Jagger on Pandemic Relief: 'It's Just a Shot Away'

Latest news and political briefs and films, plus Patti Smith last weekend does Dylan, Mick teams up with Dave Grohl, and Rickie Lee Jones meets both sides of Van Morrison.

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News & Politics

The Onion: “CDC Launches Ad Campaign Featuring Racist Mascot in Effort to Get More Conservatives Vaccinated.”

James Corden: “Damn it, Johnson & Johnson—you had one jab.” Jimmy Fallon: “Johnson & Johnson is owned by the same family who owns the New York Jets, so don’t think of this as a pause—think of it more like a 50-year rebuild.”

Axios: Of 20 social-media stories about J&J that drew the most engagement, just two headlines included the context that blood clots were very rare occurrences (and far, far less frequent than for, say, birth control pills). Ezra Klein: “There’s no actual evidence the F.D.A. knows how to manage public psychology correctly on this.”

Today, a House committee votes on whether to create a commission to study reparations for African-Americans.

Capitol Crime: NY Times on (deliberate?) January 6 failures.

The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator.

In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, criticized the way the Capitol Police prepared for and responded to the mob violence on Jan. 6. The report was reviewed by The New York Times and will be the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday. Mr. Bolton found that the agency’s leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment.

The Circle Game Elizabeth Warren on Biden’s announcement pulling all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11: “President Biden recognizes the reality that our continued presence there does not make the U.S. or the world safer. Year after year, military leaders told Congress and the American people that we were finally turning the corner in Afghanistan, but ultimately we were only turning in a vicious circle.”

New Morning Consult poll finds Biden approval at 60%. Recall that Trump’s never once approached 50%. Also finds strong approval for gun control measures.

Hank Azaria apologised this week “to every Indian person” for voicing convenience store owner Apu in The Simpsons.

So John “Daze of Wine and Poses” Boehner ended up voting for Trump anyway in 2020, he told Time yesterday.

Fun little Colbert post-Gaetz bit below on new app “Sexno” to help you (maybe) hide actual sex payments.

Huff Post: “Former Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker announced Monday that he has formed an exploratory committee for a potential 2022 Senate campaign, a major indication that he plans to challenge Sen. Rand Paul (R) next year. Booker, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary contest to face Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell a year ago, is for now the only major Democrat considering a bid against Paul.”

Pal and subscriber Lucian Truscott IV at his own Substack on Tucker Carlson: “He gives new meaning to the words, self-satisfied asshole. That’s a face that never missed a meal, never bounced a check, was never late with the rent, never picked up a fucking check. It’s the face of a putrescent, pusillanimous prick who hasn’t entertained a genuinely new thought in twenty years. The words pig-headed frat-boy don’t do him justice.”

Steve Brodner’s take today at his Substack on Tucker:

My Pillow nutcase Mike Lindell says Costco has stopped selling his products over his voter fraud claims. So I’ll sleep easier tonight.

Jon Stewart went to Capitol Hill yesterday to advocate for military veterans who suffer from diseases stemming from exposure to burn pits and who have been denied government benefits.

Books

Rickie Lee Jones has a new memoir (doesn’t everyone?), Last Chance Texaco—named after a song on her hit debut album—and Rolling Stone carries a lengthy excerpt today, with a focus on her bizarre meet-up with Van “The Man” Morrison, one of her idols. Despite her fandom, she has only covered one Van song in over 30 years, but putting that aside it’s a fun read, as she finds him alternately warm and (living up to his reputation) dickish.

I told Van about the spidery man in the Volkswagen, how he showed up right next to me, out of the blue, on this road with no other cars and no cars allowed. How he said he lived “far, far from here” and grabbed my knee and wouldn’t let me out. How I jumped out right in front of the festival.

“Ah, well. You met a leprechaun.”

“Ah! …Ah? …Oh?”

“You’re lucky you got away.”

A leprechaun! I checked Van’s face to see if he was kidding me.

He was not. He was deadly serious.

Now it all made sense!

So here’s Van himself, with the Chieftains, searching for lucky charms via Irish classic, “Raglan Road.”

Music

Subscriber Robert M. Herzog, author of several books, has sent along a report on a rare pandemic-era performance by Patti Smith at City Winery in NYC last weekend. It’s a revealing read, so enjoy (and perhaps this will be the first of other guest contributions if you want to send any my way, hint, hint). And, below, from fhe show, she covers Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings.”

There comes a certain point in life when the knees ache on a once-easy walk that the biggest wish is for nothing more than for things to be restored to the way they were.  So it was with a mixture of pleasure and relief to hear Patti Smith playing in person at the newly renovated City Winery flagship site on Pier 57 to a reduced but very appreciative audience.  Sometimes people and society need not be defined by growth and progress so much as by capturing and reclaiming elements that make lives warm and worthwhile.

As City Winery’s founder Michael Dorf introduced her he made reference to both how pleased he was to finally be again hosting such event but also that the patrons at the widely space tables shouldn’t get too used to their elbow room as soon he hoped they would be packed together in a club like atmosphere that created one of the best intimate listening rooms in the city.  As Dorf looked over the room one could sense that the empty spaces between the tables were as prominent to his impresario’s eye as the filled tables themselves.

It was billed as an acoustic set but the electrically amped guitars and microphone made familiar the resounding sounds of Ms. Smith’s voice.  As she has aged her voice has become even more extraordinary, with nuances of depth and range that convey the meanings of her ballads and the passions of her anthems. One was reminded of how Frank Sinatra was known so well for his phrasing, and Ms. Smith is now his equal.

There are not too many artists who can weave Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine into their sets but Ms. Smith did so seamlessly, as befits the woman known as the punk rock poet laureate.  Her son was playing guitar and she was occasionally joined by her daughter on piano.  This was a New York family affair and seemed as deeply appreciated by the artists as the audience.  She mentioned that this trio had played to an audience of 67,000 people in Spain, and yet the 100 in front of her seemed if anything more satisfying.

Diners could be seen through the glass wall on the Hudson River facing wall of the main performance space eating outside.  Walking through the venue, people were also tucked into other nooks and crannies, creating the sense of filling whatever space they could with this new found freedom, no longer taken for granted. 

And when she ended the set with her rousing version of “The People Have the Power” one felt that yes, the people’s power had been diminished but was returning.

Film

Kind of a thrill to see a page for acclaimed film I co-produced a few years back posted today on the official Carnegie Hall site, no less. It’s Following the Ninth, on the global/political influence of Beethoven’s 9th symphony and “Ode to Joy,” and it will be streaming from April 24 through the end of May—for free.

Good L.A. Times piece on my major gripe with Nomadland—soft-pedaling harsh conditions for Amazon workers. ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis, author of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, argues the film sidesteps what he says are dehumanizing and potentially injurious working conditions at Amazon: “One could easily come away from the movie having a benign view of the toll Amazon takes on its workers, including the temporary ones.”

Song Pick of the Day

Mick Jagger (remember him?) just dropped a new Stones-ish tune with Dave Grohl, with plenty of comments on his pandemic year. “Trying to write a tune / You better hook me up to Zoom.” Grohl claims: “It’s the song of the summer, without a doubt!!”

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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 about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.