Leonard and Joni, Together Again

Trump in hot water and more hot news, plus cartoons, Springsteen returns to Broadway (with some updates and song changes), and music from Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.

What, Monday already? But away we go. Don’t forget to subscribe, it’s still free.

News & Politics

The Onion: “Conservative Man Tearfully Informs Family Critical Race Theory Has Spread To His Liver.”

Hump day: Yes, there is a camel-wrestling festival in Turkey.

Ya think? Thousands of Prisoners Were Sent Home Because of Covid. They Don’t Want to Go Back.

Trump roast: Prosecutors in New York have given Trump’s attorneys a deadline of this afternoon to make final arguments as to why the Trump Org should not face criminal charges.   Legal experts have said an indictment could bankrupt the company by undermining its relationships with banks and other business partners. 

Red the news today, oh boy: In an average U.S. county that voted for Trump, only 34 percent of people are fully vaccinated, according to New York Times data. In a Biden county the share is 45 percent . “No wonder, then, that the number of new cases keeps falling in Biden counties, while it has begun to rise in Trump counties.”

Better Leave, Hillbilly: Axios reports, "J.D. Vance plans to announce at a factory in Ohio this week that he's seeking the Republican nomination for Senate."

Wolff at the Door: New York has an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s latest book about Trump, for which the ex-president actually sat for an interview.

Oregon crazy: Portland’s temp hit 112 on Sunday shattering high record—set the day before. The British Columbia heat wave shattered Canadian record for highest temperature ever recorded in the country by three degrees.

The FDA’s approval of an Alzheimer’s treatment — the first in two decades — is a scientific and financial mess, Axios' Sam Baker and Bob Herman report. For one thing: evidence that it actually works is very thin.

See Karen Fischer's remarkable story about the Navajo Nation, FM radio, and the hosts who countered Covid misinformation on the airwaves. Plus: Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard.

Car trouble: Axios reveals that Toyota leads all companies, by a wide margin, in donations to nutty GOP election-objectors. Perhaps the auto company will call a new 2022 model “Sedition.”

Keith Olbermann on that shameful weekend Atlantic article: “William Barr is an anti-democracy, pro-dictatorship religious-nut martinet. Why did @TheAtlantic and @jonkarl help him begin the process of whitewashing himself? Barr has earned prison for life. I don’t care what Trump line he wouldn’t cross. He’s slime.”

Shading to the Write: Good friend for over half a century, Crawdaddy colleague for almost all of the 1970s, and teammate on more than one NYC softball club, Peter Knobler, has his first published piece of fiction (it’s baseball-related) at Fortnightly Review now.

Fatal Shooting of 2 Black People Near Boston Is Investigated as a Hate Crime.

A short shot from Harper’s: “In Alabama, after being asked to provide an example of the implementation of critical race theory, a state representative mentioned reading about a government reeducation camp for white men but, when pressed, couldn’t find the article. ‘Must have deleted the link,’ he said.”

Music

Billboard has ranked the 100 greatest “Car Songs” and tramps like us may find plenty to argue with.

Bruce Springsteen returned to Broadway on Saturday night, giving the re-opening of the theater district a Bossy push. And, of course, the question was: Did he update the show and its script, or add any new songs, since 2017-2018 when some of us saw it live or at least on the TV? According to this account, yes, at least in part—there are some new pandemic and DWI lines, and a claim that “I’m frightened for us, I understand those folks out in the street. It’s scary times filled with confusion.” Plus three newly inserted songs, including the topical “41 Shots,” the show closing “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” and a duet with his wife, “Fire” (unfortunately with the great “Brilliant Disguise” deleted). He also dropped “Born to Run” and “Long Walk Home.” On his tequila bust:

“I didn’t wake up one morning, get on my motorcycle and say, ‘I think I’ll drive to jail,'” he said. “And then I had to go to Zoom Court! My case was the United States of America vs. Bruce Springsteen. That’s always comfortable to hear, that the entire nation is aligned against you. ‘You have managed to engage in an act so heinous that it was offended the entire fuckin’ United States! You, my recalcitrant, law-breaking, bridge-and-tunnel friend have drunk two shots of tequila.’ New Jersey, they love me there!”

Film

I noted on Saturday that we’re marking another 50th anniversary, this time Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, which introduced Leonard Cohen’s early songs to a great number of folks. A little after that, Crawdaddy founder Paul Williams interviewed Leonard, and I edited the piece, including Cohen’s revelations on McCabe:

“I was living in Franklin, in Tennessee, and I’d come into Nashville just to see a movie–we’d been living out in the sticks for a long time. And I saw this movie called Brewster McCloud. Have you seen it? It’s a very, very beautiful and I would say brilliant film. I sat through it twice. Maybe I just hadn’t seen a movie in a long time, but it was really fine.

"’I was in the studio that night, in Nashville, and I got this call from a chap called Robert Altman. And he says, ‘Listen, you know, I love those songs, I’ve built a film around them, can I use them?’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘Well I, I did M*A*S*H, that’s my film.’

"’I said, ‘I know it was enormously successful, but I haven’t seen it. Is there anything else that you’ve done that I might know?’ ‘Well, I did a picture that’s been completely buried, that you wouldn’t know about, it was called Brewster McCloud.’

"’I said, ‘Listen, I just came out of the theatre, I saw it twice, you can have anything of mine you want!’”

Here’s the opening of McCabe with Leonard crooning “The Stranger.”

Song picks

In case you haven’t read or heard enough of Joni’s Blue at the 50th anniversary, here’s something unique: five demos/outtakes, some just surfacing, see below. First, remarkable alternate lyrics to one of her greatest songs “A Case of You” (where she also sounds five years younger), plus “The River” (with French horns), and another alt-take— and then two songs cut from album (as I featured last week), “Urge for Going” and “Hunter.”

“Essential daily newsletter.” — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

“Incisive and enjoyable every day.” — Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic

“Always worth reading.” — Frank Rich, New York magazine, Veep and Succession

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.