Tom D'Antoni

2009-02-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

Profoundly Thankful for Your Legacy Tour, George

2009-01-16T11:29:00.000-08:00

I would like to extend my personal thanks to George Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the members of the outgoing administration for their efforts over the past few weeks in trying to define the last eight years on every media outlet with the possible exceptions of the Jim Rome Show and Howard Stern.

By doing so they have reminded us in ways those of us who have been writing about them, since what seems to be the dawn of time, could not. They have, point by point, word by word and image by image both reinforced and re-inventoried every evil deed and mistake they have made while in office.

Bush himself has re-affirmed the advanced extent of his mental illness. Cheney has given us reason to nod our heads and think, "Yes, he really is the most dangerous man in America." The rest of the cast has been wonderfully consistent in their roles, too. Thank you Ms. Perino.

Unless more is revealed about how they have done everything in their power to fuck up the United States of America (a good bet), this is the last weekend many of us will be forced to write about these chi-ractors.

I won't miss them, even though they are easy targets. The problem is that they do not and will not reap what they sow.

We do and we will.

That said, Tuesday is the real New Year's Day.

Happy new year, America!

The Bad Democrats Begin to Surface

2009-01-07T11:48:00.001-08:00

A lot of people have done a lot of complaining about Congressional Democrats, especially Senate Democrats. Were they briefed about torture and illegal wiretapping? Did they know and do nothing? Are they complicit?

And who are they?

Today we know who two of them are. Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockafeller came out of the closet and showed their true Blue Dog colors by opposing Leon Panetta, or at least opposing the manner in which his appointment was announced (or leaked).

We're going to be seeing more of this. And when some Democrats oppose people like Panetta, who was a strong opponent of torture and wiretapping, they identify themselves as the same people who secretly pushed the Bush agenda along in Congress, giving in at every turn.

President Obama is bound to piss off a lot of people, even those who support him. Rick Warren is a good example. I'll take a dozen Rick Warren's moose-like bellowing to God in public in exchange for Obama appointees Dawn Johansen, David Ogden, Elena Kagan and Tom Perrelli who will help rehabilitate the Justice Department.

Progressives cannot behave like right-wingers and begin to jump ship when Obama does something that steps on their own personal agenda. Your agenda is yours and Obama's is his.

So far he is living up to his campaign promises, pretty much.

The next time you find yourself getting pissed off at Obama, say these words out loud,"George Bush."

But Blue Dog Democrats be warned. We're watching you very carefully. Your butts are at stake.

Finally: The Death of "Greed Is Good"

2008-12-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

It's not all about the Benjamins anymore, baby.

Although it is still the defining principle in many people's lives, the concept that "Greed is Good," is dead. It rose to its despicable zenith in tandem with the rise of Reagan, and has been the guiding principle of industry, finance and government ever since.

Greed has been with us since the dawn of time and will remain, but in cyclical bursts, greed destroys enough to make those in the path of the inevitable result of unchecked greed take notice and do something about it.

Like regulations on how much greed is allowed.

Greed brought us to this place…unregulated, untrammeled, vicious greed. Greed has no morals or ethics. Greed has no regard for others. Greed feeds only the greedy and feeds on every thing and every one within grasping distance.

This Christmas Eve there will be no ghosts of the past, Christmas or otherwise, disturbing the sleep of the greedy. The greedy will be in danger of losing a percentage of their riches as a result of their greed. The rest of us feel a primal danger, one that most of us have never felt.

Yes, fear is upon the land. The fear of not being able to keep a roof over your head. Of not knowing where to turn when you watch your sources of income fall, one after another in the twinkling of an eye.

The week before the crash of 2008, I had been hired to write industrial presentation scripts for a company which was very successful at making them. They told me I could expect maybe five a week, if I could handle that. I assured them I could. That was on a Thursday, as the stock market crashed.

The following Monday went by without a word. Then Tuesday. I emailed them on Wednesday and got a worrisome replay on Thursday that said, "Stuff is hitting the fan this week. Clients are pulling out before the initial interview. Waiting for news, as far as what the fallout is., but things are much different than just two weeks ago. I’m sorry Tom… I’ll give you news as I get it."

I replied, "That was one chilling email." The reply? "Word."

On Thursday, I got an email which said that the company had lost so much of its upcoming business over the past week that would not need my services. Two weeks later another company, for whom I had been writing for a year-and-a-half fired my editor and was going to re-think its whole operation. I'm still waiting for my last check from them.

My story is being repeated over and over throughout America. The root of our misery is greed and the greedy.

And President Obama says it's going to get worse before it gets better.

The safety net is in place for the greedy who caused this mess. Where is the safety net for the rest of us? There is no place under the TARP for us to get out of the rain and cold.

The Greed Is Good pack are thieves. They've stolen our money, our hope and any sense of safety we had. And then we rewarded their greed with more money.

It's a cliché to some of us, other may have never heard it, but I will paraphrase Woody Guthrie who said, "Some will rob you with a shotgun and some with a fountain pen."

Or a handful of keystrokes.

For now, the concept that "Greed Is Good," has been discredited and for at least the next four years, we will have an executive branch of government which at least considers the rest of us.

Read Art Levine's Ecnomic Meltdown 101

2008-11-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

My friend and Blogtalkradio co-host has put together a roundup of misery. He also posted this on huffington but it first ran on his blog.

November 17, 2008
Economic Meltdown 101: How We Got Here and How We Might Dig Ourselves Out
Here are some basic primers on the economic crisis:
This is the simplest presentation, with captioned pictures, one after the other:
here.

A clear explanation of how Fannie Mae wasn't the primary cause of the subprime crisis, but unregulated private sector loans subsequently packaged by Wall Street, has been done by McClatchy:
here.

If you hear this presentation from This American Life, or skim the transcript, it can bring home the issues home pretty clearly and in a personal way:
here.

Then here's a well-written lively overview in layman's terms:
here.

A video presentation of subprime mortgages, by PBS:, with props and an effort to make it clear:
here.

Paul Solman also uses simple cartoon images and other props to explain the screwy world of "credit default swaps" -- insurance policies on risky securities composed of risky subprime loans. Much of the world's leading economic institutions invested in assorted financial instruments that were built on the sandy of risk loans -- and no one factored in falling house prices as even a possibility.
Newsweek explains how credit default swaps became "The Monster That Ate Wall Street"

A mix of captioned pargraphs, with charts underneath, explaining how we got in this mess:
here.

Here's a detailed look in The New York Times how each deregulating or short-sighted institution and key player failed the public and the economy. Everybody with real power got it wrong, or did the wrong thing; others who tried to do the right thing were ignored or marginalized as greed and ideology triumphed:
here.

A more crisply written, anecdotal three-part series on the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and how it brought down Lehman brothers, etc was in The Washington Post in the "Bubble" series:
here.

You can keep up on economic news from a progressive perspective with Brad DeLong, among others, here:
here. And you can hear his explanation of our current crisis , the underlying shakiness of the economy, and why major domestic spending initiatives shouldn't be put off , heard in the second half hour of the "D'Antoni and Levine" radio show here, starting at 44 minutes, from mid-October:
here.

And NPR's Planet Money (useful if "objective") is also informative:, plus a daily podcast posted online:
here./

Finally, this month:
Michael Lewis takes us inside the world of those few analysts who realized what a flimsy house of mortgage-related cards the greedheads in the financial institutions had built their wealth on, how it was going to come crashing down, and few people in power bothered to listen. It's so long it's worth buying the magazine for it, but it's only for those who want a long narrative.

That's how we got here, and let's hope our leadership can dig us out.

How to get out of this mess? Read Paul Krugman , Brad DeLong, and the Center for American Progress for some sound ideas.

-- Art Levine

This Week's Music Blog

2008-11-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

I'm still unsure if this is going to go up on LivePDX.com, so in case it doesn't:

While waiting to hear what's up with this site and my blog…..

Just got in from the Stephanie Schneiderman CD release at Doug Fir. She had Keith Schreiner with her, of course. James Beaton joined on keys. She said her dress made her look like a slutty cupcake. Like there's something wrong with that?

They did pretty much all of the tunes on Dangerous Fruit and added a Pete Krebs tune and another with Keith on didgeridoo. Aside from the usual rude Portland audience, everything was lovely.

Ran into Mercy Corps' Laura Guimond at the show. She is a music maven. I remember when she used to help Pepe (and the Bottle Blondes) Raphael by working the merchandise table at the Crystal. She was a full-time fan at the Fir.

I had Stephanie on my KMHD show last Saturday night. She told me Keith has a new solo Auditory Sculpture album pretty much ready to go. And just when were you going to tell me, Mr. Sculpture?

Plans are shaping up for Mayor Sam's inauguration celebrations. I'm sworn to secrecy at the moment, but it sounds like (a) great party(ies).

There's a thing called Pecha Kucha. They tell me it's "Japanese for ‘the sound of conversation and has spread to over 100 cities world-wide, including Portland. It is intended to gather creative individuals, designers, architects and artists to meet, network, and to share and discuss their work in an informal, public environment."

There is one of these things on Tuesday, November 18 at The Plant, 939 SE Alder. The deal? "Presenters are allowed 20 images, shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes & 40 seconds per presentation. This allows the audience to experience a diversee group of speakers in a relatively short space of time. After the presentations, the evening continues with drinks and music."

I've been told to write blogs through the end of the month. After that, I have not been notified. I'm very sorry to see Liz Hummer, LivePDX's editor, get laid off. She's a fine editor and I've enjoyed working with her here and at PDX Magazine. I hope to get to work with her again sometime.

These are not good times for creative folks…musicians, writers….pretty much all across arts and entertainment….editors, too.

Singer Barry Hampton is at it again. He writes:

Come join us for a special evening of sounds featuring Nefasha Ayer, Gabriel Teodros, and of course, The Triple Grip.
Nefasha Ayer, loosely translated from Amharic as "the wind that travels", explores a sublime mixture of influences: Ethiopian, South Indian, and American jazz to create a colorful imagery that makes one remember the simple power of music.
Featuring Vocalist Meklit Hadero, Guitarist & Composer Todd Brown, South Indian Saxist Prasant Radhakrishnan, Drummer Sameer Gupta, and Bassist/Flutist Eliyahu Sills.

Gabriel Teodros will explain in quite simple terms his love of verse with a transcendent set of his honest and truly haunting style of Hip Hop. He is also a featured artist on the Nefasha set.
Barry Hampton and the Triple Grip offer the original soul style that rings true, yet truly different, as they sound off with harmonies and a groove for the mind, body and soul.

Monday, November 17th @ the Someday Lounge. 125 NW 5th. $6 9pm

I don't usually run stuff like that verbatim, but I just did anyway.

I was talking with my friend and Blogtalkradio co-host
Art Levine the other night. He was on his way to a post-election party in D.C. He had investigative reporter Murray Waas in the car with him. Waas has broken many earthshaking stories, mostly about the Bush administration's criminal activities. Anyway, I had never talked to him before. He wanted to talk about music. Turns out he claims that his dad wrote the Mister Softee tune that has been annoying the hell out of me and a major portion of the universe for decades. He said his dad had sold the rights for $400 way back.

So now do you have that song in your head?

I have achieved my goal.

Sarah, How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

2008-11-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

They're missing the story again.

Remember when Hillary was a lock to win the Democratic nomination? And so was Romney? And watch out for Fred Thompson?

Obama winning? Not a chance.

Conventional media wisdom has been wrong much much more than it has been right.

So when 14 million people are out of work, the American auto makers are about to close up shop and Secty. Paulson appears to have lost his mind… When President Barak Obama is putting together his administration at a time of great emergency…why is it all I see is Sarah Palin?

I mean, I like watching Republicans make fools of themselves as much as the next guy, something they have, thankfully, not ceased for a moment.

I suppose she thinks she's saying things that people like her want to hear, but she looks like a polar bear on an ice floe, floating out to sea, bellowing on her way out.

Note to TV and radio news directors and producers:

We nevah liked her. When Peggy Noonan says, "It's over," upon setting her eyes on Palin... When Palin's negatives went so far South, you'd think they were in Brazil looking for Summer… Maybe you should consider covering something else. A demolition derby. A lost dog….

Or an Obama administration that is about to sweep away as much of the Bush administration as it can, as fast as it can.

Grousing about Emanuel being "Too Tough?" Shut up and let the President work!

2008-11-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

Why anybody would second-guess President-Elect Barack Obama (It's still thrilling to type that) is beyond me.

Has he not done everything right? Who knows better than him and his people about what to do next? When people were screaming for him to attack, attack attack, he played rope-a-dope, stayed on message and WON THE PRESIDENCY.

So when I read criticism that Rahm Emanuel is "too tough" for Chief of Staff, as Josh Marshall noted, calling it a Emerging DC Meme, all I can say is, shut up and let Obama do the work.

I remember the words of Gen. Tony McPeak (USF Ret.) who flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam and became a four-star general, serving four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. McPeak spent time with Obama on the campaign trail and was one of the generals lined up on the stadium stage before the acceptance speech.

He understands how tough Obama really is, and everyone who doubts it, from Republicans to pundits to heads of state of other countries better understand it too.

In describing Obama's toughness, McPeak was quoted as saying:

"He has gut-fighting sidewalk smarts that have allowed him to prevail when people said he couldn't. And he did it in a way that they didn't even know their throats were cut until they tried to smile."

People better understand the difference between anger and toughness. Bush=anger. Obama=toughness. You don’t have to scream and act like a cowboy to be tough.

No, Emanuel is a good fit. I'm not surprised at all.

Stephanie Schneiderman Charts New Course, Finds New World

2008-11-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

By Tom D'Antoni

Stephanie Schneiderman and Keith Schreiner (aka Auditory Sculpture) may have re-invented the entire concept of singer-songwriters. Dangerous Fruit her new album, obliterates what had been fast becoming a stale genre. You may never think of singer-songwriters the same way again.

She is known for her Lilith Fair period, later a jazzier edge, and then several years with Dirty Martini.

He is known for being the electronics part of Dahlia, for the memorable Storm and the Balls remix Vastectomy, the hip-hop project Suckapunch, for Jazztronica and his own solo albums, all under the name Auditory Sculpture.

[Full disclosure: Keith wrote music for a documentary Greg Bond and I made. Rather than prejudicing this piece, it gives me insight.]

The result is a perfect marriage of her songs, his electronic soundscapes and his ability to bring out the best in female singers. He did it with Jen Folker, Storm Large and now…well, if you think you've heard Stephanie Schneiderman before, you haven't.

It all has to do with something he heard in his head.

"I sought her out," he told me. "I had approached her seven or eight years ago, when Dahlia was first popping and I was sniffing around for another project to work on." It wasn't until last January, when Dahlia played for Schneiderman's Voices for Silent Disaster concert series. (KPTV was a media sponsor.) He had an idea of doing some remixes of material she had previously recorded, and then possibly working up to an album of new songs.

"Her old style of music isn't something that interests me that much but a good song is a good song," he said. "I went over her house.. Instead of saying I want to do a remix I said, 'Screw it, I want to do an album. I have this radical idea of changing everything that you do, like your sound and I really want to get in there and rip your songs apart and put them back together,' and she was like, 'Yeah! OK!'"

"It was perfect timing," Schneiderman said over tea on Alberta St. "I wanted to do something different and I didn't know what it was. I just knew. I had this batch of songs. I had changed as a songwriter. I knew I wanted to push the edge, whatever the edge was for myself.

"I don’t' know if he knows this, but I was so inspired before our meeting,, I was gathering my songs together, finishing some things."

Things clicked for them on the first day in the studio. "It was pretty apparent from the second we started," said Schreiner, "that this style I had in my head, "and that she signed on to, and that we both worked together towards…was totally going to work."

Schneiderman adds, "We were both really blown away. He said, 'What I want do to is find the song in each of your songs.' That means to strip away the things that you don't realize you're doing…that emptiness is so nice. He wanted to keep things raw and open and let the vocals breathe in a different way and not fill every spot in."

The soundscapes he created for her, some close, intimate microphone work, plus not having to sing over a band allow for a quiet explosion of meaning in this collection of thoughtful, perceptive, sometimes seductive, sometimes loving, sometimes bitter songs "Twenty Slivers, changed from a sad, moody song…it worked to be more angry when I sang it," she said. "Maybe that song was really angry and I just didn't get there until he helped me get there.

"I felt like the other songs became more evocative because of the production. The words worked better."

Perhaps the most evocative song on the album is, When You Touch Me. Schreiner says, "It's the most honest marriage between my sound and her sound."She explains the line I've got this fire frozen in my heart, in the absolutely unforgettable chorus this way, "It's the idea of wanting something that you see and that you know is there but it's just a little bit out of reach."

I guarantee that you'll have that chorus in your head for weeks.

For all around musicianship, imagination, songwriting and pure inspiration, this gets my vote for best album of the year on any chart, in any genre.

CD Release:
Thursday, November 13, Doug Fir Lounge, with Kaitlin ni Donovan and DJ Dave Allen, 8pm door, $12

A Moment Which Will Last a Lifetime

2008-11-05T15:40:00.001-08:00

How many I'll-never-forget-where-I-was-when's are happy memories? Think about it. From 9-11 on back to Pearl Harbor, since we've had instant mass communication, none of those moments are happy.

Last night was happy, and we'll never forget it.

We had some friends and family over last night. From 11 p.m., when I heard Olbermann announce that Obama had won, until the middle of the afternoon today, I have been speechless. Me! I get paid for words.

Obama had it exactly right. The night belonged to us. People of good will never gave up trying to make a better world and, in the words of Allen Toussaint's Yes We Can!:

Make this land a better land

Than the world in which we live

And help each man be a better man

With the kindness that you give.

I'm white. I know what this election means to me, but I was listening to national African-American talk radio this morning and one-after-another, callers were agreeing to a remarkable concept...maybe white folks weren't so bad after all.

Funny concept to some. Serious as death to others. Serious as lynching.

We're all looking at each other, and I mean everybody, in a new way today. Here in the People's Republic of Portland Oregon, there's a quiet sense of relief, although last night, on my block there were a lot fireworks exploded and much banging on pots. I know that these feelings are shared by people of good will all over the world.

How long will that last? Stay tuned.

But it's still fresh. And if feels good. And I'm beginning to be able to talk.

I can say this........WE WON!

Last Week's Music Blog

2008-11-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

My editor at LivePDX.com has been laid off. I am not sure what the future of the site will be. They did not run my blog from last week, so I'm putting it up here.

We'll see what the future holds.

While discovering I don't need meditation to empty my mind of thought, It is a natural occurrence. So how come I feel stupid instead of enlightened?

So like, I know I had some news, but I just can't think of what it was. Or where I've been. I just deleted a sentence. It embarrassed me.

From the I've-never-heard-of-them-but-a-friend-says-they're-good department:

The Trio will be at on Thursday 10/30. According to my friend, they are, "Winners of the Manifest Award (Swedish Grammy) for Jazz Album of the Year (2007) – beating out the last release from the late, estimable Esbjörn Svensson (E.S.T) - and fresh from headlining this year’s Stockholm Jazz Festival"

I never heard of them either, but as Bill Royston told me at the news conference when he announced that the Jazz Festival would return…well I don't remember his exact words, but he said that most of the really forward-looking music is coming out of Europe. That's something to think about, especially since we don't get to hear too much of it, hardly any.

Berghe is a pianist, in case you were wondering. I'm wondering.

that unique series produced by and which has been selling out at for the past few months is moving over to the on Nov. 6. Appearing will be "Still Pending." Oh wait, that was the name of their last show. will be there.

Worth going to see.

As I wrote during the past summer in the O, "The microphone isn’t all that gets passed at the every-second-Tuesday “PasstheMic!” shows at Mississippi Pizza. Knowledge of what it takes to have a career in music is transmitted from pros to those just breaking in. That there’s a night of good music to hear is sometimes beside the point."

Not very often you get to steal from yourself. I used to be able to write before I emptied my mind of thoughts. Maybe I better go look in the recycling and see if my wife threw them out.

I would never use the phrase, "back in the day." And I might slap the next person who says to me, but back in the good old days, i.e. Before Bush, when Pepe Rafael was bursting on the scene with and he started throwing very huge and very naughty events, usually at the and mostly on Haloween.

Therefore, the 8th Annual (which is what he's calling it these days) will again be on Halloween and again at the Crystal. You can't get in without a costume, although since I'm going to dress as a washed-up hack writer, I'll have some explaining to do. Pepe is giving away 5K as part of "Portland's Biggest Costume Contest." I'm assuming it isn't for having the biggest costume, tho.

PP and the BB will play of course, also and

I miss running into Pepe. Maybe I don't get out as much. Last Saturday, at 3 a.m., I was in an all night bingo parlor in Beaverton. Just to watch, mind you. No sign of Pepe.

One of my favorite images is of shooting Pepe in 2000 before that year's ball. He was frantically searching his wardrobe for just the right gown. He found it, of course.

Looking for a parade? How about an altar building? How about both? Someday Lounge's Second Annual Day of the Dead Procession & Altar Building Party will be held on Saturday, Nov 1 from 3-6 p.m. Mixing myth, superstition and art:

We'll start with a 3pm sugar skull decorating session. We'll provide home- made sugar skulls and frosting to decorate. Participants are encouraged to bring additional decorating material.
We'll use these sugar skulls, and any other mementos brought by participants, to create community altars in the space. A true community art installation rooted in ancient cultural traditions.
As we create our altars, participants are encouraged to wear festive attire, and solicit the services of our house face painter. At 4:30, we'll meet in the North Park blocks to commence our procession through the Pearl and Oldtown. Banners waving, our party will be led by a marching band fit to rouse the dead. Then back to Someday Lounge for hot chocolate and movies.

Sounds like fun unless somebody wants me to pray to a skull made out of sugar, although consumable gods sound kindof attractive. Beats having to do all that kneeling.

Tis is Ursula from is putting together an evening of Gypsy, Balkan and jazz on Wednesday November 5 at
<3 Leg Torso,> a Balkan Gypsy band from Italy and featuring special guests from Fishtank Ensemble and Slavic Soul Party.

Crap, my mind's all cluttered again. Hope it doesn't last.

Are You Suffering from Election Insanity?

2008-10-30T00:36:00.001-07:00

Are you finding it hard to focus? When you think about the possibility of McCain winning next week do you feel lost and bewildered at what that would mean to your life? Do you feel like your head is about to explode?

Me too.

Are you hysterically ambivalent? Do you go between watching and reading every single word spoken and written about the election, following every poll and poll of poll and poll of poll of poll...and never wanting to hear another pundit ever again, even Rachel Maddow?

Me too. Well maybe not Rachel Maddow.

Do you go from one frame of mind to another? From envisioning an America which has just elected the first African-American in its history and is in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing...with some hope for the future...to envisioning an America who has just voted out of fear and hatred and believed all of the lies...again?

Me too.

It's a good thing I live in Oregon, where an Obama victory is assured. And if the worst happens, it'll be a good place to stay.

I usually have an election-night party at my house. I may not. In 2004, everyone came over enthused. Remember the exit polls? Remember how you felt when it went the other way?

Think of that times, oh say, a hundred million this year.

Get a grip on yourself, D'Antoni.

I voted last week. In Oregon we have vote-by-mail. I won't debate the merits of that method, but when I filled out the ballot, I didn't have the feeling I thought I would have voting for Obama. I mean, I cried during his acceptance speech in Denver, didn't you?

I made a mistake while voting. My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table filling out our ballots and I accidentally signed her ballot envelope by mistake. Even though it had her name plainly printed on it.

After absorbing the deserved abuse, I suggested we take our ballots to the election board and make sure everything was Kosher. It was. But instead of handing them to the man behind the counter like I thought I would, the African-American man behind the counter pointed to a light blue plastic box with a slot in the top.

I suddenly realized what I was going to do. I turned to my wife and asked if she wanted to put he own in. She did. It was obvious why.

My action of dropping my ballot in the box was quick but it seemed like I was moving in slow-motion and I filled up and flushed with emotion. I just got the same feeling typing this.

I felt like maybe my life had meaning after all. Maybe in some minuscule way all of the things I had done...written...put on TV...said on the radio...to try to promote love and understanding had somehow paid off.

And now I think, if McCain wins, will that all be washed away and destroy any remaining hope I had for America?

Like I said, can somebody make this election be over?

You feel that way too?

Is the McCain Campaign is Being Secretly Run by Democrats?

2008-10-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Seems that way.The Republicans appear to be following a script written by people who want to see them not only lose, but lose big and be humiliated and reviled at the same time.

What other explanation could there by for the sociopathic insanity of their campaign. One of these days a psychologist will write a book diagnosing the actions of John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt and the rest of the bunch. Since psychologists don't deal with good v. evil, there will have to be a logical explanation of what seems to be pure insanity.

It can't be written off as "politics" or even "tough politics," as McCain likes to call it. It's more than that. What do you call constant lying? What name do you give to the attempt to destroy another human being's character? To paint him as a traitor? To play to hatred? Indeed, to stoke and cultivate hatred?

No, this is not to be forgiven. Barack Obama seems to be so convinced that nothing can be done without dragging the Republicans in with him and governing under an "American" umbrella, and an "Earth" umbrella. He must be much more forgiving than I am. Or perhaps he has something in store for the Republicans when he takes office. Like prosecutions of the Bush war criminals, for starters.

It appears that Americans have caught on. Only the haters are responding to McCain and Palin's lowest common denominator attacks, and those dimwits weren't going to vote for Obama anyway. Never has the word "base" been more apt. Other words for "base" are….dishonorable, ignoble, sordid, immoral, vile and corrupt.

That about sums it up, doesn't it?

Reap the whirlwind, Republicans.

Cindy McCain's Family Ties: Suds and Murder

2008-09-11T11:17:00.001-07:00

We all know that Cindy McCain owns the beer distributorship that has made her a multi-millionaire, or rather that made her father a multi-millionaire. But do you know the sordid backstory of her father, James Hensley, and the scandals surrounding him?

Including the 1976 murder of reporter Don Bolles?

From: The Lonesome Trail: Cindy McCain's nontraditional campaign by Ariel Levy in the September 5, 2008 New Yorker

James--whom everyone called Jim--and his brother Eugene Hensley built their wealth on alcohol. After Jim returned from service as a bombardier in the Second World War, the brothers entered the wholesale liquor market and began operating two warehouses--United Sales Company, in Phoenix, and United Distributors, Inc., in Tucson--in partnership with Kemper Marley, Sr., a Phoenix businessman. (Police reportedly suspected Marley of having had a hand in the 1976 murder of Don Bolles, a reporter for the Arizona Republic who had written extensively about Marley's business and political machinations. Marley died in 1990.) In 1948, the Hensleys were convicted on federal conspiracy charges after filing more than twelve hundred fake invoices to cover up under-the-table sales of liquor to night clubs and bars throughout the state. Eugene was sentenced to a year in prison, Jim to six months, but, with the help of their lawyer, a former mayor of Phoenix, Jim had his sentence suspended.

Despite his criminal conviction, in 1955 Jim Hensley was granted a liquor license to start an Anheuser-Busch distributorship, which he called Hensley & Company.

But there's a lot more backstory than that. For more on the sleaze surrounding Cindy McCain's father, here's a roundup of stories from other papers compiled by Sam Smith. It includes this from the Phoenix New times on Jim Hensley's partner and the murder of reporter Don Bolles:

Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles wrote a series of stories documenting Marley's questionable performance in appointive posts he'd previously held. Bolles' stories doomed Marley's appointment, forcing him to resign soon after being named to the Racing Commission.

On June 2, 1976, Bolles was mortally wounded by a car bomb. Before lapsing into unconsciousness, Bolles uttered the words, "Adamson, Emprise, Mafia." He died 11 days later.

John Harvey Adamson confessed to luring Bolles to a Phoenix hotel parking lot and placing a bomb beneath the reporter's car. The bomb, Adamson testified, was detonated by James Robison, a Chandler plumber. Adamson testified he was hired to kill Bolles by Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor and close associate of Marley's. Marley had extended a $1 million loan to Dunlap, which had not been repaid. Adamson said Dunlap hired him to kill Bolles because Marley was upset over Bolles' stories.

Also read Beyond Booze: The Strange Roots of the McCain Family Fortune from July 2008 by Caitlin Ginley in Public Integrity.

Watch Crooked Senator Ted Stevens Endorse Palin

2008-08-29T23:51:00.001-07:00

Obama's Rope-a-Dope

2008-08-29T00:22:00.001-07:00

The Republicans have been George Foreman, hitting Obama with everything they had in their evil arsenal over the past few weeks.

Obama let them punch themselves out and then tonight he hit them with a solid right and then another and then a straight left hand.

The fight isn't over, but McCain is on the canvas.

Don't these people ever learn?

Obama is smart and tough. Very tough. McCain didn't know how tough until tonight. He might get up and throw some more punches, but they will have lost their steam...while Obama is loading up that right hand again.

Obama bomaye!

"Get on board, you don't have any other choice," happens to be the truth.

2008-08-26T16:56:00.001-07:00

That's what one Hillary Clinton supporter said today. She's right. Any rational human who decides to vote for John McCain deserves John McCain, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Condi Rice, John Ashcroft, Ronald Reagan, big oil, polluters, homophobes, wife-beaters, racists, anti-abortionists and those who have besmirched any moral authority America had left.

Is that what you want?

Really.

Did Barack Obama's campaign win because the Supreme Court decided so? Did it steal votes? Did it disenfranchise any voters? Did Obama call Clinton's character into question? Does Obama have a clear record of fighting against women's issues?

The answer is no.

He won fairly and with dignity, which is more than I can say for the sore-losers in the Clinton camp.

Clinton waged a dirty campaign, but she earned the right to have her recognition at the convention. Other than that, she lost.

L-O-S-T, lost.

If John McCain wins because of former Clinton voters' support…..

You know, I can't even imagine what's in the minds of these people. Four more years of Republican rule?

Come to your senses, people.

Gen. Clark & Joe Biden's Statements Pretty Much the Same. Why No Fuss Now?

2008-08-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

"I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," – Gen. Wesley Clark, June 29, 2008

"These times require more than a good soldier." – Sen. Joe Biden, August 23, 2008

There's not a whole hell of a lot of difference between these two statements. Perhaps if Gen. Clark hadn't been officially declared a pariah by the weaker, more politically-correct folks in the Obama campaign, Obama wouldn't be perceived as not hitting back at the vicious Republican attacks on his character.

The simple fact remains that the plain and honest statement by Gen. Clark is right on the money.

McCain was a failure at Annapolis and a failure as a pilot. Yeah, we're sorry he got locked up for five years, but how many innocent people have we locked up in jails all over America? And how many more have we put through the same kinds of torture McCain suffered? In Guantanamo and our franchise dungeons all over the world?

Let's not forget, McCain's voting record on torture. He was against it when he was being tortured, and for it when it was politically advantageous.

It's time to stop kissing McCain's red white and blue butt on the subject of serving in the military, especially since he has supported Bush in denying our current military the equipment it needed to fight and protect itself, and in the shameful manner in which it has treated the troops when they came home, dead and alive.

So, stop saying how much you respect his service. Tell the truth. Call him on his pandering on his Vietnam experience. Dig up some other ex-POW's who will call him on using his experiences for current political gain.

And anyway, his five years in a POW camp over thirty years ago apparently has nothing to do with the situation into which the Bush administration has put us. Wait, maybe it has everything to do with it…and getting rid of the last of the pro-Vietnam War leaders is a good thing.

Our military is not to be worshiped. It is to be used as a last resort, and to present a strong face to those who would attack us. Period. They do the job they applied for, just like everybody else. Cops and firemen are no less heroes. Garbage collectors and those who deliver the mail, also.

General Clark? There are many of us who applauded your statement. I'm sorry you won't be at the convention. It's a big mistake on the part of the Democratic Party (no strangers to big mistakes).

Tom does a talk show live Thursdays at 5:30pm ET with fellow Huffingtonposter Art Levine. Listen here.

There's Something About Televangelists

2008-08-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins on the folly of religion.

Then I ran across this which proves it.

Russia: Foreign Policy Issue #1---Or SHOULD Be

2008-08-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

On June 16, 2001, with Vladimir Putin at his side, George Bush said of the Russian President, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. "

That part of the story we know.

The part we don't know for fact, but can make an educated guess about is what Putin thought when looked Bush in the eye. Given Putin's actions since then it was probably, "Jesus, this guy is a fucking idiot. I can put anything over on this fool."

And so he did.

U.S. relations, or lack of them, with Russia should be a hot campaign issue. I mean, is there another country in the world with a giant nuclear arsenal who has invaded a sovereign country in order to control the flow of oil? Well, besides us.

Yes, Obama made a typically nuanced statement when Russia invaded Georgia, but it didn't say a whole hell of a lot. And it certainly didn't assuage my concerns. Of course, it was vastly superior to McCain's war-mongering on behalf of his client.

Is this the first time in American history that one of an American Presidential candidate's chief advisors was in the employ of a foreign government. Is there any doubt that McCain's statements on the Russian invasion are a direct result of Randy Scheunneman's lobbying contract with Georgia? I have no doubts at all.

Clearly, McCain never met a war he didn't like, except one where he's getting shot at.

Still, when Russia goes running around invading other countries, especially ones which use to belong to it, (Georgia = Sudatenland) and threatening others nearby (Poland), I expect Obama to tell us what he's going to do. If he's going to be running the show come January 20, I'd like to know his plans for Russia.

This should be the major foreign policy question of this campaign. A few religious nuts in the mountains of Pakistan don't even come close.

Tom D'Antoni and fellow Huffingtonposter Art Levine do a talk show on Blogtalkradio live on Thursdays at 5:30pm ET. All shows are archived. Listen here.

KMHD show with Guest Art Levine 8-16-08 10pm PT

2008-08-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Countdown ---Too Much McCain Bashing, Not Enough Obama Reporting

2008-08-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

We know what Fox News' function is in the universe…the Republican Party line.

We know that CNN is still hopelessly stuck in the Crossfire concept of two opposing points of view, given equal weight even if one of them held that the world is governed by dancing cantaloupes wearing fake monkey heads and lime green leisure suits…and the other held that they didn't exist. Plus, except for Cafferty, it is the residence of boring pundits and conventional "wisdom."

That leaves us with MSNBC which is an uneven collection of solid reporters, airhead anchors, scenery-chewers and the stars of the channel Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

But although many of us rely on Countdown for our only national television leftie news, it is devolving into a McCain bash-fest rather than the only place on cable where we might find out what Obama is doing and saying. Yesterday Obama did not appear at all! It was all McCain bashing. The closest they came was a quote from an Obama surrogate put up on the screen as text, read by Olbermann.

When Obama was in Germany, Countdown focused not on what he had to say, but on what McCain was doing. There was much more of McCain in the supermarket than a thoughtful presentation of Obama's day in Germany. The Brian Williams grab at the end was a great touch, but that was not generated by Countdown This is a pattern. Yes, there is an obligation to point out McCain's daily errors and horrors, but where else is anyone going to find out what Obama is saying?

The networks are in the same Crossfire mode as CNN, they promote controversy rather than dealing in fact-finding, truth-finding journalism. With studies finding that there is more negative coverage of Obama than positive, Countdown's daily beatdown of McCain and Fox/O'Reilly is missing the point.

Congressional Interest in Bugliosi's Book on Prosecuting Bush for Murder

2008-07-22T17:53:00.001-07:00

Two interesting items came out of my Blogtalkradio interview with prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi last week on his book The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder.

First, he had to end the interview because he was being called by "a very conservative member of Congress" who had opposed the Iraq War. Bugliosi would not name him but claimed that the member of Congress had heard the audio book version and that the book "had convinced him that Bush misled Congress." The former prosecutor said the member of Congress said he had bought more copies and passed them on to friends. Bugliosi also said that the member of Congress told him that he wanted to "pursue this matter and find out the truth after the election."
Listen to what Bugliosi said in the interview:

Listen to what Bugliosi said:

Who could it be? Was it Rep. Walter B. Jones, Jr (R-NC)? He invented "Freedom Fries" when France refused to support the U.S. going to war in Iraq, and then reversed his position on the war later on. Any speculation is just that, but suppose it was Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? Probably not, but I suppose we'll find out eventually.
Second, I asked Bugliosi who was worse George Bush or Charles Manson, who Bugliosi prosecuted and convicted. He said, "It's a different type of criminality," and then explained.

Listen:

Who do you think is worse?

also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Bush is Oil Companies' Scott McClellan

2008-07-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

Why is it we should listen to anything GW Bush says on the subject of oil? In addition, why does he think we still haven't figured out that he is, was and always will be a shill for oil companies.

Everything out of his mouth concerning oil drilling, oil prices, oil anything should be treated as what it is, a message from the oil companies.

We figured out that his war was for the control of oil. Not for drilling more but for drilling less. Just as they haven't produced more domestic oil and gasoline, once they've officially gotten their mitts on Iraq's oil, they'll leave it in the ground. The less they produce, the more it costs. Simple plan.
The simpletons who believe that Bush is on any side of the issue other than the oil companies'? They're the ones who believe that Obama is a Muslim.

At least the Dems in Congress are on the right side of this one. Harry Reid said today, "We want oil and gas companies to drill on the leases they’ve been given,” according to The Hill. He could have added, "How about a few more refineries?"

What's pathetic is the tone Bush evoked in today's statement. Someone told him that the Presidency is a bully pulpit. He just remembers the "bully" part. His desperation is a dangerous thing. His lies mount even as they become more transparent.

He's Scott McClellan for the oil companies. And a bad one.

Obama: Change Comes Harder Than We Thought

2008-06-25T16:23:00.001-07:00

When Obama said he wanted to bridge the divide between blue and red, some of us may have thought that he would be reaching out with his left-leaning hand to the middle and middle-right and pulling them closer to the left.

He never said that.

Perhaps we thought that we would emerge from such a bridging with all of our hopes and issues intact.

I don't believe Obama ever thought that.

Turns out it hurts to walk half way across that bridge. It hurts both sides. That this is the legacy of Republican politics is beside the point. Change means change for us, too. What is now being called the "Netroots," which yesterday was called the "Liberal Blogosphere," is all upset about some of Obama's policies. It has always been upset over his health-care plan, and even though there are many plusses in the FISA bill, and a giant loophole which allows an Obama Justice Department to investigate and prosecute the Telcoms, the blogs are screaming bloody murder over Obama's support for it.

I don't like that he supported it either. I'd like to see the CEO's in the same Federal Prison with many of the Bush administration.

I'd like to see Obama elected President first.

One of Obama's strengths is that he allows us to write our own beliefs on to his bandwagon. It's one of the things that make him such an attractive candidate. Blacks write their history on him, whites understand that he was raised by white folks. And on and on.

It's hard to compromise when you've spent your whole life being uncompromising, but what's the alternative? John McCain? Moving to a self-sustaining farm?

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Talon News Endorses George Pappoon, Really

2008-06-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

That Jeff "James Guckert" Gannon, former paid shill purportedly representing "Talon News" at Presidential press conferences is still passing himself off as a journalist is funny enough. That he denies he had anything to do with a male escort service, the same male escort service that had a nude picture of him advertising his service(s) is a good Republican joke. They're awful good (or awful bad) at trying to convince you that your eyes are telling you something that just isn't true…like that naked picture of big Jeff is what? a doll?

What's funny is that Talon News has just endorsed George Pappoon for President.

Yes, the same George Pappoon that the Firesign Theatre has run for President for decades. Remember his slogan? "He's Not Insane."

There are lots of other very funny stories on here. Intentionally funny, not like Fox.

Could it be that someone else has gotten ahold of that domain? Maybe someone connected with Firesign Theatre?

A recent item read:

June 16, 2008
PALOOKAVILLE: Surrealist Presidential candidate George Papoon agreed to debate his opponents in a series of "Town Hall" meetings. Papoon had never agreed to debate anyone before, or had much use for any kind of personal interaction that didn't involve pet grooming, so his agreement marks an historic change in campaign strategy.
Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain agreed to the meetings with Papoon, so the effect on the horserace will be negligible. "Really, I'm all about the horserace, and grooming the horse after the race," said Papoon, relapsing into an unusual degree of consistency. "That," continued Papoon, "and Paraguay."

Don't miss "D'Antoni & Levine" (two Huffington contributors) live Thursdays at www.blogtalkradio.com/tomandart

Clinton as V.P. Grrrrrrrrrr....Well OK.

2008-06-03T15:03:00.001-07:00

I think we're feeling a huge amount of residual fear and loathing of the Republican hate and slime machine; and a similar size helping of non-confidence in how Democrats have responded to it in the past. Both feelings are totally justified.

Will America vote for an African-American? Better to ask if they'll vote for someone with brains.

First of all, there is at least 20% of the population of the U.S. who hate Black folks, always have, always will. Ingrained bigotry is a part of human nature that will always survive. Face it. There's nothing we can do about it. Write them off. They were going to vote Republican, anyway. Republicans have portrayed themselves as the party of hatred and bigotry. Let them have it their way.

The ray of hope is that, except for those 20% (who believe that Obama is a Muslim, and all the other Rovian lies), none of the Republican slime has stuck to Obama.

Will America vote for an African-American with a woman as his running mate? If that woman is Sen. Clinton? As much as it pains me to say so, Obama would do well to swallow the bitter pill and take her on as running mate. And send Bill to be ambassador to anywhere.

It's a good thing that "white working class men" weren't watching the proceedings on TV Saturday when the Florida and Michigan votes were settled. Trust me on this, and men you back me up. There is a gut reaction in men, not based on logic, but solely on emotion, to women like the ones who wouldn't shut up, and kept screaming. Any man who has ever had an acrimonious break-up with a woman knows it and felt it as they watched. I know I did.

The male brain goes, "Will you please just shut the fuck up and leave me alone! Go away. I can't stand this shit anymore. No, really! You're driving me out of my mind. Do whatever you want, just shut up and leave me alone!" But they don't. And you feel like you want to run and never stop running just to get away from it.

This male reaction takes place no matter who is to blame, or if both are to blame. Maybe it's a female weapon. Did they talk about that in "Sex and the City?' It just IS. This isn't sexism. This is based on experience. If there are men out there who haven't experienced it, God love ya.

That is part of Obama's Hillary problem, if he offers her the V.P. slot. I never understood why the right wing hated her so much. I have a better idea now. She has waged a dirty campaign, not based on issues but on character destruction. I'd rather see Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebalius as his running mate, but I understand that sixteen million people voted for Clinton. I just don't know why.

The other part is what does he do about her Iraq vote?

As the campaign begins, I'm trying to hold to my original belief, that the Democrats could run a dirty catbox and win this year. Running a man with the intelligence and compassion of Obama almost seems like too much to ask for.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Editing Error in my Dick Weissman Story

2008-05-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

There is an editing error in the Dick Weissman story of mine in the Oregonian today. For reasons of space the editor changed my copy so that it read "The Journeymen are best known for "San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair).

Of course, they never did that song. Scott McKenzie, who was a member of the Journeymen with Dick from 1961-64, did that song alone years later.

Grrr.

Clinton Campaign Reduced to Sketch Comedy

2008-05-12T04:30:00.000-07:00

The Clinton campaign has turned out to be as idiotically funny as the current TV spots DirecTV has been running. In the spots, "Cable Company" execs are sitting around the table and the CEO says, "People DirecTV has way more HD channels than we do. What can we possibly say to keep them happy?"

"Allow me to answer that," John Michael Higgins, the star of these spots says, standing up. "We make our channels louder. They're getting, 'Hello, this is the nightly news.' We give them, 'HELLO, THIS IS THE NIGHTLY NEWS!!!!!!'"

He picks up a graph and says, "Our sales are going to go up 800%...800%!" And then flipping it away he says, "This chart is broken."

In another spot, the CEO says, "DirecTV is doing very well with customer satisfaction. What do we do?" Higgins says, "I learned this when I was in business school…when I read about business school…in a book. We can't improve the service but we can improve the price, we can make it higher."

Another guy says, "You know, that's not a bad idea."
Still another guy says, "We can get people with disposable incomes to dispose of it to us."
"…and they don't watch TV."
"…they're workaholics. They wouldn't know HDTV if it sat in their laps and called them mama."

That's how I imagine the conversations must have been for the past six weeks when Hillary Clinton and her brain trust have met to discuss strategy.

To be specific:

"People seem to be hungry for change, what can we do?" Sen Clinton asked.
"Let's make sure we're the candidate who represents the status-quo in Washington!" replied Mark Penn.
"Yeah, yeah," Harold Ickes said, "experience says it all. People who want change will love that!"

"Obama is offering hope, what do we say?" asked Clinton.
"We say we're against hope!" said Penn. "Let's dash the hopes and dreams of a generation of young people who adore Obama and replace it with a shrill appeal to the worst in human nature!"

"Some people are writing that this is a turning point in the racial life of America, one in which the accumulated assimilation of black folks into the mainstream of American life is second-nature to everyone under the age of 40," Hillary said. "How can we make that work for us?"
"We can't," said Bill Clinton, "Let's belittle Obama's accomplishment, tell the public that Americans won't vote for a Black man for President and say that White folks are on our side."

Sidney Blumenthal piped up, "I've been doing a good job sending out these emails about how Obama is a Muslim but how can we maximize that?"

"Oh, I know," said Hillary brightly, "when Sixty Minutes asks me about it, I'll make sure I leave doubts in the minds of the viewers that he just might be a Muslim after all!"
"And that's why we love you, Hil," said Blumenthal, licking the bottoms of her shoes.

And then picking up a chart at a meeting last week, Howard Wolfson said, turning it one way and then another, "I can't make this chart work. No matter which way I turn it, we lose…pledged delegates, super delegates, popular vote, number of states won…what do we say?"

Hillary threw a glass of expensive wine at him and said, "We say we're winning. Look, the best way to make sure I'm elected President of the United States is to change the perception Democrats have of the Clinton family and get America to hate us!"

Mission Accomplished, Mr. President and Madame Senator.

Don't miss "D'Antoni and Levine," the new talk show with me and Huffington Post contributor Art Levine live every Thursday at 2:30 PT (5:30 ET) at BlogTalkRadio.
This week Art follows up his series on potential fraud in the upcoming election. The recent US Supreme Court decision to allow Indiana to ask for specific kinds of ID's is beginning to cause other states to think they can block voting rights, looking at Missouri, and other states,and other schemes already on the books to rob Americans of right to vote.
All shows are archived.

Listen to an hour of the "Bar" part of my KMHD radio show

2008-04-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.sendspace.com/file/wkw9xm

Obama---Acting Positively Presidential

2008-04-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

In the past week, the media sharks have been swimming around Barack Obama, the Republican vultures and their surrogates in the Clinton campaign flying overhead ready to devour. What has been Obama's reaction? Calm, thoughtful, reasoned responses.

He has not lost his cool. He has looked positively Presidential. He hasn't threatened to wipe another country and all of its innocent men women and children off the map, as Clinton has, either.

He has responded to the Wright shitstorm in a proper and dignified manner…just the opposite of the snarling, hate-filled attacks on him. And the attacks are coming from all sides. Why do you think that is?

It is because he has offered hope instead of fear, reasoned proposals for dealing with the problems we face, and a realistic perception of the country and the world.

I know many of us have been despairing one minute and angry the next as the onslaught has escalated. We are up against evil, let's face it. The powers that rule will do anything to prevent change, and I mean anything.

I stayed away from the 24 hour news channels for a day and found myself thinking that their aggregate audience, if applied to one prime-time sitcom or cop show would cause that sitcom or cop show to be cancelled inside of a month. Most people don't watch them. They are a closed circle. One Obama has stepped outside of.

Compare the two news conferences we saw today, the angry, petulant, inarticulate, lie-filled Bush performance vs. Obama on Wright. Which guy looked Presidential to you?

Americans made the mistake of voting for a dope they could have a beer with. Many are making the same mistake with Clinton. Obama's cool cuts through all the bullshit. He is calm and reassuring. He doesn't pander. He looks presidential.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Latest LivePDX Music Blog

2008-04-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

News & Gossip: Jumpin' Joint at deLay Memorial Show II, Beliss Being Bad Girls on the Run
Mon, 04/28
by Tom D'Antoni

While humming Jazzfest in New Orleans (which I'm not)....

Last weekend's (4/20) second annual Paul deLay memorial concert, this one to benefit Ethos, may not have been standing room only, but the big ballroom at the Portland Art Museum was full and the dance floor rocking. Ethos, btw, is the Portland organization that teaches youngsters how to play music.

Speaking of youngsters, Paul's little grandkid was tearing around the ballroom all evening wearing sneaks that had flashing red lights. Paul would have dug that.

KMHD's Jan Mancuso's pasta salad was the hit of the green room. She and husband Ric do The Night on Thursdays, 9:00pm to midnight.

Sights at the concert: Terry Robb with his arm around Linda Hornbuckle talking about her new album, which he's releasing in July. Harmonicats' Bill Rhodes and Hank Shreve hanging out. Bass player Dave Kahl, who was one of the organizers, looking harried. Peter Damman looking cool (he never looks harried, even when he should be). Duffy Bishop joking about her very very red hair color.

Singer Joe McMurrian with harmonica player David Lipkind started things off with a very large bang. The rest of the night was one long happy jam with nearly everyone who ever played with Paul playing. Too bad pianist David Vest couldn't make it down from B.C. His boogie-woogie thunder was missed.

Noah Mickens and Nick the Creature have formally formed Portland Circus Works. They started off at the downstairs room of Rotture and called it the Hippodrome...to be a circus-themed venue. When Mickens left Rotture, he apparently took the concept with him. I hear that the room is going to revert to an all-ages venue again, but that's still up in the air. Mickens will have nothing to do with it.

Instead, they write: "Mssrs. Creature & Mickens will set up shop at 2410 North Mississippi. This former warehouse was brought to notability through the work of Maria Toth (Anonymous-I). Having made their name supporting creative spaces and green building projects for years in Portland, Anonymous-I is opening the 2410 space to showcase a community of performers and craftspeople to which Portland Circus Works is already a major contributor. This will become the the duo's Headquarters, housing the CircusWorks educational operation and offices while their events spread out to cover the whole city."

Their first event is at Mt. Tabor Legacy on Sunday, April 27. It's Wanderlust Circus.

Ever wonder what bands do when they're on the road? This just in from Melissa Underwood of Belliss: In Arizona, "We went to a funny ass bar in Flagstaff on Route 66 where Belinda and I put on fake personas (she was Apache and I was Scarlett) and we were from the Aouth. Not too far-fetched, we're half Tennessee-ean. Fortunately we didn't get into too much trouble...reminded me of college time bars, barfing in the bathroom (not us), chicks falling down stairs (not us), cowboys stripping (not good). Glad we survived those shots of SoCo and tequilla, but man was it good to hear Tone-Loc again! Saguaro cactuses are so beautiful!"

Extremo the Clown's new art car is a van (pictured). If you'd like to refresh your memory, watch my TV story on him here. You may remember the two hand puppets he would wiggle out the window at you while the music blared out of his old art car. He tells me, "Spanky (the chimp) loves it, in fact he has a new primate buddy that has joined the club. Freakensteinn and Daisy have been showing up lately but they don't seem to fit in as comfortably. For months they were out of the picture, but now they have appeared again."

I've missed them, but then I voted for Extremo when he ran for mayor.

Klezmocracy is back! They've managed to round up all the players in their new configuration in the same place at the same time (Saturday, April 26). The place is Mississippi Pizza where they played weekly gigs for a couple of years in with their former lineup. This lineup brings back Joe Janiga on drums, Ralph Huntley on keys and Courtney Von Drehle on sax, and adds Damien Erskine on bass and Jason DuMars on sax. They promise a lot of new material and some old faves, too.

Art Levine and I have a new internet radio talkshow

2008-04-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

DC-based journalist Art Levine and I have started a mostly-political talk show on BlogTalkRadio, a fairly new site. We do it live...this Thursday live at 3:30pm PT. You can call in!
It is always available to listen to after it's over tho.
Check us out. Click below, or click on the player next to the top of the first entry of this blog.
Our page: www.blogtalkradio.com/tomandart

Latest LivePDX Music Blog

2008-04-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

While wondering what's written in the notebooks Captain Beefheart must have been keeping all these years and listening to his Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey On My Knee:

Following last week's item about Alan Jones' new jazz club comes word from saxophonist David Valdez that he has taken over booking at Pine Street Bistro. The infamous Craig Marquardo didn't last long there and did absolutely nothing for them.

It wouldn't take David too much to be better but he's making all the right moves. He is integrating the Nu Jazz cats and kittens like Andrew Oliver, (5/3), John Nastos, (5/23), Chris Mosely (5/17) and the all-female all-the-timeQuadraphones sax quartet (4/25). I've been dying to write about them.
Valdez isn't leaving out vets like Dave Frishberg
and Tall Jazz.

At least Valdez knows how to promote. He may have set the world's record for most appearances plugging a new CD with FOUR interviews on KMHD (including my show). He also had at least one on KBOO. Hey, some aggressive promotion is just what the jazz scene needs around here.

News from Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival booker, fine guitarist and cool cat Peter Dammann is mostly awesome. I asked him if he might be trying to get Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (the real Amy Winehouse). He replied, "I've been trying to get them here for three years. Made a big offer. They're going to Europe, then returning and playing the zoo in late July (25th)." Damn.

So far, he's telling me that booked so far are: Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, James Hunter, Phoebe Snow; Gulf Coast Guitar slam with Sherman Robertson, Phillip Walker and Andrew Jr. Boy Jones; Canned Heat, Rosie Ledet, Lavay Smith, Classie Ballou.

Also, headlining, a Stax/Memphis soul tribute with Portland Soul Allstars (Louis Pain, Linda Hornbuckle, Laron Steele et al) followed by Isaac Hayes. Dammann says he, "Can't wait to see that rider..."

About two young guitar slingers, Joe Bonamassa, and Carolyn Wonderland, he says, "She's a grittier, more compelling and to my mind more talented version of Susan Tedeschi, from Houston/Austin."

On the Front Porch Stage, he says, "A battle of the 'bones: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, and Fred Wesley w/ Groove Sect (Offbeat award winner for funk band of the year last year); i.e., two of the funkiest trombonists on the planet, back to back on our front porch stage. The purists will insist Fred Wesley (James Brown, Count Basie, Parliament Funkadelic) is no 'blues' artist. But his blues cred and roots are about as deep as it goes: by the time he was 16 Wesley was touring with Ike Turner...."

I may go down to the waterfront and put my blanket down this weekend.

Peter is on his way to Jazzfest in New Orleans at the end of the month, "I'll be on a panel on the "International Festival Market" with organizers from other festivals around the country," he says, "including former Oregonian writer and percussionist Rick Mitchell (Houston International Festival). I'll also be sitting in with Charmaine Neville at Jazz Fest and at Snug Harbor, and have a gig with Reggie Houston at a little club in the 9th ward. And going to Ponderosa Stomp both nights to check out 'Lost Soul Queen' Bettye Harris among many others. And four days of Jazz Fest. Will I make it home in one piece?"

Does it matter? All that and Jazzfest too? Oregon Food Bank is banging on him to write a blog for them. It's a thankless job, Peter.

Cherry Poppin' Daddies have a new album coming out in June but they're playing Saturday night at the Wonder Ballroom. Their new album, Susquehanna is nothing like their big big big big hit. It is a story cycle in several genres. The closest thing to the jump blues that most people know them for (not us) is a dark tune about someone wearing wingtips and diapers. Nice to see Steve Perry's mind expanding (exploding?)

Jay Bozich aka King Fader reminds me that the CPD gig will be, "mixed by yours truly." Don't worry Jay, one of these days the rest of the world will understand what a huge role you've played in Portland's music scene. He has been the silent partner in Dahlia since they formed…and re-formed...but not reformed.

Patrick Lamb has recovered awful fast from that serious car accident. He was back at work playing with his band at the Rose Garden Tuesday night before the Blazers' game and at halftime.

Remember the 3 Leg Torso-fueled award-winning video I blogged about a couple of weeks ago? See it here.

The Terry Robb/Lauren Sheehan duo is a go. I was sitting in the patio of Vivace banging on this computer when it was warm the other day. Lauren was walking by. Don't know how she wasn't tempted by their coffee but she told me they're going to be making some demos and taking gigs.

Stop "Old" Jokes Now!

2008-04-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

The time has come to stop making "Old Jokes." I shouldn't have to say that. In most societies old age is respected for accrued wisdom. Not in ours. In ours you get ridiculed, marginalized and completely discounted as though wrinkles and other natural aging processes disqualified a person from being a member of the human race. Worse, that normal aging qualifies the rest of the world to make fun of you.

There are many reasons to dislike John McCain. His age is not one of them.

In my youth, as a card-carrying member of the "Youth Culture," I may have fought against the older generation, but I never thought they were laughable. They weren't. They were in control, they could and would send me to certain death in Viet Nam.

This all started when people began laughing at the "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" commercials. I was in my 40's when they were running and I could never understand what was so fucking funny about an older person who was unable to get up off the floor after having fallen. I still don't. The heartless cruelty a person must have within them in order to find that amusing escapes me. And I'm the guy who wrote, "Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket" for a supermarket tabloid. THAT is funny, sick and funny, but not in the same way.

John Stewart should know better. His hair is getting gray. He's over forty, or looks it. He is the worst of the offenders. I understand others, the Sterns and Mancows of the world whose job it is to be cruel. But Stewart should be above making fun of someone simply because that person is old. It is symptomatic of why "The Daily Show" is shrinking in its popularity. Once you no longer have Bush to kick around, you have to go looking for targets, real or imagined. Since the writers' strike ended, they don't seem to know what's funny or what to do to be funny. So they take the easy way out, "old" jokes. Fat jokes, too.

I wish you could feel what it does to a person of age who is at least as aware as any 25 year old, and in most cases more aware. It doesn't feel good.

Try this: substitute the word, "Nigger" or "Jew" or "Bitch" or "Sand Nigger" or "Dago" for "old," either literally or conceptually. Now how does it sound? Still think it's funny?

One of these fine days, all of the folks who make "old " jokes will look in the mirror and perhaps pause, suck in their breath and say, "Oh my God. Did I really say that stuff? Look at me. I got old." And then they'll look around and find that people younger than they are pushing them out, not paying attention to them, discounting their talents and making fun of them, in public, on TV….everywhere.

I don't have to wish I were around to see it. I know it will happen.

Their smugness will be gone. Their snark in retreat.

Perhaps if they stopped the "old" jokes now, they might be better able to live with themselves later on.

I don't expect this will happen. I am a better writer, TV producer, radio DJ than I was when I was 30. I will not have the opportunity to prove that. Nobody wants to hire an old guy, no matter how good he still is. "Old" jokes feed this idea. "Old" jokes are a result of this idea. They even think there should be an age cut-off for driving a car.

So shall it be for those who now laugh. That's my only consolation. That and making fun of those stupid wool-hats the indie-boys wear.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

CNN's Disgraceful Push Poll on Obama

2008-04-12T00:07:00.000-07:00

There they go again.

They being mainstream media. Remember them? They're the ones who bought and then brought to you the lies that led us to war in Iraq. The ones who laughed along with Rumsfeld. The ones who followed the lead of Karl Rove in telling you that Howard Dean was screaming like a lunatic when, in fact, he was yelling enthusiastically over a loud crowd. The ones who swift boated John Kerry as surely as the Republicans who lied about the Senator's service.

Today, after Sen. Obama's painfully truthful remarks about how politicians try to lead Americans to vote on the basis of fear and bigotry, and how people are sick and tired and yes "bitter" about how they've been treated, the Lou Dobbs Show on CNN ran this push poll:

"Do you believe that Senator Barack Obama's comments reveal his elitist attitude toward every hardworking American?"

It says "his elitist," not "an elitist" attitude as though his statements were proof of something that already existed, but was, perhaps doubtful. Viewers, why don't you validate that for us here in Atlanta!

In other words, Senator Obama, how long HAS it been since you've beaten your wife.

At 11:20 p.m. PDT on Friday night it stood 50-50, based on 18,453 votes. Under that total, CNN states, "This is not a scientific poll." Correct. It is a push poll.

The rest of CNN went hysterical, with lots of white faces calling Obama's remarks a "turning point." Sen. Clinton tore into the remarks ravenously, as though they were insults to working class voters. She was shameless when in fact it is the actions of "her administration" who allowed jobs to leave America and put us in the toilet in which we now find ourselves.

Her surrogates droned on about how the Republicans will jump on these remarks, something they beat the Republicans to, and were harder on Obama about.

Later on Obama was as eloquent as ever, calmly illuminating, even more sharply, what he had said before. That eloquence is elsewhere on this site but it bears repeating:

When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what's worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened - I want to make a point here today.

I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how're you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What's going on there? We hear that's its hard for some working class people to get behind you're campaign. I said, "Well look, they're frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says 'No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, 'Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'

Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain--it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up.

They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America.

The misguided mainstream media may be right about one thing, this may be a turning point, the point at which Americans begin to listen to a politician who tells the truth and refuses to pander, to stoop as low as Senator Clinton and the rest of the Republicans.

That would be Barack Obama.

Here's video of his reply:

also appears on huffingtonpost.com

This Week's LivePDX.com Music Blog

2008-04-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

While plotting to somehow arrange it so that no song ever again begins with an acoustic guitar going "chunk chunk-a-chunk-a, chunk, chunk-a-chunk-a, chunk chunk-a-chunk-a"…etc:
The Mt. Hood Jazz Fesitval is actually the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival again. On Monday, with saxophonist Red Holloway in attendance, they announced that the festival will come back to the campus of Mt. Hood Community College (also the home of KMHD) Friday and Saturday August 16 & 17. That's where it started in 1981. There are still bad feelings about how and why it left. Not toward the college, but toward those who ran it back then. No, it won't be like it was, but it's a good thing it has come home. More info later.
A new jazz club in Portland! And run by a musician! Come May drummer Alan Jones will be opening a club in the basement of the Green Onion near Portland State called The Cave at 636 SW Jackson St. (at Broadway). And hallelujah!!! Wednesday nights will be owned by Nancy King. There will be music on weekends, too.
Yes, of course Alan will be playing, it's his club.
There's some grumbling among and between the musicians over Jimmy Mak's new policy of booking two bands in one night. Two bands, one cover. Sometimes a band will open for another, sometimes they share the headline. I think it's a great thing for music consumers (us).
I reported last week that Margaret Slovak was having her shoulder examined in New York. Not exactly. She says, "I got a grant to go to NYC for two weeks to study with a classical guitarist, David Leisner, who has developed guitar playing techniques utilizing larger muscle groups in the shoulder/armpit to help regain right hand function due to injuries. The lessons went very well and I feel that these techniques will help me to get more of the use of my right hand back. It will still take a while to fully integrate the techniques but the study gave me a lot of hope! I had shoulder surgery in 2006 to fix the damage from the (auto accident)."
On the teenage blues front: Last Friday (Muddy Waters' birthday) guitarist/singer TJ Moor was thrilled to be able take the stage with Pinetop Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith at the Aladdin Theater while multi-instrumentalist Mac Potts, "danced the night away whirlin' and twirlin'," according to TJ. Saturday Mac played in the lobby of the Schnitz.
One good thing about working for nothing at KMHD is the DJ email list. For instance, a couple of weeks ago Jeremy Appleton, who does the awesome Soul Station show at 10 pm on Tuesday nights wrote, "Robert Parker is an Australian Sound Engineer and Broadcaster. Over the last thirty years Robert has developed a unique, award winning system for extracting high quality sound from early mono 78 rpm records. He has been collecting records since the age of around twelve - and has now amassed one of the finest vintage music collections in the country. It has formed the basis for 'Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo'. You can now hear the seris over the Web."
Brother/sister electronic/trip-hop duo Oracle with Keith Schreiner,
twin sister/sister duo Acoustic Minds
and Morgan Grace (among others) performing at a tribute to Billie Holiday? Now that sounds like fun. It's a benefit for November's Siren Nation Festival on Saturday, April 12 at The Fez. MCing is Tahoe Jackson. I wish she were also singing. Somebody has to get her to sit in on something that night.
Bassist Damien Erskine is always busy. There's finally a Klezmocracy gig coming up (stay tuned) and recently he signed with Alfred Publishing for an instructional book and a DVD. He ought to have one on how to grow and maintain an awesome half-a-goatee.
I won't jump the gun on a piece I have in this week's A&E section but one of the happiest happy hours in town these days features former Artichokians Kate Power and Steve Einhorn every Monday night in April at the Alberta St. Public House.
There are no Oregon bands nominated for Jammys
this year. You can vote there anway. I voted for Bonerama and Galactic.
Tom D'Antoni is a Portland writer and TV Producer/Reporter. Listen to his show on Saturday nights 10pm to 2am on KMHD 89.1 fm and streaming on the web at kmhd.fm.

A good time to remember this song

2008-04-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'd rather support the people ho faught against the Iraq war than the ones who actually faught it in Iraq.

This week's LivePDX.com music blog

2008-04-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

While trying to recover from two days in Bend "covering" the famed Pregnant Man story for Inside Edition:

Word from saxophonist/composer Patrick Lamb's wife Amy Maxwell tells me that he is home and recovering from last week's traffic accident at Grand and NE Weidler where his car was smacked by a dump truck. She said that the people who found him immediately after the wreck thought he was a goner. He was not. He has some broken bones, but after a couple of days in the hospital, he was released. She is grateful for all the good will sent her way…and Patricks's.

Not sure how long it'll be before he's up and playing again. The sooner the better.

Another medical report: Margaret Slovak is back from New York City where she was having her shoulder examined. The lingering effects of her own auto accident several years ago is one of the sad stories in the Portland music community. She was rear-ended not terribly far from where Lamb's car was hit.

And you thought drugs were the biggest danger to musicians. If I was a Portland player I'd stay away from Sullivan's Gulch!

3 Leg Torso is going to be "featured in the DVD release of Diary of the Dead, George Romero's latest zombie movie" according to Courtney von Drehle, the accordion leg of the band. & Teller, a short film by the silent half of Penn and Teller along with Ezekiel Zabrowski won one of the five first prizes in a George Romero-sponsored contest. That's how it gets on the DVD. They used the 3 Leg tune "Elliot's Dream." It comes out May 20.

Teller narrates the film which tells the story of how his Las Vegas hometown is overrun by those cute undead folks. He kills them, I hear. Violinist Bela Balogh said, "We’ve been licensing a lot of music lately…to Bill Plympton and others. Von Drehle added, “Though in retrospect, we were glad they didn’t ask us to help clean all that zombie make-up and glue off of them after filming!”

Think that rock operas are dead? A new one called Toy Room by performance artist Sally Tomato premieres April 4-6 at the Wonder Ballroom. A soundtrack album has already been released and a DVD of the performance will be released in the fall. Proceeds go to Portland Women's Crisis Line.

According to what they sent me, the show "chronicles the life story of the enigmatic Sally Tomato. Touching on her childhood and hurtling into a chaotic adult life, the story line moves through an abusive marriage on its way to rediscovering the innocence of youth. Throughout the play, Sally struggles to regain the ability she had as a child to rise above the mundane via her imagination. In the end she triumphs, finding that the toy room has always existed in her own mind – and reminding us that it exists in ours as well."

Sounds like a chick thing.

One of the happiest elements of the show is the return to the dance world of Clynthia Chimienti who came out of the late great PSU dance program and who hasn't been active for the past few years while getting her masters and launching her counseling practice. She does the choreography and plays the part of "Destiny."

Boomerific bass player Freebo who backed Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall, CSN (that's Crosby, Stills and Nash, kids), Maria Mauldaur and even Ringo Starr (although who didn't?), Neil Young and Dr. John (I don't remember that)….whew that was long…he's coming to Artichoke Music for a songwriting workshop on Sunday, April 6 2-6pm. He was Best Folk Artist in last year's Los Angeles Music Awards. F.Y.I. His real name is Daniel Friedberg.

R.I.P Sean Levert. According to news reports, " Sean Levert, a third of the 1980s R&B trio LeVert and son of lead O'Jays singer Eddie Levert, has died after falling ill while serving a jail term. He was 39. Authorities said Monday that an autopsy was inconclusive but foul play was ruled out.

Levert was sentenced last week to one year and 10 months in jail for failing to pay $89,025 in child support.

Wednesday is (was) Leon Russell'sLeon Russell's 67th birthday and he's still caught in a masquerade.

Art, waffles and music? Rich going, huh? Scott Stobbe of the band Zdrastvootie says, "I am having some of my compositions performed (a collage of pieces for trombone, oboe, violin, accordeon, toy piano, guitar and percussion) come if you can. Jace Gace makes good waffles and has beer!! There is also a free impov sextet on the April 9th show!!" It is sponsored by Portland New Music Society.

And on Friday, April 5, don't forget Rachel Taylor Brown's CD release gig at Mississippi Studios.

"The Real DB Cooper" ....a rerun

2008-03-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a story I did last spring on a man who might be (have been) DB Cooper. Since they found a parachute the other day that might be his, I thought I should post this again.

New LivePDX.com Music Blog

2008-03-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

News & Gossip: Sometimes Girls Rock! And Sometimes They Don't

While listening to "Give the Drummer Some More," from the new Greyboy Allstars album....

I have been putting off writing anything about the movie Girls Rock! I was thinking I'd just shut up about it, but it's been on my mind. I have not seen the film and have no plans to.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of a music camp for girls is a good one for all the obvious reasons, but in 2003 I did a TV story for OPB's Oregon Art Beat on the first camp. And I got my butt kicked because of it.

I had the nerve to actually show some of the girls failing. Like the movie, I'm told, I followed several girls through a day at the camp. I showed the teaching, the camaraderie of collaboration, the discovery that they could make music, etc. All the good stuff. I came back to shoot the performances at the end of the week. A couple of the girls I had followed were not bad, but a charming duo who I had shown writing songs together had been joined by two others who could not play at all.

As a result, the two we had followed were thrown off and were just awful. A painful moment, but a real one. I understand there are such moments of failure in the movie. All in all, my story was very positive, mostly triumphant even, but in this one case, not so much. I felt fine about the story.

A couple of weeks after it aired, I was walking downtown and heard a female voice calling my name. It was an adult from the camp. I thought she was going to tell me she liked the piece, since it was so positive. Instead she began to berate me because I had shown failure and how showing that failure could have damaged these girls.

I told her that I've always learned more from failure, especially in public, than from success. She didn't want to hear about that.

Then the following year, I called Misty McElroy, the founder of the camp (who later "resigned"), to offer her any publicity she might need from Art Beat. She snarled and told me where I could shove my offer. She was still pissed over my story.

More damage is done by adults sugar coating what's out in the real world, than by telling little Tiffany or Jason that they suck as musicians and probably should try something else. I had to learn it the hard way and the lesson stuck. It's a hard world, an even harder business, and you might as well learn it at the beginning. Part of "empowerment" is learning how to fail. When I have taught broadcasting, I always took a day of class to teach people what to do when they get fired. It's inevitable, so you might as well learn what to do.

Let the church say amen.

THIS JUST IN: Patrcick Lamb's wife Amy Maxwell reports that Patrick was in a "really bad car accident (Tuesday). He was hit by a dump truck, and is lucky to be alive. He is currently in the hospital at Emmanuel. He is scheduled to have an MRI (Wednesday) and get the final results on his other tests. So far everything is looking great."

Full details to follow.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming....

You won't find a better start to a Ron Steen jam than the one that will happen on Monday, March 31 at Produce Row. David Friesen's pianist Greg Goebel and Pink Martini's bassist Phil Baker will form the trio that starts the jam with Ron. Baker wrote "Cante e Danse," for Pink Martini's Hey Eugene! It's one of the prettiest tunes ever written.

Speaking of the Greyboy Allstars, that song is stuck in my head. Stop! Hold it right there. Give the drummer some more because the drummer ain't had none in a long time/he ain't had none in a long time/the drummer ain't had none in a long time. It goes on to name all of the band members. Guess none of them ain't had none in a long time. They're going to be at the Roseland on Friday, March 28.

Last blog I mentioned that trumpeter Ingrid Jensen was in town. Her set with Alan Jones and Dave Speranza to'e the roof off Jimmy Mak's last Monday.

Sorry I missed Jen Folker and Solovox at The Crown Room last Friday. Missing Jen anytime is a damned shame.

Sen. Clinton's Own Religous Cult: Includes Brownback, Santorum

2008-03-25T13:55:00.001-07:00

Given Sen. Clinton's remarks today concerning Sen. Obama's choice of pastor, it's about time the cult of religious fanatics to which she belongs got wider notice. In September of last year Mother Jones ran this piece about The Fellowship, a group to which she belongs and which includes right wing fanatics such as former Sen. Santorum and noted bigot Sen Brownback.

It's time she stepped down. She has done nothing but embarrass herself and the Democratic Party, driving deep divisions that may cost the election and result in a disaster unlike we have yet to imagine.

The ruling class, having profited hugely from their puppet, the current President, has totally bought off Sen. McCain. He wants to cut their taxes further, continue their war, continue policies that will never reverse climate change and leave us with even less health care then before.

Sen. Clinton is part of the same crowd. She is not to be believed. Use the word, "dissemble " or "disingenuous," if you will, but let's call it what it really is. She's a liar, most recently about her trip to Bosnia.

Read that Mother Jones article carefully and then send it out to all your friends, especially the Clinton supporters. It's shocking. She has no right to criticize Obama, her fellow cultists have done more damage to this country than any lone African-American preacher could ever dream of, even if he wanted to.

She is not a progressive, she isn't even a liberal. She's more of the same, and prays alongside religious lunatics.

Sen. Obama doesn't have to project what it would be like to run against a Republican, he's running against one from his own party.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

LivePDX.com music blog for this week

2008-03-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

While wondering, after interviewing Bettye LaVette, why I am still such a fool when a woman calls me, "baby," but knowing that all men are:

Noah Mickens, who I have called "the impresario of the avant-garde" in Portland is out of a job again. Rotture/Branx/Hippodrome owner Mike Wolfson relieved Noah of his duties, or as Noah put it, "fired me." You may remember that Noah was at Someday Lounge at its birth, got it off the ground, booked all the acts and was the face of the place. He got the gate there, too.

Not sure what the deal was at Rotture, but he did wonders for it. I know that Noah will find another way to bring the most exciting and dangerous music, musicians and performers to whatever place he ends up next.

When I ran into him at the anti-war march last Saturday he was a part of the troupe surrounding Tuvan throat singer Soriah, who performed a ritual of some sort. I don't pretend or need to understand it in order to appreciate it. He says he'll still be putting on shows, but not at one venue only. Good idea.

Rachel Taylor Brown's CD release gig on Saturday, April 5 at Mississippi Studios
should be quite an event. The album half hours with the lower creatures is spectacular, crossing genres and my brain up.

She wrote me, "i'm delighted to say that in addition to your kind spinning on kmhd,
"creatures" has been getting radio play [truthfully, this whole process makes me very nervous and near-vomitous, but so far, so good (knock on wood)]
"the band and i are covering all the very many cruel parts from the cd by ourselves. the show should be interesting and exciting because someone's head will explode...
p.s...fyi, i started recording the next album (saints & superheroes) a coupla weeks ago."

Of course, I'll be on the air and will miss the gig. I miss a lot of gigs.

Dropped into Falcon Recording Studios
other day while Terry Robb was putting the finishing producer touches on Karen Rohr's new album. It's not blues, or Americana. It's not singer-songwriter either. It rocks with surprisingly disarming and very direct personal lyrics. The twist to the whole thing is that there are no guitars and what sounds like a guitar (and will fool you) is her electric mandolin. It works. She is the daughter of George Kindler who played with David Bromberg and Steve Kindler who played with John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer and Jeff Beck is her uncle.

Sixteen year-old phenom Mac Potts just got a new nine-foot Baldwin grand and a Hammond and has begun recording a new album. He is playing with special guests at Hudson's on Sunday nights. Reggie Houston sat in last Sunday.

I want to check out Polka Madre y la Comezon on Tuesday, March 25 at Someday Lounge. They tell me the band "has surprised its audiences with the originality of its compositions and the energy, sarcasm and humor of its live shows. After two and a half years since its conception in Mexico City, Polka Madres principle influences lie in Jewish music and the old sounds of Gypsy and Eastern European cultures."

I'm there.

Jazz trumpeter Ingrid JensenT Jensen was in town this week meeting with trumpet manufacturing maestro David Monette to get the mouthpiece just right before she takes possession of one of his musical works of art. People come from all over the world to Monette's. She played at Jimmy Mak's
Jimmy Mak's on Monday with drummer Alan Jones.

One odd thing I found out about Bettye LaVette during my radio interview with her last week was that before they got married she told her latest husband that she does not sing around the house. He didn't believe her but he does now. I asked her how she persevered all these years, just coming into her own after over forty years singing. She said, "I quit every day."

Look for the Tugboat brewpub to become more active booking some of the best jazz musicians in town after the fall of Jax and Blue Monk.

Obama's Speech On Race Today

2008-03-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

Debunking That Fraudulent Obama Email You Got

2008-03-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the best point-by-poing debunking of that fraudulent email on Obama that has been circulating for months.

Find it here.

Clinton Nomination Nightmare

2008-03-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

I had a nightmare about what happens if Clinton gets the nomination.

I can recall all of it.

On election day, the Hillary/Bill haters on the right and in the middle don't vote for her.

The black folks who have watched Barack Obama viciously attacked? They stay home.

The progressives, having watched Clinton win using Republican tactics and not forgiving her for voting for the war and destroying the hope Obama brought? They stay home.

Having been disgusted by every aspect of Clinton's campaign, I stay home.

The result? Hillary Clinton gets John McCain elected President.

Another generation of young voters has had it proven to them that participation is futile.

McCain inherits the mess that Bush has wrought, takes the blame and is too old to run again.

Clinton becomes a discredited, vilified and despised creature.

Obama is elected President in 2012 but it's too late.

In the meantime, millions of us suffer the economic ruin Bush has wrought and McCain has continued. Remember, he doesn't really understand economics, so the same Republican leadership continues to rule.

Global warming goes unchecked. Millions suffer from lack of health care.

My nightmare might have been from something I ate but I'm glad my Oregon Primary in May will count.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Maybe My Problem is that Somebody Done Hoodooed Me

2008-03-12T16:21:00.001-07:00

This week's LivePDX.com Music Blog.

2008-03-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Tue, 03/11
by Tom D'Antoni

While realizing Obama can't use "Yes We Can" as his campaign song, no matter how perfect it is, because nobody under 35 knows it....

March Fourth's fifth anniversary at the Crystal Ballroom was packed and rocking. They deserve every good thing they get. They're not sitting still. More members are writing new tunes, many with international flavor. It's always a pleasure to hear them start up "Space Hole," one of their (my) long-time favorites. As usual, spectacular costume/outfits on the women and NW drab on the men.

Picture this: At the Knitting Factory in L.A. last week, the Blind Boys of Alabama, touring behind their album Down In New Orleans, were joined onstage by PRINCE! Reports are he played guitar and keys as Jimmy Carter (their singer, not the ex-President) took his "blind walk of faith" thru the crowd.

I sat with Spanish guitarist Pere Soto and saxophonist David Valdez between sets in Pine Street Bistro the other night. I'm doing a preview for the Oregonian of their March 29th gig at Jimmy Mak's, so I better shut up. Their album Oasis comes out at the end of the month. Soto is getting a lot of work during his stay in Portland. He's playing with tap dancing saxophonist Shoehorn at Jimmy Mak's this Friday, March 14. His band is called Shoehorn's Hatband Circtet and includes Skip Elliott Bowman on bass, Dan Gaynor on piano, Ward Griffiths on drums.

Portland's Tuvan throat-singer, cab driver and avant-good guy Soriah will be a part of the anti-war protest on Saturday in the North Park Blocks. I'd pay to see him in that. One look at this and you'll know why:

What band doesn't play publicly nearly enough? John Nastos' E4. John is on reeds, Drew Shoals on drums, Damien Erskine on bass and Clay Giberson on keys. There are so many young jazz ensembles around town right now and so few venues. Every time I see Drew, I wonder if it will be the last time before he leaves town for fame and fortune. Not that I've heard anything about his leaving. It's just that this town may not be able to hold him. He's that good. Of course, Nastos and many others have come back to Portland after being in New York, not because they failed, but just because they'd rather live here.

Pianist Ben Darwish was in the house and sat in.

Very happy to see Nann Alleman surfacing this Saturday night at the Mission Theater in Miz Kitty's Parlouras part of Spigot with harmonica player David Lipkind (who claims to have jammed with William Burroughs). For some reason, all of the people who hold the indie boys up as poets seem to ignore Nann, who can write wrings awround those guys. For my money, nobody writes better lyrics in this town. She always astonishes.

The Barons In Trees CD release and "Arts Collaboration" gig at Someday Lounge on Wednesday, March 19, will include these activities: "an artist paints, a clown with antics, dancers imbue physical texture, all the while the collaborations are being captured in video and projected real time." The Barons are all over the place in absorbing influences. Vagabond Opera and March Fourth's Lesley Kernochan will be there, too.

Now I can't get Yes We Can (the song) out of my head.

Sun Ra Speaks

2008-03-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

"Some call me Mr. Ra. Others call me Mr. Ree. You can call me Mister Mystery."

part1

part 2

Note to Network News Operations: There's War In South America

2008-03-07T14:56:00.001-08:00

Here are a couple of headlines you might have missed.

U.S. Bombs Somalia

War Breaking Out In South America

You may have also missed seeing much about them on TV news. That's because the networks and news channels know nothing but the Presidential election. Why? Because there's conflict…drama…name calling…and it's like a movie that has us guessing at the thrilling conclusion.

There's no conflict in war. No drama. Is that right? They don't speak English and there are no stars, no people who are household names, even Chavez.

They can't look knowledgeable, can't primp, give good lines and smirk about war.

While Chris Matthews gets wood over fat Pennsylvania politicians in pissing contests, other things are happening in the world.

Did you know that Bush is trying to get the U.S. involved in another oil war? Greg Palast does and wrote about it here.

And Somalia? Where's that again?

I haven't seen anything about these issues on THIS site, either.

Even Olbermann could take time off from the endless Bill O'Reilly jabs (that shark has jumped over itself) and do a story about what's going on in South America.

I don't pretend to know much about it. There hasn't been very much on it in the news lately.

I'm writing this at 2:30pm on the West Coast. On the East Coast I guess the news has ended till Monday. Oh wait, the Wyoming Primary is getting an hour on each network.

Is 2 minutes 30 seconds on a new oil war in South America too much to ask?

first appeared on huffingtonpost.com

Watch this and then ImagineJohn McSame as President

2008-03-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

What an asshole:

And Them Too

2008-03-07T00:50:00.001-08:00

I Need Some Fiyo

2008-03-07T00:45:00.000-08:00

I Need To Go To New Orleans REAL BAD

2008-03-07T00:28:00.001-08:00

Bill Bradley tells it

2008-03-07T00:25:00.001-08:00

New LivePDX Music Blog

2008-03-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

Patrick Goes on the Lamb in NOLA, Those Wacky Russians at it Again, Indie Rears Its Defiant Head

While trying to find a way to eliminate the phrase "going forward" from the English language:

Saxophonist/vocalist/band leader Patrick Lamb is taking some of the NW Ray Charles Tribute band to New Orleans for a show at Harrah's March 13-15. The Lamb camp reports, "We are taking 8 vocalists: Olivia Warfield, Duffy Bishop, Andy Stokes, Lee Garrett, Keeshawn Jones and Gretchen Mitchell. Some can't make it. i.e. Norman Sylvester who had hip surgery and we are using a whole band from New Orleans. Patrick is going there to play with Bobby Caldwell. We sent charts a month ago, so they can prep for the show."

It's a damned shame that Harrah's wouldn't increase the budget so that Reggie Houston could go back to his birthplace and play on this gig. He'll be doing some playing at this year's Jazzfest.

They're working to get the whole band booked with three symphonies (not all at the same time).

Jimmy Mak's was sold out for the Lamb/Jeff Lorber show recently. They had Damien Erskine on bass, Reinhold Melz on drums and Marlon McClain on guitar. You can watch some of it below:

Lamb has a lot more videos up here.
File this away: How's this for an inspired collaboration? It hasn't happened yet, but Mary Flower wants Courtney von Drehle to play accordion on the new album she's recording in June.

Sixteen year old keyboardist/saxophonist/anythingelsehepicksup Mac Potts is in a new band Roots Revival Blues. It's another one of those "kid" blues bands that have come out of nowhere and seem to be everywhere. The others in the band are TJ Moor (guitar, vocals, harmonica) and Taylor Eaton (bass) Sam Low (drums).

The total age of the band (5 of them) is 59.

Last year when Mac went to Jazzfest in New Orleans, he got to jam with Harry Conick, Jr. Wonder who he'll sit in with this year?

The ever controversial Portland band The Slants. The headline of their media release reads, "THE SLANTS REJECT CHANCE AT MILLION DOLLAR RECORDING CONTRACT; TURN DOWN BODOG BATTLE-OF-THE-BANDS AND REALITY TV SHOW, REFUSING TO SIGN CONTRACT." (caps theirs)

They said it was too binding. And non-negotiable. Bass player Simon Young is quoted saying, "It is my hope that there aren't band desperate for the publicity that they are willing to gamble their futures for a chance to win a million dollar recording contract. If anyone continues, they better have a pretty good lawyer and a whole lot of luck. We've enjoyed the ride and meeting new bands, but as soon as I saw that contract it was like red flags all over. We're done."
They're still touring with their current album "Slanted Eyes, Slanted Hearts."

Those wild Russians are up to it again. Their current excuse to party and get you drunk is as follows:

"Each year on March 8th, millions of women and men celebrate International Women's Day all around the world (from Alaska to Zambia). It is an official holiday in many countries including Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia and Vietnam. Traditionally it is a holiday of men (and sometimes women) honoring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers, small gifts and extra attention. The time has come to start celebrating it in the best city to live and party in - Portland, Oregon!
So we decided to start the tradition by throwing a Grand Ball in honor of all our favorite women. For that we got the Fez Ballroom to open it's doors on March 8, Saturday at 9 pm for the Ball.

There will be fresh spring flowers for every girl, love songs from different countries, dances, prizes and surprises. For this wonderful occasion the performers are preparing a very special program. Don't miss Chervona, the local Russian gypsy street band, they've promised to steal your heart with their brand new program "Chervona Amore".

I love those guys.

Tom to Hillary, Shut the Fuck Up

2008-03-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

It may be true that an untidy cat box could beat sad sack John McCain this year.

But.

Senator Clinton, please shut up.

Every charge you angrily hurl at Barack Obama gives the Republicans a talking point.

On yesterday's Sixty Minutes, you crossed an unforgivable line:

"You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?" Steve Kroft asked her.

"Of course not. I mean, that, you know, there is no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that," she replied.

"You said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not…a Muslim. You don't believe that he's…," Kroft said.

"No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know," she said.

As far as I KNOW? What if the situation was reversed?

"Sen Obama, What about those smears that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian who likes to skinny dip with her Iranian `assistant...' and 'gal pal.' What do you think about those rumors?"

"She is a heterosexual happily married to former President Bill Clinton, as far as I know," Obama responds.

Who are you, Senator Clinton?

You are doing exactly what the Republicans do when they campaign.

I'm Changing My Middle Name

2008-02-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

My middle name is "Vincent." On Monday morning I'm going to go to city hall and have it changed to "William" or "John" or something less ethnic.

See, I may run for office and I would hate to have my opponent say my middle name over and over and over. I mean, I've never been a member of an organized crime family (that I know of). Really.

Just think how bad for me it would be if voters got the impression I was just like Vincent "Chin" Gigante, or mistake me for him, even though he's dead.

(I wonder if Bill Cunningham would have used "Chin" to imply that the boss was a Chinese Communist?)

Suppose they thought I was like Vinnie "Big Pussy" Ponpensiero and wanted to dump my lifeless body in the Atlantic Ocean?

On the other hand, my middle name could get me votes. There are seven towns named Vincent (Alabama, Minnesota, Pennsylvania--East and West Vincent, Louisiana—Port Vincent, and Minnesota—St. Vincent.

I wouldn't want people to get the impression that I'm Catholic, either. Since the Catholic Church has been complicit in war, conquest, support of Benito Musselini, and pedophilia. There are seven Saints named Vincent. I don't have to name them, do I? You can name them just as easily as Presidents of the United States #20 thru #29, right?

No, siree, I'm dumping my middle name. Nobody will ever guess that I'm Italian just by looking at the rest of my name "Tom D'Antoni."

Forward this to Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati. I don't want him coming after me too. He looks deranged and dangerous.

Note to Mike D'Antoni, coach of the Phoenix Suns: listen buddy, I don't know what your middle name is, but you had better change it quick.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Latest LivePDX Music Blog

2008-02-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

With The Dells' "Stay In My Corner" playing in my head....

The best moment of the Oscars evening came when the crowd at the Mission Theater booed and hissed each and every song from Enchanted as it was performed. The free admission, seeing the ceremonies on the big theater screen and the communal drinking/watching experience drew a nice crowd. There may have been differences of opinion on who should have won what, but nobody disagreed that the songs from Enchanted were about as bad as Hollywood ever gets.

FYI…That was Kristin Chenoweth who sang the dreadful "That's How You Know." Even worse was "So Close" sung by the instantly despised Jon McLaughlin. Look for that song to begin a run at "first dances" at dismal wedding receptions all over America.

Not that the drippy song from Once was much better, or the Gospel knock-off either.

How big has March Fourth Marching Band gotten? Big enough to stretch their Fifth Anniversary celebration to three days! It starts Sunday, March 2 with an all-ages show, continues the following night as they open for the wild Balkan Beat Box band and then winds up with a huge show on (yes) March 4th. All shows at the Crystal Ballroom.

They're still working on a new studio album. The wonderful live album that they brought out in time for their national fall tour captures them just fine. It was recorded all over…here, Austin and other points of the globe.

I wish I had gotten to ride on their new bus on that tour. I was on their old bus and it was…memorable, shall we say.

Bye-bye guitarist Dan Balmer. He's not leaving town for good, just for two months on the road with Diane Schur.

Four Portland-based blues musicians are nominated for what they used to call the W.C. Handy Awards, but since W.C.'s family decided they wanted a taste of the dough are now called the National Blues Music Awards. The nominees are: Insomniacs (Best New Artist Debut), Fiona Boyes (Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year), Mary Flower (Best Acoustic Artist) and Franck Goldwasser (aka Paris Slim).

All of them are appearing on Saturday, March 1 at Jimmy Mak's.

In my rant last week about the lack of full-time jazz clubs, I overlooked, as many do, the Tugboat downtown. You won't find a music schedule on their site, but it's worth the effort to find the place right off Broadway downtown (across the alley from what used to be the Church of Elvis). Sometimes you can just walk in and find Glen Moore playing solo. Saxophonist David Valdez plays there sometimes. It has the feel of a beatnik joint. I've actually overheard intellectual conversations going on. Not that I was a part of one.

Artist-Musician Ron Rogers will be at Cannibals art gallery (518 NW 21st Ave) on Thursday night, Feb 28, as part of their one year anniversary.

He tells me "I will be showing my coffins and paintings along with my friends Kitty O'Keefe and Brian Belfast. Kitty does VouDon Art (that's VooDoo for you non-HooDoos). This includes masks, walking sticks and great VooDoo Dolls made from all kinds of materials. Brian does wonderful photography, photographs taken through liquids, very different and striking."

I have one of Ron's "coffins" (James Booker) hanging in my living room.

Then Saturday and Sunday, March 1& 2, Ron will be participating in the SE Area Art Walk. At 1:00pm he'll be reading excerpts from his 1979 "underground classic" (he says) The Story of Sand and "my as yet unpublished autobiography Cranium Drip: The Real Story of Ron Rogers and His Struggle For Artistic Freedom in Today's Mundane, Bar-Ditch World." He promises "Strip Karaoke" on Sunday morning.

I'm extending my KMHD radio show till 2:00am every Saturday night starting this weekend.

Obama Symbolizes America

2008-02-26T13:09:00.001-08:00

Obama, the transcendent symbol, is more important than Obama the progressive politician.

Obama may look black, may self-identify black because of his features, but he is truly an African-American. Anyone, including other blacks, who call him black, well they're just missing the point. He is a mixed-race American. He loves his white family. He loves his black family. It shows.

White folks sense this. Black folks take comfort in this, no matter how they might appear on the surface.

His demeanor is mixed. His vocabulary is mixed. He is a part of us, one of us all, and therefore the perfect person to unite those of us who long for a just and equal society.

The haters are out with their knives. We will beat them back this time. They must not be allowed to steal America from us again. This time there are too many of us.

Hillary Clinton must get out of the way of the march of history.

I don't expect Obama to solve all the problems. I expect him to fail at trying to solve many, even most of them. The forces arrayed against justice and good are mighty. What he will do is to set a new agenda, create a new climate in ways we can't even imagine…and he may not be able to at this point either.

Let's not forget that he is both a lawyer and a politician, that's two strikes against him in my book. But I look around at some of the politicians from here in Oregon and I think, well…things are possible.

Things have been impossible under the Republicans.

I'll feel much better when the "bad Hillary" is beating up on Republicans in a few weeks.

I'm not young and I'm not idealistic, but I know hope when I see it.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Two More on Clinton by Nick Tosches

2008-02-20T14:39:00.000-08:00

BARACK OBAMA - 3

by Nick Tosches

It's like the old song: "Three times a fool, but I ain't gonna be no more."

Do you realize that, as a former Democratic president, Bill Clinton qualifies as a "superdelegate" in the underhanded Democratic nominating process?

Do you realize that, as a former president and the spouse of a former president, Bill and Hillary Clinton are entitled to Secret Service protection wherever they go, and that we, as tax-payers, are picking up the tab for Secret Service agent-gofers to accompany both Bill and Hillary Clinton on their campaign?

Have you paused to wonder why Hillary Clinton, who is estimated to have a personal net worth in excess of $34-million, refuses to make public her tax returns, as Barack Obama did last year?

Do you think Jimmy Hoffa would have taken her seriously as a champion of blue-collar workers, as she pretends to be?

Have you paused to realize that, as nothing more than the continuation of the political establishment of this country's government, she could ruin it for any good and worthy woman candidate for the presidency in the future?

Have we forgotten, regardless of all her talk about health care, that when she was the head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform in 1993-94, she folded to the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, from whom she continues to accept money?

Are you aware that the United States ranks 42nd in education, well below countries such as India, the Czech Republic, Tunisia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Lithuania, Indonesia, Croatia, Qatar, (get this one) Slovenia, and thirty other countries? How can we consider entrusting a stupid, semi-literate, overgrown spoiled brat with improving this deplorable and dangerous state of education?

She is so out of touch with young people that she believes her daughter, Chelsea, will appeal to them where she herself has failed. Don't allow yourself, regardless of age, color, or sex, to be conned, suckered, swindled, used, or in any way fooled by Hillary Clinton's conniving and dishonest masquerade.

She's the worst of a bad lot, and her daughter should go out and get a job: a real one. Right now, she pulls down six figures "working" in an "undisclosed capacity" for a hedge fund whose founder is a contributor to mommy's campaign.

BARACK OBAMA - 4
by Nick Tosches

I want to thank the Teamsters who were moved to response to the question I posed in my previous posting: "Do you think Jimmy Hoffa would have taken her [Hillary Clinton] seriously as a champion of blue-collar workers, as she pretends to be?"
I am happy to hear that the Teamsters today have announced their official endorsement of Obama.

I am also happy to hear of those in Ironworkers Local 40, New York, who have seen through Clinton and decided to go with Obama.

I hope that the people of Ohio and Texas do not fall for Hillary Rodham Clinton's embarrassing and fraudulent displays of disingenuous nonsense.

When she arrogantly felt that a state's votes would be hers, or that a state's votes were inconsequential to her, she sent her privileged daughter or her bulb-nosed buffoon husband to represent her to the public. That's how much she "cares" about you. Why not send the family dog? And as soon as the Ohio and Texas primaries are over, she will care the same about those states as well.

She truly cares only for herself and winning at any cost the glory of a presidency to which she feels entitled. The more desperate she gets, the more obvious this becomes. It is good to know that America, with a renewed sense of hope and strength, is proving too smart for her act. This is a return to bedrock democracy, nothing less than a dawning victory of us over them.
__________

P.S.: I should also thank John McCain for publicly proclaiming his own "humility" while that spooky wife of his stood there by him vacantly nodding her vacant head. I never thought dead people could be so stupid or so dangerous until I became aware of John McCain.

from his MySpace blog, used by permission

President Obama, Vice President Webb, Sen Majority Leader Clinton

2008-02-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

All things point to Barack Obama winning the Democratic nomination for President after March 4. Should that happen, the Democrats should do the following:

1. Clinton should concede and allow Obama a clear shot at McCain from then on.
2. Obama should make Sen. James Webb of Virginia his VP, thus taking the military aspect out of the campaign. McCain may have served in Vietnam, but Webb has sons IN IRAQ.
3. The Democrats should make sure that Clinton is elected Majority Leader of the Senate replacing the ineffective Harry Reid.

Imagine what America would be like with Obama as President, Webb as VP, Hillary Clinton as Senate Majority Leader and the subsequent cabinet.

Will all of our problems end? Of course not. Will we have a shot at making America be what it should be? Yes, a shot.

The haters, the polluters, the war mongers and thieves can't be eliminated, but they can be limited.

Just over the hill, there may be sunshine. Not heaven, but enough light to allow us to see our better selves.

appears on www.huffingtonpost.com

Latest LivePDX music blog 2/20

2008-02-20T11:29:00.001-08:00

News & Gossip: Jax Junks Jazz as Someday Lounge Adds Jazz Happy Hour

Another jazz club expired, or will in a few weeks. Jax Bar in downtown Portland had a couple of years of music, although it never really felt like a jazz club and had the worst, most out-of-tune piano in town.

It was the home to Mitzi Zilka's weekly Jazz Singer's Showcase, and it's a shame that's going to have to go monthly now. At least she has found a new home for it at Tony Starlight's Supper Club every first Wednesday of the month, starting in March.

Mitzi will feature her own self, Brian Dorsey and Nancy Curtin on Friday, February 22 at the Riverplace Hotel for a special Jazz Singers Revue.

With Blue Monk, LV's and now Jax going down, we're down to one real jazz club, Jimmy Mak's, and if you've noticed they're booking more and more R&B and Soul on the weekends. There has to be somebody in this town besides Jimmy Makarounis with smarts enough to run a jazz club…maybe a combo jazz and blues and soul club. Use it or lose it.

The final show at Jax will feature Pere Soto, the great Spanish guitarist who is in town for a series of performances with saxophonist David Valdez. Soto will be doing a special Lawrence Williams Project gig on March 15, and then that's that for Jax.

Those of you who want to think and drink at the same time will be happy to know that Dusty York's trio is playing every Friday night from 5:00 to 7:00pm at Someday Lounge.... the club's new Jazz Happy Hour.

Somebody I know (not me) went to both Someday and then to Wilf's last Friday and found Dusty's dad Michael playing there. Told me he/she/it/them likes Dusty a lot better. Now, now...

Diatic Records, the label Dusty runs, has just released a wonderful new album by Don Cherry's son David Ornette Cherry, Organic Roots.

Organist Louis Pain reports that the Tribute To Memphis Soul show at Jimmy Mak's was a big success, sold out even. So successful that they're thinking of separate admissions for the two sets next time. It sold out in advance and people had to be turned away.

Re: Portland Jazz Festival: Much negative grumbling about the ticket prices and other things I'm not going to go into here.

The Valentine's Day Vagabond Opera and Portland Cello Project show at the Wonder Ballroom was spectacular, although I did hear a couple of "Eww's" expressed by germ-frightened women when they saw the kissing booth. The evening would have had a better ending if I had not done a face-plant onto a sidewalk at the end of the night. I'm still spending a lot of time applying bandages and wincing.

Dave Van Ronk's Rules of Blues

2008-02-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

From the Dave Van Ronk MySpace page.

1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this morning..."

2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound."

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chompin' on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:
a. Highway
b. Jailhouse
c. An empty bed
d. Bottom of a whiskey glass

11. Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom's
b. Gallery openings
c. Ivy league institutions
d. Golf courses

12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.

13. You have the right to sing the Blues if:
a. You older than dirt
b. You blind
c. You shot a man in Memphis
d. You can't be satisfied

14. You don't have the right to sing the Blues if:
a. You have all your teeth
b. You were once blind but now can see
c. The man in Memphis lived
d. You have a pension fund

15. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

16. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues

17. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. Cheap wine
b. Whiskey or bourbon
c. Muddy water
d. Nasty black coffee

18. The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.

20. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

21. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

22. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")

24. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues.

LivePDX Music Blog for February 12

2008-02-15T03:21:00.000-08:00

By Tom D'Antoni

Rabid fans of Singer/songwriter/pianist Scott Fisher, or of my fabulous work, will remember the story I wrote for livepdxon him a couple of months ago. He was working on some bossa nova tunes for the movie soundtrack of The Last Word" starring Winona Ryder, Wes Bentley and Ray Romano. Well, it premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, as advertised.

It was named to IFC'sTEXT top ten films list but didn't do quite as well as they had hoped. Scott was there and reports that he, "…felt like a little fish in a big pond– but it was great to be associated with a Sundance movie because you get different kind of credentials. It was a very cool experience.”

During one screening he sat in the same row with Sharon Stone. No, I don't know a thing about her sitting position. He said the movie had a “Heavy cast with crazy star power (Tom Arnold, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Stone)…but the movie sucked. That is the danger of huge star power, you get huge expectations that aren’t met.”

He was outfitted by Portlanders "ElizaBeth Rohloff, a Portland fashion designer who created a Beatle-esque felted wool hat and shirts for him. Michael Allen’s Clothier added winter clothes for a “Portland-Goes-To-Sundance” fashion shoot by photographer Kent Derek.TEXT

Btw…Writer Tari Donohue reports that, "Chuck Palahniuk was the Portland star in this year’s Sundance universe, with the film Choke, based on one of his books, being the first sale of this year’s festival, at a cool $5 million."

Expect interesting things from a collaboration just getting started as we speak. Electronics guy Keith Schreiner Auditory Sculpture (Auditory Sculpture) has just begun working with singer/songwriter Stephanie Schneiderman.

Beats on the Park Blocks: Percussionist/producer Karriem RigginsKarriem Riggins (Kanye West, Erykah Badu, Ray Brown, Diana Dral, Talib Kweli will be at Portland State University for a drum clinic on Tuesday, February 19th.

Groove-soulsters Intervisionjust singned with In the Pocket Artists who will book them nationally. Gabe Johnson, the agency owner saw them open for the Nevilles and that was that. Could be a big summer for them.

Remember summer? That's when the sun comes out.

New Orleans griot Brother Askari, who told the story of High John the Conqueror on my radio show a couple of weeks ago is appearing at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center on Saturday, February 16. Very interesting cat. Adrienne Flagg has really put that place on the map since she started booking it. A good move by Arts Commish Sam Adams to make that happen, too.

Btw…I played some awesome drum solos by Baby Dodds behind Brother Askari. Fit better than I ever imagined.

After their gig at the Hippodrome on Saturday, February 16, 3 Leg Torso is off to California for nine gigs. Accordionist Courtney Von Drehle tells me, "I'm really looking forward to playing the Getty Museum. The museum is a refreshing breath of fresh air in such a dense area, The grounds, the architecture, it's all put together with a serene aesthetic. And I hear our show is already sold out (as far as free shows that you have to reserve seats for can be 'sold out')."

I'm doing a live mashup on my radio show Saturday night…probably around 11:30pm.

Who shot the La La? I don't know. I think it was a 44.

Tom D'Antoni is a Portland writer and TV Producer/Reporter. Listen to his show on Saturday nights 10pm to 1am on KMHD 89.1fm and streaming on th web.

Nick Tosches on Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton

2008-02-15T03:20:00.000-08:00

From his blog on his MySpace page:
BARACK OBAMA - 2
by
Nick Tosches

"I will work my heart out for you every single day!" These are the incredible words of Hillary Clinton, who arranges for a cute little Mexican boy in a sombrero to bring her flowers onstage in Texas. What a pitiful and despicable show.

If you ever see a Latino near her multimillion-dollar house in Chappaqua, New York, he'll likely be on his knees in the dirt with a gardening trowel.

You are to her a vote, nothing more. It is not you who matters to her. It is your gullibility that matters to her. Her goal is not to serve you. Her goal is to con you and use you to become president, and that is all. You are to her expendable, a mere means to an end that does not involve you or your concerns or your welfare.

It is becoming apparent that, as they become increasingly exposed to her, working-men, women, and Latinos are growing less receptive to her condescending and fatuous lies. No one with any self-respect or desire to get a better shake in this life should fall for her jive.

I hope that voters in Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin prove themselves to be worldlier and wiser than the yokels who embraced her here in New York. A friend of mine in Texas tells me flat-our: "Barack will take Texas. Just watch." I hope he is right, and I hope the same goes for Ohio and Wisconsin as well.

Barack Obama is the only serious presidential contender in my lifetime who was not born rich, who worked and had it rough, who believes in the value of education, and who knows what life and people are like beneath the closed realm of the stupid, ruinous ruling class, of which the Clintons, like the Bush family, are a part.

All politicians are whores. What we need, for a long-overdue change, is a whore that doesn't rob us into the bargain.

A telling story has been brought to my attention. It comes from Trust Me, a book about Charles Keating and the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s. John McCain was involved with Keating, accepted money and favors from him, then testified against him. Keating called him "a wimp." This says more about McCain than all the self-serving tales of his heroism as a prisoner of war that he so endlessly and shamelessly peddles. His heroism, like Hillary Clinton's concern for you, is a vapid pretense. McCain goes so far as to express admiration for George Bush, who has put this country into an open grave and pissed on it. We know where McCain stands. But be assured that Hillary Clinton would also piss on us just as George Bush did. The only difference would be that her squatting fat ass and her shrewish cackle would be closer to our faces as she did so.

My Latest livepdx.com Music Blog

2008-02-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

While pondering the phrases, "Mighty kootie fiyo on a Mardi Gras day" and "two-way pockeyway"....

The Underwood sisters, Belinda and Melissa, aka Beliss (pictured), have returned from Egypt and report, "We survived the desert rains of Egypt (the most they've had in probably thousands of years)." They have gigs this week: Thursday, Feb 7 at The TeaZone and Camellia Lounge and Friday, Feb 8 at Albina Green.

Bass player/writer and all around smart guy (and my competition at the O) Don Campbell is finally back on the job after a hip replacement. He reports, "The hip is doing great. Been walking 3 - 4 miles a night."

Re: Margaret Slovak …after I had filed this blog for last week. She has a solo tune on the new Thara Memory album Chronicles. Originally she recorded a bunch of solo tunes that he wanted to use as bridges between songs on the album. Years went by. Not long before it came out, he called to get the "mechanicals" (information for copywriting music) on a tune she had never written. He had edited together some of her playing and called it "Margaret's Tune." She thought it was funny that she went to the CD release gig never having heard the tune she wrote. She's happy with it. Laughs about it. That Thara!

It won't be out till spring, but on Rachel Taylor-Brown's new CD Half Hours with the Lower Creatures, she has put it all together…her classical training and performing experience (Cappella Romana), her poetic talents and commercial possibilities. She writes, sings, plays piano and eleven other instruments. It was co-produced and recorded by Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Stephen Malkmus, Sleater-Kinney, Menomena). Remember you heard it here first. At last, she may be the next big thing to come out of Portland. Couldn't happen to a nicer girl, too.

Portland Jazz Festival cancellation: Pianist Fred Hersch has "health-related issues" and won't be performing on February 22 with Nancy King. "Health-related," like "flu-like," is an unfortunate early 21st Century phrase for, "he's ill."

Grammy-nominated singer Kurt Elling and Nancy's longtime collaborator Steve Christofferson will fill in, having just come from performing at Lincoln Center in NYC.

I went with guitarist Terry Robb to the first night of Slim Gaillard's Civilization at the NW Film Center's Reel Film Festival. The festival is over now, but it was awesome. We sat there with our mouths open as two of the four hours of that very strange BBC series on his life proved to me why NWFC's Bill Foster said it was his favorite thing in the festival. Very oddly paced. Included long stretches that didn't seem to have much to do with Slim, but really did. One of those pieces you just have to accept on its own terms.

Anyway, Terry told me he's going to be recording a new Linda Hornbuckle/Janice Scroggins album for his new label PsycheDelta. Now that's exciting.

Re: Portland Music Awards. I am happy to report that I was personally excluded from the media guest list by Craig Marquardo, himself. Now that's a guy I like being on the wrong side of.

There's a big tango festival next Wednesday thru Monday, Feb 13 - 18, called ValenTango XI. They had over 600 people attend last year and invite you to, "Spend an intense/passionate/romantic four days together in 'tango friendly' Portland with friends and your favorite instructors, DJ's, musicians and tango partners learning, dancing, schmoozing, eating, and hanging out at the unique Portland ballrooms, coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants."

For the event, Portland's tango titan Alex Krebs is putting together "Orquesta Tipica" made up of musicians from all over the world.

Saxophonist Reggie Houston and his pal Jim Adair are putting together a production company. Stay tuned for more info.

Tap dancer/saxophonist Shoehorn is debuting his new band "Shoehorn's Hatband," with Skip Elliott Bowman on bass, Dan Gaynor on piano and Ward Griffiths on drums. They will perform material from their upcoming CD, including Shoehorn’s originals plus "overlooked gems from the American and International songbooks." Now that is one solid band. See them on Friday, Feb 8 at LaurelThirst Public House.

And with that, I'm putting on some beads and heading over to Acadia to eat and make silly for Mawdi Graw.

also seen at livpdx.com

Negroponte's Confession Convicts Bush Administration

2008-01-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

"It (waterboarding) wasn't used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even a few years before that," he said. "I get concerned that we're too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago." – John Negroponte, evil-doer.

Waterboarding is "an important tool." – Dick Cheney

"The things that I used to do, Lord I don’t do them no more." – Elmore James, poet

In a court of law, how much weight do you think this statement by the accused would carry, "Your honor, I know I stole that car, and used it to sell heroin, but that was in 2003, your honor. I don't do that no more."

Congress has it wrong. There is a taste for justice in America. American is now the face of evil in the world. The Republicans have crushed every ounce of the humanity, compassion, justice and morality that Americans thought they stood for.

Obama nor anyone else on the Democratic side can bring us together as long as the Republicans carry on as though they've done nothing wrong. The day that a major figure rises in the Republican Party who is sincere about working out America's problems alongside Democrats, any attempt by the Democrats to be "bipartisan" is doomed.

For proof, check the record of the 110th Congress. The Mitch McConnell's and John Boehner's of the world have not moved an inch. What's Obama or anyone else going to do about them? Remember, JFK and his brother may have inspired a generation but they were murdered along with Martin Luther King by people of the same mentality who waterboard, or order waterboarding.

The depth of the evil the Republicans and those who comply with them is staggering and unabated. Let's be clear about that. No need to enumerate their sins here. We know what they are. Congress does too, yet they will not act.

Criminals. Criminal acts deserve criminal penalties. A man goes to jail for years for the crime of smoking crack in a pipe. The Republicans get rich from their crimes. And laugh at people like us.

Congress, where is your sense of justice? Or are you just as complicit, cozy in your little club in Washington.

Americans want justice. We think of ourselves as a just nation. Where is the justice for the criminals of the Bush administration…from the top down.

Yes, you've heard all this before. No, it can't be repeated enough.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Thara Memory's New CD Captures His Mind and His Spirit

2008-01-26T02:56:00.000-08:00

Thara Memory had a trumpet in his left hand. With the other he was gesturing to the musicians gathered around him in the rehearsal hall of the Musicians Union in NE Portland one bleak morning last week.

Janice Scroggins was at the old upright piano. Derek Sims was on trumpet, Renato Caranto was on tenor sax, Stevie Ray Mays played bass and Israel Annoh was on drums…five of the ten musicians he will have in his band at Jimmy Mak’s this Saturday, January 26, for a CD release concert.

Memory, as is his nature, was part conductor, part teacher, both intellectual and street. He traded abuse with Mays, chided Sims for playing too many notes, stopped a tune in the middle to tell Annoh to "swing the hi-hat." Paused to tell them all, "I'm coming back!" pointing out how he is getting a new set of lower teeth, and telling them that he was going to try a new treatment for one of the symptoms of diabetes that has ravaged him.

Yet he was forever Thara: smarter than you, can play better than you, knows everything from Beethoven to James Brown to Clifford Brown and back again. And if you're gonna play in his band, you're going to do it right.

The double CD album, Chronicles, is four years in the making and it is stunning. "The whole album is the adventures in my life," he told me. "To make sure that the beats didn't get lost. Many of them have. I listen for them, but the guys who are making beats now are not even thirty years old yet, they don't have any sense of history."

That's not old-school whining. That's the disturbing word from one still out on the frontiers.

Those beats are jazz, soul and funk. Anybody who has ever heard Thara's bands knows that he can throw down the funk as tough as anyone ever has, fly through hard bop with breathtaking agility, and play smooth soul music tender enough to make you cry.
It's all here.

Included on the album are four parts of a suite, "Alright Here We Go…" They are called "Hungerford H.S. Marching Band" after his high school near Orlando, Florida. That school set Thara on his musical journey.

"It had a very inclusive music program," he remembered. "We did everything. We played jazz in the marching band…concert band music…kept up with the new Ray Charles things, Miles things. It didn’t make any difference to us. We arranged, wrote, sang, danced…whatever was necessary. When I graduated from high school, I had two years of college training under my belt."

Caranto, trombonist Stan Bock, and Thara himself take sparkling solos, particularly Caranto on soprano sax, an instrument on which he's not as well known.

It's tempting to say that this album sums up the life of Thara Memory, given the state of his health. I choose not to think that way. His fire still lights up a room, and it will at Jimmy Mak's.

This was written for livepdx.com and appears there.

Candidates In Pissing Contest as Washington Burns

2008-01-26T02:54:00.000-08:00

This week the U.S. Senate Democrats caved in again….twice. Once on re-authorizing illegal domestic spying by giving immunity to the Telcos' past criminal offenses. Next on the spare change hand-out which patronizes most of America.

That was bad enough. Bad enough to make one lose further faith in the Congressional Democrats who voted with Bush. It another example of the Democrats' litany of "we want to work with the Republicans and stop the partisan bickering," in action. In fact, 99% of the partisan bickering has come from the Republicans.

What's worse is that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were absent from duty while this was going on, missing both votes and engaging in a juvenile pissing contest while campaigning.

Amidst the pissing, they had a few things to say about what they would do if elected. Back when they were running for Senate, they also told voters what they would do. Unfortunately, they did not promise those who voted to elect them to Congress that they would miss two of the most important votes of the year by talking smack at each other while running for President.

The media, needing no excuses to ignore substantive issues, loves a fight. Therefore, the two votes that Clinton and Obama missed were also missed by most of the media, or buried so far down that they bumped up against the day's Brittney Spears incident.

Since they didn't make the votes, they obviously couldn't talk about the issues, thereby ignoring the issues. Vicious cycle isn't it?

All this is supposed to make us have faith that either one of them can bring us change? For a dollar, maybe.

The Dems know they have us progressives by the balls. We have nowhere else to go. We're not going to allow another Republican to be elected, or to steal another election. There's no alternative. And Mayor Billionberg won't get us.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Who is to say that, even with a Democratic President and Congress, what needs to get done WILL get done? I'll believe it when I see it and all I see is the Republican in the White House having his agenda furthered by a Democratic Congress, in the face of his overwhelming unpopularity in America.

To hope that the candidates will stop pissing on each other and begin to deal with their responsibilities as United States Senators and as the future President, is about the same as hoping you'll win PowerBall. And yet we go back and play again and again. That is our strength and our folly.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

How To Read Bill Kristol

2008-01-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

There's one thing you can say about Bill Kristol, he's consistent.

He reminds me of the movie critic on a TV show I used to be on. The rule of thumb was if he liked it, I hated it, and if he hated it, I was first in line the next day to see it.

If I were to read Kristol's pieces in the NYT Op-Ed, that's how I would approach it. I don't ever plan to read one, and that paper has been greatly diminished in my eyes because they hired him, but if you really want to know what's going on, read Kristol and believe the opposite.

He hasn't been right about anything, not ever.

The latest example of what not to believe came when he said on Fox News that Sen. Clinton was faking her emotional moment in New Hampshire. He said it with great conviction. He was so wrong even BRITT HUME disagreed with him.

He says Clinton faked it? She must have been sincere.

Of course, he has been wrong about bigger things, Iraq for instance. Everything he's ever said on Iraq, for instance. There is blood on his hands which he has now wiped off on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.

Meanwhile, if you're ever stuck someplace and you can't avoid Kristol, just use this rule: If Bill Kristol says something, always believe the opposite. You can't go wrong.
Remember, he's the man who said that the Iraq war "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East," and "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."

And Plan 9 From Outer Space is one of the great American films of all time.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

This week's LivePDX.com music blog.

2008-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

News and Gossip: LV's Goes Silent (For Now), Summer Dreams, Potential Awards Train Wreck

While I continue to devour Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, the best book on the history of jazz I've ever read...

The first glimmer of warmth and sun is in. Negotiations are underway for the 2008 Waterfront Blues Festival. They're working on getting the Pine Leaf Boys, the Cajun/Creole band from Southern Louisiana and featuring the amazing fiddler/accordionist Cedric Watson. Other New Orleans bands in the plans are a Stanton Moore trio and Alan Toussaint, who is in San Francisco on July 6. Money might keep him away. He's expensive. Nobody's confirmed. We can hope.

I have been lobbying/begging for Bonerama, Washboard Chaz and any band with Skerik in it.

Willamette Week broke the original story, but the Craig Marquardo saga continues. You may remember him from when he was caught in several lies when he was involved in trying to bring a major league baseball team to Portland. Turns out, lying is a full time business. Read the comments with each of those stories.

He now publishes Music Spectator Magazine and is behind the Portland Music Awards planned for the Roseland on Monday, January 28. Apparently he's up to the same old monkey-business. One broadcaster said, "We…have been in contact with some of the performers and musicians listed on his 'Nominee List,' and they're beginning to drop out like Poll numbers. Let's hope this isn't another of his 'Big Plans.'"

Another music insider told me, "…a lot of the bands who he says are playing never agreed to play." And yet another said, "…he’s way out of touch based on my ‘conversation’ with him — he talked for 25 minutes. I listened."

Also turns out he has started booking music at the Pine Street Bistro (formerly Abu Karim), which has been struggling since it changed hands. Someone who is involved confirmed that, "[The new owner] now has Craig Marquardo doing the booking and promo for him, of all people."

He's on the wrong track and headed for you.

The guitarist I mentioned a few weeks ago who is starting his own label? Terry Robb. The name of the label? PsycheDelta. It will be distributed by Allegro. The diva he's about to sign? Still embargoed. Robb produced John Callahan's album Purple Winos In the Rain. John self-released at first, but now it'll be on Terry's label.

What you learn when you hang around the NW Film Center's Reel Music Festival on opening night: 1) the very well dressed NW Film Center Regional Services Coordinator Thomas Phillipson is a closet accordionist who prefers Western Swing and wouldn't be caught dead playing polka; 2) the two Dylan films reinforced how mean and arrogant he was back then; and 3) people who come to music films and insist on humming along with the tunes should have their own private section. It isn't karaoke, idiots.

Pi-Rem is back open. Two of the owners are gone and the third has returned to his studies in Berkeley, but the show goes on! A new entrance around back replaces the riot-lighting in the old lobby entrance. Don't bother checking online, their site hasn't caught up yet.

The rumor is the sad truth: LV's is silent. Here's what Darrell Grant emailed: "For the moment, it is clear that LV's Uptown, as we knew it, is no more. While I sincerely hope the [new owners] choose to make music a part of the vision for the restaurant, and believe it would be to their benefit to do so, they are (rightly, in my opinion) focused on completing their remodel, and getting the restaurant in shape to promote it to the public and attract patrons. They have left the door open to future discussions on music at the restaurant, (and they kept the stage.)

I also have to take some responsibility in this transition, as it coincides with my desire to take a break from the ongoing weekly responsibilities of booking, administering and promoting a live music venue, which I've been doing for almost three years."

Was that Pink Martini I heard in an American Express TV spot?

Biggest regret of the week: New Orleans Saxophonist Reggie Houston invited me over for his red beans and rice, plus the BCS championship football game on TV, and I couldn't make it!

Mary Flower on my KMHD show Saturday Night!

2008-01-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

Internationally-known guitarist and 2008 Handy Award nominiee Mary Flower will be my studio guest at 10:15pm on KMHD radio 89.1 fm and streaming at www.kmhd.fm. She'll be bringing in a set of music she's been listening to.
She's appearing with Reggie Houston at Mississippi Studios in Portland on Saturday Jan 26.

My livepdx.com Music Blog

2008-01-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

I am writing a weekly music blog on livepdx.com. You can find it here. Here's last week's:

Blotto Barfly Bus on New Year's Eve

Tue, 01/08

by Tom D'Antoni

While sitting in the Pharmacy Café listening to the Meters on WWOZ (that's in New Orleans, y'all)...

Two vivid memories from New Year's Eve on the Barfly Bus: 1) horns blown in my ear, and 2) climbing to the top of Rocky Butte at midnight carrying a bottle of champagne, along with Jen Lane and the rest of the people from the bus, reaching the top and saying, "This is just too f---ing cold, let's go back to the bus and drink."

You get on the bus not knowing where they're taking you. Me and the spousal unit, a couple of friends and about 70 others piled on Jen's bus (one of six).

As far as I can remember, the itinerary went like this:

We departed from the Rialto (where I found out the best and cheapest Greek salad in town had been taken off the menu…along with a lot of other items). The crew on the bus ranged from normal looking folks, all the way to too-much-metal, too-much-ink, too-little-clothes, too-full-of-myself scenesters. Unfortunately, the scene was 1994.

The first stop was Tube, which used to look like something out of 2001(the movie) and now looks more like something from the set of Brazil (the movie), quite ruined, somewhat charmingly so, a 21st Century dive.

Second stop was Jen Lane's "office," Sewickly's Addition. Who didn't know we were going there?

Third stop was the Rumpus Room out past SE 92nd on Division, where there was karaoke and where the drinks really began to take their toll. One guy from the bus got a triple lap dance from three women from the bus. I wanted to sing some James Brown, but the DJ had none. Their loss.

Frigid Rocky Butte was next. It was a good idea, conceptually.

Fifth stop was sloppy. The hats, horns and noise makers were in the hands of the riders by now. It was loud. I think we were at Roscoe's on SE Stark out by 82nd. I do know that one guy fell off a barstool and a girl had to be held up. Things get fuzzy after that. Ok, things were fuzzy already.

Jen dropped us off at Dante's, where they were having a "Karaoke From Hell" marathon. I hiked back to the car, not subjecting my companions to the cold six-block walk.

I probably had a really good time. You'll have to ask somebody who saw me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One more New Year's item: Funny that three of the top music bookers in town were all at the Bingo and Dream Band show at Kennedy School…Jan Haedinger (McMenamins booking agent), Lisa Lepine (Bite of Oregon booking agent) and Alicia Rose (Doug Fir booking agent). Mike McMenamin was there, too.

Speaking of Lisa, her New Year's day party was packed and was subsequently sent into orbit when Chervona, that wacked-out Russian band, showed up and rocked the house (pictured, photo by Jamie Lee Christiana). I'm writing about them in Friday's A&E. Their Old Russian New Year's Eve show is Saturday at The Bitter End.

A few more random notes:

The jazz community is holding its breath, waiting to hear if LV's Uptown has gone the way of the Blue Monk. Apparently the restaurant changed hands, and they may be eliminating the music.

OHM is going back to electronica, and guess who is back on Tuesday nights? Keith Schreiner (Auditory Sculpture), one third of Dahia, who used to own Tuesday nights at OHM. Looks like a solo gig for now. Just don't tell him I called it "electronica."

Jazztronica, of which Keith is also a part, is going to be at Jimmy Mak's twice this week, Tuesday at 6:00pm and Friday at 10:00pm. Good move on JM's part, trying them out late. Keith wrote "…hope to see ya. And yes I will be at Jimmy's and then hi-tail it to the Ohm on Tuesday...double booking nights are oh so fun, jeesh."

This just in: According to an email from an artist who works there and just lost a gig, The Green Room folks told him/her/it that they've lost their lease. Confirmed later.

Clinton/Obama Joint News Conference on Race/Gender

2008-01-14T11:52:00.000-08:00

TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S 9AM ET JOINT NEWS CONFERENCE WITH SENS. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) AND BARAK OBAMA (D-IL)

Sen. Clinton: We have called this joint news conference today because Barak and I want to make something very clear to our fellow Democrats and to all of America.

Sen. Obama: For the past few weeks the two of us have been concerned about the tenor of the campaign. We do not want our supporters or anyone else to mistake what we say.

Sen. Clinton: First of all we are Democrats. Democrats stand for equal rights and justice, for all races, genders, sexual preferences, religious preferences...or no religious preferences. All of the legislation to insure these equal rights has come from Democrats.

Sen. Obama: We do not seek, as the Republicans do, to exploit divisions among people...to stoke latent prejudices and make political gains from them. And so we have come before you today to make a pledge. We don't apologize for criticisms we have made of each other's records or positions.

Sen. Clinton: No, they are an important part of the process of choosing a new President. What we want to make clear is that when we criticize each other, what we say is neither racist nor sexist. Therefore, we pledge here today that for the rest of the campaign neither one of us or our representatives will accuse the other of either racism or sexism.

Sen. Obama: This is new to America...an African-American and a woman, running for the highest office in the land, and against each other. We both acknowledge that there are race and gender tensions in America. We would be silly to say there weren't. But I tell you here today, that I will never play the race card.

Sen. Clinton: And I will never play the gender card. We know that there are some Americans who will never vote for a woman for president.

Sen. Obama: And some who will never vote for an African-American. What is important in this campaign is that we will not make any statements which might be construed to appeal to prejudice. We'll leave those to the Republicans.

Sen. Clinton: Also, we promise that we will not react to any statement by each other and make accusations of veiled racism or sexism.

Sen. Obama: We want our supporters and representatives to know that whatever we say is about what we feel is best for America. We're going to appeal to our natural constituencies, of course, we'd be stupid not to.

Sen. Clinton: But at no time are you or anyone else to construe that what we say has an ounce of prejudice or pandering to race or gender. After the nightmare of the past seven years, we seek to restore respect for ourselves as Americans and for the United States on the planet.

Sen. Obama: Let that moral compass come from us, by example. And with that...

Sen. Clinton and Obama toether: Let the best candidate win!

And then I woke up.

this also appears on huffingtonpost.com

OK, I'm sorry

2008-01-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

I have neglected this blog for a long time.

Don't ask.

Beginning with this week, I'll be active here again. I promise.

Brokaw Should Have Talked To Me

2007-11-12T23:01:00.001-08:00

By Tom D'Antoni

My ex-brother-in-law gave me my first hit of LSD. He drove us toward Western Maryland, I think. I didn't notice the scenery too much because the clouds wouldn't stop changing into figurative sculpture, organizing themselves into moving morphing dancing figures for what seemed like hours.

I don't remember talking to him. I know we ended up at a party, or was it people just hanging out, musicians maybe, in a hippie apartment in the building next door to mine. I brought the clouds in with me, it seemed. They could have had them painted on the walls. There could have been black lights. All I knew was that they were there and rounded out my first psychedelic experience.

That's how I ended up as editor and publisher of Baltimore's underground/hippie paper of record, "HARRY." Yes, all caps, no I don’t have room to tell you why the name.

We printed the going rate of dope and baited the cops and lived what we preached. I spent the summer of 1970 walking around without shoes.

To our everlasting shame, P.J. O'Rourke wrote for the paper.

In July of that year I wrote in the July 17,1970 issue of HARRY:

"Scene: July4. The Lincoln Memorial—it's alabastard columns and its simple dignity—symbolic. It's like the Parthenon, the Coliseum and the Reichstag—symbolic of an empire. Undimmed by human tears but goddamned sooty from the pollution.

Pan back: The army chorus, senators, congressmen, Kate Smith, bob Hope, the army band, 4,000 hard hats, Nixon freaks, flag freaks, God's own prophet—the gospel of America incarnate—Billy Graham, a huge American flag and your mother and father on the steps in front of the memorial. They are singing the Star Spangled Banner, which as you know, is the former national anthem. Some guys somewhere in the back of the memorial are firing a fifty-six gun salute.

Pan back further: Two thousand freaks on the banks of the reflecting pool doing a number of interesting things including: (a) giving the scene in front of them (1) the fist and (2) the finger; and (b) just sitting there saying, "far out, far fucking out!"

It seems we had the smoke-in after all.

Right and Wrong ripped us off and the "movement heavies" couldn't get it together, so we did what we've always done from Woodstock to the last Balto-Cong demonstration in May—we just did it ourselves—TOGETHER.

There was no admission, there were no fences, no speeches, no collections, no march routes and NO fucking marshals.

People started arriving as early as Thursday and the D.C. free community put them up until The Big Day. Some crashed on the grounds of the Washington Monument on Friday night. Unfortunately, they were forced to play a rather unfriendly game of hide and go gas with the local constabulary. I heard they didn't mind too much, though. Matter of fact, some of the people I talked to kind of dug it. Of course, they were stoned when I talked to them.

I arrived at dawn—stoned. There were about three hundred freaks there—including a large contingent of Yippies who were painting people's faces with orange and blue war paint. I got some of the blue but none of the orange.

Everyone was sitting on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument smoking them funny looking cigarettes and puffing on pipes. I joined them. Fast.

Was the dope good? Let me put it this way—I took fifteen pictures before I realized I had no film in my camera. Yeah, it was good dope.

By nine o'clock the crowd numbered around a thousand—all stoned. The Billy Graham Honor America Before It Honors You, Buddy Day ceremonies were getting ready at the Lincoln Memorial so I walked over to the area of the press trailer so I could get press credentials. I was prevented from doing so by a cop.

"I can't even get to the press trailer to see whether I can get credentials?" I said.

"That's right."

"Oh."

I was really stoned.

After an uneventful stroll around the reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial—well, I did rip off an American flag from a vendor and tied it upside down around my arm—I walked back to the Washington Monument grounds and found the number of freaks had almost doubled. Upon visiting the Yippie tent (a large tree) somebody laid a tab of that dynamite white acid on me—FREE. Yippies are like that.

From then on things became a little strange. Let's see—I remember ripping off a vendor for a box of Crackerjacks. I remember that.

Well, I trucked on over the Lincoln Memorial again and found that there were lots of freaks in the reflecting pool. Just then Deliverance Billy and Friends cranked up their Gods and began their show.

There was one disturbance at the Lincoln Memorial end of the reflecting pool when the cops used horses to keep the freaks from storming the ceremonies. Couple of people got kicked in the head by the horses.

I got off.

I'm afraid you're going to have to ask your friends about the details of what happened after that because—well, I know what I saw but it's hard to tell how accurate any of this is..

For instance, I don't think the Lincoln Memorial really turned into the Reichstag. I mean there really weren't any Nazi flags, were there?

As far as I can figure out, there was some head busting and gassing. This may have been caused by thinks like Yippies liberating a giant supermarket opening floodlight, tossing it in the reflecting pool and using it as a raft.

By the way, there was a huge thunderstorm—high winds, lightning, and lots of rain. We caused that. There was so much fucking freak energy that it directed itself upward and the heavens broke loose on Bob Hope's festivities. Well, it's a nice thing to believe, anyway.

One disturbing thing—and I have no logical basis for this statement—it's just a vibe I felt. This is going to be the last D.C. good time demonstration. Don't ask me why.

So it was fun. It was also a microcosm. It was a confrontation on an intellectual level with the empire when we smoked dope at the base of the Washington Monument with a couple hundred cops watching, and later when we skirmished with them.

It was a confrontation on a personal level when we had to deal with the straights who were there personifying our cultural struggle first and our relationship to our families second. It's quite easy to talk about smashing the state, but doing it when you're face to face with the "ordinary" silent majority is another thing altogether.
I wonder—when faced with this kind of confrontation—how many of us would stick our thumbs in our mouths and curl up in a mentally fetal position.

I sure don't have the answer to that."

Looking back is a bitch. I can report, however, that I still write in the same voice, I just spell better due to computers. I smell better, too. Also, that in the midst of all the hippie-cop violence, and tripping my brains out, I managed to find my car and drive back to Baltimore. One wrong turn took me in front of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a mental institution (the one they keep John Hinckley in). I saw what it was and quickly got away from it as fast as I could.

I must say, I always enjoyed my LSD hallucinations, no matter how horrifying. I mean, I knew that the origin was inside my head. I still enjoy the inside of my head from time to time.

I knew I was ok when I spotted Nipper, the big RCA dog, on top of the building at the edge of downtown Baltimore. THAT was NOT a hallucination.

And by the way, I don't regret a thing except my naivety.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Old scores and hurt feelings

2007-10-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

I got this today from Delmark Goldfarb:

Hello Tom:
I respect you integrity a lot, so I have to share this concern with you.
Regarding your piece on the award at the fest . . .
following the first fest, there were NO lawsuits or challenges.
Never any legal action. Ever.
Accusations like that are hard to rise above. And when they are repeated, it gets distorted further.
It's not helpful to have that on the internet. I cannot link to it for any reason.
I'd be happy to clarify it for you, there's plenty of public record.
BUT there was never any lawsuit. Not one.
Your piece states that there were lots of 'em. Quite a difference.
I don't lay out the tale unless someone asks.
Later,
Del

I replied:

I'm sorry the facts are wrong. I didn't make it up. I don't make things up. Why would you even say something like that.
I don't remember exactly who said that to me, it was a couple of people as I remember. Seemed to be common knowledge.
Of course, I don't know if what you're saying is any truer than what I was told. I suspect it is.
I think the recognition you got at this year's Blues Festival says it all.

So there you have it. Nobody reads this blog anyway.

My KMHD Playlist 8-4-07

2007-08-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

10:00 PM Wayne Horvitz Duke Monolgue
10:03 PM Lester Bowie Waterfall When the Spirit Returns
10:08 PM Art Ensemble of Chicago Suite For Lester Tribute To Lester
10:14 PM Anachronic Jazz Band Giant Steps Blues to Bechet
10:20 PM Klezmocracy Reslolution Unrelesed Courtney Von Drehle tune
10:28 PM 3 Leg Torso Divertissments For Performing Bears 3 Leg Torso
10:31 PM Motion Tro Tango Motion Trio
10:34 PM Jamie Stillway Madelein's Sin Mell Of a Hess
10:37 PM Topiary Kings Richard's Garden unreleased
10:40 PM Billy Tipton Saxophone Quartet Fat Bearded Lady Walks the Tightrope Sax House Courtney von Drehle tune
10:44 PM Jimmy T99 Nelson Meet Me With Your Black Dress On
10:50 PM Jimmy T99 Nelson Wee Baby Blues unreleased David Vest, piano
10:55 PM Jimmy T99 Nelson The Devil's Sending Up a Blessing To You

11:02 PM Darrel Grant From "Spirit" CD release concert 12/12/02 Oregon Art Beat Archives
11:34 PM Pink Martini Everywhere Hey Eugene!
11:37 PM John Abercrombie Vingt Six The Third Trio
11:42 PM Solomon Burke Don't Give Up On Me Don't Give Up On Me
11:45 PM Mary Flower Three Sisters' Waltz Instrumental Breakdown
11:49 PM Gabriela Ecos de Allia Atras Viento Rojo Bill Frisell: music Tom D: reading
11:55 PM Anat Fort Morning: Good A Long Story

12:02 AM Keith Jarrett The Entire Koln Concert

Watching My TV Stuff Here

2007-08-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've been putting up here all the stories and ephemera I've recently placed on YouTube. I may continue to do that but not as much. If you'd like to keep current with what I'm putting up you can click on the link in the links section (scroll down down down).
Here it is if you want to bookmark it:
My YouTube Channel

My KMHD Playlist 7-28-07

2007-07-29T22:34:00.001-07:00

And a big thanks to Belinda and Melissa Underwood aka Beliss for driving out to the station and spending time with me on the air!

10:00 PM Wayne Horvitz Duke Monologue
10:03 PM Red Garland Ron Carter Philly Joe Jones Railroad Crossing Crossings
10:08 PM Eberhard Weber Syndrome Stages of a Long Journey Carla Bley tune
10:17 PM Bleliss Baby Cop Beliss
10:22 PM Beliss Goin' Down Beliss
10:35 PM Belinda Underwood Midnight Snatcher Unreleased
10:40 PM Joanna Newsom Three Little Babes The Milk-Eyed Mender Beliss' choice set
10:43 PM The Poppy Family Where Evil Grows A Good Think Lastq same
10:45 PM Bobbie Gentry Refractions An American Quilt samr
10:48 PM Curtis Mayfield The Other Side of Town Curtis samr
10:53 PM Klezmocracy Adventures of a Solioquy unreleased Joe Janiga tune

11:03 PM Reggie Houston From Oregon Art Beat Live at the Candlelight in Portland
11:21 PM Eberhard Weber The Colors of Chloe Stages of a Long Journey
11:30 PM John Abercrombie Number 9 The Third Quartet
11:36 PM Anat Fort Just Now, Var 1 A Long Story
11:40 PM Kurt Elling Where Are You My Love Nightmoves
11:45 PM Stefano Battaglia Canzone di Laura Betti Re: Pasolini
11:49 PM Enrico Rava Todamor The Words and the Days
11:56 PM Dino Saluzzi/Anja Lechner Tango a mi padre Ojos Negros

12:02 AM Herbie Hancock Piano Intro/Maiden Voyage/Nefertiti V.S.O.P Vinyl
12:26 AM Herbie Hancock Toys/You'll Know When You Get There same
12:49 AM Herbie Hancock Hang Up Your Hang Ups same

Even More of My TV Stories

2007-07-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Steve Reich with 3rd Angle Music Ensemble Part 1

Steve Reich with 3rd Angle Music Ensemble Part 2

The Making of Defiant Requiem Part 1

The Making of Defiant Requiem Part 2

Cybele & Boteilus

Ron Rogers

David Friesen

David Delamare

Playlist from my KMHD radio show. 7-14-07

2007-07-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

10:00 PM Wayne Horvitz Duke Monologue
10:03 PM Rahsaan Roland Kirk Bright Moments Bright Moments
10:17 PM Tom Waits & the Kronos Quartet Diamond In Your Mind Healing the Divide
10:22 PM Arto Lindsay Tone Prize
10:27 PM Auditory Sculpture/Keith Schriener eye, ear and nose candy Sessions at East
10:31 PM Tom Waits & the Kronos Quartet Lost In the Harbor Healing the Divide
10:41 PM David Murray Black Saint Quartet Sacred Ground Sacred Ground
10:47 PM John Boutte At the Foot of Canal Street At the Foot of Canal Street
10:54 PM Greg Goebel Moon and Sand/Say Yes Unreleased

11:01 PM Pink Martini Sympatique Art Beat Archives Bite of Oregon
11:07 PM Pink Martini Flying Squirell same same
11:12 PM Pink Martini Hang On Little Tomato same
11:17 PM Charles Mingus Scenes In the City Symposium of Music and Poetry
11:31 PM Glen Moore Bloomination Nude Bass Ascending
11:37 PM Savath & Savalas Era Tu Golden Pollen
11:40 PM Midnight Siren Take a Stand Instead of Sleeping
11:43 PM 3 Leg Torso Danza Lucumi Astor In Paris
11:49 PM Keith Jarrett Trio I Remeber Clifford Still Live
11:56 PM Duoglide Virtual Seduction Song Noir

12:01 AM Gil Evans Orchestra La Nevada/Where Flamingos Fly/Bilbao Song/Stratu Out of the Cool
12:34 AM Gil Evans Orchestra Moon Taj/Pots/Angor Wat/ Into the Hot

Playlist from my Blues Festival radio show. 7-7-07

2007-07-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

As I said on the air, I broke all the rules, inluding my own. Back next week to whatever passes for normal on my show.
I dedicated this show, on the air, to Peter Dammann.

10:01 PM Little Richard Rip It Up The Essential Little Richard
10:03 PM Chris Kenner Land of A Thousand Dances More New Orleans Party Classics
10:06 PM Wild Magnolias Party Life Is A Carnival
10:11 PM The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Ain't Nothing But a Party Medicated Magic
10:18 PM Eddie Bo Hook & Sling The Hook & Slng
10:22 PM Amos Milburn Chicken Shack Boogie Crescent City Gold
10:26 PM Mavis Stapes/Staples Singers Pray On My Child Peace In the Neighborhood
10:30 PM David Vest Try Not To Kill ME Serve Me Right to Shuffle
10:33 PM Charmaine Neville Band with Reggie Houston and Amasa Miller The Right Key But the Wrong Keyhole Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens
10:38 PM John Boutte A Change Is Gonna Come At the Foot of Canal Street
10:46 PM John Lee Hooker One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer Chill Out
10:49 PM Norman Sylvester Hard Times Rose City Blues Festival
10:53 PM Red Hot Blues Singers Flood In the Basement Blues Hot Off the Press
10:56 PM Percy Mayfield Danger Zone Walking On a Tightrope

11:01 PM Allen Toussaint All of It Connected
11:05 PM (Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away Dr. John Desitively Bonneroo
11:07 PM All I Do Every Day The Meters Kickback
11:12 PM John Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen Ain't Nuttin Nice Pin Your Spin
11:16 PM Papa Grows Funk Fish-Eyed Fool Live at the Leaf
11:24 PM Funky Meters Keep On Marching Fiyo at the Fillmore
11:31 PM John Boutte Someone To Watch Over Me At the Foot of Canal St.
11:36 PM Dr. John Since I Fell For You Goin' Back to New Orleans
11:39 PM Johnny Adams Down That Long Lonely Road Louisiana Spice
11:44 PM Irma Thomas Ruler of My Heart Finger Poppn' and Stompin' Feet
11:47 PM Slim Harpo Rainin' In My Heart The Best of Slim Harpo
11:49 PM Allen Toussaint With You In Mind The Allen Toussaint Collection
11:55 PM Alex Spearman Mama Ka Toka Laka Poo Poo Ya New Orleans Popeye Party

12:00 AM Neville Brothers Congo Square/Can't Stop Da Funk/Ball of Confusion Live at Jazzfest 2005
12:30 AM Neville Brothers Big Chief/Tell It Like It Is/Iko Iko/Brother John Live at Jazzfst 2005

2007-07-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

And then it ended. Six days of much more than blues. As Chirs Thomas King likes to say, "I don't give a damn what the purists say, they wouldn't know the blues if it bit em anyway."
Early on, I decided not to write a lot about the music, but just comment once in a while and show you pictures. I'll have some more to say later after I've processed.

The Neville Brothers Close the Festival

2007-07-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

Nuff Said.

Almost Done

2007-07-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not preturbed, really. Ok, some.

The Nevilles had already started at the other end of the Festival. At the A&E stage Janice Scroggins and Louis Pain work out something before Linda Hornbuckle's band started.

And I introduced them.

And the dancing started immediately.

"Voices of the Wetlands" set

2007-07-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

"Voices of the Wetlands" was formed at least a year before faulty construction of the levees caused New Orelans to be destroyed. Their point was that because the wetlands south of the city had been ignored and exploited for profit there was a much greater danger of flooding.
Yeah, I know. Brownie's boss and the feds in general had dropped the ball on this for decades.
Nothing has gotten any better. But voices must still be raised.

Members include, Cyril Neville, Tab Benoit, Anders Osbourne, Jumpin' Johnny Sansone, Wayne Thibodoux and others.

Before "Voice of the Wetlands" set

2007-07-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

New Orleans legends Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians and Cyril Neville.

A gator on the amp.

Paul deLay Tribute

2007-07-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

The last Paul deLay band. They've released a live album, "The Last of the Best." David Vest announced to the crowd that Paul was back on top, that the album had gone to #1 on the Amazon Live Blues Albums list.

Two great piano players backstage after the set: Janice Scroggins and David Vest.

Backstage Before the Paul deLay Tribute

2007-07-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

David Vest and Duffy Bishop.

Peter Dammann joined the schmooze.

D.K. Stewart did too.

This is Jean Kempe-Ware, one of the unsung heroes of the Blues Festival. She is in charge of media relations for the Oregon Food Bank. I've dealt with media relations people for decades and I have to say she is one of the most talented, most thorough, nicest and most patient I've ever met. And she actually loves the music, too!

Gospel Time

2007-07-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Linda Hornbuckle, Janice Scroggins et all inspired those inspirable and musically pleased everyone else.

Sunday 7/8/07---The Final Day!

2007-07-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

At 11:30am, before the gates opened, Gary Houston and Ron Rogers act like they like each other. They actually do.

At noon, I introduced Ocean 503, from Portland.

This is Tim Rutter, manager of the Miller Stage. Both Jim and Bill at the Credit Union stage did fabulous jobs. Never a cross word, always getting things on and off on time...and great guys.

Dick Potts, Mac Potts and Ben Rice were everywhere!

4 p.m.

2007-07-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Reggie Houston and Charmaine Neville renew their collaboration of over 20 years.

...along with Amasa Miller, co-leader of her band, also up from New Orleans for the Festival.

...as Reinhard Melz, the best second-line drummer in town, kicked off on the one and let the boogie do the rest. (James Brown said that.)

After the cruise, this familiar face and ears was by the fountain. He was not invited to participate in the festival, thank God..

3:15 p.m.

2007-07-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

The city gleamed from the stern

...another stern...Fred Stern the rainbow maker.

On the middle deck, one man had on his dancing shoes.

While David Vest and family got ready for Reggie and Charmaine.

2:45 p.m.

2007-07-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

While Charmaine second-lined in her chair.

...and the love of my life, Karen Fox had the sweetest smile.

...and the tuba kept the bottom fat.

Charmaine grabbed a cowbell and joined the guys.

The Saturday Afternoon Cruise

2007-07-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

On the top deck The Dirty Dozen Brass Band to' it up.

E.T. shows off

Charmaine Neville plays air trumpet.

Reggie Houston sat in on "Saints."

David Vest---my Festival highlight

2007-07-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

Boogie woogie grand master David Vest played the most outstanding set of the Festival Friday afternoon. These pics are from his workshop.

Sorry, my camera crapped out just before David took the stage. However....he was behind a big grand piano and played with Peter Dammann, David Kahl and Jeff Minnick of the Paul deLay band. Vest was in Paul's last band for nearly three years. Paul loved David's soul and amazing technique. Also playing on the Miller Stage with David was the Texas Horns (who have been everywhere during the festival).

David played tunes from his own albums and from Last of the Best, the recent and only release by Paul's last band. I've seen David many times and I can truly say I have never seen him play a better set of music than this one. He was in great voice, never missed a step on the piano and played blues, boogie-woogie and rock n' roll with a soulful vengance.

The crowd was up and dancing immediately and never stopped.

He finished with a tune on both The Last of the Best and his current album "Serve Me Right To Shuffle," called "Try Not To Kill Me When You Say Bye-Bye." It has become a rock n roll classic. Paul used to close the set with it, and David left the crowd screaming for more by the time it was over. And yes, he did kick back the piano bench and went wild at the end.
One line in the song got a huge response from the crowd, "Don't ask me where my country went/B.B. King is MY president!!"

Let's hope David starts playing around here a whole lot more!

Not Blues for Kids

2007-07-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

....but blues BY kids! 12 year-old Gunnar Roads tears it up at the A&E stage as part of the New Blues segments of Friday's shows.

He switched to electric guitar later on.

Eugene's Hank Shreve made a splash when he played at Paul deLay's Memorial Concert at the Portland Art Museum and he's working his way up. He's with Gunnar's band currently, among others. Nice way to get seen.