Woo Hoo! The Present Tense Videos!

Yessssss!!!!! I've been waiting for YouTube to get these for a while.



Tomorrow Night



Cruel You



Too Late



In My Arms Again

What I know: there are four videos from this record, recorded in one session, in New York, on a layover returning from recording Present tense in England. Not everyone had enough changes of clothes. They're on videotape. When the band asked for more money to make videos, Elektra--owned by the same company that owned MTV--told them it wasn't important, that MTV would never amount to anything. These were intended for European release only.

But damn, I love these.

Back on Topic...

I've been doing a lot of political blogging lately--frankly, I think the world needs it--but it's only fair, because the political bloggers have been doing some fun music stuff.

via Atrios:

Fun guitar-based pop with some added flourishes to make it interesting. And they're shrill, which is very important.

I blogged about the Trolleyvox a few weeks ago when they played with PowerPop faves Milton and the Devils Party, but I had no idea they were shrill. Thanks, Atrios!

via FDL:

Lots of panels ranging from "Acting Up: Music Activism 2006", to "Hiring and Maintaining an Entourage". There is "CBGB: The Ultimate Reunion" with Chris Stein (Blondie) and Tommy Ramone (Ramones), as well as the panel that I'm on - "Lollapalooza 15th Anniversary Reunion".

I have to say, it's a doozey of a panel: George Clinton, Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard), Gibby Hanes (Butthole Surfers), Maureen Herman (Babes In Toyland), and yours truly (L7). We don't need a moderator, we need the Chief of Police. Should be interesting, all of us lined up on the dais…authority figures. I can almost hear Jackie Gleason saying "Har har hardy har har!".

(The "I" here, for those who aren't firedogs, is Donita Sparks of L7. We love her. She's shrill, too!)

via Sadly No!:

The Angels, "No Secrets"

(I love Gavin's "discovery" story here--all real audiophiles have one, or forty.)

They have Ted freaking Nugent. That's all I'm sayin'....

Well Fuckity Fuck

Why is this news not everywhere?

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

A spokesman for Diebold, which manufactures the state's touch-screen voting machines, said the company is treating the software Kagan received as "stolen" and not as "picked up" at the State Board of Elections, as the anonymous note claimed. Lawyers for the company are seeking its return.

The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns nationwide about the security of the November elections and the ability of the state to keep tight controls on the thousands of machines that will be used next month.

Maryland's September primary - which used voting machines and electronic check-in equipment made by Diebold - suffered a series of mistakes, and the outcomes of some contests were not known for weeks.

This needs to be a huge issue, everywhere. If Republicans can't back fair elections, it's fair to ask why not.

And Robert Kennedy's excellent piece is here.

I want my democracy back.

UPDATE: As Eli notes, this issue is a passion of his, and it's his legitimate concern that convinced me of the importance of it.

Eeeeek!

The New Face of Terrorism in America. Gaze Upon her Evil and Despair!



Gah, you can't make this shit up.

SACRAMENTO — Upset by the war in Iraq, Julia Wilson vented her frustrations with President Bush last spring on her Web page on MySpace.com. She posted a picture of the president, scrawled "Kill Bush" across the top and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand. She later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.
It was too late.

Federal authorities had found the page and placed Wilson on their checklist. They finally reached her this week in her molecular biology class.

..........

"I wasn't dangerous. I mean, look at what's (stenciled) on my backpack — it's a heart. I'm a very peace-loving person," said Wilson, an honor student who describes herself as politically passionate. "I'm against the war in Iraq. I'm not going to kill the president."

Aside from anything else, it took them six fucking months to track her down? Or they're looking at cached pages? Good work, guys! Good thing she wasn't building a fertilizer bomb in a Hello Kitty backpack or something.

They're scared of grandmothers and honor students. Period.

(Is it me, or does that pic have a Charlotte's Web vibe to it?)

Videoblogging

No theme here: just some fun ones.







If it's content you want, enjoy Digby's fine post callling bullshit on the inevitable calls for bipartisanship to come.

Hilly Packs It In

From James Farber:

Back then, the best of the CBGB bands were not only great, they were great in such different ways. Contrary to the tidy "punk" term that bound them, none of these groups looked or sounded anything like each other. They were connected solely by the tightness of the scene, a point underscored by the jukebox that spun almost exclusively house bands. The result sealed this place as its own world, fostering the gloriously laughable notion that the Ramones were every bit as big as the Rolling Stones.

Amazingly, the CB's scene remained remarkably small throughout its heyday. Though every national publication (save Field & Stream) glowed about the bands here, you'd see the same 200 freaks there every week. I remember the first time Television finally managed to get off the Bowery and play the Palladium, as the opening act for Peter Gabriel in 1978.

They got booed off the stage. If they couldn't make it to 14th St., I thought, how could they possibly make it on Main Street?

From James Wolcott:

Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell may have been Lewis & Clark of the Lower East Side, discovering and claiming CBGB's for the future punk poets of America as Hilly Kristal gave the shrug that changed history, but it was Patti Smith who made everything possible--Patti who was CBGB's first star and benediction spirit, Patti who channeled the nomadic nerve of Rimbaud and Isabelle Eberhardt, the bop prosody of the Beats, and the monochromatic drive of the Velvets through her scrawny frame and expressive, air-sculpting fingers. Tonight Patti, the first performer I ever saw at CBGB's--back when her band was drummer-less, she and Tom Verlaine held hands between sets, her band was drummer-less, and the occasional beer bottle dropped from the men's shelter upstairs from the club, shattering on the sidewalk--will be headlining the club's farewell bill, as the former biker's bar on the Bowery joins Max's, Mercer Arts, the Mudd Club, and Danceteria in the foggy graveyard of bohemian legend. (Sirius Radio will be broadcasting the concert live at 9pm on channel 24.) It never occurred to any of us then that someday the CBGB's t-shirt would be a ubiquitous cultural signifier, Richard Hell's byline would grace the op-ed page of the NY Times, the Ramones' "Hey ho/let's go" would rev up car ads, Please Kill Me would be as much a classic of oral history as Edie or Studs Terkel's books, and Deborah Harry would achieve her dye-job dream of being a Warhol superstar in a post-Warhol world.

From Roy Edroso:

It made sense that the nexus of New York punk rock was such a ratty joint. A greybeard such as I have become will taunt the kids today for their backwards-looking rock gambits, but the old punk scene was full of magpies mining la boue for lost gems, and sometimes turds. This was said to be a rebuke to what was considered the smooth and stupefied state of the lively arts of the time. It was also a form of passive aggression: one could expect outsiders to be uncomfortable. I have a hunch you won't like it here, the potato chips are soggy, they water the beer, etc.

I became a habitue, saw many splendid shows (Ramones, Dead Boys, X-Ray Spex, B-52s) and a lot of lame ones. Eventually I hauled myself up on that stage and played some splendid/lame shows myself. I got accustomed to the smell, the smashed toilet, and the pleasurable clubhouse atmosphere that you get just by showing up and doing a little work. Nostalgie de la boue? No, it was happening right now! I always had a hand to shake or a back to pat or a face reading clearly, "Oh, this guy again" when I walked in the door.

All those hours spent loading in and loading out and drinking and hearing, or yelling, "You rock" or "You suck." Long after I stopped playing regularly, I considered it part of my life, until the day came when I realized I could count the time that had passed since I darkened Hilly's door in years, and if I walked through again it would be as a stranger.

From Tom Watson:

We live somewhere now in post neo-classic proto pre-post punk rock land. Everything is derivative, but there's more of it, and sometimes it makes you tap your toes on the morning commute. Always there in the DNA is the strange and wonderful cluster of gene markers known roughly to scientists as "New York punk." Others call it the Johnny Thunders mutation. Whatever it is, it's a historic part of our musical evolution, a marker on a place where music changed - and it changed best here.

Clearly, one of places in the long dual ribbon of DNA bears the name CBGB. A dark pestilent hole that attracted talent: that's the elevator speech. CB's closes tomorrow, but it's all so anti-climatic. All the youngsters wearing the iconic black t-shirts under their Gap jackets is testimony to a lasting rock brand - one that Hilly Kristal and his advisor's apparently hope to keep alive in Las Vegas and along the byways of cyber-commerce.

Lots of excellent links to other elegies through these, including the 'East Village' complex in Vegas where the CB's urinals may or may not be going.

RIP: Freddy Fender

From WaPo:

Freddy Fender, 69, the "Bebop Kid" of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," died Oct. 14 at his home in Corpus Christi, Tex.

He received a diagnosis of lung cancer this year, and over the years had grappled with drug and alcohol abuse, was treated for diabetes and underwent a kidney transplant.

..........

"Whenever I run into prejudice," he told The Washington Post in 1977, "I smile and feel sorry for them, and I say to myself, 'There's one more argument for birth control.' "

He won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in 2002 for "La Musica de Baldemar Huerta." {Baldermar Huerta is his real name. --NYM} He also shared in two Grammys: with the Texas Tornados, which won in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for "Soy de San Luis," and with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for "Los Super Seven."

Steve Audio has a nice remembrance.

Happy Birthday Daily Show!

And what a bash it looks to be!

The Daily Show presents "Ten F#@king Years (The Concert)": a live event with appearances from Daily Show correspondents and personalities, live performances from Superchunk, Clem Snide and The Upper Crust, and lots of surprises. All proceeds benefit the New York-based tutoring center 826NYC.

The stars so far:




Think Craig Kilborn will show?
/snark

Free Lowe MP3's!

Since both The Kenosha Kid and Emerson recommended it, I wandered over to the supercool Post Punk Junk site. There's a lot of weird and interesting stuff there, but this struck me particularly:

I’ve got a severe soft spot in my heart for Nick Lowe, who was one of the first dudes I ever listened to with heavy regularity when I got out of my metal/prog listening phase in high school and jumped headfirst into college radio DJ-dom. His playing, singing and songwriting never seemed anything but effortless; his stuff simply made me feel good. His two albums from the late ’70s, “Jesus of Cool” and “Labour of Lust”, plus his work with Rockpile that resulted in the album “Seconds Of Pleasure”, made me a lifelong devotee, and while his later material never resonated with me in the way that those other records I just mentioned, I’m a lifelong fan and will freely and blindly acknowledge that he can do no wrong.

I was thrilled when I found out about the now-out-of-print late-’70s collection “The Wilderness Years”, all recorded in ‘77 but released in ‘91. About the CD, Allmusic sez:

“Between the disbanding of Brinsley Schwarz in 1974 and the formation of Rockpile in 1977, Nick Lowe recorded a lot, attempting to settle on a sound. Simultaneously, he became the house producer at Stiff Records, where he became notorious for his raw, quickly produced records. That attitude shines through on ‘The Wilderness Years’, a compilation of singles, outtakes, covers, rarities, and demos Lowe recorded during this year. With the exception of ‘Pure Pop/Jesus of Cool’, no other record captures Lowe’s sense of humor or love of pop music quite as well. Divided equally between gems and glorious throwaways, ‘The Wilderness Years is all over the place’, but that’s its charm…In fact, Nick doesn’t think much of any of this material, but an artist isn’t always the best judge of his own work — he rarely got any better than he did here.”

There are seven mp3s here, which should leave you on an mp3 bender. Enjoy!

(I'll admit, I got totally sucked into the Bruce McCullough mp3s too.)

Holiday Babyblogging: Percussion Edition

Happy Let's-Bring-Smallpox-to-the-Red-People Day!

A recent session, which speaks for itself.