Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Etta James and Bonnie Faulkner

"Hey Kat, long time no see." Blah-blah-blah, bite me.

Seriously, as one of the ones who hung in to the very end of The Third Estate Sunday Review (the late morning hours of Sunday), I was in no mood to blog Sunday. Saturday? I blogged at The Common Ills Saturday and Sunday as well.

In fact, I just posted there. C.I.'s very busy (and active in an activism filled week) right now so I said I'd do my review tonight. It's of Etta James' All The Way. I love the album. Thank you to Rebecca for steering me to it. I wasn't interested in a "lush" album, which is how it's been promoted. (Maybe the way it was promoted is the reason it's gotten some bad reviews? Sumner swears it's gotten bad reviews.)

I will be reviewing Ben Harper's Both Sides Of The Gun. But I got Etta on Friday when Rebecca mentioned it on the phone for about the 60th time. With March being women's history month and Etta James being Etta James, I thought I'd put Ben Harper on hold and review Etta.
(I also want to absorb his double-disc album some more -- I still haven't listened to the third disc that comes in the deluxe package, I'll try to do that before I write the review.)

I started the month with a Nina Simone review and I think going out with Etta is a good way to go. (No, the end of the month isn't until Friday. C.I. does "And the war drags on . . ." on Thursdays. There's no way I'm posting that day because I know it's a hassle to go through all the e-mails and don't want to be calling asking, "Is it okay to post now or are you posting?" As for Friday -- how many times do you see a Friday post here? Not very often. I'm usually out on Fridays. So the review, if I was going to post it, had to go up tonight.) I've offered, by the way, to help in any way I can with tomorrow night's indymedia roundup because I know C.I.'s got stuff on deck for Friday (offline stuff).

Did you read Ava and C.I.'s "TV Review: Joy Ride?"? If you did, you're one up on them. They were exhausted and fell asleep while writing it. They asked others to read it and say if they could follow it. They both sounded wiped out and I felt so sorry for them. If you take away the time they were asleep, they wrote that in twenty minutes. I love their writing. And Free Ride is actually funny. I saw an episode two Sundays ago because Ty called all excited to tell me that the show was using Cat Power's "Living Proof." Ty's ahead of me by several hours so I had time to watch the episode. (If we were in the same time zone, I would've said, "Gee thanks, the show's over now.")

For newcomers, I'm a Cat Power fan.

I'm also a Bonnie Faulkner fan. Today was Guns and Butter on KPFA. I forgot to note last week that this was a once week show. (But if you used the link, you would have seen that.)

If you listened today, you heard a really great show. If you didn't, click on Guns and Butter.

Dr. David Ray Griffin was Bonnie's guest today. They were discussing the witness testimonies from the 9-11 events in NYC. There was a desire (by the head of the fire department and I don't have his title, sorry) to get the statements recorded before the official haze and collective memories of the day overtook the genuine memories. Bloomberg (Mayor Bloomberg of NYC) didn't want to release them. It took a lawsuit. The New York Times was part of that. And having won a verdict from the court of appeals on August 12, 2005, the paper of record has done little with the testimonies.

Why is that? Dr. Griffin believes it's because they don't fit the official narrative. You have people making statements about how "I looked out the window to see what would like a perfectly synchronized explosion." You have witnesses talking about hearing bombs going off in the building. You have damage to the basement (before the towers fell, of course) that the witnesses describe which suggests a bomb had gone off. Firefighters talk about explosions. A witness talks about a fireball.

He suggested that if you Google "Explosive Testimony" you can find out more from his article.
Let me try that because I've been busy all day. It works. The page took awhile to load, however. You can Google or just click here for his article.

I'm not a 9-11 expert, by the way. Nor am I trying to upset or harm anyone who's suffered. Before I'm acccused of that. (Maybe I'll get misquoted by a certain website again?) I asked Ruth if C.I. had any problem with discussing alternative theories to 9-11. She said no and that one time C.I. attempted to talk her through an interview Bonnie did on steel's melting point but they both ended up confused. Ruth wanted to write about that and if they could have gotten the basics down, she would have. I'm not going to try to go for science. I'll note what was discussed. If it's too much for you to handle, stealing from C.I., walk on, walkon.org. Ruth did tell me that C.I. knew some firefighters in the building. That's such a hard topic to ask someone about because so many people died that day. But I did hint this weekend and I know that at least some (if not all) of the firefighters C.I. knew made it out alive. C.I. said they were disgusted with the way the walkie talkies did not work and that some swear they heard explosions.

So it was weird, after that conversation, to hear Dr. Griffin and Bonnie talking about it today. It was an interesting discussion and you can listen to it by using the link above or you can read the article (also linked above) or you can do both. Or you can do neither. That's really up to you.

I told Ruth that I'd grab Guns and Butter. From now on. She's trying to cover so much on Pacifica Radio these days. When she started, she was covering Morning Edition on NPR and she was doing two entries a week minimum. Now she does one entry a week and she's trying to cover so much that she ends up with these mammoth entries. (Wonderful ones. I read every word.) We could all help her out by noting shows during the week. Elaine's already done that with one show this week and I know Rebecca's trying to find one as well.

And we all feel like we should anyway because you either support real public radio or you don't.
Mike's noted CounterSpin twice this week. So we're all trying to do our part to get the word out. For some, that might just be noting Ruth's reports because of the way their site is set up, but we are trying to increase the attention to real public radio.

Hopefully, you will too. Imagine a country where everyone actually had information.

I'm tired so that is it for tonight. Tomorrow, I intend to add Pacifica and G&B to my blog roll. But I'm tired tonight and just wanting to get this posted and turn off the computer.














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