Rachael Pimblett (FAR OUT) writes:
He had the talent to justify a certain level of arrogance, but the singer-songwriter had managed to position himself in the middle of a circle of sycophants, and it was going straight to his head.
Around that time, Dylan, who believed he was swiftly becoming one of the greats, began to seek out his creative heroes. The release of his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in 1963 was met with endless praise and afforded the musician a level of fame he’d been after for years.
All of a sudden, the musical (and literary) canon became not just an idea which he engaged with in the dark recesses of a rainy evening, but something that the star could almost touch, meld, and make his own. He had the ever-present assent of his group of yes-men, but to really prove to himself he was the guy for the job, he had to know that everybody liked his stuff, especially his heroes.
Dylan’s relationship with musician Woody Guthrie is well documented, but around the same time, he sought out another man for his band of successful creatives: Carl Sandburg. While on a Kerouac-esque road trip with his friends in early 1964, Dylan decided to make his way to Flat Rock, North Carolina. He had a vague idea of Sandburg’s residence, so he set out, asking locals for directions to seal the deal.
As the tale in Anthony Scaduto’s Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography goes, the locals were bemused at the idea of Sandburg, the little guy with a goat farm who “wrote a book on Lincoln”, as a poet. Still, the troubadour and his entourage trudged on, but what they’d find behind the door of the humble shack would forever disappoint them.
The door opened to reveal an effigy of polite disinterest. “You’re Carl Sandburg,” Dylan said, “I’m Bob Dylan. I’m a poet, too,” he added, bulldozing on despite Sandburg’s pleasant but somewhat icy reaction. Still, the crew was invited in, as was polite society back in those days.
Carl Sandburg had no idea who Dylan was. Tim Coffman (FAR OUT) serves up a tale of Stevie Nicks:
Even before she broke up with Lindsey Buckingham, managing two couples in the span of the same band was bound to be a little bit frustrating, and once everyone started to weaponise their tunes on Rumours, it must have felt like going to emotional war every single time they went into the studio to sing those songs at each other. But while Nicks could make it through any of those tunes bravely enough, she knew that things were going to be different once she opted for a solo career.
If any of us were in her position, though, chances are we would have gone solo long before she decided to. Having to deal with Buckingham’s songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’ wasn’t going to be easy to get through, and if a song like ‘Silver Springs’ ended up being relegated to a B-side on the final record, the idea of having even fewer songs so that your ex could make strange experiments on Tusk was bound to be the last straw.
Nicks needed the chance to work on anything else, and while Bella Donna was meant to be a pivot away from everything she had done, she probably didn’t anticipate the baggage that came with it. No one wants any of their records to do modestly well or only sell a certain amount of copies, but once Nicks’s debut went multi-platinum, she had to deal with the cold shoulder from all of her bandmates the minute that she got back in the rehearsal room all over again.
Stevie's a legend and an original. Most people who leave a lasting mark are. Like Grace. Meredith Gordon (PARADE) shares news of Grace Jones:
Grace Jones, 78, has only ever fit into one category: icon. The Jamaican-born beauty made a name for herself as a high fashion model in New York and Paris in the 1970s before striking out as a singer and actress. One of the most visually unique performers of the late 1970s and 1980s, Jones became known for her androgynous look and fearless approach to combining fashion, music and performance. Fifty years after the release of her first album, Jones is still performing with the same bold style that caught fans’ attention and is earning her the title of the biggest icon in disco.
Jones just wrapped up a handful of summer festival dates, showcasing her avant-garde fashion and performance style, which hasn’t dimmed with time. Wearing insect antlers over her eyes (of course) and a men’s suit, the 78-year-old can be seen taking the stage with the same bravado and confidence that she became known for in the late ’70s.
Lastly, another original and a legend Stevie Wonder. Matthew Wilkening (ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK) reports:
Stevie Wonder will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life with an 18-date world tour this fall.
He will perform the acclaimed 1976 double album in full at these shows. The tour kicks off Oct. 13 in Birmingham, England and is currently scheduled to conclude Dec. 19 in Los Angeles.
In addition to the L.A. show, the American leg of Wonder's tour will visit New York City, Chicago, Washington and Detroit. You can see the complete schedule below.
SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE is a masterpiece and it opens with one of Stevie's best songs ever "Love's In Need Of Love Today."
Closing with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
The first night of Donald Trump‘s midterm convention failed to generate a ratings bounce for Fox News, with the audiences comparable or even slightly below regular primetime programming.
Fox News’s coverage of the convention dominated the primetime hours on Wednesday, drawing an average 2.3 million viewers. But that is less than its September, 2025 primetime viewership, when it averaged 2.54 million viewers.
During Donald Trump’s speech from 9 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. ET, Fox News averaged 2.5 million viewers. A year ago, during the month of September, Hannity drew an average of 2.89 million in the 9 p.m. ET hour and Gutfeld! garnered an average of 2.94 million at 10 p.m. ET.
CNN‘s primetime coverage averaged 441,000 viewers, compared to a 543,000 average in September, 2025. MS NOW posted 1.1 million viewers in primetime, an uptick from an average of 810,000 during the month a year ago. In contrast to Fox News and CNN, MS NOW carried little of Trump’s speech and stayed on analysis from Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell and their guests.
"I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot," the president implored the first day.
"You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell," he said on the second night.
After suffering defeats in 2024, Democrats have now expressed more enthusiasm to vote, have flipped a number of state and local seats and improved their margins with nearly every voter demographic group in elections across the country since then.
At the same time, the Republican base has fractured over key issues in the last 18 months, including the war in Iran, the handling of the release of the Epstein files, surging gas prices and rising costs driven by tariffs.
The GOP Convention audience roared in a bizarre moment Thursday as President Donald Trump had them raise their right hands and swear to get to the polls on Nov. 3 and to “try to cheat like hell like they do.”
Trump took the stage promising he’d be “brief” after giving a two-hour speech the night before on the convention’s opening day, when he caused a firestorm by promising to dole out $5,000 checks to Americans should Republicans win the midterms.
After insisting Democrats “want to cheat” and warning the party “would destroy everything we’ve built” if they win in the midterms, he then practically begged the crowd to make sure to get out to the polls.
[. . .]
He then proceeded with his pledge — urging the crowd to promise, “That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do. There has never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care, I am going to go out and I’m going to get my friends and family and we are going to vote on November 3, or we are going to vote before that.”
“JD Vance has been Donald Trump’s most loyal puppet, working in lockstep to enact an agenda that has hiked prices and made life unaffordable for working families. Vance has defended even their most disastrous policies, proving his loyalty to Trump over the American people. Vance will continue to gaslight Americans, but voters know the truth: Trump and Vance have tanked the economy, plunged the country into more endless wars, and failed to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”
Vance has defended Trump every time he’s disregarded Americans’ financial concerns, like telling them that high prices at the pump are “not a big price to pay,” and declaring, “I love the inflation.”
Vance became the chief dealmaker of his and Trump’s war with Iran — and after more than six months of the war, the administration is no closer to reaching a deal to end the war. After Trump and Vance started their war with Iran, Vance flipped on his anti-interventionist views, after assuring voters on the campaign trail, “our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
As Trump’s so-called “fraud czar,” Vance has buried his head in the sand as Trump profits off the presidency and engages in rampant pay-to-play politics to enrich himself and his family to the tune of billions.
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale took to X to eviscerate Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s GOP Convention speech, pointing out almost half a dozen falsehoods before saying he didn’t have time to check the rest.
RFK Jr. spoke at length during Thursday’s convention, making a number of claims and dourly proclaiming his famed uncle and father — President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — would not recognize today’s Democratic party.
[. . .]
Dale wasted no time slamming the factual content of RFK Jr.’s remarks:
In one speech tonight…
RFK Jr. falsely claimed Democrats canceled their 2024 convention and didn’t let delegates vote on the nominee.
There was a convention. Delegates voted for Harris.
RFK Jr. falsely claimed Democrats closed every single church in the US for a year during the pandemic. Some Dem-run states did not forbid religious gatherings, while some GOP-run states did at least briefly.
RFK Jr. falsely claimed Trump ended nine wars. It’s not even true that Trump ended the eight he cites himself.
RFK Jr. baselessly claimed Democrats lost 360,000 kids. Not what happened.
RFK Jr. claimed the Trump administration has reversed a 30-year decline in longevity. Not clear what stat he’s citing, but US life expectancy rose for years, dropped briefly during the pandemic, then started to rebound in 2022 under Biden before hitting a new record high in 2024 under Biden.
And that’s just a smattering of the checkable claims, many of which I don’t have time to check.
The controversial two-day convention saw President Donald Trump — whom RFK Jr. described in his remarks as “a self effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail” — asking the audience to raise their right hands and pledge to go vote in the midterms.
Dale annointed RFK Jr.’s turn at the mic as the “most falsehood-filled” speech of the day at the convention.
More than six months ago, Donald Trump started a deadly and costly war with Iran that has already killed at least 18 U.S. service members and wounded at least 750 more, while sending the economy into a tailspin.
Trump and his chief dealmaker JD Vance have failed to reach an agreement to end their war, despite assuring Americans dozens of times that the war was nearly over, that they were nearing a deal, or that the war was already over. Trump originally claimed the war with Iran would last “four to five weeks,” and Vance said there is “no way” Trump would “allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight.” Meanwhile, just recently, Trump said he is “not in a hurry” to end the war.
In response, DNC Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer released the following statement:
“Donald Trump’s deadly and costly war with Iran has been an unmitigated disaster that has put U.S. service members in harm’s way and decimated the economy as prices back home skyrocket. Everyday Americans were already struggling to pay for groceries and afford their medical bills — and Trump’s war has made life even worse as he spends billions of taxpayer dollars on bombs but not healthcare. Trump and JD Vance campaigned as the ‘pro-peace’ ticket, yet six months later, they still have no way to end this war while working families pay the price.”
Trump and Vance’s war has already cost up to $100 billion of taxpayer money — four times the original $25 billion estimate — and cost consumers roughly $150 billion, or about $1,100 per household in higher prices. Americans have already spent $72 billion more on gas since the beginning of the war, approximately $604 per household, as last month saw the most expensive gas prices for any August on record.
Meanwhile, Trump and his corporate donors have cashed in on the war. Trump has seen his wealth increase by as much as $15.5 million solely through stocks he owned in oil and gas companies at the end of 2025 due to the surge in global oil prices because of his war with Iran. Meanwhile, Big Oil companies have reported a whopping $125 billion in profits this year — after Trump promised them on the campaign trail that he would reward them if they donated $1 billion to his campaign.
President Trump on Thursday denied reports that Iranian forces damaged U.S. war planes during a raid on an air base in Jordan.
“Nope,” the president said when NewsNation’s Robert Sherman asked whether there is “any truth” to the reports.
“None whatsoever. No damage. No nothing,” Trump told Sherman over the phone.
Speaking to Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham on Thursday stateside, Trump said that he would have attacked Iran despite the impact on the midterm elections.
“If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now,” Ingraham told Trump, to which Trump replied “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”
[. . .]
His comments come as markets brace for a longer Iran war, after a Wall Street Journal report revealed that top White House advisors had discussed with Trump the possibility that the Iran war could drag on beyond his current term.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) released the following statement in response to President Trump’s continued imposition of new tariffs on Canada:
“The states we represent rely on Canada as a key trading partner and our primary export market. We have deep ties with our neighbors to the north, and we share one of the world’s most enduring defense partnerships. We have built two powerful nations over many decades by working together, growing our economies together, and securing our homelands together. Our countries have achieved great things by working closely together, and we still can.
“Instead of working with our neighbors, President Trump is doubling down on a pointless trade war. His tariffs will squeeze our states’ small businesses and farmers harder and drive costs up for working families. They will raise the cost of the lumber, plywood, and construction equipment we need to build new housing. They will hurt our workers and businesses who manufacture autos, aircraft, and machinery. They will drive up the prices consumers pay for everyday basics like milk, clothing, and paper products.
“President Trump’s tariffs have already cost American families as much as $5,000 in some states, and his senseless trade war with Canada will only grow that number. While American families and businesses suffer from President Trump’s trade wars, partners around the world, including Canada, are increasingly looking to diversify away from the United States and deepen trade ties with other countries including China. Congressional Republicans need to stand up to the president and do their part to give families and businesses on both sides of the border relief from this insanity.”
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BlackCommentator.com September 10, 2026 Issue 1097 |
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