[SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE] We came in from dinner at Spice on Hilton Head and turned the stream back on to the opening notes of “Althea.” We’re now deep into “Low Spark” as I update this.
Did I mention that John Scofield is in the band tonight? Hold it, what’s this? “Cumberland Jam > New Speedway Boogie.” I spent a little time on the mountain, I spent a little time on the hill…One way or another this darkness got to give. We’re going into “Mason’s Children.” On with 1969! According to David Dodd, there are 15 known live performances of this song by Grateful Dead, all in 1969-1970, after which it was dropped from the repertoire. Now Warren’s tearing into “Candyman,” off American Beauty. Wah wah pedals into “Scarlet Begonias.” Knew right away she was not like other girls, other girls…jam…change up…”Eyes.” The heart has it’s beaches, it’s homeland, and thoughts of its own. “Fire.” There’s a dragon with matches loose on the town.
Short set break. (They opened with Shakedown > Friend of the Devil > Uncle John’s tease, according to this update.)
Set two opens with “Unbroken Chain,” one of Phil’s originals. “Dark Star > Mountains of the Moon.” Hey Tom Banjo it’s time to matter. The earth will see you on through this time. Jam. Back into “Dark Star.” Noodling. “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds > Lovelight.” Baby please, I’m on my knees.
CNN is reporting that U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin—Karl Rove’s handpicked choice for U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas—has resigned under the weight of scandal.
Of course, CNN gives up very little information on this character and no information on why he’s stepping aside. For that, we must turn to investigative reporter Greg Palast, who recently mentioned Griffin in a Buzzflash interview.
Of course, the reason my book was subpoenaed is that it has to do with the US prosecutor firings. The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections — not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy. They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls, same as they did in 2000. But instead of calling them felons, they said that they had suspect addresses.
Bobby Kennedy, who is a voting rights attorney, said, “This is not just an icky, horrible thing that people do wearing white sheets. This is a felony crime.†And the guy they put in charge of this criminal ring to knock out voters is a guy named Tim Griffin. Today, Tim Griffin is — badda-bing — U.S. Attorney for Arkansas. When they fired the honest guys, they put in the Rove-bots to fix the 2008 election. That’s what I’m saying — it’s already being stolen, as we speak. Tim Griffin is the perpetrator who’s become the prosecutor, and that’s what’s going down right now.
Chicago-based In These Times offers a look at a political struggle taking place in Chicago’s city government.
Chicago’s labor unions decided to send Mayor Richard M. Daley a message: The “city that works†doesn’t work for working families. In the February and April elections, the labor movement broke with the city’s fabled but feeble Democratic machine, and helped oust key Daley allies and elect seven new members to the 50-seat city council.
Unions spent roughly $3 million and fielded a political operation stronger than Daley’s that backed challengers to the mayor’s council allies.
University of Illinois at Chicago political science professor Dick Simpson says, the new council bloc will be pushing a “working-class, middle-class agenda, as opposed to the global economy tilt of the Daley administration.â€
According to Chicago Tribune, Chicago is governed under a “weak mayor, strong council” system. But that hasn’t been the case for much of Daley’s 18 years in power, with critics contending the council has all-too-humbly served as a rubber stamp for the popular mayor.
I bought the deluxe edition of Wilco’s new “Sky Blue Sky” so I could get the DVD, featuring “Shake It Off,” a 45-minute documentary directed by Christoph Green and Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, the filmmakers behind Sunken Treasure and the documentary series Burn to Shine.
The picture opens on a low key monologue from Jeff Tweedy layered over snowy images from Chicago. He says, “I wanted a lot of the songs on the records to be really kind of direct. I think that the world is so mysterious and so scary and kind of terrifying right now, it just felt really weird to try and write puzzles, and kind of disjointed, non-sequitur-type imagist kind of lyrics. I kind of think right now is a pretty good time to sit down and sing people some mother fuckin’ songs. I’m sorry, that’s all I really I want right now. I just want somebody to sing me a song. You know? I really was consciously trying to just write these crystalized ideas kind of songs. You know, like this is just one idea. I’m just gonnna try to get it across.”
Tweedy says later in the film that he’s singing directly to his wife, former talent booking agent Sue Miller. He also talks about being sober for the first time while making an album. Tweedy sought help for his addiction to pain killers in 2004 and has been open about the fact that he suffers from clinical depression and panic attacks.
Matthew Fritch profiles Conor Oberst for Magnet Magazine’s spring issue. Magnet doesn’t offer their content online, so I’ll just share a few things from the piece I found interesting.
Cassadaga, the Omaha, Neb., native’s sixth full-length under the name Bright Eyes, is set against a bleak backdrop of American idiocy and imperialism, its 13 songs bound by lyrics about holy wars, Babylon and falling empires. Not to mention polar ice caps, hurricanes, poor black children and a frieghtened middle class. Cassadaga isn’t an album; it’s a federal disaster area.
That’s a funny last line, and also an indication of a job well done. Artists hold things up for people to see. Blinding as it is, present-day America is certainly a rich cultural and political milieu, and one begging for Obesrt’s brand of cutting criticism.
I also took note of Saddle Creek’s new economic development deal with the city of Omaha. The label–home to Bright Eyes, The Faint, Azure Ray, Orenda Fink, Cursive and others–is opening a $10 million dollar complex that includes a 500-capacity music venue, bar, movie theater, label office and retail and living space. According to label co-owner Rob Nansel, the city offered Saddle Creek a “ridiculously good deal” on their new lease in the industrial North Omaha arts district, so they “had to do it.”
The new Certified SC branding campaign was designed to stir-up state pride and loyalty, and change South Carolinians from consumers into advocates and customers who ask for and prefer Certified SC Grown products – driving the demand for the quality, diversity and availability of homegrown products and contributing to rural economic development for the state.
According to The State, the campaign is being paid for with a one-time $600,000 allocation from the state Legislature.
The effort comes at a time when consumers are growing savvier about the food they eat and demanding more information about where it comes from and how it’s grown. Recent bouts with contaminated spinach, peanut butter and pet food have placed the issue on the national and international stage.
[UPDATE] Here’s another post I made about the state’s economic development needs, which are plentiful. South Carolina’s unemployment rate was 5.8% in April, 2007—one of the worst in the nation.
Here’s how the hometown paper describes Hutchens’ solo effort from last year:
Daniel Hutchens’ 2006 solo release may be called Love Songs For Losers, but the collection of shadowy ghost songs and unfiltered rock and roll is a safe bet for the most striking collection of songs from Hutchens thus far. The Chase Park Transduction sessions inspired, among others, songs about reincarnation, birth with eventual death and the significance of blood – the hardcore stuff, y’know, no songs about finding your angry inner man-child here.
The 13-track solo album was released on Autumn Tone Records and can be purchased at the iTunes store.
Fellow Athens rockers Widespread Panic play a handful of Hutchens’ compositions, including “End of the Show,” “Success Yourself,” “Quarter Tank of Gasoline,” “Who Do You Belong To?” and “Henry Parsons Died.”
I saw Inner Circle play a bar date in Germany back in 1990. The band’s been around even longer. They formed in Jamaica in 1968. While known to the Fox Television viewing world for their 1989 song, “Bad Boys,” (title track for the show Cops) the band is better known inside the music industry for its chill recording studio in Miami.
Evelyn McDonnell of the Miami Herald paid Inner Circle a visit at Circle House–where Usher, Lenny Kravitz, Lil Wayne, Ne-Yo, Jamie Foxx and many other stars have cut a record–and came away with a multimedia report for her paper.
Straddling a quiet residential street in North Miami Beach lie two houses that are musical portals. From the mixing board in the guest cottage of one, you can look out on a curvy pool and see hitmakers taking a dip. Pungent aromas of vegetarian cuisine waft out of the kitchen across the road, while members of the storied reggae band Inner Circle watch soccer on TV, rehearse, or tend to the business of Circle House, the top-notch, world-renowned studio they built.
Caribbean culture passes into urban America here — and vice versa. Some of the hottest records of the past 12 years — from Who Let the Dogs Out to today’s hit Lip Gloss — have been recorded by pop’s top musicians and producers between these brightly colored walls. If there’s one place responsible for making the region a top destination for lovers of hip-hop, reggae and R&B — a crowd that will once again be partying in Miami this Memorial Day weekend — it’s not a South Beach club, but this tropical, professional, homey studio.
Some studios — like Circle House’s near neighbor, Hit Factory/Criterion — are known for their phenomenal acoustics and state-of-the-art technology. Circle House has those, but it also has brownies. They’re made by one of the local cooks who provide fresh gourmet cuisine nightly for whomever happens to be in one of the studio’s multiple recording and mixing rooms, which on a given night could be Nas, Kelis, Trick Daddy and Rick Ross.
”We’re not trying to run a studio business, that’s not our thing,” says Ian Lewis. “We’re just vibing. How we look at it is, in the words of the great Bunny Wailer, it’s correct. It’s flowing.”
Steve Goodman was a Grammy Award-winning folk music singer and songwriter from Chicago. “City of New Orleans” is one of his most famous numbers, thanks to Arlo Guthrie’s rendition. Bluegrass legend Jethro Burns was one half of Homer and Jethro, a group sometimes known as “the thinking man’s hillbillies.”
