Thursday Open Thread

Synchronicitous that dvx put both Jesse and Taj Mahal up (Taj in the Salon). In the mezozoic, I opened for both of them around the same time, and we kept our acquaintances over the decades.

Taj simply "blew me away," and his band then as well. I knew we'd click when I brought my drums before sound check, to find the band outside playing frisbee. You had to call out the name of one of the 500 NDN tribes after catching the frisbee, or you were out. for some reason, i thought that was cool.

After our first night, Taj's brilliant drummer Kester "Smitty" Smith came up to me and said, "I've never seen anyone play drums like that, it sounds so cool." And here i thought it was a privilege just to breath the same air as him.

And Taj was just a gateway into another dimension, especially as he'd added Caribbean players to his band. Watching Robert Greenidge play steel drums like Coltane's sax flipped me out.

When we opened for Jesse, i think it was just the second night of his first US tour after being pardoned by Jimmy Carter for fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft. Emotions were high and the band, even though they were Canuckian :-)) , smoked. There was so much emotion as Mississippi-born Jesse, forced to grow up in Memphis,, the son of a Tennessee state senator or something equally establishment, was coming from years of exile. (Though of course living in super cool Montreal, doesn't exactly classify as punishment.)

There was an almost bootleg album of that live band recorded in Philly a few nights later, Live at the Bijou. Hope it hasn't melted underneath some garage in Frisco.

But i was in awe of jesse's songwriting, his molasses and whisky voice, his humor, and his band. Haven't seen him since moving to Yurp, but remember going back to his hotel room to tell stories after a solo gig the last i saw him.

If there are any videos of him dancing to "Rhumba Man" from those days, check it out. Was the best response to disco i ever saw.

He seems to have fought off cancer of the esophagus, man Jesse, we just lost Levon to that, hang tough, bro.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 03:05:54 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (4.00 / 2)

oh, and Danke dvx for putting those two up together.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 03:55:59 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (4.00 / 2)

Don't thank me - it was the serendipity of the day.

And I am just so totally envious right now.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 03:59:38 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (4.00 / 3)

Forgot to write something important about Taj.

Once I'd packed my drums aside, and focused on this and that windpower firsts, i always had deep regrets in the back of my mind. But whenever I'd stop by to see Taj after a show in the 80's and 90's, he'd always remind me how important the windpower stuff was, and he had respect for what i'd done.

He had grown up in western Mass, a hippie/enviro hotbed... and he'd been working on a dairy farm long enough to become foreman, milking cows at 4am (after coming home from a blues band gig). But western Mass was one of the first areas to fully embrace the sustainability/renewable concepts, and put them into practice, and he never forgot that politics/energy economics mix.

He even read an early draft of Hiawatha.

Still, i believe the world is a better place, that when he finished at UMass, he went to LaLa and formed a band with Ry Cooder, and added the first native star, Jesse "Ed" Davis, to the mix, and the rest is history.

vielen Dank, Taj and Jesse.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:44:39 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (4.00 / 2)

that's when i picked up on him, that first album with jesse ed, ry cooder was some of the tightest, soulfullest blues i had ever heard, the one named 'taj mahal' with the chickens running around on the cover. his voice had all the right attributes and his harp playing kicked ass.

the liner notes were great too, i was immediately intrigued by his education and how down-home a person he was, reading interviews with him at the time.

man i bout wore out the groove on that album and the next. as per usual, the first 2 albums are the best imo.

then i saw him in cotati ca. with a horn section in the mid seventies and though jesse and ry weren't there the band blew the roof off and i became aware of what a syncopation master he was. funk and caribbean had crept way into the grooves compared to the more straight down the line style of the earlier stuff that had hooked me in 69 when he first became known to me.

then he popped up in hawaii, he lived on kauai and would come over to the big island and give one man shows. by then he could play so many rhythms simultaneously with so many accents it was like a master class, and some of it went over my head.

i'll never forget him standing there rocking different parts of his body to the mix of grooves, with that big red guitar. he's a big man, surely able to toss hay bales like they weighed nothing as a young man, and his stage presence was really earthy and commanding.

what a great gift he shares...

thanks for your recollections CH!

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 06:45:24 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 0)

i have heard brits are bailing en masse if they can.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:18:56 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 1)

i'm guessing you meant this comment for the Bank of England's rowboat blog.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:25:36 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 1)

Some smokin' hot gospel from Jesse with Emmylou and Bonnie in 1977, about the time you're talking about:

A guy in the comments says: "I'm not a Christian, but I steal their music sometimes. Think of the Mighty Hand as the love between friends."

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:40:38 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 0)

Yes!

That was the closing encore song on that tour, all chills and goose bumps.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:50:31 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 0)

The Bijou Café is also available in CD or mp3.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 06:21:14 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 1)

Dis da one:

Click for lyrics.

Taj Mahal is colossal.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:29:17 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 0)

So wrong, since I last looked (years have gone by...) it's been remastered and is on sale.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 05:49:52 AM EST
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Re: Another one: (none / 0)

DL'd the mp3s and took a big hit.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri May 18th, 2012 at 06:20:21 AM EST
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Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 8)

Well, you kinda guessed that something like this would happen eventually. Apparently some truths about economics, especially those which offend the sponsors, are just too darned political

National Journal - The Inequality Speech That TED Won't Show You

Prepare to meet Nick Hanauer. He's a venture capitalist from Seattle who was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com. Today he's a very rich man. And, somewhat jarringly, he's screaming to anyone who will listen that he, and other wealthy innovators like him, doesn't create jobs. The middle class does - and its decline threatens everyone in America, from the innovators on down.
You'll read a lot more about Hanauer in the next installation of Restoration Calls, which drops tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the full text of a speech Hanauer gave in March at the TED University conference. You can't find the talk online, because TED officials have declared it too politically controversial to post on their web site. You be the judge:
{text of speech follows}

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu May 17th, 2012 at 12:45:56 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

National Journal - Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

If you're plugged into the Internet, chances are you've seen a TED talk - the wonky, provocative web videos that have become a sort of nerd franchise. TED.com is where you go to find Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explaining why the world has too few female leaders, or Twitter cofounder Evan Williams sharing the secret power of listening to users to drive company improvement. The slogan of the nonprofit group behind the site is "Ideas Worth Spreading."
There's one idea, though, that TED's organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu May 17th, 2012 at 12:49:14 PM EST
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Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

"But even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out and out political. We're in the middle of an election year in the US. Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party. And you even reference that at the start of the talk. TED is nonpartisan and is fighting a constant battle with TEDx organizers to respect that principle....
"Nick, I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US, and would love to have found a way to give people a clearer mindset on the issue, without stoking a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media.
"Alas, my judgment - and it is just a judgment, and that's why my job title is 'curator' - is that publishing your talk would not meet that goal."

TED: fair and balanced.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu May 17th, 2012 at 01:03:12 PM EST
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Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 9)

in recent years anything that isn't specifically pro 1% has been mocked as "class warfare." Now we've got "partisan" and the next stop is "political" along the way to scarier words like "dangerous."

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu May 17th, 2012 at 01:13:38 PM EST
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Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

And "radical"

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Thu May 17th, 2012 at 02:03:33 PM EST
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