Rita Coolidge:
https://youtu.be/A1pnyh-hFRM
Song for the dumped
Ben Folds Five:
Happy Hour: Dexter Gordon – Satin Doll …
Ringo is finally in the Hall of Fame
Here’s the speech Paul McCartney made at the induction ceremony:
OK. Ringo Starr was born in Liverpool at a very early age, and he had a hard childhood. Real hard childhood, but he had a beautiful mom, Elsie, and a lovely stepdad Harry. Both of them had real big hearts, beautiful people, and they loved music. So at some point during this difficult childhood, Ringo got a drum. Ringo got a drum! And that was it. He was now a drummer.
Later on he joined a group called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. And we saw these guys when we were out in Hamburg, we were playing out there. And Ringo was like a professional musician. We were just like, slamming around and doing stuff, but he had a beard — that’s professional. He had the suit. Very professional. And he would sit at the bar drinking bourbon and seven. We’d never seen anyone like this. This was like, a grown-up musician.
Anyway, we got friendly with him, and he used to come in late night when we were playing, and he requested a couple of songs, so we got to know him. And one night our drummer then, Pete Best, wasn’t available, so Ringo sat in. And I remember the moment. I mean, Pete was great, and we had a good time with him. But me, John and George, God bless ’em, were on the front line singing, and now behind us we had this guy we’d never played with before, and I remember the moment when he started to play – I think it was Ray Charles, “What’d I Say,” and most of the drummers couldn’t nail the drum part, it’s a little bit [sings a bit of it]. It was a little difficult to do, but Ringo nailed it. Yeah — Ringo nailed it! And I remember the moment, standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like, fuck you. What is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.
Anyway, then we started this great journey for these four guys from Liverpool who were . . .we just set off on their journey. We did ballrooms and clubs around England, and we got a little work in Europe, and then we eventually came to America. And here we were, we were staying in rooms together. And I wasn’t a sheltered kid, but I just had my mom and dad growing up and my brother. So I was staying in a hotel room with a strange man. This really brought us together. We lived like in each other’s pockets, virtually. But it was a beautiful thing, a wonderful thing. Eventually we got on The Ed Sullivan Show, and we got really famous. It was just so beautiful. As all the other drummers say, he just is something so special. When he’s playing behind you, you see these other bands, they’re looking around at the drummer, like, is he going to speed up, is he going to slow down? You don’t have to look with Ringo.
It’s a great honor for me to be able to induce him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland tonight!
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
How the corporate media plans to cash in on Clinton scandal book
Playing Monopoly with our lives
No way in hell they should approve this, but of course they will:
The staff lawyers at the Justice Department reviewing Comcast’s proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable have raised concerns about the merger and are leaning toward recommending that it be blocked, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations.
The development represents only a preliminary step, and senior Justice Department officials could overrule any recommendation from their staff lawyers.
Oopsie
I don’t trust cops, and I don’t trust our criminal “justice” system:
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.
The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated.
Stupidity is contagious
All kinds of data show your family is actually in more danger with a gun in the home, but what do facts have to do with fear?
Americans’ opinions on gun rights have flipped. For the first time, more Americans value gun owners’ rights than they do gun control.
According to Pew research, the percentage of Americans who thought gun rights were more important was only 29-34 percent during the 90s. In the 00s, that number shot up and down between the 32 and 45 percent. Around the turn of the current decade, the numbers were roughly even for several years, but in December 2014 the number of Americans who value gun rights surpassed those who prefer gun control for the first time. The numbers are currently 52 percent and 46 percent.
Another of Pew’s findings was that the percentage of Americans who say that they feel safer with a gun in the home has risen even more steadily. Thirty-five percent said they felt safer in ’00. Today, 63 percent say they feel safer.
This stuff is not new
“We believe that certain aspects of Revivalism can bear examination … We believe that everyone has a right to worship according to his conscience, but — Freedom of Religion is not license to abuse the faith of the people!” –Intro scroll to the 1960 film “Elmer Gantry”
“Elmer Gantry” is a classic movie for a reason. If you’ve never seen it (it’s the film adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, back when they actually used to make movies with meaning), you can find the full version on YouTube.