Leaving Here - The Who (live at the BBC)

Not that there weren't a lot of really great British bands to take the credit. The pre-Tommy Who rocked as hard as anybody who ever picked up the tools.

This is the live on the BBC version of a song that the Who recorded a few times. That's LIVE on the radio. People younger than me who are mostly familiar with Who's Next and what came after really don't understand the Who at all. From 1964 to 1968 they were the hardest working band in show business, working all the time, barely breaking even money wise, young, broke and angry. Tommy put them on the map, but if anything, it ruined them.

Well, I just came close to saying something unkind about people who don't love the early Who. So I'll sign off, while the signing off is good.

Pretty Things- Rosalyn(1964)

On the underrated side, I'd say. These guys never got any traction at all.

Music is the toughest business of all. Talent means little. It's all about the management, personalities, and timing. Tough.Business.

The World Has Abandoned Reason

What’s wrong with cooperation? Remember compromise? Were you, or are you still, a fan of consideration? How about reasonableness in general? These things are out of fashion now, and I, for one, think that the world is poorer for it. These are the tools of order in the world, generally to be preferred over the tools of chaos.

Everyday people have discovered numerous excuses to abandon reason. They include guns; religion; immigration; sexual orientation; politics; and race, among others. All of these subjects are in a state of chaos these days, and it is a mischief.

World governments have become just as unreasonable as the people that they control. Our leaders, the world over, have also comprehensively abandoned the tools of order. Given the history of life on earth, it often appears that chaos has always been favored by our rulers. That is simply a shame. The resulting waste has kept us all in a less than perfect state throughout recorded history, and unfortunately seems likely to continue to do so.

The South China Sea

China is currently engaged in competition with several of its South East Asian neighbors for military and economic domination of the South China Sea. (I’m being polite to describe it so.) China has set itself in conflict with the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam over maritime trade routes and resources. So far, China is acting unilaterally and aggressively. The position of the South East Asian countries is hopeless. Why not co-operate and share the resources and enhance mutual security? Why, indeed.

Isn’t it all about money, security, honor, tradition and the rule of law? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to respect the rights of all of the countries involved in each of those categories? Wouldn’t it be to everyone’s advantage to manage the area together? It’s amazing to me that no one seems even to be considering a reasonable approach to security and economic advantage in the area.

TTP, TTIP, TISA

These are the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement. I am not an expert in these treaties; I am more of a semi-casual observer. I’m suspicious, though, like many similarly situated observers, that they share the intention to strengthen the positions of large corporations, and the investor classes, in both the United States and the European Union, with the goal of preserving and enhancing economic hegemony over the entire world. That would specifically be to the disadvantage of similar entities in China, Russia, India and Brazil (and any other up-and-comers). 

As time goes on, these treaties may begin to seem more and more like some kind of economic World War III. Developments are hard to follow, because of the secrecy of the “negotiations.” Even the junior partners to the negotiations are kept in the dark. Secrecy, directed aggression, and unshared advantage are tools of chaos.

The Presidential Primary Election System (!!!)

This is the process by which American political parties choose their candidates for the presidency. It sometimes comes one state at a time, and sometimes several states on the same day. Most importantly, it takes a long time, something like six months. It is unreasonable because it gives greater weight to the choices of early primary states. Iowa and New Hampshire are lovely places, but neither is particularly important in the scheme of things, except at primary time. It is a totally unreasonable system.

This system knocks out candidates that may be more popular with the general population than the early winners. Early losers are gone, and early winners may not go far. Remember President Santorum? Neither do I. He won Iowa.

It often leads to the nomination of candidates of dubious electability. I will spare them the embarrassment of mentioning their names.

The importance of the choices of large, important states is seriously discounted if their primaries come late in the process. This is the chaos component.

A more orderly process is easy to imagine. Wouldn’t it make much more sense if the primaries came much closer to together at least, or even, if possible, on the same day? Maybe in the same week? I can hear the complaining from some candidates now. It’s too expensive to campaign in fifty states simultaneously! We need to meet and talk to these voters! It takes time! Where there is reason, there are solutions.

We could arrange for a more useful schedule of national events to allow the candidates to get out their message and show the flag so voters could get to know them. This would result in every voter’s choice taking on equal importance.

I would go on to suggest that the way actual elections are accomplished now is equally unfair to some states, particularly to states on the west coast. Their polls are still open, but winners have been declared. This is a disincentive to vote at all. It hurts the pride of west coast voters, and it keeps down voter turnout that might affect local elections.

I would suggest that 1) election day be made a national holiday; 2) people should be further incentivized to vote; and 3) all polls nationwide be open for the same five hour period (in other words, all polls open and close at the same moment, with clock readings staggered across the time zones).  Add a prohibition on exit polling and the reporting of trends before all polls are closed. That would make everyone’s vote count equally.

Conclusion

Seeking reason in the world marks one as a huge Pollyanna, and I suppose that I am one. Expecting our leaders to favor reasonable policies seems equally foolish. But is it too much to ask that the world be moved, slowly perhaps, in that direction? We have arrived at a time in history where there is a sufficiency of money, food and production capacity to provide jobs and prosperity for every single person on the earth. Must we accept that greed, war and blind chauvinism must always control our path? I hope not. I sincerely hope not. 

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Frenzy

People are discovering good music on TV and in movies, and that's a good thing.

The comments to this YouTube song often mention the X-Files, and me, I just heard it in the end titles for a True Blood episode. It's nice that producers and their minions are choosing good cuts for their products. I'm pretty sure that it's a good thing. Isn't it?

I've heard some good stuff in other media, and it's always a treat. I'm always on the look out. I knew Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich from the old days, but I'd never heard "Hold Tight" until I saw "Death Proof." "Everyday of the Week" by the Students was a revelation to me when I heard in in the end credits to a Sopranos episode. I was sure that it was a Frankie Lymon cut, it sure is a sincere copy, so it was hard to find. By the Students, it was, an F.L. and the T.s copy group from the near-mid-west.

There's so much great old-time stuff out there that it's hard to find the road map to finding it. If TV and movies can help, I think it's great. (Even if it's just a bunch of wannabe hipsters trying to find ways to look cool.)

Spin Easy Time!: Thai-Light Zone: The Presence of Women

I no longer consider this odd, although it still is quite odd.

Spin Easy Time!: Thai-Light Zone: The Presence of Women: No, not the presence of women in general, nothing new about that, women make up half of the population wherever you go. I’m talking about t...

A Job Undone

Please allow me to take a moment here and pat myself on the back. I think that I have been doing a great job of not writing about politics, if I do say so myself.

And bear in mind that that whole army of idiots has been twisting my nipples with reckless insouciance for the entire time, almost without interruption. And yet, I resist.

It's been great. I'm writing about things that are much more interesting to me, things that are not half as annoying as politics. The hit count is even up, so maybe the avoidance of politics is even popular.

Thanks for that, and thanks for reading.

Music For Winners: Eddie Floyd - Knock On Wood

Marco Rubio (!) got way too much credit today for coming in third in the Iowa caucuses. Only impressive because there's what, a dozen of them in that race? Oooooh! He beat Kasich! He even beat that hopeless schlemiel John Bush! The CNN reporter then asked him, so, you're a music fan, what are you listening to today? I forget what he said, something dull and predictable. What should people listen to, if they want to win?

I always say that law school was kind of fun, but I would never say that it was not stressful. First semester tests were the worst, because none of us was sure that we could even get it together. Myself, I got a terrible rash waiting for the results. It cleared up immediately when the grades were posted, because I did fine. Thereafter I had a secret weapon for tests. A cassette labeled "Victory Music."  I'd play it in the car on the way to school on test day. It was all Stax/Volt/Enterprise, plus Wilson Picket, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. Stuff like this cut by Eddie Floyd.

Man, that cassette put me in the mood to kick ass and take names. "Watch out, motherfuckers," I'd be thinking, "they mark this shit on a curve and I'm here to eat your lunch." It worked for three years. I played it before every day of the bar exam, too. Kicked . . . Ass.

Eddie Floyd is not an famous man, that's for sure. But this cut buys him a ticket on the express train to immortality. A classic.