Hip Hop Congress

ROCK & RAP CONFIDENTIAL – No. 223 / June 2008 [RockRap]

Mainstream Hip-Hop: Filled with Positive Messages

Pete Townshend on Rap and Rock

Abe Lincoln and File Sharing

Keeping It Real on the Mississippi Delta

Cuban Music (aka “Louie Louie”)

Metallica / David Mamet / Kenny Garrett / Snoop Dogg / Tim Krekel / Sun Ra

Just Exactly Why Do We Need the Music Business?

More Bullshit from Bono

Gone Too Soon: Jeff Healey, Buddy Miles, Debbie Geller, Danny Federici

CD and DVD reviews

And much more…..

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HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT…

“Hip-hop needs to find the next subject. Politics and social stuff—those are going to be the next real subjects groups get into.”—George Clinton, Detroit Free Press, summer 2007

Too many in the hip hop audience accept the big lie promoted by opportunist preachers and politicians that hip-hop is only about madness and misogyny. The truth is very different. There are many, many hip-hop songs reaching millions of people which carry a message of unity, songs whose protests and promise promote a vision of a world without war, poverty, and racism. The truth here should set us free, free of false divisions between mainstream and underground, between bling bling and backpack.

Let us know what we’ve missed.

“All of Me,” 50 Cent featuring Mary J. Blige—Two heavyweights talk about politics at square one, between a man and a woman in a relationship. Fifteen rounds of intense negotiation lead to the kind of “win win” outcome music manages best.

“Bendicion Mami,” Fat Joe—A tribute to his mother and, just like Tupac, it resonates beyond the individual situation because our mothers are held up as subhuman by the media and by the masters of puppets in the White House. Here it’s also about unconditional love for one’s family and support in the face of physical illness and the sickness of the system.

“Black and Brown,” Xzibit—”80% of inmates are black and Hispanic/They’re trying to wipe us off of this planet/Dammit….That’s why we’ve got to sit down/And talk about the black and the brown.” A love song to brothers thrown against brothers in Los Angeles, nationwide and worldwide, with a dream of what could happen if we learned to focus on our real enemy.

“Buck the World,” Young Buck—”My rent due/Baby need food and shoes/I’m flat broke/Still I refuse to lose.” A song about reaching the breaking point and choosing life anyway, changing a “Fuck the World” goodbye to a “Buck the World” throwdown.

“Cold World,” Xzibit—A rap that follows the money at the root of a young woman savaged by a dehumanizing job then by unemployment, of a kid locked into a losing street hustle and of an Iraqi family facing guns and bombs.

“Concrete Jungle,” Jim Jones, featuring Max B, Rell, Dr. Ben Chavis and Noe—There’s power to Jones’s shout out to his “political soldiers” behind bars—without romanticizing the streets, he’s dreaming of the world that can come out of making the culture of those streets work for us.

“Do Your Time,” Ludacris with Beanie Siegel and C-Murder—A roll call of friends and loved ones locked down by a justice system “fucked up,” bolstered by details of life behind bars, suggestions for how to support these brothers and sisters and contemplating what MLK would think of how far we have to go.

“Dreams,” The Game—King’s dreams again, asking us to contemplate what they have in common with those of Huey Newton, Easy E, Marshall Mathers, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Jackson, Aaliyah and Left Eye Lopez.

“Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It,” Ice Cube—Lays waste to the logic that blames rap for everything from selling crack to college shootings, in fact arguing that gangsta’s the loudest voice against everyday violence. And the reason, Cube explains, “Lyrically I’m so lethal…Just to feed all my people.”

“Georgia Bush,” Lil’ Wayne—Sums up the first year after Katrina, calling the President out for ongoing genocide. A sample of Ray Charles’s “Georgia” not only emasculates the president but restores the power of that refrain free of nostalgia.

“Get Ya Hustle On,” Juvenile—Life after Katrina’s a lot like life before Katrina, “your mayor ain’t your friend/he’s the enemy,” your friends are behind bars, and there’s no government for the people just a hustle to stay alive. But this song’s not about defeat—”It’s crunch time,” Juvenile declares, “It’s the movement.”

“Ghetto, Arab Remix,” Ali B featuring Yes-R & Akon—This call for worldwide unity features Morrocan rappers Ali-B and Yes-R joined by R&B singer Akon, who has his own roots both in St. Louis and West Africa.

“Hangin’ On (My Song),” Chingo Bling—Biggie rapped about contemplating suicide, here it’s the terrorism of the immigration police that puts a man in that mind state.

“Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” Three 6 Mafia—Oscar or not, this song stands strong on its own, deromanticizing the hustle of “seeing people killed and seeing people deal and seeing people live in poverty with no meal.”

“Hate It or Love It,” The Game and 50 Cent—”The underdog’s on top, and I’m going to shine, homie, until my heart stop.” Summons Rakim and Marvin Gaye to remind listeners that playa hatin’ avoids the hard work of dealing with the power structure.

“Hip Hop Police,” Chamillionaire featuring Slick Rick—Cites Snoop Dogg’s “Murder Was the Case” to suggest hip hoppers not let themselves be turned against each other but, instead, stay focused on the real sources of injustice.

“Hope,” Twista and Faith Evans—Twista wishes, “I could go deep in a zone/And lift the spirits of the world with the words within this song.” He does just that and so much more, calling for his brother to get out of jail, his grandmother to get well, an end to drug dealing, war and poverty. Faith’s refrains make it easy to “take this music and use it, let it take you away.”

“Imagine,” Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and D’Angelo—In this world without hip hop, there’s all the same poverty, sickness, madness and death except no music to bring people together to fight.

“Let’s Get This Paper,” Rich Boy—May be the angriest, hardest-hitting political statement anyone’s made about the war against the poor, here at home and over in Iraq.

“Lighter’s Up,” Lil Kim—In English and in Spanish, Brooklyn’s self-proclaimed queen of rap serves up this reggaeton-flavored rap for unity, “no matter where you from.”

“Live Again,” Yin Yang Twins—Dirty South bad boys contemplate the quiet agonies of women forced out of their homes and into the streets, taking off their clothes to feed their kids and hoping for a second chance at life. D-Roc bemoans the fact that the schools don’t prepare these women for the world they face, and the preachers don’t give them refuge, so their hopes and dreams only find voice in rap.

“Make Me Better,” Fabolous and Ne-Yo—A Brooklyn rapper joins forces with a sweet voiced refrain to show just how much we need one another.

“Memphis,” Eightball & MJG—A rally cry for unity among all the hoods of the Mid-South, calling upon the region’s rich musical history and pointing toward a future where all the ghettos nationwide come together.

“My Hood,” Young Jeezy—”Everytime I do it, I do it for my hood/And everytime I do it, I do it for your hood/and everytime I do it, I do it for they hood/It’s understood….

“100 Years,” Plies—Story after story indicting a justice system out to put every young man in the hood behind bars, asking such pointed questions as “how in the fuck can four birds get you a life sentence, but give a cracker seven years for money launderin’ millions?”

“Over and Over,” Nelly—Even without the video of a day in the parallel lives of Tim McGraw and Nelly, these blues suggest the strong ties that bind Nelly being “country” to country music.

“Pal Norte,” Calle 13—This rap about the political vision of an immigrant to El Norte ran in heavy MTV rotation after its album knocked Jennifer Lopez off the top of the Latin pop charts in 2007.

“Ridin’,” Chamillionaire—A tribute to the Undeground Kings’s “Ridin’ Dirty,” this huge hit is the catchiest, boldest protest of racial profiling yet.

“Runaway Love,” Ludacris with Mary J. Blige—Just what it sounds like, a love song to children fleeing violence and a dream of a future those kids can live for.

“Slap,” Ludacris—A working man’s blues that runs through the details of a hard scrabble life, growls at the wealthy, tells the President to just shut up, and then stops and contemplates the abyss. “Troops gone and we still at war/Nobody even knows what for/Even more I’m scared to find what the world really has in store.”

“Slippin’,” Lil’ Kim featuring Denaun Porter—”Fuck the law, the whole system’s corrupt,” Kim declares as she describes just what’s universal about the dog-eat-dog situation that landed her in jail.

“Speaker,” David Banner featuring Akon, Lil Wayne & Snoop Dogg—West Coast and Southern unity “busting out of your speakers,” relishing a sense of power and self control that comes with others at your side.

“Stand Up,” Eightball & MJG—A call to the South, East, West and Worldwide for rappers to talk straight, stay true, stand up for each other, go the distance and forget those who’ve got nothing better than do than hate on other artists.

“Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill),” Wyclef Jean with Lil’ Wayne and Akon—A redemption song for a high school sweetheart all but lost to that same mess that threatens to take us all down.

“The Message,” Styles P—To each member of his family, to his hood, to his crew, to the poor, to the jail, to the kids, to the ladies, to the rich, to the world, the messages P leaves vary in specifics, but they’re tied together by “one is all and all is one/I’m going to see us all rich before all is done.”

“The Morning News,” Chamillionaire—After the enormous success of his debut album, this Houston rapper opened his second album with this attack on the emptiness of television news, where Rosie debates the Donald and the latest gaffes by Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson are worth more time than the reality that your tax dollars just “pay for classes,” CEO’s are “slavemasters….and if you ain’t upper class/then your opinion is irrelevant.”

“The Way I Live,” Baby Boy Da Prince—An appreciation of life in Marrero, one of the neighborhoods spared by Katrina’s floodwaters but not New Orleans’ neglect and devastation before or after.

“We Takin’ Over,” DJ Khaled (with Rick Ross, T.I., Lil’ Wayne, Fat Joe and Akon)—Exactly what it sounds like, blasting off with tympani and some kind of outer space choral/keyboard part that says, think big and then think bigger. Arab-American, West African, Latino and African-American voices plan a takeover, “one city at a time….with enough work to feed the whole town.” A manic Lil’ Wayne vocal promises that those who polite society most fear will soon be heard.

“What’s Going On,” Remy Ma with Keisha Cole—A heartbroken prayer to an aborted child from a young mother, without money or even support from her family or the father of her child, waiting for an answer.

“Why We Thugs,” Ice Cube—The original gangsta still standing spells out the tough questions gangsta’s critics either don’t think hard enough to ask or willfully dismiss. “Call me an animal up in the system/But who’s the animal that built this prison?/Who’s the animal that invented lower living?

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“The turn to death themes in the spirituals was partly due to the execution of Nat Turner in 1831. Soon after, many songs included references to the coming ‘Judgment Day’ for the plantation regime and, later, for the Confederacy—‘Can’t stand the fire.’ Turner’s rebellion also sparked a movement that spread white Christian missionaries across the South in order to establish churches for African-Americans that used only approved songs. The battle over lyrics and music censorship, sacred and secular, has been fully engaged ever since. The day-to-day life of the plantation bloc was built around perpetual monitoring of the behavior of blacks and whites.”— Clyde Powers, from Development Arrested: Race, Power, and the Blues in the Mississippi Delta

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They’ve got a little list of all those things of which they don’t approve

They gotta keep their eyes on you ‘cause you might make your move

“Redneck Friend”—Jackson Browne

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NO QUEENS IN THE KINGDOM… Suppose that all the rappers who ever used the words “bitch” or “ho” controlled the U.S. government. Suppose that they sent teams of police out into every neighborhood and arrested any woman who allegedly wasn’t conducting herself properly. Suppose that they refused to allow women to vote or to drive or to go to school or to travel or to leave the house. Suppose that they controlled the media and used it to constantly assert that women were too emotional to make any decisions and should never be listened to.

Sound far-fetched? Take out the hip-hop part, and this is exactly what is happening in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The obscenely wealthy Saudi royal family which controls that country has received hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. aid. The U.S. occupies Saudi Arabia militarily and our sons and daughters have shed a lot of blood there. Every time you get a paycheck, a good chunk of the taxes you pay go to keep the Saudi regime in power and to keep women there from having any function beyond pregnancy. Without U.S. support, the Saudi royal family would be immediately overthrown.

Not one of the critics of hip-hop who get media face time to slander our culture has proposed doing anything about the oppression of Saudi women. All the Presidential candidates support the status quo in Saudi Arabia. Our society definitely needs to deal with misogyny. Let’s start by breaking away from the political parties who take our money to defend it in its worst forms.

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THUG LIFE… Violence in music? In 1963 The Singing Nun had a hit with “Domenique,” which spent ten weeks at number one. It’s the story of Domingo de Guzman, founder of the Dominican order of the Catholic Church in 1210. He died in 1221, eight years before the Dominicans established the Inquisition. Pope Gregory IX gave the good friars the authority to torture heretics and burn them at the stake. In 1233 Domingo de Guzman was made a saint and he was immortalized by the Spanish when they named the current capital of the Dominican Republic as Santo Domingo.

The Singing Nun’s song celebrates the life of this saint and the Dominican “conversion” of the heretics. Perhaps Mel Gibson, who showed a similar talent as an apologist for Catholic violence with his film Apocalypto, will make a film showing the positive side of the Inquisition. The obvious soundtrack choice? “Domenique,” of course.

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ROOTS AND BRANCHES… While answering fans’ questions on the Who’s official website (thewho.com), Pete Townshend argued against one fan’s view that rap and hip-hop are dominating the charts and essentially blocking positions for new rock music. When asked what he felt about rap and hip-hop’s “stranglehold” on the pop charts, Townshend answered, “Rap and hip-hop is the music of the street today. The street is where rock came from. When the white rock players and their fans stopped hanging out on the street, and started hanging out in restaurants, the reality shifted.”

Townshend added, “This is… a ‘loaded’ question. You assume I will agree with you that rock has lost its grip on the masses. Firstly, it never had a grip on the black audience, they’ve always had their own music styles and special coded language which rap has now formalized. I also reject the use of the word ‘stranglehold’–it suggests a noble rock ‘n’ roll tree is being starved of air and nurture by the weeds of rap. I am a huge fan of rap–even Eminem has a real connection to the work I did when I was young.”

RRC reader Dennis Walkling’s response:

I’ve always loved Townshend’s fuck you attitude towards people who claim to be fans of rock, and maybe get the music to a degree, but just don’t get the idea of it. It’s that ridiculous “either/or” attitude that has been the destruction of so many good things throughout history, particularly when it comes to culture, something about which there is never an “either/or” stance one can take without looking completely ignorant. The irony of it is that musicians have been offering hope, release and plenty of in your face rebellion since before Mozart started composing at age four, and it didn’t matter then about any sort of over-commercialized, self-congratulatory sales number pretending to define what is meaningful or not. And that’s all the charts are is a data tool for sheer numbers of product sold. It may or may not have anything to do with cultural value, longevity or meaningfulness. Hoping not to die before I get old, because there’s still some great music to be made that I haven’t heard yet.

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WHITE BOY MUSIC… Michael Gonzales writes: Growing-up in the seventies, me and my baby brother Carlos had more differences than just our musical tastes. While he was a small boned boy, I was squeezing into husky sized pants; while he played stickball in the street, I devoured Jack Kirby comics; by high school, while ‘Los pumped iron and marched with R.O.T.C., I was puffing reefer and scribbling poems (“…like some kind of sissy,” he teased) in my notepad.

Living in the concrete circus of New York City, we were surrounded by an array of cultural rhythms that soared like soft winged birds throughout the neighborhood. From the open window of our shapely Rican neighbor Miss Soto, the frantic salsa sound of Ray Barretto, Celia Cruz and Eddie Palmieri blared; up the block, hard knock hustlers parked their ornate rides and chilled to the chocolate bubble bath splash of the Isley Brothers, Barry White or Isaac Hayes that sloshed from their speakers.

Across Broadway, the flour-covered men behind the Formica counter at Tony’s Pizzeria digested a steady diet of ballroom ballads sung by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin or Tony Bennett; while around the corner, the old black man who worked in Leo’s Laundromat listened to sacred gospel songs, contentedly nodding his head to the hallowed hymns.

While Carlos listened to wah-wah funk bands and strobe light disco singles, I had somehow tripped into a wonderland of screaming guitars, blaring banshee vocals and thunderous drums. Beginning with sneaking peeks at Elvis Presley flicks on the CBS Late Movie when I was seven, I had a serious jones in rock-n-roll.

One humid summer evening, hanging-out with our neighborhood crew playing the dozens in front of a flickering street light on 151st Street and Riverside Drive, my brother snapped, “At least ya’ll don’t have to listen to that white boy music Michael be playing. Those loud ass guitars and screaming drives me crazy.”

Brooding like a baby, I ran into the crib, and drowned my sorrow in Freddy Mercury’s falsetto. Indeed, the rock acts that attracted me were the flamboyant glam of Kiss, David Bowie and Elton John. My “Bennie & the Jets”/”Pinball Wizard”/”Someone Saved My Life Tonight” obsession got so bad, I had started scribbling “Elton” as my middle name on school papers.

In class, handing me back a yet another history test I had failed, beefy Mr. Waters snidely screamed, “I’m sure Elton John managed to pass history, but, at the rate you’re going, you may never get out of sixth grade.”

The entire class snickered as I visualized myself bedazzled in neon boots and a mohair suit as electric music and solid walls of sound crumbled at my feet.

For me, television was yet another passion. Forget about the former Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd band, I’m talking about the glowing glass teat that hypnotized my generation with its Technicolor gamma rays: Schoolhouse Rock shorts, nappy-headed Fred Sanford heart attacks, pictures of Patty Hearst robbing banks, soulful Fat Albert playing funk tunes in a Philly junkyard and ivory picket fence Brady Bunch images was my thing. Still, it wasn’t until a few months past my twelfth birthday that I got my first peek at punk rock, and realized there was a universe beyond Elton’s radiant rhinestone eyeglass, Freddy Mercury’s spandex jumpsuits and Ziggy Stardust partying with spiders on Mars.

One Saturday night, lying on the pudding brown linoleum in the living room, ‘Los and I watched a NBC news show called Weekend. Hosted by Lloyd Dobbins and Linda Ellerbee, a groundbreaking program came on as a replacement to Saturday Night Live once a month.

With subjects that ranged from comic book collectors to incest, one could never predict the topics that would be featured. Still, it was quite a surprise that winter night in ‘77 when Weekend aired a segment on “the punk phenomenon in England.” Open-mouthed, I gazed at the television screen with glee as The Sex Pistols wreaked havoc in countless unsuspecting households through out America.

Broadcast “in living color,” this crew of wild Brit boys clad in worn jeans, ripped t-shirts, chunky black boots and numerous piercings stalked the stage of a tattered venue in brutish abandon. “That’s disgusting,” Carlos mumbled sleepily as lead “singer” (screamer, shouter, shrieker) Johnny Rotten lobbed gobs of spit into the frenzied folks in the front jumped up and down. It was as though they were being baptized “You would never see The Jackson Five spitting at their fans.”

The more these “self-styled barbarians,” as Brit writer Nigel Williamson later described The Sex Pistols, taunted their fans, the more maniacal the crowd became. These crazed scenes inside the club were edited with shots of the band’s infamous boat ride on the Thames to promote the single “God Save the Queen,” an interview with their trickster manager Malcolm McLaren and footage from their demented appearance (pre-Sid Vicious) on a BBC talk show.

Until that night, I had never of thought of rebelling against the system or my mother, but one glimpse of The Sex Pistols changed my perspective on the world, which at the time was limited to my Harlem hood, a massive comic book collection and more than a few pop records.

For months after watching the broadcast about the social revolution of punk, I worried about the fragile state of civilization and badgered my mother with inane requests to be sent to an English boarding school like my cousin Calais, who upon returning to the States spoke incisively in her affected accent and gushed about seeing the Sex Pistols in person.

Next to the poof-pop of Elton and Queen, punk rockers were a bunch of rowdy kids who could barely play their instruments, but perfect pitch and harmony hardly seemed the point. Enraptured by the sheer emotion, vibrant energy and defiant anger directed at the plastic people populating our world, the Pistols planted a germ of creative discontent that encouraged me to write angst ridden poems overflowing with images of anarchy and sorrow, question the teachings of my Catholic education as I strived to survive in a no-future (a slogan the non-punk Black folks in my hood could well understand) world of posers and squares.—Michael Gonzales of Brooklyn writes at blackadelicpop.blogspot.com

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ROCK CRITIC OF THE MONTH… “I actually did a country song on my new album called ‘My Medicine’ that was inspired by Johnny Cash. Country music inspires me and it makes me feel so good hearing it, so I really wanted to come and be a part of this heritage.”—Snoop Dogg, backstage at the Country Music Television Awards

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BULLSHIT THE BLUE SKY…. On January 24, Bono shared the stage at a world business conference in Davos, Switzerland with Al Gore and other luminaries. Bono addressed the music censor personally and talked warmly about how Gore had visited his home. Turning to Gore, Bono said: “Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter. I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, Gulfstream-flying rock star. I’m trying, Father Al, but oil has been very good to me—those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel.” Bono the comedian conveniently overlooked the fact that Al Gore is a major stockholder in Occidental Petroleum and an architect of NAFTA, the disaster which gives corporations the power to sue governments if environmental regulations cut into profits.

The day before he flew to Davos, Bono was at the Pentagon to discuss “the fight against global poverty” with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates’ anti-poverty credentials are even worse than Bono’s. An unindicted Iran/Contra conspirator, Gates, as deputy director of the CIA during the Reagan years, argued for the massive bombing of civilians in Nicaragua. He went on to become director of the CIA under Bush the Elder and, until his recent return to “public service,” was a trustee of Brinker International, owner of 1,800 restaurants, including the Chili’s chain. How many restaurant employees do you know who live above the poverty line?

Bono and Gates didn’t actually have time to discuss “the fight against global poverty.” According to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, the two anti-poverty crusaders discussed “plans to set up a new U.S. military command for Africa.” Six weeks later, a U.S. submarine fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into a remote village in Somalia, killing six people.

It’s becoming clear that Bono isn’t just a misguided idealist—he consorts with the CIA and with music censors because they all have the same agenda: Making sure that the rich keep getting richer. U2 manager Paul McGuinness made that clear at the January Midem music industry convention in Cannes when he called on all Internet service providers to disconnect the service of music downloaders and for governments to make such policies into law. McGuinness attacked Radiohead for giving away its music and called out companies such as Apple—which paid big bucks to U2 two years ago for a special edition iPod—as “makers of burglary kits.” In McGuinness’s view, the millions of fans who have made him and his band five of the wealthiest men in Ireland–one of the world’s poorest countries–are nothing but “burglars.”

And more people are noticing that Bono the Emperor has no clothes. In his February 22 Guardian review, Peter Bradshaw gave U2 3D one star. “…This seemed reasonably enjoyable when I saw it last year at the Cannes film festival, after the band played a live introduction on the red-carpeted steps of the Palais. But watched again, deprived of that novelty and the live buzz, it’s flat and U2 just look like four conceited billionaires who are further up themselves than ever…At all times, the band congratulate themselves on their raw courage in espousing human rights. ‘Is this a time for keeping your mouth shut?’ Bono roars at one stage. Well, given it was only the Dixie Chicks and not U2 who risked record sales by explicitly opposing the Iraq war, it would seem that in Bono’s case the answer is, em, yes.”

Meanwhile, Bono has been working hard to gain Irish planning board approval for a $200 million expansion of his Clarence Hotel in Dublin. The plan will involve the demolition of several large Georgian buildings and has drawn opposition from local preservation groups.

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BIRDS OF A FEATHER… In his February 6 keynote address at the Concert Industry Consortium in Los Angeles, British promoter Harvey Goldsmith criticized U2 manager Paul McGuinness: “He accused the heroes of Silicon Valley of being manufacturers of burglary kits. However, when I later had a drink with Paul and asked him about the secondary ticket market, he told me that U2 would run its own auction site. So on the one hand he is attacking the Internet pirates for stealing his artist’s music, but on the other hand he is quite happy for the same fans to be ripped off by the secondary ticket market—providing the money, of course, goes to him and his artist.”

Al Gore is executive chairman of Current Media, which paid him $1,041,677 in salary in 2007 even though the former veep works only part-time and even though the company has lost $31.5 million over the past three years. Current Media is now preparing an initial public offering of its stock. SECinvestor.com predicts the stock will come on the market at between $13 and $15 a share, which would mean Al Gore’s 3.7 million shares would be worth a minimum of $48 million. He should have no problems buying U2 tickets at auction.

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GOIN’ DOWN LOUISIANA… “I’m not just a musician who plays my show and then takes off after the show. I use it to open the door so that we can talk. There are always discussions after my shows with 10-20 people about what’s going on. Look at the numbers of the people who are eligible to vote, and look at the number of people who actually do vote. Because I think the majority of people know better, they know that the vote doesn’t matter. They’re looking for a way to change that. They’re looking for a way to get involved. They’re like, what do we do? They’re waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. They know that something’s not right.”

Louisiana’s swamp-rockin’ bluesman Tab Benoit founded the organization Voices of the Wetlands to promote the defense of the Mississippi Delta from any and all predators but especially the corporate ones. He helped put together an all-star band, Voices of the Wetlands All-Stars, which includes Dr. John and Cyril Neville, to spread the word.

Benoit also provided much of the music and authenticity for the IMAX film, Hurricane on the Bayou, which was funded by Shell Oil. And he knows what’s wrong with that, too.

“When you see the IMAX thing, the first thing you see is Shell Oil. As long as it’s like that, we’re never going to fix it. As long as Shell Oil is funding the awareness tools, we’re never going to fix this. We didn’t touch oil [in the IMAX film], so it was Shell-friendly. It’s a good introduction, but it aggravates me when we see ‘we can just do it, we know how.’ And we aren’t doing any of it, and we’re not going to do any of it as long as these oil companies are making record profits and all, as long as the EPA restrictions are lifted off the oil companies as they are right now.”

These words come from the recent Benoit interview by Georgianne Nienaber and keith harmon snow for A28 (network.a28.org). By way of introduction, they write: “The Audubon Nature Institute produced Hurricane on the Bayou in partnership with Chevron, Dow Chemical, Dominion Oil, the Weather Channel, and several ‘philanthropic’ foundations. The film green washed the truth—there is not one word about big oil and defense and not a single image of the vast oil infrastructure that blankets the Gulf onshore, offshore, underground, and underwater.”

“My dad,” Benoit says, “owns a pipe company; he’s the guy that puts threads on the pipes so that they can screw them together. That’s all he does is mass production threading, but he’s got patents on them. All these companies have to come to him for high-pressured gas well applications. He has to do the work. He’s made millions, and I was always taught by my family—I don’t think I’m any different than most American families—if it’s legal, and you can make a living doing it, then it’s good. And I didn’t believe that. And I still don’t believe that. Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s good.”

“I understand the importance of Louisiana, for the United States to survive, for the globe to survive. You hear all about this global warming, and you look at all the stuff that supposedly causes it, and the stuff that could be fixing it. Everybody knows that the delta of a river, that those lush forests of swamps and trees are like natural filters, and oxygen makers. And we just killed a huge amount of it. We killed the third largest river on the planet’s delta. We killed one of our big atmosphere scrubbers. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that maybe we should pay more attention to the delta of the Mississippi river.”

“Here we [Cajuns] were forced to speak English. If you go to Lafayette and everything, Lafayette and that area west still speaks French and they keep French important. Here, my grandparents didn’t learn English in school. Everything was totally French here. They learned English from Texaco. Texaco bought 70% of [Terrebonne] Parish; they were kind of forced into learning English and changing their ways of living. As far as I’m concerned, that’s when the culture started dying, right there. It was stripped away for industry purposes.”

“How can we say we’re the greatest country in the world when you see the Governor of Georgia saying Atlanta has 80 days of water left, and we’ve got no solution? With all of the scientists that we have in this country, and all of this technology and all of the advances that we make, we can’t get water to a city that has a river flowing not too far from the city? There is water there.

“We’re in Iraq trying to turn them into a democracy, trying to make them be more like the good old U.S. I don’t want them to be like us.”

“All the artists are going to be the voices. Artists are the communicators. We see everybody, we go everywhere, we talk to people everywhere we go, we find out information, we find out stories, we tell stories ourselves, and I mean that’s where you’re going to get the news from. It’s come to the point right now where the news doesn’t matter; the news doesn’t count. So how are you going to get pertinent information from each other? The artists have a way to spread it. We have a way to spread it nationally, worldwide for that matter.”

“The only reason I got into music is because I knew it was the one talent that I had that I could help others with. It was a bigger more universal way to help.”

*****

Power of the Ponchartrain, Tab Benoit with Louisiana’s Leroux (Telarc)—Picks up steam, rising above stock blues licks, on the third track, “Shelter Me,” which may or may not be about Katrina but is definitely some fine gospelized gumbo. Then, as guitar and voice go where they feel like going, the title track tells credible tales of unbelievable voodoo and “Midnight and Lonesome” channels the spirit of John Lee Hooker in its attempt to exorcise heartbreak. Benoit even manages to inject life into that hoary chestnut “For What It’s Worth,” which here is about Katrina (“There’s muddy water on the street”).

*****

GIG OF THE MONTH… Kenny Garrett Quartet at Catalina’s Jazz Club in Los Angeles on March 28. Mid-set, alto saxophonist Garrett began to explore the beautiful melody of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” Nudged it here, nudged it there, wordlessly making its message stand out in bold relief. It was followed by a lengthy solo on organ by the young church-trained keyboardist–a spectacular journey of passion, wit, and innovation. Whoever is elected President, this group should play the inauguration.

Take it from me

Someday

We’ll all be free

*****

JUST EXACTLY WHY DO WE NEED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?… If file sharing is destroying the music industry, then how did Warner Music Group increase its sales in the first quarter 7 per cent to $989 million? This despite the fact that Warner Music paid its top five operational execs a total of $15,733,611 in 2007. It doesn’t hurt Warner Music’s bottom line that in 2005, according to the LA Times, they “eliminated 1600 positions, pared wages, slashed investment in new artists, shut offices, and quadrupled employees’ health insurance premiums.”… In February, Michael Cohl was elected chairman of the board of Live Nation, the nation’s leading producer of live shows. As a Toronto concert promoter, Cohl charged a “tax” for ten years to acts who played CNE Stadium even though the levy didn’t exist on provincial books. Cohl pocketed 100 per cent of the money but was never charged with a crime. He continues to work with some of the acts (Rolling Stones, U2) on whom he pulled the scam.

*****

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER… In the excellent new documentary on copyright, Good Copy Bad Copy, Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Industry Association of America (MPAA), opined that artists will not create without the financial incentive that copyright allegedly provides. “People will not do things for free,” Glickman said. “It just defies human nature.”

What are this hack lobbyist’s qualifications to make such a fundamental judgment of the artistic impulse? Glickman, who makes over $1.5 million a year at the MPAA, has never made an album or written a book, let alone made a movie. He is a former nine-term Congressman (Democrat, natch) and was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture, where he made his mark promoting genetically-modified foods.

In fact, hundreds of millions of people around the world are making music, writing, painting, and filming without any expectation of getting paid for it. Faced with this tsunami of creativity and the technology which helps it spread, Dan Glickman operates in the same spirit as his predecessor Jack Valenti, who once told Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

Glickman even told the filmmakers that his rigid stance on copyright was just an application of the ideals of our nation’s founding fathers. The most creative of that group, Benjamin Franklin, refused to patent any of his many inventions, saying they should be the property of all humanity.

To watch Good Copy Bad Copy, go to: http://nofilmschool.com/2008/03/seen-good-copy-bad-copy/.

*****

DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED…

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”–Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, 1862

“These are strange times indeed. While they continue to command so much attention in the mainstream media, the ‘battles’ between old and new modes of distribution, between the pirate and the institution of copyright, seem to many of us already lost and won. We know who the victors are. Why then say any more? Because waves of repression continue to come: lawsuits are still levied against innocent people; arrests are still made on flimsy pretexts, in order to terrify and confuse; harsh laws are still enacted against file sharing, taking their place in the gradual erosion of our privacy and the bolstering of the surveillance state. All of this is intended to destroy or delay inexorable changes in what it means to create and exchange our creations. If Steal This Film II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think ‘after intellectual property’, think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity, we have achieved our main goal.”–from the Steal This Film II website

*****

JUST EXACTLY WHY DO WE NEED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?… “After the conflagration, in the final years of humankind, the artists will, once again, be found painting the ceilings of the caves, and the middlemen will, as always, be trying to talk the honest hunters out of their kill. And it may or may not then be remembered, or indeed believed, that there was once a time when the two groups were inextricably linked.”—David Mamet in Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

*****

ROCK CRITIC OF THE MONTH… “Beauty does not oppose the revolution.”—

Che Guevara

With Castro stepping down, the romance of the revolution takes on the aging creakiness of the passage of time. Collective thinking, common good, these are things that can be dismissed as hippie commie pinko notions… But in a world of What Would Jesus Do? it harkens to a humanistic insurrection that is about decency, kindness and the best of sharing abundance with each other.

True beauty is not i-me-mine-more-now-gimme. If the revolution is lowering profit margins to increase the quality of how people — especially in this, the richest country in the world — live, then Steve Earle is right: the revolution starts now.—

Holly Gleason, Nashville, at www.theyummylist.com

*****

HOME XEROXING TIPS… Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (Duke University Press, $22.95), edited by Eric Weisbard, is wildly uneven but includes plenty of highlights. There’s Ned Sublette’s “The Kingsmen and the Cha Cha Cha,” which tells the story of how the “Louie Louie” riff (DOT-DOT-DOT, DOT-DOT, DOT-DOT-DOT, DOT-DOT) originated in the cha-cha and was inadvertently part of the ongoing infusion of Cuban music into North American culture. Even better is Benjamin Melendez telling the story of the Ghetto Brothers, rock/soul band and peace treaty organizers, who came up in the gang environment of the South Bronx just before hip-hop. Melendez describes how gang warlords began to fight each other through dance challenges, a precursor to break dancing. As for the Ghetto Brothers band: “It started with the Chipmunks. This is how me and my brothers learned harmony, by listening to these guys! Then came the Beach Boys, then came the Four Seasons. Then came the Beatles and everything changed. But the Beatles crossed all barriers of races. When we started playing guitars, we brought in Beatles music. We introduced the Beatles to the Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads and they loved it. When we were doing “Help” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” they would say, “Who wrote that?” We’d say, “Oh, we did!” Then there’s Michelangelo Matos on how “Apache” evolved into the b-boy national anthem: “A record written by a white Englishman imitating Native Americans as portrayed by white Americans and made famous by a Dane with a vaguely Hawaiian sound, newly arranged by a Canadian and rhythmically defined by a Bahaman, became the biggest record in black New York.”… Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business by Wired editor Chris Anderson is a lengthy, thought-provoking essay on the rise of “freeconomics.” Anderson details how everything touched by the Web is moving inexorably toward being given away free. He explains how the technologies which drive this process are only in their infancy, meaning we ain’t seen nothing yet in the journey to gratis. “Because free is what you want,” Anderson concludes, “and free, increasingly, is what you’re going to get.” The record industry which insists otherwise won’t be with us much longer. [Go to wired.com to read the entire article or to get a free copy of the magazine].

*****

GIG OF THE MONTH… Metallica and Scars on Broadway (featuring Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan from System of a Down) at a May 14 Los Angeles benefit for the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Money raised goes to pay for instruments and lessons at the Conservatory–founded by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and fellow musician Keith Barry–for low income students.

The long-developing crisis in funding for public school music programs has accelerated with the advent of the war in Iraq and the virtual elimination of corporate taxes in America–music funding has decreased more than 20% in each of the past three years. Now up step up a group of metal musicians to aid other musicians’ efforts to germinate the next generation. The money raised may fill Silverlake’s coffers, even if it’s only a drop in the overall bucket. But equally important, the action of these musicians makes a statement that everyone should have access to the tools of creativity. Imagine that.

*****

WE’RE SEEING THINGS… Mystery, Mr. Ra (Rhapsody Films DVD) is a 1984 French-language film which documents a European visit by Sun Ra. Ra has a reputation as, literally, a space cadet (he claims to be visiting Earth from another planet) but he makes a lot of sense here in promoting peace and urging listeners “not to follow leaders who destroy, follow those who don’t.” The music of Ra’s large jazz ensemble is only “out” occasionally–it’s actually more like an old school R&B revue. Everyone is decked out in similar costumes, there’s plenty of dancing and singing with a heavy emphasis on rhythm, everything is tight and disciplined. The tunes mine the jazz and pop canon going back to the 1920s and form the basis for Ra’s own explorations and those of his soloists, especially the talented saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen.

*****

I suppose I am not the first Krekkie to correct your understandable assumption that Tim Krekel merely imagines Wilson Pickett’s burial in his backyard. But if I am, WP is actually entombed in a mausoleum in Evergreen Cemetery which backs up to TK’s backyard. The story at the beginning of the track [from Soul Season by the Tim Krekel Orchestra] recalls an actual occurrence in TK’s life in January 2006. It’s a great story to hear him tell it live. If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend it.—Brandon, Nashville

*****

LET’S GET SIRIUS… RRC editor Dave Marsh has a music and politics show on Sirius Satellite Radio, Kick Out the Jams, that features great music, a variety of special artist and activist guests, and Dave’s provocative commentary. Sundays 10 AM to Noon, Eastern Standard Time. Sirius Channel 70, Disorder.

And Dave now has a second show on Sirius, which is all politics. It’s called The Land of Hopes and Dreams on Sirius Talk Channel Left (Channel 146) on Sundays from 2PM-5PM (Eastern Standard Time). To get a taste of the new show, go to www.rockrap.com/LOHAD.mp3.

*****

ROCK CRITIC OF THE MONTH… I was driving home from a gig at two in the morning recently and I had Mary J. Blige playing as loud as possible to help me stay awake. I stopped at a red light near my house in an area where there is construction going on around the clock. There was a construction worker standing there whose only job seemed to be to hold up a light all night. He was paunchy, 50-something, and, yes, he had a red neck. After a few seconds I noticed he was smiling and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Just before the light turned green, he walked toward my car, pointed at the stereo, and gave a big thumbs up. Mary J. Blige has said that her role in life is to “be there for all the girls who work at Wal Mart.” Looks like there may be even more to the story than that.—L.B.

*****

VOICE YOUR CHOICE… On March 2, RRC received an email about Canadian blues-rocker Jeff Healey’s untimely death from cancer at age 41 in a Toronto hospital. It was lengthy but I read it til the end, looking for the news about the benefits that Healey’s fellow musicians would play to cover his medical bills. There was no such news. Then it dawned on me. Healey was Canadian. His medical care was free. In America, we just take it for granted that part of being in the music business is staging benefits to pay medical bills. To my knowledge, such a benefit has never taken place in Canada. Or England. Or Norway. Or any other industrialized country.—L.B.

*****

THE BUDDY SYSTEM… George “Buddy” Miles, who died at age 60 on February 27, was born eclectic. He got his nickname from his idol, jazz drummer Buddy Rich, with whom he shared a stage as a teenager. His father, George Sr., was a bassist who played with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker. Buddy joined his dad’s band, the Bebops, at the age of twelve. Then over the next several years he played behind the Ink Spots, the Delfonics, Ruby and the Romantics, and Wilson Pickett.

It was while Miles was with Pickett that he was spotted by guitarist Mike Bloomfield and tapped for the drum chair in the blues-rock horn band The Electric Flag. Electric Flag’s 1968 debut album, A Long Time Comin’, is a masterpiece which rises to the conceit of its vision—to be “An American Music Band,” an amalgam of genres from rock to soul to country to jazz to blues. It wouldn’t have succeeded without Buddy Miles.

And that wasn’t even the best band Buddy Miles was in. That would be A Band of Gypsies, the trio that also featured Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox. Buddy was no sideman there. He contributed much to its injection of funk into rock, as much with his singing and writing as with his powerful drumming. He also played on Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland and had some fine moments in Santana.

Buddy Miles recorded a long string of solo albums and not one of them is fully satisfying (not even his greatest hits album is devoid of filler, for Chrissakes). But that doesn’t mean they aren’t good—most of them have thrilling peaks of roadhouse R&B heavily flavored with rock elements and Buddy’s rock-flavored singing, in which he used sheer force of will to overpower the mic.

Why was his own output so uneven? Maybe it was because he had small recording budgets and was in a hurry. Maybe it was because he never resolved the tension between being the drummer and being the vocalist/leader (at one point he had his drums and vocal mic set up at the front of the stage while another drummer played in the back). Maybe it was just that, like so many artists, his reach exceeded his grasp.