Miharu Koshi and Haruomi Hosono - Swing Slow (1996) FULL ALBUM

This is a very Japanese record. I don't think that it could have arisen from any other musical culture. I have come to believe that there is something in the way that the Japanese language orders the information to be conveyed that lends itself to the arrangement of sound into music. As the Japanese language is unique among languages, Japanese music has an unmistakable Japaneseness to it. 

What does this sound like? Well, maybe it sounds like some kind of minimalist Shibuyakai music. There are aspects of it that reminded me of the great Cornelius. Or, it might be unique. You tell me! 

I have reminded myself that in August I posted a stand-alone song by Haruomi, a surreal version of the Carpenters hit, "Close to You," rendered as "Close to Me." ("Just like me, they long to be, close to me . . .") I have also discovered that Haruomi has been turning out cutting edge material since 1970, was a founding member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and remains alive and sufficiently healthy to be touring Europe as we speak. 

Long ago I wondered about old age and whether it would become necessary at some point to look further afield to find new things to be fascinated by. I was thinking of extreme measures, like taking on an intense interest in opera music. Luckily, such extreme steps are not required. The world is full of things that we already love, but have not yet discovered. They are related to things that we know and love, but only as aspects hitherto hidden from us. This is a lucky break, and I am very grateful. 

Goin' Back - Dusty Springfield ( Some more images of Blackburn Lancashi...

This is a Goffin/ King number and I believe that Dusty's version, this version, was the first. The year was 1966. The only reason that I can think of for including old photos from "Blackburn Lancashire" (no punctuation) would be those four thousand holes mentioned by the Beatles in their particularly pretentious song, "A Day in the Life."  

Welcome To Whatever This Is

We all grew up in the United States of America. At least that's what we were told, and most of us believed it. I certainly believed it. There was a lot of evidence, after all. Maps, etc., history books. We were raised on the American myths, Thanksgiving; cowboys and Indians; westward expansion; building the railroads; Freedom (with a capital F); the Constitution; the “Melting Pot;” one man, one vote; fair-play; equality before the law. We bought it. In fact, most of us bought it hook, line, and sinker. Those were innocent times, and now it seems that it was just some kind of weird political Tilt-a-Whirl ride. It is becoming obvious that everything that we were taught was wrong. Reality is appearing out of the mist, and what we are seeing is disturbing.

I live in an advanced developing country where most of the streets bear all of the same defining characteristics of streets in any of the world's most developed countries. There are lines separating the lanes, lines of different colors, solid lines, broken lines. There are all of the usual signs, and stop signs are in the universal form of red hexagons bearing the word, “stop!,” or in this case, “yut!” There are traffic lights that change from green, to yellow, and to red, including many in the form of colored arrows. There are also the usual rules about who may drive, at what age, etc., and the process is regulated and licensed. Car insurance is mandatory, as in most advanced countries. The difference here is that all of these rules and regulations are mere suggestions, and drivers feel free to ignore them whenever it seems expedient to do so. It seems chaotic at first, but one gets used to it. All that is required is that a driver must always assume that all of the other drivers are going to do anything that makes their driving experience easier, regardless of the traffic laws. This value-set seems to have infected American politics. Something has dramatically changed.

Here again I am not just talking about the fantastic and wonderful Donald Trump. As I have said before, he's just the canary in the coal mine. The more important bit, the deadly poisonous gas in this analogy, is our current crop of venal, hypocritical elected officials. The Republicans are more directly the cause of the shift that we are seeing, but they are joined in their guilt by most of the Democrats. The real brains of the outfit may be easily identified. Just follow the money! Who has almost all of it by now? Yes, the investment class. To refer to them so may be sarcasm or it may be an attempt to be polite. Perhaps their most apt description is, “the oligarchs.” “Galtian Overlords” also works. I usually just call them the “super-rich,” whom I consider to be anyone having so much money that they could never possibly spend it all. They, whatever you call them, are the new masters of the political entity formerly known as the United States of America.

The United States was a house of cards held up by gravity and supported by a critical mass of participants who were in tacit agreement over the norms and traditions that were to be followed at the risk of losing everything. Our problem today is that not enough of the participants believe any longer in those norms and traditions. We've had politics as total war since the Reagan days. Do whatever you want if you can get away with it, and keep pushing to make sure that you exploit every advantage. It's been pretty bloody. Now that the Supreme Court has a safe majority on the winning side, the battle is over. The war is won.

Reports of the demise of the Republican Party are premature.

Like the traffic in my adopted country, it has now become obvious that all of the rules, regulations, laws, conventions, and traditions of the United States have been mere suggestions all along. All it has taken was for a well-knit group of ruthless, heartless, selfish bastards to ignore the entire legal framework of the United States and simply do whatever suits their best interests.

No, of course congress is not required to hold hearings just because the president has nominated someone to a vacant seat on the Supreme Court! No, of course the Senate will not be required to hold a trial on the matter if the House, in due course, sends them articles of impeachment! No, of course the Executive Branch is under no obligation to cooperate with a lawful impeachment process!

We, all of us, have allowed this to happen over the last fifty years. Think tanks, big-money, and the Republican Party have brought us to this point, slowly but surely, and most Americans, including most of the Democrats, have just gone along for the ride. Now, after almost three years of Trump, the Republicans have succeeded in dismantling the Federal regulatory agencies; incarcerating vast numbers of suspected Democratic voters (i.e. Negroes); emptying out the State Department; impoverishing the country with a vast tax cut that made the rich much richer and Federal and local state governments much poorer; throwing out pesky regulations of industry and the environment; filling ambassadorships with the most crass, unsuitable cronies, if at all; militarizing our regular local police forces and filling the country with truly frightening Federal police in large numbers; criminalizing everything; Gerrymandering most of the safe Republican districts in the whole country; stacking the Supreme Court; stripping us of one Constitutional right after another; and hypnotizing a substantial portion of the population into liking it.

The Supreme Court! The real laughs will begin when cases revolving around either Trump's impeachment or election shenanigans start arriving at the Supreme Court. I've been warning people about the Supreme Court for about thirty years now, twelve of those years right here on this blog. The Constitution is whatever they say it is. Buckle up, Buttercup. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

So, what do you think? Is it time to come up with a new name for our completely reformed country? Should we stick with a “reinterpreted” Constitution, institute a vast amendment process, or just shit-can the whole thing and start over? So many new, exciting questions. Even if it may turn out to be just so much rearranging of the deck-chairs on the Titanic. One of the more dubious features of our new power-elite is their rejection of advice from the scientific community. Oh, they believe the advice, make no mistake about that. Many of them have good educations, and they know facts when they see them. They agree, secretly, with climate change, for instance, but they reject it publicly, because to do otherwise would cost them money. They know that they will need that extra money some day to protect their own families from the effects of climate change. There's a circular-logic going on there, but I think that the real dynamic is the race for the money itself. Those super-big-shots are in a competition with each other. Whoever has the most billions wins! (Extra credit if your company owns a colony on Mars.)

I'd suggest keeping our Constitution, because they're all ignoring it now anyway and keeping it offers good optics. It allows the illusion that we're still the good old U S of A. For a name I like the Republic of Freedomland. Then we could all call ourselves “Republicans” with a straight face. We should keep the two political party thing, but new names are in order. How about “Lincoln Republicans” and “Liberal Republicans?” Everyone could hate the Liberal Republicans, who would be allowed to pretend to fight to restore some of the social freedoms that we now take for granted, even as we are losing them. This is a work in progress, so I'm not sure where the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis fit in.

I miss the old America, even with its many imperfections. It was a pretty good place, all in all. This new thing, whatever we call it, is a poor substitute. It'll be a dirtier and poorer police-state, and everything will be more expensive. All of that is true already, so you can't disagree.

The CRAMPS - 'What's Inside A Girl?' - 7" 1986

So, the 1980s were good for something. Make a note. The Cramps were never the "greatest" anything, or close to the "best" at anything, but they always made sure to put the "fun" in "funtastic." And they always sounded good doing it. 

Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble & Jaki Liebezeit - Mystery R.P.S. (No. 8)

There is a world close by, where neither Trump, nor Hannity, nor Moscow Mitch, not Tomi Lahren, nor Takeshi 69, nor Justin Beiber, nor Mark Zuckerberg, nor even Freud or Jesus, can bother you. A safe space. It's an easy trip. Go there now! 

Baby Boomer Privilege (Or, I Worked Hard!!!)

All age groups are present on my Facebook friends list, although I will admit that the geezer end of the spectrum is better represented. The anecdotal evidence of my own FB feed is full of memes shouting, “I worked hard!” Or, “We worked hard for everything that we have! Nothing was given to us!” It is most often my fellow Baby Boomers that are passing these things around. I see a distinctly selective memory pattern at work here.

The subject of Baby Boomers most often comes up on this blog when I feel like objecting to us being blamed for every damn thing that has gone wrong with America in the last fifty or sixty years. To read the click-bait about those greedy-ass Baby Boomers, you'd think that we have been totally in charge of the world since we were grammar school students. I hate that shit; it's totally unfair. Today, however, I'm turning the j'accuse lens back on us. It is simply wrong for us to forget or deny the many advantages that we have had over not only generations that came before, but also over generations that have come after us.

For people my age to say that, “we worked hard for everything!” is a truism. We did work hard. Everybody in America must work hard. It has always been thus, since those first ill-fated settlements in the early 17^th Century. America is a tough town. If you don't work hard, you are left to die by the roadside. But for Baby Boomers to suggest that we did not enjoy huge benefits from having been born in our narrow range of birth-years would be disingenuous.

For some Baby Boomers to suggest, as some do, that, “nobody ever gave me anything,” would be a colossal self-delusion. The government, and historical circumstances, gave us tons of stuff. We entered the work force with close to a living wage. Everything from cars and houses to a day at Disneyland was very affordable. We were all given free Blue-Cross/ Blue-Shield medical insurance policies with almost any job, easily transferable to the next job because it was the same insurance company. We were given free university educations. We were given meaningful interest on savings at the bank. Those of us who were seriously injured in our generation's stupid, meaningless war were pretty well taken care of, with high-quality health care and meaningful financial compensation that enabled the sufferers to live well on the benefits. No, my fellow Baby Boomers. We did very well when it came to free stuff.

It's harder to pin-down the financial demographic for the “I worked hard!” group. Most seem to be retired Baby Boomers whose apparent prosperity may be fraying a bit around the edges.

And who are these people getting “free stuff?” The chorus repeating this refrain seems to take its cue from certain so-called “conservative” political interests. The beneficiaries of the mysterious “free stuff” turn out to be identifiable groups of low-income Democratic voters. Minorities, immigrants, the usual suspects. Double-dippers get special attention. Groups like “Somali (black; Muslim) immigrants” will receive special mention, especially if they vote one of their own into the House of Representatives. Remember “Obama phones?” That was a good one. I'm sure that every reader has seen all of the memes on Facebook about how, “illegal immigrants get free medical care and $4,000 per month while our veterans are homeless!” It is very sad that many of my age-mates seem to believe every word of this complete bullshit. In truth, illegal immigrants just keep their heads down and work hard! Duh!!! If they ask for “free stuff,” all they'll get is a free trip over the southern border, minus their possessions. Here's a news flash: illegal immigrants pay taxes, including Social Security, but they get zero benefits. All of that money subsidizes Social Security payments to Baby Boomers! Y'all should really be more appreciative.

Many older Americans, including many Baby Boomers, are also fond of complaining about Millennials. Are Millennials also in the “free stuff” club? That would not jive with my observations. Don't let those fashionable young people drinking Starbuck's coffee fool you. Those people work for tech companies and their high salaries are driving up your rent if you live anywhere near them. Most Millennials can barely make ends meet. They double and triple up in over-priced apartments and work two or three jobs in the gig economy. They live without health insurance, hoping against hope that they don't come down with something expensive. I'll bet that they are, as a group, very careful crossing the street. They are one broken arm away from living under a bridge.

The patience of these long-suffering young people reminds me of the centuries of brotherly tolerance exhibited by American blacks. Both groups have suffered, and continue to suffer, the insufferable with quiet dignity. I am humbly grateful for their forbearance.

And speaking of grateful, wake up, Baby Boomers! We should all offer sincere thanks to God or to fate for hitting the chronological lottery! When we were starting out in life, we had the world served up to us on a half-shell. We had advantages that today's young people can only dream of. Now we have huge TVs and Netflix, and the time to enjoy them. And hey, here's a helpful tip: the Internet is good for many things other than joining in today's Two-Minute-Hate. Back away from the Hate Hillary memes. Go to the websites of famous museums and look at some famous paintings. Read poetry. Take a virtual tour of Kuala Lumpur and discover that much of this big, wide, wonderful planet has joined the First World since the last time you checked. Learn some history. Find some new music to love. What the hell, go nuts and study a foreign language! Learn a few hundred Chinese characters and impress your friends by reading a Chinese language Menu! The Internet is like having a good library on your desk, and we all have monitors as big as Dallas these days so it all looks great.

And leave those poor immigrants alone. If you read a bit about why they take those extreme risks that they do to get to America, first you'd hang your head in shame, because America is responsible for a lot of their misery, and then you'd take it easier on them, and maybe even do something to help them. They're not getting any free stuff, and they're not riding on your coattails. All they want is a chance to bus your table and pick your damn strawberries, for crying out loud.

I for one am very happy to have been born in the post-war Baby Boom. I am grateful for all of the advantages that I benefited from. For a while there I was fully occupied with raising my boys and trying to make a living, but for the last thirty years I've been trying to make repayments on my good fortune in life. I've been working on my compassion skills. I can't tell anybody what to do, but it's worth thinking about.

Clever Girl--No Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room (Full Album)

Okay, raise your hand if you've ever heard of Math Rock? Nope, me neither. Buzzfeed thinks that there is such a thing, and that Clever Girl are an example of it. 

Whatever it is, it all sounds very fresh and new. It's got echos of things in it, sure, echos of Prog Rock from the 1970s, maybe? A bit of Yes sometimes? But with horns. Is it Jazz? I'll bet that this style is popular in Japan. It's precise and surprising at the same time. It sounds very nice to me. I like Clever Girl.