Death Comes To Ditmars

NOT THAT ANYONE in the Greater Blogosphere is likely to care or shed a tear, but let it be noted that at 7:30 this very morning a City sanitation worker was struck and killed by a truck just a few short blocks from where I live. When I met my brother at around 8 this morning for coffee at the Bagel Shoppe, he told me that the area around 35th Street and Ditmars Blvd. was blocked off with cop cars. He thought a sanitation truck had hit someone, but later I found out that a 41-year-old garbageman was hit and then pinned between two trucks, and was pronounced D.O.A. at Mt. Sinai, the local hospital, leaving behind as they say a wife and two young kids. Just another death by motor vehicle in a City quite inured to and even tolerant of them.

I always said that if mob hit men were smart (a stretch, granted, but play along), their best bet would be just running over the intended victim. As long as you're not intoxicated, let's face it, no one does hard time in this city for killing a pedestrian or cyclist. In any case, the odds are against it. Last year, according to Streetsblog, "Of the 66 pedestrians, seven cyclists and one wheelchair user known to have died since January, in only 12 cases was the driver reportedly charged for taking a life." Why the hell would you go through the elaborate ritual of stalking a guy and pumping a few bullets into him. And of course if you use an SUV as the "weapon" of choice, the chances of anyone surviving a collision are few and far between. Just get behind the wheel like you usually do, tune everything out, pump up the tunes, crank it up to 70 and BAM! the guy's history. Shoot, you can probably even be texting or sexting or carrying on a cell conversation while you do the deed; most you'll get is a meager fine. The police don't seem to prioritize moving violations for the most part in the City under the all-important guise of keeping the precious traffic rolling along; after all, there'll be plenty of chances to fill the city coffers later when you're caught double-parking.

I have my own rather draconian yet I think fair and indeed necessary solutions when it comes to assholes caught talking on cell phones while driving that involve not only a 90-day suspended license right on the spot but also more far more fitting penance for such selfish behavior -- i.e., violators being forced to pull rickshaws full of obese tourists around the Theater District for a like duration. Because from what I've heard, your conversations suck anyway, so put the damn phone down or pull over and, for chrissakes (as my father used to say), if it's not too much trouble, pay some attention while operating your 2-ton metallic monstrosity. I mean, is it too much for you to live in the moment, to interact with what's in front of you for a change?











Fill 'er up, Draco!
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Déjà Vu All Over Again

IN A TEXTBOOK CASE of Groundhog Day -- and not the good kind -- we find ourselves in almost the exact same position as when we started this epic blog, as it's almost four years to the day of the first ever Warden's World post, and once again we're out of work, fast running out of unemployment benefits, down-shifting into panic mode. Freelancing itself has totally dried up over the last year, after I had built up a nice stable of clients over a 3-year period, only to see them drop off one by one. That's right, boys and girls, your Uncle Warden needs a job (along with something like 14 million other out-of-work Americans!!), ideally in the field he's put 20+ years in (publishing) -- but at this point how can he possibly get too picky? (Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question.) But please, no pity parties; we've been there, you've done that. We the people need jobs, as "The System" fails us yet again.

Before the Big Layoff Of '05, I had only been on unemployment one time in my entire existence; now I'm finishing my third such bout in the last 4+ years. One of the only bright spots if you will is all the time it leaves for reading, which in my case is mostly history, although I recently went on a fairly big Shakespeare run to my surprise, finishing the likes of Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, the Henry's (IV, V, VI), which were my favorites, and also a great bio of Willie the Shake called "Will in the World."

Then after watching a PBS special on early Christianity around Christmas, I was really intrigued by the Gnostic movement, the recently discovered Gospel of Judas and other so-called Lost Gospels, as well as choice books of the New Testament, which I had never felt compelled to read before. And who among us without a dental plan can't relate to lines like, "And verily, there shall be great weeping and gnashing of teeth..." Fascinating stuff all around, but the Gnostic use of numerology really had me intrigued -- and when I found out its message of achieving a kind of personal divinity via gnosis, or self-knowledge -- “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death” (Gospel of Thomas) -- had roots predating Christianity, going back to my ancient Greek homies Socrates and Plato, I was and still am hooked, so to speak.





ONE MORE THING and then we'll let each other go. Just got back from the supermarket, Key Food if you must know and why else would you have read this far, and in the time it took for me to collect my 12 items in a basket, I heard four songs over their in-store system that could have formed the heart of any one of my classic mixtapes. I mean, I walk into the store and David Bowie's Hang on to Yourself is playing! Not nearly loud enough, but it was early in the morning. This is followed by the weakest of the 4 songs, but it's still an AM nugget from my youth that I never mind hearing and usually end up singing all day when I do: Come and Get Your Love, by Redbone. Again, you probably had to be there, both this morning and back in the early '70s when that song was all over the airwaves, but Song 3 was another unexpected gem, one of my absolute favorite Bob Marley songs: Roots, Rock, Reggae with the great shuffling refrain of "Dis-a reggae music" after every line. And last, as I was leaving, another classic: the Kinks' Jukebox Music. When the day starts like that, it's usually a good omen. I'll keep you posted...
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Jersey Shore cast joins Jay for Jaywalk All-Stars

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Abusive Kansas Football Coach Resigns
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Sam, My Man

I WAS WAITING for the Lincoln Center library to open up this morning, a few minutes before 11--trying to fill the hours of yet another unemployed day with some bare modicum of social interaction--when who should I see but Sam Waterston, the excellent actor who plays the District Attorney on one of the 47 or so incarnations of Law & Order, walking right past me. For some odd reason, I found myself saying "Good Show" to the guy as he walked by dressed in a suit and a beige trench coat. He said "Thanks" and as he walked away, I felt the need to throw out another line, asking him if he was the narrator of the latest Ken Burns PBS documentary on America's national parks. I mean, I watched about 3-4 hours of the series, so I already knew he was, but I guess I wanted some verification to that effect, and he admitted that it indeed was him doing the voice-over. I further surprised / embarrassed myself by complimenting him on a job well done. This time there was no "Thanks" in return; old Sam just kept right on walking. And here I thought we were really hitting it off, just two New Yorkers shooting the breeze of a morning. Of course, looking back, can't really blame him: I probably looked like a stalker type in my shades, or just another street crazy or nosy nutjob to the esteemed thespian, whose best movie role was undoubtedly the journalist in The Killing Fields. I too would have walked away from myself had I been in his shoes. Lord knows I've tried, and we all know how painful that can be.

As Sam left the scene, I remembered that there was a terrific bordering on riveting Law & Order episode about three weeks ago dealing with the prosecution of a John Yoo-type scumbag for his depraved legal brief endorsing the use of harsh, okay-as-long-as-it's-not-fatal interrogation techniques by the last administration. Old Sam really made an impassioned stand against the use of torture in that show, and I would have loved to pick his brain on how close his own views were to those of the character he played. Oh well, now I have some material for next time, including some choice personal info I picked up on Wikipedia. Can you say Rupert Pupkin ??!!

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When Ignorant Sheeple Attack

"I hear hurricanes a blowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't go around tonight
Well it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise.
All right!..."

Do We Miss You, Yes We Do

There may never be a five-year period in music again like 1976 to 1980 or so. The greatness and originality of these bands only appreciates and resonates more as the years pass, and oh how they do pass. If you don't have the sound up as loud as she goes on your speakers for these videos you're pretty much an ass in my book.

Sarah Palin's Slightly More Crazy Twin?

Sponsors Leaving Glenn Beck Show

A Bronx Jinx?

WELL, NOW IT'S 0 FOR 2 on the 2009 season for me at the new Yankee Stadium following a loss to Texas this afternoon on a picture-perfect day for baseball. Good thing I don't have season tickets, because based on my track record the Yankees would be winless at home on the year. For the record, without my presence, they're 42-18 at the new Stadium this year.

We got there about an hour early, so we circumnavigated the huge ballpark. And who should we see pulling into the players' entrance but one Alex Rodriguez, driving his own black SUV. Who knew that would be the highlight of the day! Well, that and seeing ex-Yankee "legends" Ron Blomberg (MLB's first designated hitter back in 1973) and Oscar Gamble (he of the giant Afro and funky batting stance) signing autographs in front of one of the old souvenir shops across the street from the Stadium. But at $20 a pop, we bypassed their table and instead took our chances on a dollar street dog with all the trimmings before heading inside the park.

Starter A.J. Burnett had great stuff today, striking out 12 Rangers in just 6 innings, but he walked 7 men and gave up a 3-run bomb to Ian Kinsler in the 4th inning. He left the game trailing 3-1, but Phil Coke and the rest of the Yankee relievers couldn't hold it there, and the final score was 7-2 in favor of the visitors.

I don't know if it was due to a day game following a night game, but the energy level in the park was almost nil, despite a crowd of over 47,000. Boston also lost last night as well, so the division lead remains at 6 games with fewer than 40 left to play. Barring a New York Mets 2007/2008-type collapse, the Yankees will be back in the postseason again, where of course it's one big crapshoot, if I can still say that on the Webosphere. We've got tickets for at least one more regular season game this season, so it would be nice to see a victory in person and break this curse once and for all.

COUNT ME AMONG yesterday's teeming multitudes flocking to the last Summerstage show of the year. The price was right (free) to see two pretty good indie/alternative acts -- the Walkmen and Dinosaur Jr. -- as was the locale (Central Park). And if nobody is around to remember it or mythologize it in 40 years like a certain anniversary that just passed, then so be it; that's okay too.

The plan was to get to the Park at around 2:00, so that by 2:30 we were already inside with a decent spot for when the first band, the Walkmen, came on at 3:00. But nooooooo! For whatever reason, the promoters snuck a third band in the lineup, a heavily tattooed, shaggy-haired, leather-clad heavy mental band calling themselves the Saviours. They hit the stage at 3, and I can't say anyone was especially thrilled to see them remain there for the worse part of an hour.

The Walkmen were about what I expected, maybe a little better, especially when they used a 6- or 7-piece horn section on a few songs. One minor criticism is that too many of the songs were the same tempo. Toward the end of their set, they finally unleashed their best song -- The Rat -- a blistering new wave raver, and you wonder where that energy was the whole afternoon. Granted, the sun was beating down on everyone by then anyway, but still...

The headliners made it onstage a little after 5:00. By my highly unofficial account, they mixed in six classics from their first time around-- In a Jar, Freak Show, The Wagon, Out There, Feel the Pain and their scorching cover of the Cure's Just Like Heaven -- with stuff from the two newer albums. Farm (2009) and Beyond (2007).

Out There might be my single favorite Dinosaur Jr. song, with one of those patented J Mascis solos that sends chills up your spine like very few other living guitar players not named Neil Young. On the 1993 album (Where You Been), Out There leads right into the terrific Start Choppin, which unfortunately was nowhere to be heard yesterday. But I'm not gonna complain about getting my money's worth at a free show. What kind of example would that set for the kids?

A Razor In The Wind

WILLY DEVILLE, FOUNDER OF ONE OF THE ORIGINAL CBGB's house bands, passed on last week at age 58 after a battle with cancer. DeVille's group was lumped in with the burgeoning mid-'70s New York punk movement that featured acts as diverse as the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie, but the soul-and-R&B-drenched sound of Mink DeVille was indeed most NOT like all the others in that groundbreaking scene.

As DeVille said of his time at the legendary punk club on Bowery Street: "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on. We played (at CBGB) for three years. During that time we didn't get paid more than fifty bucks a night."

Actually, the Mink DeVille story -- "one of the greatest all-but-unsung legacies in rock history" according to AMG -- began many years before, when Willy DeVille left his native New York City for London in 1971, hoping to find like-minded musicians who were into old blues instead of all the groovy, hippie vibes left over from the '60s: “electric this and strawberry that,” as DeVille put it. The journey next took him to San Francisco, where he formed a band called Billy DeSade & the Marquees that played in some of the seedier bars of that city. After changing their name to Mink DeVille ("There can't be anything cooler than a fur-lined Cadillac, can there?") and reading an article about the nascent New York punk scene, Willy convinced his bandmates to drive cross-country in 1975.

Mink DeVille would catch on in New York quickly enough to have three songs chosen for the landmark Live at CBGB's compilation album a year later. The band was signed to Capitol Records after label executive Ben Edmonds was blown away by their exciting live show:

"When Mink DeVille took the stage (at CBGB) and tore into "Let Me Dream if I Want To" followed by another scorcher called "She's So Tough," they had me. These five guys...were obviously part of the new energy, but I also felt immediately reconnected to all the rock & roll I loved best: the bluesy early Stones, Van Morrison..., the subway scenarios of the The Velvet Underground, Dylan's folk-rock inflections, the heartbreak of Little Willie John, and a thousand scratchy old flea market 45s. Plus they seemed to contain all the flavors of their New York neighborhood, from Spanish accents to reggae spice."

Mink Deville's first two albums, 1977's Cabrera and '78's Return to Magenta, wear those influences on their sleeves, but played with an aggressively jaded swagger. Both records were produced by the legendary Jack Nitzsche, who called DeVille the best singer he had ever worked with. Cabrera features the band's best-known song, "Spanish Stroll," as well as its "punkiest" moment -- the dual guitar attack on "She's So Tough" from the first album would have fit in nicely on a Television album. But most of the songs:

"reached deep into blues and soul, the classic romantic pop of Ben E. King and The Drifters, with a side order of Spanish spices and New Orleans Zydeco swing. They favoured castanets over tom-toms, and accordion over distorted guitars, and Willy delivered his vocals with a sweet, tuneful flexibility that brought out the emotional resonance beneath his nasal sneer. What the wiry, dapper DeVille had that tied him to fellow CBGB resident bands like The Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads was an edge. He was drawing on some of the same musical areas that Bruce Springsteen’s epic rock dipped into, but Willy was an entirely different creature, a macho dandy in a pompadour and pencil moustache, with the dangerous air of a New York gangfighter and an underbelly vulnerability that came out through the romanticism of his music. Springsteen sounded like he was your friend in desperate times. DeVille sounded like he couldn’t quite decide whether to serenade you or pull a knife on you." [Daily Telegraph critic Neil McCormick]

By the time I saw Willy DeVille live -- New Year's Eve 1985, the Ritz on 11th Street, $35 ticket price -- he was incorporating even more flavors into the mix, especially Cajun music. Can't recall if there was an opening act that night or what time the show ended, but I was working at a liquor store on 88th Street and Second Avenue at the time while attending storied Hunter College. New Year's Day fell on a Wednesday that year, and so after the concert ended in the wee hours, I headed uptown to open up, catching a few uncomfortable hours of sleep on a desk chair in the back of the store before 10:00am reared its ugly head. Just a rock & roll snapshot as we remember Willy DeVille and his singular contribution to its history.

"Mink DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow — timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute. But the fighters always have a shot at turning a corner, and if you holler loud enough, sometimes somebody hears you. And truth and love always separate the greats from the neverwases and neverwillbes."
-- Doc Pomus

Here's Venus of Avenue D, Spanish Stroll, It's So Easy, Bad Boy and She's So Tough, courtesy of Nevver.com

Retro Music Snob has an MP3 up of Little Girl

New York Times obit

New York Rocker tribute

When The Kids Had Killed The Man I Had To Break Up The Band

YOUR FEARLESS NARRATOR was actually almost in this band -- or more accurately I was the singer in an earlier incarnation of Kraut -- back in the very early '80s. Now that I have your attention, allow me to 'splain how I came to be the NYC Hardcore scene's version of Pete Best...

Two weeks ago, Big Mike, the Urb, the Admiral (aka Jimi the Greek) and me were having a smoke outside Stini Yiamis on Ditmars Blvd. when the subject somehow turned to the rock bands we tried to start back in our wayward youth. Putting the cart way before the dead horse, I'll reveal the absolute highlight for me came when I joined Urb's group, Peer Pressure, for an encore set at a small club in Sunnyside. Literally jumping onstage, I took my leather jacket off in dramatic fashion and grabbed the mike for stirring renditions of the Ramones' Rockaway Beach and the Clash's White Riot. Sadly, and to punk history's great detriment, no known footage exists of this seminal event.

Documentation, however, conceivably could still exist of the recording session our nameless band made at a Long Island City studio. I know Dave last had the cassette, which captured about an hour's worth of our covers-laden material. These were mostly punk standards like Blitzkrieg Bop, Garageland and Pretty Vacant. I was always fucking up the last song, jumping in either too soon or too late with the first line "THERE'S NO POINT IN ASKING YOU'LL GET NO REPLY" while waiting through the fairly long intro:





But we also had a few original compositions, such as my very own Stiff Little Fingers ripoff/homage STATE OF THE UNION:

THE PEOPLE I KNOW ARE ALL PATRIOTS
CONTENT TO LIVE THEIR LIVES IN FRONT OF TV SETS
THEY DON'T MAKE WAVES FOR FEAR OF A STORM
THEY PAY THEIR TAXES AND FOLLOW THE NORM

WELL I DON'T WANNA BE JUST ANOTHER JOE
I WANNA KNOW WHERE THE TAX DOLLARS GO
THE PENTAGON YELLS COMMIE, GIMME MORE MORE MORE
WHILE THE GHETTOS IN NEW YORK CRUMBLE ON THE POOR

YET THE POOR ARE THE ONES WHO GO OFF TO WAR
TO PROTECT BIG BUSINESS ON A FOREIGN SHORE
AS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ALL IT STANDS FOR
MURDERS ITS CHILDREN FOR OBEYING THE LAW

THIS IS THE STATE OF THE UNION!
THIS IS THE STATE OF THIS UNION!!

Soon after we made a recording of this song, I parted ways with the lads. There was a fairly big age gap, with me going to college and just about to turn 21 while the rest of the band was 5 or 6 years younger than that. I wanted to do more original material and, even more important to me at the time, much more political stuff, like the lost classic above. I never imagined this band going in that direction, despite my constant history lectures (El Salvador = the next Vietnam), and so I just stopped showing up to Dave's basement on Saturdays after my film appreciation class at Hunter College in the the morning, and soon I lost touch altogether.

Amazingly, just a few short months later, Davey had a new band called Kraut made up of some of the guys I played with and some I didn't. Davey Gunner, who I knew as a drummer, was now the lead singer, and Johnny Feedback -- who used to hang around while we practiced -- was now on drums. By May of '81 they had secured an opening slot for the Clash at Bond's based on a demo tape of 3 songs! The Clash had originally signed on for a week's worth of shows at the legendary Times Square venue, but they sold too many tickets and had to play additional shows. Thus they needed opening acts on short notice, and Kraut enterprisingly got the tape in Mick Jones' hands, who evidently liked what he heard. According to the band's MySpace page, the Bond's slot opening for the punk icons was their first-ever live gig. Talk about your baptism under fire.



Their first single, Kill for Cash b/w Just Cabbage, was a self-made DIY affair that nevertheless sold out fast. I bought a copy at Bleecker Bob's in Greenwich Village, but alas sold it along with the rest of my punk singles and albums for a mere song about 10 years ago on the advice of a long-gone ex. I can still hear her saying, You never play them, they're just taking up space; you might as well get some money for them. It's my fault for listening to her, of course, but just like that about 100 vintage punk albums and 50 singles were history. Shortly after, I went on eBay and looked up what some of the 45's were going for. A copy of Kill for Kash was going for close to 100 bucks -- and that was before bidding closed. I ended up with about 150 dollars for my whole fucking collection.

Kraut contributed two songs to the essential hardcore compilation New York Thrash. Their first album, 1982's An Adjustment to Society, featured the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones on guitar for a new version of Kill for Cash. The video for All Twisted was in rotation on MTV. Later on, Kraut would become more of a speed metal band, but they had a nice little thing going on there for a while, and they're much more than a footnote in the history of New York Punk. Me, on the other hand...

My own crew in Astoria tried to get a few more bands together over the years, including one where I tried to learn an instrument. Big Mike had a huge, fretless jazz bass with an amp that he lent me, and I could play a few progressions, but soon found out I could not play an instrument and sing at the same time. No kidding. Anyway, we spent way more time trying to come up with catchy names for the band than actually practicing. I still remember trying to convince everyone that my idea to call us "Stavros and the Two-by-Fours" was a winner, to little or no avail. And so folk-punk songs of mine like the haunting, elegaic Momentless Times would go unrecorded.

Soon we finally gave up our musical dreams, Real Life being what it is. My friends would kid me about how right after I left, Kraut took off and made it big; how I coulda been a contender, etc., in the way your closest buds like to bust your balls just because they know they can. In reality, I never begrudge anyone's success or even harbor regrets in that way. In other ways, sure, but that's for another time, another place, another girl, another planet.














Portrait of The Warden as a young poseur

The Sleep Of Reason*

I'M VERY DISHEARTENED, but not all that shocked, that retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters' call for the U.S. military to abandon a captured soldier in Afghanistan didn't get more traction in the mainstream press. Then again, this past week was virtually subsumed by yet another racial Rorschach test, Gates-gate -- the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police for disorderly conduct. All news seemed to pale in comparison to President Obama calling the actions of the arresting white officer "stupid," and it was obvious the story wasn't going away any time soon -- at least until a round or two of beer diplomacy at the White House by everyone involved set for Thursday afternoon. And we can all drink to that.

In case you hadn't heard and/or weren't paying enough attention, according to MSNBC.com, on July 2:

"An American soldier (Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl) is believed being held by the Taliban after he walked off his base in eastern Afghanistan without his body armor and weapon, officials said Thursday. Initial reports indicated that the soldier was off duty at the time he went missing, having just completed a shift."

This is where five-star wingnut Peters comes in. He made an appearance on Fox News on July 19, right after the Taliban released video of a shaken Bergdahl in captivity. Channeling his inner Cheney, Peters cautioned that we shouldn't be making a hero of this soldier, who after all is engaged in anti-American propaganda:

"We must wait until all the facts are in to make a judgment, but … he is an apparent deserter. Reports are indeed that he had abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post and walked off.”

“I want to be clear. If when the facts are in we find out it’s through some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime — I don’t care how hard it sounds — as far as I’m concerned the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills."

Peters' odious diatribes are usually confined to the fairly unbalanced op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. But back in May, he outraged decent people everywhere in a different forum: asserting in the "Journal of International Security Affairs" that, in the future, "godless" journalists criticizing the glorious war effort just may have to be sacrificed on the altar of a Pax Americana Uber Alles:

"The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the "rights" and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion--were any additional proof required--that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves. And, of course, there is a penalty for the intellectual's dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters."

Call me overly sensitive, but I detect a subtle anti-liberal bias buried in there somewhere. In a nutshell, and where else would you find a crackpot like Ralph Peters, this is the standard neocon credo: the future consists of eternal, endless war against whatever bogeyman we're demonizing at the moment, and if you get in the way of the War Machine, you too will be demonized and ultimately destroyed. Because according to Peters, "Our failures nourish monsters." This guy's hateful, overheated rhetoric fits right in alongside Joe Goebbels and Joe McCarthy.

Not surprisingly, Peters has seen as much actual live combat as I have: zip, zilch, nada... He was forced to admit as much a few days later on an appearance with fellow chickenhawk Bill O'Reilly, who seemed crestfallen at the news that Peters too was a war virgin. Peters then regained his footing, calling the captured soldier "mentally disturbed," and O'Reilly quickly chimed in that the guy "must be crazy." Ironically, the only people who fit those labels more than Bill O'Reilly and Ralph Peters usually wear straitjackets to the dinner table.




















*El sueno de la razon produce monstruos
(The sleep of reason produces monsters)
Francisco de Goya
1797-98

Rider In The Sky

JOHN "MARMADUKE" DAWSON, founding member and driving force behind country-rock pioneers New Riders of the Purple Sage, passed away Tuesday at age 64 from cancer.

The group was originally conceived as a side project for Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh to indulge their country & folk interests. By the time the first New Riders album was released in 1971, the lineup was independent of the legendary psychedelic band, although Garcia plays throughout the record on pedal steel guitar.

The Adventures of Panama Red, the New Riders' gold album from 1973, featured the marijuana-fueled adventures of the title character in the group's best-known song, written by Peter Rowan. Dawson contributed two plaintive ballads to an almost perfect record (one drawback is the flimsy running time, a mere 29 minutes, 51 seconds): "One Too Many Stories" and "You Should Have Seen Me Runnin'."

Panama Red spent as much time on my turntable as any other record in the collection back in those "heady" days -- my mellow Deadhead phase: New Riders, Hot Tuna, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels Band, Poco, Pure Prairie League, etc. This is the kind of music I was listening to at the time... before the metallic-sharp Punk Rock phenomenon would slice through my wooden Americana doors of perception a few years later.

All Music Guide gives Panama Red short shrift, awarding it only 3 out of 5 stars, then almost makes up for the slight by sagely pointing out:

"The freakiest thing is that the record segues together so beautifully and the songs are so tight with nothing extra between, it feels like it's a lot longer than the mere 29 minutes it is. The listener feels satisfied that after 11 songs it's all been said and done in a delightful way ... Musically it can do a lot to teach modern-day alt-country cookie cutters something about knowing the rules before trying to break them." Amen to that...

Their first album's 10 songs were all written by Dawson. The rollicking "Henry" chronicles an enterprising young pothead's trip to Acapulco in search of "twenty keys of gold" -- with "fifty people waitin' back at home for Henry's load." "Glendale Train" is Dawson's detail-oriented embellishment of a famous 19th century train robbery -- where the robbers "MADE CLEAN OFF WITH SIXTEEN G’S AND LEFT TWO MEN LYING COLD" and "THEY FOUND AMOS WHITE IN FIFTEEN PIECES, FIFTEEN MILES APART."

Dawson also had a hand in one of the Grateful Dead's most enduring songs, co-writing "Friend of the Devil" with Garcia and Robert Hunter. In fact, future Riders Dawson and David Nelson make key contributions to that American Beauty record, along with its companion Workingman's Dead (both released in 1970).

I saw the Riders play in Central Park circa 1975. Looking back, NRPS were at their absolute live peak at this time. They would stay together for another five or six years, and after the original lineup disbanded in 1982, it was Dawson alone who kept the name alive, with a revolving cast of new members, for another 15 years.

Unfortunately, the NRPS selections on YouTube are underwhelming at best. Here's a "video" of "I Don't Know You" from the 1971 first album. A year later, of course, The Eagles would release their own debut album, offering a safer, more mainstream version of what the New Riders were doing, but it was The Eagles who would go on to ride country rock to the corner of Fame and Fortune -- a cross street that eluded the more visionary New Riders of the Purple Sage.

And here's a touching video of a frail Dawson with the 2007 version of NRPS, performing "Portland Woman" from the first album; it takes a while for the band to get going -- only for the video to cut off abruptly. Boo, hiss...

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The Original Moonwalk

TONIGHT MARKS THE 40th ANNIVERSARY of the human race's singular technological accomplishment -- bigger than Twitter, even more impressive than the George Foreman Grill: sending three men to the moon and back. On July 20, 1969, sprawled in front of my aunt's living room color console in New Jersey, I watched in awe as the Apollo 11 spacecraft touched down and deposited Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon.

If we could somehow time-travel back through the miracle of the Interweb to that miracle summer of '69, there could not have many kids more into Apollo 11 and the whole space program than my 9-year-old self. Put it this way: Leading up to the big event, I began to fill a shoebox with articles I'd clipped from newspapers relating to all things space exploration. I also had this huge book on astronomy passed down to me from my older brother, and I knew a helluva lot more back then about the planets, their moons and orbits than I do now.

I remember keeping the shoeboxes on the floor of my bedroom closet, and at the slightest interest evinced by anyone in my vicinity, I was ready to break out the clips and go over each one while providing a running commentary. At a moment's notice, I'd have my Apollo 11 model set up for a detailed demonstration of precisely how the Eagle landing craft separated from the mother ship Columbia before oh so lightly touching down in the Sea of Tranquility. I was kind of a geeky kid before I got into sports a few years later.

Sadly, the man most of us watched narrate the whole incredible lunar landing passed away just a few days short of the anniversary: Walter Cronkite. There's that famous clip of Cronkite right after the Eagle landed exclaiming, "Man on the moon... Oh boy!" and then removing his glasses as if in disbelief of what his eyes were showing him.

For centuries Man had dreamed of somehow escaping the bounds of Earth and reaching the moon. For a country mired in an unpopular war thousands of miles away from home, the lunar landing was the ultimate feel-good moment and the payoff to an 8-year commitment set in motion by JFK -- albeit with the help of scientists with rather unsavory pasts.

But somehow I think the late great Cronkite got it wrong when he said: "500 years from now they will be celebrating the first landing on the moon and the first walk on the moon." Acknowledging, yes, the way we mark Lewis & Clark's voyage of discovery in the history books or Chris Columbus' three jaunts across the Atlantic on the calendar; but as far as celebrating and being emotionally involved across the next five centuries, I don't see it. Interest in the space program peaked that very night 40 years ago, and it's been steadily waning ever since. Ask yourself what got more interest: the actual moonwalk or Michael Jackson's moonwalking across a stage?

Sometimes I gaze up at a full moon and have a real hard time believing it's possible to land a spaceship on such a distant body, whether manned or unmanned, over 240,000 miles away. Now, just to be clear, I'm not a moon hoax conspiracy advocate. But it's the sheer implausibility of it all -- looking up at that big hunk of cheese in the sky and imagining a spaceship taking three of your fellow human beings there and back -- that undoubtedly drives many a moon landing skeptic. And as you might expect, there's no shortage of interesting fabrication scenarios.

Fueling the fertile minds of the roughly 6% of Americans who doubt the landing actually took place, just four days ago NASA admitted that 45 videotapes recording the actual landing were erased sometime ago -- meaning precious little actual footage remains of perhaps the landmark event in history. So the timeline goes something like this: Three years ago NASA couldn't find the tapes, then they turned up a few days ago demagnetized -- evidently some bureaucrat's idea of a cost-saving measure. And now as a consolation, just in time for the 40th anniversary, NASA is releasing digitally restored highlights.

But the signal the TV stations were broadcasting that July night 40 years ago came from network cameras filming the NASA monitors in Houston, hence the extremely low picture quality -- while the much clearer direct feed from the lunar camera to mission control has never been viewed by the public, and now in all likelihood never will be because of the tape-erasing fiasco. You can see where skeptics might wonder whether a government agency is deliberately withholding the visual documentation because it doesn't want a high-tech examination of its veracity.

The blueprints of the lunar module and rover have also gone missing. One major question mark voiced by the landing deniers revolves around whether the Eagle craft's foil-thin walls and the astronauts' spacesuits were advanced enough to withstand the dangerous radiation levels of the moon.

As for all the moon rocks the mission brought back? Well, the conspiracy crowd has an explanation for that too: The rocks brought back from the Moon are almost identical in composition to rocks collected in documented expeditions by NASA scientists to Antarctica two years earlier (led by ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun). Throw in a little Stanley Kubrick post-production, and you've got one mind-blowing covert operation! But if you're one of the almost 90% of Americans polled who believe we indeed landed those men in funny white suits on the Moon, tonight's your night to go a little loony.

World Still Turning

Impassioned letter in the current (July 15-21) Village Voice criticizing its contribution to the off-the-wall Michael Jackson media circus. Proving great minds indeed think alike, Adam Laten Wilson specifically took aim at the Voice's eulogizing scribes -- the shameless, almost textbook case of revisionist history by '60s anachronism Greg Tate, and singer Jean Grae's delusional gibberish about MJ's magic. (In the same issue, Jessica Hopper did some good-old-fashioned reporting: going back to Gary, Indiana, to trace Jackson's roots and influence in that downtrodden community.)

Let's check the actual letter first, followed by some more "regurgitation and synthesizing of the news" and in all likelihood "snarky commentary," whether faux or otherwise.

"The Man in Our Mirror" by Greg Tate might pass for a pseudo-neo-Hegelian-post-Soul tractatus on God-knows-what. Nonetheless, it has nothing to do with Michael Jackson and is atrociously self-indulgent.

The claim that Jackson is (despite his entire career of continual transmutation) nothing more than the latest installment of "The Real Soul Man" is an absurd form of conceptual masturbation that disrespects Jackson's true brilliance.

And "In Defense of Magic: A Solo Bed-Stuy Dance Party" is not only an example of horrendous journalism, but also a pretty meaningless diary entry that ought to have been burned immediately after writing.

What your writers don't seem to understand is that Jackson was not simply a genius, but also a failure and freak. Mr. Tate almost touches on this point when he compares him to Icarus. Unfortunately, he then wonders if it's not a blessing that we are now freely permitted to forget he ever fell.

I find it telling that in '82, the populace applauded Jackson for pretending to be a zombie, but when he actually became one . . .

Since he appears to have died more than 15 years ago, last week's memorial feature seems woefully behind the times.

Back on July 8, if you missed it the first time, Warden's World, ahead of the pack as usual, harshly but rightly singled out Grae's column as perhaps the most notably ludicrous example of Michael Jackson canonization:

Speaking of psychobabble, if there were an award for Most Cringe-Inducing Commentary on Michael Jackson's death, rap "artist" Jean "I need that Grammy" Grae would definitely be a contender, given her gushing, near-hysterical column in last week's Village Voice:

"I'm lucky and blessed to have been one of the millions who received Michael's magical, awesome, immortal presents/presence ... I'm not going to speculate on any of the controversy, the darkness--we all have, all of us. I can't judge anyone, and I won't ... No, I never met Michael Jackson. No, never even got close. But if he wasn't the most brilliant sliver of magic alive, I don't what is or ever will be."

Wilson took Tate's rambling, overwrought column to task as well, no doubt bothered as I was by
all the glorifying gibberish, such as the following representative non-gems:

The absolute irony of all the jokes and speculation about Michael trying to turn into a European woman is that after James Brown, his music (and his dancing) represent the epitome—one of the mightiest peaks—of what we call Black Music. Fortunately for us, that suspect skin-lightening disease, bleaching away his Black-nuss via physical or psychological means, had no effect on the field-holler screams palpable in his voice, or the electromagnetism fueling his elegant and preternatural sense of rhythm, flexibility, and fluid motion. With just his vocal gifts and his body alone as vehicles, Michael came to rank as one of the great storytellers and soothsayers of the last 100 years ...

His orgies of rhino- and other plasty's were no more than an attempt to stay ahead of a fickle public's fickleness ...

Critical sidebar: I have always wanted to believe that Michael Jackson was actually one of the most secretly angry Black race-men on the planet.

Put down the fucking bong, Greg... or at least pass it along. As we used to say back in the day when confronted with such fantasies: AND THEN YOU WOKE UP! Well, the Tate article is chock-full of similar nonsense -- thereby a worthy exemplar of the insufferable oversaturation, overanalyzing and overrating of all things Mike Jackson. Hopefully we're done with all that now, until the suckfest of the inevitable American Idol Michael Jackson tribute. Bank on it, because the flock of sheeple will undoubtedly demand it.