Country Club #34: instrumental virtuosos

There's a long history of country music virtuosos and few, if any, stand out more than the long-time duo of Speedy West on pedal steel and Jimmy Bryant on electric guitar. Here's one of their pieces.



Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, in 2011,toured a musical tribute to the music of Speedy Weat and Jimmy Bryant. He commented 

My first impression was, ‘Man alive! This is insane! The speed, technique….wacky! I’d never heard anything like it.

If you want to hear, there are some other tunes on YouTube and some fine collections on CD.

• West and Bryant,  Stratosphere Boogie  Razor and Tie collection
• West and Bryant,Flamin' Guitars Bear Family box 
• West and Bryant. Bustin' Thru: Flippin' the Lid 
• Jimmy Bryant Frettin' Fingers  3-cd set

BDS Factless Water Day Libel of Soda Stream

The BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement tried to make March 22 World Water Day an occasion to promote it's campaign to boycott Soda Stream.

There may well be a water crisis on the West Bank and there may be a case for boycotting Soda Stream.  But is there a real causal connection between Soda Stream and water problems on the West Bank?  Or is is just a convenient excuse to attack Soda Stream and demonize Israel?

You might have seen this tweet  on your timeline.

 

Not  surprising, since it was a part of an organized tweetstorm by the U.S. Committee to the End the Occupation.

 

 

I got to wondering about this claim. If one Soda Stream device "helps deny 71,622" Palestinians, things must be pretty dire since there are thousands and thousands of Soda Stream dispensers made at the factory.  And what exactly I wondered was the factual nexus between the production of Soda Stream devices and the lack of running water access.  Since Soda Stream production has been growing, there must be a growing number of Palestinians without access to water.

So I clicked on the link to see what the promised "more information" provided.  It took me to a page from the respected Israeli watchdog group B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Funny thing, there was no mention of Soda Stream on the page of statistics about the Palestinian Water Crisis.

It turns out the number of West Bank Palestinians in 2011 who lacked access to running water was 71,622 or 2.6 percent of the West Bank population.  But in 2008, the figures were much larger: 188,922 residents without access to running water or 10.4 percent.  

That's a reduction of over 117,000 and 7.8 percent.

(Incidentally, before the 1967 war, only 10 percent of West Bankers were connected to running water.)

There is another thing that stands out in the statistics.  About 30 percent of the water on the West Bank is wasted due to defective pipes or theft.  This is a failure of the Palestinian Authority.

 

Political Duopoly Reconsidered

From Ballot Access News

TEXAS DEMOCRATS HELP GREEN AND LIBERTARIAN PARTIES
 
For the sixth time in a row, Texas Democrats are indirectly helping the Green and Libertarian Parties to remain ballot-qualified for 2016. The indirect help consists of not running a full slate of candidates for statewide office. The two ballot-qualified minor parties must poll 5% for a statewide race (or 2% for Governor) in order to remain on the ballot. When one of the major parties stays out of a race, it is easy for those two parties to meet that vote test. Texas Democrats left three statewide offices unfilled this year.

Country Club #33: PBR

Via Gene at Harry's Place who blogged about "Hipsters, rednecks and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer" who ponders the strange fact that today's hipsters and yesterday's rednecks beer of choice coincidentally happens to be Pabst Blue Ribbon and that conservatives have recently written books attacking hipsters and rednecks. (Greg Gutfeld’s Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You and Charlotte Hays When Did White Trash Become the New Normal? A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question).

Johnny Russell's recording of "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbons" was a hit in 1973.  



Lyrics

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer
The barmaid is mad 'cause some guy made a pass
The juke box is playin' "There Stands the Glass"
And the cigarette smoke kind-a hangs in the air
Red-necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer
A cowboy is cussin' the pin-ball ma-chine
A drunk at the bar is gettin' noisy and mean
And, some guy on the phone says ill be home soon dear
Red-necks white socks and blue ribbon beer


No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd
We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud
There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red-necks white socks and blue ribbon beer

The semis are passing on the highway outside
The four thirty crowd is about to arrive
The sun's go-in' down and we'll all soon be here
Rednecks, white socks and blue ribbon beer


There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red-necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer
"There Stands the Glass" was a Number 1 country hit for Webb Pierce in 1953.  (Video)
 

Country Club #32: Under appreciated

Eddie Rabbitt is an under appreciated country artist.  Perhaps it is his last name, which is his real family name and, unlike John Melloncamp's stage name Cougar, not imposed by a manager. Perhaps it is that he grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey and, by our geographic stereotypes. Perhaps it is that country music is taken less seriously than other American song moments. should have been a rock-and-roller.  Perhaps it is Rabbitt was an impure country artist, crossing borders, mixing non-country styles, rather than a neo-traditionalist,   Still, he made some very fine music, including some songs which could be considered neo-traditional.

Tom Roland appreciates on allmusic.com

One of country music's most innovative artists during the late '70s and early '80s, Eddie Rabbitt has made contributions to the format that have often gone overlooked. Especially in songs like the R&B-inflected "Suspicions" and the rockin' "Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight," Rabbitt challenged the commonly recognized creative boundaries of the idiom.

And, he was a very successful artist.

In 1976, he started a string of Top Ten hits that ran uninterrupted until 1989. During that time, he had 16 number one singles,

Here is "Suspicions." one of the most un-country songs ever to reach #1 on the country charts.

It's even been covered by Tim McGraw.


Here's "Drivin' My Life Away," one of many songs based on Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and Bob Dylan's "Subeterranean Home Sick Blues."

And, here, is "On Second Thought," with a video styled to resemble a country TV show from the 1950s or 1960s.

Claude McKay Explains Why He Opposed Communism

Writer and poet Claude McKay is listed by Molefi Kete Asante in his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, he  was also active for a while in the socialist and communist movements in England and visited the Soviet Union in 1922-23, attending the 4th Congress of the Communist International.  McKay was impressed and wrote an report "Soviet Russia and the Negro" which was published in the December 1923 issue of  The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP. Later McKay broke with Communism.


I am opposed to the Communists, not, like the Trotskyites and other opposition Communists, on account of their special opportun­ist interpretation of Marxian ideas, but because I do not accept the basic political ideology of Communism.

 (1) I reject absolutely the idea of government by dictatorship, which is the pillar of political Communism.
 (2) I am intellectually against the Jesuitical tactics of the Com­munists:
       (a) their professed conversion to the principles of Democ­racy, which is obviously fake, since they defend the undemocratic regime in Russia and loudly laud its bloodiest acts;
      (b) their skunking behind the smokescreen of People’s Front and Collective Security, supporting the indefensible imperialistic interests of European na­tions and deliberately trying to deceive the American people;
      (c) their criminal slandering and persecution of their opponents, who have remained faithful to the true traditions of radicalism and liberalism.

More important than the fear of Communists dominating the Negroes on work relief (especially through the talents of their colored members among the Federal writers!) is my concern about the Com­munists capturing the entire colored group by cleverly controlling such organizations as the so-called National Negro Congress.

Experience since the Emancipation should have taught the vari­ous colored leaders that it is a mistake to deliver the colored people over to any one political party. The colored minority has special prob­lems to face and should itself organize its powers for social and politi­cal preferments, similar to other American minorities.

It would be bad enough for the colored minority to be owned by any purely American party, as it formerly was by the Republican Party. But it would be disastrous if it were captured by a Communist Party, which, despite its professions to the contrary, is the highly-controlled Propaganda Bureau of the Communist International, which is dominated by the Russian Government.

For in the eventuality of a crisis developing between the United States and Soviet Russia, the colored minority might find itself in a very vulnerable and unenviable position. As a member of this group and also as a radical thinker, I am specially concerned about its future and the danger of its being maneuvered through high-powered propaganda into the morass of Communist opportunism.

Excerpted from a McKay letter to The New Leader vol. 21, no. 37 (Sept. 10, 1938), pg. 5   posted on Tim Davenport's invaluable Early American Marxism website.

Country Club #31: Patty Loveless

Written by Harlan Howard and Kostas, Patty Loveless' "Blame it on your lying, cheating heart " spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart, reaching No. 1 during the week of June 19, 1993.


Loveless has had a long country career. She has had more 40 records on Billboard's top country list including five number one hits. She has recorded 14 albums. Her 1994 When Fallen Angels Fly was the Country Music Association's Album of the Year. It's a very fine album.

Country Club #30: Shotgun Boogie

Country boogie was a link between western swing and rock'n'roll. Tennessee Ernie Ford , most famous for "Sixteen Tons, " had a big hit with Shotgun Boogie in 1951, which spent 14 week atop the country charts. Here are two versions from the period. The first features the legendary Jimmy Bryant on guitar and Speedy West on pedal steel.