As We Sail Into the Misfit
Kicking off the week with news and political briefs plus upcoming TV to watch, and music from (great) Flying Burritos to (bad) Van Morrison, plus classic Marvin Gaye and Roy Wood.
Once more into the void….and here’s a link if you missed this past weekend’s special, an exclusive excerpt on Linda Ronstadt finding her voice from the new Ron Brownstein book. Onward, but don’t forget to share, comment, subscribe.
News & Politics
Must-watch tonight: The Crime of the Century, Alex Gibney's two-part probe into the opioid epidemic—and those who promoted it and/or profited off it—premieres on HBO.
A beer and a shot: Buffalo News reports, “Free beer offer results in more vaccinations than all Erie County first-dose clinics last week.”
Dazed or Just Confused? NY Times asks today, “Could Matthew McConaughey Be All Right, All Right, All Right for Texas?” I have to applaud the Times for at least not spelling it (as most do, wrongly) “Alright.” Note: Beto also thinking of running for governor.
Liz and Let Liz: Meanwhile, in an interview yesterday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced that she intends to run for re-election in 2024, ending speculation about a primary between Rep. Ayanna Pressley and former Rep. Joe Kennedy III.
No Homer run? Yes, that was George Stephanopoulos and Nate Silver on The Simpsons last night covering Lisa’s campaign as a “NOT 80-year-old male candidate.”
Gates of Hell? Wall St. Journal scoop yesterday: “Melinda Gates Was Meeting With Divorce Lawyers Since 2019 to End Marriage With Bill Gates: The philanthropist had discussions with lawyers in October 2019 around when the Microsoft co-founder’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein became public.” But her concerns went as far back as 2013. She’s already changed her full name to Melinda French Gates and asked media to refer to her that way.
Kurt response: FBI has belatedly released its file on Kurt Cobain, mainly concerned with claims that he was murdered.
Voting with their feat: NY Times relates, “Florida and Texas became the latest states to move toward limiting voter access after November’s elections, joining Republican-backed measures in Georgia, Montana and Iowa. Other states including Arizona, Michigan and Ohio are considering their own bills….Without an effective legislative or legal strategy, Democrats are applying pressure on their allies in Washington and trying to energize supporters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”
Dr. Jonathan Reiner on CNN Sunday evening: "I have two questions for Tucker Carlson. Number one, have you been vaccinated? And number two, why won't you tell your audience whether you've been vaccinated? I'm tired of his nonsense.…"
From AP this story this morning, not that many Americans care: “153 Palestinians in hospital after Jerusalem holy site clash.” “Israeli police firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets clashed with Palestinian stone-throwers at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site on Monday, the latest in a series of confrontations that is pushing the contested city to the brink of eruption.”
Cool story on the mother of Kerry Candaele whose film on Beethoven I was involved with as co-producer (we also co-authored book on same). His brother is former MLB player Casey Candaele, now a minor league manager. His mother was an all-time great: "Former pro's mom was in a league of her own." Indeed, Kerry and brother Kelly did the original doc, A League of Their Own, later made into the Tom Hanks classic.
Roots of Big Lie: Wild opening of Wash Post story today, “Key elements of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump took shape in an airplane hangar here two years earlier, promoted by a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream.”
How much is your tweet worth? Wash Post lowers expectations for Twitter’s new “Tip Jar.”
Music
Burritos to Go: Pitchfork revisits classic albums regularly and this week they made a fine choice with the first Flying Burrito Brothers lp. Yes, poorly produced and mixed but highly influential in the country-rock sphere and with stunning and fun Gram Parsons-Chris Hillman songs and vocals. Naturally Gram would wreck it all quickly and then his own life. Fun fact in the article: Former anaimator turned ace pedal steel innovator Sneaky Pete Kleinow wrote the original, fairly psychedelic, Gumby theme song. Two of best songs on the album were by Parsons and bass player Chris Etheridge, “Hot Burrito #1” and “Hot Burrito #2” (with the immortal line to a girlfriend, “You better love me / Jesus Christ”).
Here is one of few videos of the band, doing #1 and having fun with Etheridge drumming and drummer Mike Clark on bass—and Hillman nowhere in evidence for some reason.
Linden Arden Stole the Highlights: Van Morrison has a new double-album that is drawing raves, if by raves you mean raving mockery on both sides of the pond. The always cranky Van—one of my true favorites going back to mid-1960s—earned headlines last year when he recorded a song (“No More Lockdown”) urging non-compliance during the pandemic. The new record goes even further in venomous anti-media and conspiracy fringe putdowns that might find favor on the hard-right. One has to wonder: Who is the “they” in “They Own the Media”? He even makes hating Facebook unappealing. A witty review in The Guardian (giving the album one star) included this: “It seems a miracle there aren’t songs called ‘These New Speed Bumps Outside the Primary School Are a Disgrace’ and ‘Have You Seen The Repair Shop? It’s the Only Thing Worth Watching These Days.’”
I admit that when I first read about the album I thought it might be another case of Van producing an intentionally bad release merely to fulfill and get out of a bad recording contract, as he famously did decades ago, in 1968, to exit Bang Records. That album contained brief numbers along the the lines of the “classic” bit of nonsense titled, and concerning, “Ringworm.” (Another title: “Want a Danish?”) Don’t miss it, below, but don’t expect another “T.B. Sheets.”
The great hitmaker Lloyd “Personality” Price has died. His “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” was a key in sparking early rock ‘n roll. I recently wrote about meeting him here when I revived Crawdaddy in early 1971 and we were under the same umbrella for a spell. Cool guy, but about that bullet hole over my desk....
Film/TV
‘Underground’ Film: Series based on the Colson Whitehead book finally coming to Amazon this Friday, here is full story: “How Barry Jenkins and his band of indie filmmakers made television’s most ambitious take on American slavery since Roots.”
Still Goin’ On: CNN aired a special last night on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On for its 50th anniversary. Catch up with it somehow, somewhere. Here’s their article about it. And below, simply one of the greatest songs of our time, “Inner City Blues.”
Sex Lives and Video Tape: Yes, there is a film coming on the infamous Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson sex tape which stars Sebastian Stan and Lily James (as blonde bombshell?), directed by Seth Rogen. You’ve been warned.
Song Picks
One of the wildest cult artists in rock history is Roy Wood. He co-founded The Move with (later much more famous and successful) Jeff Lynne, and when they broke up in the early 1970s, he formed a new group called Wizzard. Heard of them? Probably not. Jeff went on to form the very popular Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and joined the Traveling Wilburys. Meanwhile, Wood trucked along with his usual mix of startling and meh cuts. But here we honor his part in two of the greatest rock ‘n roll tunes ever: lead vocal on Jeff’s “Do Ya” with The Move and then his own Spectorish “See My Baby Jive,” which hit #1 in the UK and in Ireland in 1973 but did zilch in the USA (but clearly inspired ABBA).
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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film, Following the Ninth, about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.