Linky-lurvs

Attentive CF Lifers may already have noticed our latest addition, findable at not-quite-bottom left in Ye Aulde CF Blogrolle section: Substack Scalawags, featuring whippersnappers who have cast aside the creaky, crotchety, arthritic old WP “weblog” gizmo for that newfangled Substack whatsit all the kids are talking about nowadays. Check it out, loads of excellent stuff in there.

Another good ‘un gone

Kim DuToit memorializes the renowned Sloop New Dawn’s master, owner, and captain.

The Layabout Sailor
Longtime Readers may recall that a bunch of my friends and I used to get together once a year for the Feinstein-Daley Memorial Shoot at the east Texas ranch of Reader Airboss (sadly, since deceased). It was always a festive affair and featured the occasional gun.

It was at one such event where I met Doc Russia, at the time still a med student at UT-Houston, who had a blog entitled Bloodletting (which I miss dreadfully, even though I still see him regularly for shooting and dinners etc.). Another blogger also came along at that same meeting: Jim Siegler from Smoke On The Water (ie, blog, linked at Kim’s place—M), which featured guns, politics and details of his life on board his beloved yacht, the sloop New Dawn.

While Doc was an excellent shot, Jim was likewise; actually, Jim was easily the best all-round shooter — pistol, revolver, rifle and shotgun — I’ve ever met.

I need to make a comment at this point. Frequent Readers of this website may remember that I have always referred to Jim as “the Layabout Sailor”. That was a total lie, because Jim was one of the hardest-working men I’ve ever come across, and the ironic nickname was the complete antithesis of him. Having come from extreme poverty — his first job was washing dishes at a restaurant, at age eight — Jim worked his whole life at a number of jobs, sometimes two at a time: insurance adjuster, car salesman, bus driver, roofer, whatever paid the bills. He used to joke that his best-paying job was when he enlisted in the Air Force in his late teens, so you get the idea. College was never an option because there was little money and he refused to get into debt. But he was always well-groomed and impeccably dressed — and by the way, very intelligent, well-read and well-spoken, his soft Texas drawl a welcome sound always, along with his impish sense of humor. (His online signature: “Jim S.– Sloop New Dawn” became “Jim S. — Sunk New Dawn”, which masked his despair at the tragedy of its loss.)

Last November Jim wrote to me to tell me that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Lou Gehrig’s Disease — and of course as we all know, ALS is incurable. His prognosis was grim — perhaps two years — but the cruelest part was that while ALS can affect both the brain and the muscular system, Jim’s brain was completely unaffected. So his body was starting to collapse, leaving his lively, intelligent brain intact. He became weak and his speech began to slur.

My friend Jim died two weeks ago, in late June 2025, after only nine months since his diagnosis. Rather than a slow decline, his condition simply went over a cliff, and he died of pulmonary failure, as his lungs — even with a respirator — ceased to function.

And the world became a little worse for his passing.

It did indeed. Most of you have probably run across Jim Seigel’s remarks in the comments section of one blog or another, maybe including this one; for a good long while there, he popped up at CF frequently. I was fortunate enough to enjoy an extended private email correspondence with Jim as well. Never did get to meet the man IRL, alas, nor to go shooting with him, which makes me just a wee mite envious of DuToit, damn him.

But as I slowly, torturously figured out after my late wife’s sudden, violent demise at an unfairly early age—as I have told friends who are fetched up in the deepest toils of mourning over the loss of a beloved spouse, child, parent, sibling, what have you—the only way to get through the agony of bereavement is to not be bitter over what you lost, but to be grateful for what you had. Yes, maintaining a positive outlook, keeping our attention tightly focused on gratitude rather than the easy, more natural slump into bitterness, darkness, and crushing despond can be tough sledding indeed. No matter how long one had with the Dearly Departed—years? Months? Weeks? Days? Hours?—it can never be long enough to satisfy those left behind.

Although Jim and I were on friendly terms, and I hugely enjoyed our email correspondence, we weren’t so close that I’d presume to offer counsel to his widow and other loved ones on how they might best cope with the unfillable hole in their hearts Jim’s absence is sure to leave. I hope and pray that Jim’s people are hanging in there as well as might be, and that when the immiserating flood-tide of grief has at last begun to subside the survivors can evade the dead-end swamps of bitterness, resentment, and leaden futility to walk the more comforting, luminous path of gratitude instead. Like I said, that really, truly is the only way. Same-same goes for our old buddy DuToit, a good and decent sort his own self. Kim, my prayers are with you and yours, my friend.

Regardless of whether you were familiar on any level with Jim of the Sunk New Dawn or not, do read all of DuToit’s heart-rending post. The death of such a singular, multifaceted, and noteworthy an individual as was Jim Siegel diminishes us all to some extent, whether we know it or not. As such, his passing should be marked, his numerous accomplishments remembered, his extraordinary life celebrated.

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Barrence Whitfield & The Savages redux

Yes, I know I posted a jubilee of praise for the mighty, mighty Barrence Whitfield not terribly long ago, but for some reason I got to ambling through my Barrence YewToob playlist earlier today and, as is his/their usual wont, Barrence and the boys just blew my doors in all over again. In consideration of any poor deluded fools who have no interest in grooving to the extraordinary rock ’n’ roll stylings of the Round Mound Of Beantown Sound* and his band—a soul-blighting malady I can neither comprehend nor overlook—I’ll just tuck the vids below the fold.

Continue reading “Barrence Whitfield & The Savages redux”

Yeah, tell me another one, Tommy Flanagan

Had to edit the title, for accuracy. My own arcane title reference explained here.

An Exceptionally Good Liar D卐M☭CRAT: Newsom Reimagines His Record on Gun Rights in the Run-Up to 2028

There, that’s better. Now, onwards.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing all he can to obfuscate his abysmal record to prepare for a White House bid in 2028. His latest stunt – he received a SIG Sauer P365 XMACRO from Shawn Ryan while he was sitting for a podcast interview.

It gets better.

For certain values of the word “better,” mind.

Gov. Newsom actually said, “I’m not anti-gun at all. I’m just for some gun safe common-sense. I’m challenged by large capacity clips in urban centers, weapons of war sometimes outgunning the police. But otherwise, man, people have the right to bear arms. I got no ideological opposition to that at all.”

If you believe that, I’ve got a Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.

Here’s Gov. Newsom’s problem. We have the receipts. Heck, everyone has the receipts. The firearm industry hasn’t forgotten the time California Attorney General Rob Bonta – working for Gov. Newsom -“leaked” the personal information of every California concealed carry permit holder. Gov. Newsom’s self-professed affinity for the Second Amendment is about as hollow as former Vice President Kamala Harris’ attempt to side with gun owners by saying she owns a GLOCK handgun.

Perhaps Gov. Newsom thinks no one remembers his failed publicity stunt to nullify the Second Amendment with a proposed 28th Amendment. In 2023, Gov. Newsom wanted to export California-style gun control to the rest of the United States by proposing a “Right to Safety” – an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would strip Second Amendment rights from individuals and instead make the government the arbiter of which firearm “privileges” would be allowed. That would be recipe for disaster.

Townhall.com did the math for everyone who hasn’t been attempting to tally every gun control law Gov. Newsom has signed. Don’t feel bad for not keeping track. They’ve been coming at a dizzying pace. Since 2019, when he took office, he signed nearly 70 gun control laws. For someone who claims to respect Second Amendment rights, he’s got an odd way of demonstrating it.

Well, I mean, y’know, DUH. Don’t know who the hell Gruesome Newsome thinks he’s fooling here, but in reality it amounts to just another spectacular demonstration of the plain and simple truth fact, no matter what lies they may try to peddle to the contrary (for instance, “I’ve been an avid hunter my whole life!”), shitlib D卐M☭CRATs and the 2A DO NOT MIX. Never have, never will.

(Via Stephen)

Memezapoppin’!

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading Memezapoppin’!

From Kenny – The Real Reason for the Epstein Blowup

In a Daily comment Kenny uncovers the reason for the epstein blowup – trying to divert attention from the fantastic economic news. The Comment:

Last Friday it was reported that the Fed Gov ran a surplus for the month of June. I missed it then and saw it yesterday. I went to look at the report and the details.

But the lede was buried. Here’s some extraordinary facts.

For the past 4 months (Mar, Apr, May, June 2025), outlays aka Fed Spending is DOWN year over year compared to the same 4 months in 2024. When can you recall that happening? Given an inflation rate of 2.3% the Real Spending is down even more.

Revenues are UP over that same period.

So, the Deficit is already trending well downward. The last 2 months compared to last year it’s down 31%. From 418B to 290B. That’s not seasonally adjusted. At a 30% rate the deficit from last year of 1.9T could be 1.3T over the 12 months ending June 2026.

It’s still a lot, but that’s a vast improvement and he’s really just getting started. The Big Beautiful Law just kicked in, the Courts have been rebuked with their injunctions and the tariffs only hit a few months ago.

Don’t believe the FUD, it’s a sequel.
That’s why they’re trying to pivot to Epstein.

Don’t let them get away with it again. It’s why they released the scamVirus in the Trump first term.

Update_1:
Now he is free to focus on the things he needs to do to make America great again- the economy, jobs, GDP, bringing manufacturing back to the USA, tariffs, pushing Fed Chief Jerome Powell to resign, so we can get lower interest rates; getting rid of income taxes; ending the threat of WW3; sealing the border; expanding the mass deportation; getting rid of DEI in government, military, corporations and colleges; removing transgender brainwashing from our schools; getting boys out of girls sports events; and making elections honest again by getting Voter ID passed, preventing illegal aliens from voting, and removing illegal aliens from the census count.

Update_2:
According to a report by JustTheNews, Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and other high-level Obama-era operatives have been named in the investigation, which shows a coordinated criminal conspiracy to target political enemies, shield Democrat allies, and manipulate multiple presidential elections — from 2016 through 2024. But it gets better: The probe may now shift jurisdiction to Florida — thanks to none other than Special Counsel Jack Smith’s own raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Can you smell the FEAR in DC?

Update_3:

Per Kenny’s suggestion, my list of Trump Term 1 accomplishments. It’s not everything, just some of those that I thought important enough to be reminded of whenever some nutcase tried to pretend that Trump was unable to accomplish anything…

1) stopped ISIS cold
2) EO stopping the drug companies from charging medicare more than what they charged foreign countries
3) EO forcing hospitals to disclose their prices
4) Move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
5) ENERGY INDEPENDENCE for the first time in my lifetime of 70 years, and record low energy prices
6) Started no new wars
6A) Abraham Accords, bringing peace to the middle east instead of war
7) Elimination of regulations, required to eliminate 8 to add a new one
8) Cut Taxes across the board
9) Increased the individual tax credit eliminating the need to file more complicated returns
10) Started the space force, sorely needed today
11) Replaced NAFTA with an agreement better for American workers
12) Put tariffs on china, starting the process of moving American production out of the enemy’s land
13) Brought back massive amounts of money saved in foreign countries
14) Withdrew from the farce know as the Paris Climate Accords
15) Withdrew from the Iran deal
16) Increased the $$$ of the average family by over 5K
17) Started the process of fixing the VA
18) Increased the spending by other NATO countries
19) Killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
20) Created several million jobs, actual creation not bafflegab bullshit
21) Economic growth rates were going up, somewhere around 4% before the marxist killed the economy with the scam chinaVirus
22) Lowest rate of unemployment ever, across the board for blacks, hispanics, asians, veterans, etc.
23) Opened ANWAR and had the Keystone pipeline being constructed

There is much more of course.

That’s just a short list. Trump did this by himself, with little to no help from the republican party opposition from the republican party and the democrats. He did this while the deep state through the FBI, intelligence agencies, congress, and the DOJ were conducting illegal surveillance and investigations. But Trump didn’t falter, didn’t stop. He just kept on working.

No one else was capable of doing this, no one else has ever done this, no one else will.

The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Welcome to Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. New posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack


New Eyrie posts go up every Monday and Friday, although the time of day may (and most likely will) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: “Screamin’ meemie Monday!” Links to archived Golden Oldies are findable down at the bottom of each post.

Please do consider subscribing to The Eyrie, gang; it’s free, unless you’re feeling big-heartec enough to kick in for a paid sub. Either way, paying customer or freeloading looky-loo, an Eyrie subscription is a bargain at any price, a move you’ll won’t ever regret mking.

All subscribers receive email notification whenever each new post goes live, although CF management promises not to blow up your inbox with a bunch of junk mail. Latest Eyrie offering is getatable (yes, that’s really a word—trust me!) for one and all to read and enjoy totally free of charge, regardless of subscriber status. However, a paid sub is required to unlock commenting privileges—an almighty incentive to kick loose and chip in if ever there was one. Thanks, everybody!

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The incredible disappearing “client list”

Tonight’s Eyrie submission casts a jaundiced eye upon the Trump admin’s self-beclownment via unforced error concerning the too-conveniently phantasmagorical, now you see it-now you don’t Epstein client list. Coinky-dinkally enough, our bigly esteemed blog-colleague Ken Layne posts a bit of relevant meme-ology over at his crib. To wit:

 

Mo’ bettah.

The not-subtle, courteous-to-a-fault complaint tacitly made in that second meme above—using a sotto voce which reeks of hopelessness and despair as the realization sinks in at last: there will never be a reckoning for any of the well-connected frequent fliers on the Lolita Express—is sure to leave a powerfully bitter taste in the mouths of even the most placid, steadfastly unflappable Real Americans.

Those folks are a decent, justly proud albeit unassuming breed—endowed as individuals from birth, seemingly, with inexhaustible reserves of equanimity—whose interest in, patience for, and/or willingness to put up with ceaseless torrents of breathlessly gushing Hot Breaking News!!© reportage (despite the aforementioned equanimity) are in the main so grudgingly extended, greedily infinitesimal, and short-lived as to be undetectable using any method, process, or device known to modern science.

Or, to lay a-holt of a hoary, innocuous blogospherical catchphrase we’ve all heard a blue million times already and stand it on its head, so to speak:

This time, it AIN’T funny ‘cause it’s true.

Update! Looks like it is ON.

BONDI OR BONGINO: Bongino Won’t Remain At FBI If Bondi Keeps Job, Source Says
Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi have sparred over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Dan Bongino, the Deputy Director of the FBI, is threatening to leave the bureau if Attorney General Pam Bondi remains on the job, a source close to Bongino tells The Daily Wire.

Bongino is reportedly furious with Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which has led many to believe he could walk away from the job that he took in February. The source close to Bongino said that he’s effectively issued an ultimatum, saying he won’t work alongside Bondi.

Bongino left a lucrative career in broadcasting to take the job in the Trump administration. He was not present at the FBI on Friday, after a reported spat with the attorney general earlier this week over the Epstein situation.

The rift between Bongino and Bondi intensified on Wednesday, days after the Department of Justice announced there was no evidence to prove that child rapist Jeffrey Epstein had a client list, had blackmailed powerful people, or had been murdered. Bondi had promised to reveal major details in the case five months ago, when there were no massive revelations to bring forward.

The deputy FBI director, who raised questions about Epstein’s death before he was in the Trump administration, said in May that his review of the file and hours of video recording from Epstein’s jail proved that the child abuser committed suicide. FBI Director Kash Patel also said that the evidence the bureau has reviewed shows that Epstein was not murdered.

A source close to the Justice Department told The Daily Wire that Patel also wants Bondi gone, and that he would consider departing alongside Bongino. The source also said that Patel wants Bondi to unseal more documents.

I have to say, this whole shit-circus has left me mighty damned disappointed in Ms Bondi. Which, I hate that, actually; I had terrifically high hopes for that gal back when Trump first picked her for AG. Now, though? Not so much, sad to say.

Of course, we don’t know the whole story here, possibly never will. That said, though, I’m thinking Trump’s people are going to find it extremely tough to reconcile the fact that Bondi explicitly stated back in February that she had the client list sitting on her desk among a bunch of other heretofore unreleased material and that she’d be releasing the whole kit and kaboodle the following Monday, IIRC, with the current admin claims that there IS no client list; that there never WAS any client list; that all the hinky aspects of Epstein’s purported “suicide” never actually happened, etc.

So what goes on here, anyway? As pretty much everybody knows by now,  or should know at any rate, the clumsy “Epstein committed suicide” ploy didn’t pass the smell test; right from the beginning, there was evidence aplenty indicating something entirely Else, great interlocking. mutually-supporting heaps of it. Now, though, the Trump team tries to tell us that there’s “no evidence?”

Sorta calls to mind Praetorian Media’s continually repeated refrain, from mid-November 2020 on, sniffily dismissing “Trump’s baseless claims” of election jiggery-pokery, a rousing Halleluja Chorus of “no evidence” for fraud, tampering, ballot-box stuffing, phonus-balonus absentee/early ballots, &c—the list goes on from there, and it is by no means a short one.

Sorry, Mr President sir, but anybody who’s even half-heartedly paid attention to the Everest of clear, documentary evidence in support of contentions of massive, systemic fraud rife before, during, and after the 2020 Presidential “election” knows better.

This just might be the most unappetizing tidbit from the whole rancid, offputting shit-sandwich.

“In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it’s been getting a lot of attention because … I was asked a question about the ‘client list’ and my response was, ‘It’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well,” Bondi said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “That’s what I meant by that.”

During that same Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump blasted a reporter for asking Bondi about the Epstein case.

“That is unbelievable. … I mean I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this when we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas,” Trump said. “It just seems like a desecration.”

“Desecration,” my withered, baggy ass. You say you want to drain the Swamp? Well, I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate just how serious you really are about it than by shining a bright light upon the sloppily-concealed facts surrounding the murder, by Swamp rats, of one of their fellow Swamp-dwellers who had was too much on them for their own comfort.

Deny it all you want to; play along with the Deep State éminences grise to your heart’s content. It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans at this point—they still won’t trust you, they’ll never trust you. Before long, they’ll decide it’s necessary to remove the threat you represent to them in their own minds. This, they will assuredly do, or hire it done, rather, only next time it won’t be some cognitively-impaired, maladjusted teenage whackjob on whom the Secret Service and/or FBI “security” personnel will helpfully turn their backs and avert their gaze from; preposition ladders, rifles, and/or other essential equipment; unlock doors, switch off interior lighting, and close blinds/curtains. After all those preps are done, “security” will spend whatever time remains before the scheduled first pull of the trigger on shrugging off credible reports of suspicious persons, movements, and/or behavior given by alarmed locals who witnessed what was going down at firsthand, in real time.

No, no more of that amateur-hour clowning around. Next time, the contract will be offered to none but seasoned professionals, who will preferably have extensive military sniper training and field expertise. Afterwards, the shooter will police up the general AO—cigarette butts, candy/gum wrappers, boot-prints, empty water bottles, spent brass (assuming he didn’t just rig one of those fancy-schmancy brass-catcher thingamabobbers over his weapon’s ejection port before heading out for the field, thereby making his life a heck of a lot easier). This is NOT the sort of task on which a true professional would ever dream of doing less than a one hundred and ten percent perfect job; after all, it’s his own ass he’ll be saving (or endangering) by it. As such, he will leave no traces of his physical presence behind for investigators to find layer, nor will there be any slightest hint of his ever having been in the vicinity at all.

Unless something goes horribly awry, the shooter’s name will never be known, his true identity a fanatically guarded secret shared only betwixt the three to six FederalGovCo bureaucreeps behind the whole op, ie the small cabal of secret plotters responsible for choosing, recruiting, hiring, and briefing the members of the hit team (a shooter, a spotter, a cpl of gear-humpers who will later double as back-watchers and perimeter guards—probably four (4) support personnel all told, five at most, the fewer the better. As an important codicil from the Hells Angels’ charter says: three can keep a secret only if two are dead).

The treasonous original conspirators will pay their SpecWar field operatives with cold, hard cash money, half in advance, half on completion of their mission: wrinkly, crinkly, tattered, battered, well-traveled US greenbux with nonsequential serial numbers in various denominations ranging from one-hundred dollar notes, then fifties, all the way down to a smattering of lowly double-sawbucks, said currency having been passed along, around, through, and among hands beyond counting.

Once the operators have been paid off in full, all involved parties will disappear like a thin fog wafting off the surface of a lake, this spectral condensation quickly cooking off into nothingness by the heat of the rising summer sun—a damp, chilly mist that vanishes faster than a cockroach caught square in the middle of the kitchen floor when you turn on the light. Same-same with the assassination-provoking, power-obsessed cock-a-roaches on two legs who, if they’re anything like as smart as their more-admirable Neopteran cousins, will likewise vanish, never to be seen or heard tell of again by we lower-caste denizens of the overt world.

Believe it, Mr President: you’ll never know what hit you.

JAZZ cat!

Actually, I’d call this number from jazz/R&B/pop/rock legend Ben Sidran more blues than it is anything else, but that’s probably just me. See what you think, bearing closely in mind Rule #1 with all things musical: Always go with what your heart tells ya.

The brilliantly understated piano and guitar solos work together with the likewise spare but quite tasteful fills from the tremolo-soaked Stratocaster and that perfect Hammond B3/Leslie pairing to juice this modest piece right on up to genuine “earwig” status. Sidran’s laid-back vocal stylings are just the icing on a VERY tasty cake; he and his backing musicians play so far behind the beat here that they’re in serious danger of having it come around behind to lap their asses.

Sidran has been kicking out the jams since about 1960 or so, winning his spurs with an insanely wide variety of fellow artists. To wit:

Ben Hirsh Sidran (born August 14, 1943) is an American jazz and rock keyboardist, producer, label owner, and music writer. Early in his career he was a member of the Steve Miller Band and is the father of Grammy-nominated musician, composer and performer Leo Sidran.

Sidran was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was raised in Racine, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961, where he became a member of The Ardells with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs. When Miller and Scaggs left Wisconsin for the West Coast, Sidran stayed behind to earn a degree in English literature. After graduating in 1966, he enrolled at the University of Sussex, England, to pursue a PhD. While in England, he was a session musician for Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, and Charlie Watts.

Sidran joined Steve Miller as keyboardist and songwriter on recording projects, appearing on the albums Brave New World, Your Saving Grace, Number 5, and Recall the Beginning…A Journey from Eden. He produced Recall the Beginning and co-wrote the hit song “Space Cowboy.” In 1988, he produced Miller’s jazz album Born 2B Blue. He has also produced albums for Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Rickie Lee Jones, and Diana Ross.

Sidran returned to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1971 and has spent most of his life there. He taught courses at the university (on the business of music) and beginning in 1981 hosted jazz radio programs for NPR (including the Peabody Award-winning Jazz Alive series) and TV programs for VH1 (where his New Visions series in the early 1990s won the Ace Award). While hosting that series, Sidran frequently expressed his desire to “demystify the world of jazz; jazz musicians are just like the rest of us, only more so.”

As a musician and a producer he has released over 35 solo recordings.

And even that catalog of achievement, remarkable as it is, is but the tip of the Ben Sidran iceberg. There’s a way-cool backstory for the above embed, specifically the title shared by both song and album.

The original idea for Rainmaker was to throw a party in a Paris recording studio in honor of my 80th birthday. I saw it as a way to celebrate the survival of so many things, including myself, a life without borders, and my friendship with so many musicians abroad.

I imagined that it would be a blues record, so I began by writing some original blues songs and revisiting some of my favorite classic blues too. But as often happens, what we discover is not necessarily what we were looking for, and in this case I found myself writing songs that felt dystopian, not all of them traditional blues forms, and not what you might imagine as “party music”.

But by the time we finished recording at Studio de Meudon with new and old friends from America and France, the record had found its own sound. Somewhere between tragic and celebratory, shaggy and polished, broken and healed, I guess you could say that Rainmaker really is all about surviving in the modern world.

“Just like the rest of us, only more so.” Yeah, you sure said yourself a mouthful there, Ben.

Memezapoppin’!

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading Memezapoppin’!

There’s good rockin’ tonight

Another blast from the musical past, this one starring the incredible Leslie West singing and playing lead guitar on his own original classic, which revolves around probably the tastiest rock guitar riff of all time.

I will forever be haunted by two (2) terrible regrets from my NYC years: 1) Never checking out Leslie West at any of the frequent small-club gigs he played in NYC aprés his illustrious career fronting Mountain, and 2) Likewise never troubling my sorry butt to go out and pay due and proper homage to pioneering guitar icon Les Paul at his own weekly NYC appearances at the Iridium, to which premises proud Les Paul owners from all over the world would tote their axes and form up in surprisingly orderly out-the-door-and-down-the-block queues to have Les personally sign the back of the body, the top, the pickguard, the back of the neck, the headstock, basically any surface roomy enough for him to write his name—no-charge autograph sessions on which Paul graciously spent long, wearing hours after wrapping up his set, making nary a murmur of complaint the whole while.

For further info and bare-knuckles analysis on how profoundly the Leo Fender/Les Paul competition reshaped our world, do yourself a HUGE favor and check out this tome: “The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll.” I’ve had the ePub version on my phone ever since it first became available on Amazon Kindle, and have read it e-cover to e-cover way more than just once. If a well-written chronicle of the little-known, behind the scenes story of the guitars, the amplifiers, the brilliant men who created them, and how the fortuitously-timed confluence of those three factors transformed a musical genre derided in its infancy as just another teenybopper fad which would have no lasting significance into a cultural juggernaut whose powerful, pervasive influence gives every indication of being permanent is of even passing interest to you, you won’t go wrong by giving “The Birth of Loud” a read your own self, I assure you.

I offer no excuses for my unforgivable lassitude re: those aforementioned two regrets. Another fascinating chapter from the Mountain man’s eventful biography:

The story  of Leslie West’s jam session with Jimi Hendrix
The guitarist Leslie West was a fundamental part of Mountain‘s sound, one of the most influential bands from the late 60s and early 70s. With famous songs like “Mississippi Queen” and “Never In My Life” they were the American response to the incredible Hard Rock movement that was happening in the United Kingdom.

During his career the guitar player had the chance to meet many incredible musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, who died in 1970 at the age of 27.

West recalled this incredible experience in an interview with Classic Rock, after releasing his final album “Soundcheck” in 2015. “Jimi came into this nightclub in New York at, like, one in the morning. I happened to be there to see Steve Miller, who had finished and left. I’d already met Jimi in the studio at the Record Plant – we were doing Climbing! and he was doing Band Of Gypsys – so we knew each other. He came over to me and said, ‘Wanna jam, man?’ Just like that. We didn’t have any equipment there, but we had a loft about 13 blocks away, in a real deserted part of Manhattan, 36th Street, 11th Avenue.”

“So Jimi said, ‘Well, let’s get in my limo.’ My road manager lived in the loft, so we woke him up at two in the morning. He came down and opened the door and who’s standing there but Jimi Hendrix. He nearly had a heart attack. We went upstairs and we jammed, Jimi was playing bass and I was playing guitar. We just seemed to hit it off. But I think Jimi could have played with anybody. He just loved playing, and he was so cool as a guy. That’s my favourite memory of him.”

West covered a few Hendrix tracks during his career, including “Red House”. Mountain was formed in Long Island, New York back in 1969 by Leslie West, Felix Pappalardi, Steve Knight and N. D. Smart.

The article includes a video embed of said “Red House” cover—always one of my absolute favorite Hendrix tunes, which if I remember right may have been a cover its own self, an old blues chestnut copped by Hendrix and reimagined as only James Marshall Hendrix could bring off. Although this post says I’m all wet on that one.

Update! Oh, what the heck was I thinking, not going ahead and including this one also after mentioning it in such glowing terms?

This is the version I grew up listening to, off the album I had when I was but a wee bairn. There are lots of excellent live versions out there too, but I still like this rendition most. For one thing, having played and replayed the song myself so danged many times, on record and guitar both, hearing Jimi stray from the exact notes I’m accustomed to hearing him play during the opening solo is the aural equivalent of a Sykes-Fairbairn knife through the eardrum at this point.

Which, at least in all the Yew Toob vids of live “Red House” performances I’ve seen to date, the man never played that bit the same way twice; it’s different each and every time.

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Memezapoppin’!

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday (except on those occasions when I completely lose track of what day it is and end up running it on Thursday, not that that ever happens—a-HEM!) meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading Memezapoppin’!

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