Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now Watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE. Sustain this newsletter by orderings one of his books.
A few weeks back, I touted Linda Thompson’s excellent 2024 album “Proxy Music” and posted a song picked by a fair number of writers as one of the best of last year, her gorgeous “John Grant” which was sung by longtime alt-rocker and critical favorite…John Grant. With memorable opening line, “John Grant took my heart to Reykjavik / I hope he takes care of it.” (John has indeed settled in Iceland.)
Well, I wanted to come back and offer a shout out to John myself, so here is perhaps his most famous song, live with backing from Sinead O’Connor and her daughter, “G.M.F.” That stands for “greatest motherfucker,” and he gets to sing the line in this Irish TV appearance whereas it was bleeped out on Letterman. You will dig it and laugh at, as he might say, 65% of it.
And here he is singing “John Grant” with Teddy Thompson at a live rendering of some of Linda’s album.
Meanwhile, Ringo has a new country album (I recall when we did a cover story for Zygote magazine on his first one back in…ouch…1970. And he made his Grand Ol’ Opry debut this past weekend. Here his finale, “A Little Help from My Friends,” and among the friends is the great Molly Tuttle.
How could Trump possibly make “Crash” Patel appear sane? By naming as his #2 ultra-right-wing pod commentator Dan Bongino. Nothing to worry about here. “My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino said in 2018. From Sen. Chris Murphy of CT:
Glad to see growing coverage of outrage at Republican congressmen at town halls. This is how the Tea Party got going and I wonder if the media will lavish on this the same kind of wide attention? Yes, we need this:
Yosemite National Park workers protested the federal firings by hanging an upside-down American flag off the side of iconic El Capitan as a symbol of national distress.
New Weird Order
Elon and Kanye
Loved the video of Ringo! In the 1960s and 70s, I would never have dreamed that one day one of the Beatles would be singing at the Grand Old Opry.
Tragic