Friday, December 26, 2008

See You Next Year

Merry Christmas

Happy Chanukah

Happy Kwanzaa

Merry Masa'il

Happy Sharaf

Happy Day of Hajj

Merry Eid al-Adha

Happy Maunajiyaras

Merry Tohji-taisai

Happy Yule

and...

Happy Festivus!


Be seeing you next Friday/Month/Year

Friday, December 19, 2008

Choice Of Rick Warren For Inaugural Is Wrong

On Wednesday, December 17, President-elect Obama's transition team, along with the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced the inaugural program. The invocation is to be given by Dr. Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California.

The program includes the following profile of Dr. Warren: "Dr. Rick Warren founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, in 1980 with one family. Today, it is an evangelical congregation averaging 22,000 weekly attendees, a 120-acre campus, and has more than 300 community ministries to groups such as prisoners, CEOs, addicts, single parents, and those with HIV/AIDS. He also leads the Purpose Driven Network of churches, a global coalition of congregations in 162 countries. TIME magazine named him one of "15 World Leaders Who Mattered Most in 2004," and in 2005 one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World."

But there's another side to Dr. Warren. The Christian Post website stated, "Attempting only to make abortions “rare” is not much different than saving some of the Jews during the Holocaust when all could be saved, according to megachurch pastor Rick Warren." Warren himself is quoted as saying, “For these people who believe life begins at birth, all right, at conception, it’s an American holocaust. They believe that there’s 40 million people who should be here." Comparing legal abortions to the Holocaust is absurd and is indicative of someone with a not quite hidden 'Christian' right-wing agenda.

Dr. Warren has compared same-sex marriage to pedophilia and incest. He has claimed that had Proposition 8 in California (which restricted marriage in California to one man and one woman) not passed, pastors who speak their mind on certain issues would have had silenced - their free speech rights severely restricted. Obama should refrain from having Warren, who attempts to prop up this intellectually barren philosophy by guilt by association with pedophilia and incest, be anywhere near the inauguration. click here to listen to Dr. Warren.

He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. Not exactly a bridge-builder, is he? Divisive, hypocritical, and cruel are terms more apt.

This is not a person that President-elect Obama should showcase during his historic inauguration. Why was the decision made to include Warren? Was it political? Thinking about 2012? Would the choice of Warren drain Christian right-wing votes from the Republicans? Unlikely. Those votes will flock to Palin in 2012.

It is not too late. Obama can still change the man or woman who will give the invocation. Or he could be really bold and eliminate it altogether. You know, something about the separation of church and state.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Music Keeps Us Young (part 2 of 2)

I left off last Friday in the mid-1960s. No one who was a teenager in Chicago at that time was unaffected by the plethora of Chicago area rock bands that were played on the two major radio rock stations, WLS (890) and WCFL (1000). Their 50,000 watt stations were heard across many states, and helped these bands achieve success. There was a distinct feature of most of these groups. They virtually all had horn sections. Why was that? The Chicago public high schools encouraged every incoming freshman to take band class. If you agreed, you were usually given a choice of trumpet, trombone, saxophone, or other brass instrument. You could take it home and practice. So horn sections were a natural addition to local Chicago rock bands. The special depth that gave to the music resulted in it being described as the 'Chicago Sound.' My favorite local Chicago bands included:

- The Buckinghams. KIND OF A DRAG, and MERCY MERCY MERCY.

- The New Colony Six. I WILL ALWAYS THINK ABOUT YOU, and what I consider the most beautiful love song ever written, about a girl who breaks up with her guy, and even though he's hurting badly, still loves her with all his heart and wants only the best for her, THINGS I'D LIKE TO SAY.

- The Chicago Transit Authority, later shortened due to a lawsuit threat to Chicago. Here are two seldom heard songs. The first has their greatest horn, bass, and wah-wah pedal guitar work. LISTEN, and the politically charged PROLOGUE, AUGUST 29, 1968 - SOMEDAY.

- The Shadows of Knight's cover of GLORIA, and OH YEAH.

- The American Breed. BEND ME SHAPE ME.

- The Cryan' Shames. IT COULD BE WE'RE IN LOVE, and SUGAR AND SPICE (sorry...no YouTube link to this song worthy of posting).

- The Ides of March. VEHICLE.

- Moving ahead now to my first car - a used, light blue 1964 Buick Skylark convertible, purchased in 1967. Of course I had to have an 8 track tape player installed. The first tape I purchased? The Beatles' MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR. But the band I had the most tapes of was Buffalo Springfield. Their biggest hit was FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH. I also fondly recall driving west on 95th street towards Maple Lake with the top down, sun in my face, and wind in my (increasingly long) hair, listening to their MR. SOUL, and the wonderfully melodic ON THE WAY HOME.

- When I entered college in 1968 I supported the war in Vietnam. The Chicago public high school I had attended had done its brainwashing best. But fellow students at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle showed me the other side to U.S. involvement. My musical tastes changed accordingly. I reinterpreted the lyrics to The Jefferson Airplane's SOMEBODY TO LOVE. "When the truth is found to be liew, and all the joy within you dies" was exactly how I felt about my changed viewpoint on Vietnam. Their signature song for me, though, will always be VOLUNTEERS. Playing these songs just now brought back all the emotions of that time. But they pale in comparison to the next entry in my personal 'Hit Parade."

- After Nixon expanded the Vietnam war by invading Cambodia on April 30, 1970, my world changed. Anti-war protests, though peaceful, increased greatly in terms of participants. Then came the shootings of thirteen students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio by Ohio National Guardsmen. Four students were murdered, and nine more seriously wounded. It is said that when Neil Young (formerly of Buffalo Springfield, and then with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) heard the news, he went to the bathroom and wept. Ten minutes later, he had written both the lyrics and the music to OHIO.

This post has gone on longer than I had intended. Tempus fugit. But indulge me a moment longer while I mention other musical artists that have moved me (click their names to hear a song):

- SHIRLEY BASSEY

- TEN WHEEL DRIVE

- CELTIC WOMAN

- FRANK ZAPPA

- NIGHTWISH

- EVANESCENCE

- PINK MARTINI

- GUSTAV HOLST

- VAYA CON DIOS

- WITHIN TEMPTATION

Thanks again to the artists and YouTube. And thanks to you for reading and listening!


Next Friday: Back to politics

Friday, December 5, 2008

Music Keeps Us Young (part 1 of 2)

Music and memory - what's the connection? A scientist might say it has to do with the rostromedial prefontal cortex. That's the section of our brain that not only processes and tracks musical tones, but also is activated when we try to remember something. Did you learn your alphabet, a-b-c-d-e-f-g et cetera, accompanied by the "Alphabet Song"? Fifty-plus years after learning it that way, I still hum the tune when I'm trying to remember what letter comes before 'Z' or 'L'.

The thrust of today's post goes beyond the science of 'why', and into the connection between certain specific songs from my past, and the feeling of well-being that I experience upon hearing those songs today. More often than not, I find that certain music transports me back to when I heard it for the first time. In approximate chronological order, I list the songs that have had the greatest effects on me. But first, a big 'Thank You' to the artists and YouTube.

- EXODUS. My earliest such recollection is of the title track for the movie, released in 1960. I was ten years old, had been taken to the movie, and the music compelled me to use up my number 1 Christmas wish on the soundtrack. I still have that vinyl disc. When I hear this song, I'm back in 1960, when times seemed simpler, and the future was so far away I didn't care.

- GIRL GROUPS. 'Girl Groups' songs left an indelible impression on me. Martha and the Vandellas remains my favorite of this genre. HEATWAVE, DANCIN' IN THE STREETS, and NOWHERE TO RUN, had more soul than the Supremes. But there are two Supremes' songs, released in 1966 and 1968 respectively, that stand out from their entire repertoire: LOVE IS LIKE AN ITCHIN' IN MY HEART, for its percussion, bass, and complex rhythmic structure - thanks to the incredible but unappreciated Motown house band, the Funk Brothers, and LOVE CHILD, for its social commentary. This category would be incomplete without mention of the Ronettes' BE MY BABY, and the Shangri-Las, best known for THE LEADER OF THE PACK, but even more memorable to me was their musically interesting WALKIN' IN THE SAND. Listening to these songs today takes me away from adulthood, and back to what seemed at the time to be a less stressful existence. I wonder if my blood pressure decreases when I listen?

- LOUIE LOUIE, covered by the Kingsmen in 1963, was by far the greatest single influence on my musical tastes. It is the classic 'three chord rock' song that launched thousands of garage bands. In my case, it was a basement band, as the house I grew up in had no garage. It changed my personal musical instrument from an accordion to a beat-up acoustic guitar ($5) in 1964, replaced by a red Vox solid body single pickup electric guitar ($35) in 1965.

Three chord rock means the song's rhythm guitar sound (when all six strings are strummed simultaneously) is composed of only three different chords. Even the beginning guitar player can master three chords. It didn't hurt the song's popularity when, due to the poor sound quality of the cheap recording studio that the struggling band used, many words were muffled, and rumors spread about what the "real, dirty words" were. Then, the Governor of Indiana tried to ban all airplay of the song in Indiana, and last, but not least, it was investigated because of its "obscene" lyrics, by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Your tax dollars at work.

My friends and I played the 45 rpm record at 33 1/3 RPM and even 16 RPM to try to make out the words. Of course our feverish 13 year old male minds concocted our own outlandish lyrics, which we played to our heart's content when we finally put a band together the next year. Oh yeah, the three chords were A, D, and Em. Listening to this song today brings me to the beginning of my adolescence, when making a rudimentary form of music, mixed with hormonal drives, fueled creativity on several levels. The band lasted only two years, but it feels like yesterday.

- THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN by the Animals (1964). At a time when the Beatles were appealing to teenage love angst, the Animals were fusing the blues with rock, and singing about how a combination saloon/gambling den/house of ill repute in New Orleans led to a young man's downfall. Eric Burdon's voice was rough, filled with raw emotion, and so unlike Paul, John, Dave Clark, or even Mick Jagger's, that I had no choice but to succumb to Animalism. Coincidentally, it was the album Animalism that introduced me to traditional Chicago Blues (electric guitar driven instead of acoustic, more urban and hard-edged than the Delta blues. Bluesman Muddy Waters moved from Memphis to Chicago in 1954, and quickly discovered that his new audiences were both larger and rowdier. He couldn't be heard. So he traded his acoustic guitar for an electric one, and the Chicago Blues sound was born. He later wrote the song, "The Blues Had a Baby, And They Named It Rock and Roll". The song on Animalism that did it for me was their cover of GOIN' DOWN SLOW. Listening to the Blues does not necessarily take me back to a specific, younger age. It does, however, take me on a trip to the very core of my being, which is perhaps the best "wayback" journey of them all.


Next Friday: Music Keeps Us Young, Part 2 of 2