Guns, No Roses, in Colorado

Slaughter, without end. If you want a distraction, we have music from George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Brittany Howard doing Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and a new Trini Lopez doc.

Ten more dead. Here we go again, America.

News & Politics

Just last week: “Can Colorado cities enact their own gun restrictions? A Boulder judge says no.” Reported the Denver Post: “A judge blocked Boulder from enforcing its 2-year-old ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines in the city.” With all the focus on the pandemic and the election, gun issues have gotten less attention but note: Last year, 41,000 people — a record in modern American history — died in shootings.

CNN’s Oliver Darcy in newsletter early this morning: “While CNN and MSNBC aired the press conferences from Boulder police, which any TV news professional with half-decent editorial judgement would do, Fox opted to stick with regular programming from its propagandists. During the first press conference, the network aired Sean Hannity showing footage of Biden stumbling on the stairs of Air Force One last week. And as Boulder police announced that 10 people had lost their lives, Laura Ingraham chatted with Dr. Scott Atlas about ‘THE SOCIAL DISTANCING FARCE. This is not the behavior of a news organization. It's the behavior of a right-wing talk channel.”

Meghan McCain has apologized for her repeated use of the phrase "China virus." The apology came only after John Oliver called her out on Sunday night.

We reported on Twitter’s first ever tweet (by Jack Dorsey, of course) yesterday. Now we learn that the NFT of it has sold for $2.9 million. Imagine if he’d used all 140 characters? Dorsey said he will convert the proceeds to bitcoin and will then donate that to Give Directly’s Africa Response fund.

Trevor Noah on the annual madness in Florida: “There’s no reason that you can’t celebrate spring break and wear a mask. It could be part of the fun. I mean, just think how sexy a wet mask contest could be? I mean, we haven’t seen mouths in a year — what’s under there?”

From The Onion: “Biden Claims It’s Unfair To Attack Administration Over U.S. Borders That Were Created By James K. Polk.” Blasting the critics of surging migrant detentions, President Joe Biden claimed Monday that it was unfair to attack his administration over borders that former President James K. Polk was responsible for creating. “It’s absurd, we just got here, and now we are being blamed for a lack of transparency around migrant detention even though we obviously inherited this border from Polk,” said Biden. “We have a delicate situation here, and we inherited a real mess from the incompetent Polk administration. They started this problem by pushing the border south to the Rio Grande. If you want to blame someone go talk to Winfield Scott and James Buchanan.”

The great Steve Brodner at his Substack newsletter. Steve did a cover for me at E&P about 15 years ago.

Sidney Blumenthal—remember him?—has s left the rough and tumble political arena to become a tweedy Lincoln biographer. Back in the late-1970s he wrote for me at Politicks magazine when he was still in Boston. Now he has written a “one-act play” for National Memo inspired by Trump aides claiming he may sit down with as many as a dozen writers working on biographies of him. So Sid imagines what would happen if one of them was Michael Wolff. So Trump, for example, tells him: “Want to know how merciful I am? Dershowitz wouldn't represent me at the second impeachment and I gave his client a pardon anyway. You think Lincoln would have done that? And how did he end up?”

Jack Shafer: “Why Trump Would Make the Most Boring Social Media Site Ever”

Lengthy Mother Jones interview with ageless Jane Fonda on her climate activism (and arrest record). “You know, you don’t start out with civil disobedience. But when you’ve marched and protested and petitioned and lobbied, and the elected officials haven’t paid enough attention, the next step is civil disobedience. Because, of course, it brings attention to the issue. It raises people’s awareness of the urgency. And I know because I was 82 years old, that if people started seeing Jane Fonda getting arrested with more and more people with her, that a lot of people would start saying, ‘Well, God, if this old lady can do it, why aren’t I out there?’”

Dave Rohde at The New Yorker: “Garland Is the Last, Best Chance to Uncover Trump’s Role on January 6th” The ongoing federal criminal inquiry is the most promising route to the truth.” Cross your fingers (and toes).

“The public understands that, if the same clues existed for someone else, they would be investigated,” Gillers told me. “Garland should approach January 6th with the same vigor that was used with crime bosses, drug traffickers, 9/11, and the Oklahoma City bombing. It should be no-holds-barred. Begin with the insurrectionists themselves and then try to flip them and see if there are ties to the White House.”

Music

On this day in 1956: Elvis released his self-titled first album studio for RCA Victor. RCA inherited five unreleased songs from Sun, which were in more countryish form—including “Blue Moon”—so they boosted the rock impact by adding covers of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman,” Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” (pre-Pat Boone) and, of course, Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” which would kick it off and help drive the album to the top. “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” not pn album, would soon follow. The album spent ten weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop chart, the first rock and roll album to make it to the top and the first million-selling rock album. The immortal cover photo was taken at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Florida, back in 1955. Here’s “Money Honey” from that album. Elvis in early “pelvis” mode.

On this day in 1972: The film of The Concert For Bangladesh—the first benefit concert of this magnitude—and featuring George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ringo, and Eric Clapton, premiered in New York. (Sales of the album and DVD continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.) Here’s George and Eric trading leads while their guitars gently weep. Below that George and Bob work out “If Not for You” in a rehearsal before the show.

Film/TV

Well-known doc filmmaker Charles Ferguson is now suing A&E Networks. His four-hour Watergate film from 2018 (which I’ve seen, quite good) was a hit at festivals and aired on the History Channel—and never heard from again. “Ferguson accuses the company of attempting to delay the documentary until after the 2018 midterm elections because a History Channel executive feared it would offend the White House and Trump supporters.”

Today is the birthday of one of the greatest (and my favorite) directors ever, Akira Kurosawa, who I had the honor of meeting and interviewing—rare for an American—in 1981. This is a suitably stunning analysis of just one part of his genius, filming “movement.”

Reminder: My film, Atomic Cover-up, is having its world premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30 and drawing extraordinary attention. Anyone can watch. Go here to read more, view trailer, buy tix. Reviews and responses collected here.

There’s a new doc on folk-rocker Trini Lopez and it gets a festival debut this week. Among other things, he brought Peter Seeger’s “I’ve Got a Hammer” into the mainstream. Wide range of interviews, from Dave Grohl to Jim Brown. Here’s the trailer….

Now comes word that Netflix will air Dolly Parton: A MusiCares Tribute on April 7. The concert features Willie Nelson, Katy Perry, Leon Bridges, Miley Cyrus — Parton’s goddaughter — Chris Stapleton, and Shawn Mendes.

Song Pick of the Day

Brittany Howard pays tribute to the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe…

Greg Mitchell’s film, Atomic Cover-up, will have its American premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30. Go here to read more, watch trailer, buy tix. He 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. 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 about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.