Twangin’ and Bangin’

BOO!

Posted on October 31, 2022October 31, 2022 by Mike

Happy Halloween to all CF Lifers everywhere, and to all the ships at sea. Buck Throckmorton posts up a good ‘un in celebration of the day.

Now, one from my dear departed friend Ronnie Dawson.

Though they share the same title, near as I can tell the two songs have no connection with one another: not chord progressions, not tempo or rhythm, not lyrics, not nothin’. But now that I brought up Uncle Ronnie (that’s what I called him, at his insistence, which I found quite flattering), no way am I gonna pass up the opportunity to post this one.

Now as fate would have it, I attended the Conyne taping along with a large contingent of the NYC-RAB scenesters, and a good time was had by all, believe you me. Backing Ronnie up is the absolute best rockabilly combo I’ve ever seen or heard tell of: High Noon, a trio from Austin Texas, with the welcome addition of the brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous Lisa Pankratz pounding the skins.

Ronnie always gave a good, energetic performance onstage, but out of a thousand and one Dawson shows I either saw or played on, I never, ever saw him as charged up as he was that incredible night. Not just Ronnie, but the whole band was very nearly sending sparks flying off their bodies, they were all so excited and exhilarated. The audience was, too, even Conan himself. Take especial note of what Ronnie does at 3:34 in the vid: he’s waving his arm around over his head at the NYC-RAB crew. We were all up dancing in the aisles, and he was beckoning us to come right down front to dance closer to him nearer to the stage.

After the performance, when he got over to sit on the couch and chat a bit with Conan, first thing out of O’Brien’s mouth was a stunned but amused “My GOD, what have you DONE to these people?” Watch the vid again, you can just about see the sheet-lightning emanating from Ronnie and the band. It was fucking shit-hot, that’s what. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it, in all my years of rockin’ and rollin’.

When the taping was done, me and my gf at the time met Ronnie, Lisa, and the High Noon crew up at their Midtown hotel and went out bar-hopping to celebrate this historic triumph for real rock and roll. We hit several Midtown dive bars—yes, there are a few, but you gotta look for ’em—until airtime for the Conan show started getting close (the taping was at 5:30). Then we began to ask each bartender at wherever we were at the time if they would pretty please turn the TV to the right channel so we could watch the show, since several of us were gonna be on it. After being turned down by three (3) assholes who preferred watching some goddamned sportsball event instead, somebody (wasn’t me) suggested that we all go downtown to cram ourselves into my apartment to watch.

And so we did. Mine and Jen’s less-than-palatial crib was more crowded and smoky even than it usually was, which is saying something; the drinks were flowing freely, we had the TV cranked to window-rattling volume, and the laughter, shouting, and general hullaboo was boisterous enough to almost drown THAT out.

We celebrated for a few more hours, watching the show over and over on the VCR, and then everyone piled into my rattletrap E350 van for the drive back uptown to drop the band off at their hotel. As we jounced and shook up the perpetually-under-construction FDR drive at a leisurely 80mph, a fear-stricken Lisa shouted from the back, “Mike, I think you’ve been in New York too long!”

It was without a doubt the most wonderful night of my entire life, and I wasn’t even onstage.

The Last Man Standing stands no more

Posted on October 29, 2022October 30, 2022 by Mike

As you would assume, I am indeed working on my Jerry Lee Lewis remembrance/obit. There’s a couple of documents I’m trying to get my hands on for it, which apparently do not exist on the innarnuts anywhere. In fact, one of them I know for sure is in the sole and exclusive possession of our former manager, who as far as I know is the only guy who has a copy of the thing. Unfortunately, Mike isn’t at all web-savvy, so I doubt he has the means to scan it and send it over to me, or would know how even if he did. We’ll see about that, I suppose. More coming, as and when…

Update! YES!!! Got ’em both, I can hardly believe it. Okay, folks, stay tuned, this is gonna be good.

Updated update! Okay, here we go. Somewhat atypically for these rock and roll-icon obits of mine, I did NOT ever get to meet or hang out with Jerry Lee Lewis, to my great disappointment. We DID have a show scheduled with him once, at the legendary Tramps in NYC. To wit:

Big night — *Would’ve been our first Really Big Show at Tramp’s, but alas, t’was not to be*

What showed up in lieu of The Killer that night was a doctor’s note (those with older eyes can click here to embiggen):

Mind, now, this was the selfsame Dr Nick who was widely despised among fans of the King as the Man Who Killed Elvis, the guy who for years had signed off on whatever self-prescribed drugs Elvis was of a mind to indulge in that particular evening. He’s also the real-life personage from whence The Simpsons‘ Dr Nick Rivera got his name:

The character design of Dr. Nick is based somewhat on Gábor Csupó, of Klasky Csupo studios, who was originally from Hungary—the animators mistakenly believed Hank Azaria was impersonating Gabor, when in fact the voice was actually a bad imitation of Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy.

His name came from George Nichopoulos, nicknamed Dr. Nick, Elvis Presley‘s personal physician who was indicted on 14 counts of over-prescribing drugs to Presley and several other patients in the years following Presley’s death. While Nichopoulos was acquitted of those charges, his medical license was revoked by the Tennessee medical authorities in 1993.

And there you have it. When that fateful note from Dr Nick finally did show up at Tramps instead of Jerry Lee it scared me half to death, because Terry Dunne, the owner and founder of Tramp’s, asked me right away if we’d be willing to go on and take the whole show anyhow, three sets instead of the agreed-upon two. I mean, who wouldn’t be scared, right? The joint was packed with people who had paid top buck to see Jerry Lee Lewis, only to learn they’d be getting a full night of the lowly if up-and-coming Belmont Playboys in his stead? My God, I thought, these people are gonna KILL us!

To the contrary, it all went quite well; we were warmly received, the dreaded mass stampede for the exits when it was announced that Lewis wouldn’t be appearing never happened, and we did a good show despite the jacked-up Fear Factor.

No, I never did get to meet the Killer, but he still wound up being one of my biggest personal influences nonetheless. That came about the night of a different show a few years later, when the BPs were to play at the old Park Elevator in CLT, situated in the century-old, decaying and decrepit Park Elevator building, before it burned up, was refurbished, and turned into condos like all the other old buildings around here.

Now, the Park Elevator was notoriously rickety in places, but as it happens there was a low entryway that led directly out onto the stage. In those days, I was the proud owner of a 71 Shovelhead FLH, fully tricked out with, among other things, a suicide shift and 20-inch apes sitting atop 5-inch risers:

Wheels — *Me, my beloved 61 Galaxy, and the ol’ Shovel*

So naturally, I conceived the brilliant notion that hey, wouldn’t it be just the most awesome thing ever if I rode the bike onto the stage when we went on? My friend Joe was also there on his hotrod Evo Sporty, and was quite eager to join me in risking my fool neck to ride his Harley out onto the stage through that tiny, low door also. So low was said portal, in fact, that I had to yank my apehangers back and down to even get through it; the damned bars were way too tall to go in as they were.

But no matter; such a minor obstacle could never be sufficient to deter a dedicated Jerry Lee wannabe like myself. Right before we were to do our dirty deed, I asked one of the proprietors of the Park Elevator, Tim Blong, if he thought the stage would be able to support all that weight without collapsing into rubble and killing us all. He shrugged eloquently, muttered, “Dunno, man, maybe?” and grinned. Joe turned to me with a slightly troubled look on his mug, as if to ask, “Well, we doin’ this or what?”

Which was when I asked myself what would come to be the eternal question for me regarding any outrageous, dangerous, or just plain stupid stunt I was thinking about attempting to pull off: What Would Jerry Lee Do?

The answer, of course, was always the same, being eminently obvious given the Killer’s hard-won reputation for bold, daredevil antics. We fired up the scoots, rode through that tiny door with our heads ducked way down low, put the bikes on the kickstands one on each side of the stage, and the show went on, as it always and forever must. A few fun facts about the Killer:

The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at his Mississippi home, south of Memphis, Tennessee, representative Zach Farnum said in a release. The news came two days after the publication of an erroneous TMZ report of his death, later retracted.

Of all the rock rebels to emerge in the 1950s, few captured the new genre’s attraction and danger as unforgettably as the Louisiana-born piano player who called himself “The Killer.”

Tender ballads were best left to the old folks. Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made the fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show,” chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.

“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. But there was no pure rock ’n ’roll before Jerry Lee Lewis kicked in the door,” a Lewis admirer once observed. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.

Heh. Pure, 24-karat Jerry Lee right there. Nobody ever saw his like before, and we never will again. Y’all might be familiar with the story of the night Lewis rammed his Cadillac into the front gate at Graceland, perhaps. Lewis, drunk as a boiled owl, was hauled off by the gendarmerie hollering at Elvis to come on out like a man so’s they could finally settle who the REAL King Of Rock And Roll was once and for all. More:

Lewis had a run of top 10 country hits between 1967-70, and hardly mellowed at all. He performed drinking songs such as “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)”, the roving eye confessions of “She Still Comes Around” and a dry-eyed cover of a classic ballad of abandonment, “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye.” He had remained popular in Europe and a 1964 album, “Live at the Star Club, Hamburg,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest concert records.

A 1973 performance proved more troublesome: Lewis sang for the Grand Ole Opry and broke two longstanding rules — no swearing and no non-country songs.

“I am a rock and rollin’, country-and-western, rhythm and blues-singin’ motherf—–,” he told the audience.

Lewis married seven times, and was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while suing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. Within a year, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of physical abuse and infidelity. He countersued, but both petitions eventually were dropped. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III.

Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973. Lewis also had two daughters, Phoebe and Lori Leigh, and is survived by his wife Judith.

His finances were also chaotic. Lewis made millions, but he liked his money in cash and ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. When he began welcoming tourists in 1994 to his longtime residence near Nesbit, Mississippi — complete with a piano-shaped swimming pool — he set up a 900 phone number fans could call for a recorded message at $2.75 a minute.

There’s always more to say about the inimitable Jerry Lee Lewis, and there will always be too. I’m sad he’s gone, at the same time I can hardly believe he didn’t die on us thirty or forty years ago, buck-wild as he was. The Killer grabbed life by the scruff of its neck and lived the ever-lovin’ hell out of it, from start to finish. With that, enjoy a so-called “lost track” recorded back in the year I was born, 1960, that’s long been Number One with a bullet on my own personal Jerry Lee Lewis hit parade, complete with a bit of studio chatter from the Killer himself.

That patter beforehand has actually been bowdlerized somewhere along the way. In the version I had, the track begins with a runner in the control room hollering to the Killer, asking what he wants to eat. Jerry Lee responds, “What am I gon’ eat? I’d like to eat a little pussy if you got some,” followed by an extremely salacious sluuurrp sound and a smacking of the lips. Jerry then laughs that great laugh of his, and yells “STONED!!!” After that is when the “That’ll be the only place you can play it” part included in the vid comes in.

And then the one and only Killer hits that big, fat power-chord—Jerry Lee was the only guy I ever heard of capable of producing power-chords on a piano, which formed the basis of his whole playing style—and we’re off and running. “Birthday Cake” also features probably his best-ever solo, a pounding, pulsating, joyous break that’s a thing of wonder every time I hear it. And I’ve heard it a thousand times.

The great Jerry Lee Lewis was a genuine American original: a rowdy, relentless Southern roughneck who neither knew nor cared one whit about such trivial irrelevancies as giving up, giving in, backing off, or calming the fuck down. He lived the way he played, WTFO and balls to the wall. May the Good Lord bless and keep his indomitable, irrepressible spirit forever.

Good ol’ Franky

Posted on October 29, 2022October 29, 2022 by Mike

Since I used up “Monster Mash” and “Haunted House” already, the two greatest Halloween songs EVAR, allow me to present another selection which I think is appropriate for the occasion.

Yes, there’s a drum solo—two, actually, even one of which is a big, fat strike against any live rendition—and it weighs in at a hefty 9:18 long, much of which is Edgar Winter just basically making a bunch of goddamn racket on the synth towards the end. But it’s still pretty good overall, if you can put up with those two highly objectionable things.

On the plus side, you really get a sense from it of just how short Rick Derringer is.

Believe it or not, I came across another live version from 2007 with truly terrific sound quality, but 1) it was over twelve (seriously, twelve!!!) minutes long, and 2) Rick Derringer ain’t in it. So, y’know, screw all that noise. In a manner of speaking.

If it ain’t good, then what good is it?

Posted on October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by Mike

Dennis Prager has really pressed one my buttons with this one.

The Left — meaning progressives, not necessarily liberals — loathes the fact that conservativism preserves the past. That is why “change” is one of the most cherished words in the Left’s vocabulary. There is nothing more threatening or, perhaps more important, boring, to a leftist than preserving the past. “New” and “change” provide leftists meaning and excitement.

As one involved in the music world (I periodically conduct orchestras), I have always been struck by how important it is to orchestra CEOs, music professors and especially music critics that as much “new” music be played as possible. If a conductor prefers to program the classics, he is deemed a reactionary, while conductors who regularly program new music are heroes in the music world.

Music critics rarely discuss the question that preoccupies conservatives: Is this new piece of music good, let alone nearly as good as the classics? What matters to music critics is that the music is new — and, these days, that it was composed by a nonwhite person, ideally a woman.

Conservatives ask whether new music is good enough to warrant being played. They are preoccupied with excellence, not with newness or “change.”

This difference between conservatives and leftists/progressives applies to virtually every realm of life.

It explains the decision of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of English to remove a large mural of Shakespeare and replace it with a mural of a gay female poet of color. No one in his or her right mind thinks that this poet is the equal of Shakespeare. But the members of the Penn English Department are not concerned with literary excellence. Shakespeare’s picture wasn’t replaced because his writing was surpassed. He was replaced because he was male, white and straight. And most of all, he was replaced because he was old. He is an “old (or dead) white European male,” in the words of the Left.

Change and newness are so vital to leftists that a progressive who cared first and foremost about excellence would cease to be a progressive.

Early this past summer, I sat down and composed a lengthy e-mail diatribe for the local classical-music radio station on this very topic, although I never did bother to hit “Send.” Said station, WDAV, is attached to Davidson College, and the hosting staff is shot through with kneejerk Progtards who are not at all shy about making their political leanings perfectly clear on-air.

The hell of it is, DAV is hands-down the best classical station I’ve ever listened to, among all the stations in all the cities I’ve lived in over the years. They don’t play nearly as much of the wretchedly tedious “new classical” dreck the stations in NYC, ATL, and New Orleans muck up their airwaves with. As far as their programming selection goes, DAV is, umm, sweet music to my ears.

Yeah, I know. Sorry, couldn’t help myself there. Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful, aiiight?

Anyhoo, I listen to DAV pretty much all day and night, and enjoy it tremendously, the exception being the ever-winsome Rachel Stewart’s Sunday morning show, “Biscuits and Bach.” It’s devoted exclusively to the Baroque composers, see, and Baroque aggravates me like bamboo shoots under the fingernails. Verily, I do despise that shit. Well, Scarlatti I like a lot; same-same for the great composers for guitar at the fag-end of the era like Giuliani, Boccherini, and Paganini*.

Bach, Handel, all the rest, though? Humbug, I say!

Over just this past year or thereabouts, as if to intentionally annoy me further still beyond the occasional not-so-sly digs at Trump from the aforementioned hosts, the station has put several new programs into the regular rotation, all of them exercises in drooling PC.

One in particular focuses on “marginalized composers,” mainly females, who have been unfairly short-shrifted because you fiendish classical fans are so goddamned MISOGYNIST you refuse to listen to the flavor-of-the-month LGBTQZRWNmXXX Composers of Color, damn your eyes, despite their all CLEARLY being the equals of Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin rolled together into one awesome wad of talent and inspiration.

Another gruesome offering, airing a couple afternoons a week at 2, I think it is, lionizes unknown Neegrow composers as the put-upon musical saints they all are, unjustly oppressed by De White Man because RACISM!!!, you rotten BASTARDS.

Then there’s Concierto, a show which I hesitate to lump in with the others, because it’s actually quite damned good and I like it a lot.

Concierto is a weekly program of classical music presented in Spanish and in English. The program features music by Latin American and Spanish composers and musicians. With Concierto, WDAV extends a welcoming hand to the fastest growing ethnic group in the Carolinas, while also seeking to introduce new listeners to the pleasures of classical music.

Concierto es un programa seminal de música clásica presentada en español e ingles. El programa cuenta la música clásica por compositores y músicos latinoamericanos y españoles. Con Concierto, WDAV extiende una mano de bienvenida al grupo étnico que está creciendo más rápido en las Carolinas, y a la misma vez también buscando a introducir nuevos oyentes a los placeres de la música clásica.

Spanish translation included above because of course it was.

These shows, plus a couple others I’ve labored mightily to put out of my mind, undermine their own raison d’etre by confirming that skin color, sex, and/or political opinion make seriously piss-poor criteria for judging compositional ability. Trust me, if these over-entitled hacks have indeed been “marginalized,” then they all came by it honest, and richly deserve to be. I endure these shows by the skin of my gritted teeth, and can say with no little authority that the “music” these talentless tyros are putting out is truly the pits: screechy, skrawky, aimlessly atonal clappa-trappa devoid of any semblance of melody, coherence, or worth. It is literally excruciating to listen to. Which, believe me, you shouldn’t. Nobody should.

But hey, it’s New, it’s Nonwhite, it’s Transgressive—for your standard-issue liberal dumbass, it checks all the necessary boxes, so what’s not to like? What it assuredly is NOT, is good. Not by any standard for “good” I can recognize or endorse, it ain’t.

So much for the outdated stereotype of classical-music mavens as stuffy, rigid, ultra-conservative old gits who poot dust and cobwebs; wear monocles, cummerbunds, and spats, even at home; and lounge about in their fancy-schmancy home “libraries” or Gentlemens Clubs gassing on about the lamentable state of the Modern World, to the eternal irritation of their long-suffering manservants. It just ain’t so anymore, if it ever even was. Nowadays, classical music-lovers are all yuppie-puppy standard-issue shitlibs: affluent, self-absorbed, smug, and entirely insufferable. Nice thing is, it makes all that beseeching and imploring for donations during the annual Fall Fundraiser so easy to ignore without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt over it.

*A bit late for Baroque on a couple of those, I know. In Scarlatti’s case, he’s generally considered to be the “bridge” between the Baroque and Classical periods, much the way Beethoven is thought of as being the same between Classical and Romantic. So there.

RIP Robert Gordon

Posted on October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by Mike

Do I have stories about this guy? Oh, you just better bet I do.

Robert Gordon, Rockabilly Revival Icon, Dies at 75
Over his career, Gordon released more than 20 albums and helped usher in a rockabilly resurgence in the 1970s and ’80s.

Rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, whose albums with guitar greats Link Wray and Chris Spedding helped solidify his place in rock history and carry the genre over several decades, died Tuesday (Oct. 18) at Don Greene Hospice in New York City following a diagnosis of leukemia, according to a Facebook post by his label Cleopatra Records. He was 75.

Born in Bethesda, Maryland, Gordon was drawn to rock ‘n’ roll after he heard Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” at age nine. He soon dug into the music of Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochrane and others ’50s greats and cut his first recording at 17 singing with a band called The Confidentials. His career ramped up after he relocated to New York City and joined the punk band Tuff Darts (which can be heard on the 1976 album Live At CBGBs alongside tracks by Mink DeVille, Sun Ra and others).

In 1977, Gordon cut his debut “solo” album, Robert Gordon With Link Wray, and followed with several others, including 1978’s Fresh Fish Special (with Wray), which also includes Presley’s famed background singers The Jordanaires and Bruce Springsteen, who played on Gordon’s rendition of the Springsteen-penned track “Fire.” An ad in Billboard that ran on March 11, 1978, read, in part: “Robert Gordon, the new voice of Rock and Roll, and Link Wray, the legendary guitarist, are together again! FRESH FISH SPECIAL follows their red hot first album – and it’s a killer! Bruce Springsteen wrote a song for it. Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Jack Scott are faithfully remembered in it.”

In 1979, Gordon released Rock Billy Boogie, which peaked at No. 106 on the Billboard 200. That was quickly followed by 1980’s Bad Boy and 1981’s Are You Gonna Be The One, which included the single “Someday, Someway,” which peaked at No. 76 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1982, Gordon ventured into acting, co-starring in outlaw biker flick The Loveless opposite Willem Dafoe. Gordon can also be seen performing with his band in a 1981 skit for Canadian sketch comedy show SCTV, in which he’s mistaken for astronaut Gordon Cooper.

As you may have guessed from my opener above, the BPs have a long, somewhat sordid history with Gordon. We played with him as supporting act several times, both in NYC and in Finland, resulting in my having a fair bit of dirt I could dish on ol’ Robert, but ain’t gonna. Instead, a few pics of us from our very first time working with him, at the legendary and now sadly-defunct music venue Tramps.

RIP — *Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding, shot by me from the wings at Stage Right*

After the show — *Green room group shot of both bands, after the show*

SCHWEEET! — *Why we pick up a guitar in the first place; no idea what her name was, didn’t care*

And there you have it, folks. Robert certainly did have a way of picking guitar talent; over the years, he worked with Spedding most, a brilliant player who also turned out to be a truly sweet, humble, and all-around nice man. That first show, Spedding borrowed a 9-volt battery from me for his tuner pedal, and actually returned the damned thing to me without even being asked—and believe me, that NEVER happens. Not just Chris, but Robert also had the peerless Danny Gatton in his onstage stable for a few years, as well as bona fide rock and roll icon Link Wray.

So yeah, rest easy, Robert Gordon. A top-notch singer, blessed with a deep, resonant voice and an excellent range. We had our run-ins over the years, as can happen sometimes in showbiz, but none of that matters now. May your troubadour’s heart and soul find everlasting peace.

Skynyrd and DeSantis kick out the Southern jams

Posted on October 20, 2022October 20, 2022 by Mike

Some of you may remember when I posted on a new Van Zant brothers tune celebrating “Sweet Florida” and its governor not too terribly long ago.

Well, don’t look now, but the other shoe has officially dropped.

Watch: Ron DeSantis Makes Surprise Appearance at Lynyrd Skynyrd Concert, Crowd Chants ‘USA!’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made a surprise appearance at a recent Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Hollywood, Florida, where the stunned crowd erupted in loud applause and chanted “USA!”

DeSantis appeared onstage with his wife, Casey, and their children, during the band’s show Sunday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Lynyrd Skynyrd has made no secret of its admiration of De Santis.

Earlier this year, lead singer Johnny Van Zant and his brother, Donny Van Zant, released a new single dedicated to the governor titled “Sweet Florida.”

The song includes the lyrics: “You can take it to the bank, he don’t care what Brandon thinks at the White House / He’s fighting for the right to keep our state free / Well he’s taking on the swamp and he’s calling out Dr. Fauci / He’s the only one fighting for you and me.”

Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has reportedly announced that the Jacksonville band has donated $100,000 to help those affected by Hurricane Ian, with the amount matched by the Seminole tribe.

A hat tip and a hearty “good on ya, fellas” to all involved. I know some folks don’t quite trust DeSantis; certainly, he ain’t perfect, just like all the rest of us ain’t. But speaking strictly for myself, barring some truly monumental betrayal, this immortal quote alone guarantees I’ll always love the guy: “I will not, Joe, and you can go fuck yourself.”

The Louvin Brothers

Posted on October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 by Mike

So in a conversation with my mom, who considers herself a country music devotee, an astonishing gap in her musical education came shamefully to light: she had never heard of the Louvin Brothers, AT. ALL. Needless to say, I straightaway raced over to YouTube so as to put her back in the good graces of the Lord again. To wit:

The Louvin Brothers story is a fascinating one, which is true of a great number of legendary country artists from the 50s and 60s Golden Age of the genre.

The Louvin Brothers were an American musical duo composed of brothers Ira (April 21, 1924 – June 20, 1965) and Charlie (July 7, 1927 – January 26, 2011) Louvin (né Loudermilk). The brothers are cousins to John D. Loudermilk, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member.

The brothers wrote and performed country, bluegrass and gospel music. Ira played mandolin and generally sang lead vocal in the tenor range, while Charlie played rhythm guitar and offered supporting vocals in a lower pitch. They helped popularize the vocal technique of close harmony in country and country-rock.

After becoming regulars at the Grand Ole Opry and scoring a string of hit singles in the late 1950s and early ’60s, the Louvin Brothers broke up in 1963 due in large part to Charlie growing tired of Ira’s addictions and reckless behavior. Ira died in a traffic accident in 1965. They were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, and Charlie died of cancer in 2011. Rolling Stone ranked the Louvin Brothers No. 4 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.

As a great many brother- and/or sister-duos (think the Everly Brothers, just to name one example) seem to have in common, Charlie and Ira could not possibly have been more different in terms of character and personality and thus, as with Don and Phil Everly, the boys didn’t get along worth a damn. While both the brothers were devoutly Christian, steeped in the teachings of their Southern Baptist faith, Ira was something of a hellraiser nonetheless, with a serious bent towards boozing, brawling, and chasing those wild, wild women. Charlie, for his part, was much more conservative, quiet, and straitlaced.

Which makes Ira’s story the more interesting of the two, at least for me.

In 1963, fed up with Ira’s drinking and abusive behavior, Charlie started a solo career, and Ira also went on his own.

Ira died on June 20, 1965, at the age of 41. He and his fourth wife, Anne Young, were on the way home from a performance in Kansas City when they came to a section of construction on Highway 70 outside of Williamsburg, Missouri where traffic had been reduced down to one lane. A drunken driver struck their car head-on, and both Ira and Anne were killed instantly. At the time, a warrant for Ira’s arrest had been issued on a DUI charge.

How ironic, that a man with his own LE want for DUI should get snuffed in a head-on crash with…a drunk driver.

After the tragic split that ended the Louvin Brothers as a brother-brother singing duo for good, Charlie went on to have significant success as a solo artist. This next selection (from 1968, I believe, three years after his brother’s demise) is one I consider to be probably the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, in any musical genre.

Gorgeous, plangent vocal harmonies; a real earwig of a guitar riff; a forlorn, plaintive lyrical narrative that penetrates the heart so deeply it actually, literally hurts to hear—man, if THAT ain’t country music, I sure don’t know what might be.

As it happens, up until The Sugar™ rendered my entire life all pear-shaped for me, I had a side-project yclept the Parodi Kings with two of my perennial partners in musical crime: Tom “Mookie” Brill, and one of my oldest and dearest friends, known here in the CF comments section as simply “brack.” Also as it happens, the Parodis regularly performed both of the above Louvins classics. I suspect they might be findable on YT someplace or other, but ain’t gonna go trying to dig ’em up right now myself because reasons.

Any interested parties should try poking around on Eric Benson’s YT channel, if he has one; he’s a friend of ours who for several years there took down every one of our shows via videocam, and made some really terrific, high-quality recordings too. If you do decide to go a-hunting, be sure to watch our version of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath. That one makes me giggle to this very day, I swear it does. Take my word for it, folks, you haven’t truly lived until you’ve heard that song played on the doghouse bass.

In the mood

Posted on October 14, 2022October 14, 2022 by Mike

I know it might be a mite early to start in with the Halloween stuff, but I still want to post these because I just love them soooo much. First up, a solid gold seasonal chestnut from The Other Wicked Pickett.

Next, another classic, this one from The Other Gene Simmons.

Finally, this one isn’t really a Halloweeny tune, except for the spooky werewolf howl that kicks things off.

Seeing as how, as I’ve said here plenty of times over the years, the great Richie Blackmore is something of a God to me, I just HAD to include this one.

This H-ween stuff reminds me that somewhere around this place, I have an illo provided to me by Coop, another true great, especially for use in my annual Halloween theme-conversion, a practice I’ve abandoned in recent years. I need to see if I can’t resurrect it this year; gonna require some jiggery-pokery, since the theme I used it for before was a two-column design instead of my current three.

Okay, an occasion this auspicious demands that I run my all-time favorite D-Purp tune. Enjoy, y’all.

The dude who posted this vid on YouTube says it was “an attempt to synch Highway Star from the Made in Japan CD with sections of the Copenhagen DVD.” I’d say he did a damned fine job, myself.

Loretta Lynn

Posted on October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 by Mike

As y’all no doubt know by now, music legend Loretta Lynn left us the other day. After casting about trying to decide which of her many solid-gold country classics I ought to post here to memorialize her, it hit me that one of my favorite scenes from the great bio-flick Coal Miner’s Daughter might do just as nicely.

CMD is one of the most flawlessly cast films I’ve ever seen; Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, and Beverly D’Angelo were all note-perfect as Loretty, Doo, and Patsy Cline respectively. Kinda surprised at how few clips from the movie there are on YT. There are a good half a dozen more quotes I’d like to have been able to include here, but “Boy, you better come up with a better reason than that” is probably my favorite of all of ’em.

As it happens, the BP’s manager Mike Evans was on friendly terms with Doolittle Lynn. Mike always has had a way of seeing to it that he crossed paths with all kinds of people most of us would never even think of approaching at all, introducing himself, chatting with them, and following through afterwards to remain friends with them for years and years. Remind me to tell y’all sometime all about the morning he walked up to the front door of Graceland mansion not too long after Elvis had died, but after all the hooraw had finally died down and Memphis had gone back to whatever normal is there.

In a nutshell, Mike rang the bell and Elvis’s longtime housemaid and cook—a gentle, matronly black lady name of Nancy Rooks, who was the culinary genius behind those nanner and peanut butter sammiches fried in about half a stick of butter each which the King was famous for devouring entire plates of at a single sitting—answered, telling Mike he should come back in about an hour or so. Vernon, see, was in the middle of breakfast, and wasn’t receiving guests until she had finished getting him fed. Mike drove off to a nearby Waffle House or some such, sat on pins and needles in his old Corvette staring at the slow-moving minute hand on his watch, and ended up sitting in front of the TV with Vernon Presley watching Vernon’s favorite Elvis movies one after another, occasionally weeping together in grief over Vernon’s and the entire world’s loss, and just generally chewing the fat like old high school buddies. That story’s a good ‘un, it truly is, a real jaw-dropper for sure.

Anyways.

The cast, crew, writers, and producers of Coal Miner’s Daughter certainly did right by their subject, doing honor to an iconic artist whose like we shan’t ever see again. The movie came out kinda towards the tail-end of a minor spate of music-legend biopics—Lady Sings The Blues, Bound For Glory, The Buddy Holly Story, Sweet Dreams—and outshined ’em all hands down, if you ask me.

Rest easy, Loretta.

Okay, okay, just one song then.

Neat neat neat!

Posted on July 31, 2022August 1, 2022 by Mike

So a good friend put me onto this teewee channel I didn’t know about before, not having even turned the danged thing on in about three years or so: Tubi, which has a damned near miraculous cornucopia of documentaries chronicling the rise of the first-wave punk rock bands of the late 70s. Now, I’m finding it impossible to turn the dang thing off.

For those not previously into this sort of thing, that’s one of my all-time faves, a Brit punk outfit yclept the Damned, slashing ‘n’ burning their way through one of their classic tunes*, “New Rose.” Their Tubi doc is called The Damned—Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, and it is filled to brimming with some mighty toothsome stuff.

There’s a crap-ton of these things available on the Tubi channel, featuring bands from the Ramones to the Dead Boys to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers to…well, you name it, they got it, pretty much. Here’s a latter-day version of “Neat Neat Neat” from 2009. See if that bassist doesn’t look a mite familiar to ya’s.

Yeppers, that there would indeed be the god-like Lemmy Kilmister, who stepped in to tour and record with the Damned for a spell after OG (Original Guitarist) Brian James had left the band and Captain Sensible had moved over from bass to guitar. As much as I’ve always loved the Damned, from back in 77 up until right this very minute, I never knew that Lemmy had filled in with ’em as bassist, a tidbit I gleaned from the documentary.

An additional nugget of fascinating Damned lore: the original-original guitarist (well, kinda-sorta) was Chrissie Hynde, who would go on to great fame with a little combo called the Pretenders. According to Ms Hynde herself, she had three rehearsals with the embryonic punk icons, after which “they never got back in touch with me, I don’t know why.” Ahh, but I do: not to put TOO fine a point on it, but Chrissie never was anything much to brag about as a lead guitarist; after the band had gotten James into the slot—who IS a good lead git-fiddlist, and very much so—the lads had no real use for Miss Hynde anymore.

A pretty comprehensive record of the Damned’s long and storied career is perusable here; it reads like a who’s-who of OG punk rockers from the UK, and encompasses pretty much the whole history of first-wave punkdom across the Pond.

Another Tubi documentary I’m very much looking forward to viewing covers one Stiv Bators and his band, the forever-notorious Dead Boys. These guys are another of my perennial faves; they actually played the old Milestone Club in Charlotte in, oh, 79 or thereabouts, maybe? To my undying regret, I missed that show thanks to what felt to me at the time as if it might turn out to be a fatal case of the Green Apple Strut, dammit.

I later heard that Bators had indeed performed one of his signature stage moves that night: he would wind his way-long mic cable around his neck three or four times, toss the rest up over a beam or rafter or whatever else was handy and looked to be sturdy enough to bear his weight (which couldn’t have been much more than a buck-twenty or so, the skinny little git), then pull up the slack until he was literally hanging himself by the neck from the ceiling several feet off the stage. Which, with the creaky, decrepit old Milestone, was an act of profoundest faith, believe you me.

Tragically, Bators died in 1990 after being clobbered by an errant taxicab in the streets of Paris. Somewhere around here I should still have a photo I clipped from Creem or Circus or some other one of several 70s rock and roll mags I devoured as sustenance for the soul back in my wayward youth, featuring Bators with his pre-Dead Boys band: a Mark 1-Mod 0 Longhair, Boots, ‘n’ Spandex agglomeration hailing from Stiv’s own home-base of Cleveland, calling themselves Frankenstein. As a preview of what was coming, that pic was about as off as off can possibly get. My own sudden artistic swerve from the comparatively sedate metal/hard-rock byway and into the punk fast-lane was every bit as aggressive and extreme as Stiv’s was.

Here’s a blast of some typical Dead Boys mayhem, from 1977 at the hallowed CBGBs.

Those were the days, my friends.

* NOTE: I originally had an early live clip of “Neat Neat Neat” in this space, but decided to swap it out for “New Rose” since I definitely wanted to include the “Neat Neat Neat” with Lemmy in it, and didn’t see the point of having two versions of the same dang song up there.

Hey lawdy MAMA!

Posted on July 22, 2022July 22, 2022 by Mike

I’ve been stuck staring at this…ummm, story…ever since Ace first brought it up the other day.

Mum trolled as boobs ‘steal spotlight’ in ‘indecent’ dress at son’s birthday party
A mum claims her own cleavage “stole the spotlight” from her son’s birthday party.

Raquel Dicuru, 37, was throwing a party for her son’s seventh birthday last month while her sister-in-law filmed her lighting the candles on the cake.

It wasn’t until the mum, from Tonbridge, Kent, watched it back that she saw her purple sundress revealed much of her chest.

Happily, the comely (and hoo boy, is she ever that, as can be seen in the several other pics included with this bodacious article) Ms Dicuru has boucoup chestage to reveal, and it looks to be well worth the revealing, bless her perfectly proportioned, shapely heart.

Tig ol bitties!

Raquel’s riposte to the juiceless, withered old killjoys who took umbrage with the inadvertent display of her succulent fun-bags was spot on:

In response, Raquel has told her followers to “get a life”.

Attagirl, you tell ’em. I could be mistaken, I admit, but I can’t help but get the distinct feeling the bluenoses’ unsolicited critique just might have been motivated primarily by envy—the males, because they ain’t got anything like that waiting for ’em at home, and the females, because ditto. Certainly, it’s a pretty safe bet that young master Dicuru saw quite a lot of those tig ol’ bitties early on, or at least until he was weaned off of ’em—one assumes under extreme, kicking-and-screaming protest—and was therefore already quite familiar with the edifying spectacle anyway.

For some strange reason, this feel-good story puts me in mind of a certain RAB classic.

Now as it happens, among a crap-ton of other artists the Stray Cays covered that one early in their illustrious career, with Setzer tacking on one of the coolest verses yet written as a bonus:

Well, I’m smoking past the filter
And it’s burnin’ my lips
Yeah, I’m smokin’ past the filter
And it’s burnin’ my lips
My whole body is a-shakin’ right to my fingertips

Yep, you go on and try and tell me that ain’t just like mama used to make. Knowing Brian as I do, and I know him pretty well, he would be extremely gratified that I’d thought to include him in this particular post, and for all the right reasons too. A little extry rockabilly twangerrifickness for ya.

Lots and lots of excellent, obscure stuff on that album, but it’s that first tune I particularly wanted to call y’all’s attention to. If you’re into it, the fifth song—”Hot Rod Baby—is another one of my all-time faves. GONNA SUCK THIS CAT RIGHT UP MY PIPES…

Update! Yes, I know, I’m obsessing here, but can you blame me? Actually, I been mulling it over trying to come up with some conceivable downside for the kid here, seeing as how all those green-eyed bluenoses claim to be upset about how his hot MILF ruined his birthday for him by the heinous, hateful sin of letting ’em breathe without malice aforethought, and I confess I’m drawing a blank on that.

I mean, the child doesn’t look to be terribly upset in the two (2) pics he appears in in the article, as far as I can discern. And honestly, why would he be? Mama made the both of ’em famous the world over because a bunch of self-righteous Holy Joes got their panties in a bunch over nothing whatsoever.

Think of it: for the rest of his life, he gets to tell his buddies the funny story about that time he and his mom made the newspapers and got everybody all in a dither because, even pushing 40, she was still a sexy, eye-catching lass. He’ll be laughing over this tempest in a teapot from now on; he’ll consider Year 7 the greatest birthday party he ever did have. It’ll be a long, long time before he has to buy his own beer once he’s old enough to belly up to the bar for a pint of stout at his local pub with a story like this to recount.

And like I said earlier, it ain’t as if he didn’t already KNOW his mom was sporting a righteous shirt-full long before now; he didn’t just learn of it after every swingin’ Richard in once-Great Britain got all frothy and fizzy-lipped over it and pointed it out to all and sundry with great outrage and vexation. If there’s any real downside to be found here, for anybody at all except the aforementioned Holy Joe and Jane—who really ought to just shut their yaps and mind their own beeswax—be damned if I can find it.

Sick, boys!

Posted on June 23, 2022June 23, 2022 by Mike

One for my boy Big Country.

I’m thinking BCE might not have found that as amusing as I do a cpl-three days ago, when he was deep in the throes of I-wish-I-was-dead-itude. Now that he seems to be on the mend, though, hopefully he’ll get a small chuckle out of it.

Meanwhile, I also ran across a somewhat less recent live Social D vid, this one from all the way back in 1997. As it happens, the BPs opened for ’em on the CLT date of that tour, which took place at the long-since defunct and demolished Tremont Music Hall. After our set, we were hanging with a few buds of ours in our green room when Ness—with whom I had become good friends back when he spent a few months mastering their huge breakthrough release White Light White Heat White Trash in NYC—came crashing in to bitch at me about nobody having informed him we were the support act that night.

“Okay, well, you guys are doing support tomorrow night in Atlanta, right? And then the night after in Birmingham?” “Ummmm, no, Mike, we ain’t on either of those bills. It was just tonight, and we’re done with that already. Sorry, buddy.” He seemed to be genuinely upset at having missed us, even though he’d attended all of our shows at Rodeo Bar in NYC with my friend Kendra in tow over the months he was in residence in the Big Rotten Apple, so was presumably every bit as familiar with our act as we were our own selves.

This recording is old enough to include what to most Social D fans will always be thought of as the “classic” lineup of Ness, the late Dennis Danell, John Maurer, and a man who is probably the greatest punk rock drummer of them all, Chuck Biscuits. If I remember right, it was the first and biggest of several new-rock radio hits yielded up by White Light White Heat.

Biscuits, a real hard-hitter if ever there was one, got his start with the seminal Canadian punk outfit DOA, following that up with stints with California hardcore icons Black Flag and the Circle Jerks before landing in a little ol’ band called Danzig, a move engineered by producer Rick Rubin at the specific behest of Glenn Danzig himself.

Since I’ve put myself in mind of all that good ol’ punk stuff I used to love so much, might as well subject y’all to one of DOA’s best.

Hard to believe now that we were ever that young.

Hyeppeh Joomteemf ‘n’shit, yo!

Posted on June 19, 2022June 19, 2022 by Mike

So earlier on this most auspicious of several other Nigger Day! holidays we now have strewn carelessly about the calendar like junk vehicles, broken toys, and stolen bric-a-brac across the dead brown grass of a Darktown front lawn, the local classical-music station spent the afternoon highlighting the “contributions” to the orchestral music oeuvre (not so auspicious, actually) of Black Composers (if any).

I used that “if any” aside sarcastically, yes, but advisedly too. Because apparently, there are indeed a handful of uppity Neegrows who claim to be composers of symphonic music. After enduring a painfully wretched interlude of truly godawful sqwronk and blorgle, including one “composition” featuring a male singer for whom one couldn’t help but feel a certain measure of pity as the poor fellow tried manfully, but all in vain, to locate some semblance of melody somewhere in the unmusical, atonal mosquito repellent this alleged Black Composer™ dared to claim as his own. As I was desperately cramming bits of toilet paper, styrofoam packing material, asbestos swatches, and cigarette filters up against my eardrums to blunt the agony, I realized that, as a huge ST-TNG fan, I had heard this material before:

You guys may think I’m just being funny here, but I swear that’s what this crap sounded like. Seriously.

Which doesn’t mean that there are NO black classical-music composers worth lending an ear to, mind. I know of at least one: the great Justin Holland, a true-blue, gin-you-wine-article American Original of the classical guitar.

Justin Holland (July 26, 1819 – March 24, 1887) was an American classical guitarist, a music teacher, a community leader, a black man who worked with white people to help slaves on the Underground Railroad, and an activist for equal rights for African Americans.

Holland was known nationally, not only as a musician but also as a civil rights activist who worked in the same national circles as Frederick Douglass. His goal was to develop his personal growth, in order to stand as an example for others to see. As a teacher, he deliberately chose a “cautious and circumspect” bearing, keeping his relationships with students strictly professional. He chose work that was considered honorable and held high standards, and the professional respect that accompanied his position aided his civil rights goals.

A measure of his success in showcasing the admirable African American to the world came after he died, when he was given eulogies, by white people as well as African Americans, about his skill as a musician and his personal character.

…In 1845 he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in the Western Reserve, where he worked on his dream of complete acceptance for African Americans by white Americans, with complete equality. Cleveland was another place where white people were sympathetic toward African Americans. He saw the area as a place that gave him the opportunity to work toward that goal. He consciously embraced education and assimilation as the best ways to overcome racial barriers and prejudices. He looked to European culture as a source of admirable standards (and hoped that middle-class Americans around him would associate him with those standards as well.) He spoke of his own music in terms of European excellence, teaching the “correct system” to fret the strings on the guitar, as done by “the best Masters of Europe.” He also wrote a 324-page treatise on subjects of moral reform.

The standout thing about Justin Holland is that, nearly unique among classical-guitar composers and performers, all of Holland’s work proudly bears a readily-identifiable Made In America™ stamp. To wit:

All of his stuff I’ve ever heard—and I’ve heard quite a bit over the years—is like this: lush, gorgeous, with all the Spanish or Italian influence sanded off to leave nothing but pure America the Beautiful shining through. If you listen close enough, you can hear the earliest stirrings of another distinctly American form in there: jazz.

Pretty, no? So here’s to ya, Justin Holland; God rest ye, and long may your beautiful music endure. You are a credit not just to your race, as they used to say, but to your art, and to your nation as well.

Trouble up the road

Posted on June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 by Mike

Twitter twats bite back.

Elon Musk Says Twitter Is ‘Resisting’ Terms of Deal, Threatens Termination
Elon Musk is accusing Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his ability to obtain information about bot accounts on the social media website, saying that it’s a “breach” of the terms of their April deal.

Musk, the world’s richest person, sent a letter to the San Francisco-based firm on June 6.

“Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” the letter reads.

Several weeks ago, the Tesla CEO accused Twitter of allowing a significant number of automated or “bot” accounts on the platform and demanded that the company release that data to him.

In late April, Twitter’s board and Musk jointly announced that he would purchase the social media company for $44 billion and take it private. The deal could take months to finalize, and Musk has publicly stated that it’s not entirely confirmed that he’ll actually buy Twitter.

After the letter was released on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s website, shares of Twitter dropped 1.5 percent.

“As Twitter’s prospective owner, Mr. Musk is clearly entitled to the requested data to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter’s business to his ownership and to facilitate his transaction financing,” the letter reads. “To do both, he must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model—its active user base.

“Musk is not required to explain his rationale for requesting the data, nor submit to the new conditions the company has attempted to impose on his contractual right to the requested data. At this point, Mr. Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Mr. Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover.”

Much as many of us would enjoy seeing this propaganda mill and the nefarious manipulators running the joint finally on the receiving end of the overdue bruisin’ they’ve long been a-cruisin’ for, the sole arbiter who will judge whether the project to bring Twatter into compliance with 1A standards is actually worth the effort, hassle, and expense required for final consummation of the current takeover agreement is none other than Elon Musk his own bad self. Of course, there are other avenues for dealing effectively with the likes of Twitter and their odious ilk available. But given how pricey ammo has gotten these days, we can only wish fair seas and following winds for Musk. For now, at least.

Explanation for my post title:

That there’s the jumpin’ and jukin’ 1991 cover version of an old Ike Turner-penned scorcher—originally recorded and released by the great Jackie Brenston, who gained everlasting renown for “Rocket 88“, which platter is generally acknowledged as the no-shit genesis of rock and roll—as reimagined by my longtime Nashville homeboys The Planet Rockers.

As it happens, and probably to the surprise of absolutely no one here, I not only have a history with the Planet Rockers, but with this specific song also.

If I recall correctly, which I do, we were playing under a drenching rain that night.

Update! Well, spank my ass and call me Shorty.

“Rocket 88” (originally stylized as Rocket “88”) is a rhythm and blues song that was first recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1951. The recording was credited to “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats”, who were actually Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. The single reached number-one on the Billboard R&B chart.

As long as I’ve been aware of “Rocket 88” and its storied history, never did I have the vaguest clue that the record was actually done by Turner and his posse, not Brenston. Just goes to show that no dog is so old he can’t be taught a new trick once in a while, I reckon.

Everything louder than everything else

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Mike

My title, of course, is one of the great Lemmy Kilmister’s most well-known lines, as well as the name of an album by Lemmy’s band. So I’m sure you can easily guess what I’m going to be embedding for this evening’s Tune Damage segment.

Mass shootings just one sign of the systemic collapse of western society… more hunger, violence, debt and destruction yet to come
We are watching the downfall of western civilization as we know it.

The rule of law is dead. Elections are rigged. Free speech is disallowed and a criminally corrupt government now runs an actual Ministry of Truth “disinformation” board. “Science” is a total fraud and the medical system is a murder system. Most of the youth refuse to work, and real-world skills are practically non-existent among those under the age of 30. The education system is run by pedophiles and groomers, Hollywood has gone all-in with satanic programming of children and the US military, under the leadership of woketard Pentagon officials, has become a pathetic shadow of its former self.

On top of all that, the dollar is collapsing in real world value, even as it rises against other currencies (temporarily). The Fed is trapped in an inescapable economic collapse scenario, and the housing bubble is in the process of bursting. Our “president” is a dementia patient who was installed in a rigged election, and our news media — if you can even call them that — are journo-terrorists who parrot CIA lies and corporate disinformation to invoke race wars and covid panic while pushing depopulation vaccines that are designed to exterminate humanity.

None of this is going to get resolved through sanity and reason. It’s all headed for collapse. And when I say “collapse,” I mean the total collapse of western civilization as we know it. This includes the collapse of Western Europe, which is also run by retarded lunatics who are wholly incapable of functioning in any sort of rational way whatsoever.

The West has lost the ability to reason. Logic no longer applies to anything, not science, medicine, journalism, elections, etc.

Oh, I assure you it still DOES apply, and always will. It’s just that most “Americans” have fully bought into the Left’s cherished delusion that logic, like reality itself, can be suspended completely at their capricious whim, then reinstated soon afterwards with no real harm done.

“Journalism” is now just parroting the lies of the corporations and deep state agenda-setters. “Elections” now simply means Democrats running vote-stuffing mules to achieve whatever number of faked votes is necessary to “win.” “Science” means rigging studies, censoring data and destroying the careers of scientific whistleblowers who dare to speak out and warn the world. “Medicine” is a process whereby hospitals and doctors gain financial wealth by murdering patients for profit. “Wall Street” is a Ponzi scheme propped up by seemingly endless money printing. The “gains” are ephemeral. Pension funds and retirement funds are ghosts, and they will collapse toward zero as the house of cards collapses.

Western countries like the USA manufacture almost nothing. We have virtually no domestic supply chain for steel, rare earth minerals, electronics or industrial chemicals and polymers. We are a nation that has abandoned industry and embraced “financialization,” which is the scam of creating make believe wealth by pretending to move numbers around on computer screens, creating derivatives and CDOs and “synthetic CDOs” and other incomprehensible financial instruments that ultimately produce nothing in the real world.

Meanwhile, as China is stockpiling grain in anticipation of a global food shortage — and India has just banned all exports of wheat in order to feed its own people — America continues to export corn, wheat, soy, millet and other agricultural products to China, helping make sure that China won’t starve even while America’s population faces mass famine this year (and next).

There is no longer anything resembling sanity or reason in America. The nation has lost its mind, and the oblivious masses are getting angry enough to start shooting each other with greater frequency. This should come as no surprise.

Believe me, it doesn’t. But odd as it may seem, it ain’t a bad thing, nevessarily. In fact, it’s abundantly clear by now that “shooting each other with greater frequency” is our only way out of this mess. To be specific: sane, sensible, normal Americans are gonna have to start shooting Leftards in job lots if they want their situation to improve. As the saying goes, you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.

(Via WRSA and Bracken)

Update! Dang it, forgot the embed.

Why yes, of COURSE I have a great story about meeting and hanging out with Lemmy once. Ill have to tell ya all about it sometime.

Updated update! A 2009 live version so racy it has to go below the fold. Continue reading “Everything louder than everything else” →

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