September Shows

Posted on September 4, 2004 by ken

Email announcement to come, but I’ll be doing another show with Mike Skliar and Tom Ricciuti at the Orange Bear on Saturday, September 18, at 9pm. The usual collection of political songs, especially given that it’s election season. (“Welcome To New York” has left the building, along with the Repugnants, but we’ll certainly be doing Mike’s “Make the Big Push.”) I have three new songs in various stages of completion, so hopefully at least one of them will be ready. We’ll also be playing some older songs that haven’t been out for a while including some traditional tunes.

I’ll be playing with Corby Stutzman at the Parkside Tavern, for a special Monday-night edition of The Ponkiesburg Pickin’ Party, and next weekend is the usual second-Saturday show with Kate and Lou at Sunny’s.

Full details on the web site. Also note that there are three songs up there, including “Preserved Fish.”

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GMail anyone?

Posted on September 3, 2004 by ken

I have several GMail invitations, if anyone wants one.

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Straight from the horse’s mouth (well, almost)

Posted on September 2, 2004 by ken

I’ve had a quote in the Quote Server for years, attributed to Louis Armstrong: “All music is folk music. Horses don’t sing.” But recently someone on the folk music list questioned whether Big Bill Broonzy had said it first.

To the microfilm!

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McWhorley’s

Posted on September 1, 2004 by ken

Now that Dennis Hastert thinks it’s a cool place to go, isn’t it time that all decent New Yorkers gave up on McSorley’s? Between the lines, the crowds, and the drunken tourists, it’s certainly no longer the Wonderful Saloon of Joseph Mitchell’s time. And now we see that the staff doesn’t even have the guts to throw a pig like Hastert into the gutter where he belongs.

But at least the photo is pretty amusing. Neither of the sorry fools can draw a decent pint, but at least Hastert looks like he’s getting into the McSorley’s spirit — which is to say, shitfaced. Pataki, meanwhile, seems to think he’s still onstage at the Madison Garden of Squares. In Mitchell’s day, both of these guys would have been rolled for their money and left in an alley somewhere.

Meanwhile, I spent last night at a good Irish bar: Rocky Sullivan’s, where Jello Biafra made a surprise appearance and closed out the evening with a 40-minute rant on Bush, corporatism and individual activism. Satire For Sanity is there every night this week.

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Truck Vs. Truck.

Posted on September 1, 2004 by ken

Sighted five minutes apart, circling Union Square:




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Feeling Old in a Good Way

Posted on August 31, 2004 by ken

Last night I Netflixed (it’s not quite renting, is it?) a film I haven’t seen since it was on TV when I was a kid: The French Connection. Filmed in 1971, it really brought back my childhood: the so-called “New Look” buses that were “the old ones” by the time I was a teenager; the black-and-white police cars with the gumball-machines on top; wooden turnstiles; yellow-and-black street signs in Manhattan and black-and-white street signs in Brooklyn; the subway cars I now think of as “redbirds,’ not only before they were painted red, but before they were covered with the graffiti whose removal led to the red paint scheme.

Subway graffiti digression

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The Highest Form of Patriotism

Posted on August 29, 2004 by ken

I went through Union Square today as the protest march was coming back down Broadway (it made a big circle). Can’t say what was happening in Midtown but the scene there was peaceful and optimistic.

Gallery and more…

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Mice, Hookers and Pies

Posted on August 29, 2004 by ken

The Manchester Union Leader published a column earlier this week by former editorial page editor Bernadette Malone, solemnly warning RNC delegates that NYC protesters…

…plan to release swarms of mice in New York City to terrorize delegates to the National Republican Convention.

Republican-haters plan on dressing up as RNC volunteers, and giving false directions to little blue hair ladies from Kansas, sending them into the sectors of New York City that are unfit for human habitation.

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall.

Ted Rall is, of course, a political cartoonist, and the column Malone is quoting is obviously satirical — except, apparently, to people who take seriously the “Live Free Or Die” slogan on their license plates. Meanwhile, the official GOP web site is linking to the article.

Thanks to various posters on rncnotwelcome for this info.

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Today’s Clips

Posted on August 24, 2004 by ken

David Brooks, the junior member of the minority party on the Times Op-Ed page, had me nodding along in his column about John Kerry this morning. His basic point was that Kerry’s Vietnam-era speeches were passionate and full of conviction, but no longer:

Kerry’s speeches in the 1990’s read nothing like that 1971 testimony. The passion is gone. The pompous prevaricator is in. You read them and you see a man so cautiously calculating not to put a foot wrong that he envelops himself in a fog of caveats and equivocations. You see a man losing the ability to think like a normal human being and starting instead to think like an embassy.

I just keep coming back to Yeats:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The Journal had a leader today on independent bookstores that are beating the superstores at their own game, getting larger and larger in order to compete. The spectacular Powell’s is mentioned, although the focus of the article is a PA/OH chain owned by a former in-law of the Borders brothers.

What I’d like to know is when we get some of these stores in New York? The city bookstore scene has been declining for years. We have no equivalent to Powell’s, or even to Bookman’s, the used and new bookstore in Tucson that also features movies, CDs and even “antique” collectible PCs (Mac 128, anyone?).

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Prince on Joni Mitchell

Posted on August 24, 2004 by ken

In an excellent article and interview in the Rocky Mountain News, Prince weighed in on Joni Mitchell:

“I love all Joni’s music,” he says, adding that he does her songs “just to keep her name out there. Joni’s music should be taught in school, if just from a literature standpoint.”

He also mentions someone else who should have made that list — what WERE we thinking and how could I forget her? Wendy Melvoin, with whom he was recently reunited for a TV performance:

“She plays acoustic guitar with me better than almost anyone. The opportunity came up and her name was the first to come to mind. I’m looking for things to juice me, too.”

The article has some good details on his current financial arrangements with Sony, noting that he gets $7 for each copy of Musicology sold. (Usually it’s closer to a dollar if not less.)

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