info deep dive

the call of duty - in service to what exactly?

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:35:44 -0800

A friend just told me her son has decided to quit college and join the army. She is, as I imagine most mothers to be in this situation, distraught. The question she asks repeatedly and can’t seem to get answered by the young man is, why?

What drives a young man with his entire future in front of him, to enlist? To purposefully put himself in harm's way? To risk his life in a war based on lies & deceit? Is it answering a noble cause? Or another brainwashing by the marketing of war as video game? A need for structure and discipline? Some primal male instinct to be tested, to face the ultimate challenge?

I understand this is part of the bargain we make for living in this country...but there is little say, as we've seen time and again, in who, where, when and for what “cause” our children are sent to fight. My generation was taught that we fight to preserve our freedoms and those who would seek to oppress those freedoms. The Patriots of the Revolutionary War fought, so we were told, to end the oppression of the British, stop the crushing taxation, establish a country free of limitations because of class, religion or race, of equal justice for all and guaranteed basic freedoms.

Noble causes. So many things to be proud of and feel worth fighting for, worth defending.

Starry-eyed youth, standing every morning for the Pledge of Allegiance...and meaning it. We would fight to the death to defend the rights and freedoms so many others gave their lives to defend. We would gladly take up arms to join the legacy of the heroes.

But as history proves time and again, we do not fight to defend our country or our rights or protect ourselves from the oppression of outsiders.

In this modern age, we fight to defend this country’s interests. An entirely different notion. And because this country’s interests are global, we send our children, our friends, our family to die thousands of miles away for imperialist reasons. And to protect the industrial-military complex/financial house of cards we’ve created.

The wars we are engaged in are not about defending our rights or protecting our freedom or way of life.

Iraq was not launched as a reaction to 9/11. By the principals own admission it was all bullshit. There were no WMD. It is not the stronghold of Al Qaeda. It is not a threat to our way of life. A small radical element may be...but that exists far stronger in other places.

Afghanistan? Are we there to flush out and bring to justice Bin Laden and his top cats...still on the loose a decade later? How many lives is it worth? Not just our soldiers but the civilians we seem to incapable of NOT killing. Do we call it quits when the number equals those lives lost in 9/11? Haven’t we eclipsed that already? How many Iraqis and Afghanis...men, women, children...have died? How many Americans more will die?

So let me ask you this...

Would you feel more secure knowing we’re going to continue sending soldiers and spending untold billions of dollars in two wars that really have no end game...

Or might you sleep a bit better had the country invested that money in technology to make our airports, ports and borders more secure?

Seriously. We talking 1.07 TRILLION* dollars spent on the combined wars which does NOT include the additional Obama ordered up.

How much protection at home would that buy? How much new scanning & surveillance technology, vastly improved intelligence and information infrastructure between gov’t agencies and actual training for the TSA could that buy?

You can have your prostate removed by a fucking robot but still need to take your shoes off at the airport? That’s really, really fucked up.

Countries need security forces. We need armies to defend our citizens our rights, our freedoms. I get that...I can, contrary to Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men,” handle the truth. Someone needs to stand on that wall and I’m very glad there are men and women who do. And should those walls be attacked, I would be among them. I would stand to defend my family, my friends, my country from oppression.

But I can’t get behind this other madness.

It won’t be long before the world corporations have there own standing armies. Blackwater or whatever they’re called now, is the template. Fine by me. Use your profit billions to outfit the mercs and privateers to defend your interests abroad.

Leave our kids alone. Let them join an Armed Forces that stands on the wall, keeps a vigilant watch and has a chance to live a full life after they’ve served their tour of duty.

Not come home maimed or in box because of some company’s bottom line.

*You can put this incomprehensible number in prospective here:
www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home)

Pete Anderson Webcast

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:46:45 -0800

Really enjoyed chatting with Pete last night. He’s a fellow rant n raver which doesn’t make for much empty airtime when the two of us get started! His command of the instrument and depth of knowledge - not just musical - but the history of the genres he loves is truly impressive. In a world where guitars have become weapons of mass destruction, Pete’s clarion tone and melodic sensibility is a refreshing change for the battered eardrums.

Do yourself a favor and check out his solo outings listed on his website and available @Amazon & iTunes.
http://www.peteanderson.com/index.html

Answering a question from the audience last night, Pete named his top 3 faves of his own work - all are available through the artists website, amazon or iTunes:

This Time - Dwight Yoakam
http://www.dwightyoakam.com/index.html

Short Sharp Shocked - Michelle Shocked
http://www.michelleshocked.com/index.htm

American in Me - Steve Forbert
http://www.steveforbert.com/

Steve Forbert is an incredibly talented songwriter, once hailed as the “new Dylan” and quite possibly the only artist so anointed that actually comes close to living up to the claim. He came up in Greenwich Village during my time there and seeing him play the Bleecker St clubs was a memorable experience. Steve continues to release albums and tours frequently. If you like good music - and I know you do - seek him out. His debut “Alive on Arrival” is a must-have.

What Pete’s listening to these days (other than dead guys!!)

Derek Trucks - blood ties to the Allman Brothers & channeling the spirit of Duane. Kicked Eric’s butt all over the stage on the last EC tour!
http://www.derektrucks.com/

Nathan James - traditional blues - the real deal!
http://www.nathandjames.com/fr_index.cfm

Seth Walker - blues filtered through New Orleans.
http://www.sethwalker.com/2.0/seth_main.html

For all the folks interested in the blues - and that should be ALL of you - recommended viewing from GVDub - George Van Wagoner - friend, master guitar wrangler, barrista’ extraordinaire and walking encyclopedia of all the music. Friend him on Facebook - you won’t be disappointed.

“Devil Got My Woman” - Allan Lomax film of the 1966 Newport Blues festival. ALl the greats are on this one!

The webcast with Pete is archived on the Jack On The Rocks channel. Enjoy!
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4808077

weighing in on “Not dead...now what?”

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:06:54 -0800

Hi Jack

Just watched your show with Marc Cambell and found it very interesting. Sorry I can’t usually join in in real time but 10 PM here is when I am hanging with Liz and/or getting ready for bed.

Yes I am getting old. I am ahead of you and Marc in the race to finish line. Perhaps that is why rock and roll in not the sacred cow to me that you and he seem to find it. Or maybe I was just never a “rocker.” I started playing the violin in the fourth grade for very rock and roll reasons—a cute girl was taking violin also—and moved on to upright bass and tuba in High School. Though I took up the guitar in Junior High it was to join a Dixieland band, then I moved on to folk and blues in HS. I found the Beatles haircuts silly when they appeared on Sullivan and couldn’t understand the fuss.

I was turned on to the rock of the Sixties by Steven Tyler (then Tolerico). We marched in band together (he on drums, me on tuba) and used to hang out in the band room where he would play the Stones, The Pretty Things and the Yardbirds on an old record player.

Having already steeped myself in the blues (I wrote my HS senior thesis on it) I appreciated the blues roots of these bands and was excited by the direction that they were taking it, much as I was excited by the possibilities of where Brian Setzer might have taken rockabilly the first time I heard the Stray Cats—unfortunately we know how that turned out. I guess this is all to say that I have a different perspective on the whole rock and roll exceptionalism thing.

Essentially I have always felt that Rock and Roll was just another category in the wide wonderful world of music and as such subject to some of the same standards. The wild and dangerous rockabilly bands that started the whole thing did not contain “rock” guitarists, just guitarists like Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup who could probably play standards if pressed. The singers sang on pitch and the band grooved on some level.

As to the dangerous question, was rock any more dangerous than the blues, be-bop or Stravinsky? That music pushed the envelope and buttons, arousing passions and in the latter case even fistfights—without a hint of eyeliner in sight. That said seeing Rod Stewart’s rooster haircut when I saw him with Jeff Beck at the Fillmore East and Jimmy Page’s 18th century fop drag when I saw the Yardbirds at the Andersen Theater was definitely as life altering as the music. But that is the social revolution aspect of rock not the musical one.

Though I was unequivocally blown away when I first saw Hendrix in my college gym (he is playing all those parts at once?!!), I was perhaps less so as a result of recognizing his roots in Cornell Dupree and Buddy Guy, two players who had already blown my mind and inspired me to take up the electric guitar.

This is just about adding perspective. When people talk about the “purity” of their rock heroes I reach for my revolver. One of my fondest musical memories is hearing the Yardbirds and the Who shilling for Great Shakes on the radio on the bus as I road to High School. The myth that rock and roll was the embodiment of some anti-capitalist utopian philosophy I have always found laughable. I remember my amusement at the irony and gall of John Lennon singing. “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can?” Excuse me motherfucker; I am not the one who owns forty apartments in the Dakota and a white grand piano on a white shag rug. My belief that Neil Young is one of the only musicians of his genre to even approach any kind of purity was confirmed when after 9/11 he came on TV and sang, “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if I can?” —a crucial lyric change, no?

I don’t mean to denigrate the power of great rock and roll, just try to offer another viewpoint. For me, seeing Hendrix and the Who in their prime in relatively small venues was no more or less mind-blowing than seeing Howling Wolf perform in my dorm lobby or Chico Hamilton at CBGBs, before Hilly went punk, with a band that consisted of John Abercrombie, Glen Moore and Ralph Towner, or Bill Frisell playing with Percy Jones’ Stone Tiger (Dougie Bowne on drums, who I later saw play with Iggy Pop) at the Bitter End.

As to aging in rock, we like to think that our heroes who died young would have somehow retained their power into middle and old age, but who is to say that Hendrix might not have finally capitulated, putting the Experience back together and trotting out “Foxy Lady” one more time; remember, Clapton started out with experiments like Cream and Blind Faith.

A favorite conversation starter of mine is to ask which musicians in any genre have aged gracefully. My picks are:

Neil Young (though I think he misses way more than he hits these days at least he is still trying)

Dylan (the band with Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell was one of his best)

Jim Hall (the guy starts using effects in his sixties and just gets better and better)

Robert Plant. I have loved his solo work since Zep, especially his latest band (no, not with Allison Krause, though that ain’t bad), the one with Justin Adams on guitar, who having been born in the mid-east helps keep that great Zep influence alive.

Bowie was doing well until he trotted out his greatest hits tour.

Miles, certainly until he went and died.

I would now, thanks to Mr. Campbell, add Leonard Cohen. I am open to other suggestions.

Back to the danger thing, it is an important element in any great art. But it must come from the art. I saw Ornette Coleman at the Masonic hall in SF about a decade ago. He played first with Geri Allen on piano in a trio format, and for the second half with Prime Time, his electric band. At intermission, he had people on stage piercing themselves and hanging from hooks. Of course a number of people left in a huff. The sad thing was that once upon a time it would have been his music that was disturbing enough to make people leave. Muddy Waters sitting on a stool was more dangerous than Jim Morrison on his best day—without the aid of leather pants.

I am all for show as long as we don’t mistake it for content.
Howling Wolf, from all reports was an educated man who had a health care plan for his musicians, but on stage he was fearsome. If you want to see dangerous, check out the Legendary Shackshackers sometime. The lead singer/harmonica player comes off like some nightmare out of Deliverance, prompting the guy standing next to me in front of the stage to say, “Please don’t kill me.” Interviewing him later I found him to be articulate and, wouldn’t you know, nice.

I guess this is all a long-winded way to indicate—as the young folks post on Face Book—it’s complicated.

Hope this finds you well and happy and maybe we can discuss this in person some time – love to hear your always-intelligent ideas.

Best
M

Recommended reading:
Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and the Blues by Elijah Wald
An interesting look at how white blues fans created the myth of the lone guitarist as the genesis of the blues

Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches (or anything else by him for that matter). An OCD look at Emmet Miller and how black music influenced white music but more interestingly vice versa.

not dead...now what?

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:21:45 -0800

Been spending a lot of time thinking, chatting and arguing about The Who’s performance at the Super Bowl. Doesn’t seem to be much middle ground in the reaction at all. Most folks who weighed in either loved it or hated it. Some really hated it. I was too excited just to see Townshend up there that I hardly paid attention to what it actually sounded like.

My brain just automatically fills in what may not have been there. The Who - and Pete specifically - was such a huge influence on me and my approach to music and I spent so many hours listening to Live at Leeds that just seeing Pete on stage sends me back in time to laying on the living room floor in the dark, my parents out of the house, the big console stereo fucking cranked to window rattling levels...completely and utterly happy.

Happy Jack.

So now he’s old. So am I. Neither one of us planned or hoped for anything other than dying before this happened. But we didn’t. We’re here. As are all of you.

So what do we do? Put away the toys of our youth? Brush it off our shoulders as something that was silly and a meaningless part of being a kid? Bury the emotions and hopes and dreams that we had then, that the music of our time reflected, fed and became a rallying cry as we strode clenched fist to the front lines in the battle between Us and Them.

Not me. I love my rock n roll. And will til my dying day.

I wonder if what pisses us off, watching The Who or so many of the artists who have survived and continue to do what it is they do...repeating what they did...is that it reminds us, we failed. We lost. We, all of us for the most part, sold our collective soul to the devil we once so vehemently railed against, swore we would never have anything to do with and tried to bring down.

We became THEM. Caught up in an unending struggle of acquisition and endless desire for more more more. We stoked the insatiable engine of the consumer society. We became something far worse than anything we once thought our parents were. My folks never spent beyond their means or even had a credit card until well into their 40’s. And they never ever let the balance ride.

So much for getting back to the land and setting our souls free.

We filled the arenas. We filled the stadiums. We created this monstrosity, this aberration of the art we so deeply loved, we brought life...like Frankenstein...to the horrible, bloated, corruption of something once beautiful and full of purpose.

These bands play arenas and charge $400 a ticket because we pay it. We allow them to gross 100’s of millions of dollars touring. We listen to computer formatted classic rock radio that clogs the airwaves with “Won’t Get Fooled Agin” and “Hotel California” and “Stairway to Heaven” & “Start Me Up”

We asked for it. We got it. And now we want to blame Pete & Mick & Keith & Sting & Bruce & Bono for cranking out formatted spectacles with planned encores because demand still exists.

Don’t want your precious memories fucked up by hearing The Who on CSI? Turn that piece of shit show off and read a fucking book.

Don’t want to see Mick prancing around some stadium looking all the world like a rode-hard-put-up-wet whore? Don’t buy the tickets. Tell your friends not to buy the tickets.

The future of rock n roll is in the past.

Rock n Roll - real rock n roll - takes place in sweaty bars and small theaters and shit-hole nightclubs in bad neighborhoods. It’s not clean or nice or all that pretty.

All these bands that have become more spectacle than rock n roll experiences could still and would, tear the joint apart in a small venue. I know, I’ve seen it done.

There are great rock n roll bands & vibrant music being played in every city, in every town in every country on this planet. But most of us will never see them or hear it...

Know why??

We won’t get off the couch, turn off the flat screen, get in the car, drive into town to stand at the bar and toss back a few watered down cocktails served in plastic cups while getting our ears blistered by some struggling bunch of kids learning to play their instruments by doing gigs!!

It’s not the musicians who are too old to rock n roll...maybe it’s us.

rock n roll christmas

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:45:13 -0800

Every gathering starts with a central theme around here and a Christmas bash is no different. When I was first discovering the world of wines, my good friend, Doug compared wine varietals to music genres. The idea shortened my learning curve and gave me a greater understanding of what to expect for a particular wine. I’ll get into a more detailed outline of the concept at another time but tonight’s theme was built around the idea that Zinfandel is the rock n roll of wine! Big, in your face, the jammy fruit is very apparent in smell and taste. This style - as uniquely American as the roots of rock n roll – pairs extremely well with spicy foods, bbq, fruit glazes and bold flavors. So used this wine as the starting point for a gathering, pairing foods and a cocktail recipe to make a kick-ass night.

watch the webcast here - http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3322100

Nuestra Paloma Cocktail - Scott Beattie’s update on a classic.
3/4 oz “Good” SIlver Tequila - Partida, Corzo, Don Julio
3/4 oz Charbay Ruby Red Grapefruit Vodka
3/4 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
3/4 oz freshly ruby red grapefruit juice
1/2 oz agave nectar sweetner - water diluted 1/1

shake vigorously - serve on the rocks - garnish w/slice of dried ruby red grapefruit

links
http://www.scottbeattiecocktails.com/ Get the book
http://charbay.com/default.aspx

Pedro’s Vino Picks
Maple 2006 Zinfandel - http://www.maplezin.com/

Arnot-Roberts 2007 Alder Spring Syrah
Arnot-Roberts 2007 Griffins Lair Zinfandel
http://www.arnotroberts.com/index.html

Cola-Baked Ham w/Cherry-Orange Glaze
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/cola-baked-ham-with-cherry-orange-glaze-recipe/index.html

Scalloped Potatoes & Onions - Cameron highly recommends caramelized onions and using a bechamel sauce rather than the cream called for the recipe - a little jazz thrown into the rock n roll mix.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/scalloped-potatoes-and-onions-recipe/index.html

Some tips on ham buying from Saveur magazine issue #125.
http://www.saveur.com/article/Techniques/Buying-a-Ham