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News & Politics
The Onion: “Bernie Madoff Assigned to Cushy Circle of Hell For White-Collar Sinners.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she opposes the new bill proposing a four-seat expansion of the Supreme Court — at least for now. Stephen Colbert responds: “Seems unfair to the rest of us if the Supreme Court is able to make it through quarantine without packing on a few.”
Eight people were shot and killed in a late-night shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, and the shooter has killed himself, police said. Seven other people were injured Thursday night. Witness this morning: “I saw a man, a hooded figured … the man did have an AR in his hand, and he starting shouting and then he started firing.”
Simon & Schuster said late Thursday that it had scrapped plans to distribute a book by one of the Louisville police officers who shot Breonna Taylor during the botched drug raid last year. The book by the officer, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was wounded in the 2020, is being published by Post Hill Press, a Tennessee-based house known for Christian and conservative political books.
Vac at Ya: Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla said on Thursday that a third dose of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine was “likely” to be needed within a year of the initial two-dose inoculation — followed by annual vaccinations.
Bloomberg reports: “Unused Vaccines Are Piling Up Across U.S. as Some Regions Resist.”
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, was permanenttly suspended from Twitter on Thursday. The suspension comes after Project Veritas released spy videos of a CNN tech director criticizing the network while on what he thought were dates with a woman posing as a nurse.
Dr. Ruth—yes, the sex doc is still around—tweeted this message yesterday, which seemed to be an ad for a helpful email app but then turned into, ahem, something else: “Ever notice a typo right after you hit Send? Annoying, isn't it. But nothing compared to the awful feeling that comes after having a man send a shot of sperm into a woman's vagina when he promised to withhold it. Condoms can't prevent typos but they can keep you safe during sex.”
Thursday high point: During a meeting of the House Coronavirus Crisis Subcommittee on Thursday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) had to intervene in a shouting match between Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Dr. Anthony Fauci by telling Jordan to “shut your mouth.”
Better Leave Hillbilly: Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance has told friends and colleagues that he plans to run for Senate in Ohio. Meanwhile, Vance has resigned from the board of a company that uses green technology to mass-produce food in Appalachia, days after sending some controversial tweets, including one hailing Tucker Carlson as heroic.
Headline of the Day, from Wash Post: “Man seeks pals he once persuaded to ship him around the world in a crate.”
Politico: “The U.S. is furiously prodding world leaders to show up to Biden’s climate summit next week with new pledges to fight the rising temperatures threatening the globe, but so far, it seems the only big promises may be coming from the White House.” Meanwhile, Politico’s popular Playbook newsletter cites a Pew poll pegging Biden’s approval rating in terribly divided America at a robust 59% but laughably terms him only “pretty popular.”
Despite dire predictions, the number of suicides fell by 5 percent last year, although the decline appears to have been concentrated among white Americans.
First-strike and We’re Out: One of my pet issues raised as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Adam Smith on Thursday reintroduced legislation to establish that "it is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first."
Here’s fun New Yorker illustrated “How to Play Covid Chess.” See what chess piece you may be.
Axios: “Substack Local will launch with a $1 million initiative to help 30 independent writers build local news publications using Substack's subscription model. Facebook plans to dedicate a large part of its new newsletter publishing platform to supporting independent local journalists covering communities solo, sources tell Axios.”
Books
Unlike Brandi Carlile’s memoir, Richard Thompson’s Beeswing likely will not go #1 or even top 15 (he’s done a full round of interviews and zooms but no Colbert etc.). But Jim Farber has done a great Q & A with him focusing on his Fairport days and how he avoided becoming just another Mayall or Savoy Brown blues guitarist. Here’s an excerpt on Sandy Denny who died at age 31.
No singer has a timbre or character like Sandy’s. What made her so special to you?
First, technically, she was a tremendous singer. She could do that thing that opera singers can do where they can go from almost a whisper to really loud without any difficulty in the whole dynamic. Also, her voice was incredibly expressive. Expression is something some people can learn, but with her it was just there. Then, Sandy was a very emotional human being. That came across when she was singing. She could inhabit a song completely. In many cases, she could make a song so much her own that no one could sing it afterwards. She even did that with some traditional songs, and she certainly did it with her own songs. What’s the point in doing an interpretation of a Sandy Denny song? You’re never going to sound as good.
The portrait you paint of Sandy aligns with other accounts of her as very insecure to the point of self-loathing. Do you have a sense of why she felt that way?
Gosh. I don’t know enough about her early life to know why she was that way. I do know she was very insecure about her appearance. She felt she was overweight and too short. And she’d hang out with taller and more beautiful people, which didn’t help.
Here’s Sandy singing Richard’s haunting (and relevant today) “Genesis Hall,” written at age 19. Genesis Hall was an abandoned hotel in London's Drury Lane, originally the Bell Hotel. It had been occupied by squatters. The London police had evicted the squatters, and eventually caused the building to be razed. Thompson's father was a member of the London police force at the time.
Music
Steven Stills tweeted demo title track of CSNY’s Deja Vu album which is coming in 50th anniversary version in May.
On this day in 1956, Chuck Berry recorded "Roll Over Beethoven" for Chess Records. It’s said that Berry wrote the song in response to his sister Lucy always using the family piano to play classical music when Berry wanted to play pop. Tomorrow here at the newsletter: earn in my usual in-depth weekend post how I became obsessed with Beethoven about 15 years ago. Meanwhile, here’s vintage Chuck, complete with intro and duckwalk.
Arcade Fire has released an epic 45-minute single — in Headspace’s meditation app—as “meditative vibes to help you focus and feel inspired.” Sample here.
Film/TV
Excited to see major doc on my man Louis Armstrong coming from Imagine with Ron Howard exec producing and with full cooperation of the Armstrong Foundation. Will focus on both his music and his words and overlooked political impact.
The film offers a definitive look at the master musician’s life and legacy as a founding father of jazz, the first pop star, and a cultural ambassador of the United States. He was loved by millions worldwide but often mischaracterized for not doing enough to support the Civil Rights Movement. In reality, his fight for social justice was fueled by his celebrity and his willingness to break his silence on issues of segregation and patriotism. With the full support of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, the filmmakers have access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival materials including hundreds of hours of audio recordings, film footage, photographs, personal diaries and a life’s worth of ephemera.
Here King Louis performs his “message” song, “Black and Blue.”
And more great news: I reported hints of this several weeks ago but it’s now official—there will not only be a fifth Call My Agent season from France but a movie as well!
I Wanna Be Re-created: Rolling Stone reports, “Pete Davidson is set to star as Joey Ramone in an upcoming Netflix biopic about the late Ramones legend, I Slept With Joey Ramone. The announcement comes on the 20th anniversary of Ramone’s April 15th, 2001 death. The Saturday Night Live star and his frequent collaborator Jason Orley also penned the treatment for the film — based on the 2010 memoir written by Ramone’s brother Mickey Leigh — with Orley also directing.”
Song Pick of the Day
Dusty Springfield was born on this day in 1939. Here in this fun, and far from lip-synced, clip she has a ball on “Wishin’ and Hopin’” with Motown’s great Martha Reeves.
“Essential daily newsletter.” — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire
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“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.
This has become a daily "must"
I played three Dusty Springfield songs on my radio show this morning. Also, two by Eddie Cochran, who died 61 years ago tomorrow.