Tuesday, December 06, 2005

White mobs do love their Bobby Dylan

What am I working on? Two things for The Common Ills actually. Hopefully, I'll have at least one completed this week.

In the meantime, have you been following Pop Politics?

There's a fire storm going on. Bernie posts that Bob Dylan is next to godliness and someone doubts that in the comment and it's a fire storm.

Misogynist Dylan's baby boom defenders swarm in on their Little Rascals to holler.

This is the same crowd that booed sinead o'connor at the 30th tribute to Dylan.

Bernie can cream in his shorts over who ever he wants. He can even quote the neocon bible The New Republic. The comments surprise me: a) didn't realize the readers were all baby boomers and kids who wished they were; and b) they can't take a contrary opinion.

You really should read the comments because they're really hilarious.

The one who upset the boomers said that Dylan had done anything in 40 years which is more or less true. By then, he'd stopped ripping off the melodies of folk songs that most people then and now didn't know so they'd talk about what wonderful music Dylan wrote. I always wonder about people who brag about his ability to write music -- does it hurt to be that stupid?

But the defense is hilarious. Dylan got married! And divorced! And he had kids!

With those hips? Don't think so.

What that has to do with art is beyond me but then Dylan hasn't approached art in a little less than 40 years.

This comment's too priceless not to note:

how about becoming a father and husband, going through a divorce, finding a new faith, battling drug addictions, carrying the dylan burden, remarrying, alcoholism, fighting a rare heart disease and constantly touring while releasing around twenty albums....

"Releasing around twenty albums" is the closest the comment has to do with music. (Strange that the children outside of marriage aren't mentioned. But then maybe they don't realize that while he was on his Jews for Jesus trip and preaching the gospel, he was also fathering kids? Reportedly, he married her. I don't remember if it was the second time she was pregnant or after she'd had the second child.)

Dylan's a joke. He was a Buddy Holly wanna be who couldn't mesh with a band and ended up in folk. His best moments were then but it's not as though he wrote any wonderful music and only the musically ignorant would claim otherwise. If I write "Where's The Rain?" and set it to the Lennon & McCartney's music to "Yesterday," I haven't written great music.

That's really why his post folk period is so disappointing.

He's an old man who preaches the apocalypse and has for years. "Drifting Too Far From Shore."
Does anyone pay attention to the "message" these days? He's an old crank.

I can party down with the Wallflowers but Dylan hasn't made it in years. We're all supposed to go "Hey, 'Hurricane' was about something!" But it was a badly written song.

But the same mob that booed Sinead turns out to scream, "Leave our Bobby alone!"

As for Bernie's opinion, he's welcome to it. I disagree. Bright Eyes "When A President Talks To God" is not only a great song, it's a watershed moment. If you can't handle it, how do you handle someone singing "ten dead in Ohio"?

I do, however, worry about anyone that reads The New Republic. (And hat tip and thank you to Rebecca who gifted me with Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege which dispenses with any thoughts that the rag, New Republic, is anything but a conservative bible -- why do you think Fred Barnes and Andrew Sullivan wrote for it? Or how about the fact that they supported every war, not just the current one, although Marty P puts the "P" in PNAC.)

As for the mob, when you're too busy jerking off to the sixties and mythic icons, you may have trouble hearing actual music. You'll also notice that they didn't comment on Ani DiFranco. That's because the mob has a hard time acknowledging women. Rock criticism hasn't fed them women over and over and all they know is what they're told.

"Both Hands" is better lyrically than anything Dylan's written since he went electric. And since Ani actually wrote her music as opposed to stealing from a folk song, she's also a better music writer than Dylan.

As for the rap claims, I went to a rap lover there. I asked Cedric, "The Roots, Dylan influenced?"

After he stopped laughing, he told me that he couldn't think of any Dylan influenced rapper though he feels the White press likes to push that notion.

It's like that laughable moment in Dangerous Minds when Michelle Pfeiffer teaches the kids Dylan. They would have booed her out of the room. Which is why in the actual person that the movie's based upon, LouAnne Johnson's (who wrote My Posse Don't Do Homework) used rap, not Bob Dylan.

Cedric's right. The White world needs to believe that Bob Dylan means something to everyone because they've invested so much in him.

Two suggested reads, Cedric's "Collaborative working" which takes a look at what goes into turning out a new edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review and C.I.'s "NYT: 'U.S. Interrogations Are Saving European Lives, Rice Says' (Joel Brinkley)."










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Saturday, December 03, 2005

Laura Flanders Show on right now

Swiping from C.I:

Via Martha, here's what's coming up on The Laura Flanders Show:
Today on The Laura Flanders Show
On Air America Radio, 7-10 PM ESTFrom cutting and running after Katrina to shredding more than abortion rights. We look at corruption 'W' style and consider solutions.
MILES RAPOPORT, president of Demos.org on Connecticut's political reforms.
LOUISE MELLING, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project director, on what difference a single Supreme Court decision might make.
A report from the U.N. global warming conference with KERT DAVIES, GreenpeaceUSA research director.
And singer-songwriter-animal rights activist JOY ASKEW.
You can listen to shows you missed: Download archived shows HERE or Subscribe to the Free PODCAST through the iTunes Music Store
Go to the Laura Flanders Blog

So make a point to listen. I always do unless I'm at a concert. If I've got a party I'm throwing here, I've got the show on in the kitchen. (If I'm throwing a party, music's always on the living room stereo.)

Thursday was an effort to blog about race and/or racism online. Rebecca, Wally, Mike & Betty and Cedric participated. I tried to. I don't do well with assignments as anyone who sat in class with me, and I'm sure my permanent record, could tell you.

I spoke on the phone that day to Cedric and C.I. I tossed out ideas to both and both made a point to say, "If you can't do it, don't." C.I.'s reasons were because . . . Well there's a reason C.I.'s dubbed me the Hunter Thompson of the community. My reviews always come later than I say. "I'm working on it, it'll be done tomorrow!" is a popular phrase of mine. And I always mean it. Sometimes it will be something interesting in life happening. And I'll use any excuse to avoid writing. Sometimes it will be that I'm just not happy with a phrase.

Which isn't to claim that my reviews are perfection to the world but it is to say that if my name's on it, I want it to reflect what I feel.

I never care about typos. I do care about sentiment expressed.

C.I. knows that about me and has heard for a year now (because it is a year that I've been contributing to The Common Ills), "It's almost done, it will be done tomorrow."

Now when C.I. went to D.C. to protest the inauguration in January, I did fill in. I probably did two entries that day. I told myself I wasn't going to worry about anything but getting something up because I really believed in (and approved of) C.I.'s protesting the inauguration. So I just wrote essays about the state of music and I had my topics ahead of time. I also was fueld by several pots of coffee, music blasting on the stereo and, of course, the desire to support C.I.'s efforts to say no to the Bully Boy.

Cedric knows I'd rather do anything besides blog. He also knew my problems with the topic which weren't as beautifully expressed as his own but did mirror them on some points. (Read Cedric's "Race" because it's wonderful.) I've lived through enough "Year of the Women" -- which actually seems to be a week of one month while some news magazine, usually Newsweek, declares it such, so for that week, people talk about it and then move on.

When C.I. started using the phrase "the summer of protest," I was leery of that as well. Fortunately, at community sites, it hasn't been something noted once and then forgotten. Everyone who has a site (and Gina and Krista with their newsletter) has written on that theme, extended it and made it more than a happy slogan we all rallied around for a week and then promptly forgot.

I was going to write about music. About the breakthroughs early on, then the Motown breakthroughs (Smokey, the Supremes, the Four Tops, etc.), then Stax and Atlantic and the notion that some weren't "black enough," followed by disco, followed by the quiet storm, followed by where we are today. It was going to be about "crossover" artists and the efforts behind them and about rap and a number of topics.

I even did an outline. Cedric said, "Kat, the minute you wrote that outline, the piece was dead." He was so right. But he said not to work myself up over it. After several attempts at an opening paragraph (and after considering writing a huge draft and then asking C.I. for some editing help), I finally figured, "Screw it" and went to a jazz club with Sumner and Dak Ho to enjoy some music.

Good for everyone that participated but I didn't even blog about C.I.'s "Target: the 9th Circuit (The Republican war on the judiciary continues)" and that went up Tuesday. I figured I would on Saturday. My thoughts on that are "When does the Republican Party get reigned in?"

It's insane what they will do. Sneaking an effort to split the Ninth Circuit into a budget bill?
The thought of the split and Bully Boy stacking a new circuit court neither thrill me nor make me safe.

But I don't do well with assignments and there was no way that finding out Thursday morning that Thursday was blog on race and/or racism day was going to result in anything by me.

And while I've been typing, stopping, reflecting, I've wasted time and Laura Flanders has already started so let me post this thing. (I hate deadlines.)

And let me note Mike's motto:
Motto: The Common Ills community is important and the Common Ills community is important to me. So I'll do my part for the Common Ills community.

I'll also note that I just heard, on Flanders' show, Bully Boy's "I will not cut & run remark." I read about it this week but I avoid him on TV and radio. Hearing his lifeless "I will not cut & run" nonsense reminded me of a guy who's bound and determined to make sure you have an orgasm to the point where sex loses all of it's joy.

Turn on your radios, Laura Flanders is on right now.













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