Musical Interlude

Nils Lofgren performing Black Books

(the guitar solo is gut-wrenching)

Lynn Miles

...hails from Ottawa, Ontario

Recommended: Night in a Strange Town

A little Ian and Sylvia (for you, Mom)

Sweet little ditty

When I get my ears by I am Robot and Proud

Doug MacLeod performing The New Panama Limited

One of the greats.

MacLeod is one of the last remaining Bluesmen who learned from the old masters, lived the music, survived the life, and now continues to carry forward that valuable tradition. Within the blues world, MacLeod is known for his quality recordings which feature superb songwriting, guitar wizardry, warm soulful vocals, wit, and unforgettable live performances.

Born in the pines of Virginia, MacLeod's unique, unorthodox, and powerfully rhythmic style of acoustic guitar playing is tempered by his early years as a blues bass player, and honed by his subsequent journeys into jazz and electric blues.

The way it is

We Can't Make it Here


Right Here Now is another great one by James McMurtry.

Satellites

the voice of an angel...Rickie Lee Jones

Are you alright?

Lucinda Williams' album West is on repeat right now.

Gotcha

Love love love Patricia Barber...

Recommended

Album: West by Lucinda Williams

The Amazing Chase or A Blur of Bassets:

Writing: James Wolcott on Rush Limbaugh:

Global warming's most popular denialist, talk radio's most imitated showman, conservatism's minister of disinformation, he has injected millions of semi-vacant American skulls with a cream filling of complacency that has helped thrust this country into the forefront of backward leadership. He has given Republican lawmakers the rhetorical cover fire to do nothing but snicker as the crisis emerged and impressed itself on the rest of the world. He conscripted concern for nature as just another weapon in the Culture Wars. May the grasses of his favorite golf courses go forever yellow and dust storms whip from the sand traps.

Amen, brother.

Opinion: What Echidne said about Markos who called Kathy Sierra a whiner for taking email threats of rape and murder seriously.

Echidne's final words on the Imus debacle.

He's been dancing (or tottering) on the edge, and his supporters have been applauding his brilliance. Only this time he chose go a little too close to the edge and fell over. It's not kosher, even in today's fundamentalist America, to call young women playing college basketball nappy-haired hos, when these young women did nothing to hurt Imus, had no political power and were in general acting out the accepted version of the American dream. This is pretty much the consensus, and we should not forget it.

Now step back a little, and ask what it is that we are not really debating in this great Imus-debacle. We are not debating the context (watch the video on the site) in which Imus's comment came. It started with him making fun of the idea that women could play basketball at all, and it continued with essentially rating the fuckability of the two teams in the championship match. It then turned into the "nappy-haired hos" statement.

This context seems to me to consist of first ridiculing women's athletic abilities, then their right to be seen as anything but sexual objects for men like Imus, and then putting the black women into their even lower place as nothing but frightening whores.

Now, this is not how Imus spoke, of course. He spoke in code. But the reason he expected his audience to appreciate the code is that he believed them to agree with him on all those matters. It is this that should be the talking point in the debates, much more than whether certain things can be said or not and by whom.

Coming soon: Another motherfucker should be out of a job next week. Wolfowitz apologized "to a few hundred staff members assembled in the bank building atrium, only to be greeted by booing, catcalls and cries for his resignation." I'm no fan of the World Bank but I chuckle thinking of staid bureaucrats heckling this asshole. Goddamn, that must have been a sweet moment.

Nathan

This delightful 'alt-country' band hails from Winnipeg. A few tracks are available on myspace.

Jim Bryson

Link. Listen. (I'm particularly fond of Sleeping in Toronto and The Lost Occasional.)

Where the Bungalows Roam, his newest album will be released March 27, 2007. Two tracks are available here.