perfidy

It looks like our good friends the Russkies have designs on the American heartland. I am told that a Russian observation plane will be making flights from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, taking photos of the United States under the Open Skies Treaty.

Good God. What can they be looking for? I know they are interested in more than ariel shots of Jacobs Field and the Football Hall of Fame. Perhaps they are interested in what went on here, the old Ravenna Arsenal. Although ostensibly closed down for decades, I myself as a tot wondered at the gigantic C-130s making landings at the old closed-down munitions arsenal. My guess: zombies. The entire place is surrounded by barbed wire, and although they let hunters on the land each fall to cull the resident deer horde, there are some places the hunters cannot go.

The zombie places.

Though it could also be nukes. Satellite images that already exist show a curiously large number of earth mounds, set in long rows, in several areas of the old Arsenal. Are they munitions bunkers? ICBM silos? Or maybe… where they keep the giant robots? Only the President, and soon, our good-souled friend Vladimir Putin, know.

But this is all simply conjecture. What is fact is that the Russians have long had it in for Chainsaw Mick and his tenacious brand of termite-level capitalism. Whatever else they are for, these Russian flyovers are just a front for ongoing operations by the Russians to keep track on Chainsaw and what he’s up to.

For years Chainsaw Mick has been training secret cadres of small-equipment salesmen and repairmen in remote camps, building elite squadrons of highly trained mechanics. These enterprising men and women will return to their home countries – Guatemala, Uzbekistan, the Ukraine, Chad, Russia – and there start small home businesses of their own. That is Phase One. Phase Two is secret and unknown even to me, but Phase Three involves these sleeper cells of insurgent capitalists bursting forth from the countryside and small manufacturing zones of their nations and sweeping across the land, leaving behind them a riot of small-scale wealth, economic well being and stability, individual self-reliance, and immaculately maintained lawn equipment.

Small wonder the Russians want to keep tabs on ol’ Chainsaw. He holds the key to their future, the future they fear will one day come to pass.

Rock on, Chainsaw. The future of the world is in your hands.

The Venerable Bede: FUCK YEAH!

Click here for a fascinating and darkly humorous look at the antics of the less, well, able of the Iraqi insurgents/regime holdouts/foriegn jihadi/fucknuts.

My personal favorite:

Item 6: And an oldie but a goodie from the early days of military operations in Iraq. The enemy will always try to provoke you into doing something impulsive and, let's face it, stupid - so don't let them. This simple lesson was, alas, lost on Saddam's brave but foolhardy irregulars:

Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes. One was that young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees would, from time to time, blare out in Arabic that Iraqi men are impotent. The Fedayeen, the fierce but undisciplined and untrained Iraqi irregulars, could not bear to be taunted. Whether they took the bait or saw an opportunity to attack, many Iraqis stormed out of their concealed or dug-in positions, pushing aside their human shields in some cases to be slaughtered by American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

Not impotent; just stupid.

Sam, a commenter over at Murdoc's place, dropped this link when he read my recent post about the zombie dogs.

All you really need to know is this:

Three time winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest.

Via loyal reader #0017, EDog, we are made aware of two developments with Google worth checking out.

First: Gizoogle. Get dizzle with the gizzle, bizzle! Fo shizzle!

Also: Welcome to erf. Download Google Earth now, and mortgage hours of your life. Google has aggregated a planet's worth of satellite maps into one globe simulation that you can navigate at will. Zoom in, zoom out, tilt, get driving directions and watch turn-by-turn instructions and a bright purple line spread out across a richly detailed terrain map. I can see my house from here. I can see my parents' house from here. I can see the Drug Van parked outside Chainsaw Mick's place, from an application on my computer desktop! The future, folks, is here.

I woke up this morning to the sight of bloodied and bewildered Londoners covered in dust emerging from the wreckage of the Underground. News reports currently make it 5 bombs on the tube and one double-decker bus. Luckily only two deaths are reported so far. (Luckily? What's lucky about that? Someone's brother, someone's sister, someone's best mate won't be coming around any more. That's not lucky, that's not as fucking tragic as could have been.)

A previously unknown group called "Secret Organization group of al-Qaeda of Jihad in Europe" have taken credit for the bombings, so that's at least a few douchebags who will be independently verifying the 88 Virgins claim pretty soon here. Although it doesn't pay to leap to conclusions, it's a fair bet that the Islamists are behind all this. Between the G8 conference up in Scotland and an Israeli economic conference being held close to the site of one of the bombings, there's plenty of circumstantial reasons to believe the Usual Suspects are here. Of course it could always be some rogue mongoloids calling themselves something like "The Original Famous Real Real IRA" or whatnot, Irish thugs saddened by the recent burst of civilization that has gripped their mother organization. Who knows? Lots of people have beefs with the British. But only a few are murderously deranged.

Looks like someone needs their ass kicked in a precise, surgical and relentless fashion. Funny, that's just what the Brits are best at. Hope we can lend a hand.

My blogcritics compatriot Andrew Ian Dodge is liveblogging as best he can from his home in central London. Check with him for updates.

[wik] As is my blogcritics compatriot sungoddess.

[alsø wik] Here is a London-based blog who has aggreggated a number of other liveblogs and news and video feeds.

[alsø alsø wik] [buckethead adds] There may have been as many as seven bombs. There are reports of hundreds of injured, and of wounded being operated on in the concourse at Liverpool Street station. Other reports mention bodies lying under sheets. Here's a couple more links with news: Tim Worstall and the Guardian. And the Washington Post is reporting:

Three blasts rocked the London subway and one tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing after what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called "barbaric" terrorist attacks. A U.S. law enforcement official said at least 40 people were killed and London hospitals reported more than 300 wounded.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] The butcher's bill is now 37 and undoubtedly rising, and more than 300 are confirmed injured. This is the same city that bore up through the blitz and went on with their lives. London will be fine. The people who did this, they will not.

I recently kicked off a review of a Don Byron album by complaining about how hard it can be to review albums in genres whose followers are particularly devoted to their cause. Well, before proceeding I would like it to be known that I am wearing sackcloth, rolling myself in ashes, and beating my head repeatedly into the brick wall out behind CBGB, ‘cuz it’s Punk Rock Reviewin’ Time! Outraged jazz fans might lob flaming emails in my direction if I dare to compare Greg Osby to Coleman Hawkins. But be stupid about punk in the wrong room, and you might find yourself (so I fancy) running for your life.

The object of today’s scrutiny is the pretty good sophomore effort from Roger Miret & The Disasters, titled 1984 (2005; Epitaph). According to Miret, “’1984,’ was originally written about 1982. But the chorus ‘1982’ doesn’t sound as good as ‘1984.’” Ok, then. Orwellian it ain’t, for a change.

Roger Miret was born to Cuban immigrants fleeing Castro's Cuba, and grew up on New York's Lower East Side. Since 1982 he has been the frontman of the great New York hardcore band Agnostic Front (except for those couple years in jail). It seems that despite his spotless hardcore credentials, Roger has a relatively softer side to him, because on 1984 he trades the brutal thrash of NYC hardcore for a more melodic but no less raucous street-punk sound. Plenty of punk bands these days do the football-chant chorus thing, but Miret, having decades of experience on the young pikers (and having been around when the thing began), generally does it better.

Part of the difference is that Miret knows how to write a song. 1984 is full of loud guitars, fast tempos, shouted “oi!”s, and aggressive melodies, and with its thirteen songs clocking in just under 30 minutes, nothing hangs around long enough to get old. But the rest of the difference is that Roger Miret is older and smarter. Street punk isn’t all that interesting a genre without good stories to tell, and Miret has 25 years of experience behind his songs.

Lyrically, 1984 is about the glory years of oi, the bad old days when Times Square was about porno and New York seemed to be imploding. Songs like “Hooligans,” “New York City” and “Lower East Side” are shouts out to the kids of 1982, and others like “Kill for Cash,” “Shot Stabbed and Fooled” and “Turncoat” revisit the ground-level political themes of betrayal and responsibility that have been Miret’s mainstays for years. But Miret sings with the earned wisdom and nostalgia of someone who’s seen it all. The lyrics to “New York City” go:

New York City, a city so great
Her pride, her beauty so pure
Her birth of my soul, so honest, so strong
Her mecca – how I adore

As I child I remember her dark alleyways
Where we learned how to fight
And we learned to be brave

We played handball all day and kissed girls all night
Fought off rival gangs
How we were so alive

I grew older and watched the neighborhood change
I saw my friends perish
To ruthless violent ends

I remember just yesterday’s city streetlights
Where the boys hung all night
And the gang fought with pride – in New York City.

Outside the world of activist punk, out where people have desk jobs and Toyotas, the world doesn’t seem as dark and desperate as this. Not, at least, in the same hope-againt-hope, true-grit, darkess-at-the-edge-of-town sense. Not every corporation is actively plotting to take your home (well, not yet), not every person has to scrabble for every nickel, and not every boss has secret plans to impoverish your neighborhood. People don’t get stabbed all that often.

But to the same degree that Straight Outta Compton was actually about how some dumbass teenagers with uncommon talent for marketing sold drugs and shot other gangs up, 1984 is about the dedicated individuals who remember where they came from and find in punk rock the inspiration they need to keep fighting the good fight. In this, it’s not that different from the last five Rancid albums or whatever the kids are playing down at the V.F.W. hall tonight. But Rancid get boring, the kids have no talent, and Roger Miret has 13 good songs, 30 minutes, and 25 years of sticking to his guns.

And it is the “sticking to his guns” part that makes Roger Miret & The Disasters a little more interesting than the thousand other worthy street-punkers out there from the Dropkick Murphys to the Unseen. With Agnostic Front, Miret has been actively involved in political music since 1982, and considering his background he has come by his activism honestly

As AF’s website puts it,

In today's civilization, people continue to suffer undergoing the grief, corruption, oppression and exploitation without a way to elude their troubles. Many have lived through these problems for ages, and the moment one tries to fight for what they believe is right, the elite brings them down and their voices are disregarded. Since 1982, AGNOSTIC FRONT has helped get these messages across to the populace to help solve these problems through socially driven music known as “Hardcore.”

It is easy to scoff at a band who claim to help solve problems through their music. After all, last Saturday Bob Geldof got Paul McCartney to play with U2, and here it is Wednesday already and Africa is still a mess.

But it takes a certain kind of bullheaded integrity and tenacity to fight the good fight for twenty-five years in the face of Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, gentrification, yuppification, and the coming of the abomination known as Emo-core. Despite the fact that AF’s manifesto isn’t incredibly articulate, Miret’s songs are. Generally speaking, his politics and causes are those of the street, of the Irish immigrants of the last century and of the Latino immigrants of this one; justice, loyalty, fair policing, giving people a break, and taking care of one’s own.

Populism as a political mode is custom made for punk rock, and Miret's music is compelling in a Studs Lonigan way. That his cause seems a little quixotic is unavoidable as true old-Left style social activists have been supplanted by a bunch of talkers spouting paranoid rants and conspiracy theories. Whatever else you might say about them, unions have fed more people than Moveon.org ever will. It also helps that Miret’s songs are born of personal experience rather than youthful idealism, which is the difference between the old neighborhood organizer trading punches inside City Hall and the idiot kid burning the flag outside.

If through 1984 Miret wins more fans for his music and good fight he fights (even if it’s not my fight), great. Thanks to him and the scene he helped found, generations of hardcore fans have grown up understanding the power of grassroots organizing, how to put on a show in your garage and make a few bucks doing it, and how to deal with the cops when they come around. For that alone it is a sure bet that Roger Miret has done more good in the world than Bob Geldof, Bono, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” put together.

www.epitaph.com

(This post also appears at blogcritics.org. All good sentient beings get their entertainment news and reporting from blogcritics.org. You are sentient, aren't you? You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?... You are watching television. You see a wasp crawling on your arm. What do you do?)

Enemies of humanity are busy at work this week, endangering our racial survival on a broad front.

First up is this group of 'scientists':

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution. The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity. But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.

The researchers claim that this research could lead to hundreds, even thousands of saved lives. It is well known that the sooner medical treatment can be brought to bear on a trauma victim, the better the chances of survival. The scientists say they believe that this technique could greatly extend the period when life-saving treatment can be successfully applied. Of course, trifling with the undead has a long history of high ideals and tragic, gory endings.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

Yeah, right:

Creating man's best undead friend is only the beginning for these tireless, yet clever, enemies of mankind. Witness this example of mind-numbing stupidity in the guise of science:

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a robotic breast "examiner." Combining ultrasound and an finely honed sense of touch, this robotic hand will enable "trained medical personnel" to cop a feel from across continents.

"Just because you’re located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or even Botswana, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a sophisticated diagnostic or therapeutic procedure."

Sure. Just like vibrators were originally sold as "marital aids," these devices will not remain in the hands of researchers for long. Under the control of artificially intelligent robot overlords these nefarious devices will be a handy tool for subverting half the human population; making our eventual demise that much quicker.

[I might add a modest prediction: that is exactly as close as that guy will ever get to touching an actual human breast.]

Imagine the humiliation, as you - one of the last surviving humans on earth - are mercilously hunted by autonomous hunter-killer drones. Cornered, you pull your gun, determined to go down in a blaze of glory. But instead of maniacal laughter, or a toneless admonition that "resistance is futile!" you hear only this:

"Smell my finger."

Some albums are not easy to review. This is especially true in genres that reward a great deal of inside knowledge such as opera, jazz, or indie rock. God forbid the reviewer ignore the soprano’s nods to Maria Callas, the wayward Raincoats cover, or the faint soupçon of early Sun Ra suffusing the latest and greatest release to cross your desk. Furthermore, I believe it is the job of a good reviewer to educate, and it is difficult to do that when you yourself have to learn as you go along. None of us are omniscient even though we would all like to be. But I suppose that if learning as I teach is good enough for the Baltimore public school district, it’s good enough for me.

My only firsthand knowledge of jazz clarinetist Don Byron comes from his work on Bill Frisell’s excellent album Have a Little Faith. On that record, Frisell remade various landmarks of American music in his own image: Madonna’s “Live to Tell,” Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman,” Aaron Copeland’s “Billy The Kid Suite,” and John Philip Sousa’s “The Washington Post March” all got the Frisell treatment. In my opinion Don Byron was a major reason that album worked. In his hands, the clarinet was by turns dark and comic, regal and frivolous. He made the “Washington Post March” into a kid’s parade and Copeland’s “Open Prairie” into an empty and contemplative quiet before the storm. It was far more than I had come to expect from jazz clarinet, whose practitioners generally have to struggle with avoiding lazy comparisons to Benny Goodman.

But Don Byron doesn’t have to worry about sounding like the Father of Swing. His music contains nods from everything from klezmer to the militant spoken word funk of Gil Scott-Heron, and (appropriately, considering these two influences) has been for years a mainstay of the New York City downtown jazz scene. He has played with everyone from The Duke Ellington Orchestra to Vernon Reid and counts Stravinsky among his key inspirations. Although he can pull out a good old diatonic line when he wants to, his playing more frequently splits the difference between cerebral post-bop complexity and Loony Tunes.

On his new album, Ivey-Divey, Byron tackles the music and legacy of the great saxophonist Lester Young. Taking a cue from a bassless trio Young played with for a time, Byron recorded much of the album with young piano wonder Jason Moran and telepathic drummer Jack DeJohnette. Freed from the stabilizing effect of a bass player, the trio are free to range from swing to clouds of notes at will, which they do with impressive ease. On a few tracks the trio are joined by bassist Lonnie Plaxico and trumpeter Ralph Alessi, additions that complement rather than blunt the trio’s impulses toward loose swinging.

That’s a funny word, “loose,” because at no point on Ivey-Divey do the players lose the beat or lay back into a groove. Instead, the players are loose like a great double-play combo are loose: everything locks into place in a ballet of perfectly timed split-second moves that look effortless but are in fact halfway superhuman. This is fitting, because Lester Young was the Godfather of loose. A player of enormous talent and discipline, he played softly, gracefully, and yet forcefully. The surface attractions of his style masked a deep cerebral side that only emerges when you look closely at the careful harmonic and melodic composition of his solos. Moreover, Young seemed to make things fun for everyone playing with him, even when he played ugly.

Fittingly, Ivey-Divey is a fun record. On the four tunes taken from the Lester Young repertoire, “I Want To Be Happy,” “Somebody Loves Me,” “I Cover the Waterfront” and “I’ve Found a New Baby,” the trio dig in with verve and wit, with Moran scattering harmonies underneath Byron’s fleetfooted lines as DeJohnette holds them both together. On these selections, Byron sticks to a relatively tonal Lester Young script for the most part, only moving into growly harmonics and outside sounds on “I’ve Found a New Baby” and an alternate take of “Somebody Loves Me.” But where Young would have laid back Byron steps into space, transforming lines reminiscent of Young into energetic outbursts. For all Byron’s pyrotechnics, all four Young pieces are anchored by Moran and DeJohnette to a sense of lighthearted and generous… fun.

The rest of the album revisits Lester Young’s legacy from varying points of view. But more than simply being a lesson album: Don Byron Plays The Great Lester Young, the band bring Young’s influence to the table as just one ingredient of their sound. Sometimes the connection is literal: Byron picks up the tenor saxophone to lay down some lines a la Lester on “The Goon Drag” (which Young recorded in 1941). But on other cuts like quartet readings of Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader” and “In A Silent Way,” the group walk a line between Davis’ chilly cool, Young’s gentle beauty, and Byron’s own playful mania before taking off in unexpected directions. “In A Silent Way” also features Byron on the bass clarinet in a groovy turn that evokes Bennie Maupin’s work on Davis’ Bitches Brew. (Jack DeJohnette actually played on Bitches Brew and helps out by hinting at the “chakaCHAKAchakaCHAKA” groove he laid down on cuts like “Pharoah’s Dance.)

Also intriguing are the four Byron originals. “Leopold, Leopold” is an homage to long-time Loony Tunes conductor Leopold Stokowski (and to Bugs Bunny) that chugs along with manic energy contrasts nicely with the gently swinging “Lefty Teachers At Home.” Both of these cuts also appeared in the PBS documentary “Strange Fruit.” The other two originals, the contemplative “HIMM” and “Abie The Fisherman” round out the collection.

While I am not necessarily in a position to pass judgment on the finer, obscurantist points of Don Byron paying homage to Lester Young, I can definitely pass judgment on the album as a whole. As the man said, “I know what I like.” Since I am not a hardcore jazzhead, one trio record can often sound pretty much like the next, but Byron and company have made a distinctive and original album that stands head and shoulders above the crowd. I’m sure the hardcore are already hard at work elucidating for me what I’ve missed and what I’ve gotten wrong, and I apologize in advance for any sins of commission, but the bottom line is that Don Byron makes music that, like the old Loony Tunes shorts, rewards listeners on many levels at once.

This post also appears at blogcritics.org, where all sentient life forms get their up to the minute entertainment news and opinions. You are sentient, aren't you?

Since my cobloggers here seem intent on talking about stuff like boring old politics, I am going to hew to my usual tactic of changing the subject entirely. (With one dangerous and discussion-sparking aside to Buckethead: I smell what you're cooking regarding fetal rights, but arguing that a nine-month fetus is a person so therefore a one-month fetus is logically so strikes me as a perfect expression of the sorites paradox. I am sympathetic to your argument but don't think it's as clear-cut as you do.)

So. To business.

Record label retrospectives can often be spotty affairs – many labels who put out 10- 20- or 25th anniversary discs ought to be arrested for public self-pleasuring. I can think of a couple recent cases where outstanding labels with otherwise sterling reputations have sold out their big anniversary compilations in the name of pushing mediocre current releases, a shortsighted move that makes the whole affair a waste of time and good money.

On the other side of the coin is the retrospective that tries too hard to be good. A prime example is an old Matador set my wife has. Whoever put it together chose well; all Matador’s big names and proud moments are spread over three discs. But there is one drawback: Matador have hewed to their guiding vision with almost Puritanical devotion. Hearing so much of the label’s self-chosen best moments in super-duper indie rock integrity in one place is overwhelming, sort of like eating two pounds of exquisitely delicious pulled pork barbecue in one sitting. (I don’t recommend trying this; my last barbecue bacchanal put me down for 24 hours, and I still can’t listen to Superchunk without bolting from the room.)

Concord Picante has recently decided to celebrate their 25th anniversary with a 4-cd collection celebrating their quarter century at the top of the Latin-jazz heap, and it turns out they have put out a lot of really good stuff. As a relative newcomer to the wonders of Latin Jazz, I have to say that this collection is a great place to start learning. If the single-disc sampler I received is any indication, Concord Picante have not only managed to sum a quarter century but have done so without becoming didactic, boring, or presentist. The full set’s four discs seem like the right length to contain 25 years of music of this variety and uniformly high quality.

The challenge for Concord Picante is that Latin Jazz is sometimes seen as being a niche market within a niche market. However the sampler proves the opposite, showcasing a surprisingly diverse (and excellent) collection of recordings by artists from all over the Americas. Tito Puente is of course well represented, but so are other Latin music eminences like Pete Escovedo and Eddie Palmieri. Vibraphone great Cal Tjader is here too (his debut with the label won the label its first Grammy in 1980), as well as Concord Picante stalwarts like the great conguero Poncho Sanchez’ groovy soul-jazz-blues-Latin hybrid, the sparkling Brazilian bossa nova of guitarist Charlie Byrd, and the hot Brazilian dance of Tania Maria. On the jazzier side, Concord Picante offers recordings by reggae-tinged Jamaican keyboardist Monty Alexander and harmonica great Hendrik Meurkens, and many more. Far from being a niche product, it seems that in the hands of Concord Picante “Latin Jazz” is almost anything they want it to be as long as it’s got a little duende, a little especia.

As I’ve gotten older, my tastes in music have changed. Somehow Jethro Tull don’t seem as deep as they used to, and I no longer think it’s quite as funny to put together a one-hour set of Japanese noise rock, TV show themes, and Tibetan throat singing. I still like these things (well, not so much the Tull), but I have matured into a less smugly elitist music fan. Now I want something with some teeth, something I can dance to, something with great playing that I haven’t necessarily heard a million times. Right now for me, Latin Jazz is filling that role to perfection. The Concord Picante box set sampler hasn’t left the cd player in my house for three weeks, and it is the most played album of late on my ipod too. That my wife, whose tastes are wildly different from mine (Tracy Chapman versus Frank Zappa), also digs the Concord Picante indicates that there’s really something here for everyone.

One final thought. Record reviewers are in an interesting position. Lester Bangs once observed that the fact that most of the music reviewers come by is free of charge, meaning they are under less of an obligation to care whether it’s any good. When you buy an album, your investment – however small – biases you toward finding something of value in it. On the other hand, getting lots of music for free tends to make you bored and jaded. With this in mind, I am prepared to give the Concord Picante 25th Anniversary Collection the highest possible recommendation any reviewer can: it’s so good, I’m buying my own copy.

This review also appears, without the political parts, at blogcritics.org.