A few weeks ago, Republican Fucktard Congressman Boehner had a video where he had a bloodhound searching for jobs created by the Economic Stimulus money. Huffington had a post about it here:
I can tell him exactly where a portion of the money is: resurfacing Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. Here's a picture.
The stretch of Lincoln Avenue, around Bryn Mawr, was pot-holed to the point of being dangerous; I had to drive over it when I picked up my son at my ex's house. I'm very happy it's being fixed.
Boehner is, of course, playing to the rubes that 1. forget that a Republican was president for the previous eight years, and the current Democrat has had not even eight months to start mitigating the damage of the previous administrations and 2. don't realize that his state, Ohio, has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and stands to gain the most from publicly-created jobs.
I've got to meet classmate Paul this afternoon to study for Monday's test, then work tonight, Saturday and a double shift Sunday. Oh, and tests and work on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thankfully Wednesday is the last day of class.
1. Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon- Urge Overkill 2. Sexual Healing- Soul Asylum 3. Original Sin- INXS 4. How Deep Is Your Love- The Bee Gees 5. School's Out- Alice Cooper 6. Suspicious Minds- Fine Young Cannibals 7. Bela Lugosi Is Dead- Bauhaus 8. Cherry Bomb- John Mellencamp 9. Keep Your Hands To Yourself- The Georgia Satellites 10. Cathy's Clown- The Everly Brothers
1. From the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Funny how I usually like Neil Diamond when others cover him-- Monkees' "I'm a Believer," UB40's "Red Red Wine," and this one-- though I do like his own versions too. 2. Okay, a theme here-- a midwestern band covering a song. This time it's a Marvin Gaye song. 3. I nearly wore this album out the summer of 1984, along with REM's Reckoning, Prince's 1999 and Huey Lewis and the News' "Sports." 4. This is one from the Bee Gees' disco period, but sounds more like something from their folky roots. The Brothers Gibb could write a pretty tune, couldn't they? 5. This one was put to good use in "Dazed and Confused," one of my favorite movies. 6. A fine cover from the Fine Young Cannibals' first album. 7. There used to be a punk bar at 63rd and Pulaski in Chicago called "Over Easy." They had a remarkable jukebox that had great songs like Husker Du's cover of "Eight Miles High," and this song, with a cover of T. Rex' "Telegram Sam" on the other side. 8. John Mellencamp at Poplar Creek in 1988 is one of the great shows I ever saw. This song was popular at the time. 9. These guys were refugees from The Brains, the song that wrote and originally performed "Money Changes Everything," which Cyndi Lauper covered. 10. The Everly Brothers were pioneers in the "Brothers Who Hate Each Other But Are In A Band Together" movement-- the Davies Brothers (Kinks) and the Gallagher Brothers (Oasis) have continued it. Notes
I am totally fried; this is the longest week of my life and it's only Wednesday. My only consolation is that next week will be even more grueling-- three tests in three days. And that I have no class or work tomorrow (traded a shift with someone at work). I'm trying to get back to a post a day. Today's post is a movie recommendation.
This weekend, I watched a really fun movie with my son (my daughter wasn't back from visiting her grandparents yet). It was the 2003 "My Dinner With Jimi," which I'd wanted to see since it was released. The title is obviously an homage to "My Dinner With Andre," a movie I love.
In any event, the autobiographical "My Dinner With Jimi" was written by Howard Kaylan, one of the singers for the great sixties group The Turtles. It revolves around the short time when their lovely pop hit "Happy Together" was #1 in 1967, the "Summer of Love," and they were sent to England to tour to support the single. On his first night, Kaylan, who was an oddity in the music business-- an LA musician who was actually from LA-- meets all of his idols and then some. In the course of the evening he meets all of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones, Donovan, and of course a guy who he'd barely heard of, but who is, of course, the most sweet, charming, visionary and magnanimous guy in the whole bunch, Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix who had survived, among many things in his musical career, a disasterous tour with the Monkees, and was about to go back to the states with the band he'd formed with two Englishmen, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, and play the Monterey Pop Festival, which would break him out huge. Hendrix has no idea he is about to become a legend, and asks Kaylan, who is as hapless as he is about fame and legend, despite having a #1 hit, what his secret is. I'll leave it at that.
The casting is great, the story is great, with some surprises and some unflinching-- and at times unflattering-- depictions of '60's icons.
"Happy Together" was one of the first songs I remember hearing on the radio as a kid. My daughter and I love to karaoke together to this song. Everytime I hear it or sing it, it reminds me of what a pure piece of pop beauty it was. In the movie, they reenact this video from the Smothers Brothers show. Here's the original video from the Smothers Brothers show.
In June of 1979, I graduated high school. Toward the end of high school, I had, true to form, become friends with two completely different groups of people. One group was a group of guys and women who "partied," though I didn't. The other was a more serious group-- all college-bound, who shared my love of music.
Toward the end of the school year, someone in that second group had gotten ahold of the summer schedule for Ravinia, a beautiful pavillion theater in Chicago's north shore. Not only were there a bunch of great shows that summer, but we could get lawn seats for only 4 bucks. We picked out three shows to go to over the summer: Steve Goodman and Bonnie Koloc, David Bromberg and McGuinn, Clark and Hillman (basically the Byrds, missing David Crosby) and Pete Seeger with Arlo Guthrie.
It seemed particularly important to see the Seeger/Guthrie show. Pete Seeger was getting up in the years-- he was 60 years old in 1979-- and Guthrie was waiting to discover if he had Huntington's Chorea, the genetic disease that had taken his father Woody Guthrie's life.
In July, we heard of one other great event: Disco Demolition. For you youngsters, let me put the times in context. In the mid seventies, it was easy to hear great rock music on the radio, both AM and FM. Then suddenly, after the popularity of "Saturday Night Fever," radio programmers suddenly started switching to all-disco formats. When one rock station, WDAI became "Disco 'DAI," one of the disc jockeys, Steve Dahl, who was not happy about the format change, started openly disparaging the records he was forced to play. He was fired, and quickly hired by WLUP, "The Loop," which had continued a rock format.
From his bully pulpit, Dahl ranted against disco. He would "blow up" disco records on the air-- symbolically, of course, with an "explosion" soundtrack in the background.
Dahl announced that he was going to have a promotion with the Chicago White Sox. On May 2, a game with the Detroit Tigers was rained out. League rules required that this game be made up through a double-header on the next meeting the teams had. This was July 12, 1979. Dahl invited fans to bring a disco record to the game, where he was going to literally blow up the records.
My friends and I were excited about this game. My friend Jim got ahold of some disco 45's and we began planning for the game, just a few days away. Then it hit me-- that date sounded familiar. Sure enough, I checked our Ravinia tickets, and realized that was the night of the Seeger/Guthrie show. So many social engagements, so little time. Since we'd already bought the tickets, we decided to go to the concert.
The summer of '79, I ran into my high school friend Art Rus twice on commuter trains going from Chicago to the western suburbs. One of those times was the night of July 12, 1979. That night, as my friends and I returned from the concert, Art, nearly hyperventilating, told us a tale that was barely believeable. Indeed, we thought he certainly had to be exaggerating. Steve Dahl and company had gathered the disco records-- well, most of them. Hundreds of them had been whipping over and through the crowd like lethal frisbees. As Dahl blew up the bin full of records, Art told us, the crowd went crazy, spilling over the fences. In the meantime, the "Andy Frain" security people were dispatched to the perimeter of Comiskey Field in a vain attempt to stop the thousands of non-ticket holders who were climbing the walls getting into the stadium. With nobody to stop them, tens of thousands poured onto the field, stealing everything they could, even tearing out patches of the field. With Harry Carey, then the announcer for the White Sox, vainly beseeching the stoned masses to go back to their seats, the Detroit manager pointed out that since they couldn't get the crowd under control and the field was now unplayable, the White Sox would have to forfeit the game. The umpires agreed.
The crowd finally dispersed when dozens of baton-swinging Chicago cops arrived.
I had a feeling that I may have missed something historic.
A lot of people have pointed to that event as the death knell of disco. Over the years, my own hatred of disco has mellowed; I find it to have a kitschy humor, like platform shoes and white suits with wide lapels. But over the years, I've considered my decision to see Seeger and Guthrie that night.
In 1998, I saw Seeger perform once again, at an event in New York City. He just turned 90 in May, and is still performing. Arlo Guthrie, who had turned 32 a couple of nights before I saw him perform, did not, happily, have Huntington's Disease. He is now 62, older than Seeger was that night, and continues to perform. Maybe I'll go see him again the next time he's playing in town.
Last week, the Micheal Mann movie "Public Enemies" was released. The movie recounts the exploits of John Dillinger and other bank robbers in the 1930's. I'm eager to see the movie-- not only am I a big fan of Michael Mann ("Thief," "Manhunter," "Crime Story"), but the John Dillinger part of the story has a family connection: my grandparents were at the Biograph Theater the night Dillinger was shot by the FBI while coming out of the theater.
While Dillinger was regarded as a fairly successful bank robber, today I stopped to take a photo of the site of possibly the least competent bank robbery ever.
The bank in the picture has changed ownership several times in the last ten years. When it was BankOne, back about ten years ago, my now-ex-wife Cynthia and I had our joint bank account there, and she did the banking for her dance studio there. We were not there the day a bank robber came in and passed a teller a note to give him cash.
The teller quietly complied, and the robber left the bank with a bag full of cash.
Now, I've never robbed a bank, and have no plans to do so, but I do know that tellers usually put a dye pack in with the cash. And again, while I don't plan to rob a bank, if I were to do so, I would think that I would carefully plan my getaway.
The police quickly responded and just as quickly caught the robber. Apparently, his getaway plan was to take the commuter train-- you can see the station in the background, to the left, about a block from the bank, next to the railroad bridge. The police found the robber standing on the platform, covered with the blue dye from the bag full of loot that he held in his hands. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to him to check the train schedule, and plan his getaway accordingly.
One of the things I find fascinating about music is how a song or an album can bring you back to a certain part in your life instantly. This is the case with Wire Train's "Should She Cry."
In 1991, I was working as a construction worker and taking classes toward my teaching certification. In the summer, we would work with asphalt-- working on driveways and parking lots-- and in the winter we would primarily do kitchen renovations. We had to make the countertops and cabinets in the northside Chicago shop my boss rented. The fall and winter of 1991, I spent a lot of time in the shop making cabinets and countertops and listening to the radio. I would switch between WNPR, which was giving coverage to the horrifying civil war erupting in Yugoslavia, and WXRT, our local "progressive rock" station. The two songs that got a lot of airplay at that time, and will always be associated with that time in my life, are Richard Thompson's "I Feel So Good (I'm Gonna Break Somebody's Heart Tonight)" and Wire Train's "Should She Cry."
Wire Train was formed in San Francisco in 1983 as The Renegades. They were on the same label, 415, as Translator and Romeo Void.
"Should She Cry" was on Wire Train's self-titled 1990 album. The vid for "Should She Cry" is simple and elegant, like the song itself. I've long conjectured about the meaning of the song. My favorite interpretation is that of an old friend, who thinks the "she" of the song is the sea-- taking in her men-- sailors-- and giving them back to their women at the end of the voyage, taking consolation in the fact that they'll always return to her.
One of the reasons I started this blog nearly three years ago was to try to deal with the grief in the then-unsolved murder of my friend Mark "Atwood" Evans. Mark and I met at Eastern Illinois University in 1983, we remained close friends until his murder on the night of June 3/4 2006.
In August of that year, a young gang member was arrested and charged with being a participant in the robbery attempt in which Mark was shot to death. I elaborated on that in this post.
The police finally arrested the guy who shot Mark in December, 2007. It turned out that he had also murdered one of his accomplices, who he was afraid was going to "roll" on him. The prosecutors decided to try the case of the murder of the accomplice, which had more eyewitnesses, and was, consequently, a stronger case. If they could secure a conviction on that case, it would bolster the prosecution in Mark's case.
Because of school and work this week, I've got to keep this post short-- I'll post a longer one Thursday. Yesterday, the prosecution and defense gave their final arguments and the jury convened. I wasn't able to be there because of school, but old friends Tim and Matt were able to go. Since we have wifi at the school, I was able to keep Facebook on. Tim sent a note out that the jury had convened. When I got another message an hour later, that the jury had already returned, I knew that this was probably good news. It was. The defendant was found guilty on both counts-- Murder One and Use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.
The sentencing will be August 5. The minimum sentence is 45 years. The judge is known for not handing out minimum sentences. They will also have a hearing to begin the process of trying Mark's case. The same judge will preside over his case.
Funny-- as I'm finishing this post, "Alone Again, Or..." by Love came up on Little Steven's Undergound Garage. It was a song I discovered through Mark. Here's a Youtube post of the late Arthur Lee and Love performing it.
A punishing work and school schedule is keeping me from posting as much as I usually like, but I did get a break to hang out with some delightful people at the Bubs clan's annual Fourth of July bash. Great company, great food (I ate more meat than I usually eat in a week), great hooch. And to top it off, Bubs gave me the recipe for the amazing Carolina Barbecue Sauce he serves with the vast quantities of smoked pork shoulder. I feel like I made off with a state secret.
