Friday, March 20, 2009

Tracking The Backlash

TODAY MARKS TWO MONTHS since President Obama took office. For some, it would seem, even 60 days is way too long a presidential honeymoon. For Rush Limbaugh, it was about 64 days too long.

On January 16, four days before the new president was even handed the keys to the Oval Office restroom, here was Limbaugh declaring, "I want everything he is doing to fail."

In all fairness, those liberals and progressives who are honest with themselves will also admit to wanting most of George W. Bush's policies to fail. They sure as hell didn't want Bush/Cheney's vision of a Pax Americana succeeding, because it was reasonable to assume that if Iraq was the cakewalk neocons predicted it would be, American soldiers would be dying on the streets of Iran at this very moment, and who knows where else. But to hope the American economy fails, with all that's at stake, is a different animal of another stripe, like wanting your house to fall down because you hate the landlord.

With 4.4 million American jobs lost since December 2007, and the economy tanking in general well before the election results were in a year later, reasonable observers may well lay at least affix partial blame to the Republican administration that implemented the economic policies over an 8-year period, with Congress all but rubber-stamping 2, 3, 4, 5 straight years of massive tax cuts, securities deregulation and financing costly wars on two fronts. For years, progressive commentators like the Times' Paul Krugman warned of the consequences of such irresponsible economic behavior, but Bush's loyal defenders in the media scoffed at such anti-market hysteria. And when the modern-day Cassandras' worst predictions came to pass regarding the economic downturn, only then did we find the first mea culpas appearing on the editorial pages of the mainstream press.

The national economy was in true tailspin mode -- hemorrhaging jobs, suffering massive layoffs and suffereing a wave of bank collapses. The subsequent government bailouts to date amount to close to $2 trillion in taxpayer money, with the only certainty being more to come, which in all likelihood still won't be enough to stem years of job loss and almost unimaginably large deficits.
It was into this climate that the news came of insurance company AIG, recipient of billions in bailout money, going ahead with parceling out $125 million in executive compensation for 2008. The Obama people tried to get out ahead of the national wave of indignation, condemning the bonuses as unmitigated gall, even though the actual original bailout language had not expressly prohibited using the government funds as executive compensation. With one man's populism being another's demagoguery, the accusations predictably flew back and forth. The bonuses should be given back, or at least taxed at a prohibitive rate, came the roar from the Democrat-controlled Congress. Typical grandstanding and anti-business rhetoric, countered the Republican minority, with surprising last-minute succor from a group of select moderate Democrats by the end of the week.

How much of President Obama's erosion in popular support is due to his administration's handling of the economy is difficult to quantify, but the president's approval rating dropped below 60 percent this week for the first time:

It was a five point drop from the 64 percent approval rating for the president in January, according to the Pew Center. "Although most people think the new president is doing as much as he can to fix the economy and relatively few say Obama's policies have made the economy worse, the public expresses mixed views of his many major proposals to fix the economy," the Pew Center published in its conclusion.

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For better or worse, the Daily News has always been my Sunday paper of choice, more out of habit and custom going back to my childhood than any great enthusiasm for its product on my part. I'm not gonna drop 4 bucks on the Sunday Times -- not when I can read most of it online; and the Sunday Newsday is okay in a pinch, but it's always been bland visually in terms of the layout. Rupert Murdoch's hideous New York Post is so far off the radar that I wouldn't even consider it unless it was free, and even then I'd feel dirty afterward like it was a porno magazine. So more by default than any real endorsement of what's to be found inside, I plunk down the buck-25 at the newsstand, carry off my copy of the News, and go about the rest of my Sunday morning like any good citizen.

The Daily News once housed unrepentant muckrakers like Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill. Unfortunately, since real estate developer Mort Zuckerman purchased the paper in 1993, its editorial policy has veered right, ostensibly in an attempt to encroach upon some of the New York Post's territory. The two tabloids have been in embroiled in a nasty never-ending circulation war -- with the main collateral damage being the newspaper readers of New York City, as dumbing down the product drives the tabloids to new depths of mediocrity.

Michael Goodwin has been the lead political columnist at the News since 2004. He sets himself up as a moderate, independent chronicler of national politics. Yet Goodwin was on board with every major component of the Bush agenda every step of the way, consistently siding with Republicans against Democrats right up until it became glaringly obvious that Bush was a dangerous incompetent who had bankrupted the country not only economically but morally poisoned the very soul of a nation in some strangely visceral way, in the process almost personally splitting the country along partisan lines like few times in its long history. Only when it became unavoidable fact that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were paranoid ideologues who conducted an organized campaign of demonizing the political opposition did Goodwin write his first columns that came to the same conclusions his colleagues in editorial offices across the country had reached years before. When men like Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff were Enron-izing the entire American economy over Bush's first term and lobbyists were seen handing out checks to the people's representatives on the Senate floor, the outrage was nowhere to be heard from "independent" Goodwin.
Leading up to the 2004 election, Goodwin wrote that it would be unwise to switch horses in midstream, especially in a time of war, that Bush was the man to finish the job against Islamic fascism. Even after the Iraq invasion and no weapons of mass destruction and Abu Ghraib and Mission Accomplished and Guantanamo, Goodwin believed voting George Bush back for a second term was the only option.

That lamentably consistent track record of enabling a corrupt president should serve as backdrop when reading Goodwin's increasingly sharp criticism of the new president. Back on February 11, three weeks into the Obama administration, here was Goodwin bemoaning Obama's lack of bipartisanship. In a Daily News column called Change would do President Obama good: Partisan rant is bad form, Goodwin decries the current state of Democratic leadership:
Oh, how we need a Moynihan now; one with the guts to call Obama on his promise to change the tone in Washington. Only three weeks into his tenure, the new President has repeatedly expressed scorn and ridicule for any who disagree with him. It is as unappealing as the initial promise of bipartisanship was appealing.

In the short term, it is succeeding brilliantly. Obama's approval ratings remain high and the campaign-style trips he took to sell the stimulus package demonstrated the potency of his charm and eloquence. Senate passage of the $838 billion package put an exclamation point on his demand for fast action.

But I believe he will pay a high price for running roughshod over those who object to some of the contents. It is odd because he himself says the bill is not perfect, but stomps calls to change it. And he does so in that intellectually dishonest way that marks Washington at its worst - by distorting legitimate objections into a form that is unrecognizable.

One result is that he got only three Republican votes in Congress. It's a worrisome start to a new administration facing a frightening list of foreign and domestic crises.

Goodwin ends the column by taking up the cause of the poor, misunderstood, outflanked minority party:

Yet Obama lumps all objections onto a garbage heap and douses it with gasoline. On Monday he was more solicitous of the mad mullahs of Iran than he was of Republicans. He promised to engage Iran and called its behavior "unhelpful," a curious word for an adversary whose explosives have killed hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq.

Republicans, on the other hand, were scolded for "the usual partisan games" and for plying "the failed theories of the last eight years." He often invokes similar language, suggesting he is ticked off in an irrational way.

Heaven knows, there was plenty wrong with the last eight years. But to believe the answer is a triumphalist turn of the partisan wheel does a disservice to all Americans who need and expect a united front now. After all, that's what candidate Obama promised.

Nothing if not repetitive, Goodwin drives home the same message of excessive partisanship coming from the Democratic leadership in a Sunday column titled Obama's search for an enemy from the March 8 Daily News. But he goes even further this time out, approaching hysteria in accusing President Obama of "putting together an enemies list" a la Tricky Dick:

"Strangely, though, those on it are not terrorists or foreign dictators. They are mostly Americans lucky enough to have succeeded through capitalism and democracy ... Less than halfway through what should be a 100-day honeymoon, the Obama administration is on a war footing. Make that a class-war footing.

But the tone of the President's own attacks on industry and his spending and tax policies are increasingly worrying Wall Street and much of the business world ... That agenda, which revolves around a dramatic increase in Washington power, relies on tax hikes on the same successful businesses and individuals he denounces.

First he demonizes them, then he taxes them ... Being President means you don't have to let the facts get in the way of a plan to divide and conquer."

Noticing that Goodwin's columns are preoccupied with the taxation of upper income earners is like saying Bruce Springsteen writes songs about cars every once in a while. His sycophantic sympathizing with the rich man's tax burden continues apace with his Wednesday March 11 column, There's no end in sight to pols' taxing problem. Here Goodwin argues that the Obama administration's policy of overtaxing the rich will have dire consequences on the rest of us:

"The arguments against the hikes have nothing to do with protecting the rich, who can speak for themselves and often do through Mayor Bloomberg. Bloomberg, no slouch on tax hikes himself, prefers to raise broad-based sales and property taxes. And he's onto something. His office says that, in a city of more than 8 million people, 1.2% of taxpayers, or 40,950 households that earned more than $500,000, already pay 52.3% of the city's income taxes.

Look at those numbers again - they are extraordinary. People with that earning power are no fools - they can and do leave for areas with lower taxes. Their economic impact is like that of a small business, with their spending creating jobs and tax revenues.

And as I have written before, it is economic incoherence for state and local government to raise taxes at the same time they are getting bailed out by Washington. The net effect will be to cancel out much of the stimulus. Yet Thompson sees no alternative. "Ordinarily, you definitely would not want to raise taxes in a recession," he told me yesterday. "But these are extraordinary times."

There's no argument this is a crisis. The only argument is with the idea that government should respond by grabbing an even bigger slice of the shrinking pie."

But the anti-Obama hysteria rises to a new crescendo in his Sunday March 15 piece, More than a bad day, with Goodwin for the first time voicing concern that the new administration's poorly executed economic agenda is an ominous sign of things to come:

"Yes, it's early, but an eerily familiar feeling is spreading across party lines and seeping into the national conversation. It's a nagging doubt about the competency of the White House ... The longest campaign in presidential history is being followed by a very short honeymoon.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter: the doubts about Obama himself. His famous eloquence is wearing thin through daily exposure and because his actions are often disconnected from his words. His lack of experience is showing.

His promises and policies contradict each other often enough that evidence of hypocrisy is ceasing to be news. Remember the pledges about bipartisanship and high ethics? They're so last year."

Maybe Goodwin is right. After all, if Obama can't solve this broken economy in the first 1/24th of his first term, maybe he's just not the right man for the job. And I'm sure if Goodwin was fortunate to have his current post back at a similar point in the FDR administration, he would have literally written off the FDR's New Deal as an anti-Wall Street demagogue's misguided attempt to resurrect the economy by government spending and massive taxpayer waste.

In any event, at least one of Goodwin's cherished canards -- that the rich will flee if taxes are too onerous -- was sweetly punctured by the facts once again. An article in yesterday's New York Times called Taxes Not Seen as Making the rich Flee New York would seem to almost directly countermand Goodwin's musings on the subject, so at odds with reality as to perhaps call his own competence into question yet again:

Yet there is surprisingly little evidence to support the proposition that rich New Yorkers would bolt if forced to pay higher income taxes. Though tracking the movement of wealthy taxpayers from state to state is difficult, experts on public finance and migration say they have yet to document a substantial “rich drain” in states that have raised income taxes in recent years.

“At the level we’re talking about, there’s no quantitative evidence that it affects the mobility decisions of affluent taxpayers,” said Douglas S. Massey, a demographer at Princeton University and president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

“I kind of clench my teeth every time Paterson says people will leave,” said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative-leaning research group that has advocated for sharp cuts in spending to balance New York’s budget.

New Jersey raised taxes on the wealthy in 2004, increasing by 2.6 percent the tax rate levied on those making more than $500,000 a year; and Gov. Jon S. Corzine this month proposed a new increase on high earners. But a study by Professor Massey and two colleagues, published in September, estimated that the previous tax increase cost New Jersey only 50 to 350 existing “half-millionaire” households — a relatively small number against the total of 44,000 such households in the state.

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Prominently adding to the increasingly nasty tone in the political debate was one Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney. The former vice president's latest salvo warned that President Obama's anti-terror policies risk exposing the United States to a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack:
In his first interview since Obama's inauguration, with Politico Tuesday, Cheney was unapologetic about the bitter controversies surrounding his own influential role in president George W. Bush's "war on terror." Cheney said Obama would regret his commitment to closing down the Guantanamo Bay internment camp and ending harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects. "These are evil people. And we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek."
The Cheney remark was rejoined by retired Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell, who in a March 17 editorial for the Washington Note website wrote that "crazy people" in the United States -- those "fringe" individuals who jeered for violence at McCain/Palin rallies -- make Dick Cheney's fearmongering "dangerous." Wilkinson also called Cheney "evil" and said the former vice president knowingly kept innocent men imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay:
"The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan duri ng the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation." "Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent," he wrote. "Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib).
Wilkerson went on to say that he is becoming increasingly concerned about the "fringe" individuals who attended the McCain/Palin election rallies during the 2008 campaign:
"I didn't like what I saw," he said. "It frightened me. I think people like Rush Limbaugh and now Dick Cheney, former vice president ... are doing some of that fearmongering too. "This is not good. There are some crazy people in this country. There are uni-bombers. There are Lee Harvey Oswalds. There are Sirhan Sirhans. These are the kind of people that listen to this fearmongering and it's dangerous. Someone's gotta start talking out about it."
Students of American presidential history will recall that early in his first term FDR faced a threat in the form of a planned right-wing coup, known as the Business Plot. According to a BBC documentary: "The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell House and George W. Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott), believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the Great Depression."

More recently, JFK faced a withering barrage of scorn from the right-wing press, as well as entrenched opposition from the military-industrial complex over his (mis)handling of Cold War hot spots like Cuba and Vietnam. On the morning of his assassination, a full-page ad ran in a Dallas newspaper charging the president with outright treason among a host of other serious offenses that amounted to betraying his country to foreign powers. Is that the irreversibly divisive direction this nation is headed?

The Secret Service reportedly have been kept busy monitoring potential threats among the unhinged, increasingly rabid contributions to right wing websites like FreeRepublic.com. The hatred is in the air, and it has little to do with a policy debate over the progressive direction of the new administration.

Of course you may have noticed that some of these "crazy, dangerous people" happen to be employed in the mainstream media. What other conclusion can one draw upon encountering today's cover of the juvenile-minded New York Post, featuring a photo of President Obama on the Jay Leno Show and the headline: NO JOKE! O Disses Special Olympics on Leno as Economy Burns. The term Selective Moral Outrage comes to mind, as it's likely no will remember a similar use of the tabloid's cover page to express indignation at the Decider-in-Chief's work ethic, with Bush spending about half of every year vacationing at his faux Crawford ranch ("Uh, Karl, we need two more tumbleweeds from Ranches R Us, and you better order a few logs for the Prez to split at the next photo op").

In addition, the bad headlines continue for the newspaper industry itself, as the recession exacerbates a decade-long trend of falling classified and advertising revenues. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, founded in 1863, has ceased operating as a newspaper and is now online only. The New York Daily News itself was just listed by Time magazine as one of 10 prominent papers in danger of vanishing. If that were to happen, even Michael Goodwin might be less concerned with carrying water for the super-rich, and perhaps more concerned about the swelling ranks of jobless Americans. Goodwin might even find himself thankful that because of the last economic stimulus bill, hard-hit states like New York and Michigan were able to modestly raise unemployment benefits by $25 per week. I'd also guess we all see class warfare differently depending upon which class we find ourselves in at the moment.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Rebirth Of Death

SO DID YOU HEAR THE ONE about Death -- the band who back in 1974 made a punk rock album before they even had a name for it? The N.Y. Times has a terrific chronicle of how that record finally came to be released in 2009, called "This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk." And as of right now the Times Website still has the MP3 up for Politicians in my Eyes, the reissue single from 1976 that is creating a buzz in the music biz more than 30 years later.

Discovering the album all these years later is the rock & roll equivalent of the Dead Letter Office turning up The Great American Novel. Or something like that. (Would you believe a long lost David Hockney canvas found in a New York City dumpster?) You get the idea. Feel free to create your own analogy, I won't be offended, even though it's my blog post. Honest, go ahead...

Unfortunately, David Hackney, the driving force behind Death -- the band, not the state of unbeing -- is not around to revel in his music's much-belated success, having succumbed to cancer in 2000. The band cut a demo tape in 1974, and it's that recording session which makes up "...For the World to See," the album released last month by the Drag City label.
The single Politicians is more melodic metal than punk rock, almost verging on power pop -- as if Green Day grew up two decades earlier, only as three black brothers in a Detroit ghetto listening over and over to their dad's Black Sabbath record collection. That's my lame attempt at a lame Chuck Klosterman-ism, and we all know how useless that can be.

Anyone who saw the Ramones biodoc End of the Century can appreciate the bland, overproduced music climate a hard rock band like Death were up against in the early '70s. Simply put, good rock bands were struggling to be heard in the R&B/disco era, and unless they made AM-friendly product and played the whole happy-face marketing game, they simply were not going to be signed to major labels. And let's face it: an all-black rock trio calling itself Death and featuring songs with politically charged lyrics was probably going to be fighting an uphill battle against the music industry no matter what era they were in. Until punk came along around 1975 and bands started releasing their own singles, there was literally no alternative outlet for oddball outfits like Death and the Ramones:
Death began playing at cabarets and garage parties on Detroit’s predominantly African-American east side, but were met with reactions ranging from confusion to derision. “We were ridiculed because at the time everybody in our community was listening to the Philadelphia sound, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers,” Bobby said. “People thought we were doing some weird stuff. We were pretty aggressive about playing rock ’n’ roll because there were so many voices around us trying to get us to abandon it.”
Too bad they weren't from New York, because I think Death would have fit right in at CBGBs circa '76 alongside bands like the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Dead Boys. Detroit actually has great rock and roll roots, with the Stooges and MC5 and Alice Cooper, the band that inspired Death to play the kind of music they did in the first place. But rock and roll, and punk specifically, is full of just such stories: not quite one-hit wonders but music that still screams to be heard. I remember back in my singles-buying days just picking up 45's based on the band name or the look of the record sleeve. I'm thinking of a tremendous single I used to have by an obscure band from Scotland called The Wardens, another blazing 45 by a band from Texas called Not For Sale, lost songs by forgotten bands that cut a single or two if they were lucky and then faded back into what is commonly known as Real Life. So here's to you, undiscovered groups of bygone ages, here's to you all...And oh how I wish I never sold all my punk 45's for a mere song, pun intended, back in 1997!

P.S. While looking for a shot of the Death album cover, I stumbled on another free MP3: Stark Online (2/20/09) has a track posted called Keep On Knocking. It absolutely blows me out of the water, and I'm on dry land as I write this. If the rest of the album is anything like these two songs, then it really is monumental: as if Jimi Hendrix had cut one last album, backed by The Stooges! Yeah, something like that...

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Economic Stimulus?

"Why not give the 7-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we can have an 8-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand and buy a 3-cent newspaper and get the nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!"

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Band On The Rise


SO IT'S 7:00 SUNDAY NIGHT
, an hour before doors open at Bowery Ballroom for the Airborne Toxic Event show, and the 2 Johns, Steve and me are walking down a side street off Delancey, heading to a Spring Street bar working on a spliff when who should we run into but Mikel, lead singer of the a-4-mentioned, and in true New York rapid-fire fashion the 4 of us start peppering the poor guy with questions and comments -- asking him which other Don DeLillo books has he read (Airborne Toxic Event being named for his novel "White Noise"), offering him a hit (for the record, he just said no), and telling him how his band blew the Fratelli's off the stage at Roseland Ballroom when they opened for them back in September. It wouldn't be that great an exaggeration to say that there's been a nightly Toxic Event sighting since then, with a relentless, almost show-a-night pace the rule more than the exception; according to their MySpace page, they're in the midst of a busy 25-shows-in-29-days stretch that takes them to Europe at the end of March. Add in the fact that we knew ATE had to cancel a few recent shows because of Mikel's bout with laryngitis, and we decided to cut off the conversation after 5 lively minutes, not wanting to put a strain on his voice so close to the band taking the stage. Mikel came across as a regular guy who might've gone on talking with us indefinitely. But we took mercy on him, letting him go about his pre-show business while we in turn went on with ours.
After a quick beer and slice we hit the Ballroom, where the warmup act, the Henry Clay People, was just beginning its set. Pretty good blend of grunge and alt-country, Screaming Trees for a reference point, and we kept debating who Henry Clay was. I guessed Civil War figure, one of the Johns thought he might have been the Great Liberator, until we set him straight that Abe Lincoln kind of had that designation wrapped up. Turns out Clay was a U.S. Senator known as the "Great Compromiser" or "Great Pacifier" who had something to do with causing the War of 1812. The Henry Clay People, however, don't appear to rate a Wikipedia page, so for now I'm left wondering what the connection might be between band and statesman, or why they chose the curious name in the first place.

The next band to hit the stage, unfortunately, was not named Airborne Toxic Event but was instead what's known in the music business as the opening act. When we saw the name, Alberta Cross, we thought it might be a folk chick or all-girl band, but alas we were dismayed when they took the stage and, after tuning up for the better part of 15 minutes, launched into a set revealing a deep-seated Neil Young "jones" both musical (okay) and visual (not so much). The lead singer let loose an unbelievably high-pitched screech that made the a-4-mentioned Mr. Young sound like your local basso profundo. I'm talking only dogs might have heard some of the higher notes in the Alberta dude's register. They weren't terrible, but suffice to say, none of us are likely to be running out and buying Alberta Cross tickets any time soon. Once = enough.

Finally, at around 10, Airborne Toxic Event came onstage to thunderous applause. If anything, the band is even more confident than six months ago at Roseland, attacking the first song with gusto. Second song is Papillon, which opens with a ringing guitar riff that is answered like a clarion call by the rest of the instruments in a Strokes-like rush. The debut album is full of just such rousing, smart and literate stuff: either songs of love gone wrong, which is what all the songs are about really, or else an occasional paean to love which hasn't gone wrong yet, the stuff of thousands of stellar pop songs written through the decades, and with songs like Papillon this ATE are poised to join the legions of terrific rock bands who have composed them.

There's not a whole lot of banter or tuning up or other lulls between songs, just a cryptic line or two, such as "What happened is we wrote a bunch of songs and we're gonna play 'em here for you tonight, I think we're gonna have a good time." It's partly that no-frills, no-pretense approach that accounts for the steadily growing buzz this band is generating based on a handful of solid songs off their one album.

The one new song, introduced as never having been played live in New York, bodes well for the band if it's part of a new album, because to me it was the best thing they did all night. ATE on this Sunday night seemed to start out strong but then started to noticeably flag a little halfway through the set. Maybe the recent stretch of shows caught up with them or the jet lag kicked in, but the crew seemed to be in agreement that their energy level was a little off on the night. In my opinion, they played too many similarly paced, slower songs toward the end, where the violin player seemed to dominate the overly orchestral arrangements. I mean, one song where the bass player uses a bow on his guitar a la Jimmy Page is cool and novel, but 2 and 3 in a row where this happens and we're straying into Yanni territory here, folks. But that's about my only complaint, or would be if I didn't bring up the disturbing trend of 20-somethings who refuse to shut the hell up even when the band hits the stage, chattering away cluelessly song after song while the band we all paid good money to see is playing their fucking set. But I did bring it up, and now I guess we can move on.

Overall, for a mere $13 ticket price, it was a good rock & roll night in the Big City, with old friends and new music proving a good combo. And just like old times there was a McBurney alumni sighting, which, given the size of the school, the size of the crowd and the fact that McB hasn't existed at all in any form for over 20 years,
is truly an event worth noting. Consider it done.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Doors Open @ 8








IN HONOR OF tonight's sold-out-for-weeks Airborne Toxic Event show at Bowery Ballroom, thought it might be fun -- with fun being a relative term -- to list the many shows I've been to, all the great live music I've witnessed, with almost four decades of concert-going under my belt.

Memory being what it is, or isn't, I've started with the saved ticket stubs, then polled the outer precincts of Remembrance for the rest.

Syd Straw
Mercury Lounge/June 11, 1996

Buzzcocks
Irving Plaza/July 2, 1996 (brilliant show)

Jayhawks
Warsaw/April 10, 2003 (think this was an acoustic show)

The Fratellis/Airborne Toxic Event
Roseland Ballroom/September 5, 2008

Buzzcocks
Bowery Ballroom/December 1, 2000

Jayhawks/The Thorns
Irving Plaza/June 27, 2003

X
The Grand/November 27, 1993

The Specials
Irving Plaza/September 20, 1994

Violent Femmes/Pogues/Mojo Nixon
Reebok Riverstage/July 18, 1989

Johnny Thunders Tribute (Benefit for Johnny's kids)
The Marquee/June 19, 1991

Cracker
Irving Plaza/August 26, 1998

Fleshtones
Woody's/March 9, 1990

Golden Smog
December 5, 1998

The Clash
Bond International/May 29, 1981 (also went to one other Bond's show)

The Pretenders/The Necessaries (Chris Spedding)
Detroit's/March 21, 1980 (may have been Pretenders first U.S. show; $5 ticket price)

Guinness Fleadh (Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams, etc.)
Randall's Island/June 26, 1999

Wilco
Irving Plaza/April 21, 1999 (nice birthday present)

Bob Dylan/Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Madison Square Garden/July 17, 1986 (terrible Garden sound system detracted from Bob's show; Petty was outstanding)

Son Volt
Irving Plaza/May 9, 1996 (one of top 4 or 5 concerts of all time for me)

The Clash/Undertones/Sam & Dave
The Palladium/September 20, 1979 (the night Paul Simenon smashed his bass guitar)

Luna/Clem Snide
Knitting Factory/February 3, 2001

Stiff Little Fingers
Village Underground/September 8, 2001
(Caught this show with Steve and his friend Gavin, who was attending his 60th SLF concert! Unfortunately, 3 days later he would perish in the 9/11 attacks)

Lucinda Williams
Irving Plaza/January 29, 1999 (the night my dad died)

Stiff Little Fingers
Tramps/May 16, 1999
THAT'S ABOUT IT for the documentation; the following shows I don't have ticket stubs for, just a faulty, leaky memory bank. In some cases I can't remember the year or even venue. Ironically, for the bands I know I've seen the most over the years, like The Ramones and Johnny Thunders, I can only seem to recall one or two shows at most. Memory is a fickle mistress.

The Clash/Kurtis Blow
Pier 43/1982

Aerosmith/Black Sabbath
Madison Square Garden/1973 (Aerosmith opened and actually blew them off the stage, as much as I'm loath to admit it even this many years later)

Lou Reed
Felt Forum/1974 (with Jimi the Greek, and plenty of vintage Reed stage banter)

Stills-Young Band (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
Nassau Coliseum/1976?

Grateful Dead
Nassau Coliseum/1979

Robert Gordon
My Father's Place/1979 (with Chris Spedding, an unbelievably entertaining show)
Queens Festival/1986

Wreckless Eric
Hurrah/1979 (Whole Wide World lp given away free, wish I can say I still had my copy)

Steel Pulse
Irving Plaza/2000?

David Bromberg Band
Carnegie Hall (w. Ralph McTell/November 1978
Bottom Line 12th Anniversary concert/1992?

Hot Tuna
Beacon Theater/1977
Central Park/1975
Palladium/1978

Buzzcocks
The Ritz/1981

The Waterboys
Beacon Theater/1989

Iggy Pop
The Ritz/1981

Gang of 4
Rock Hotel?/1981

The Selecter
Rock Hotel/1982

Madness
The Ritz?/1981

Plasmatics
Heat/1980

Dead Boys
Heat/1980?

Richard Hell & the Voidoids
Mudd Club/1981

Luna
South Street Seaport/2003
World Trade Center/ August 2001

Graham Parker
Bottom Line/1994 (solo acoustic)
Tramps (w. the Figgs, Amy Rigby)/October 15, 1996

Ramones
Great Adventure/Summer 1980 (won 6 tickets from WNEW)
Zappas/Lamour/somewhere on Staten Island/elsewhere/1979...?

Wire
South Street Seaport/May 30, 2008

Power Pop Festival: Speedies/Neighborhoods/Baby Shakes, etc.
Southpaw/March 30, 2007

Wedding Present
Tramps?/1997?

Johnny Winter
Felt Forum/1975?

Chuck Berry/Sy Sylvain
Heat/1980 (a night, and dawn, for the ages)

The Neighborhoods
Hurrah/March 1979 (first punk show)

New Pornographers (w. Neko Case)
Warsaw/2000?

Lords of the New Church
Rock Lounge/1982?

Johnny Thunders
Max's Kansas City, elsewhere/1979-85

Marshall Tucker Band
Central Park/1975

Leslie West/James Gang
Central Park/1976

Black 47
Paddy Reilly's/early 1990s

Black Oak Arkansas
Great Gildersleeves/1979?

The Slits
Mercury Lounge/March 2008

Joe Jackson
Central Park/1980
Richard Lloyd
Uptown?/1981

David Peel
Max's Tavern/1978-79

Everclear/Spacehog
Garden Arts Center/1995

New Riders Purple Sage/Poco
Central Park/1976

Psychedelic Furs
The Ritz, somewhere else/1980

The dB's
The Ritz?

James White & the Blacks/DeFunkt
Hurrah/1980


Rockpile

The Ritz/1981

Son Volt
South Street Seaport/2004

Philip Glass Ensemble (Dracula)
Brooklyn Academy of Music/March 26, 2000

Mink DeVille
Peppermint Lounge/New Year's Eve 1985

Slade
Wollman Rink/1975

The Wanderers (Stiv Bators)
Mudd Club/1981

Jefferson Starship
Central Park/1975

Simon & Garfunkel
Central Park/1980

Dead Kennedys
Bonds/1981

See also:

The Clash
Johnny Thunders
Neil Young
Son Volt
Luna
The Jayhawks
Lords of the New Church
Speedies
Iggy Pop

Goings & Comings

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Fewer than 3 days after being handed his walking papers by Dallas, Terrell Owens will be shuffling off to Buffalo (couldn't resist), signing a one-year, $6.5 million contract with the Bills yesterday.

Around 20 NFL teams immediately issued clear denials of their interest as soon as the controversial wide receiver became available as a free agent. The Saints' and Redskins' statements in particular were stridently anti-T.O. It seemed like there was no market at all. I had the Colts as my dark horse, since they are a perennial Super Bowl candidate as long as Peyton Manning is under center and they were losing WR Marvin Harrison. But it was a non-contender, the Bills (7-9 last three seasons), who become Owens' 4th NFL employer, and the first American Conference team to take the tempting T.O. plunge. I'll have to ask Dan the one diehard Bills fan I know, how he feels about this move. (Note: Dan was against it.)

For his part, Owens promised "to be the same person he was the last three years with the Dallas Cowboys" as he takes his act from the glaring spotlight of America's Team to as close as you can get to the Canadian Football League. And T.O. has seemingly resigned himself to playing on a new stage, if not a new continent:
"I just have to create my own following up here in North America. I'm leaving America's Team to come to North America's team."
Owens will be playing in another country next year, as the Bills will play one "home game" next season in Toronto. Paired with WR Lee Evans and emerging RB Marshawn Lynch, the addition of T.O. gives Buffalo a decent array of offensive weapons, provided QB Trent Edwards can continue to improve this season. Just another interesting situation to monitor after the NFL's most fascinating offseason in recent or distant memory.
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IT LOOKS LIKE Alex Rodriguez will have that hip surgery after all, but the Yankees doctors are opting for the arthroscopic surgery and hoping that his recovery will be in the 6- to 9-week range (2 to 5 weeks of the season); the more aggressive kind of surgery Mike Lowell and Chase Utley had for similar injuries requires a much longer recovery period and likely would have cost A-Rod most or all of the 2009 season.
Eventually, Rodriguez will need the more complete procedure, so why not do it now? It's a gamble that A-Rod doesn't reinjure the hip after he returns. Personally, as a Yankees fan who can't stand Rodriguez, I'd rather see him out the whole year; just the absence of bad karma would do wonders for the state of the Yankees.

One overlooked element to the whole A-Rod story is that this all but kills his chance of becoming the all-time home run king five or six years down the road. No matter how great an athlete a player is, he's just not coming back from this kind of major setback healthy enough to pick right up where he left off.

A-Rod has amassed 553 homers thr
ough 15 seasons, leaving him over 200 HRs short of Barry Bonds' mark of 762. A-Rod will be 34 years old during the season, not old but he's never had this kind of injury before. Get used to lovable Barry at the top of the heap, asterisk and all, because A-Rod was probably the last guy who had even a remote chance of breaking the record. Otherwise, you'd have to believe A-Rod has five more years of 40-plus HRs left in him. And that's just crazy talk, even coming from you.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Subtracting A Distraction

"Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor with all others." - William Shakespeare

"I love me some me." - Terrell Owens

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Whether it was due to excessive vanity, overweening pride or any other combination of tragic personal flaws, the 3-year Terrell Owens melodrama in Big D came to an end late last night, with the Dallas Cowboys biting the bullet and taking a massive salary cap hit of almost $10 million in the process.

On the field, Owens put together 3 seasons of 1,000+ yards and at least 10 touchdowns. He caught 235 passes for 3,587 yards and 38 TDs while at Dallas, but as usual with T.O., it's all the baggage that comes with the production. After last season's sideline outbursts and complaints about not getting the ball enough, this is a move that had to be done to save the chemistry of the Cowboys. Most Cowboy fans are in agreement that this is a positive day for the franchise given all that transpired last season: Owens is officially someone else's problem child now. Jones' comment last month that he was committed to making the team more "Romo-friendly" now reads like a clue in the thought process that led to the T.O. release.

The magnitude of this transaction is enough to drive sports talk radio for weeks and weeks, perhaps even displace the Alex Rodriguez-on-steroids monotony for a while. It's not only how the move affects Dallas, but all the speculation over which team takes the plunge and becomes Owens' fourth NFL employer after controversial stops in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Dallas. This story has more legs than a family of centipedes.

If T.O. is not picked up immediately, in the next 3 or 4 days, there could be a sizable delay before a team takes a chance on the 35-year-old receiver with Hall of Fame production but off-the-wall distraction, similar to what Manny Ramirez just went through in baseball. Training camp could very well begin without T.O. on a roster. Already one prominent Dallas sportswriter is on record saying Owens is finished, period. I seriously doubt it. But everything has to be just right in terms of QB situation, veteran leadership and sheer desperation for a front office to even consider acquiring the migraine-in-waiting that is Owens.

ESPN is already throwing out some names. How about Arizona, if they lose Anquan Boldin? The Vikings, who need playmakers? Maybe the Saints would take a chance? How about the Giants? If GM Jerry Reese is ready to welcome the felonious Plaxico Burress back with open arms, why not Owens? (After all, the Giants just signed two players who were accused of assaulting women.) Owens has never been a problem off the field, just a high maintenance handful everywhere else. But there just aren't a ton of places in the league for T.O. to land.
After Dallas pulled the trigger on the Roy Williams deal midseason, giving up a boatload of draft picks and signing him to a lucrative long-term deal in the process, there was not room for both of them. Add in the problems with TE Jason Witten, the offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, QB Tony Romo, and fans were waiting for this day since the season ended. If every disgruntled Cowboy fan sent Jerry Jones a dollar, I have a feeling he'd have more than enough bills to cover the $9.5 million cap hit.

Dallas should look to add another WR to the mix in the draft, then concentrate on becoming a run-first team. With a massive offensive line that is better run-blocking than pass-protecting, this makes sense. When you add in three top-notch RBs in Marion Barber, Felix Jones and Rashard Choice, plus two of the more versatile tight ends in the league in Witten and Martellus Bennett, a ball control offense that limits Romo's turnovers is the way to go. Also, ridding the team of Owens may have the same salutary effect on Romo as the Giants dumping Jeremy Shockey had on Eli Manning's development.

You would have to be on the various Cowboys websites and forums on almost a daily basis to get a feel for the intense, visceral hatred many fans have for Jerry Jones. Many wanted coach Wade Philips gone after the December collapse. But for better or worse Jones chose stability over headlines in that case. Firing the ineffective special teams coach, and then cutting ties with Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson and "Bad" Johnson were steps in the right direction. But it's releasing Terrell Owens that will go a long way toward restoring Jones in the good graces of the team's rabid followers.
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2:30pm Update:
The major facelift continues apace with news that the Cowboys have also released S Roy Williams this morning, saving themselves $2 million in salary cap for 2009. The 8th overall pick in the 2002 draft and one of the most feared defensive players in NCAA history while at Oklahoma, Williams' Cowboy career started off like he just might become the next great defensive force in the NFL. But after 3 strong seasons of terrorizing receivers who came into his terr
itory with a series of highlight reel bone-jarring hits, his play began to level off, with his coverage skills in particular consistently exploited by opposing offensive coordinators.

Williams' sudden downfall was vexing and perplexing to Cowboy fans, as if one day he was a dominating safety that had to be accounted for in every offensive game plan, the next day a scrub who had those same coordinators licking their lips in anticipation of facing him. Interesting to see where he ends up and at what price.
Ironically, word this morning that Alex Rodriguez may miss up to 10 weeks with a hip injury has overtaken the T.O. news as the day's main topic on sports talk radio stations, with callers wanting to talk A-Rod versus T.O. running about 5 to 1. This could be the best thing to happen to the Yankees. It eliminates the inevitable A-Rod circus at opposing ballparks, or at least delays it until he returns in May or perhaps even June, and allows the Yankees to forge somewhat of an underdog identity without the beleaguered superstar. Maybe him missing a substantial part of the season due to injury is just what the doctor ordered. Thus his biggest contribution to team chemistry, like T.O., may be in physically removing himself from the equation.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Monday, March 02, 2009