I am trying to build up my vinyl collection. Right now, I'm focusing on singer-songwriter and icon Laura Nyro. I have seven vinyl Laura lps already. My favorite Laura album?
LAURA: LIVE AT THE BOTTOM LINE. It came out in 1989 and was the only album during Laura's lifetime that wasn't issued by COLUMBIA.
Yes, Laura's first album, MORE THAN A NEW DISCOVERY, was issued on VERVE in 1967. However, COLUMBIA re-released it in 1969 as THE FIRST SONGS -- which is the album that remains in print today.
So even that album was released on COLUMBIA. CYPRESS got Laura's live album because COLUMBIA was pressing Laura to go into the studio and do a studio album. When they passed, they allowed her to take it to CYPRESS.
During her lifetime (1947 to 1997), COLUMBIA released Laura's THE FIRST SONGS, ELI AND THE THIRTEENTH CONFESSION,, NEW YORK TENDABERRY, CHRISTMAS AND THE BEADS OF SWEAT, GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE (the album she did with Labelle), SMILE, the 1977 live album SEASONS OF LIGHTS, NESTED, MOTHER'S SPIRITUAL and WALKD THE DOG AND LIGHT THE LIGHT. That's ten albums they issued while she was alive.
I wasn't a big fan of SEASONS OF LIGHT. I got the single disc album when it came out -- ten songs. The double disc album -- which I didn't even know of until year after it came out -- had sixteen songs and it a better album.
But LAURA: LIVE AT THE BOTTOM END is her best live album -- that's it and SEASONS released while she was alive -- and the five live albums issued since she died. It's got sixteen tracks and Laura's so into the music on this one. She loses herself in the music and the crowd goes wild as a result. She'd returned to touring with this album and she attracted enthusiastic fans. She didn't just do her best known songs, she also introduced new songs including "The Japanese Restaurant" -- she does it better on that live album than she ever did. And there's an exchange with the waitress at The Bottom Line in the song that is just delivered perfectly -- by both of them.
CYPRESS is no more and I don't understand why COLUMBIA hasn't purchased that album so they'd have all the essential Laura in their catalogue.
So I love that album. I think it's a classic the same as ELI, THE FIRST SONGS, NEW YORK TENDABERRY, CHRISTMAS AND THE BEADS OF SWEAT and MOTHER'S SPIRITUAL.
After Eli, the most listened to Laura album by me would be CHRISTMAS AND THE BEADS OF SWEAT. It's not a Christmas album but the title did lead some record stores to only stock it during that season. I'm not just talking when it came out. I can remember being at TOWER in 1989 and buying Laura's BOTTOM LINE album. I got it on CD and I wanted to get CHRISTMAS too that day. It wasn't in stock. I went to the desk and asked if they could order it. "What's it called?" CHRISTMAS IN THE BEADS OF SWEAT. As the guy punches the title in to the computer, he warns me, "You may have to wait until December. You can't always get these seasonal albums year round."
So anyway. Last week, I ordered CHRISTMAS AND THE BEADS OF SWEAT on vinyl.
And?
It arrived today with another album I ordered on eBay. The eBay album was in the usual container for a vinyl album. CHRISTMAS?
I was looking at the AMAZON PRIME box and trying to figure out what I'd ordered. It was the size box for a hardcover book. I open it and it's CHRISTMAS. And to use that box, they had to force the album in. They're lucky the disc didn't crack. The album jacket's all screwed up because of this.
And, let me be clear, this is a new album. Not a used one. You can still buy CHRISTMAS new. It was never deleted on vinyl by COLUMBIA.
I think AMAZON needs to take a little more care and not bend an album up on the top and the bottom to fit into a box that's too small to handle sending a vinyl album in.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Ben Cohen, co-founder of popular American ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, was arrested Thursday outside the Department of Justice while protesting in support of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange.
Cohen had shared in a tweet on Wednesday that he planned to “protest the criminalization of the free press and the prosecution” of Assange, acknowledging that the move would "risk arrest."
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
•
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat
The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.
But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.
Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.
On the 30 June, Stella Assange and her two children were granted a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Mrs Assange has reported that the Pope is well aware of the urgency of the situation her husband Julian is in, as he awaits his appeal against extradition from England to the United States to face charges of violations of the US’s 1917 Espionage Act.
[. . .]
In light of her audience with Pope Francis last week, I caught up with Stella Assange in London earlier today to ask her about her own faith and the role that faith has played throughout the ordeal.
Anthony McCarthy (AM)
Can you tell us what the audience with the Pope meant to you and your children?
Stella Assange (SA)
The audience with the Pope was a moment of humanity and compassion at
a human level and contrasted with much of the day-to-day fight where we
are confronted with the opposite. The prison, which is a place that we
spend a lot of time, and which Julian is in all the time, is where
humanity and compassion and dignity is denied in a systematic way. We
felt the exact opposite in meeting with Pope Francis, where we were
greeted with great warmth. I have huge respect for Pope Francis and I am
very grateful that he allowed for this meeting to be publicised.
AM
Can you tell us more about what the Pope’s letter to Julian meant to him at the time it was received?
SA
The Pope sent a message in March 2021 to Julian via the Catholic chaplain of the prison. It came at an especially low point, as the lower court in UK had ruled that Julian’s treatment in the US would not be humane, but the court, despite this finding, did not grant him bail. The letter was a significant event and it was very important to Julian that he received this message, which also coincided with some very difficult days – he had lost one of his close friends to suicide in the prison just a couple of months previously and it was during the cCvid lockdown period, so there was much isolation. While these communications are private there is much significance in these gestures and Julian has found much comfort from the pastoral care of the Catholic chaplain at Belmarsh, who also blessed our wedding. It was this same chaplain who verbally read to Julian the Pope’s message through the prison door.
[. . .]
AM
Is there any final message you would like to give to Catholics in the British Isles ?
SA
I would like to thank everyone who has been praying for Julian and supporting his freedom. I think that many people whom I have met along the way are both deeply concerned and disgusted about the dehumanisation and mistreatment of Julian, but also share my understanding that what is being done to Julian is a bigger attack on the truth and on people’s right to know the truth. And without the truth we can never have justice. The most important thing is not to allow Julian to become a taboo issue. This case is so flagrant, it concerns the exposure of the killing of thousands and thousands of men, women and children and what the punishment is for exposing that. Justice here should not be seen as a taboo subject.
We all have a responsibility to ensure that injustice isn’t allowed to carry on in silence. It’s crucial that people don’t remain silent in the face of this. That is why I am so grateful to the Pope for having decided to highlight this in this way.
Iraq sealed a $27 billion energy deal with French oil major TotalEnergies on 10 June to develop the nation's oil, gas, and renewable energies sectors over 25 years in a step toward achieving energy self-sufficiency.
"This is the starting day, and we'll deliver the project in the next four years for the benefit of everyone in Iraq," TotalEnergies Chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanne said during the signing ceremony in Baghdad, stressing that this was a “historic day.”
The four contracts include:
- Building a seawater treatment plant to provide water injection for pressure maintenance to increase regional oil production
- Development of nearly 600 million cubic metres of associated gas and several oilfields in South Basra governorate
- Boosting output from the Artawi oilfield
- Developing a 1 GW solar power plant to supply electricity to the Basrah regional grid.
In the five years from the time the Islamic State terrorist group was compelled to get out of the country, Iraq has had a comparatively peaceful time.
In spite of some persistent economic and political disputes, the northwestern Kurdish highlands of the country have witnessed a huge rise in tourism as stability in the country has been reinstated.
Convention organizers are pulling out of Florida, which is devastating knock-on tourism and causing panic over the future of the industry, experts warned in a report Friday.
When asked for a reason why they were scrapping plans, one organizer wrote simply: “Governor DeSantis.”
More than half a dozen planned conventions in Broward County, which encompasses the Fort Lauderdale area, have been scrapped in recent months, according to a list drawn up by the county’s tourism promotion group Visit Lauderdale and reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“We lost this program due to political climate,” Visit Lauderdale notes on a decision by the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons to cancel its meeting, planned for August next year. It also canceled 855 hotel rooms
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign is sinking into oblivion – and that's filling Floridians with dread, columnist Fred Grimm writes for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
“Somehow, DeSantis has failed — so far — to captivate Republican voters despite his relentless exploitation of crafted-for-MAGA issues like race, abortion, immigration, guns, gender dysphoria, gay rights, drag queens, the Disney Company," Grimm wrote.
Grimm notes that despite DeSantis’ efforts to project a “tough guy” image of Trump without the baggage, MAGA voters are sticking with what they know.
For example, last month Kennedy said that chemicals in the water are turning kids trans. His proof? It’s happening to frogs.
“There’s atrazine throughout our water supply,” Kennedy claimed. “If you, in a lab, put atrazine in a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there. And 10 percent of the frogs, the male frogs, will turn into fully viable females able to produce viable eggs. If it’s doing that to frogs, there’s a lot of other evidence that it’s doing it to human beings as well.”
If this particular rant sounds familiar, it’s because Alex Jones has used it as well. No one has ever suggested that Jones, who claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, was a credible presidential candidate.
Kennedy has also said he opposes trans athletes participating in sports. “I am against people participating in women’s sports who are biologically male,” Kennedy said on CNN last April.
Kennedy’s disdain for the health of LGBTQ+ people extends to HIV as well. In his worldview, AIDS is actually caused by poppers. In a nice blame-the-victim touch that would have made the Reagan administration proud, he also sounds as if he believes gay men were at fault for their own deaths.
“A hundred percent of the people who died in the first thousand [with] AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause Kaposi sarcoma in rats,” Kennedy said. “And they were people who were part of a gay lifestyle where they were burning the candle at both ends.”
Kennedy believes that AZT, one of the earliest treatments for AIDS, killed more people than the disease itself would have if left untreated. (It didn’t.) He has blamed Anthony Fauci for deliberately sabotaging treatments that were cheaper and more effective and even accused Fauci of essentially murdering 80 Black children in a clinical trial and burying them in a mass grave. Kennedy recently endorsed a book that argues that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Kennedy’s fringe (to be polite) beliefs will no doubt come out as the campaign wears on. But it’s in the interest of the far right to promote him as a legitimate alternative to Biden during the primary. The more votes Kennedy might siphon from Biden, the weaker Biden will appear, softening him up for the general election.
That’s the apparent reason why such Trump-world figures as Steve Bannon and Roger Stone are singing the praises of Kennedy. Bannon actually encouraged Kennedy to run for president as, in the words of CBS reporter Bob Costa “a useful chaos agent.” Stone has said that a Trump-Kennedy ticket would be a “dream.” Michael Flynn and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk have also expressed their admiration.
The right is certainly doing its best to create a race between Biden and Kennedy. “With RFK Jr. … surging in the Democratic primary, is Biden in trouble?” Sean Hannity asked on one recent show. As it turns out, Kennedy is rising in the polls – among Republicans. Democrats have had an increasingly unfavorable opinion of him as they learn more about him.
That’s a problem for someone who is running as a Democrat. The other problem Kennedy has is that his family isn’t lining up to support him either. Three years ago, two of his siblings and a niece wrote an op-ed in which they said they loved him but called his anti-vax stance “tragically wrong” and “an outlier in the Kennedy family.”
Meanwhile, the foundation named after his father, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, is carrying on exactly the kind of mission that Junior is not. It has decried last week’s Supreme Court ruling allowing selective discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, criticized the attack on books, and, most telling of all, advocated for the rights of trans people.
The president of the group is Kerry Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s sister.
Days after the Supreme Court's ruling that businesses can deny same-sex wedding services if it clashes with their religious views, new data says most American voters disagree with that position.
Last week, the nation's high court sided with a Colorado business owner who argued a state nondiscrimination law could not compel her to make same-sex websites.
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