Requiem for a Roadtrip

rob recently asked for musical recommendations for his lengthy roadtrip to Colorado.  Offering musical opinions is one of my core competencies here.  And postcount is huge.  So here are some suggestions.

Starting in-house, you should check out We Defy Augury, especially the one about Charismatic Megafauna because you probably never think about these beasts.  Also, Les Coole and the Cukes, available here on Spotify.  I celebrate their entire catalog.  And our resident professional musician, Rootstone.

We also have recurring bits of derivative in-house content including Whitney's 6-pack, zshazams, layzman's filler, and top 10.

Sometimes I let someone else do the driving musically when I'm driving automotively--I let the folks on the radio pick the music for me.  I've touted WFMU here many times, and you can stream it from your phone to your car.  In fact they have four different streams at all times: their radio live stream, Rock 'n Soul Radio, Give the Drummer Radio, and Sheena's Jungle Room.  And they have an insanely deep archive.  Rex Doane's Fool's Paradise is my personal favorite and he has over twenty years of shows available to stream.  The Halloween and Christmas specials are always outstanding.  You can also stream WBGO--Felix Hernandez's Rhythm Review on Saturday and Sunday mornings is my favorite.  They have archives too but the interface is clumsy.  I've found myself listening to WFUV during the day lately and you can stream them too.

Those three stations will take care of you.  To w(h)it, whilst running a few errands yesterday and flipping between FMU and BGO (FUV is useless on Sundays, they play Irish folk music), I heard "Revolution Rock" by the Clash, "Me and My Baby Brother" (on BGO) and "Summer" (on FMU) by War, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" by Marvin Gaye, "Never Can Say Goodbye" as done by Gloria Gaynor, "Brick House" by the Commodores, "If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight and The Pips, "Master Blaster" by Stevie Wonder, and "You Outta Be Here With Me" by Annette Snell.  I even heard "Don't Cha Wanna Ride" by Joss Stone and the song that it samples, "Soulful Strut" by Young-Holt Unlimited.

I don't listen to a ton of podcasts but I greatly enjoy The Bulwark's offerings.  Charlie Sykes is always good.  Here's one with Chris Krebs and Adam Kinzinger.  Anything involving Tim Miller is fun, like this one with the Tribe's own Jen Psaki.  Mona Charen will irritate you but I do think it's good to hear opinions that conflict with my own.  Will Saletan's "The Corruption of Lindsey Graham" is a three-part tour de force.

Anyone with other/better ideas should list them in the comments.  I eagerly await photographic reports from rob along the way.

Our Matrix Sucks

As it describes itself, "The Bulwark is a news network launched in 2018 dedicated to providing political analysis and reporting free from the constraints of partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices." Its editors and contributors do span a reasonable range of American political thought, at least broad enough sampling of the center-left and center-right. Of note, Bill Kristol, the very same person who helped immensely the project to foist Sarah Palin's canary-in-a-coalmine version of skin-deep dumb on our political firmament, is doing penance flagellating the Trump-era GOP as an editor-at-large.

Introductions aside, I do appreciate The Bulwark's generally actually fact-focused approach to the news of the day. In this era where many in the political maelstrom and their media enablers pit us against one another because it sells, I especially liked a story this week that reassured me and pissed me off all at once.

Entitled "Unplug From The Matrix", the story by Gregg Hurwitz and Marshall Herskovitz (the fourth and fifth Beastie Boys, I believe) simply and concisely lays out the many ways the majority of Americans are in violent agreement about the issues of the day, as backed by polling. So concisely that it's easy to repeat:

• We believe hard work and innovation should be rewarded.
• We believe everyone should play by the same rules, that the same laws should apply to all, regardless of race, religion, or background.
• We believe in opportunity, that everyone should have a fair shot to earn a sustainable living for themselves and their family. And that working Americans have not received that fair shot for a generation.
• We believe in laws and stability and want a competent, fair, and just legal system with enforcement that protects us all equally and is deserving of our respect.
• We believe in the right to hold opposing views.
• We believe in borders around our country and in a lawful, regulated, and humane immigration system.
• We believe that children from every community should have access to quality education.
• We believe the stain of slavery and racism has not been lifted from America, in spite of the great progress that’s been made.
• We believe affordable healthcare should be available to every American, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and that prescription drugs are too expensive.
• We believe in preserving our oceans, land, and skies for future generations.

There's not a lot to argue with there, no pun intended. Why, then, do we have so much angst, choler, and anger loose in the land? Herwitz and Herskovitz blame four factors: social media tech giants, mainstream newsmedia, politicians, and lobbyists. Per the authors, "These groups have created a Matrix-like information universe that monetizes, thrives, and feeds on our dissent and pain, and keeps us compulsively focused on our few areas of disagreement rather than our overwhelming similarities, until disagreement is all we can see."

The diagnosis seems logical, the remedy far less clear. It starts with conclusively and overwhelmingly defeating Donald Trump and aggressively cleansing our body politic from the people and institutions that support and enable him. A truth and reconciliation program, only one that lands a lot of people in jail or unable to show their faces in polite society. 

That's a start.