Gheorghasbord: Yin

Got a selection of odds and ends for you over the next few days. Gonna do a bit of yin-yanging, if you will. Even if you won't. Not stopping me. 

Today, we'll start with the bleak, the dark, the cowardly buffoonery that's helping to enable it.

Sarah Kendzior is a journalist, author, and researcher. She's studied and written extensively on the rise of Donald Trump and his coterie of ghouls - and the cultural conditions that enabled it. She writes a newsletter on Substack, and posted a beautifully stark piece yesterday, which included the following thought: 

A government shutdown was always the goal. The premature ending, the stripping for parts, the theft without pretense of duty. The open abandonment of the public good. The apathy at abandonment and the avarice in apathy. The slaying of seasons, the torture of time, the collapse of chronology: when promises turn to premises and premises to pixelated dust. There is honor in real dust: this is not that.

When you are ruled by a technocratic death cult, the concept of leverage changes. A general strike does not pose the same threat to the powerful when their goal is to destroy the national economy. A protest does not have the same impact when officials are devoid of shame. A spectacle does not hold the same power when AI lies are generated with a whisper to a soul-stripping robot. A vote is an illusion when elections lack integrity. Calling your representative is a grim farce when your representative serves transnational oligarchy — and sells it American sovereignty.

We'll follow up that softly-whispered damnation with a more forceful condemnation from Ta-Nehisi Coates. Speaking at an event in Minneapolis, Coates offered this measured and typically cutting critique of the institutions and individuals whose cowardice has defined this era:

@mikosataylorcoaching Just saw Ta-Nehisi Coates live in Minnesota and y’all… his words were a balm to my soul. No fluff. No filter. Just truth. 🖤 “You don’t have to fix it all—you just have to be human where you stand.” That part. 🎤 Thank you @StKates + The O’Shaughnessy for this space. 📚 Support Black authors. Listen when they speak. Share their work. #TaNehisiCoates #msp @St. Catherine University #SupportBlackAuthors #BookTok #BlackWritersMatte ♬ original sound - Mikosa Taylor | Business Coach

I might've chosen any one a dozen other fucking things to close with, but here's one that gives us tragedy and comedy in equal measure. Last week at a protest in Oakland, an ICE agent appears to have shot a tear gas canister into the face of local minister Jorge Batista, the aftermath of which you can see below (there's video, but it's not a fun watch).

A different angle of the confrontation reminds us that ICE and its agents aren't some unbeatable monolith. Rather, they're largely undertrained, scared, and overmatched. See, as an example, what certainly appears to be the urine stain on the shooter's pants, right where it would be if one were to piss oneself in fear.

We're gonna beat these losers. Because there are more of us than there are them, and because the cause of righteousness will bring more and more people to it as time goes on. In the meantime, keep calling out their cowardice, disgraceful un-Americanism, avarice, and general goddamn weirdness.

Wrenball Preview

Year One of the Brian Earl Experiment at William and Mary showed promise, as the Tribe debuted a new coach, an entertaining, up-tempo style of play and a return to the top half of conference standings. 

Following a successful run at Cornell, Earl convinced a handful of key contributors on a roster that had scuffled along under previous coach Dane Fischer to stick around and to give him and his system a chance. The holdovers and a wave of transfers produced the program’s first winning record since 2020 and the Before Times, pre-Covid, when Tribe all-timer Nathan Knight roamed the landscape. William and Mary finished 17-15 overall and a spunky 11-7, good for fourth place, in the distended patchwork that is the Coastal Athletic Association. 

The Tribe’s calling card was pace and perimeter shooting. More than half of their shots were 3-point attempts. They were third in the nation in 3-point attempt rate (.517). They were fifth nationally in 3-point field goal shots per game and tied for 15th in 3-pointers made per game. Seven players attempted at least 80 shots from behind the arc. They were also 45th in “pace” – the number of possessions per 40 minutes – and second in the CAA in scoring (77.7 ppg) (Brief aside: I’m well aware that “Tribe” is a singular nickname and therefore an “it” and not a “they;” I adhered to that inconvenient propriety for 30 years in my previous life and I’m thankful that management here at the digital tree fort is more grammatically lenient). 

Encores and continuity are tricky in the new era of NIL and rampant player transfers, components that prematurely drove away championship coaches Jay Wright at Villanova and Tony Bennett at Virginia. By nature, transfers are upperclassmen and sometimes graduate students with one or two years of eligibility remaining. Coaches often aren’t simply filling a few roster spots with a transfer or a couple of freshmen recruits, but bringing in a vanload of fresh faces who see opportunity and are happy to wear the school laundry for a season or two. 

Such is the case in Williamsburg. The Tribe cycled out eight players from last season’s team, including five of the top seven scorers. They lost 80 percent of their scoring and almost 70 percent of their rebounding. Earl brought in eight new players – seven transfers and a freshman, nearly all of whom are guards and wings with perimeter chops and decent shooting eyes. Returning leaders are a trio of seniors, 6-4 Kyle Pulliam (9.9 ppg, .313 pct from 3-point range), 6-5 Chase Lowe (8.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg) and 6-2 Kyle Frazier (4.7 ppg, 33 pct 3-point shooter). Newcomers who figure to contribute include 6-7 junior wing Tunde Vahlberg Fasasi from LaSalle (5.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 34.8 pct 3-pt shooter), 6-6 graduate student Jo’El Emanuel from Fairleigh Dickinson (11 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 36 pct from 3), 6-6 graduate student Cade Haskins from Dartmouth (9.6 ppg, 3.5 rpg), 6-4 junior Reese Miller from Blinn CC (41.6 pct 3-point shooter) and 6-0 graduate student Jhei-R Jones from D2 Winona State (10.9 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 3.1 apg). 

Two additions who may have outsized importance are junior transfer Kilian Brockhoff, a 6-9, 235-pound German making his third stop after seasons at UC Santa Barbara and Saint Louis, and Kaleb Spencer, a 6-8, 225-pound freshman from, believe it or not, here on the sandbar and who did a year’s prep work at highly regarded Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. 

For all of Earl’s reliance on a quick pace and perimeter shooting, his system requires a solid post presence for offensive balance and rim protection. It’s not a coincidence that the Tribe limped home last season, losing its last four and six of its last nine, after a season-ending injury to productive 6-8 forward Noah Collier. Without a consistent backup, opponents took advantage at both ends, extending their defense to challenge W&M shooters and working inside on offense. 

Earl’s frequent all-court pressure is designed more to goose pace than to turn over opponents and generate easy offense; the Tribe committed almost as many turnovers as they forced last season, and though they scored a lot, they also allowed a lot (76.4 ppg) and their field goal defense was in the bottom half of the conference. Makes for interesting viewing. 

The Tribe opens at home Nov. 3 vs. Georgian Court University, which I believe houses the athletic department for Downton Abbey, and has non-conference dates against state rivals Richmond, Old Dominion, Radford and Norfolk State. There’s a trip to Queens, N.Y., to face Rick Pitino and St. John’s, as well as road games at George Washington (G:TB Northern Va. chapter alert!), Duquesne and Bowling Green, and a date versus Texas El Paso at a Jacksonville, Fla., tournament. 

William and Mary was picked fourth in the CAA behind Towson, defending tournament champ UNC Wilmington and College of Charleston. Earl set a worthy standard in his first season, but again he must identify a cohesive rotation from among a slew of newcomers and returnees eager to make a significant impact. If the “bigs” develop, the Tribe has a chance to build on last year and not simply hoist and hope.

Tar Heel State Distress

Dispatch from the State Where Wilbur and Orville Mightily Tried to Take Off: A couple of recent developments have roiled the citizenry here in North Carolina, and that doesn’t even include Bill Belichick’s tenure in Chapel Hill. I’ll try to keep it brief, as y’all come to this site for politics and current events like guys go to IKEA for simplicity and serenity. 

The state legislature voted this week to redraw the Congressional district map, in lockstep with the Big Orange Oaf’s directive for Republican-controlled states to do so to maintain, if not increase, the GOP’s narrow hold of the House of Representatives. The current map is already tilted to give Republicans ten seats and Democrats four; the new map is likely to give Republicans an eleventh seat and take away one Democrat rep. It just so happens that the rep is Black, and the redrawn districts split up the African-American constituency. 

This wouldn’t be a big deal if state legislative maps weren’t already gerrymandered to hell and back. North Carolina is essentially a purple state. As recently as 2022 the Congressional breakdown was seven Democrats and seven Republicans. Vote totals in all Congressional races combined are generally within a few percentage points one way or the other. Yet Republicans hold super-majorities in both the state House (71-49) and state Senate (30-20) – thanks, further gerrymander! – and two years ago re-drew the Congressional map for the current 10-4 advantage. 

The legislature has also done its darnedest to kneecap the Democratic governor (previously Roy Cooper, now Josh Stein) to do anything beyond voice strongly worded opposition. Democrats may sue to overturn the map, but in a dandy little turn of self supervision the Republican-controlled State Supreme Court ruled a couple years ago that the Constitution doesn’t expressly prohibit partisan monkeying with voting districts and that courts cannot force change or alter maps, that only the legislature can do so. 

The message to Dems, as Marco the Albanian said to Liam Neeson in “Taken” – Good luck. Meanwhile, more than a year after Hurricane Helene ravaged areas of western North Carolina, state and local officials are still waiting for Federal funds promised by FEMA. 

According to a Washington Post story, millions of dollars in cleanup and recovery funds are hung up by bureaucratic delays and obstacles, which has forced the state and various counties to assume much of the costs so far and stretched budgets beyond their capabilities. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA, has said that the review process and further scrutiny are needed to root out waste, fraud and abuse. In a statement to the Post, FEMA said that it’s prepared to support states with critical disaster needs, but that its Disaster Relief Fund “is not infinite.” 

Coupled with President Bone Spurs’s remarks earlier this year about possibly shuttering FEMA, and states and local governments taking more responsibility for disaster recovery in the future, folks in North Carolina and elsewhere are a mite skittish about whether the Feds will pony up. Staff cuts to the Federal workforce, FEMA included, have further slowed and complicated the allocation process. Also, Noem, who I wouldn’t trust to oversee cleanup of a garage never mind a multi-billion-dollar disaster, has to sign off on any expenditure over $100,000, and such requests also now go through a DOGE vetting process. 

The Post also reported that so far the Federal government has covered only 10 percent of the damage from Helene, compared to 70 percent of the damage caused by storms such as Katrina, Sandy and Maria. All of which leans into an evolving notion of “You’re On Your Own.” It’s a curious addendum to the current regime’s campaign mantra of “America First.” If the wealthiest nation on the planet is going to slash foreign aid and pull back from alliances and concentrate on matters within, then what parts of America and which Americans come first? To be sure, there are indicators, many of which aren’t promising for those of limited means and influence. Depending on one’s level of discouragement, it might be enough to hop on one of Wilbur and Orville’s machines and take off for distant shores.

Gheneration Next

Next in our ongoing series celebrating Gheorghie progeny (KoGTB?), we give you an up and coming band of rockers from the land where Treehouse Brewing makes Julius and its numerous variations. Friends, I give you...The Public. 

(The guitarist on the far right is Dooger's kid, Owen. These lads have a genre.)

The Tigers Win the Pennant! And Climax!

I've been sitting on Hanshin Tigers news, not because I want to keep it secret but because I'm lazy.

The Tigers won the Central League pennant ... on or around September 9.  This was the fastest anyone ever clinched the CL pennant in NPB history and a bye in the first round of the playoffs.  There was a celebration.

More recently they swept the Central League playoffs, also known as the Climax Series.  You probably thought that was a collection of VHS tapes hidden in the back of TR's closet.  Climaxing successfully earned the Tigers a berth in the Japan Series which starts October 25.  I'm sure that exactly zero of us will watch a minute of these games given the time zone differences but all we really need are the highlights.

Let's go Tigers.

Dave Gets Physical With Physical Graffiti!

First of all, I respect and revere the LP.

I love the album format: it’s the perfect length for a listening session: 40 - 44 minutes.

It’s enough time for an artist to develop a theme, but the whole thing fits into the typical human attention span. I also like the idea of Side A and Side B and how producers and artists can curate the song order so there’s momentum at the beginning of each side of a record (or tape).

I almost exclusively listen to albums– I rarely put on a particular playlist or let that smooth-talking Spotify AI DJ control my audio experience. An album feels like a journey with an artist at a particular time and place; there's coherence and there's control.

Albums often have a definitive timbre– the murky, muddy sound of Exile on Main Street, the shimmering, fuzzy reverb-drenched wall of guitar on Loveless, the post-modern new-wave Americana of Damn the Torpedoes . . . I like enveloping myself in a particular tone and time, and I often get obsessed with a particular album for a month or so and listen to it daily.

Last year, I couldn’t stop listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals; this summer, I went through the Rush catalog and got obsessed with Fly By Night– which mainly sounds like AC/DC if they went prog-rock, with a couple of songs that are reminiscent of The Allman Brothers.

A weird Rush album.

Right now, I am mainly listening to Zamrock, specifically the W.I.T.C.H. album Lazy Bones!!

Highly recommended.

I am listening to Zamrock because of Zman. He introduced me to it on our road trip to Boston. And, moving forward, I am always listening to Zman . . . because of Zamrock!

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I love Whitney’s creative mission to pare down double and triple albums into the regular LP format. Double albums are too long for one listening session– they are a commitment– and I often pass on listening to them and choose something shorter. Honestly, I often forget how many great songs are on double and triple albums because I rarely listen to them– aside from Exile on Main Street and Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic (which is just barely a double album).

I guess the moral here is something I am not great at. Sometimes you have to “kill your darlings” in the name of expedience and practicality– and so people enjoy and listen to your masterpiece. As Hamlet says to his mom, sometimes you have to “be cruel to be kind."

It’s a ruthless endeavor, paring down some bloated behemoth of an album into something that is more in line with the human attention span, and while Whitney might cause some controversy with his song selections, I want to say very explicitly that I truly admire his vision and I am fully on board with this project.

That being said, he fucked up his first attempt. Botched it.

He tackled George Harrison’s triple LP All Things Must Pass, and while he did a passable job paring down this extremely lengthy work, he left off my favorite song: “Beware of Darkness.”

Egregious.

You need the darkness to balance out the lightness! The yin, the yang, all that shit. If you’re going to have “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life,” then you need a counterpoint to those songs. Mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage, equal scale delight and dole. All that.

No worries, though, I came up with an easy fix. I copied his playlist and added “Beware of Darkness.”

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I also think the name of my playlist is much classier than his on-the-nose and rather clunky “All Things Must Pass as a Single LP.”

Not very catchy.

Here’s my (much improved) revision of his absolute travesty. With a much classier title.

I’ve talked the talk, and now I’m going to walk the walk.

You might be thinking: Dave’s an asshole, criticizing and stealing Whitney’s hard work, and then adding one song and claiming it as his own.

Or you might admire my moxy. You might be thinking: Dave’s a killer! Or perhaps you’re just thinking: Dave’s a mess! All of these are fair thoughts about Dave.

Obviously, to earn your respect back, I had to pare down a double album all by myself, without Whit's initial guidance. So I did just that. I took a crack at it, and now you can judge my artistic sensibility. I'm putting myself out there.

I wanted to do an album I love, but one I rarely listen to because of the length. I decided on Physical Graffiti.

I fucking love Led Zeppelin. Killer riffs, alternate tunings, mud shark mayhem, hotel room hijinks, wailing vocals, plenty of artistic theft, and the creation of a mystical dark subterranean musical universe that rivals no other band. Hammer of the Gods.

But my go-to album Zeppelin album is Houses of the Holy. I can’t explain how much I love entering the sun-drenched, swirling, and layered weirdness of that world. And it’s 41 minutes long.

Physical Graffiti is double this. 82 minutes for those of you who are math-averse (and for those of you who are math-rock averse, do NOT listen to Tera Melos).

So I gave Physical Graffiti a couple of listens and made some hard decisions. This thing needs to be cut down to size.

Here we go . . .

Custard Pie – carnal with a killer riff. Got to have it.

The Rover – alternating between funky and epic. Fantastic.

In My Time of Dying – psychedelic slide guitar, fucking sweet.

Houses of the Holy – catchy and wonderful. No brainer.

Trampled Under Foot – Zep does Stevie Wonder, most excellently.

Kashmir — NOPE! YUCK! A boring, bloated faux-Middle Eastern dirge. Repetitive, obnoxious, ponderous. This thing is more appropriate in the film Spinal Tap than on a Zeppelin album. The lyrics are mystical bullshit, promising nirvana but delivering nothing. And I truly hate how Robert Plant delivers them. This song is right out, the tribe has spoken . . . Kashmir, you are fired, voted off the island. No soup for you. Take a seat on the bench, you did NOT make the starting line-up. Even THINKING about this song annoys me. This song should be put in a supermax prison and only allowed to interact with Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." I wish I could use the "Eternal Sunshine" brain eraser to erase the so-called "melody" of this song from my brain. Droning, obsequious, bombastic, turgid, insipid . . . there are no words. Fuck this song.

In the Light – this is how you do an epic 8-minute song. Builds up to something magnificent. It’s in the movie!

Bron-Yr-Aur – lovely and intricate acoustic instrumental piece evoking the cottage where many of the songs were recorded. Short and perfect.

Down by the Seaside – serene and then surprising, catchy and hazy, sounds like it belongs on Houses of the Holy. Enough said.

Ten Years Gone – love this melancholy darkness. Ten years man!

Night Flight – this song rocks. Rescued from the Zeppelin IV sessions. Meet me in the middle of the night. Killer.

The Wanton Song –sinister and ferocious guitar, inscrutable wailing lyrics, spot-on drum fills, this song crushes it.

Boogie with Stu – a bit of a goofy throwaway number, but because it lightens the mood after the fury and ferocity of “The Wanton Song” and also because it features The Rolling Stones' piano player Ian “Stu” Stewart, this song is both sonically necessary and symbolic of the time period and must remain in this spot.

Black Country Woman – a great reminder of what Zeppelin is all about, a transcendental, otherworldly rendering of the blues, this song seems to channel some ancient emotions . . . and only Robert Plant could pull this off, without sounding like he was culturally appropriating black culture. Impressive and authentic.

Sick Again – a perfect ending to this debauchery. A gritty, sleazy rock tune about teenage groupies that also turns reflective and a bit woeful.

Whew. This was NOT easy. But I managed to pare Physical Graffiti down from 82 minutes to 76 minutes. It was hard work, and I may not be cut out for this.

Good luck, Whit. 

I’ll be offering encouragement . . . and plenty of criticism when you fuck up, as you continue on your mission for the rock gods.

Emergency Music Post: Rock 'n' Roll is Awesome!

I was dicking around on the Bluesky last night while the Blue Jays were going all Hitchcock on the Mariners and stumbled upon one of the frequent post-bait questions one sees on socials. A user named Liz Ryerson said, "a poll idea that just popped into my head: since we've collectively been doing 90's nostalgia for awhile as a culture, what's your secret/stealth best 90's album? not something necessarily widely super critically beloved but is nonetheless great and defining for you?"

To which I responded with Sugar's "Copper Blue" and posted this video:

Woke up this morning and made breakfast - my standard fare: plain Greek yogurt with berries, granola, and honey, cup of coffee, glass of water. Checked in on Bluesky again to find that a user named nooneofcons.bsky.social had replied to my post with this:

I clicked through the link to learn that a) Sugar has reunited, b) they're planning to tour, and c) they've released a new single entitled "House of Dead Memories":

Did I...post that into existence? What an exciting turn of events!

Fashion is Dumb

I tried to get AI to superimpose the Teej's face on the model's below, but it wouldn't let me. So score one for our AI overlords. Kneel before Zod, or something. 

Please enjoy this fresh new look from Jean Paul Gaultier's newest ready-to-wear collection. I'm planning to wear it to Colorado/West Virginia football game in Morgantown in November. I'll send photos.

As a Single LP 1: George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

Artist: George Harrison

Album: All Things Must Pass

Released: November 27, 1970

Length: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Vinyl Discs: 3

Might as well start with a doozy, right? 2 hours. 3 LP's. Whew.

Backstory: George, known as the quiet Beatle, or if you watched the Get Back documentary, the super whiny one that Paul pushed around, had a treasure trove full of tunes by the time the Beatles busted up in the year of our tiny dictator’s birth (Anno Dictato 1970). 

And… he put them all . . . all . . . all on this record! All of them! Include some Sides E and F sludge. Man. 

George was in a truly spiritual frame of mind in the late 60’s. He was hanging with Norah Jones’ dad and meditating and taking some acid and most relevantly, incorporating a sitar and other Indian classical instruments into rock and roll. It wasn't just the sound of it, though. He was imbued with religion and Hare Krishna and peace on earth. 

The lyrics of All Things Must Pass are mostly about: God, loving God, praying, and really loving God. You hear a song and start to think it’s an ode to a gal, and ah yeah, it’s instead a paean to a god. Which is obviously perfectly fine. There just isn’t a ton of complex lyrical content. All Things Must Pass is really about one thing. Dear lord. 

When you’re a Beatle (you’re a Beatle all the way?), you have lots of things:

Talent. 

Money. 

Fame. 

Wives.

Gold records.

Access to famous recording studios and producers.

But also really gifted friends. Ones who will oblige you and play on your records. This album is star-studded, to include:

• his future wife-swipin' buddy Eric Clapton
• 5th Beatle Billy Preston
• 4th Beatle Ringo Starr
• Gary Wright ("Dream Weaver," "Love Is Alive")
• Klaus Voormann, German bassman extraordinaire
• Jim Gordon, stud drummer til he lost his fucking shit
• Peter Frampton, age 20
• Pete Drake, pedal steel (played on "Lay Lady Lay," "Stand By Your Man" so many more)
• Badfinger dudes
• Bobby Keys, super sax man on Exile and 100 others

Hell, it goes on, see here -- to the point where Dave Mason said he doesn't know what tracks he's on because "there were so many people in the studio." So they all got together in London town and pumped out a plethora of rock music. 

My story: I never really listened to this album before this year. Everyone knows “My Sweet Lord,” and a few of you know about the landmark lawsuit that the Chiffons’ levied at George for ripping off their hit “He’s So Fine.” Score 1 for ABKCO, later seen destroying The Verve.

Other tracks you know from this solo debut include the title track and especially the stellar “What Is Life" -- my favorite all-time George-solo tune and one immortalized in Goodfellas.

   

I am mostly a post-Beatles fan of Paul and Wings, even with some of his slight fare and silly love songs (actually love that one).  Over the last couple of years, I have honed in on Lennon's work before and after his "Long Weekend" and Hollywood Vampires stint and A Toot and a Snore in '74 sagas -- a chapter of Whitneypedia worth mining another time. 

And Ringo is just Ringo, god bless 'im. You can hear everything worthy he's done since 1970 in 14 good minutes. ("Photograph" is outstanding, albeit footnoted with Harrison's co-write.)

George? I never gave him the time. Even though his name is G(h)eorg(h)e.  I know.

Until this project. And I'm glad I dug in. Here we go, with a newly re-arranged and massively truncated album that rivals any Après-Beatle offering. 

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass as a Single LP

Side A (22:12)

1. What Is Life 

This song just seems like a killer album opener to me. And so it is now. 

2. I Live for You

I follow it up with… an outtake? Yep, good shit. Pete Drake pedal steel. Get some. 

3. My Sweet Lord

At #3, we go with the big hit. Hare Hare Krishna Krishna, the thing about the Lord, he’s so fine. 

4. Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)

My favorite discovery on this little journey! Frank Crisp, a “microscopist,” and the original owner of Harrison’s London home. Now that is lyrical fun! Love this tune. Let it roll, indeed. 

5. Run of the Mill

Now this one really deviates from the peace and love! A nifty little tune with some brass, it sounds pretty Beatles-y. Maybe because it was written when the Fab Four were breaking up; it’s a major slap squarely at Paul. Love it. You go, George. 

6. Awaiting on You All

Okay, let’s hustle back to the pew. A rocking little number. Lyrics remind me of our pal Hightower’s ex-gal Allison, who’d joined a cult and shaved her head in the late 1990’s. He went to see her and was catching up, and he told her he was a schoolteacher. She replied curtly, “Okay, but wouldn’t it be better if you were teaching people to chant to God?” 

Side B (20:19)

1. Isn't It a Pity (Version 1)

A lovely song. A long song. A Phil Spector-long song. It’s 7:11. You know, like they were recording so long, so late at night, they had to go get Twinkies and burritos and Cokes and then made the song that runtime. Ringo, Billy Preston, Gary Wright. Version 2 is shorter and has Clapton. Eh, I like this one.

2. If Not for You 

A cover of a Dylan tune. Is it a cover if it’s by your friend and he only released it one month prior? I don’t know. I like George’s version way better. A toe tapper, and his slide sounds great. Listen for a young Peter Frampton on acoustic guitar. (If you can.) 

3. Hear Me Lord

Really enjoy this one. This is a beautiful spiritual with killer keys (piano, keyboard, and amazing organ) and some electric licks from E.C. A great cut. 

4. All Things Must Pass

Closing it out with the title track. I wish I loved this song more than I do, but it’s integral to the album and a good message for today.

Wow. What a tight little banger. Wait, what? Seriously, though, it's too bad Sir Martin, a gheorghe in his own right, didn't stop by Abbey Road Studios in the summer of '70 and hack away at the scraps to make this sharp piece of British steel. 42 minutes and 31 seconds lean. 

Listen away until the next time. Let it roll.

New Recurring Feature: Les Coole's As a Single LP Series

Bloated. Self-indulgent. Lacking self-control and self-awareness. A massive ego trip. 

These are labels often used to describe (a) me, (b) my blog posts, and, most pertinently, (c) double and triple albums throughout rock'n'roll history. Yes, for decades, 99.9% of original release pop and rock LP records were single vinyl discs to be played at 33⅓ rpm, and they usually held 20 to 22, no more than 23 minutes a side. Along the way, though, there were occasional, more robust submissions of multiple discs – those in the .1% – with varying success. 

[Of Note: compilation and live albums are exempted for obvious reasons. They can and should go long. Doy.] 

The Double Album. What a statement. Our work cannot be contained within a single disc! We have more! You need more! The push-back from fans and critics often would become a personal statement about the artist(s), like “The audacity that you wouldn’t pare this down to the standard listening length! Where is your sense of rock album decorum?” 

And let’s face it, sometimes that backlash is warranted. Sometimes recording artists need someone tastefully judicious like George Martin or Rick Rubin sitting there going, “ Nope… nope… nope…” and x-ing out the tracks that clutter up what could be a svelte, sleek piece of musical brilliance. 

The artists need that, but they don’t always get that. You have people like Billy Corgan musing, “We had one solid record and one hit record… let’s go massive double album, baby!” And while I’m sure someone at Pumpkinland (actual studio name) at that time must have told him he shouldn’t, nobody told him he couldn’t. 2 hours and 1 minute of Pumpkins. Phew. 

Then, sometimes you’re The Clash, who boldly released the punk rock Hall of Fame double album London Calling (1 hr 5 mins) in 1979 to incredible fanfare! Success against the odds! And then, validated, just threw the kitchen sink onto tape onto their triple album Sandinista! a year later and didn’t hold back (2 hrs 24 mins). Wowsers. 

For all of that, there are instances when the scope creep does work. In addition to the aforementioned magnum opus from The Only Band That Matters, London Calling, the Stones’ high-water mark to a vast number of fans and critics is Exile on Main Street (1 hr 7 mins). Others are out there. Tommy. The Wall. Songs in the Key of Life. 

Goodbye Vinyl Brick Road 

When vinyl fully gave way to cassette along the way in the 1980’s, the double album became less of a big deal. For one thing, it happened less frequently – there was no decade in music as senselessly sprawling, as dilated and diluted with decadence as the 1970’s. Punk rock at its inceptive core was at least in part an angry reaction to 10-minute epic raga saga songs on double albums belted out in flairs and heels with feathered butt cuts. Punk begat new wave, and the 1980’s were a go. (“It's called the 80's, and it's gonna be around forever!”) 

Brevity was suddenly the wit of soul, rock, pop, and other genres in the 80’s. [Except for reggae. And “Purple Rain.” And “Rock Me Amadeus (Salieri Version).”]

Also, cassettes could handle the load on one unit! For the most part, cassette tapes could run up to 45 minutes a side, so even The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and its whopping 43 songs was a single tape! (They’re short songs… 1 hr 14 mins.) But wow! 

[Oh, but not Sandinista. That’s two tapes, buddy. Talk about extravagant, boyo.] 

In this cool new medium, runtimes on tapes could elevate beyond the previously established ceilings and nobody really knew or cared. In fact, with the advent of dual cassette stereos and boomboxes, you could have a Maxell (way better than Memorex) 90-minuter with Murmur on one side and Reckoning on the other! And I did! 

Those were great days. Oh, minus the underreported impact from the loss of amazing album art, as liner notes and gatefold album covers were basically eradicated. Also crappy was the inevitable snapping of the tape and the resplicing with scotch tape and a pencil. And the eventual faded warble that cassettes’ sonic brilliance became with overuse. But hey, no scratches like on records! Glad that scratches are gone for good! Oh. Wait for it… 

All Music Media Things Must Pass 

Ah, yes. Then came CD’s. Mind-blowing for the audiophiles. 

Compact discs in the late 80’s and early 90’s were another sea change for squeezing albums onto media. Roughly 74 to 80 minutes on music, so a number of the “double albums” in the original issuance became 2-CD sets. (A little better for album art; still not the same.) 

ooh, the original master recording

Multi-disc releases were boxed and organized a number of different ways, from the big fat double jewel case (could handle 3 or 4 discs but usually just a deuce) to cardboard experimentation to just 4 CD cases that get strewn about in your collection and lost. 

Lose Your Illusion 

So I give short shrift to double albums on CD. Even moreso for streaming. By a looong shot. Doesn’t matter any more. Feels like progress, eh? It’s not. Hell, albums of any kind are secondary items. All the world’s a jukebox and we are merely players of that jukebox now. Only Mr. KQ and a few others spend quiet time with an album and its art. Kudos to that. 

And the seemingly arbitrary time limits of yesteryear? Well, they protected us from overlong kitchen-sink stuff. Hey folk, here’s the demo of the 1st-take acoustic (with oboe) instrumental version of “Layla.” And then Takes 2 and 3 of that. Sweet. 

You know what’s better? Concise? Taut? Crisp? Powerful? Sharp? 

23 minutes on Side A. 

23 minutes on Side B. 

Flip it. Flip it again, if it’s really good shit. 

So… the current malaise has to be remedied. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Marls? I have a greater responsibility to our collective gheorghian music entertainment than you can possibly fathom. 

As such, without anyone asking for it, this is an exercise I have performed for you, albeit one that’s been done – not to death, but ad nauseum in certain music forum spaces on the world wide web. And everyone out there has different opinions, as it damn well should be. So therefore I cannot offer a definitive take on it . . . except that I’ve been hanging with Dave for 37 years so far and so, therefore, this is indeed truly definitive! 

I offer you a premier look at: 

Les Coole’s The “As a Single LP” Project 

:wherein I take double and triple albums of the rock and roll canon and give you a pared-down, svelte, bad-assed rendering of what these records would be like on a single vinyl platter. As in, a Side A and a Side B.  Wander down the road with me if you will. 

Stay tuned. Like right away, the first edition is set to pop, accompanying this post 1-2 like . . . like it's a . . . yep.  A double album. 

I Light My Torch and Burn It

My first-born child turned 24 today. They are a constant source of amusement and amazement to me. By leaps and bounds, they're braver than I've ever been socially and emotionally. They're fearless in their expression and the way they show up in the world. 

Recently, they started a Substack where they share musings and ideas. It's generally very poetic, sometimes profane, often uncomfortable for a middle-aged cis person. And it's fascinating. 

With their permission, here's the text of a recent post based on three decades-old photos of their father. That being me.

in this one he’s a floating white-shirted torso - the hazy grain of the flash, of the badly lit bar, of wherever he was, swallows his legs, and the ink of that creeping dark leeches onto his shirt, coating it with red shadow. he reaches up like a child, right palm flexed in a high-five, or telling god to STOP, or maybe he’s pulling a bow and arrow, left arm tensing the string back, fingers parted lazily. there’s these flecks of brightness dotting the space above his head, unintelligible radiances, probably the glow of yellow bulbs, not planets or stars or halos. it seems he’s been dancing, by the way the fabric of his shirt is wrinkled and pulled, by the way his sleeves are bunched and rolled up to his elbows. he’s got sweat on his brow, and that innocent wonder in the eyes reserved only for the very young and the very drunk. there is no tension in the face; his lips are parted, his mouth is soft, he is not smiling. i want to thank whoever took this photo profusely for saving this privacy. for showing me something i would have never known otherwise, would have never even thought of.

*.

in this one he’s with a friend. it must be new years, they’ve got party blowers in their mouths, making noise in each other’s direction. it’s a playful gesture, boyish. the man boy on the right has a kind of cowboy thing going on, and he’s pretty in the face, muscles of his jaw hard and frozen in motion. dad is on the left and i love him for it, love him for the fat under his chin, love him for the creases in his neck and the acne on his face, the party horn clenched tight between his lips. the plaid on his shirt is a weird pink and red. his face is pink and red, his eyes are drunk again. maybe somebody told them to pose. i’d like to think that it was just something that they did, mister cowboy unfurling his party blower like a paper tongue, dad’s green horn honking in the din of the bar, a silly, beer-bloated goose.

*

he’s alone again in this one. is it strange to keep these from him. is it strange to want to show him, beg for the stories without knowing which one’s to ask for. is it strange to project my new boyhood onto his old boyhood. he had something i can’t have and in breaking into these privacies even for a second i can get closer to him and closer to me. he’s decapitated - head bending down and over the fence he’s trying to conquer. or he could be vomiting, undoing the drinking. it’s unclear. he’s pressing himself up, lifting his weight off the ground, midmotion. red shorts, no shirt. march sixth nineteen ninety five. the flash lights up the leaves in the foreground, silvering them. there’s a road in front of those leaves, a curb, where is he, a flat plane of land and then the fence, and the night behind that fence, the night cutting his head off, looks almost like a man, like he’s leaning into the end of the world.

From this proud Dad's perspective, that kid can write. And think. Also, it's possible that I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol in my twenties.

Black Eye for CBS

Turns out that former “60 Minutes” executive producer and CBS news hound Bill Owens was more correct than he knew. He resigned from the network last April, you might recall, citing increased corporate meddling toward the long-running news magazine show. In a note to staff, he wrote that it became “clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.” 

Less than three months later, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, agreed to pay $16 million to Donald Trump’s foundation* to settle a lawsuit the president filed against the network and “60 Minutes” alleging election interference over an interview with Kamala Harris. Didn’t matter that most legal experts thought the lawsuit frivolous and that CBS would have won. What mattered was that Paramount Global was working on a deal to be sold to mega-corporation Skydance Media and needed approval from Trump’s hand-picked FCC for the new conglomerate, which would be run by a gent named David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle founder and Trump buddy Larry Ellison. 

[*Ed Note: the fund for his cosmetics, not any sort of philanthropic venture, for as we know, that prick wouldn't lift a finger for someone else]

Bari Weiss is German for Barry White

Sixteen mil is sofa cushion change in an $8 billion merger. Now comes word that CBS News will install Bari Weiss, 41, as editor-in-chief as an offshoot of Paramount’s nine-figure purchase of Weiss’s digital media outfit, The Free Press. Prior to TFP, Weiss did three-year stints as a columnist and opinion writer at the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times. She left the Times in 2020 and on her way out the door dropped a public resignation letter in which she claimed she was subjected to a hostile work environment and harassed for her views by liberal colleagues. 

Weiss calls herself a centrist liberal who is “politically homeless” due to intolerance Left and Right, but many media knowers describe her as right-leaning and chummy with conservatives. Curiously, conservative Times voices David Brooks or Bret Stephens haven’t been similarly offended or constrained, yet we’re supposed to believe that a centrist was heckled out of the building because “intellectual curiosity is a liability at the Times,” she said. 

Weiss attracted millions of dollars from mostly anonymous donors for The Free Press startup, which began in 2021 as a newsletter but whose subscriber list and valuation grew quickly. Its purchase has been reported in the $150 million range, down from a reported $200 million ask this summer. It bills itself as “Honest. Independent. Fearless.” Yet she and it are heavy pro-Israel and routinely anti-“woke” and skeptical of social justice in society and academia. They regularly call out the worst excesses of the Left, while thinner on criticism of the Trump administration and conservative positions. 

Jay Michaelson, a respected author, rabbi, activist and blogger, wrote recently that there’s little evidence that she’s liberal or even centrist. He said that she tracks conservative and has long been guilty of stoking societal divide with questionable conclusions and sloppy logic and editing, all under the guise of free speech. 

Weiss’s appointment comes on the heels of Paramount recently naming a former Trump appointee and conservative think tank leader to be CBS ombudsman. The network’s long-running Sunday morning show Face the Nation also was instructed to change editing practices after Homeland Security Secretary and animated sack of hair Kristi Noem complained that she didn’t like the way her answers were edited and presented in a segment. 

Weiss’s Zionist leanings have left many to wonder how that will affect coverage of Israeli action and Palestinian suffering in Gaza. With Ellison openly talking of massive layoffs, many CBS News staffers are reportedly somewhere between concerned and freaked. 

If much of this comes across as a lot of newsroom inside baseball, that’s understandable. But as the site’s media grump, I’d argue that Weiss’s leadership may present not only a major shift in tone and practice at a marquee network, it also further chips away at the myth of a monolithic liberal media. Certainly, there are left-leaning sites and publications and plenty of liberal voices at various outlets. But corporate acquisition and consolidation have created huge umbrellas under which newspapers and news organizations work. Decisions are made now for bottom line reasons, irrespective of what they mean for newsrooms and journalistic standards and independence. News organizations are corporate commodities, not an essential component for a functioning democracy. 

Consider that last December, ABC’s parent company, Disney, also settled with Trump for $16 million after private citizen Trump sued ABC for defamation over George Stephanopolous’s imprecise language in discussing the E. Jean Carroll verdict. G-Steph said that Trump was “liable for rape” when the verdict was that he was liable for sexual abuse. The presiding judge said that the distinction between the two was semantic, but Disney settled and issued an apology anyway for several reasons, according to the New York Times: Disney feared that its brand would take a further hit after jousting with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and subsequent criticism and boycotts from conservative officials and customers; the Mouse Empire was also concerned that a Trump FCC would go after ABC’s news license; and it didn’t want to risk a trial that might go to the Trump-friendly Supreme Court. Disney’s a $200-billion brand, and again, $16 mil is pocket change. 

Seven months later, Paramount settled, rather than stand behind a First Amendment defense, signaling that government bullying is an effective tactic for squeezing free speech in general and journalism in particular when spread sheets rule the day. When Stephen Colbert called it for what it was, he was told that his late night show was going to be cancelled. Purely a financial decision, Paramount execs said, because the show loses money. Uh huh. Then, after Jimmy Kimmel’s fairly innocuous remark about MAGA attempting to score political points following conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, FCC chair and Trump crony Brendan Carr talked about going after Kimmel and ABC’s broadcast license, and the network suspended him for a week. 

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Trump has done exactly what he promised, using the Presidency to go after those he considers enemies and those he thinks crossed him. He has banged the “fake news” drum for a decade over unflattering coverage, and with a weaponized justice system and a pliant regulatory structure, sometimes all it takes is the threat of government action or scrutiny to affect news decisions and slant reporting. No one knows what CBS News and “60 Minutes” will look like in six months or a year. Change is coming, with new corporate oversight and a hand-picked, conservative provocateur in charge of a thinned work force. The stopwatch is still tick-tick-ticking, but is it marking time or a more ominous countdown?

In Defense of Shame

We live in the time of an epidemic of shamelessness. Good people of all stripes who have the capacity for feeling shame watch helplessly horrified as cretins with no sense of humiliation wantonly stomp on the poor, the downtrodden, the differently abled, the people of color, the gender noncomforming, the queer. Really, if you don't fit into a very small box: white, "conservative", "Christian", you're an enemy of the Shameless.

I come here today to praise shame, and to plead for its return to our public discourse.

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, and Lord knows there's been plenty of fodder for it since our most recent long national nightmare descended that gilded escalator. I could've chose any one of dozens of insults the President* has spewed over his time in the political spotlight. Might've talked about Boebert, or Taylor Greene, or the abasement of Rubio, or lying about the size of the inauguration way back in 2017. In hindsight, we should've been louder.

Most of those violations of ethical norms seem quaint now. 

The new proximate cause of my shame about our lack of shame is this week's humiliating display by Pete Hegseth and his boss, with a side of Stephen Miller's dweeby fake toughguy turn.

If you've been living like Luke Skywalker, or been smart enough to spend your time watching sports, listening to music, reading books, and generally avoiding the news, here's the story on the former. Hegseth, who desperately wants you to call him the Secretary of War because he's dumber than a bag of hammers and less nuanced, summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from their posts around the world to an in-person meeting at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA.

Given the extremely unusual nature of the meeting and the significant security risk inherent in publicly bringing nearly all of the country's senior flag officers and their key staff together in a single location, initial speculation suggested that the meeting was to be extremely important. Friends, it was not.

Once the plan for the meeting made the news and got some attention, Hegseth's boss wanted some of that sweet, sweet camera time, and glommed onto the occasion. The officers sat together, their ranks thinned of black, brown, and female colleagues by Hegseth, in an auditorium at the Marine Corps Museum, a monument to valor, courage, and honor, and listened to his type of abject nonsense:

The stone silence of the room of military professionals that greeted this intended applause line was among the cringiest moments of a festival of awkward.

Often in his rambling, chest-out, rah-rah harangue, Hegseth praised lethality above "woke", saying things like, "You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct, and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”

That first sentence will be news to the 85% of the leaders in the meeting who are responsible for the boring (to Hegseth) but absolutely vital elements of effective military organization like logistics, healthcare, financial management, procurement, education, communications, information technology, and on and on and on. The second sentence built on Hegseth's guidance to ignore rules of engagement and kill bad guys. Which elides the fact that rules of engagement protect our troops as much as they do enemy combatants. If we have no honor, no guardrails on the battlefield, we have no moral legs to stand on should our enemies decide that if torture, violence against civilians, and wanton murder are good enough for Americans, then they're good enough for them, too.

I won't get into the Commander-in-Chief's remarks, because a) you've heard them all before, and b) I'll be goddamned if I besmirch this here web cottage with that bloated fuck's voice. But I'll let Ronny Chieng make fun of Hegseth for your amusement:

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All of this is to say that it's just gobsmacking to hear a man who's failed at nearly everything he's ever done other than be telegenic proudly lecture a room of professionals any one of which is his intellectual and moral superior and not feel the merest scintilla of shame. Not one ounce. It's incomprehensible.

Equally so the recent ranting of naked mole rat slash sentient penis Stephen Miller, who was heard (I won't make you watch it for the sake of your sanity) to say before an audience of law enforcement officials, "All that bullshit is done, over, it's finished. The gangbangers you deal with - they think they're ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they're tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they're hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are."

The irony of this ballsack of a coward posing as hard man, this Jiminy Glick playing Jason Momoa is obvious. The root of his pathology a bit harder to divine. But the lack of humility, of the ability to feel shame, that's on full display to all of our great detriment.

Shame on us, brought by men and women who feel none. May the tables turn sooner than later.