I’m not so sure Kathy would be thrilled about the headline–she did so much more than fight cancer, although to a lot of folks it would maybe seem like she just lived her life (likethat’s a little thing). But her book, The Red Devil, is the definitive account of the price of surviving cancer–in her case, a 19 year struggle against stage IV breast cancer, and yes, I know that sounds impossible. All the more reason for you to read it, for anybody who is beginning or in the middle of cancer treatment to know it by heart, which is what happens when you read it.

It is not a guidebook on how to survive. Stage IV is lethal, and after a couple of decades even Kathy Rich couldn’t live with it anymore. Fuck that. What matters is, she lived.

I met Kathy in ’94, I think, or maybe late ’93. I told our mutual friend Joanne Goldberg that I was going to up to Sloan-Kettering, the NYC cancer hospita, to do something else. She said that Kathy was in the hospital with stage four breast cancer, and she was a writer too. I ought to meet her. I’ve gotten better advice but not often.

Kathy was a horror, as anyone is after bone marrow transplant. Swollen of face, scrawny of limb, bald, her room a havoc. There were no pictures around but I understood for other reasons–personality, confidence, but not complaints–that she was under what had previously been normal circumstances an attractive woman.

Sitting in the chair next to the bed talking to her was a guy who turned out to be the best friend of my own family doctor. He and I sat by for an hour or two, as Kathy held forth about the travails of the hour–not just cancer, but the treachery of magazine jouranlism and of the men in her life. She did not so much continually reiterate as act our her intention of beating her illness…fuck cancer, she was more or less in a mood to beat death itself. And you had to think, yeah, yeah, she might.

We had journalism in common, which we had practiced very differently but there is not all that much distance between Rolling Stone and Allure, come to that; and we had had very different experiences of cancer, and while what had already happened to my duaghter Kristen and what not been happening to Kathy suck equally, they are quite different–survival without the disease relinquishing its grip might be worse than death, or so we had to suppose. But we also had to suppose that living was better tahn dying, and there you are, the paradox of young adults with cancer. “Can’t stop won’t stop,” indeed.

Anyway, we supposed both things together and for all our differences, after that day, she was my friend and I tried to be hers. I did what I could to support her book, when it came out, and I knew I could send any young woman who needed it to her book and thence to Kathy herself and they would always have some wisdom imparted from that source. We have many more friends in common for many other reasons.

Then, when she didn’t die, Kathy went off to India to study the language. She had a habit of sort of disappearing for a couple of years and then turning back up, always chastened, never less determined, and she’d tell me about the journey, the weird people she met, what she’d learned, what she decided not to learn, how many relapses and surgeries and dodged bullets had come across her path. I’d fill her in on what I’d been doing. We’d do a little gossiping, we’d laugh, we’d both wonder more than we let on how long anyone could survive stage IV breast cancer (as the saying goes, there is no stage V). I don’t know what she assumed. I assumed she was so tough and smart, she might outlive me, at least, and probably a whole lot of other people. (And in a whole lot of the other cases she did and hell yeah, that’s something to brag about.)

And that was it. The second book, Dreaming in Hindi, was both a struggle to read — it was so internalized, it was so unmetaphoric, so literally true. Which mean you couldn’t put it down either. It’s really not about learning to speak Hindi, and it’s not even a travel book, or a book about how to live in cultures that are poles apart. It’s about trying to inhabit the mind of strangers, maybe. And it is ruthless about the strangers, the author, the world in which it occurs, and out of that ruthlessness comes a stronger sense of Kathy’s intelligence, courage, and determination than you get in the cancer book. I read a few chapters and thought about them and read some more. Sometimes a year would go by and I wouldn’t touch it and then I’d dive in again and get lost in her head. I never told her this–it was embarassing, no one reads books like that, it’s like an implicit criticism. But really all it means is, you don’t drink a strong bottle to the bottom any way but warily…if the contents are as pure on your palate as they are powerful.

Kathy’s struggle seemed endless: when we met, I had hair and Kathy didn’t, then I lost about half of mine and the rest turned gray, while hers grew back and looked just fine. Twenty years is a very very long time. And most of that time, we had no idea what hte hell was up with her. But when I sent a newly diagnosed friend, whose tumor was also at stage four and also seemed indolent, to talk to her, it was just the right thing to do and Kathy and I emailed about it but we didn’t talk on the phone or see one another for lunch or any of that. I didn’t know such a serious relapse had occurred–although I knew there were relapses, they were pretty much continual– and the news took my breath away that Saturday morning.

Kathy was nothing like Kris Carr, who has an indolent tumor and has an hilarious survival yarn about it that has, I suppose, saved many lives, presuming that relying on eating a lot of wheatgrass and other dietary stuff, and yoga, etc. has anything to do with surviving cancer. I don’t know what Kathy ate and if I had asked her, she’d have very likely said something that amounted to, “What made that your business, buster,” and moved on to what she was actually interested in, which was her life. (Skeptics are like that and no journalist worth anything is not a skeptic, even if the writer in question is also a true believer.)

But these kind of semi-survivable tumors do exist and not only in breast cancer. They’re rare but so are the kind of people who know how to make a life, really a life not just a series of struggling days. Kathy taught me that, and how you have to live differently and not compromise a single one of your goals or principles as you fight, because you fight. And that it could be done.

I asked her once why she left Allure, and she said some of the things about it that are in the Times article and then–now that I think of it, it might have been that day in the hospital–she spun this long, rather mordantly funny story about her last days in the fashion journalism world, and how Conde Nast reacted to her departure: They gave her a lunch with the staff, or something like that, and a Prada bag, the same thing they gave everyone who left in relatively good graces. The message was not “I’m nothing special,” the message was “they don’t know I’m something special.” Is there bitterness attached to that? Well, there ought to be.

Kathy wasn’t everyone, she was as specific a someone as anybody I’ve had the luck to know and care about. And I am pissed off about it to this day, because she’s right, the devil of cancer is red, not black. Blood red. And to this day, when I see Prada–the logo, the clothes, the ads–I think about Kathy Rich and how little respect she got and how much she deserved.

Well, all I’m trying to say is, Kathy Rich was a great person and I loved her, truly I did. And, you know, as long as I’m here, she’s here, I’ll make sure of remembering her however I can. And telling you about it is part of that.

So startled and sad as I was when I heard the news, I didn’t cry. I started to and then I got to thinking about Kathy and how it was that we met and how it was that we were friends, and I think the tears just got beaten back by the only thing that sometimes can do that, even in the face of death, which is the living truth, as we have ourselves witnessed it.

Here’s what she taught me in a nutshell: You have to die and you have to bear it in mind. Then you have to go out and be who you are and let the dying take care of itself. And rage, rage, because that isn’t Tinkerbell’s light that’s dying, it’s your own and, goddamn it, it’s irreplaceable—irreplaceable to everybody not just you.

So don’t clap your hands to save Kathy Rich, just live your life and refuse to forget that it will end someday. That’s not just the acclamation she deserves. It’s the one she earned.

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Dave

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The massive South by Southwest music festival (SXSW) has been held in Austin, Texas in the spring of every year since 1987. Dave Marsh reports on this year’s shindig.

I know something about SXSW keynote addresses. Little Richard and Smokey Robinson both did theirs as, in part, dialogues with me—sitting live in front of several hundred people, Richard being Richard, Smokey being serious, sincere, smart, and as handsome as seventy will allow.

To a certain extent, it’s a setup: All the attendees who don’t care find other things to do and most of the rest come to have expectations affirmed. But it’s not that simple either. I had the best fun of the last twenty years just asking four questions, sitting and watching Little Richard rave for (I timed it) 17 and a half minutes without pausing for breath. Then he turned to me, clearly winded, and said breathlessly, “Ohhh, Dave! You’re still here. I bet you want to ask me some more questions.”

But it’s not that simple either. The best moments can also be absolutely pedagogical: Smokey ended with a seven minute spiel telling people how to find and deal with stardom, beginning with an admonition (“Thicken your skin”) and ending with a parable about the invention of show business. Since 2010 that last part’s gotten almost half a million hits on YouTube. Richard, who appeared in ’08, seemed to just rant but in reality he was preaching a sermon on the same theme as Smokey, offering all kinds of nuggets but coming back to the main point over and over again: “Sign your own checks!…Sign your own checks!” Afterwards, a young woman came up to me, eyes a brimful of tears, and said, “Thank you, thank you, that was everything I came here to learn.”

Steve Earle began by lecturing his audience: “Let me make something extremely clear. Kiss is not cool, Kiss was never cool, Kiss will never be cool.”

But Bruce Springsteen, this year, was something else again. He offered career advice wrapped in biography, history complete with instructive examples of where he’d swiped a couple of his classics: the doo-wop crooning that led to “Backstreets,” the way the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” provided the core of “Badlands,” and how and why “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” is “every song I’ve ever written including the new ones.” Rocker he may be, but not rockist: “The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There is no right way, no pure way, of doing it. There’s just doing it.” Bruce wrestled with Lester Bangs and Woody Guthrie, post-authenticity, the transformative self, Roy Orbison’s paranoia, Phil Spector’s musical violence, the cover of Meet the Beatles as “the silent gods of Olympus,” the barely comprehensible existence of Nintendo-core, black death metal, and the yearning needs of soul. It was as if someone had managed to translate “A wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom tutti frutti” into a comprehensive treatise on the development and meaning (or lack thereof) of the past sixty years of Anglo-American popular music.

He avoided the hard political realities at the core of his new album, Wrecking Ball, in favor of talking eye to eye with an audience he assumed (correctly) consisted of people who either knew these things or needed to find them out. It was a practical speech, aimed at a specific group of people. He didn’t even know it was being broadcast live or, as far as I can tell, imagine that it would wind up all over the Internet, words stuck in the heads of millions of listeners. (The full audio’s at npr.org. It’s also worth looking at the segments posted on YouTube, particularly the stuff about the Animals.)

Raves arrived immediately, but I don’t think anyone’s used the term that best describes it for me: Generosity. The speech gave far more than it took and it held back on self-promotion (granted that the entire speech was wrapped in Bruce’s persona, but I’ve already quoted the only reference to his new album.)

Springsteen never has opening acts. That day he had five. Before the SXSW speech, Jimmy LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson, and Juanes sang Woody Guthrie songs (plus one original by Juanes). It was beautiful and loving, and all the things that a tribute to a great artist on his centenary ought to be. The highlight for me wasn’t Juanes singing a verse from “This Land Is Your Land,” which he told me later was the first time he’d ever sung in English onstage, but Juanes stepping up to challenge the audience when it didn’t sing along heartily enough. LaFave sang wonderfully as he always does, his Oklahoma roots deliberately on display, and his commentary on Woody’s music and life more trenchant than ever. And Eliza, firebrand that she is, kept the music contemporary, insisting on its relevance—or rather, insisting on her listeners paying attention to its continuing relation to the world descended from the one Guthrie described. Eliza has been the best female singer-songwriter for several years now, LaFave has been the best interpreter of Guthrie, Dylan and Springsteen for longer than that, and maybe this performance will help the news spread from Austin. Juanes, of course, is a rock star of Springsteen’s magnitude throughout Latin America and much of Europe; imagine John Lennon in Spanish.

That evening at the Moody Theater Springsteen had two openers–Low Anthem and Alejandro Escovedo with his full band each did about 45 minutes. (Springsteen had done a couple of numbers with Alejandro the night before at the Austin Music Awards show.)

The Austin show was only Springsteen’s second since the release of Wrecking Ball and, like its predecessor—an Apollo Theater benefit in honor of SiriusXM’s tenth anniversary—it contained some beautiful one-off wrinkles. Instead of invoking Curtis Mayfield, Wilson Pickett and Smokey Robinson (and James Brown by way of a lunatic climb into the rigging), this time Woody Guthrie framed the action. Bruce opened with his now-17 member E Street Band doing “I Ain’t Got No Home” a cappella and closed with “This Land is Your Land” with Escovedo, Low Anthem, Joe Ely, and a couple members of Arcade Fire helping out.

Is there another performer in our culture who operates in both the folk-rock and soul-gospel traditions? It’s as fashionable lately to evoke Springsteen as a literary figure as it once was to display him as an articulate pseudo-gas station attendant. But what’s most remarkable is the ability to move smoothly among soul and gospel music and the folk and country tradition in the way that Springsteen does. He has reached the point now that on Wrecking Ball’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” he does both in the same song. Generally, one is lurking in the background of the other in any of his songs, especially live. (Which can’t be discerned if all your attention is on the lyrics which is where, I suppose, the shade of the Great American Poem lurks in the minds of the critics who think it’s mostly about the words.) Yet in pulling these sounds together, Springsteen is capable of convincing more than a few that the beloved community truly could be in our future.

The Wrecking Ball songs (at the Moody he played eight of the eleven) have the strongest connecting thread of any Springsteen album since The River–from the furious social questions of “We Take Care of Our Own,” through the economic despair and determination of “Jack of All Trades” and “Death to My Hometown” to the glorious anthem of hope “Rocky Ground”—with its invocation of God, who does not answer—to the final, unambiguous call to action, “We Are Alive.”

I don’t suppose Bruce Springsteen has a much clearer vision of where, exactly, that action must lead to prevent the “hard times come and hard times go” cycle that he pounds away at six consecutive times in the song “Wrecking Ball.” But you can glimpse what it might feel like in any great musical performance, not just one of his. And, from my perspective, that is the real purpose of SXSW. Truth is, there hasn’t been a commercially important act that broke out of the conference since Hanson, fifteen years ago. But so what? It’s still the biggest, best music school in the United States, maybe the world.

And while Bruce’s show couldn’t offer the kind of community that he evokes in songs like “Land of Hope and Dreams,” it did evoke a sense of musician solidarity that’s essential to what happens with SXSW at its best. It’s a glimpse, but even a full-on Bruce and the E Street Band show is just a glimpse of what it would be like to live with equality and justice every day.

SXSW is as imperfect as any other human project. The sheer size of it has outstripped Austin’s transportation infrastructure and its deficit is ever-widening. The business panels are just the record industry trying to talk itself into believing it still exists. Hip-hop, dance, and ethnic music never get an equal shot in the press coverage and Austin’s local Mexican/Chicano community is invisible.

But.

What SXSW offers is a chance to attend that music school not only as student but as teacher. Not to study music but to observe and participate in the stewing mess of it. I have gone to Austin for this peculiar rite of March madness for the past, I think, nineteen years. I went to speak, I went back to listen. I keep going back not because I think I’m going to find any next big thing, but because I might run into musical glory.

This year, I got it in half a dozen ways—from Bruce, of course, but also from Eric Burdon, whose surprise (even to him and Springsteen) appearance to sing “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” at the Moody was a fiery proof of every accolade heaped upon the Animals’ frontman earlier that day. Where else could I interview, in the space of forty-eight hours both Juanes and Eric Burdon? Where else could I see old Austin friends like LaFave, Gilkyson, Michael Ramos, Michael Fracasso, Joe Ely and the Krayolas? Where else could I spend an afternoon and evening at a taqueria with Alejandro, Jesse Malin, Lenny Kaye, Rosie Flores, and new favorites like Maren Parusel?

Where else could I (with massive help from David Alvarez at KUT-FM and my producer Jim Rotolo) put on a live Sunday radio show, from nine to eleven AM, with seven musical guests? None of them played a record or sang a song I’d ever heard before. And all of them were flat-out great. None of them got paid—at SXSW no artist at an official gig ever gets paid, and very few get paid at any of the others, either. It is, most of the time, music for the love of music.

I go to SXSW to recharge, to remember why I love music, why we’ve still got a chance. And this year, like that young woman said, I got everything I came to learn.—D.M.

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I would also urge you to read Wise’s books, particularly the new one, Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority (City Lights). It is a toolbox for critically examining white privilege, the delusions of the Tea Party and our national blindness and ignorance about how our system of ethnic discrimination works. I would summarize Wise’s point this way: The racial dilemma of the United States can only be solved by increasing white people’s awareness of the various ways they are able to take advantage of our social, cultural and economic resources, why this comes at the expense of non-whites, how most whites are themselves held back by this system, and the central role that whites must play in any positive resolution.

If I were still a parent of young children, I’d want each of my kids to have her own copy and probably would distribute a few to their teachers too. And nobody who sees racism as a peripheral or nonexistent issue in this year’s elections ought to allow himself anywhere near a voting booth until he’s absorbed the meesages in Dear White America and this essay.

Thanks to Tim Wise, not only for helping others fight the internalized evils of white supremacy but for helping, me.– Dave

Of Broken Clocks, Presidential Candidates, and the Confusion of Certain White Liberals

Posted on January 12, 2012

This  commentary is rated MA for mature audiences. It contains some foul language, although honestly, only so much as is needed to get the damned point across. Parental discretion is advised…

——————————————————————————————————————————

P.S. I must add that I radically diverge here from the position of my close friend Kevin Gray on whether Ron Paul can be a useful tool in open primaries for expressing disdain for the more popular Republican contenders as well as raising some of the issues listed below (which need to be raised by somebody and certainly will not be by Barack Obama). I’ve never lived in an open primary state, I’m white not black…there are a lot of reasons why Kevin and I see this differently. We have been arguing it out for the last several weeks on Live from the Land of Hope and Dreams (SiriusXM Left, channel 127, Sundays 1-4 PM Eastern). I certainly don’t agree that there is no reason to be disappointed in Barack Obama, although I suspect that both Kevin and I are disappointed in the response of Obama’s voting constituency in failing to oppose his abandonment of too many issues he promised he’d help out with during the ’08 campaign. But I also know that I share with Kevin agreement that we don’t need better candidates so much as we need more active, determined citizens waging a battle against a corrupt system outside the polling places. Maybe Kevin will drop in at this site with some expression of his own reasoning.  — D.M.

Can I tell you a secret? It’s ridiculous but I didn’t even know it was a secret until I heard Lady GaGa’s “Hair” this morning and then I realized that I’d kept it even from myself. In my ears, it’s a record where I always find you. “I’ve had enough, this is my prayer / That I’ll die livin’ just as free as my hair.” Those are the first song lyrics I’ve heard since “My clothes don’t fit me no more” in “Streets of Philadelphia” that capture what you
dealt with in those long, brief months you fought your illness.

Now, Gaga’s not as cool as you. She worries too much about being cool. You never worried about that—not as far as I could tell, and I was watching pretty closely. Why would you? You walked into a room and cool had arrived.

Nobody who remembers you could forget your glorious hair—blonde or strawberry, somewhere down around your shoulders or a little past, shimmering in motion, a glorious sight on a sunny winter’s day like this one. It looked as free as you always seemed to be feeling. Not free of worry or obligation. Free to be.

I know for a fact that cancer didn’t take much from the life you lived. But once you started the all-but-useless
chemotherapy, it took your hair. All your hair—not the way they do it in the movies and on TV, where they let the eyebrows stay. Chemo and cancer aren’t that kind.

Even if I hadn’t been caught up in the teenage hair wars of the ‘60s, I’d know that hair is a key to identity. I’d
know even if I hadn’t lost almost all my hair to age. What I remember, better than my own stringy locks, is the first time I saw a chemotherapy patient after you died. They looked just like you and I had to turn away. I’ve never turned away since then, that I promise you. Because I would never, even symbolically, turn away from your memory twice.

You lived beautifully without hair. We have pictures to prove it. The spirit shone more brightly from your eyes, your whole face was consumed with your conviction that life, not death, was what mattered.

Every time I write you, it always comes back to this same thing: The contradiction between the failure of your fight for life, and the reality that your life cannot be described  in any terms I know of, except duration, as anything but a monumental success.  You loved, and you were loved, for that matter you are still loved. You wrote, you danced, you sang, you worked, you slept late, you stayed up all night, you traveled, you had a home and a family and a man who loved you. When there was a fight, you figured out the right side to take, and you fought. When there were questions, you sought answers. When you saw that other people hurt, you tried to make them feel better.
As in anybody’s life, there were fights that couldn’t be won, consolation that didn’t change anything, important questions that lacked sensible answers, flat-out disappointments in some of your ambitions. Eventually there was even betrayal by your own body. Yet you had the courage and the grace to let it go, to move on, to come back to a center point that was fundamentally cheerful, accepting, open. You were a child of Manhattan, without a doubt, tough enough to cope with the worst and smart enough to try to outwit fate without ever denying who held the cards. If you could be cynical (and, boy, could you), you were the most optimistic cynic I ever met.

One reason I’m talking about this now is that I am watching that spirit rise again. It never made itself entirely
absent from my life, of course. Like everybody, you were a product of the family you grew up in, and if there’s anything that defines Barbara, Sasha and me, it is absolutely an optimistic cynicism. We assume the worst and look for the best. I’d say that we have done it better over the past nineteen years because of the example you set, but then again, the example you set was only the most extreme version of that family trait.

To me, the entire wonder of human life, its majesty and its mystery, are bound up in this ability to share aspects of our personality and yet arrive at a remarkably original individual synthesis—billions of times over. You and Sasha, sleeping literally within a few feet of one another most of the nights of your lives, are the paradigm, a similarity for every difference, a contradiction for every convergence. One of the luckiest
aspects of my own existence was to watch the two of you emerge. One of the happiest moments  was when Sasha returned from abroad and the two of you harmonized so effortlessly those last few weeks. And one of the most painful was watching Sasha have to learn the painful process of living a complete life without her sister.

This year, she reached a new peak. She became a mother. Her son’s name is Weston Kristof Carr.  He looks almost exactly like her, and yet, they must be substantially different, because when she holds him and they look into each other’s eyes, they are complete. You can imagine what happens when Barbara and I hold him.

At Christmas dinner, Sasha watched Wes at the table. He was doing what kids do, just immersed in his essential joy of life. He must have been doing something particular, but the details really aren’t important. What matters is what Sasha said: “Sometimes, you remind me an awful lot of your aunt.”

After all this time, we all want and need that reminder, Kristen. You are so far away, though you are always
close to mind. And heart.

I’d no sooner typed those words than Sasha and Wes came into the house. (They live next door.) Wes gave me his huge smile—it’ll show all his teeth, just like yours did, once he has all his teeth. I walked over and picked him from his momma’s arms. “Are you writing?” Sasha asked me after I’d held him for a few minutes. “Do you want me to take him?” I didn’t say anything. “Yes and no, huh?” she said.

The heart is a muscle. It has an amazing ability to expand—you may feel like your heart will burst with joy and
love but it never does. And when it contracts, it finds a way to fill itself again. Each breath, in and out, a little different, a lot the same. If we’re smart, we treasure them all, deep and small. And while my breaths continue, that is the flat out truth, the one that really matters.

Not a lesson you ever seemed to need. But I surely did. Thank you for teaching me the things that kids teach
their parents (and grandparents). We are so lucky to have Sasha and Wes in our lives. We are—to this very second—so lucky to have you.

love from your Pop,

Dave

Which is, I am sure, information sufficient in itself to explain the channel change. Kick Out the Jams has been on several channels previously–a show pretty much evenly divided between music and talk would inevitably be hard to place.

The Spectrum should be a better fit, because it plays a more diverse lineup of rock. I’m delighted to join The Spectrum, one of whose channel managers is my friend Gary Schoenwetter and whose programs include Larry Kirwan’s Celtic Crush and Per Gessle and Sven Lindstrom with Nordic Rox. The Spectrum is a rock channel with a harder edge than The Loft, and while Kick Out the Jams is too eclectic to truly fit anywhere except the great, much-mourned Sirius Disorder channel, everybody associated with Kick Out the Jams is grateful to the Spectrum for making room for it.

Talk about raising more questions than you answer! Let us ask:

1. For what reason should the proscription against “demonizing” apply to Operation Wall Street and not to the President’s own speechwriters? Through their writing, the President himself regularly demonizes black parents for their allegedly obese children, their poor choice of breakfast foods, and other sins while he’s never commented at all about the failed child-rearing skills of wealthy white parents like, say, Al and Tipper Gore. Isn’t this kind of selective, exaggerated criticism what is usually meant by “demonizing”? Another sign that this is the President demonizing is that he has never publicly dealt with the corporations that create and market the breakfast foods and other obestiy-inducing agents.

2. What evidence is there that the Occupy Wall Street forces have demonized Wall Street workers? Or even Wall Street owners? This is, after all, the President putting words in a martyr’s mouth to form an accusastion he apparently isn’t willing to voice directly. So let’s have some facts in play here…not just innuendo against those whom the President would love to condemn if there weren’t so goddamned many votes at stake.

3. Why does the President refuse to recognize that OWS regularly reaches out to workers on Wall Street? It’s not workers who have been subject to their criticism, ridicule and anger. It’s owners.

4. Why doesn’t the President follow OWS in relentlessly describing in plain language what Wall Street owners do and the damage it causes?

5. Why isn’t demonization of the working class by Wall Street owners and other powerful people equally subject to what I suppose we might refer to as The King Rule?

6. For that matter, if the Occupy Wall Street group must obey The King Rule what about the President himself, whose statements attempting to rationalize the assassination of Osama bin Laden and the murder-by-drone of Anwar Al-Awlaki certainly smack of demonization much more than anything anyone associated with OWS has said.

7. Does President Obama believe that more than 30 months of supporting the Wall Street ownership class justifies his putting words in Dr. Martin Luther King’s mouth? On what basis does he arrogate to himself the right to sideswipe an entirely non-violent movement to curry sympathy–or even empathy–for the Wall Street scoundrels who occupy so many posts in his cabinet?

8. If we were going to reference Dr. Martin Luther King in regard to these events would it not be better to recall what King actually said, for instance in his “Where Do We Go From Here” speech to the SCLC in 1967:

“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the fires of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until they who live on the outskirts of Hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heap of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be
transformed into the bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.”

Anyway, here’s this week program, devoted to Steve Cropper, the MGs and Lowman Pauling & the 5 Royales to whom Steve’s new album pays homage. I am also a long-time fanatic about the Royales, Lowman Pauling, and indeed, his brother Clarence Paul, as he was known at Motown where he shepherded Stevie Wonder in Stevie’s early days and co-wrote several hit songs including “Hitch Hike.” Early Temptations records produced by Clarence combine vocal harmony and guitars in a way reminiscent of the Royales…and in my opinion, also of the early Rolling Stones. Which makes sense since, and you must hear the original recordings to believe the extent to which this is true, Lowman Pauling pretty much invented the kind of rock’n'roll guitar from the soul era. This isn’t to take anything away from Mickey Baker, Ike Turner, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. But that particular combination of integrated vocal harmony and electric guitar was principally the product of Lowman Pauling. This is even more strongly reflected at Stax–Cropper was a huge fan, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr. and original bassist Lewis Steinberg both did Memphis sessions with the Royales (the tracks from Take Me With You Baby listed below).

I’m going on vacation so the next two weeks are pre-recorded (August 7 Land of Hopes and Dreams should be live though). I’ll try to post those playlists late next week, after we figure out how much too much music I’ve written into the programs and make the necessary cuts–Dave

This is Dedicated to the One I Love, Five Royales CD: 1957 King, The “5″ Royales

Green Onions, Booker T. & the MGs 2:55 CD: Time Is Tight, Booker T. & the MGs

Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples CD: Gotta Serve Somebody–The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan

I’m Gonna Tell Them (1960-1), 5 Royales CD: Take Me With You Baby, The “5″ Royales

Catch That Teardrop (1961), 5 Royales CD: Take me With You Baby, The “5″ Royales

Talk About My Woman (1962?—VJ), 5 Royales CD: Take Me With You Baby, The “5″ Royales

Don’t Be Ashamed, Bettye Lavette & Willie Jones CD: Dedicated, Steve Cropper

Right Around the Corner, Delbert McClinton CD: Dedicated: A Tribute to the Five Royales, Steve Cropper

Messin’ Up, Sharon Jones CD: Dedicated: A Tribute to the Five Royales, Steve Cropper

Help Me Somebody, Steve Cropper CD: Dedicated: A Tribute to the Five Royales, Steve Cropper

Thirty Second Lover, Steve Winwood CD: Dedicated: A Tribute to the Five Royales, Steve Cropper

Boot-Leg, Booker T. & the MGs CD: Time Is Tight, Booker T. & the MGs

Laundromat Blues, Five Royales CD: Monkey Hips and Rice: The “5″ Royales Anthology

I Can’t Turn You Loose, Otis Redding Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding

Come On & Save Me, Dylan Leblanc and Sharon Jones CD: Dedicated, Steve Cropper

Hey Ya, Booker T. Jones CD: Potato Hole, Booker T. Jones

Representing Memphis, Booker T. Jones featuring Matt Berninger & Sharon Jones  CD: The Road from Memphis, Booker T. Jones

The Bronx, Booker T. Jones featuring Lou Reed C: The Road from Memphis, Booker T. Jones

Down in Memphis, Booker T. Jones CD: The Road from Memphis, Booker T. Jones

Just a Friend, Booker T. featuring Biz Markie, Matt Berninger & Sharon Jones (bonus track) CD: The Road from Memphis, Booker T. Jones [deluxe edition]

You Left the Water Running, Otis Redding CD: Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding

A Place Nobody Can Find, Sam and Dave CD: Sweat’N'Soul: An Anthology 1965-1971, Sam and Dave

Just One More Day, Otis Redding CD: The Soul Album, Otis Redding

Cigarettes and Coffee, Otis Redding CD: The Soul Album, Otis Redding

Soothe Me (Live), Sam and Dave CD: Sweat’N'Soul: An Anthology 1965-1971, Sam and Dave

Big Bird, Eddie Floyd CD: The Best of Eddie Floyd

Howdido, Woody Guthrie CD: Nursery Days

Do Re Me, Bob Dylan  CD: The People Speak soundtrack

Pastures of Plenty/This Land is Your Land, Lila Downs CD: La Linea

This Land Is Your Land, Bruce Springsteen CD: Live 1975-1985, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

Buffalo Skinners, Jim Kweskin CD: Relax Your Mind

Oklahoma Hills, Jimmy LaFave & Night Tribe CD: More Songs of Route 66

The Great Dust Storm, Woody Guthrie  CD: Dust Bowl Ballads

Dusty Old Dust (So Long It’s Been Good to Know You), Pete Seeger CD: Pete Seeger at the Village Gate with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon

Goin’ Down That Road Feelin’ Bad,  Gwen McRae CD: Lay It On Me, The Columbia Years

I Ain’t Got No Home, Joel RafaelCD: The Songs of Woody Guthrie Vol. 1 and 2

Ramblin’ Round, Indigo Girls with Ani DiFranco CD: ‘til we outnumber ‘em  (from Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Woody Guthrie tribute at Severance Hall, Cleveland)

Do Re Me, Ribbon of Highway, Slaid Cleaves with Ribbon of Highway cast featuring Bob Childers  CD: Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway

Hobo’s Lullaby,  Guy Carawan CD: This Little Light of Mine

Deportee, Richard Shindell CD: South of Delia

1913 Massacre, Arlo Guthrie CD: Hobo’s Lullaby

Philadelphia Lawyer, Maddox Brothers and Rose CD: America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band

Pretty Boy Floyd, Roger McGuinn CD: Live from Spain

Vigilante Man, Bruce Springsteen CD: Folkways: A Vision Shared

Don’t You Push Me Down, Woody Guthrie CD: Nursery Days

Car Car, Peter Paul and Mary  CD: Peter Paul and Mary in Concert

Peace Call, Eliza Gilkyson CD: Land of Milk and Honey

This Land Is Your Land, Sharon Jones & the Dap Band Cd: Up in the Air soundtrack

Kick Out the Jams 7-24 2011

Heat Wave, The Who CD: My Generation deluxe edition

Summer Romance, Maren Parusel CD: Artificial Gardens

Love Minus Zero / No Limit, Mirah CD: Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home (digital only)

Excerpts from Spiderman: Turn off the Dark (recommended only as kindling) (which come to think of it is pretty much how we used it)

Shut Your Mouth, Sidney Joe Qualls  CD: I Don’t Do This, Sidney Joe Qualls

Shaddap Yo Face, Joe Dolce 3:13

No Banker Left Behind, Ry Cooder track from forthcoming album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down

Shine Silently (live), Nils Lofgren CD: New Lives: BBC Sessions

Live music from Maren Parusel and her band—all songs performed are from her album, Artificial Gardens (www.marenparusel.com or her facebook page). Special thanks to Maren for playing under great stress after her equipment van had just been robbed. Imagine how great she’ll be next time!

Letter to the  Baltimore Sun

Sen. Benjamin Cardin’s recent letter defending Bono and his ONE foundation puts him in direct opposition to President Obama’s appeal for “corporate jet” owners to pay their fair share of tax (“Cardin: ONE Campaign works,” June 27). U2 are major tax evaders. I am also perturbed by Senator Cardin’s statement that Bono and the ONE campaign exercised significant influence on framing legislation in the financial services bill.

Roadrunner (live), Bo Diddley CD: Bo Diddley’s Beach Party

Drive All Night, Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard and Jake Clemens (found material)

Roadrunner USA, Joan Jett CD: Hit List

Swallows of San Juan (live), Alejandro Escovedo (from Kick Out the Jams, June 2009)

Make It Stop (September’s Children), Rise Against CD: Endgame

Give Me a Place to Stand, Thea Gilmore (fan club track–go to Theagilmore.co.uk and poke around)

See My Friends, Ray Davies and Spoon

Lola, Ray Davies and Paloma Faith

You Really Got Me, Ray Davies and Metallica

Dead End Street, Ray Davies and Amy McDonald

‘Til the End of the Day, Ray Davies and Alex Chilton and The 88

ALL of the above from See My Friends, Ray Davies’ latest, fantastic album

You Really Got Me (BBC version), The Kinks CD: The Kinks deluxe edition

Such a Shame, The Kinks CD: Kinda Kinks deluxe edition

So Mystifying, The Kinks CD: Kinks deluxe edition

I’m Not Like Everybody Else, The Kinks CD: The Kink Kontroversy deluxe edition

With God On Our Side, Bob Dylan CD: Fahrenheit 911 soundtrack (because I’d misfiled The Times They Are A-Changin’ CD)

Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan CD: Highway 61 Revisited

It’s All Good, Bob Dylan CD: Together Through Life

Radio, Raphael Saadiq 3:22 CD: Stone Rollin’, Raphael Saadiq

Boeing 737, The Low Anthem CD: Smart Flesh

Hey All You Hippies, The Low Anthem CD: Smart Flesh

Waterloo Sunset, Ray Davies and Jackson Browne CD: See My Friends, Ray Davies