Oscars Leave Many Grouchy

As Dylan put it, the producers should have sent out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille...but at least we have some vintage tunes for you from The Beatles, The Stones, Nick Drake and Nils Lofgren.

And so another week begins after the Oscars’ show, directed (with much hype) by Stephen Soderbergh, delivered no Sex, several Lies, and little Videotape…Enjoy, below, then share, comment, subscribe (it’s still free). Illustration by Steve Brodner imagining Andrew Cuomo as “Mank.”

News and Politics

The Onion: “Person Criticizing Police Has No Idea What It’s Like To Wake Up Every Day And Put Lives In Danger.”

Quote of the Day: CNN’s Jim Acosta calling Tucker Carlson “Fox’s chief white power correspondent.”

Headline of the Day, from Huff Post: “Befuddled Larry Kudlow Rails That Biden Will Force Americans To Guzzle ‘Plant-Based Beer.’”

At least 167 Confederate symbols around the U.S. have been removed or renamed since George Floyd’s death last May, Southern Poverty Law Center reports.

Big moment coming this Wednesday when Biden has a big choice, described by Politico today: 1) whether to include longtime Dem promise to allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, which would save nearly $500 billion over 10 years, and 2) what to do with those savings. Big push now from progressives, and some centrists, to plow that money back into expanding Medicare—while Pelosi and others favor using it for shoring up the ACA. Stay tuned.

The great Rep. Val Demings strongly considering a run to unseat Rubio or DeSantis in the Sometimes State….Big win for moderate Dems this weekend as Troy Carter beat more progressive candidate to fill House seat in Louisiana.

Call it “Tipper” from now on? Twitter is looking at adding a “Tip Jar” to users profiles.

A New Zealand band called Six60 played for 50,000 this weekend in Auckland — the biggest live show in the world since the pandemic hit. New Zealand has all but eradicated the virus, and with 2,600 cases and 26 deaths reported since the start.

Meanwhile, in the USA, NY Times reveals: “More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Charles P. Pierce:

There is nothing new in anti-vaccination movements. There have been backlashes against nearly all breakthroughs in that area of science, beginning with the crude inoculations as a defense against smallpox. In the early 1900s, after many states had passed mandatory vaccination laws, anti-vaccination movements got such statutes repealed in seven states, including California. In 1905, Massachusetts beat back a similar challenge to mandatory vaccination laws passed by many of its cities and towns….

So now we call it “vaccine reluctance,” even though every person refusing to be vaccinated is a danger to public health. There’s more political ideology mixed in with vaccination policy in this country right now than there was in Hungary or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Charles Mahthesian in NY Times: Why Biden’s Armenian Genocide Declaration Really Is a Big Deal. “Every American of Armenian descent — indeed, every Armenian in the global diaspora — lives with the ghosts of the Armenian Genocide. … [W]e have been trapped in a mourning period with no end, a funeral cortege with no destination, so long as the truth of what happened in 1915 was denied and the searing experiences of loved ones went unrecognized.”

Local and national news orgs have demanded the release of body cam footage in the shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. The sheriff says he hopes to get clearance from the judge, "hopefully Monday."

Music

Tonight, folks, up in the sky, it’s here again, or below, “Pink Moon,” from Nick Drake….

Fun fact I (somehow) just learned: Eric Carmen based much of his mega-hit “All By Myself” (later revived by, ugh, Celine Dion) on a Rachmaninoff movement. I presume he guessed rock audiences wouldn’t notice but in any case—he figured it was in the public domain. Wrong. The family of the famed pianist/composer managed to secure co-writing credits which is how it appears today.

On this day in 1964, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five headlined the NME poll winner's concert at Wembley Empire Pool, London, shortly after the British Invasion hit America. Below, the Stones that day play “Not Fade Away” and two more.

And now, same day, five early songs from The Beatles….who are enjoying themselves, and no wonder.

With a high-profile Billie Holiday biopic and doc this year, the immortal “Strange Fruit” rightly drawing extra attention.

Film/TV

After last night’s Oscars show, and another ratings disaster certain, Soderbergh may wish he stayed retired from the movie biz. NY Times’ Mike Hale compared it to the “closing-night banquet of a long, exhausting convention.” This was the NPR Oscars: all earnest talk, no visuals. 3 1/2 hours with almost no images ]yet someone thought it was smart to have a ten-minute song quiz….For the record, Another Round and Octopus Teacher were weak picks—should have been Que Vadis, Aida and Collective respectively. Nomadland much overrated and etc. Unlike most of the know-it-alls complaining about winners and losers in other key categories—I’ve actually seen virtually all of the nominated films, including foreign and docs….So if, for example, you’re still shouting that Chadwick got robbed—but you have not seen The Father—maybe consider calming down or, you know, actually watch the latter. Good flick.

Barry Blitt’s forecast came true in at least one case, more or less:

Johnny “Rotten” Lydon smashed the upcoming Sex Pistols series Pistol—directed by Danny Boyle—with the singer threatening legal action. “I think that’s the most disrespectful shit I’ve ever had to endure,” the singer told The Sunday Times. “I mean, they went to the point to hire an actor [Anson Boon] to play me but what’s the actor working on? Certainly not my character. It can’t go anywhere else [but court].” FX ordered the six-episode series based on Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy.

The doc film that I co-produced on the political impact of Beethoven’s final symphony around the world, Following the Ninth, premiered via Carnegie Hall on Saturday and remains streaming for free until the end of May…

Song Pick of the Day

Long before he became an E Streeter, in a decidedly backup role, Nils Lofgren was thought by some to be the next big thing (and this was before Bruce emerged), when he led Grin. I saw him live back then when he used to bring out a small trampoline-type thing and do a flip while playing guitar. One of his early classics below.

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.Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.