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Slacker Friday
By Eric Alterman
I've got a new Think Again column called "Obama's Commie Past Exposed Yet Again," and it's here.
Here's what I did last night. How were things in your city?
Crosby, Stills and Nash: "Woodstock" "Marrakech Express" "Almost Cut My Hair"
Bonnie Raitt with David Crosby and Graham Nash: "Love Has No Pride"
Bonnie Raitt and Crosby, Stills and Nash: "Midnight Rider"
Jackson Browne with Crosby, Stills and Nash: "The Pretender"
James Taylor with David Crosby and Graham Nash: "Mexico"
Crosby, Stills and Nash with James Taylor: "Love the One You're With"
Crosby, Stills and Nash: "Rock and Roll Woman"
Crosby, Stills and Nash with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and James Taylor: "Teach Your Children"
Paul Simon: "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" "You Can Call Me Al"
Dion DiMucci with Paul Simon: "The Wanderer"
Paul Simon with David Crosby and Graham Nash: "Here Comes the Sun"
Paul Simon: "Late in the Evening"
Little Anthony and the Imperials: "Two People in the World"
Simon and Garfunkel: "The Sounds of Silence" "Mrs. Robinson"/"Not Fade Away" "The Boxer" "Bridge Over Troubled Water" "Cecilia"
Stevie Wonder: "Blowin' in the Wind" "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" "I Was Made To Love You" "For Once in My Life" "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" "Boogie On Reggae Woman"
Smokey Robinson with Stevie Wonder: "The Tracks of My Tears"
John Legend with Stevie Wonder: "Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)"
Stevie Wonder with John Legend: "The Way You Make Me Feel"
B.B. King with Stevie Wonder: "The Thrill Is Gone"
Stevie Wonder: "Living for the City"
Stevie Wonder and Sting: "Higher Ground"/"Roxanne"
Stevie Wonder with Jeff Beck: "Superstition"
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "10th Avenue Freeze-Out"
Sam Moore with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "Hold On I'm Comin'" "Soul Man"
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Tom Morello: "The Ghost of Tom Joad"
John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "Fortunate Son" "Proud Mary" "Oh. Pretty Woman"
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "Jungleland"
Darlene Love with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "A Fine, Fine Boy" "Da Doo Ron Ron"
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Tom Morello: "London Calling" "Badlands"
Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "You May Be Right" "Only the Good Die Young" "New York State of Mind" "Born To Run"
Darlene Love, John Fogerty, Tom Morello, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Peter Wolf and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher"
CHARLES PIERCE
NEWTON, MA.
Hey Doc:
"Here by the sea and sand/Nothing ever goes as planned."
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "C'mon Cat" (Chainsaw DuPont) -- Not even the fact that Mary Landrieu is a bought-and-paid-for What-Grayson-Said of the insurance industry can keep me from loving New Orleans.
Short Takes:
Part The First: Don't make Ms. Jane angry. You wouldn't like her whe n she's ANGRY. Somebody smart is going to have to explain to me why "Go ahead and filibuster, you jackasses" is politically unfeasible in a country where two-thirds of the people want what's being delayed.
Part The Second: I like a lot of what he says, too, but, if Alan Grayson is going to work talk radio's locked-ward, he should probably stick with Art Bell's program. That said, this woman used to work for Enron, for pity's sake. Seems to be we're just haggling about the price.
Part The Third: As Interim Altercation Papist Correspondent, I'd like to point out to this rightist quota-hire that, if HE wants to be Peter The HERMIT, he's going to have to grow a better BEARD. Also, concerns about environmental destruction and the crippling effects of the poverty associated with Third World debt are "only tenuously connected to the Gospels," but atavistic theocratic loogie-hawking is just what, oh, St. MATTHEW had in mind? Doesn't. Know. Dick. Of course, he lacked support because His Eminence, Cardinal Nutsy Fagen was busy ELSEWHERE.
Part The Fourth: I was informed by E-card this week that, on November 19, we will all celebrate the 50th anniversary of the greatest cartoon show there ever will BE. No doubt about it. I gotta get another hat.
(0) CommentsOctober 30, 2009
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Oh, Brother...
By Eric Alterman
I've got a new Think Again column called "Obama's Commie Past Exposed Yet Again," and it's here.
I took a seminar at Yale in 1985 when I was getting my master's with Edward Said on the role of the intellectual. Everyone in the class wore black and quoted Derrida (with whom I also took a seminar, in French, of which I understood very little). Anyway, there was a rather imposing African-American fellow at the seminar table on the first day with a vest and tie, etc., and a big afro. He said nothing for the two-hour class and then at the end, was called and ripped into Said with every three-dollar word I had ever heard and many more I had not. It was like a fantasy come true--going back to school to show off how smart you were now; perhaps the coolest moment I've ever seen in a classroom. Then Said said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Cornel West," who apparently was an assistant professor in the Divinity School, letting the rest of us in on the joke. The amazingest thing about Cornel is what an original he is; there's never been anything like him: "Gramsci and Sly Stone both understood..."
Anyway, I mention all of this because of the publication of Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, an as-told to memoir written with David Ritz, who has apparently cornered the market on cool as-told-tos, having done Paul Schaffer's surprisingly excellent one, and also Lieber and Stoler's not-as-great one. I's published by something called Smiley Books and it's fun.
(0) CommentsOctober 29, 2009
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Slacker Friday
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new "Think Again" column called "It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News," and it's here.
My Nation column, about Obama and Fox News and the rest of the media, is called "Just Don't Call It Journalism," and that's here.
I did another piece on J Street for the IHT. It's called "Voices From the Wilderness" and that's here and then Le Monde Diplomatique asked me to do a podcast and that's here: Living on J Street.
Philly gets everything!
(0) CommentsOctober 23, 2009
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Precious
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new "Think Again" column called "It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News," and it's here
My Nation column, about Obama and Fox News and the rest of the media is called "Just Don't Call It Journalism," and that's here.
I did another piece on J Street for the IHT. It's called "Voices in the Wilderness" and that's here and then Le Monde Diplomatique asked me to do a podcast and that's here: Living on J Street.
(0) CommentsOctober 22, 2009
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Slacker Friday
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new "Think Again" column called, believe it or not, "I'll See Your Testicles...' (Catfight on the Right)" and it's here. (though perhaps they changed the title later in the day)
Also, I did an op-ed on the move away from AIPAC-style politics for American Jews for the IHT, which is up on the NYT site, here.
Classified section: I'm selling fifty or so Miles Davis cds--everything on Columbia during the key period--mostly in beautiful box sets, etc, and would love to sell the whole thing as a package. Email if genuinely interested. Also, I have two lousy seats for Bruce on 11/8 and one for 11/7 I need to get rid of. Email below....
(0) CommentsOctober 16, 2009
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People Who Died...
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new "Think Again" column called, believe it or not, "'I'll See Your Testicles...' (Catfight on the Right)" and it's here.
Also, I did an op-ed on the move away from AIPAC-style politics for American Jews for the International Herald Tribune, which is up on the New York Times site, here.
I'm getting to the age where the obituary pages are really starting to bum me out. Wasn't AL MARTINO wonderful in the GF? Wasn't NAN ROBERTSON brave to go after the Times the way she did? Wasn't Stuart Kaminsky a fun read? But here is the one that really got to me. Captain Lou Albano. What a great guy, even better in reality than in the "ring" or on the sidelines as the manager of the great Bruno Sanmartino. But how could Mr. Goldstein omit the greatest tribute to Lou from this otherwise loving obit? It's Psychedelic Pandemonium.
Speaking of obits, did I mention that I was briefly in a reading group with Jim Carroll. Really nice guy. He never heard the Drive-By-Truckers' version of "People Who Died" and so I played it for him on my iPod. So history moves forward...
"Gonna Huey, Dewey, and Louie all over the room." Who's for legalizing sex with ducks? Me, David Rudd, and Garfunkel and Oates (but I hope not that juvenile druggist/anal rapist, Roman Polanski.
(By the way, did you notice that the above ducks all have rhyming names spelled totally differently? Awesome, huh?)
(0) CommentsOctober 15, 2009
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Slacker Friday
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new Think Again column called "CBS and Dan Rather--Doing the Right's Dirty Work," and it's here.
My Nation column, "Where have you gone, William Safire?" is here.
Sal's got an interview with Hall & Oates and Pierce follows below, which is followed by more mail. Now here's Sal:
Alter-reviews: New H & O Box Set.
(0) CommentsOctober 9, 2009
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Sea of Heartbreak
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new Think Again column called "CBS and Dan Rather--Doing the Right's Dirty Work," and it's here.
My Nation column, "Where have you gone, William Safire?" is here.
The worst day of the Obama campaign for me was the day I got an email saying "Vote Charlie Rangel for Change." My congressman is quite properly a symbol of everything people hate about the Democratic Establishment and they are cowards for trying to sweep this away. If anyone can imagine a better symbol of corruption that a guy who can't be bothered to pay taxes on the resort he owns in foreign country--who gives the excuse that they were speaking Spanish to him when half his district is Spanish speaking--writing the goddam tax laws that the rest of us losers have to follow, I'd be mighty impressed... I wrote this column in December 2008, things have only gotten worse.
(0) CommentsOctober 8, 2009
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Slacker Friday
By Eric Alterman
We've got a new "Think Again" column called called "Kevin Jennings, the Mainstream Media, and Right-Wing Target Practice." Read it here. Now here's Pierce:
CHARLES PIERCE
NEWTON, MA.Hey Doc:
(0) CommentsOctober 2, 2009
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Wrecking Ball
By Eric Alterman
I've got a new "Think Again" column called called "Kevin Jennings, the Mainstream Media, and Right-Wing Target Practice." Read it here.
Also, I'll be doing an event next week on October 8 at Demos with Rich Benjamin, who's just written a book called "Searching for Whitopia" which you can read about here.
I should have mentioned that I was speaking at the Glory Days conference last weekend at Monmouth University in West Long Branch. I had a really nice time meeting Springsteen-interested academics, musicians, and interested parties. We had a really interesting discussion. I strongly recommend the next one. I did not give a formal paper, but I found the one offered by Jim Cullen, which you can find here to be enormously thought provoking and indicative of the excellent quality of many of the presentations. Joe Grusheky, Jen Chapin, Gary US Bonds and many others performed. I was also quite happy to discover a new book of photos and essays called The Light in Darkness which made me painfully, but happily, nostalgic about the 1978 tour, one of the greatest experiences of my life. The photos of the tour are fantastic and while the essays naturally vary in quality, some of them are real gems. "It was like lightning flashing through the darkness and the band was the thunder," writes Ron Wells. "I had never seen any performer so full of energy and joy. He was definitely on a mission. This was not just a gig for him; it was freedom and exhilaration personified." It's on large format 9.25" x 12" EuroArt Silk 200m paper stock and contains more than 200 photographs reproduced from the original negatives and slides. The book is only available online for purchase at: www.thelightindarkness.com. (Bruce is doing Darkness in its entirety Friday night at Giants' Stadium. He did Born to Run last night. It was awfully moving, after all these years. And he wrote a new song just for these shows, "Wrecking Ball." You can see it here…and if you want to hear Bruce discuss the pain of turning sixty, inside the "rap" portion of "Growing Up," that's here.
Now here's Sal on Rhino's new box set: Where the Action Is
(0) CommentsOctober 1, 2009
Eric Alterman
Well-chosen words on music, movies and politics, with the occasional special guest.
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