as any specific promotion and was met with anti-gay protests. The team has not hosted a similar event since.

Despite a push from LGBTQ+ leaders in the Dallas community, the Rangers have thus far refused to host a promotional game for the LGBTQ+ community and do not have one planned for this season. And it does not sound like they plan to host a Pride Night or a similar event in the future, either.

The Rangers are the only team in Major League Baseball not to host a Pride Night or similar promotion in the past two decades. And based on their messaging over the past few years, it doesn’t sound like that’s going to change.

WELL, then. Looks like as of now, I’m with this fellow:


Me and you both, buddy, me and you both. What the hell, they DID have the incredible Nolan Ryan hurling those hundred-plus-mph fastballs of his for ’em at the end of his world-record 27 year, four-decade-spanning career, so they can’t be all bad.

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As promised

Time for those two excellent vids I mentioned earlier. First, we have your feel-good vidya of the week, featuring what I keep insisting ought to be the end result every time a few pAntiFa fascists dare to venture forth from Mom’s basement.


And yet again, we see the Bastards In Blue dashing to the rescue…on the side of their pAntiFa pals, of course and as usual. Maybe it’s about time they started featuring prominently in some of these beatdown-vids their own selves, just to help them get their heads screwed back on straight.

Next up, the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe busts one out for us.

One of the most amazing singing voices ever, and the ol’ gal could really rip on that gloriously Bigsbyfied SG Custom too. Believe you me, cranking out those simpler-is-better blues licks on guitar is way, WAY tougher than it looks. I never could do it worth a damn myself, and I did NOT suck on guitar otherwise, either. Try as I might, and I surely did, Sister Tharpe could’ve easily stomped mudholes in my po’ white ass when it comes to blues pickin’, then backed up and walked ‘em dry.

Note too, that she’s doing the right hand proper: finger picking it, although she DOES cheat just a little bit, using a thumb-pick on there. Ah well, as I always say: pobody’s nerfect, right?

Update! Just remembered something my longtime partner in musical crime, Tom “Mookie” Brill, always told me: “You can’t play blues with a pick, man, it’s just impossible.” Being entirely reliant on the Dunlop yellow Tortex picks my whole life, I can testify that the man was 100% correct on that.

And if you click on the Tommy Brill link above, then on the profile pic therein, yes, that’s me in the pic with him, playing my good ol’ pinstriped Gretch Electromatic reissue. A sweet, sweet git-fiddle my girl was, complete with a full-custom Craig Landau neck carve (the “Hendrix profile,” he named it) and a set of TV Jones Magna’Tron pickups that were bright, glassy, and just ballsy as hell all at once.

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Nuke up before it’s too late!

Finland figures it out.

How Finland Ended Up with Too Much Electricity
As the Western World drives mindlessly into the fantasy of a false green energy future, shortages are a common topic of discussion—blackouts in the frigid winter, brownouts in the heat of summer. You’d be right to ask.

What “leader” pushes a plan that puts demand before supply?

Finland, not known for its politically conservative nature (quite the opposite), was struggling with that problem. After Russia invaded Ukraine, available energy became a priority. You can’t run anything these days without it, and we’ll only need more.

But it is a problem Finland has solved, at least for now, with Nuclear.

Then we get a link to a Daily Wire article which says this:

Electricity prices in Finland plummeted into negative territory this week after the launch of a new nuclear power plant last month.

The development comes months after officials in the Nordic nation were raising the alarm over widespread energy shortages, a reality induced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Energy producers are now discussing mechanisms to reduce production as power becomes so abundant that prices venture into negative territory.

“Production is high, consumption is low, and now we are in a situation where it is not easy to adjust production,” Fingrid CEO Jukka Ruusunen said in an interview with Yle News. “Last winter, the only thing people could talk about was where to get more electricity. Now we are thinking hard about how to limit production. We have gone from one extreme to another.”

Average spot electricity prices in Finland declined from $264 in December to $65 in April, according to a report from the National News. Utility companies are unable to decrease energy output through hydropower, the typical domain in which electricity production can be reduced, because of excess snowmelts.

Back to the first excerpted article for the moral of the story.

I’m not sure why Finland can’t sell the excess to someone who needs it, but I’m not familiar enough with their grid arrangements or EU policy. But, they built a nuclear plan which seems out-of-character.

European thinking on Nuclear energy is bipolar at best. They are all dancing to the broken tune of the ridiculously flawed Paris Climate Accords and other EU green deals. The Daily Wire reminds us that Germany ended its relationship with Nuclear (so it could burn coal to keep warm) while Finland and Poland are adding capacity.

Lesson learned? Probably not quite yet, or not in solid-Green Churmany at least. But one way or another, cold, implacable reality will see to it that eventually, it will be. Yes, even here in the US.

I live in New Hampshire. We are at the mercy of the New England Grid as all the states around us announce green power plans, EV mandates, and race to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. We can’t get new pipelines built to carry fracked Gas from Pennsylvania because States like New York and Massachusetts say none shall pass.

Federal Law prohibits domestic port-to-domestic port transport of domestic energy, so when we find ourselves chilled in January or February, we have to look off the continent in Africa or Asia for natural gas – while Joe Biden promises mountains of US NG to the EU as a favor for supporting his proxy war with Russia.

The whole business is FUBAR, even in Finland.

“Operators in Finland and the surrounding areas are now monitoring the situation. If hydropower can’t be regulated, then it will probably be nuclear power next. Production that is not profitable at these prices is usually removed from the market,” Ruusunen continued. “Now there is enough electricity, and it is almost emission-free. So you can feel good about using electricity.”

Feel good? Did you miss the memo? That’s not the plan. You’re doing it wrong. The idea is to starve people of modernity as punishment for whatever the progressive narrative mills can imagine will scare you enough to go along. Not them, just you. But for a few heartbeats, Finland has a good problem that has exposed another problem. What to do with the idea of abundant, affordable electricity in a world committed to hating both?

Well, I can think of at least one option—which involves pitchforks, torches, stout ropes, and lampposts for the evil ProPol bastiches who are doing this to us.

Dictionary definition

STUMBLEBUM (noun) stum·​ble·​bum

: a clumsy or inept person
: a bum, in the act stumbling.

To wit.


It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so damned pathetic. No wait, wrong…it’s STILL hilarious. Bonus stumblebummery, shot just before the above crowning achievement of pratfalls (CRUCIAL NOTE: so far) in what’s become a long, seriously illustrious career of them:


Yep, still hilarious. As I always say, couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole. In the first vid above, Lyin’ Pedo Jaux can be seen pointing back at the imaginary culprit that purportedly caused the decrepit old fraud to take his habitual header, a “black sandbag on the stage,” even going so far as to blubber a surpassingly lame deflection for it later:

President Joe Biden laughed off his embarrassing fall at the Air Force Academy commencement ceremony as he arrived safely back at the White House on Thursday.

‘I got sandbagged,’ he joked to reporters following the tumble, which has raised more questions about his age and health.

Hardly. It doesn’t “raise” them, it answers them.

(Via Ace)

1

Opting out of Holy Pride Month™

A truly appalling how-to.

How To Speak Up And Opt Out Of ‘Pride’ Month Activities At Your Child’s School
No one is coming to stop this. Your only option is to let your own school know you will not allow your child to take part.

My friends and I are bracing for the annual rainbow onslaught poised to swamp families coast to coast this June. This year’s storm looks like a Category 5; it’s already blowing the doors off the nearby Target and wreaking havoc on the Bud Light warehouse. 

As bad as it is out in corporate land, it’s worse in the public schools, where it’s harder to see — almost like they’re trying to keep it secret! Many schools have even moved their pride events up to May so that no child is freed for summer vacation without being forced to take their required rainbow pill.

I was shocked to learn this week that not only are newborns not allowed to opt out of transgender indoctrination, but kids with Down syndrome aren’t either!

Incredibly, the Los Angeles Unified School District is doing just that. I don’t know why I’m surprised; LAUSD has never met a bad idea it didn’t immediately adopt and force on its kids. 

This week, a friend of mine sent out an email account of her shocking experience at her local public elementary school’s morning assembly. She is an educated woman, a scholar, and an artist, and her older children are linguists and classical musicians. Somehow, in the heart of Los Angeles, she has raised a Catholic family of devout and artistic children.

Her youngest is 9 and was born with Down syndrome. He is enrolled in a classroom for children like him with developmental disabilities. But his intellectual limitations end at the door to his special classroom; in the school at large, he is subject to the same gender indoctrination the other 5- to 13-year-olds are forced to undergo. Not even a child with Down syndrome is free from learning about the wonders of becoming transgender. After all, this is vital knowledge for everyone 5 and up, no matter their disabilities!

Here is her account. Some names have been changed to protect her from the mob:

Once a month, there is a school-wide assembly to which parents are invited and then a coffee with the principal. I made a point of attending both this morning. I was eager to be part of the Friday morning with my son. 

 Assembly began with a Pledge of Allegiance and a greeting by the student council. Then, five students and a staff member came to the microphone bearing various incarnations of the “pride” flag and reminded everyone that June was pride month.

Waitwaitwait—these poor, put-upon children were forced to recite—at the muzzle-end of a deadly fully-semi-automatic assault-weapon rifle gun, no doubt—the Pledge of Allegiance? UNACCEPTABLE! UNCONSCIONABLE!! INTOLERABLE!!! And here I’d thought all this time that we’d all agreed that such a horrible thing was tantamount to child abuse. Musta missed something somewhere along the line, I reckon.

The piece continues from there to relate the rest of this mom’s harrowing ordeal; as is made abundantly clear in the above excerpt, said mom is by no means the kind of slavering, pig-igner’nt, trailer-trash throwback driven to act out by her inborn H8RRRR instincts that local LA media is probably already assiduously painting her as. Like I said, it truly is appalling—not that Mom actually raised up on her hind legs and did it, but that it was necessary for her to in the first goddamned place.

This courageous mom ended up winning her fight, and that’s certainly a good thing. As the post also makes clear, she is by no means alone either, which is even better. The closing ‘graphs, although amusing in a way, also have appalling moments of their own.

Another friend, this one who sends her daughter to an elite private all-girls school in Manhattan, has taken a similar approach. She, nearly alone among the parents, refuses to let them force her 10-year-old daughter to write her pronouns whenever she writes her name. She has to opt her daughter out of the rainbow activities. 

Why? Because almost 10 percent of the eighth-grade class of girls already identifies as trans or queer, and the numbers are increasing each year. There is also a young girl at the school who identifies as a cat and walks on all fours. This is permitted. Annual tuition is $61,000 a year.

A cat, eh? What the hell, why not—although it’s gotta be pretty hard on Cat Girl’s knees, I should think, a mistake she’ll be paying for quite painfully later on in life. Myself, I identify as a wealthy, handsome, and extravagantly-hung pR0n star, and hereby demand that you people start treating me with the respectful, awestruck deference my mental disorder merits.

Speaking to them in the only language they’ll ever understand

Ie, swift and blinding violence.


No word on whether the idiot Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ “protesters” were permanently maimed or not, but one can always hope. Via Ace.

TRULY transgressive

As the man says, Dave Chappelle never disappoints.

Dave Chappelle Invites Cancelled ‘SNL’ Comic On Stage. What Comes Next Is Pure Gold
Footage shared Monday shows the moment Dave Chappelle invited cancelled “Saturday Night Live” writer Shane Gillis up on stage at the Comedy Cellar. What came next was pure comedy gold.

Gillis was dropped as a writer by the sketch comedy show after footage of him making jokes about Asians resurfaced. Despite Gillis immediately saying that the joke was a “miss,” and inviting others to call out any aspect of his writing and stand-up that could help him be more culturally sensitive, the fun-police decided to wet their pants and fire him.

But that didn’t stop Chappelle from bringing him up on stage, calling him “so funny that he got cancelled at the beginning of his career.” The crowd whooped and cheered as Gillis took the mic. Once he was up there, Chappelle requested he “do a joke about Donald Trump getting shot.”

Apparently, Gillis had done the bit before, but that didn’t make it any less hysterical. And not for the reasons you might be thinking. The crowd clearly didn’t think the set-up was funny, but once Gillis got into the joke, he couldn’t be stopped. It has to be watched to be properly enjoyed.

S’truth, too. Here’s the vid:


As the DC article’s author goes on to say, the gut-bustingest bit is the “punch-assassinate Biden” riff at the very end, which leaves Chappelle in a heap on the floor and gasping for breath, and which is also perfectly true and accurate.

3

The soldier’s faith

Excerpts from a Memorial Day, 1895 speech given to that year’s Harvard graduating class by Massachusetts SC justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The society for which many philanthropists, labor reformers, and men of fashion unite in longing is one in which they may be comfortable and may shine without much trouble or any danger. The unfortunately growing hatred of the poor for the rich seems to me to rest on the belief that money is the main thing (a belief in which the poor have been encouraged by the rich), more than on any other grievance. Most of my hearers would rather that their daughters or their sisters should marry a son of one of the great rich families than a regular army officer, were he as beautiful, brave, and gifted as Sir William Napier. I have heard the question asked whether our war was worth fighting, after all. There are many, poor and rich, who think that love of country is an old wife’s tale, to be replaced by interest in a labor union, or, under the name of cosmopolitanism, by a rootless self-seeking search for a place where the most enjoyment may be had at the least cost.

Meantime we have learned the doctrine that evil means pain, and the revolt aginst pain in all its forms has grown more and more marked. From societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals up to socialism, we express in numberless ways the notion that suffering is a wrong which can be and ought to be prevented, and a whole literature of sympathy has sprung into being which points out in story and in verse how hard it is to be wounded in the battle of life, how terrible, how unjust it is that any one should fail.

Even science has had its part in the tendencies which we observe. It has shaken established religion in the minds of very many. It has pursued analysis until at last this thrilling world of colors and passions and sounds has seemed fatally to resolve itself into one vast network of vibrations endlessly weaving an aimless web, and the rainbow flush of cathedral windows, which once to enraptured eyes appeared the very smile of God, fades slowly out into the pale irony of the void.

And yet from vast orchestras still comes the music of mighty symphonies. Our painters even now are spreading along the walls of our Library glowing symbols of mysteries still real, and the hardly silenced cannon of the East proclaim once more that combat and pain still are the portion of man. For my own part, I believe that the struggle for life is the order of the world, at which it is vain to repine. I can imagine the burden changed in the way it is to be borne, but I cannot imagine that it ever will be lifted from men’s backs. I can imagine a future in which science shall have passed from the combative to the dogmatic stage, and shall have gained such catholic acceptance that it shall take control of life, and condemn at once with instant execution what now is left for nature to destroy. But we are far from such a future, and we cannot stop to amuse or to terrify ourselves with dreams. Now, at least, and perhaps as long as man dwells upon the globe, his destiny is battle, and he has to take the chances of war. If it is our business to fight, the book for the army is a war-song, not a hospital-sketch. It is not well for soldiers to think much about wounds. Sooner or later we shall fall; but meantime it is for us to fix our eyes upon the point to be stormed, and to get there if we can.

Behind every scheme to make the world over, lies the question, What kind of world do you want? The ideals of the past for men have been drawn from war, as those for women have been drawn from motherhood. For all our prophecies, I doubt if we are ready to give up our inheritance. Who is there who would not like to be thought a gentleman? Yet what has that name been built on but the soldier’s choice of honor rather than life? To be a soldier or descended from soldiers, in time of peace to be ready to give one’s life rather than suffer disgrace, that is what the word has meant; and if we try to claim it at less cost than a splendid carelessness for life, we are trying to steal the good will without the responsibilities of the place. We will not dispute about tastes. The man of the future may want something different. But who of us could endure a world, although cut up into five-acre lots, and having no man upon it who was not well fed and well housed, without the divine folly of honor, without the senseless passion for knowledge outreaching the flaming bounds of the possible, without ideals the essence of which is that they can never be achieved? I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts under foot. If you wait in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you down a gentle slope like that of Beacon Street, have seen the puff of the firing, have felt the burst of the spherical case-shot as it came toward you, have heard and seen the shrieking fragments go tearing through your company, and have known that the next or the next shot carries your fate; if you have advanced in line and have seen ahead of you the spot you must pass where the rifle bullets are striking; if you have ridden at night at a walk toward the blue line of fire at the dead angle of Spotsylvania, where for twenty-four hours the soldiers were fighting on the two sides of an earthwork, and in the morning the dead and dying lay piled in a row six deep, and as you rode you heard the bullets splashing in the mud and earth about you; if you have been in the picket-line at night in a black and unknown wood, have heard the splat of the bullets upon the trees, and as you moved have felt your foot slip upon a dead man’s body; if you have had a blind fierce gallop against the enemy, with your blood up and a pace that left no time for fear –if, in short, as some, I hope many, who hear me, have known, you have known the vicissitudes of terror and triumph in war; you know that there is such a thing as the faith I spoke of. You know your own weakness and are modest; but you know that man has in him that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face anniliation for a blind belief.

War, when you are at it, is horrible and dull. It is only when time has passed that you see that its message was divine. I hope it may be long before we are called again to sit at that master’s feet. But some teacher of the kind we all need. In this snug, over-safe corner of the world we need it, that we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming of the world, and in order that we may be ready for danger. We need it in this time of individualist negations, with its literature of French and American humor, revolting at discipline, loving flesh-pots, and denying that anything is worthy of reverence–in order that we may remember all that buffoons forget. We need it everywhere and at all times. For high and dangerous action teaches us to believe as right beyond dispute things for which our doubting minds are slow to find words of proof. Out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism. The proof comes later, and even may never come. Therefore I rejoice at every dangerous sport which I see pursued. The students at Heidelberg, with their sword-slashed faces, inspire me with sincere respect. I gaze with delight upon our polo players. If once in a while in our rough riding a neck is broken, I regard it, not as a waste, but as a price well paid for the breeding of a race fit for headship and command.

We do not save our traditions, in our country. The regiments whose battle-flags were not large enough to hold the names of the battles they had fought vanished with the surrender of Lee, although their memories inherited would have made heroes for a century. It is the more necessary to learn the lesson afresh from perils newly sought, and perhaps it is not vain for us to tell the new generation what we learned in our day, and what we still believe. That the joy of life is living, is to put out all one’s powers as far as they will go; that the measure of power is obstacles overcome; to ride boldly at what is in front of you, be it fence or enemy; to pray, not for comfort, but for combat; to keep the soldier’s faith against the doubts of civil life, more besetting and harder to overcome than all the misgivings of the battlefield, and to remember that duty is not to be proved in the evil day, but then to be obeyed unquestioning; to love glory more than the temptations of wallowing ease, but to know that one’s final judge and only rival is oneself: with all our failures in act and thought, these things we learned from noble enemies in Virginia or Georgia or on the Mississippi, thirty years ago; these things we believe to be true.

As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.

Three years ago died the old colonel of my regiment, the Twentieth Massachusetts. [Web note: Col. William Raymond Lee] He gave the regiment its soul. No man could falter who heard his “Forward, Twentieth!” I went to his funeral. From a side door of the church a body of little choir-boys came in alike a flight of careless doves. At the same time the doors opened at the front, and up the main aisle advanced his coffin, followed by the few grey heads who stood for the men of the Twentieth, the rank and file whom he had loved, and whom he led for the last time. The church was empty. No one remembered the old man whom we were burying, no one save those next to him, and us. And I said to myself, The Twentieth has shrunk to a skeleton, a ghost, a memory, a forgotten name which we other old men alone keep in our hearts. And then I thought: It is right. It is as the colonel would have it. This also is part of the soldier’s faith: Having known great things, to be content with silence. Just then there fell into my hands a little song sung by a warlike people on the Danube, which seemed to me fit for a soldier’s last word, another song of the sword, but a song of the sword in its scabbard, a song of oblivion and peace.

A soldier has been buried on the battlefield.
And when the wind in the tree-tops roared,
The soldier asked from the deep dark grave:
“Did the banner flutter then?”
“Not so, my hero,” the wind replied.
“The fight is done, but the banner won,
Thy comrades of old have borne it hence,
Have borne it in triumph hence.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:
“I am content.”

Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass,
and the soldier asks once more:
“Are these not the voices of them that love,
That love—and remember me?”
“Not so, my hero,” the lovers say,
“We are those that remember not;
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled,
And the dead must be forgot.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:
“I am content.”

Stirring, powerful stuff, no? So powerful, in fact, that after Teddy Roosevelt read it seven years later, he was moved enough to decide to appoint Holmes to the US Supreme Court. The wisdom expressed in these words is profound, the fundamental truth timeless, eternal. We fail to pay heed to them at our direst peril.

3
1

The oldest instrument?

In the interest of keeping things somewhat light and pleasant around here on a holiday-weekend Friday night, enjoy something truly gorgeous.

Simplicity itself; just variations on a most basic theme, yet heartbreakingly lovely just the same—calming, elegant, mellow, engaging, and utterly spellbinding. This is one of those pieces that really bring Congreve’s old “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” adage right on home.

Claudia Antonelli, in case you didn’t know, is generally regarded as one of the world’s best-ever harp virtuosos, and rightly so. If you’ve never seen a harp being played live, it’s a helluva mind-blowing experience. The European pillar harp with pedals, see, is one of what I refer to as a full-body-involvement instrument—fingers, arms, back, legs, feet, all come fully into play for the harpist, as with the pipe organ, say, or the double-neck, ten-string (per neck, that is) pedal-steel guitar. It all depends on which variant of the harp they might be playing at the time; some of the four or five-string handheld harps are so simple and basic they can look downright primitive in comparison. Because, y’know, they are.

Don’t hate it me ’cause it’s beautiful, y’all.

3

Lightfoot redux

Owing to Mark Steyn’s near-total absence from his SteynOnline site because of his long, slow convalescence from two (2!) heart attacks, I scarcely bother checking up there these days. So I missed his Gordon Lightfoot SteynMusic post, which as per usual is the definitive Last Word on the subject.

On February 18th 2010 Gordon Lightfoot was driving in Toronto en route to the office when he heard on the radio that he had died. In such circumstances, most of us would turn round and go back to bed. But Lightfoot kept on, to the office, and to new tour dates and live albums – for almost another decade-and-a-half. He died, for real, a few days before the Coronation, having been garlanded with every bauble in the gift of his native land – Commander of the Order of Canada, recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal – and honoured by his peers around the world. Here is what Mark had to say about him on the occasion of his eightieth birthday:

Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr was born on November 17th 1938 in Orillia, Ontario, which is a straight shot north of Toronto, although you’ll be driving your Honda Civic through Lake Simcoe if you try it as the crow flies. Gordon Lightfoot Sr owned a large dry cleaner’s, and Mrs Lightfoot thought Junior had the makings of a child star. His first public solo performance was in Grade Four, over the school’s PA system for Parents’ Day, singing “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral”, an early example (1913) of a commercial pop song that everybody thinks is a(n) ancient traditional tune, which isn’t bad practice for a chap who’d eventually emerge in the “folk revival” of the early Sixties. He was a boy chorister in Orillia, and by the age of twelve singing in Toronto, at Massey Hall. At eighteen he went to Westlake College of Music in Hollywood to study jazz composition and orchestration, which I can’t honestly say I hear a lot of in his music. At any rate, he missed Canada and came home, and landed a spot in the Singing Swinging Eight, the square-dance group on the CBC’s “Country Hoedown”.

One day a couple of years later Gord thought back to how homesick he’d felt in Los Angeles. So he set down his five-month-old baby in a crib on the other side of the room, and wrote a song about it:

In the Early Morning Rain
With a dollar in my hand
With an aching in my heart
And my pockets full of sand
I’m a long ways from home
And I miss my loved one so
In the Early Morning Rain
With no place to go…

On rainy mornings in Los Angeles, a lonely Lightfoot liked to go to the airport and watch the planes take off. If you try that now at LAX, even if you survive the tasing or shooting, you’ll be on the no-fly list for thirty years. But back then it was different, and so a young songwriter wrote, in effect, a train song for the jet age. Just as Johnny Mercer heard the lonesome whistle blowing ‘cross the trestle, Gordon Lightfoot heard a wistful echo in the 707s on runway nine:

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver wings on high
She’s away and westward bound
Far above the clouds she’ll fly…

Except, of course, that there’s no boxcar on Pan Am or TWA:

You can’t jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I best be on my way
In the Early Morning Rain.

It was on his debut album – the exclamatory Lightfoot! – in 1966, by which time Ian & Sylvia, the Canadian folk act with the arrestingly prosaic name, and the Grateful Dead, the American rock band with the prosaically arresting name, had both recorded the number. And Judy Collins, George Hamilton IV and Peter, Paul and Mary had put it, respectively, on the Billboard album, country and pop charts. “Early Morning Rain” isn’t quite the first song Gordon Lightfoot wrote, but it was the first to get any notice internationally, and I do believe to this day it’s the most recorded of his compositions. Jerry Lee Lewis did it, and Paul Weller from The Jam, and the Kingston Trio, Eva Cassidy, Billy Bragg… oh, and Bob Dylan, on one of his worst received albums (first line of Greil Marcus’s Rolling Stone review: “What is this sh*t?”). It’s a simple song, and for my tastes it can go awry in the wrong key or an insufficient travelin’ accompaniment. The composer likes Elvis’s version, and so do I.

We probably should mention one other take on “Early Morning Rain” – as a marching song for the US Army:

In the Early Morning Rain
With my weapon in my hand
With an aching in my heart
I will make my final stand…

I’m not sure how the author feels about the rewrite, but maybe he could do a Canadian version for the Princess Patricias.

An oldie but goodie, the piece carries on from there in Mark’s usual surpassingly brilliant vein, of which you will surely want to read the all.

5

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2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

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