Blog Entries [880 - 889]

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Election Warmup

There was an election in south-central Kansas on Tuesday to fill the House of Representatives seat vacated by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The Republican candidate, Kansas State Treasurer Ron Estes, won with 52.5% of the vote, beating Democrat James Thompson (45.7%) and Libertarian Chris Rockhold (1.7%). In 2016, Pompeo won with 60.67% of the vote, a margin of 30.06% over Democrat Dan Giroux. (Miranda Allen ran as an independent and took 6.91% of the vote. In 2016, Trump carried the district by 27 points. According to 538, only 19% of all Congressional districts are more Republican than this district (KS-4, see: Harry Enten: Why Republicans Are Worried About Kansas).

Thompson ran 20 points better than the Democratic Party national ticket only six months later (about three months into the Trump presidency). That augurs well for a Democratic rebound in 2018, which is likely for several other reasons: the party not in the White House usually gains in mid-term elections, Trump is already very unpopular (uniquely by historical standards), and there is very little reason to expect that Trump's administration will be more popular once its acts and effects have taken their toll. No doubt some Trump voters have already turned against their hero, but nowhere near enough to affect this election.

Rather, I see four differences this time. The first is that all the awful Trump news has energized part of the Democratic base here in Wichita -- specifically the part that gave Bernie Sanders a 70% victory on the 2016 caucuses. The second is that they nominated a relatively charismatic newcomer in Thompson, narrowly over the party establishment's candidates. The third is that the Republican convention nominated their insider guy, a thoroughly lackluster party hack. And fourth: the candidates started out even in money and name recognition (whereas Pompeo, and before him Todd Tiahrt, rarely entered a reëlection with less than a million dollar warchest), and until he last week or two Thompson was able to run competitively by raising samll contributions. (In the last week, the national party and their dark money benefactors tilted the balance, although their ads were so tone-deaf I doubt they helped much.)

Conversely, the Democratic Party (both state and national) took little interest in the race -- a source of much debate and friction; e.g., see John Nichols: Coulda Woulda Shoulda -- Democrats Miss a Huge Opportunity in Kansas, vs. Jim Newell: Democrats Didn't Tank Kansas 4th District. The latter piece, ostensibly defending the Party elites, is pretty embarrassing:

The excuse the DCCC -- and the Democratic consulting class at large -- have been peddling is that keeping its involvement below the national radar (i.e., not getting involved) was the only way to win such a red district. A DCCC official told the Huffington Post on Monday that "the party's involvement would have been 'extremely damaging' to Thompson because it would have been used against him by Republicans, who have poured significant money into the race." If the national party had made a big show of the race, per the argument, it would have awoken the traditionally red Kansas electorate to turn out at normal election levels.

Someone should inform the DCCC that no matter how invisible they try to be, grassroots hatred of the Democratic Party elites will be stoked by Republican ads: the main one that ran this time featured a split screen with Thompson and Nancy Pelosi, even though neither (at least as far as I know) ever even acknowledge the other. Still, what the DCCC's lack of interest suggests to me is not tact, but rather disdain, tinged with self-awareness that the national party doesn't have anything to offer people in states like Kansas. This may have started with the pragmatic idea that given the electoral college there's no point in ever running in right-of-center states, but what really locked it in was basic graft. As political parties became ever more in thrall to big business money -- and really, the thing that made Obama and the Clintons stars in the party wasn't their brains or policy skills and especially wasn't their empathy with Democratic voters. Rather, it was their appeal to big money donors. And in order to deliver to their donors they had to win elections -- something they turned into a narrowly technical set of skills and tricks. In that schema, states like Kansas weren't just lost causes -- efforts to win them were just plain inefficient. And making matters much worse, the Clintons and Obama put their own personal needs way above those of the Party, leaving it hollow and ineffective, and the party's loyal supporters unrepresented.

The rationalizations of the national Democratic Party won them a few elections, but they've driven the states they've written off -- both traditionally Republican ones like Kansas and formerly supportive ones like West Virginia -- ever deeper into Republican clutches. To understand why this happened it helps to look at how democracy has evolved (and recently devolved) in America. The key idea is that democracy provides a general method for arbitrating differences between the various stakeholders. Early on those stakeholders were limited to property owners, notably including owners of slaves. Over time, the franchise expanded, although even today there is much pressure (especially from Republicans) to limit who can vote, and therefore to shift the balance of power. For instance, despite the fact that "no taxation without representation" was a founding principle, the US denies the vote to tax-paying resident aliens.

One result of the initial restriction of the franchise was that all political parties catered to elite interests, a practice which with few exceptions has persisted to this day. Republicans not only seek to restrict the franchise; they also seek to expand the influence and importance of money. The effect of this is to shift the balance of power toward the wealthy, so that government is more responsive to their concerns, and becomes less concerned with the poor or merely less affluent. The Republicans, especially after Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, have been remarkably successful at this, so Democrats have been left with two largely incompatible choices. One is to organize the vastly greater numbers left out and often hurt by Republican policies. The other is to compete with Republicans for the money and influence of the elites.

The Democratic Party establishment, with Obama and the Clintons among its stars, has mostly done the latter. They've had quite a bit of success courting socially liberal donors in knowledge-intensive industries like high tech, communications, and finance, and have tailored their policy initiatives to their benefit. This has let Obama and Clinton raise more money for the last three presidential campaigns than Republicans were able to, but Republicans have done better down ticket, in large part because they've put their money to more effective use in media and organization, and in developing candidates. Meanwhile, Obama and the Clintons have done much to alienate the voters they depend on: partly because they've let their policies become warped by their donors, but mostly because they've neglected (and often undermined) building up a strong party organization. One can only speculate as to why, but one suspects that they fear an organized Democratic rank and file might upset their ability to serve their sponsors -- a prime example being Bill Clinton's decision to favor NAFTA over the unions which had long provided Democratic votes. (Obama made the same choice with TPP, which so unpopular among Democrats Hillary Clinton was forced to reverse course and oppose it.)

As I mentioned above, there is an alternative to the focus on donors that has been so prevalent among the elites of the Democratic Party, which is to try to build a mass organization. That is what Bernie Sanders tried to do in 2016, and his near success, combined with Hillary Clinton's abject failure to beat Donald Trump -- by all measures the most blatantly flawed candidate either party has run since, well, forever -- points toward the alternative: one that makes stronger promises to the voters the Democratic Party courts (and counts on), and which by building a strong organization can finally deliver on those promises. (The main knock on Sanders in 2016 wasn't that he couldn't win but that he had so little backing among elected Democrats that he couldn't govern and/or couldn't follow through on his platform. Something like this happened to Trump, but he's so lazy and unprincipled he just turned the reins over to mainstream Republicans. Sanders at least cares about his platform and the people who voted for him.)

This is the context that explains the DCCC's snub of Thompson and Kansas. Thompson came out of the Sanders campaign, he built a grass roots organization, and wound up doing much better than anyone expected. It didn't appear to me that he ran an especially radical or populist campaign: he avoided negatives, didn't push a lot of policy positions, just promised to fight for people (building on his personal story). I think he should have slammed the Republicans harder, but given how biased the district was I could be wrong. (By contrast, Estes' ads were extremely negative -- so hateful I would have voted against him without knowing anything else, but there can be little doubt that the Republicans know how to push their voters' buttons.) Thompson's organization was very focused on Wichita, and he wound up carrying Sedgwick County by a couple thousand votes (so Wichita by much more). He came real close to a tie in Harvey County, but he lost the other larger counties about 3-to-2, and the outliers badly, some by 4-to-1 or more.

Thompson says he'll run again in 2018, which will bring him much up the learning curve. The obvious downside is that Estes will enter 2018 with a huge funding advantage (unless he gets burned in a primary -- Susan Wagle is talking about a run, and Todd Tiahrt still thinks he's entitled to reclaim his old seat). Also, turnout will be higher -- this election only got 43.52% as many votes as 2016; 2018 will probably split the difference. Hard to say who that will help. The bigger wild card is how much worse off most Kansans will be in 2018 -- as Brownback finishes his second term, with two years of Trump and Ryan doing their worst.

It's still going to be hard for Democrats to win in KS-4. It's not so much that Republicans have a huge natural advantage as that the Republican Party (and affiliates like the Kochs) have put a lot of work and money into building a grass roots organization, and have hooked into the national right-wing propaganda network (especially, but not exclusively, Fox) to all but automatically win elections. Still, their intentionally divisive strategy runs the risk of backfiring. On the one hand, it often promotes weak and often very flawed candidates. On the other, the lies build up, and it's become ever more obvious that too much Republican power causes more harm than good. Still, they win if nobody runs against them, which has more often than not been the case. And that's why James Thompson's run was important: not only is he an impressive candidate, he's not out to wheedle his way in by trying to meet Republican talking points half way. He represents real change, and only that promise has a chance against the GOP machine.

As you probably know, the first post-election effort to move the national Democratic Party focus toward the voters instead of the donors was Keith Ellison's campaign for DNC chairman. He barely lost to Tom Perez, after the latter made all sorts of conciliatory promises like a return to Howard Dean's "50 state strategy." However, consider this Perez quote from Jamie Peck: The Democratic party is undermining Bernie Sanders-style candidates:

In an interview with The Washington Post, Perez confirmed the DNC would not be giving Thompson a dime. "We can make progress in Kansas," he said. "There are thousands of elections every year, though. Can we invest in all of them? That would require a major increase in funds." Fact check: the DNC has a fund just for Congressional elections, of which there are just ten this year. . . .

One person the party does not think will be hurt by their help is Jon Ossoff, who is running in a similarly red, but much wealthier, district in Georgia. To date, the DNC has raised some $8.3m for him and has committed to sending nine field staffers to organize on-the-ground efforts.

Although he is young, he's an acolyte of the Democratic establishment, having worked for Representatives John Lewis and Hank Johnson, and he endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary. He went to Georgetown followed by the London School of Economics and speaks fluent French. He has the support of several Hollywood celebrities.

Democrats think Ossoff is just the guy to bring his affluent suburban district back into the fold. (Clearly, losing a national election was not enough to reverse course on that most doomed of 2016 strategies: trading blue collar whites for wealthy, suburban ones.)

I hope Ossoff wins, but if he does it won't have nearly as much impact as a Thompson win would have had in Kansas. The fact is that Kansans have suffered as much under Republican rule as anyone in the country. Democrats should be able to make their case here as pointedly as anywhere, but they can't unless they try, and they won't as long as they remain dedicated to chasing the donor bucks of the upscale urban liberals they've courted ever since they let the unions go bust and manufacturing jobs move to ever cheaper labor markets abroad. And make no mistake: no matter how much Republicans wanted those changes, Democrats let them happen. Letting districts like KS-4 rot is one way they do that.

Also see Harry Enten's post-election piece, Is Trump or Brownback to Blame for the Surprisingly Close Race in Kansas 4?:

Still, Estes's underperformance in Kansas 4 should worry Republicans because special elections as a group have done a decent job of predicting midterm results over the past few cycles. Kansas's result comes on top of Democrats' doing 18 points better than the past presidential vote suggested in California's 34th special election last week. In no midterm cycle since 2002, except for 2006 when Democrats took back the House, did Democrats outperform the past presidential vote in at least two districts as much as they did in California 34 and Kansas 4. Those outcomes are potentially indicative of a wave large enough for Democrats to take back the House in 2018.

I wouldn't get too excited here, although I'm pretty sure Trump will be even more extensively despised by 2018. The California race is pretty atypical -- it was an open primary, with two Democrats nominated for the runoff, and few (if any) serious Republicans ran. And while anti-Trump feeling motivated some Thompson volunteers, it's too soon for many Trump fans to feel betrayed. (For one thing, they're not exactly "high info" voters.) Georgia-6 next week is probably a better test, and a race in Montana is coming up soon, too -- both have serious candidates, which wasn't exactly a given here in Kansas.

One big hole the Democrats have dug for themselves is that they've lost sight of the notion of a public interest as they've pursued special interest donors. They need people to understand that there are large aggregates of people whose interests are being trampled on in the mad rush to satisfy the big lobbies. Secondly, they need to bring back the notion of countervailing power: the idea that government can level the playing field so that people who don't have power bases (like businesses) can get a fair shake. One can argue that the Republicans have far too much power, so it would be only prudent to tilt back toward Democracy.

Of course, it would be terrific to get rid of the exalted role of money in politics, but as long as the Republicans think that works to their favor, and as long as they have any substantial power, that won't happen. The next best thing is to make people constantly aware of the tinge of political corruption, and that would be an easier task for Democrats if they'd stop indulging in it so conspicuously. (And yes, that means stop nominating Clintons and their cronies.) What Democrats need more than anything is to re-establish a bond of trust among the voters. Republicans do this by exploiting the prejudices and rage of their target audience. Democrats are hard pressed to compete on that level. The only real chance they have to succeed is to become trustworthy. To do this they need to recruit plain-spoken candidates who understand what it means and takes to fight for the underprivileged. James Thompson is just that, and if he can make KS-4 competitive, think what more candidates like him can do all across the nation.

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Sunday, April 9, 2017

Music Week

First, a couple more links I missed last night:

I should also note that there will be a special election here in Kansas to pick the successor to Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Koch), who has moved on to become Trump's CIA Director. The favored Republican is Ron Estes, who combines the worst aspects of Pompeo and predecessor Todd Tiahrt (R-Boeing) with a markedly lower IQ -- I wouldn't want to pick on someone just because he looks stupid, but all evidence suggests Estes is the real deal. Republicans have plowed a lot of money into this race, but all they've come up with are smears that attack Democrat James Thompson for supporting "late-term abortion" ("he's too extreme for Kansas") and split screens with Nancy Pelosi. Republicans have held the seat since 1994, usually with big margins, and their base has grown as the district has spread out from Wichita. The Nation finally took note of Thompson: see John Nichols: A Berniecrat Takes on Trump and the Koch Brothers in Kansas. I will add that Thompson hasn't tried to make this a referendum on Trump nor does his advertising cite Bernie Sanders. I think he missed an opportunity there, but he has a strong personal story, and his ads have a lot of guns, so we'll see how that plays out.

There are also special elections to fill House vacancies in Georgia and Montana. See: Charlie May: A blue wave begins? Republicans may be in trouble in Kansas, Montana and Georgia elections.

Music: Current count 28009 [27981] rated (+28), 404 [400] unrated (+4).

Round number notice, as I passed 28,000 records rated. At 30/week it takes 8-9 months to accumulate a thousand, so unless I slow down I'll probably hit 29,000 around the end of the year, and 30,000 close to Labor Day 2018. Big assumption. I've certainly slowed down going through the new jazz queue, mostly because this week's four A-listed records on Intakt and Cuneiform got four or more plays each. On the other hand, the records I downloaded or checked out on Napster got much less attention -- usually a single play, which is what kept the week from being a major wipeout.

The old music by Herbie Hancock, Freddy Hubbard, and Pete La Roca was suggested as I was slogging through the database adding entries to the jazz guides (currently 590 + 299 pages, so +5 and +13 over the week -- damn slow progress).

For Hancock and Hubbard, I stopped after the Blue Notes ran out (well, I included one Hubbard MPS, which had gotten some Critics Poll reissue votes last year). Both artists declined afterwards, and I figured I had heard enough for now. La Roca had two widely spaced Blue Notes and one outlier, and I wound up most impressed by the latter (John Gilmore is the secret ingredient, as he so often was).

Other recent jazz albums were suggested by the Downbeat Critics Poll album ballot (Cameron Graves, Heads of State, Derrick Hodge, Kneebody, Julian Lage, One for All, Bria Skonberg, Nate Smith -- Trio 3 and JLCO were also on the ballot but unrated in my queue). Can't say as I had missed much, but now I can say I didn't. I took the time to compile my usual notes. The invite from Downbeat's editor claimed that some critics can fill out the 20-page ballot in 25 minutes, but it took me over six hours, and that only because I skimmed through the backstretch, most often repeating last year's picks rather than taking the extra time to rethink everything. Horrible experience.

The non-jazz records were suggested by Robert Chrisgau's latest: obviously, I like the New Pornographers and Shins considerably less, but was pleasantly surprised by Conor Oberst's neo-Dylanisms. I had previously given Old 97's' Graveyard Whistling a B+(***). Still need to check out that Craig Finn record.

New records rated this week:

  • Chicago-London Underground: A Night Walking Through Mirrors (2016 [2017], Cuneiform): [cdr]: A-
  • Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra: Invitation (2016 [2017], OA2): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Tom Dempsey/Tim Ferguson Quartet: Waltz New (2015 [2017], OA2): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Cameron Graves: Planetary Prince (2017, Mack Avenue): [r]: B-
  • Heads of State: Four in One (2017, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(**)
  • Oscar Hernández & Alma Libre: The Art of Latin Jazz (2016 [2017], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Derrick Hodge: The Second (2016, Blue Note): [r]: B-
  • The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra: The Music of John Lewis (2013 [2017], Blue Engine): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Kneebody: Anti-Hero (2017, Motéma): [r]: B
  • Julian Lage: Live in Los Angeles (2016, Mack Avenue, EP): [r]: B
  • The Microscopic Septet: Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me: The Micros Play the Blues (2016 [2017], Cuneiform): [cdr]: A-
  • The New Pornographers: Whiteout Conditions (2017, Collected Works/Concord): [r]: B+(***)
  • Conor Oberst: Ruminations (2016, Nonesuch): [r]: B+(**)
  • Conor Oberst: Salutations (2017, Nonesuch): [r]: A-
  • One for All: The Third Decade (2015 [2016], Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(**)
  • Matt Otto With Ensemble Ibérica: Ibérica (2016 [2017], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
  • The Ed Palermo Big Band: The Great Un-American Songbook: Volumes I & II (2016 [2017], Cuneiform, 2CD): [cdr]: B+(*)
  • The Shins: Heartworms (2017, Columbia): [r]: B+(*)
  • Bria Skonberg: Bria (2016, Okeh/Masterworks): [r]: B+(***)
  • Nate Smith: Kinfolk: Postcards From Everywhere (2017, Ropeadope): [r]: B
  • Spoon: Hot Thoughts (2017, Matador): [r]: B+(***)
  • Trio 3: Visiting Texture (2016 [2017], Intakt): [cd]: A-
  • Trio Heinz Herbert: The Willisau Concert (2016 [2017], Intakt): [cd]: A-

Old music rated this week:

  • Herbie Hancock: Cantaloupe Island (1962-65 [1994], Blue Note): [r]: B+(***)
  • Herbie Hancock: Speak Like a Child (1968, [2005], Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
  • Herbie Hancock: The Prisoner (1969 [2000], Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
  • Freddie Hubbard: Goin' Up (1960 [1961], Blue Note): [r]: B+(***)
  • Freddie Hubbard: Hub Cap (1961, Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
  • Freddie Hubbard: The Hub of Hubbard (1969 [1971], MPS): [r]: B+(*)
  • Pete La Roca: Basra (1965 [1995], Blue Note): [r]: A-
  • Pete La Roca: Turkish Women at the Bath (1967 [2004], Fresh Sound): [r]: A-
  • Pete (LaRoca) Sims: SwingTime (1997, Blue Note): [r]: B

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Buffalo Jazz Octet: PausaLive (Cadence Jazz)
  • Peter Campbell: Loving You: Celebrating Shirley Horn (self-released)
  • Oliver Lake Featuring Flux Quartet: Right Up On (Passin' Thru): April 21
  • Gregory Lewis: Organ Monk: The Breathe Suite (self-released): May 5
  • Jason Miles: Kind of New 2: Blue Is Paris (Lightyear): advance, May 12
  • Jared Sims: Change of Address (self-released): April 14
  • Günter Baby Sommer: Le Piccole Cose: Live at Theater Gütersloh (Intuition)
  • Trichotomy: Known-Unknown (Challenge)
  • Ronny Whyte: Shades of Whyte (Audiophile): May 5
  • Alex Wintz: Life Cycle (Culture Shock Music): May 19

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Sunday, April 9, 2017

Trump Flirts With Infamy

On Thursday, April 6, 2017, Donald Trump ordered the US Navy to fire 59 cruise missiles from ships in the Mediterranean targeting the al-Shayrat airbase in central Syria (near Homs). This was widely reported as the first time US forces had directly attacked forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. My first reaction to write up another Day of Infamy post, like I did the day after March 17, 2003, when Bush launched his invasion and occupation of Iraq with a similar volley of cruise missiles. But since those missiles blew up on or near their target, the US hasn't followed up with an invasion or any notable escalation of war. It's not even much of a precedent, as the US has been bombing Syrian territory held by ISIS for several years, and has stationed "military advisers" ("special forces") well inside Syria's pre-war borders. And the US and its nominal allies have been running guns and munitions to various anti-Assad groups within Syria almost from the very start of Syria's Civil War. Obama had gone on record as insisting that Assad "must go" early in that war -- an extraordinarily arrogant stance coming from the leader of a nation which used to proclaim its belief that each nation has a right to choose its own leaders and political system ("self-determination").

The US has had a checkered relationship with Syria and the Assad dynasty since it seized power in the mid-1960s, sometimes forming alliances against common enemies (like Iraq and al-Qaeda), but one issue has effectively kept Syria on the US enemies list and that is Israel -- especially since 1967 when Isreal seized and annexed a strip of territory it calls the Golan Heights. That issue pushed Syria into becoming a military client of the Soviet Union (later Russia -- in neither case for ideological reasons, but because its opposition to Israel closed off access to American arms), and that alignment only (plus the similar one with Iran) only added to the peculiar combination of antipathy, indifference, opportunism, and intolerance which has characterized America's increasingly violent and fitful intervention in the Middle East.

The immediate rationale for this particular act of war was the use of poisonous gas, allegedly by Assad's forces, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in "rebel-held territory" in Idlib Province. Obama had arbitrariy proclaimed a "red line" that would be crossed should Syria use poison gas. When Syria appeared to have used poison gas in 2013, the US prepared a "punitive" attack against Syria, but backed down, partly because Congress was wary of authorizing US intervention in Syria, but also because Russia intervened and negotiated a deal between Assad and Kerry committing Syria to destroy its stocks of chemical weapons. Although few Republicans wanted to intervene in Syria, neocons were critical of Obama for failing to punish Syria, and Trump picked up that theme on the campaign trail. Given a similar provocation, it's hardly surprising that Trump would want to show his toughness by bombing first -- especially given that the US had a long history, dating back to Reagan in Libya, of punitive bombing against Middle Eastern targets. (Clinton did the same in Afghanistan and Sudan, and turned the pummeling of Iraq into a kneejerk response every time he wanted to deflect attention from his own scandals. Trump understood this political tactic well enough to tweet (not sure when): "Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin -- watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.")

But while Trump's now-signature attack isn't far removed from "business as usual" for the US in the region, it will take some effort to various threads that came together to make Trump's own decision little more than a kneejerk response. One question has to do with the chemical attack cited as the rationale. It's hard to get politically untainted data from the site, but it makes little if any sense that Assad would use chemical weapons after having given them up. As Jason Diltz reports, one possible explanation, promoted by Russia, is "that no such gas attack took place to begin with, and that a Syrian conventional strike hit a rebel warehouse full of chemicals." Russia, having brokered the deal to rid Assad of chemical weapons, isn't a disinterested observer here, but it is likely that chemical weapons caches fell into "rebel" hands early in the war, and there has been reason to suggest that some of the pre-2013 poison gas incidents had been "false flag" operations by "rebels" to goad the US into taking punitive action against Assad.

More generally, Assad has evidently been gaining ground recently, and several countries had come to the conclusion that Assad would continue to play a role in a negotiated post-conflict Syria -- even the US seemed to be moving toward that conclusion, at least as part of Trump's more amicable stance toward Russia. So why would Assad risk all that by doing something practically guaranteed to trigger a belligerent response from Trump? It makes no sense -- which doesn't prove it's untrue but does raise suspicion. If you look at who benefits from the chemical attack, it isn't Assad or his foreign allies; it's the anti-Assad "rebels" and elements within the US security establishment who have long benefited from sowing discord with Russia and Iran; e.g., the very people who applauded Trump loudest. Diltz also reports that the Pentagon is investigating whether Russian planes took part in the chemical attack, and that Rex Tillerson says Russia bears responsibility for Assad's gas attack. Strategic thinkers in and around the Pentagon have long cherished Russia as an enemy.

The key thing in Trump's attack against the Syrian airfield wasn't what he did so much as how quickly he did it. Speed saved Trump from a lot of possible headaches: he never had to explain what he intended to do, and he didn't give anyone the chance to second-guess him, let alone organize opposition. He didn't consult anyone in Congress. Despite Nikki Haley's recent flurry of tantrums, he didn't engage the UN. What he wanted to do was to show that he could act decisively (unlike Obama, or even Bush, but ironically much more like Clinton). He informed the president of China only after the missiles were launched, and only because they were having dinner together and he was too pleased with himself to keep a secret like that. About the only one he did as much as notify before the fact was the Russians, who were given ample time to clear the air base, minimizing damage and casualties. (Press reports stated that the 59 cruise missiles -- at $1.5 million each he liquidated $90 million in inventory in seconds -- had killed nine Syrians.) You'd think that hardcore Trump-Russia conspiracy devotees would be up in arms over such collusion, but most of them are Clinton dead-enders, and by and large they were so elated by the fireworks they let such details pass.

So even if you've forgotten the movie Wag the Dog, it was pretty obvious that the chief objective in bombing Syria had to do with domestic politics. Trump has been struggling in the polls, and he's especially been dogged by charges of underhanded hanky-panky with Vladimir Putin and the Russians -- whose interference in America's notoriously corrupt political system is popularly regarded as nefarious (as opposed to, say, Israel's completely kosher manipulations). So in one stealth blow, Trump shows his independence from Putin as well as his allegiance to the imperial war state, and gets a moment doing the one thing Americans of most political stripes seem to regard as truly "presidential": blowing shit up. And to think that until he did just that, Trump was widely regarded as a dangerous maniac.

Conspicuous among those applauding Trump were not only perennial Republican war-mongers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, but virtually all of the so-called opposition leadership, starting with Chuck Shumer ("the right thing to do") and Nancy Pelosi. Even former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton came in from the woods to, just before the fact, demand that Trump step up to the challenge and bomb Syria's airfields. (Anyone who thought that Trump might be less hawkish than Clinton has by now been thoroughly disabused of such fantasies, but thus far Trump still hasn't done anything crazier than Clinton herself promised.) Even John Kerry, who negotiated the chemical weapons deal with Assad and Putin, has turned into one of Trump's loudest cheerleaders.

Still, the speed with which Trump acted belies the likely fact that he actually has no idea how to end the war. When someone like Kerry looks at Trump's escalation, he sees pressure pointed toward a negotiated settlement, and he sees bombing Assad now as a means of bringing his ambitions down a notch or two. He no doubt recalls Bosnia, where a round of American bombing brought the Serbs to an agreement known as the Dayton Accords. But that was a relatively simple and easy conflict, and the US had virtually no history as a nemesis to Serbia (or Yugoslavia) so had a relatively clean track record as an arbiter. Yugoslavia was also a country that could be sliced up into fairly neat regions, so the outlines of a solution were much more obvious. Also there was very little international involvement, so other countries (even the US) had no real stakes in the outcome. Even so, the Dayton Accords were hardly a model of impartial diplomacy: they halted a war, but didn't repair the ruins, and war soon flared up again in Kosovo, which was resolved far less elegantly.

Anyone who gives Syria even a modicum of thought must realize that the only way the war ends there is in an agreement which shares power among all factions. That is especially difficult because there are so many factions, many defined against each other, and many backed by various foreign powers, few (if any) out of any concern for the people who live (or, increasingly, lived) in Syria. The only way to cut through this Gordian Knot is to systematically focus on what would be best for the people, regardless of what it means for the outside parties -- but that is a skill that Americans in particular have great difficulty with. Some aspects of a solution seem fundamental. First, power should be radically decentralized, with each section determined democratically, and much flexibility as to how to organize each section. (This is what should have been done in Aghanistan and Iraq, but wasn't because the US wanted to control local politics through the apparatus of a central state, no matter how alien or unpopular that state became.) This would allow, for instance, some sections to be popularly organized as Islamist statelets, others to be dominated by Sunnis or Alawis or Kurds, and others to favor secular socialism (or even Texas-style crony capitalism, Bush's initial plan for Iraq). Those local sections would need to be demilitarized, and to allow free movement of people to other sections. There would need to be a comprehensive amnesty, and limits on punishment inside sections (some sort of "bill of rights," where mobility was one such right).

Such an agreement could be agreed to or imposed, and indeed a broadly agreed to framework might have to be imposed on recalcitrant factions. If imposed, it should be done by neutral soldiers who have no lasting political interests in Syria, and should involve disarmament. An agreed framework could slowtrack disarmament. The settlement would gradually remove all foreign forces, and provide an international agreement against aggression against Syria (Israel and Turkey are two countries with bad track records here). It would also come with a redevelopment bank that would provide grants and loans for rebuilding and development, and would be subject to policing of corruption.

I don't see how any other solution might work, although I can imagine various half-assed compromises, like leaving Assad in charge of a rump Syrian state that would be prohibited from infringing the basic rights of the Syrian people, with vague promises of future elections, etc. -- you might call this "surrender with dignity." Or if you cannot condone Assad, you might conspire to turn the country over to Al-Qaeda and hope they evolve into Saudi Arabia. Or I suppose the world powers might get Turkey to occupy and annex Syria, although there's no reason to think they'd do a better job than they have in their Kurdish regions. But none of these are remotely good ideas. They're merely better than maintaining Syria as a hot battleground for the cold wars of a dozen regional and international rivals -- i.e., the status quo.

While Kerry might relish the prospect of using the Trump stick to bully Assad and others to a Bosnia-like settlement (or better), it's hard to see Rex Tillerson (let alone Trump) even imagining as much, much less accomplishing it having basically decapitated the State Department (he, of course, in the role of the chicken's disembodied head). Ironically, the only one involved who possesses anything near that sort of imagination is Putin, so wouldn't a plan designed to drive a wedge between Putin and Trump be counterproductive? That's pretty clearly why McCain and Graham, and for that matter Shumer and Pelosi and Clinton and her crew, were so quick to climb on board.

Still, without a plan this will go down in history as just another arbitrary and ultimately pointless American atrocity, like so many before it, and Trump's blip in the polls will dissolve into the hole dug by his nasty incompetence. His day of infamy is likely to quickly be forgotten, until his next one anyway. It's not just that those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it. Those who respond only to the moment's temptation will never have firm ground to stand on.

One last point I want to make: what disturbs me more than Trump's missile attack has been how easily, how uncritically many Democrats and most of the media have lapped up the rationale behind the attack. OK, whatever rationale suited their prejudices best -- some exalted in American power and Trump's "presidential" resolve, some preferred to play up the vileness of the "enemy," some even believed that the killing and destruction served some humanitarian greater good. But all of them bought into the idea that the US (and the US alone) is entitled to play God and deliver justice. Back in 2008 when Barack Obama said he wants to change the way we think about war, nobody expected that what he meant was that the US should simply become more efficient and precise in its ability to project power across the globe, especially through riskless, remotely controlled long distance weapons. Surely a more reasonable reading would have been that the US should back away from its world policing role in favor of developing international organizations that could keep the peace by putting all nations on an equal footing.

Of course, no one expects the Republicans to understand all that, but shouldn't we demand as much from the Democrats. After all, what kind of practical resistance can they offer against Trump and company without making a commitment to peace, justice, and humanity?

Some more links on Trump's little venture into Syria:

  • Michael R Shear/Michael R Gordon: 63 Hours: From Chemical Attack to Trump's Strike in Syria: An hour-by-hour countdown focusing on Trump: what he knew (not much), what options he had (not many), when he decided to blow things up.

  • Peter Baker: For Obama, Syria Chemical Attack Shows Risk of 'Deals With Dictators': Misleading title, and for that matter article. I don't see any current quote from Obama -- just lots of former Obama advisers like Anne-Marie Slaughter who were always hawkish on Syria, who felt like the US missed an opportunity to flex its muscles when Obama agreed to chemical weapons disarmament. The dumbest of these quotes is from Tom Malinowski, arguing that "deterrence is more effective than disarmament." The real problem with the deal was that it didn't end the war, which was the context that made any surviving chemical weapons (including those in "rebel" hands) so dangerous. Still, from a PR angle, it's automatically assumed that any poison gas in Syria is Assad's fault, and this article (like so many in the NY Times) reinforces that propaganda. (Not that I don't mind saying that the war is Assad's fault, although its continuation is not exclusively his fault.)

  • Moustafa Bayoumi: Trump's senseless Syria strikes accomplish nothing; also: Julian Borger/Spencer Ackerman: Trump's response to Syria's chemical attack exposes administration's volatility.

  • Phyllis Bennis: The War in Syria Cannot Be Won. But It Can Be Ended. I heard Bennis interviewed on Democracy Now with two Syrian women who were almost giddy with delight over Trump's rocket attack in Syria, so when she says "the left is profoundly divided over the conflict" that may be in the back of her mind. I'd say that the Syrian women failed to understand that the problem in Syria is not just Assad (although it's hard to overstate how badly he's acted) but war itself, something Trump and Putin and many others are fully guity of. The fact is that nothing good can happen until the war stops.

  • Lauren Carroll: Fact-checking Trump's changing opinion on Syria and the 'red line'

  • Peter Cary: Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to 'take out' Assad airfields hours before air strikes: Talk about lending comfort to the enemy. The day after the strikes, Michelle Goldberg posted Hillary Clinton Is Not Going Away and answering "Good." Goldberg's apologia included this paragraph:

    As bittersweet as it was to hear Clinton talk and imagine the sort of president she might have been, the interview offered a stark reminder of why many on the left distrusted her. Speaking hours before Trump launched airstrikes on Syria, she made it clear that she'd also have been a hawkish president. The United States, she said, should take out Bashar al-Assad's airfields, "and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop Sarin gas on them." During the campaign, she said, people asked her if she was afraid that her plan to impose a no-fly zone in Syria would lead to a Russian response. "It's time the Russians were afraid of us!" she said heatedly. "Because we were going to stand up for human rights, the dignity and the future of the Syrian people."

    The Russians should be afraid of us? The whole world should cower before our Shock and Awe? Running guns to Al-Qaeda while bombing ISIS somehow is a stand for "human rights, the dignity and the future of the Syrian people"? Given the alternative, I'm still sorry that she lost, but really, this is batshit insane! And while at least I can ascribe much of the horror that Trump leads on his own peculiar mix of cynicism and laziness, compounded by the general mean-spiritedness of his adopted political party, Clinton comes off as a true believer in her self-aggrandizing fantasy. The rejection of her was the only sane aspect of the 2016 election. It speaks volumes that the American people were so desperate to get rid of her that they were willing to accept the alternative. The more she returns to public life, the more she detracts from the urgent task of resisting Trump.

  • Juan Cole: What Is It With US Presidents and Tomahawk Cruise-Missile Strikes? Cole notes numerous examples, some I've referred to above, others I hadn't -- e.g., Obama's first air assault against ISIS in Syria started in 2014 with 47 Tomahawk missiles. I think the answer to Cole's question is that the Tomahawks have much more range than fighter-bombers or drones and require little preparation, so they're the easiest weapon to choose when presidents want immediate results. Still, the real question is why are such missile attacks so addicting to presidents? What makes them feel entitled to kill so cavalierly? And why can't they come up with more effective ways to resolve such problems? A big part of this is that American politicians have become obsessed with their omnipotence, so they find these massive missile volleys very reassuring. I remember that back in the 1980s when DOD planners were thinking of putting weapons in space, they designed one that was nothing more than a huge tungsten rod that could be dropped anywhere in the world. The tungsten would resist burning up in the atmosphere, and it would gather the speed (and energy) of a meteor before it crashed in a tremendous explosion. They named this terror Rods From God. And more generally, their term for showering a target with overwhelming force was Shock and Awe.

  • Steve Coll: Trump's Confusing Strike on Syria: Another comment which shows that once you get past gut reactions, Trump had no plan or inkling what he was doing:

    If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria's Air Force, or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage risks -- military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee crisis, a loss of momentum against ISIS -- that Obama studied at great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost consistent with American interests.

  • Michael Crowley: Democratic Syria hawks love Trump's airstrikes

  • Robert Dreyfuss: Trump's Dangerous Syria Attack; also Janet Reitman: What to Make of Trump's About-Face on Syria.

  • Greg Grandin: The Real Targets of Trump's Strike Were His Domestic Critics: Six "thoughts," each hitting home. For example:

    The bombing reveals that there are no limits to the media's ability to be awed, if not shocked, by manufactured displays of techno-omnipotence. Just as it did in the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon passed footage of its nighttime missile launches to the networks. And just as what happened then -- when, CBS's Charles Osgood called the bombing of Iraq "a marvel" and Jim Stewart described it as "two days of almost picture-perfect assaults" -- today MSNBC's Brian Williams called the Tomahawk takeoff "beautiful." In fact, he described it as "beautiful" three times: "'They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield,' he added, then asked his guest, 'What did they hit?'" Why, don't you know, they hit their target: Williams and his colleagues' ability to have a critical thought.

  • Glenn Greenwald: The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise for Bombing Syria

  • Simon Jenkins: His emotions have been stirred -- but Trump's bombs won't help Syria:

    There is nothing in the world more dangerous than an American president watching television. Donald Trump last night followed Ronald Reagan in 1982 and George Bush in 2001 as an isolationist turned interventionist in the Middle East. His past pragmatism towards Syria's Assad regime and its Russian backers underwent a 180-degree turn as 59 American missiles rained down on a Syrian airbase. Welcome back to mission creep.

    None of those three really count as isolationists (a historical stance I have much respect for, although no one who held such views would have ever described themselves as such; the label was coined by their opponents, meant to suggest an ostrich burying its head in the sand, oblivious to real threats all around). But all three share a remarkably shallow sense of the world, as well as a cavalier eagerness to use violence when they see some short-term political advantage. And like any good politician, Trump put his heart on his sleeve:

    Breaking from dinner with the Chinese leader, Trump spoke of his reaction to "slow and brutal deaths," choking bodies and beautiful babies. He three times invoked God. He had been moved to act, he said, because Assad's "attack on children had a big impact on me." As for Russia's role in the attack, Trump's secretary of state said it was "either complicit or incompetent."

    Safe to say that Trump won't react with the same "emotion" to reports of Syrian children mangled by American bombs, because he won't be able to find any political advantage in doing so.

  • Adam Johnson: Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes -- Zero Are Critical: Leave the dissent to The Onion.

  • Fred Kaplan: The Morning After in Syria

  • Alex Lockie: Syrian forces defiantly take off from airfield hit by onslaught of US cruise missiles: Additional fallout: Russia just suspended key military agreements with the US -- raising the risk of war.

  • Carol Morello: Trump officials tell Russia to drop its support for Syria's Assad: Henry Kissinger liked to study Clausewitz. Others preferred to draw strategy lessons from Sun Tzu. This makes it sound like Trump's people have been reading up on stupid pet tricks: Roll over. Play dead.

  • Robert Parry: Trump's 'Wag the Dog' Moment

  • Vijay Prashad: Is Trump Going to Commit the Next Great American Catastrophe in Syria? This focuses on the alleged chemical weapons attack, and covers what (little) is known and how it is known. It doesn't really move into the question of how the US might parlay misunderstanding into full-scale catastrophe, although there is a long record of just that sort of thing.

  • David Smith: Doves and hawks: how opinion was divided about airstrikes in Syria: Features four hawks and four doves, the former deeply ensconced in Trump's White House and War Machine, the doves rather oddly all right-wingers more/less associated with Trump: Steve Bannon (recently booted from the NSC), Mike Cernovich (alt-right blogger), Ann Coulter (all-around bigot), and Rand Paul (part-time libertarian).

    Smith also co-wrote As warplanes return to scene of sarin attack, Trump defends missile launch: Twenty-four hours after Trump's attack, the bombed airbase is open again, and planes from it are attacking "rebel"-held Khan Sheikhun, albeit not with sarin gas this time. Meanwhile, Trump is basking in the adoring glow of "liberal humanitarians" for making the children of Syria so much safer.

  • Joan Walsh: Too Many of Trump's Liberal Critics Are Praising His Strike on Syria: And not just Democrats with long records as neocon hawks (like Hillary Clinton):

    On CNN's New Day Thursday, global analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, "I think Donald Trump became president of the United States" last night. To his credit, Zakaria has previously called Trump a "bullshit artist" and said, "He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting." But Zakaria apparently thinks firing missiles make one presidential.

    Walsh cites many others, including Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, who at least had reservations. She also cited Mark Landler: Acting on Instinct, Trump Upends His Own Foreign Policy, which points out how impulsively Trump reacted (original title: "On Syria attack, Trump's heart came first"): quotes Trump as saying "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack" -- referring to the Syrian chemical attack, but those words could just as well describe many of Trump's own authorized bombing runs.

    Also see: Owen Jones: Why are liberals now cheerleading a warmongering Trump?

    One of the main objections to Trump was that he was unstable, impulsive, with authoritarian instincts, and would disregard constitutional norms. This has turned out to be true, while being applauded by his erstwhile detractors for doing so, emboldening him to go further. Yet "I'm no fan of Trump, but . . ." will be the battle cry of his erstwhile detractors. Still, the children of Syria will die, just as they will die in Yemen and Iraq and elsewhere. History will ask: how did this man become president? And how did he maintain power when he did? Look no further than the brittle, weak, pathetic liberal "opposition."

  • Whitney Webb: Russia Reports Discovery of Rebel-Held Chemical Weapons at Site of Idlib Gas Attack

  • Matthew Yglesias: Trump brought his economics team to his Syria strike watch party, for some reason: Well, there's also this story: Tom Boggioni: Donald Trump personally profited from missile-maker Raytheon's stock jump after his Syria attack. There was also a spike in oil stock prices, which should warm Rex Tillerson's slimy heart.

  • North Korea says Syria airstrikes prove its nukes justified: And here you were, thinking Trump's best and brightest had figured out all the angles.

  • The Onion: Trump Confident US Military Strike on Syria Wiped Out Russian Scandal: OK, probably satire (as "fake news" used to be called), not least the alleged Trump quote:

    After ordering the first U.S. military attack against the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, President Donald Trump held a press conference Friday to express his full confidence that the airstrike had completely wiped out the lingering Russian scandal. "Based on intelligence we have received over the past several hours, the attack on the al-Shayrat air base in Homs has successfully eliminated all discussions and allegations about my administration's ties to the Russian government," said Trump, adding that at approximately 4:40 a.m. local time, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. naval ships obliterated all traces of the widespread controversy in news outlets across the media. "Ordering this strike was not a decision I took lightly, but given that it was the only way to decisively eradicate any attention being paid to congressional investigations into possible collusion between key members of my staff and high-ranking Kremlin officials, I decided it was a necessary course of action. If we learn that any remnants of this scandal remain after this attack, I will not hesitate to order further strikes." Trump went on to say that he is leaving the option open for a potential ground invasion of Syria if any troubling evidence emerges that the Russian government manipulated the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Tweets I've noticed along the way:

  • Anne-Marie Slaughter: Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!! After years of useless handwringing in the face of hideous atrocities.
  • Lee Fang: Like clock work all cable news has retired generals (many of whom work at defence firms) on air to give the sports-style play-by-play
  • Christopher Hayes: As legions of ex-Obama officials endorse the strike, it's more and more clear the degree to which Obama was resisting his own advisors.
  • Asad Abukhalil: Let me get this straight: so according to DC pundits, Trump was a dangerous maniac . . .until he started bombing?

A couple of unrelated links, just to note them:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Music Week

Music: Current count 27981 [27951] rated (+30), 400 [397] unrated (+3).

Most of this week's records were rolled up in the March Streamnotes, and for that matter look there for tips on how I found what. As you'll see, one event that set me off searching for albums was the death of alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe. I'm not sure why, but a reader in Australia (chpowell) sent me a letter with a batch of links -- all to AMG, which I'm boycotting at present, but if you're not (my grades where I have them):

As these links suggest, it would be nice to have a more comprehensive Blythe discography. I was unaware of the two Roots albums that showed up on Napster and are listed below. I checked Spotify and they have a couple items I couldn't find on Napster. At some point I need to decide whether to sign up for their "premium" service, but I've never found much there not on Napster (not that searching is any easier). They do, for instance, have the Joey Baron album I've heard, but not the one I haven't.

One grade below will probably prove controversial, if not downright offensive. Pretty much everyone I know likes the Magnetic Fields' 50 Song Memoir -- Christgau, Tatum, Ryan Maffei posted that "50 Song Memoir sampler is an A+." I finally looked it up on Napster and found that they only had 16 songs posted, so I played them. Probably not a sufficient sample to proclaim anything a masterpiece -- rule of thumb is the stuff they leave out isn't as good as what they're pitching you with -- but I disliked it so thoroughly I figure the sample is good enough for a (low) grade. Admittedly, not without its occasional charm, and possibly catchy if you can acclimate yourself to his voice, but it left me with no desire to pursue the matter further. Even made me suspect I've overrated him in the past. (I'm certainly not as fond of 69 Love Songs as my A- grade suggests, though I should also note that my wife, who has impeccable taste in music, adores all of it, and probably enjoyed what she heard of the new one much more than I did.)

Jazz Guide compilation continues sporadically -- haven't touched it for a couple days around Weekend Roundup and this post -- currently at 575 pages (20th century) and 272 pages (21st century). Next artist in the 1960s jazz file is Freddie Hubbard.

Apologies for dragging my feet on new jazz. Pending queue is up to 46 now, and I've mostly been handling it FIFO. I'm reminded of this because Tim Niland is up to Volume 4 of the six Ivo Perelman-Matthew Shipp CDs, and he's broken that series up to review a couple AUM Fidelity releases I wasn't at all aware of (one with Shipp, the other by William Parker).

By the way, if anyone can offer some pointers on converting the Christgau website to a smartphone app, please send them my way. Seems like a reasonable thing to do, but right now I'm at the wrong end of the learning curve.

Recommended music links:

New records rated this week:

  • Iro Haarla: Ante Lucem (2012 [2016], ECM): [dl]: B+(**)
  • Jü: Summa (2016 [2017], Rare Noise): [cdr]: B
  • The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir (2017, Nonesuch, 5CD): [r]: B-
  • Laura Marling: Semper Femina (2017, More Alarming): [r]: B+(*)
  • MEM3: Circles (2011 [2017], self-released): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Bill O'Connell: Monk's Cha Cha: Live at the Carnegie-Farian Room (2016 [2017], Savant): [cd]: B
  • Orchestra Baobab: Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng (2017, Nonesuch/World Circuit): [r]: A-
  • Rocco John: Peace and Love (2014 [2016], Unseen Rain): [cd]: A-
  • Trygve Seim: Rumi Songs (2015 [2016], ECM): [dl]: B
  • University of Toronto Jazz Orcherstra: Sweet Ruby Suite (2016 [2017], UofT Jazz): [cd]: B+(*)
  • University of Toronto 12Tet: Trillium Falls (2016 [2017], UofT Jazz): [cd]: B
  • David Virelles: Antenna (2016, ECM, EP): [dl]: B+(**)
  • Daniel Weltlinger: Samoreau: A Tribute to the Fans of Django Reinhardt (2016 [2017], Rectify): [r]: B+(**)
  • Jim Yanda Trio: Home Road (2016 [2017], Corner Store Jazz, 2CD): [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

  • Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari: Tales of Mozambique (1970-75 [2016], Soul Jazz) **
  • Nigeria Soul Power: Afro Funk, Disco and Boogie (1970s-80s [2016], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(*)
  • Jim Yanda Trio: Regional Cookin' (1987 [2017], Corner Store Jazz): [cd]: B+(*)

Old music rated this week:

  • John Abercrombie/Arthur Blythe/Terri Lyne Carrington/Anthony Cox/Mark Feldman/Gust Tsilis: Echoes (1996 [2005], Alessa): [r]: B+(*)
  • Arthur Blythe: Put Sunshine in It (1985, Columbia): [r]: B
  • Lester Bowie: The 5th Power (1978, Black Saint): [r]: C+
  • Herbie Hancock: Inventions & Dimensions (1963 [1964], Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
  • The Leaders: Unforseen Blessings (1988 [1989], Soul Note): [r]: B+(*)
  • Roots [Arthur Blythe/Sam Rivers/Nathan Davis/Chico Freeman/Don Pullen/Santi Debriano/Tommy Campbell]: Salutes the Saxophone (1991 [1992], In+Out): [r]: A-
  • Roots: Stablemates (1992 [1993], In+Out): [r]: A-
  • Gust William Tsilis & Alithea With Arthur Blythe: Pale Fire (1988, Enja): [r]: B

Grade changes:

  • Syd: Fin (2017, Epic): [r]: [was: B+(***)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Chris Greene Quartet: Boundary Issues (Single Malt): April 14
  • Larry Ham/Woody Witt: Presence (Blujazz)
  • Allegra Levy: Cities Between Us (SteepleChase)
  • Jesse Lewis/Ike Sturm: Endless Field (Biophilia)
  • Mas Que Nada: Sea Journey (Blujazz)
  • Michael Morreale: Love and Influence (Blujazz)
  • Renaud Penant: In the Mood for a Classic (ITI Music): April 7
  • Torben Waldorff: Holiday on Fire (ArtistShare): April 30

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Weekend Roundup

Let's start with a tweet from Dak Zak, in response to someone asking "Why couldn't they have done this before the election!?!":

Newspapers everywhere did this before the election. Editorial after editorial said "stop this man." People didn't hear, listen or care.

As best I can tell (the twitter links are circuitous) the original question refers to the Los Angeles Times' editorial Our Dishonest President (the first of a promised four-part series running through Wednesday, not that I wouldn't be surprised if they find enough new material for a fifth installment by Thursday. Zak's response is pretty much true, but he underestimates the media's failure by an order or magnitude or more. Sure, they warned us to "stop this man," but they were also so thoroughly bemused by him, and enticed by the ratings his campaign offered, that they repeatedly let him slip the hook. But more important, they didn't say "stop this party" -- because ultimately what makes Trump so disastrous is not that he's "a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters" (to quote the LA Times), but that he was swept into power with complete control of Congress ceded to the Republican Party and its agenda to rig politics and the economic and social systems to perpetuate oligarchy. Trump may be especially flagrant (or perhaps just embarrassingly transparent) but the Republican Party has embraced demagoguery and dishonesty as essential political tactics for well over a generation. Trump is more a reflection of the party's propaganda machine than he is a leader. For proof, look how often he gets caught up in obvious contradictions and incoherencies, yet always resolves them by moving in the direction of party orthodoxy.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the media is still being bamboozled by the aura of Republican legitimacy, even while individual cases like Trump and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback turn into public embarrassments. For instance, south-central Kansans will go to the polls a week from Tuesday to elect a replacement for Trump's CIA director Mike Pompeo. The Wichita Eagle, which we often think of as a voice for moderation in Kansas, endorsed Republican Ron Estes, a Brownback flunky lacking a single original thought (they like to describe him as "affable"). The Eagle even singled out Estes' vow to repeal Obamacare as one of their reasons -- even without the usual nostrum "and replace," even with the editorial facing a Richard Crowson cartoon slamming Brownback for vetoing a bill passed by Kansas' Republican legislature to expand Medicaid under the ACA. You'd think a public-interested media would easily see through a partisan hack like Estes, especially given that the Democrats have nominated their strongest candidate in decades ( James Thompson -- saw one of his ads tonight and I can't say I was pumped by the gun bits or even the concern for veterans and jobs, but those things have their constituencies; also thought he should have hit Trump harder, but if he wins that'll be the takeaway).

More fallout from the GOP's health care fiasco:

  • Angela Bonavoglia: The Fight to Save the Affordable Care Act Is Really a Class Battle

  • EJ Dionne: The lessons Trump and Ryan failed to learn from history: Also some lessons they never learned:

    But the bill's collapse was, finally, testimony to the emptiness of conservative ideology. . . . To win the 2012 presidential nomination, Romney could not afford to be seen as the progenitor of Obamacare because conservatism now has to oppose even the affirmative uses of government it once endorsed.

  • Lee Fang: GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham

  • Richard Kim: The Tea Party Helped Build the Bridge to Single-Payer: Picture shows a young guy holding a sign that reads "Health care is a human right." That, of course, has nothing to do with the Tea Party, and the argument here is forced:

    Since the first year of Obama's presidency, the Republican establishment has allowed its extreme right-wingers to run off the leash. It has amplified their every outburst, fed every conspiracy theory, nurtured every grievance, and enabled every act of hostage-taking. Now, it -- and the vandal in chief that the Tea Party helped elect president -- is their hostage. In the battles ahead on infrastructure spending, taxation, and the debt ceiling, there's no reason to believe that the GOP will behave in any less dysfunctional a manner.

    A better way to look at it is this: during the Obama years, the Tea Party acted as the "shock troops" of Republican obstruction, and somehow their role there has come to be viewed as a success. So why shouldn't the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus continue to obstruct, even with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, if they still do things that the insurgents find objectionable? That's what's happening, and mainline Republicans don't have the margins they need to rule without the Caucus, and sometimes realize that catering to them will cause even worse things to happen. Given that the mainliners are pretty awful on their own, we might as well enjoy the Caucus's obstruction, but that doesn't get us to anywhere we need to go.

  • Sam Knight: Bannon-Style "Administrative Deconstruction" of Obamacare Is Coming: Aside from the Bannon-speak, the point here is that the guy in charge of the Obamacare system is its arch-enemy, Tom Price, and there is still a lot of harm bad administration can do, even if it's nominally pledged to support the law. Reminds me that the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity, one of LBJ's main "War on Poverty" programs) had done quite a bit of good until Nixon appointed Donald Rumsfeld to run it.

  • Mike Konczal: Four Lessons from the Health Care Repeal Collapse: I mentioned this piece in Monday's post, but it's worth mentioning again. I also just noticed Konczal's December 2, 2016 piece: Learning From Trump in Retrospect. Probably could only be written between the election and the inauguration, a period when one could balance off the sensations of surprise and disgust. Two months into his reign and we're back to wondering how anyone could have been taken in by this shallow fraud.

  • Charles Krauthammer: The road to single-payer health care: Rest assured he's against it, and wants to see something far worse than Obamacare even, but he understands the logic that universal coverage, even in its corrupt Obamacare form, makes more efficient solutions like "single payer" ("Medicare for All") more attractive.

  • Paul Krugman: How to Build on Obamacare: Krugman has long been the most persuasive propagandist for the ACA, so no surprise that he sticks within its limits: urging that we spend more money to lower deductibles and make policies more attractive, and revive the "public option" to provide more marketplace competition. His point is that "building on Obamacare wouldn't be hard," but Trump would rather see it "explode," and just for the satisfaction of blaming Democrats -- a tactic which proved viable when Democrats were in power, but looks pretty puerile at the moment.

    Krugman also wrote Coal Country Is a State of Mind, picking on West Virginia, where:

    Why does an industry that is no longer a major employer even in West Virginia retain such a hold on the region's imagination, and lead its residents to vote overwhelmingly against their own interests?

    Coal powered the Industrial Revolution, and once upon a time it did indeed employ a lot of people. But the number of miners began a steep decline after World War II, and especially after 1980, even though coal production continued to rise. This was mainly because modern extraction techniques -- like blowing the tops off mountains -- require far less labor than old-fashioned pick-and-shovel mining. The decline accelerated about a decade ago as the rise of fracking led to competition from cheap natural gas.

    So coal-mining jobs have been disappearing for a long time. Even in West Virginia, the most coal-oriented state, it has been a quarter century since they accounted for as much as 5 percent of total employment.

    What, then, do West Virginians actually do for a living these days? Well, many of them work in health care: Almost one in six workers is employed in the category "health care and social assistance."

    Oh, and where does the money for those health care jobs come from? Actually, a lot of it comes from Washington.

    West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22 percent of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7 percent for the nation as a whole. It's also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14 percent in 2013 to 6 percent in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.

    It's true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in -- and it would have received virtually none of the tax cuts Trumpcare would have lavished on the wealthy.

    Now think about what Trumpism means for a state like this. Killing environmental rules might bring back a few mining jobs, but not many, and mining isn't really central to the economy in any case. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and its allies just tried to replace the Affordable Care Act. If they had succeeded, the effect would have been catastrophic for West Virginia, slashing Medicaid and sending insurance premiums for lower-income, older residents soaring.

    A couple quick points here. First is that we live in a time when business is gaining increasing influence on politics, so while coal companies represent a vanishingly small number of jobs, they dominate the political discourse in states like West Virginia. (If, indeed, jobs mattered you wouldn't find politicians backing company schemes like mountain-top removal, which is profitable primarily because it reduces jobs -- well, as long as the companies don't have to pay the costs of their pollution.) Second, while Democrats are more dependable supporters of effective transfers to poorer states like West Virginia (and Mississippi and much of the South), they almost never campaign on the fact, as they have very little presence in states that have swung against them primarily on race. Rather, Democrats focus on states where they have more upscale supporters, and cater to the businesses of those states (like high-tech in California and Massachusetts, and banking in New York).

  • Bill Moyers: Trump and the GOP in Sickness and Health

  • Charles Ornstein/Derek Willis: On Health Reform, Democrats and Republicans Don't Speak the Same Language

  • Jon Queally: Sen. Bernie Sanders Will Introduce "Medicare for All" Bill; also see Zaid Jilani: Bernie Sanders Wants to Expand Medicare to Everybody -- Exactly What Its Architects Wanted.

  • Kate Zernike et al.: In Health Bill's Defeat, Medicaid Comes of Age

Some scattered links this week in the world of Trump:

  • Stephen Braun/Chad Day: Flynn Earned Millions From Russian Companies: OK, that's the jump headline. The article itself is "Document Dump Reveals Flynn's Russian and Turkish Income Sources." And the "millions" shrink to "$1.3 million for work for political groups and government contractors, as well as for speeches to Russian companies and lobbying for a firm owned by a Turkish businessman." Doesn't seem like much, but then what else can a former general do? You don't expect him to live on his exorbitant pension, do you? Lachlan Markay has more: Michael Flynn Failed to Disclose Payments From Russian Propaganda Network. Also: Zack Beauchamp: Michael Flynn's immunity request, explained:

    More fundamentally, it's hard to see Democrats granting one to a widely disliked former Trump official when there's still a chance the FBI might prosecute him for allegedly lying to the bureau about his contacts with the Russian envoy to the US. The Trump administration's call for Flynn to appear before Congress, in Sean Spicer's Friday press briefing, could very well harden their resolve against immunity.

    This is all very bad news for Flynn, who ironically said that asking for immunity was proof that you had done something wrong when discussing Hillary Clinton's email scandal during the campaign. "When you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime," he told NBC's Chuck Todd in an interview.

  • Esme Cribb: Trump Will Sign Repeal of Obama-Era Internet Privacy Rules: The bill, which passed Congress on straight party votes, allows Internet service companies to track your on-line activity and sell that information to other companies without your permission or awareness.

  • Amy Davidson: Trump v. the Earth: About Trump's executive order to pretend that burning coal doesn't have any impact on the environment. Or, as Trump put it, "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth":

    President Trump said that his order puts "an end to the war on coal." In reality, it is a declaration of war on the basic knowledge of the harm that burning coal, and other fossil fuels, can do. Indeed, it tells the government to ignore information. The Obama Administration assembled a working group to determine the "social cost" of each ton of greenhouse-gas emissions. Trump's executive order disbands that group and tosses out its findings. Scott Pruitt, the new E.P.A. administrator -- who, as attorney general of Oklahoma, had joined a lawsuit attempting to undo the endangerment finding -- announced that the agency was no longer interested in even collecting data on the quantities of methane that oil and gas companies release.

  • Robert Faturechi: Tom Price Intervened on Rule That Would Hurt Profits, the Same Day He Acquired Drug Stock: Actually $90k in stocks of six drug companies, so his payback would more closely model the industry-wide average. "Price was among lawmakers from both parties who signed onto a bill that would have blocked a rule proposed by the Obama administration, which was intended to remove the incentive for doctors to prescribe expensive drugs that don't necessarily improve patient outcomes." This was back when Price was in Congress, before joining Trump's cabinet. Related: Fired US Attorney Preet Bharara Said to Have Been Investigating HHS Secretary Tom Price; also When a Study Cast Doubt on a Heart Pill, the Drug Company Turned to Tom Price.

  • Ane Gearan: US leads major powers in protesting UN effort to ban nuclear weapons: Nikki Haley asks, "Is it any surprise that Iran is supportive of this?" Nearly every nation signed the NPT renouncing nuclear weapons on the understanding that the grandfathered nuclear powers would disarm as well -- something which hasn't happened, largely because the US feels it's important that someone like Donald Trump should have the option of blowing the world up.

  • Michelle Goldberg: Why Won't Republicans Resist Trump? That's the link headline. The article title is even funnier: "Where Are the Good Republicans?" We're talking about people in Congress whose singular mission over the past eight years (and this really dates back to the arrival of Newt Gingrich as House Speaker in 1995) has been to make Democrats look bad. They've refused to even consider Obama appointees. They passed bills to repeal the ACA fifty times but couldn't agree on anything to replace it with this year. They've tried to extort favors by holding the federal debt limit hostage. And when you ask them for anything they'd consider working with Obama on, the only things they can come up are points that would make Obama look bad to the Democratic Party base (like TPP, or more war). If any Republican member of Congress has felt the slightest twinge of shame over this behavior, he or she has done a good job of hiding it. And their bottom line is that Trump's, well, not their leader but their winner, the guy whose surprise win has allowed them to advance their agenda, which may have some more hopeful aims but for all practical purposes is to wreck, ruin and despoil America, to the detriment of nearly everyone who lives here. And really, the only examples we've seen so far of dissent within Republican ranks have come from the fringe right, who feel Trump and Ryan and McConnell aren't moving fast or hard enough toward the end times. Even there the media is struggling to salvage Republican reputations; see. e.g., Ross Barkan: Give Donald Trump credit: the Freedom Caucus really is terrible.

  • Malak Habbak: War Correspondents Describe Recent US Airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

  • Ben Hubbard/Michael R Gordon: US War Footprint Grows in Middle East, With No Endgame in Sight: Anyone who thought that Trump might tone down the War on Terror -- and I gave that non-zero but not very good odds -- has by now been thoroughly disabused of such wishful thinking:

    The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to front-line positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul, where airstrikes killed scores of people on March 17.

    Two months after the inauguration of President Trump, indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames.

    Rather than representing any formal new Trump doctrine on military action, however, American officials say that what is happening is a shift in military decision-making that began under President Barack Obama. On display are some of the first indications of how complicated military operations are continuing under a president who has vowed to make the military "fight to win."

    The suggestion is that the only thing that has happened is that the military has been freed of whatever limiting or inhibitory role Obama played: Trump's basically given them carte blanche to keep doing what they've been doing so badly for years. On the other hand, Trump hasn't gotten involved enough to really screw things up with his "fight to win" slogan. The fact is the US hasn't "fought to win" since WWII for the simple reason that there's never been anything you could actually win by fighting. Rather, US military policy has been to make any challenge to US power and hegemony as painful as possible, to deter challengers from even raising the issue. Arguably, that has yielded diminishing returns as it's become increasingly obvious that US forces are vulnerable to asymmetric strategies (ranging from guerrilla war to "terrorism") and because the US has become increasingly inept at occupying hostile areas. Still, the solution to that problem isn't resolving to "fight to win" -- it's reducing the need to fight at all.

  • Charles Pierce: The Trump Administration Has Pushed the Limits of American Absurdity: If one were to teach a writing class, that title might be a good little assignment. I can imagine dozens of ways to approach it, all equally valid, and I'd still be surprised when Pierce handed in a piece with a piece starting with an Ignatius Donnelly quote. (And I'm one of the few people around who knows who Donnelly was, having read him as a teenager back before Paul Ryan, for instance, lost his mind in Ayn Rand.) Of course, Pierce soon moves on to more disturbing, although curiously mundane, realms of fantasy: namely Sean Spicer's press conferences.

  • Daniel Politi: Judge: Lawsuit Against Trump Can Proceed, Inciting Violence Isn't Protected Speech

  • David E Sanger/Eric Schmitt: Rex Tillerson to Lift Human Rights Conditions on Arms Sale to Bahrain

  • Jon Schwarz: Russia Investigation Heading Toward a Train Wreck Because Republicans Don't Care What Happened: Not a subject I'm at all partial to, mostly because it seems to cast a Cold War gloss on what strikes me as ordinary corruption, and partly because it skips over decades of stories about US interference in other peoples' politics, as well as the much more common (and I think damaging) Israeli efforts to steer American politics (anyone remember Netanyahu's campaigning for Romney, or his collusion with Boehner?). Still, if Republicans (and Democrats) learned anything from the Clinton years it's that unbridled investigations take on a life of their own, where being investigated is never a good omen.

    Unfortunately, on this planet we're on a trajectory to the worst possible outcome. It's now easy to imagine a future in which Trump and Russia become the millennials' equivalent of the John F. Kennedy assassination: A subject where no one can honestly be sure whether there was no conspiracy or a huge conspiracy, the underlying reality concealed by the thick murk of government secrecy, and progressives exhausting themselves for decades afterwards trying to prove what really happened.

  • Lisa Song: As Seas Around Mar-a-Lago Rise, Trump's Cuts Could Damage Local Climate Work: This is an amusing little piece. I've long thought that the people who should be most worried about global warming are the rich -- the people who own nearly all of the property endangered by climate change, especially from rising sea levels. Yet Republicans have been oblivious to the threats. They've convinced themselves of the importance of protecting the rights of individuals to practice predatory capitalism, and they pretty much completely deny that there can be any public interest separate from private profit-seeking (although they somehow believe that no those private interests are harmful to others, and that the sum of them must be good for everyone). I can't think of any idea more misguided and dangerous, but they've built not just an ideology but a political movement around it. I just wonder: when Mar-a-Lago is underwater, is Trump still going to be thrilled that those coal and oil magnates were able to make all that money?

  • Jessica Valenti: Mike Pence doesn't eat alone with women. That speaks volumes: Evidently, the VP can't pull his mind out of the gutter long enough to consider sharing a meal with a woman other than his wife. But then these are strange times, especially in the company Pence does keep:

    The same week the first lady gave a speech at the state department's International Women of Courage Awards, insisting: "We must continue to fight injustice in all its forms, in whatever scale or shape it takes in our lives," the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, chastised the veteran reporter April Ryan for "shaking her head" at him. (Just last month, Trump asked Ryan if the those in the Congressional Black Caucus were "friends" of hers.)

    While the president was asking a room full of women if they had ever heard of Susan B Anthony, the conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was under fire for making a racist and sexist comment about the California congresswoman Maxine Waters' hair and an Iowa legislator said that if a pregnant woman found out her fetus has died, she should carry the pregnancy to term anyway.

    And while Pence trended on Twitter for his old-school sexism, what went largely unremarked on was that the vice-president cast the tie-breaking vote to push forward legislation that allows states to discriminate against Planned Parenthood and other healthcare providers that provide abortion when giving out federal Title X funds.

  • Matthew Yglesias: So far, Donald Trump as delivered almost nothing on his trade agenda:

    On trade, exactly nothing has happened. The long-dead TPP is still dead, but NAFTA is very much still with us. No new protective measures have been put in place, and American companies have been subject to no punitive retaliations. No legislation appears to be in the works.

    This status quo acknowledges rising anti-trade sentiment on the left and right by halting forward progress on any new trade and investment deals, while refusing to take the risk of altering any existing arrangements.

    Part of the reason is that those "existing arrangements" all have big business supporters, especially among the Goldman-Sachs wing of the Trump administration, whereas Trump has yet to pick an unemployed auto-worker or coal miner for any post of influence (they shot their wad on Nov. 9 and won't get another chance for four years). Yglesias doesn't mention the "border adjustment tax" here, but it does show up in The 7 big questions Republicans have to answer on tax reform. Taxes look to be the next big Congressional battle for Trump and Ryan, and their proposals are likely to be every bit as unpopular as what they came up with for health care. Again, their problem won't be Republicans coming to their senses, but ones who want to seize the opportunity to make things even worse. At least you can't say you weren't warned.

Also a few links less directly tied to Trump, though sometimes still to America's bout of political insanity:

  • Eric Alterman: The Perception of Liberal Bias in the Newsroom Has Nothing Whatsoever to Do With Reality: Unlike, say, the conservative bias in the board rooms. But even that oversimplifies the story. Conservative scapegoating both presses and seduces the media, with its completely normal self-image as fair and objective, into legitimizing outrageous claims from the right and gives viewers/listeners/readers a readymade excuse to doubt everything they see/hear/read. Moreover, it's not entirely wrong. The fact is no one can be free from biases any more than one can escape experience or language. Critical self-reflection helps, as does a willingness to question one's own precepts. A friend recently asked me how these days one can figure out who to trust. My reaction is that I never trust anyone beyond what I can make sense of and verify. If, for instance, you told me that cutting marginal tax rates on the rich would make the economy grow in ways that helped people beyond those who saved on their tax bills, I could look for test cases and see how they turned out. Same if you told me that spending more money on the military would make it less likely that a country would be attacked by others. It so happens that there is a lot of evidence on both of these questions, and the evidence strongly disputes the assertions. If you look at many such questions, you may start to think that some sources are more trustworthy than others, but you should never cease to question them, especially when they don't make sense.

    To take a slightly different perspective, and I find it often helps to try to refocus from different angles, I've been worrying about (and distrusting) "liberal bias" since the mid-1960s, when liberals tended to take political positions I disagreed with (like supporting the US war in Vietnam). Liberals back then had an active fantasy life, as they in some cases still have today (e.g., their obsession with Russia). Both then and now it's fairly easy to pick apart issues where they are wrong and where their errors are self-serving (the Russia thing seems to be a way Clinton-supporters can avoid the shortcomings of their candidate). It shouldn't be surprising that conservatives are pretty adept at spotting and exploiting cases where liberals spin things to their own advantage. Nor vice versa -- perspective often gets clearer from a distance. Still, in reality, bias and interest isn't symmetrical between right and left, and it is a grave error to think otherwise. The right, by definition, serves private interests, often at the expense of the public. The left takes the opposite tack, favoring the broadest class interest over the most elite. We should at least be able to agree on that much, but the right has struggled mightily to confuse the issue, not least with their charges that the media is rife with "liberal bias."

    To understand this, you need to recognize that America was founded on liberal (Enlightenment) principles, notably on the notion that "all men are born equal" and share "equal rights under the law," a law meant to advance "the common welfare" and which is vouchsafed through a system of democracy. And those principles have been so internalized that even the right, which at all times has defended the claims of "virtuous elites" to rule over everyone else, has had to pay lip-service to democracy and to argue that their self-serving policies benefit some greater good. To do so they've dressed up their rhetoric with all sorts of market-tested claims, often disguising themselves as "populists" while practicing their art of divide-and-conquer -- flattering one part of the demos as the only true Americans while derogating others as deservedly inferior. And the more their claims fail, the harder they work as obfuscating their failures. One way they've done this has been to convince their followers that any unseemly facts are the product of "liberal bias." Of course, such charges ring hollow to anyone who's bothered to examine the right's own agenda, but thus far they've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of this ruse. To get an idea of how much, consider the Occupy Wall Street formulation that divides us between a 1% (which is clearly the orientation of the Republican platform) and the remaining 99%. If politics were understood this way, the Republicans should never win an election, yet somehow they manage to keep their share around 30% (vs. a more/less equal 30% for the Democrats and 40% for those who don't vote). Of course, relatively even results aren't solely due to the skill of Republican machinations -- many Democrats, including Obama and the Clintons, seem to be very cozy with the 1% and have a mediocre record of serving the 99%, both making them vulnerable to the "populist" ploys of a Trump.

  • Dean Baker: Trade Denialism Continues: Trade Really Did Kill Manufacturing Jobs: Rebuts and debunks "a flood of opinion pieces and news stories in recent weeks wrongly telling people that it was not trade that led to the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent years, but rather automation." Baker also wrote The Fed's Interest Rate Hike Will Prevent People From Getting Jobs.

  • Pepe Escobar: North Korea: The really serious options on the table

  • Chris Hayes: Policing the Colony: From the American Revolution to Ferguson: Adapted from Hayes' new book, A Colony in a Nation, on the persistence of racism in America, explained by the tendency to even now treat black people as something different from equal citizens under the law. One sample paragraph:

    In Ferguson, people were enraged at Michael Brown's death and grieving at his passing, but more than anything else they were sick and tired of being humiliated. At random, I could take my microphone and offer it to a black Ferguson resident, young or old, who had a story of being harassed and humiliated. A young honors student and aspiring future politician told me about watching his mother be pulled over and barked at by police. The local state senator told me that when she was a teenager, a police officer drew a gun on her because she was sitting in a fire truck -- at a fireman's invitation. At any given moment, a black citizen of Ferguson might find himself shown up, dressed down, made to stoop and cower by the men with badges.

  • John Judis: Can Donald Trump Revive American Manufacturing? An Interview With High-Tech Expert Rob Atkinson: Short answer: well, someone could, but clearly not Donald Trump.

  • Greg Kaufmann: A Cruel New Bill Is About to Become Law in Mississippi: "Legislation passed this week would enrich a private contractor while throwing people off public assistance." Not Trump's fault, per se, but another example of the Republicans at work, preying on the poor.

  • Richard D Wolff: Capitalism Produced Trump: Another Reason to Move Beyond It

  • Democratic Mega-donor Saban Doesn't Rule Out Hillary Clinton 2020 Run: More proof that cluelessness is endemic among billionaires.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Friday, March 31, 2017

Streamnotes (March 2017)

Feeling rather negligent this month. New records count dropped to 52 from 120 (February) and 138 (January). Of those 17 were 2016 releases, and 2 go back to 2015, so 33 are 2017 releases (63.5%). Of the 2017 releases, 6 were non-jazz (18.2%): five of those were Christgau picks (Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Orchestra Baobab, Whitney Rose, Sunny Sweeney, Syd), so that leaves only one I checked out on my own hunch (Murs). So I seem to have moved past 2016, but not really into 2017. On the other hand, when I look at, say, Album of the Year's The Highest Rated Albums of 2017 I'm not real inspired (Mount Eerie? Magnetic Fields? Valerie June? OK, I liked the last Laura Marling album, and I have found three A- records among the top 25 -- Jesca Hoop, XX, Tinariwen -- but I've also wasted my time with Sampha and Loyle Carner; aside from Magnetic Fields, the only Christgau picks in the top 50 are Syd at 34 and Jens Lekman at 43). By the way, Napster only has 16 of Magnetic Fields' 50 songs, as if I didn't already have reasons enough to ignore the thing.

On the other hand, more old music this time than in quite some time. The deaths of Chuck Berry and Arthur Blythe triggered most of them. I knew Berry from his compilations (including the 3CD Chess Box, and the earlier LP-era Golden Decade volumes and Rarities, so I thought it might be interesting to work my way through his albums. I was fortunate to find (after some digging) all of them on Napster, but I did stop short of the "complete Chess recordings" boxes (two are online, the early one not).

Pickings for the late great alto saxophonist were harder to come by, with most of the Columbias unavailable (including the great In the Tradition), and nothing on India Navigation, CIMP or Savant -- his last masterpiece, Focus, appeared there in 2002. Also, he played a lot in groups (I knew about the Leaders, but the Roots albums below are finds) and as side credits, and not infrequently stole the show on the latter. (The John Abercrombie and Lester Bowie albums below feature Blythe; I'm listening to another by Gust William Tsilis as I'm writing this.)

Other things driving me to old music: collating the jazz guides got me to look up a few things -- Gato Barbieri, Bob Brookmeyer, Barney Kessel, Vic Juris. Old albums by Swans and Peter Van Huffel followed from new albums. I noticed Napster finally added Al Green Is Love, which Christgau had bumped up from B+ to A a few years ago (I've moved it to A- myself), so that got me looking at some albums I had missed -- mostly his mid-life gospel phase. Stopped when I couldn't find I Get Joy (1989), but I haven't missed much since then.

I also took a long look at Ken Vandermark's Bandcamp page, partly looking for new (or at least recent) material but also finding some older records I had missed (going back as far as 1993's Big Head Eddie, his first quartet). Still a few things I haven't gotten to on that page: especially the big boxes. If it all seems daunting, a good place to start is Spaceways Inc.: Version Soul. Or Vandermark 5's early risk-taking on Target or Flag (which was the one that convinced me).

Most of these are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Napster (formerly Rhapsody; other sources are noted in brackets). They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on February 28. Past reviews and more information are available here (9400 records).

Recent Releases

Greg Abate/Tim Ray Trio: Road to Forever (2016 [2017], Whaling City Sound): Saxophonist, credits here list soprano, tenor, and alto in that order, but he also plays quite a bit of flute. Ray is a pianist, also plays keyboards, and his bassist switches between acoustic and electric. Postbop, fluid and eloquent. B+(*) [cd]

AMP Trio: Three (2016 [2017], self-released): New York-based Piano trio: Addison Frei (piano, Fender Rhodes), Perrin Grace (acoustic bass), Matt Young (drums). Third album. Played it twice and it does nothing for me, but not bad when I force myself to concentrate. B [cd]

Courtney Marie Andrews: Honest Life (2016, Mama Bird): Singer-songwriter from Phoenix, based in Seattle, qualifies as Americana with its plain-spoken songs and modest (give or take some strings) accompaniment. B+(*)

Jason Anick & Jason Yeager: United (2016 [2017], Inner Circle Music): Anick plays violin and mandolin, Yeager piano. As a duo, or backed with bass and percussion, they make nice chamber jazz, but the occasional horns perk things up, most monumentally the cut with tenor saxophonist George Garzone. B+(**) [cd]

Animal Collective: Painting With (2016, Domino): Having observed (but I must say never understood) how their albums like Meriweather Post Pavilion (2009) captured critics' polls, I was surprised that the group's tenth album hardly generated a blip this year (only one vote in Pazz & Jop, tied for 279 in my EOY Aggregate). Also surprised that its bounciness no long annoys. B+(*)

Ballrogg [Klaus Ellerhusen Holm/Roger Arntzen/Ivar Grydeland]: Abaft the Beam (2014-15 [2017], Clean Feed): Clarinets, double bass, various guitars (first listed pedal steel, last banjo, also drum machine). Sort of avant-ambient fusion, which is to say it doesn't try to melt into background but doesn't really go anywhere either. B+(**) [cd]

Bat for Lashes: The Bride (2016, Parlophone): British singer-songwriter Natasha Khan, fourth album, full of weepy ballads sung in an artificially pretty timbre. B-

Battle Trance: Blade of Love (2016, New Amsterdam): Saxophone quartet, all tenors -- Travis Laplante, Patrick Breiner, Matt Nelson, Jeremy Viner). One piece (40:12) split into three parts, stuck in one narrow tone band bud they fiddle with it a lot. B+(*) [bc]

Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop: Love Letter for Fire (2016, Sub Pop/Black Cricket): Beam's own albums are released as Iron and Wine -- six since 2002, including a 2015 duo credited to Iron and Wine & Ben Bridwell. Hoop has a similar number of albums since 2007, including one this year I like a lot (Memories Are Now). Voices mesh nicely, which helps him more than her. B+(*)

Carlos Bica & Azul: More Than This (2016 [2017], Clean Feed): Portuguese bassist, currently in Berlin, released a record called Azul in 1995 and kept the name. Group is a trio with Frank Möbus on guitar and Jim Black on drums. B+(***) [cd]

Chicago Edge Ensemble: Decaying Orbit (2016 [2017], self-released): Guitarist Dan Phillips composed all the pieces here, but the edge comes from Mars Williams on saxophones and Jeb Bishop on trombone. They can crack up, loose, or any which way. A- [cd]

Alex Cline's Flower Garland Orchestra: Oceans of Vows (2016 [2017], self-released, 2CD): Drummer, staged a monumental work here, lots of strings and gongs and a soprano singer, Areni Agbabian, and other sampled voices, all things I normally detest, yet it's all quite lovely and unaccountably moving -- well, maybe if I figured out the packaging and followed the text and all that . . . B+(***) [cd]

DIIV: Is the Is Are (2016, Captured Tracks): Brooklyn indie rock band, initially called (and presumably still pronounced) Dive, second album, with Zachary Cole Smith lead singer, and keyboards adding a bit of dream pop catchiness to the guitar grind. B+(**)

Dinosaur Jr: Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not (2016, Jagjaguwar): One of the genre-defining alt/indie bands back in the 1980s, slogged on despite Lou Barlow's departure in 1989 to 1997, then regrouped with J Mascis' solo career going nowhere and Barlow returning in 2006. Eleventh album, sounds like they could go on forever. B+(*)

Akua Dixon: Akua's Dance (2016 [2017], Akua's Music): Third album, launching a career after turning 60, plays baritone violin and cello this time, backed by guitar, bass, and Victor Lewis on drums -- she certainly has a good sense of how to layer strings together. Sings one too, and not bad at that. B+(**) [cd]

Marc Ducret Trio+3: Métatonal (2014 [2015], Ayler): French guitarist, cuts with a sharp metallic edge, his trio adding double bass and drums, the "+3" horns: saxophonist Christophe Monniot, trumpeter Fabrice Martinez, and trombonist Samuel Blaser, but they only let loose when following the leader. B+(**)

Krzysztof Dys Trio: Toys (2014 [2016], ForTune): Polish pianist, has at least one previous album, this a trio with bass (Andrzej Swies) and drums (Krzysztof Szmanda). One original piece at the end, one Jobim, the rest bop classics (Monk, Davis, Coltrane, Silver, Evans, Hancock, Shorter), all handled with aplomb. B+(**) [bc]

Gorilla Mask: Iron Lung (2016 [2017], Clean Feed): Avant-jazz sax trio, the leader alto saxophonist Peter Van Huffel (Canadian, Belgian roots, based in Berlin), with Roland Fidezius (electric bass, effects) and Rudi Fischerlehner (drums). The bass gives this a certain rockish foundation, which the saxophonist regularly blows up. A- [cd]

Bill Hart: Touch of Blue (2016 [2017], Blue Canoe): Guitarist, plays fusion, backed by bass, keys, drums, and percussion, a lot of riffing up and down. B- [cd]

Jill Jack and the American SongBook Band: Pure Imagination (2016, UpHill Productions): Singer from Detroit, has a dozen albums since 1997, evidently wrote most of her songs previously but for this project she picks prime standards from "All of Me" to, ugh, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Pianist Dale Grisa leads a solid jazz combo with guitar and sax. Some interesting twists, but basically as good as the songs. B+(*) [cd]

Sarah Jarosz: Undercurrent (2016, Sugar Hill): Austin singer-songwriter, plays mandolin and banjo, originally slotted as bluegrass, fourth album, doesn't seem to belong to any genre, just the work of a talented and sometimes touching songsmith. B+(**)

Norah Jones: Day Breaks (2015 [2016], Blue Note): I've collected her reviews for my jazz guide, mostly given her label, but she's never fit very well. Still, the band here is jazzier than ever, as are her originals, and she covers Ellington and Silver (and Neil Young), all the while sounding remarkably sweet. B+(**)

Jü: Summa (2016 [2017], Rare Noise): Avant-fusion trio: Ádám Mészáros (guitars, kalimba, percussion), Ernö Hock (bass guitar, bass ukulele, percussion), and András Halmos (drums, bells, kalimba), with a couple guests on one track. Kjetil Mřster's sax is a nice touch, but that's about it. B [cdr]

Doug MacDonald: A Salute to Jazz Composers: Jazz Marathon 2 (2016 [2017], BluJazz, 2CD): Guitarist, based in Los Angeles where this was recorded live, has a dozen albums going back to 1981 -- no evidence of a Jazz Marathon 1. Horn players are mostly names I recognize -- sax section is Lanny Morgan, Pete Christleib, and/or Ricky Woodard (some churn from cut to cut). Compositions mostly date from the 1950s, roughly Charlie Parker to Sonny Rollins, with one original (MacDonald's "Bossa Don") and an Ellington medley on the margins. So nothing new here, but it's all pretty delightful. B+(***) [cd]

Kirk MacDonald Jazz Orchestra: Common Ground (2015 [2017], Addo, 2CD): Tenor saxophonist, from Canada, discography goes back to 1990, fronts a big band with five trumpets and a couple extra reeds, none of which especially stand out. B [cd]

Ben Markley Big Band: Clockwise: The Music of Cedar Walton (2016 [2017], OA2): Pianist, has a couple of previous albums, teaches as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Wyoming, his big band leaning on Denver musicians plus guest trumpet player Terrel Stafford. Walton always had a knack for writing for horns, so his music scales up easily here, a very brassy concoction. B+(*) [cd]

Lisa Mezzacappa: Avant Noir (2015 [2017], Clean Feed): Bassist, has a couple albums, leads a sextet here with just one horn (Aaron Bennett on tenor sax) and no piano: the other spots are electric guitar, vibes, electronics, and drums. B+(**) [cd]

The Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra: Welcome to Swingsville! (2016 [2017], BluJazz): Big Band from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, "managed" by Kyle Seifert (tenor sax) and Julia Rose Bustle, main name I recognize trumpeter Russ Johnson. Notes brag about this program being played "live and unrehearsed." That may explain why this gets a slow start, but they hit their stride on "Caravan." B+(*) [cd]

Nicole Mitchell: Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (2015 [2017], FPE): Flute player, based in Chicago since 1990 although since 2001 she has taught at University of California Irvine. Booklet credits this to her Black Earth Ensemble, a group with shakuhachi, viola, cello, guitar, bass, and percussion. Effectively this is two records, and long enough that both are well developed: it begins and ends with instrumental grunge, something like a jazz elaboration on industrial but a bit more ethereal; in between, we get an extended vocal harangue from "avery y young." I've played this four times, and I'm still ambivalent about both halve, but this is pretty unique, and for once I'm not bitching about the flute. B+(**) [cd]

Murs: Captain California (2017, Strange Music): LA rapper, underground, has a couple albums I like a lot, more I never heard. This one, packed with featured guests I've never heard of and nine different producers, wanders all over the place. B+(**)

Bill O'Connell: Monk's Cha Cha: Live at the Carnegie-Farian Room (2016 [2017], Savant): Solo piano, the title tune an original, the other material -- originals plus covers of "Afro Blue," "Dindi," and "The Song Is You" -- not pushing either interest very hard or far. B [cd]

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya: Drool (2017, Father/Daughter/Sooper): From LA (or Chicago), sings more than he raps, a Christgau pick but while some of this prog trickiness sounds promising I find much of it unlistenable. B-

Miles Okazaki: Trickster (2016 [2017], Pi): Guitarist, has an airy style with a slight metallic tinge, leads a quartet here with pianist Craig Taborn impressive as usual. B+(**) [cd]

Eivind Opsvik: Overseas V (2016 [2017], Loyal Label): Norwegian Bassist, based in New York, has released four Overseas albums with a core group of saxophonist Tony Malaby and pianist Jacob Sacks, joined here (as on Overseas IV by Brandon Seabrook (guitar) and Kenny Wolleson (drums). Dense and intricate, the guitar and sax blunted and folded back into the group, where the focus is more on sustaining rhythmic force. B+(***) [cd]

Orchestra Baobab: Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng (2017, Nonesuch/World Circuit): One of Senegal's most important bands, their 1970s shrined in multi-volume compilations called La Belle Epoque, with more albums since 1992, one of the best (Specialist in All Styles) from 2002, the last before this in 2008. Dieng (1947-2016) was the group's long-time singer, though he is ably replaced here. A-

The Radio Dept.: Running Out of Love (2016, Labrador): Swedish electropop group, a bit of a throwback to 1980's new wave (with a dash of shoegaze), the final cut a hint of Pet Shop Boys but rather austere. B+(**)

Rocco John: Peace and Love (2014 [2017], Unseen Rain): Alto saxophonist (also soprano and piano) Rocco John Iacovone, leading a group he calls the Improvisational Composers Ensemble in a tribute to Will Connell (1938-2014), a saxophonist with a slim discography (most notably the 1981/83 Commitment recordings with William Parker) who "lived his music." Group is an octet with Ras Moshe Burnett (bells, tenor sax, flute), violin, bass clarinet, guitar, double bass, drums, and percussion. Group hits hard, but is equally interesting when they spread out, chill out, or aim for the heavens. A- [cd]

Whitney Rose: South Texas Suite (2017, Six Shooter, EP): Singer-songwriter from Prince Edward Island up in Canada, moved to Austin and after two albums I never noticed came up with this remarkable six cut, 22:19 EP. B+(***)

Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures: Glare of the Tiger (2016 [2017], Meta/M.O.D. Technologies): Percussionist, mostly hand drums here, with two other drummers (Hamid Drake and James Hurt) in the ensemble, along with horns -- Graham Haynes (cornet, flugelhorn) and Ralph M. Jones (flutes, clarinets, saxes) -- keyboards, guitar, and electric bass. Strong suit is rhythm, colors changing from darker to lighter. B+(***) [cd]

John K. Samson: Winter Wheat (2016, Anti-): Singer-songwriter from Winnipeg, came out of a couple bands I've heard of (Propagandhi, The Weakerthans), third solo album. B+(*)

Jenny Scheinman: Here on Earth (2017, Royal Potato Family): Violinist, working on a soundtrack for the film Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait, based on 1936-42 archival footage by H. Lee Waters of small town folks in North Carolina during the Great Depression. Some scenes included fiddle-banjo-guitar, so she recruited Danny Barnes, Robbie Fulks, Bill Frisell, and Robbie Gjersoe -- reminds me that Frisell hired Scheinman for his very similar Arkansas-based Disfarmer. B+(***)

Andy Shauf: The Party (2016, Anti-): Singer-songwriter from Saskatchewan, started out as drummer in a "Christian pop punk band," third solo album here. This is pretty sedate, or pretty but sedate. B

Swans: The Glowing Man (2016, Young God, 2CD): Michael Gira's industrial/noise group, toiled in near-complete obscurity from 1983's Filth through 1996's Soundtracks for the Blind, but since regrouping in 2010 they've garnered effusive press and even a bit of commercial acceptance. That fell off a bit on this fourth post-hiatus album, perhaps because its length reinforces the sense of sameness. B+(*)

Sunny Sweeney: Trophy (2017, Aunt Daddy): Country singer, cowrote most of her songs -- don't have the credits but evidently Lori McKenna was involved. The backing is nondescript, and they drag a little, but every one hits its mark, even a couple I'd rather not deal with. B+(***)

Syd: Fin (2017, Columbia): Vocalist for the Internet tries a solo album. Small voice, matter-of-fact beats, picks up toward the end with a couple of featuring credits (who is this Steve Lacy?) and a song about "Insecurities" -- whoever's doing that low voice is helping a lot. A-

Teenage Fanclub: Here (2016, Merge): Alt/indie band from Scotland (or "Northern Britain" as one title put it), long time since anyone here was a teenager, their tenth album losing much of their jangle but keeping light pop harmonies. B-

University of Toronto Jazz Orcherstra: Sweet Ruby Suite (2016 [2017], UofT Jazz): Subtitled The Music of Kenny Wheeler featuring Norma Winstone and Dave Leibman (lyricist/singer and soprano saxophonist), so this is a minor milestone in the evolution of jazz repertory, as well as a sentimental tribute to one of Canada's greatest jazz figures (1930-2014). Not a direction I relish or a piece of opera I'm particularly fond of, but I'm not unsentimental (nor unimpressed). B+(*) [cd]

University of Toronto 12Tet: Trillium Falls (2016 [2017], UofT Jazz): Terry Promano directed and composed a couple pieces, and Noam Lomish added his piano to his track. Notable covers come from Strayhorn and Ellington. Nice flow, but sometimes I wonder why bother? B [cd]

Keith Urban: Ripcord (2016, Capitol Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, born in New Zealand, moved to Australia when he was 17 and broke through there, released his first US album in 1999, married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, moved to Nashville at some point and became a US citizen, becoming a judge on American Idol. Ninth studio album, first I've heard. A formidable voice and a flexible student of pop hooks, mixing in Carrie Underwood on one track and Nile Rodgers and Pitbull on another. Could catch on if I gave it the chance, but I can remember so little of it after one play I doubt I will. B

Velkro: Too Lazy to Panic (2016 [2017], Clean Feed): Recorded in Portugal but mixed in Norway, don't know anything about the trio -- Bostjan Simon (sax, electronics), Stephan Meidell (guitar, bass, percussion, electronics), and Luis Candelas (drums, percussion) -- other than that their 2014 debut blew me away. They describe this one as "a step forward and a dive inward," which is to say the deep sound of their dense fusion takes much longer to sink in. A- [cd]

Nate Wooley/Ken Vandermark: All Directions Home (2015, Audiographic): Duets, trumpet and reeds, recorded over two nights in Milwaukee. This actually works out quite nicely, either likely to set up rhythmic vamps the other can slide against, neither in a mood to burn the joint down. B+(***) [bc]

Michael Zilber: Originals for the Originals (2016 [2017], Origin): Saxophonist (tenor/soprano), originally from Canada, now based in San Francisco after a long east coast stay (Boston and New York -- his debut seems to have been 1992's Stranger in Brooklyn). Originals dedicated to other saxophonists -- most obviously Michael Brecker, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond), mostly backed by piano-bass-drums (David Kikoski, James Genus, Clarence Penn). B+(**) [cd]

Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries

Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari: Tales of Mozambique (1970-75 [2016], Soul Jazz): Born Oswald Williams (1926-76), he was one of the innovators of nyabinghi, a primitivist hand drumming style wrapped up in the Rastafari cult. His drumming with chants and the occasional horn are simple and seductive. A-

Nigeria Soul Fever: Afro Funk, Disco and Boogie (1970s-80s [2016], Soul Jazz): A big country, roughly the population if not nearly the physical size of Brazil (173.6 vs. 200.4 million people), its diversity another reason for adopting so many western musical styles. Label has a good record for compilations, but this often sounds second-hand, even if more energetically so. B+(*)

Old Music

John Abercrombie/Arthur Blythe/Terri Lyne Carrington/Anthony Cox/Mark Feldman/Gust Tsilis: Echoes (1996 [2005], Alessa): All names on front cover, in alphabetical order, but Blythe (alto sax) only appears on two (of ten) cuts, and Feldman (violin) on one. On the other hand, they dominate their cuts to the point of suggesting the album could turn into something. Otherwise, the guitarist is most chameleon-like, leaving Tsilis' vibes to shine. B+(*)

Gato Barbieri Quartet: In Search of the Mystery (1967, ESP-Disk): Tenor saxophonist from Argentina, played with Lalo Schifrin in the late 1950s/early 1960s before following John Coltrane into the avant-garde, leading to this debut album, with Calo Scott (cello), Norris Jones (bass), and Bobby Kapp (drums). Strong stuff, but mostly his screech is barely controlled, and sometimes it slips. B+(*)

Gato Barbieri: The Third World (1969 [1970], Flying Dutchman): Front cover just says "Gato" under the title. Album opens with flute, then a little vocal, before blossoming into one of the most identifiable tenor sax tones ever. Interesting line up here, with the first hints of his Latin/tango rhythm melded with Roswell Rudd's trombone growl. B+(***)

Gato Barbieri: Fenix (1971, Flying Dutchman): This is where he set the pattern for his best albums of the following decade: he cranked up the Latin percussion (adding Gene Golden on bongos and congas and Na Na on congas and berimbau), let the rhythm section (Lennie White III on drums, Ron Carter on electric bass, and Lonnie Liston Smith on keyboards) ham it up, and blew his sax way past them all. A-

Gato Barbieri: El Pampero (1971 [1972], Flying Dutchman): Same instrumental lineup with considerable shuffling of personnel (Lonnie Liston Smith on piano and Na Na on berimbau are the constants), with the saxophonist if anything even more towering. A-

Chuck Berry: After School Session (1955-57 [1957], Chess): I discovered Berry through compilations -- Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, which later morphed into The Great Twenty-Eight and the slightly enlarged 30-cut (picking up his 1972 novelty hit "My Ding-A-Ling") The Definitive Collection -- and I've heard the 3-CD Chess Box, but on his death, I figured why not check out as many old LPs as I could find? This was his first, only the second issued by the label, with five classics ("School Days," "Too Much Monkey Business," "No Money Down," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "Havana Moon"), a forgotten single ("Wee Wee Hours" from 1955), and filler -- plucky instrumentals plus less developed ballads. B+(***)

Chuck Berry: One Dozen Berrys (1957 [1958], Chess): Second album, follows the same formula, with four classics -- "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Oh Baby Doll," "Reelin' and Rockin'," "Rock and Roll Music" -- and mostly instrumental filler (though "It Don't Take but a Few Minutes" is a charming oddity). B+(***)

Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry Is on Top (1955-59 [1959], Chess): Third album, possibly his best known, rounded up non-album singles as far back as "Maybellene" (1955) and "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956). Eight of twelve songs made The Great Twenty-Eight, two other singles dropped from the canon ("Anthony Boy" and "Jo Jo Gunne"), and there are two odd little pieces of filler ("Hey Pedro" and "Blues for Hawaiians"). A-

Chuck Berry: Rockin' at the Hops (1960, Chess): Only one canon song ("Let It Rock"), but three other songs were released as singles, and they and a couple others (including a cover, "Too Pooped to Pop") are unmistakable Berry. B+(**)

Chuck Berry: New Juke Box Hits (1961, Chess): Not really: "I'm Talking About You" is the only canon song, and some of the covers had been around the block too many times ("Route 66," "Rip It Up"). B+(*)

Chuck Berry: Twist (1955-61 [1962], Chess): A stopgap released with Berry in jail, the title suggesting something new to cash in on Chubby Checker's twist craze, the fourteen songs old singles (though this was the first album for three: "Oh, Baby Doll," "Come On," "Back in the U.S.A."). It's all brilliant, but docked a bit as misleading, and because later compilations were able to double the length without slipping one bit. [Reissued a year later as More Chuck Berry. That title was then recycled for a 1964 UK release with a different songlist -- only "Reelin' and Rockin'" appears on both.] A-

Chuck Berry: On Stage (1963, Chess): Berry was in jail in August when this was released -- had been from February 1962 up to October -- so the label faked this, dubbing applause in over studio tracks, with "Surfin' USA" highlighted on the cover but not in the song listings (oh, yeah, "Sweet Little Sixteen"). Napster adds 12 cuts, probably from a later CD reissue I can't locate -- they appear to be the undubbed originals. B-

Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry: Two Great Guitars (1964, Chess): Each side of the original LP starts with a sub-three-minute instrumental, followed in turn by 10:39/14:23 jam, the first side leaning toward Berry, the second McDaniel. A reissue added four bonus tracks, longest 3:44. Grooveful, but might have been more exciting if not just a duo. B+(*)

Chuck Berry: St. Louis to Liverpool (1957-64 [2004], Chess): Back from jail, buoyed by royalties from the Beatles and the Beach Boys (after having sued the latter), he wrote ten (or twelve) songs, including three of his greatest ("No Particular Place to Go," "You Never Can Tell," and "Promised Land"). The forgotten songs are pretty solid too, and the reissue adds three cuts. A-

Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry in London (1965, Chess): Cover says "recorded in England" but offers no further details -- no evidence of an audience, nor that the recording location matters. But it does feature new material, only three covers (two name-checking St. Louis), nothing that wound up in the canon (although "Dear Dad" and "I Want to Be Your Driver" come close), but the guitar is sui generis even when the blues are generic. B+(***)

Chuck Berry: Fresh Berry's (1965, Chess): Last album for Chess, effectively the end of the era, but none of the songs here made the canon, the only one coming close "My Mustang Ford." Ends with a reworking of an early single, this time called "Wee Hour Blues" -- a fitting end. (Berry returned to Chess in 1970, and had a one-shot hit single in 1972, but never regained his 1957-64 genius.) B+(**)

Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry's Golden Hits (1966 [1989], Mercury): Freed from Chess Records, the first thing Berry's new label has him do is re-record a dozen of his Chess hits (well, eleven, as "Club Nitty Gritty" is new, a non-hit single in 1966; expanded to 15 songs for the reissue). While I can't swear the songs are vastly inferior to the originals, they do feel a bit off. And while the back cover notes they were recorded "in October and November, 1966" and "Chuck himself was in full charge of the sessions from beginning to end," this can't escape the whiff of fraud (although this practice wasn't unusual -- I'm still soft on The Very Best of the Everly Brothers, recorded for Warners in 1964, because that's where I started with them). Chess answered almost immediately with the 2-LP 24-cut Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, which is where I dove in. B-

Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry in Memphis (1967, Mercury): The second of five post-Chess albums Berry cut for Mercury (two live plus that bogus Golden Hits). Two more re-recorded hits, a couple of passable outtakes, a batch of soul ballad covers which are pure filler, and more stress on the horns. B+(*)

Chuck Berry: Live at Fillmore Auditorium (1967, Mercury): A proper live album, but Berry had already fallen into the mode of working with whatever local pick up band he could find, drawing what was still known as the Steve Miller Blues Band here. Someone must of whispered in Berry's ear that the hippies dug blues, because he leads off with a long string of blues covers before delving into his own catalog, with only the last three songs recognizably his own (one of them his first recorded take of "My Ding-a-Ling"). B

Chuck Berry: From St. Louie to Frisco (1968, Mercury): Seems to be working hard, wrote a batch of new songs -- though "My Tambourine" is just a gloss on "My Ding-a-Ling," and he that's far from the only recycling -- but he's falling behind and further into obscurity. B+(*)

Chuck Berry: Concerto in B-Goode (1969, Mercury): First side offers four new songs, all blues, far from bad but not especially memorable. Second side is an 18:40 instrumental, built from familiar licks, evidently intended to roll Beethoven back over. Neither strikes me as a good idea, but he makes them work (sort of). B+(*)

Chuck Berry: Back Home (1970, Chess): Well, back in Chicago with Chess, anyway, leading off with "Tulane" -- probably his best song since 1964. Follows up with blues and instrumentals, both better than par. B+(***)

Chuck Berry: San Francisco Dues (1971, Chess): I'm curious why Berry has so many San Francisco titles, especially given that whenever he thinks of that town he slows down and melts. B-

Chuck Berry: The London Chuck Berry Sessions (1972, Chess): One side (five songs) cut in the studio, including a Little Walter cover. The other side was live, just three songs: "Reelin' and Rockin'" and "Johnny B. Goode" sandwiched 11:33 of Dave Bartholomew's "My Ding-a-Ling" structured as an audience sing-along. Berry had recorded the song before (as well as its alter-ego "My Tambourine"), but this was somehow turned into Berry's one and only chart-topping single ("Sweet Little Sixteen" peaked at 2, "School Day" at 3, "Maybellene" at 5, with three more cracking the top ten). B

Chuck Berry: Bio (1973, Chess): Seven original songs show a lot of care if not much genius, but I find the easy and almost effortless pace rather appealing. The band, which fills in seamlessly, also does business as Elephant's Memory. B+(**)

Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry (1975, Chess): Mostly covers, a mix of blues and country and "Shake Rattle and Roll," with "Swanee River" adapted to be most Berry-like. It's schlock, but he makes it sound easy and natural, like he's figured out the art of coasting. B+(**)

Chuck Berry: Rock It (1979, Atco): Having left Chess for the second time, his first and only album for the Warners combine, and it would turn his last album before his death in 2017 (although a new one is rumored, the posthumous market for legends never richer). Christgau liked this one much more than his previous five (or maybe, probably, more), and it certainly is cheerier, but too much rubs me the wrong way -- not least the "Havana Moon" accent -- to get at all excited. B+(*)

Chuck Berry: Rock 'N Roll Rarities (1957-64 [1986], Chess): I wouldn't have bothered with this except I recall having it on vinyl. Some misdirection in that the songs themselves are far from unknown -- 11 of 20 are on The Great Twenty-Eight, which was the standard compilation at the time, and 4 of the remaining 9 were chart singles. Still, the fine print explains that most are demos or alternate takes, some just stereo remixes. And none of the variants stray far. Still, one terrific song was previously unknown ("Time Was"), and I hadn't noticed "Oh Yeah" elsewhere. B+(***)

Arthur Blythe: Put Sunshine in It (1985, Columbia): The late great alto saxophonist, came out of Horace Tapscott's circle in Los Angeles, cut a couple albums on small labels, then got a shot on Columbia and responded with two of the major jazz albums of the late 1970s, Lenox Avenue Breakdown and In the Tradition. This was his eighth album at Columbia (out of ten up to 1988), and by then he was struggling for something bright and pleasing. With cello and tuba instead of bass, guitar, and drums (congas on one track), this doesn't push anyone's buttons. B

Lester Bowie: The 5th Power (1978, Black Saint): AACM trumpet player, with Arthur Blythe (alto sax), Malachi Favors (bass), Amina Myers (piano), and Phillip Wilson (drums). Five pieces, Myers wrote and sings a "traditional gospel" that doesn't stay true, the rest of the pieces are sketchy and tentative. C+

Bob Brookmeyer: The Dual Role of Bob Brookmeyer (1954-55 [1990], Prestige/OJC): The valve trombonist's first album, cobbled together from two four-cut sessions: the first featuring guitarist Jimmy Raney, with Teddy Kolick (bass) and Mel Lewis (drums); the second with Teddy Charles (vibes), Kolick, and Ed Shaughnessy (drums), plus one nondescript vocal. Leader plays some fancy piano too (opposite Charles). B+(**)

Double Tandem [Ab Baars/Ken Vandermark/Paal Nilssen-Love]: OX (2012, dEN): Two tenor saxes (Vandearmark also on baritone, both also switching off to clarinet), jousting mightily with the drummer refereeing. B+(***) [bc]

FME: Live at the Glenn Miller Café - Feb. 27, 2002 (2002, Okka Disk): Ken Vandermark free jazz trio, active 2002-05, with Nate McBride on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. Terrific example of Vandermark in avant-honk mode, weakened only by a couple spots of regrouping. B+(***) [bc]

FME: Montage (2005 [2006], Okka Disk, 2CD): Last album for the group, although Vandermark has recorded a half-dozen or more duo albums with drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and has often employed bassist Nate McBride, so it wouldn't take much for them to regroup. Problem here is that at double the length, they space out the moments of brilliance, and while the anticipation may add something to live performance, it just makes us impatient here. B+(**) [bc]

Al Green: Truth N' Time (1978, Hi): His last album before switching over to gospel music. Shows some but not a lot of decline, voice still extraordinary, groove compelling, but nothing really great, and pretty short for an LP (8 songs, 26:39). B+(**)

Al Green: Tokyo . . . Live (1978 [1981], Motown): Live double, should fit on a single CD (76:49). Great songs, the two covers long owned, the band proficient, the sound a bit distant compared to the studio cuts you know like the back of your hand. B+(***)

Al Green: Precious Lord (1982, Myrrh): Green's third gospel album, after the tentative The Lord Will Make a Way and the more sure-footed Higher Plane. Traded his Memphis groove section for Nashville and more choir, which turned off some, but this is chock full of familiar songs which have rarely been raised so high to the rafters. B+(***)

Al Green: I'll Rise Again (1983, Myrrh): Back in Memphis so sure, a better groove record. Not sure of the credits but nothing I recognize, or listened to closely enough to get turned off or on. Wish the title prophesied the soul singer, not Jesus. B+(**)

Al Green: Trust in God (1984, Myrrh): His gospel albums have become so perfunctory I only noticed one song here. Looking at the credits there should have been two. B

Al Green: He Is the Light (1986, A&M): Discogs says this was originally titled Going Away (after the lead song), but I doubt the record was released in the UK before the US, where this has always been the title. Willie Mitchell returns as producer, helping to focus the groove. Favorite lyric: "I feel like shoutin' for joy." B+(**)

Vic Juris: Songbook (1999 [2000], SteepleChase): Guitar trio with Jay Anderson (bass) and Jeff Hirshfield (drums). Title piece is an original, plus two standards by Kern, one each by Jobim and Mancini, the rest jazz touchstones from "Nuages" to "Milestones," all played so modestly none stand out. B

Barney Kessel With Shelly Manne and Ray Brown: The Poll Winners (1957 [1988], Contemporary/OJC): Guitar-drums-bass trio, not sure what poll they claimed but at ages 30-36 they were early in their careers, and milked that group title for several more albums. One original, eight standards, Kessel's thin lines and mild metallic tone fast on their way to becoming hegemonic. B+(*)

Barney Kessel With Shelly Manne & Ray Brown: Poll Winners Three! (1959 [1992], Contemporary/OJC): Third group record for the guitar trio, Kessel having released a couple albums on his own between each. Again, one Kessel original, another by Brown, the rest standards swung a bit harder this time out. B+(***)

The Leaders: Unforseen Blessings (1988 [1989], Soul Note): All-star group came together in 1986 with Lester Bowie (trumpet), Arthur Blythe (alto sax), Chico Freeman (tenor sax), Kirk Lightsey (piano), Cecil McBee (bass) and Don Moye (drums). Third album with that lineup -- they'd go on to cut one more in 1994, but their 2006 reunion replaced Bowie and Blythe with Eddie Henderson and Bobby Watson. The rhythm section also recorded an 1988 album as the Leaders Trio, and Lightsey also seems to be in the helm here -- the horns tentative until they close with a blues. B+(*)

Lean Left: Live at Area Sismica (2012 [2014], Unsounds): Ken Vandermark and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, their duo joined by two guitarists from the Dutch punk band Ex, left to play free and joust with the sax. Group came together in 2008 and recorded four live albums up to this one. B+(***) [bc]

Rara Avis: Mutations/Multicellulars Mutations (2012 [2013], dEN, 2CD): Ken Vandermark group recorded in Rome, with Stefano Ferriari as a second saxophonist (soprano/tenor), Simone Quatrana (piano) Luca Pissavini (double bass), and SEC_ (Mimmo Napolitano: electronics, effects). First disc are group improvs. Second, much shorter, breaks down to duos and trios. Some sonic surprises, as well as hard-charging sax. B+(*) [bc]

Rara Avis: Rara Avis (2013 [2015], Not Two): Same Vandermark in Italy group, some months later on the road in Poland, improvising nine unnamed pieces. Piano is more prominent, and SEC_'s electronics prod things in interesting directions, while second saxophonist Stefano Ferriari does a pretty solid Mars Williams impression. B+(**) [bc]

Reed Trio: Last Train to the First Station (2008-10 [2011], Kilogram): Another live Ken Vandermark in Poland album (this time Gdansk), joined by Mikolaj Trzaska and Waclaw Zimpel who like Vandermark keep a couple clarinets in their toolkits (Zimpel also has a tarogato). Much less aggressive than Sonore (Vandermark's trio with Peter Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson), partly because the softer reeds predominate, partly because the group often drops down to solo or duo. B+(*) [bc]

Roots [Arthur Blythe/Sam Rivers/Nathan Davis/Chico Freeman/Don Pullen/Santi Debriano/Tommy Campbell]: Salutes the Saxophone (1991 [1992], In+Out): Four saxophones plus piano-bass-drums, doing nine standards every saxophonist must know by heart, with swing-era warhorses like "Cottontail" and "Lester Leaps In" raising the hottest jams. Still, the breakout star is the pianist, especially on his first two solos. A-

Roots: Stablemates (1992 [1993], In+Out): Names remain prominent on front cover, the only change Idris Muhammad moving in on drums. Mostly pieces by band members, others merely arranged. Pullen has several jaw-dropping moments, but as impressive this time is the sax layering, especially the exquisite altos (mostly Blythe, but also Freeman and Davis). A-

Swans: Public Castration Is a Good Idea (1986 [1999], Thirsty Ear): Michael Gira's noise rock band, had a run from 1982 to 1997 then regrouped in 2010. This was their first live album, heavy, plodding, not without a certain rogueish charm but nothing that might qualify as wit. B

The Vandermark Quartet: Big Head Eddie (1993, Platypus): I think this counts as Ken Vandermark's first album, recorded shortly after he moved from Boston to Chicago, credited with "reeds," joined by Michael Zerang (drums), Kent Kessler (bass), and Todd Colburn (guitar). Some parts feel overdubbed, but maybe it's just not clear what the guitar is up to. B [bc]

Vandermark 5: Drink, Don't Drown (1997, Savage Sound Syndicate): Practically a bootleg, recorded live at the Empty Bottle in Chicago and released in a jewel case with photocopied artwork. Front cover reads, above the title: "Every Tuesday at the Empty Bottle the VANDERMARK 5 will pour an ocean of sound into your bucket." This is the original lineup with Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams (reeds), Jeb Bishop (trombone, guitar), Kent Kessler (bass), and Tim Mulvenna (drums), shortly after their . Sound rather dampened, but they do have their moments. B+(*) [bc]

Vandermark 5: Thinking on One's Feet (1998 [1999], Savage Sound Syndicate): Same deal, a year later, with Dave Rempis (alto sax) in lieu of Mars Williams. Front cover, above the title, reads: "Every Tuesday at the Empty Bottle the battle for supremacy continues: the VANDERMARK 5 vs. SANTO, El Enmascarado de Plata." A bit chaotic, but group was in a feisty mood, especially trombonist Jeb Bishop. B+(**) [bc]

Ken Vandermark/Tim Daisy: August Music (2006 [2007], self-released): Reeds/drums duo, Daisy at the time was drummer in Vandermark 5, live at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, originally a limited edition of 200 copies. Album cover has two sets of initials, "td" on left and "kv" on right, and Discogs fell that way, but I went with the spine. The sax is as powerful as ever, and Daisy makes the clarinet work as well, pecking adroitly around the edges. Applause is enthusiastic, but I doubt the crowd numbered over two dozen. A- [bc]

Ken Vandermark/Tim Daisy: The Conversation (2010-11 [2011], Multikulti): Cover suggests the drummer should be listed first, but Bandcamp page belongs to Vandermark. More duos, drums and various reeds, recorded on two dates in Chicago clubs, impressive work although the high clarinet came off a bit constrained. B+(***) [bc]

Ken Vandermark/Paal Nilssen-Love: Letter to a Stranger (2011 [2012], Smalltown Superjazz): Sax-or-clarinet and drums duo, by my count the eighth between these two (half list the drummer's name first), not to mention a couple dozen group albums. Strongest on tenor sax, also impressive on baritone, and the drummer is always attentive. B+(***) [bc]

Peter Van Huffel/Michael Bates/Jeff Davis: Boom Crane (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): Alto sax trio (plus some clarinet), with bass and drums. All three originally hail from Canada, though are now based in Berlin (Van Huffel) and New York (the others). Not as aggressive as the leader's Gorilla Mask group (formed at the same time), but a good showcase for the individual talents. B+(**)

Witches & Devils: Empty Bottle Chicago (1997 [2000], Savage Sound Syndicate): The first of several Ken Vandermark groups to take the name of a famous album (cf. School Days, Free Fall), this one was more conventionally a tribute album, with three of four pieces written by Albert Ayler. Sextet, Mars Williams joins in on reeds, Jim Baker on keyboards, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, leading to collisions and pile-ups, but in the end you'd swear the Holy Ghost is tapping feet. B+(*) [bc]

Jimmy & Mama Yancey: Chicago Piano Volume 1 (1951 [1991], Atlantic): A boogie woogie pianist of some note, playing solo (bluesy but not terribly fast) on more than half of the tracks, with Estelle Yancey (wife, not mother) singing on the rest -- a straight up blues singer. B+(*)

Additional Consumer News:

Previous grades on artists in the old music section.

  • John Abercrombie: 15 other albums
  • Gato Barbieri: 13 other albums
  • Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight (1955-64 [1984], Chess): A+
  • Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection (1955-72 [2006], Geffen/Chess/Chronicles): A+
  • Chuck Berry: The Chess Box (1955-73 [1988], Chess, 3CD): A
  • Arthur Blythe: In Concert: The Grip/Metamorphosis (1977 [1991], India Navigation): B+
  • Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown (1978 [1998], Koch): A
  • Arthur Blythe: In the Tradition (1979, Columbia): A-
  • Arthur Blythe: Illusions (1980, Columbia): B+
  • Arthur Blythe: Basic Blythe (1987, Columbia): B
  • Arthur Blythe: Retroflection (1993 [1994], In+Out): A-
  • Arthur Blythe/David Eyges/Bruce Ditmas: Synergy (1996 [1997], In+Out): B+
  • Arthur Blythe: Night Song (1997, Clarity): B-
  • Arthur Blythe/David Eyges: Today's Blues (1997, CIMP): B-
  • Arthur Blythe: Spirits in the Field (2000, Savant): A-
  • Arthur Blythe: Focus (2002, Savant): A
  • Arthur Blythe: Exhale (2003, Savant): B+
  • Lester Bowie: 5 other albums
  • Bob Brookmeyer: 3 other albums
  • FME: Underground (2004, Okka Disk): A-
  • FME: Cuts (2004 [2005], Okka Disk): A-
  • Al Green: 27 other albums
  • Vic Juris: Blue Horizon (2002-03 [2004], Zoho): B
  • Vic Juris/Jimmy Bruno/Corey Christiansen: MB3 Jazz Hits Volume 1 (2006, Mel Bay): B+(*)
  • Barney Kessel: To Swing or Not to Swing (1955, Contemporary/OJC): B+
  • The Leaders: Mudfoot (1986, Blackhawk): A-
  • The Leaders: Out Here Like This (1986, Black Saint): B+
  • The Leaders Trio: Heaven Dance (1988, Sunnyside): B+
  • The Leaders: Spirits Alike (2006 [2007], Challenge): B
  • Lean Left: The Ex Guitars Meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo, Volume 1 (2008 [2010], Smalltown Superjazz): A-
  • Lean Left: The Ex Guitars Meet Nilsson-Love/Vandermark Duo, Volume 2 (2008 [2010], Smalltown Superjazz): B+(***)
  • Lean Left: Live at Café Oto (2011 [2012], Unsounds): B+(**)
  • Swans: 5 other albums
  • Ken Vandermark: 90 other albums
  • Peter Van Huffel: 4 other albums

Notes

Everything streamed from Napster (ex Rhapsody), except as noted in brackets following the grade:

  • [cd] based on physical cd
  • [cdr] based on an advance or promo cd or cdr
  • [bc] available at bandcamp.com

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Music Week

Seems like every time I post a Weekend Roundup, only minutes later I find a piece that I should have mentioned. This week's major one was Mike Konczal: Four Lessons from the Health Care Repeal Collapse. Very thoughtful, very smart piece on what last week's Trump-Ryan cave in means for now and the near future. First photo in the piece shows demonstrators with two placards: "Healthcare is a right, not a privilege!" and "Thanks to the ACA I am having my surgery tomorrow!" As I tried to stress in yesterday's post, Republicans tried to tout how their "repeal and replace" agenda would somehow be better for all (or most, or maybe just some) Americans, but they couldn't spell out any details on paper that plausibly backed up their claims. Nobody's denying that someone could come up with a better replacement -- the big story from last week that I didn't come up with any links for is how people all over the political map were looking at single-payer insurance -- but clearly the Republicans' pet ideas would only do the opposite (stripping some 24 million people of insurance, driving premiums for everyone else through the roof, protecting insurance companies from malpractice and fraud claims, providing even more tax breaks to the very rich).

It's beginning to look like people have somehow managed to sort out the key concepts behind the ACA -- especially that universal coverage is the only sane foundation for the health care system -- from its shoddy and corrupt implementation. One of the most interesting moments from last week was watching Charles Krauthammer on Fox News lament this very point. There is much more to be said about this and related issues -- like how Donald Trump has created a prison for himself in the increasingly psychotic Republican Party -- but that will have to come later.

Meanwhile, my week in music.

Music: Current count 27951 [27921] rated (+30), 397 [403] unrated (-6).

I've had an extremely weird week, one artifact being that my work space is in scary disorder. The counts above don't include unpacking last week's mail -- I didn't do that until this afternoon -- and I've added one more rated album below even though it's not in the count above. I've been especially lax on getting to new jazz records -- the pending queue is up to 46 records. I've also had scant interest in new 2017 releases (especially Christgau's pick last week, the 5-CD Magnetic Fields monument -- actually only 50 songs, less than the 69 Stephin Merrit squeezed onto 3-CD on his last excessive binge but still an awful lot from someone I like to a much more limited degree). So the only thing that's kept the rated count from collapsing is diving into old music. This week I continued my Chuck Berry dive to its end in 1979's Rock It -- maybe there are later live albums I haven't noticed.

I also started my way into Al Green's gospel period -- actually what kicked that off was noticing Al Green Is Love in Napster's new releases list. (Christgau regraded it significantly up a few years ago, but it hadn't been available and my LP is long gone, so I've been wanting to revisit.) I also checked out Gato Barbieri's early work, stopping at Under Fire and Bolivia, since I reviewed a twofer of those back in early Recycled Goods days (a very solid A-). I suppose I should revisit Chapter Four: Alive in New York since it won its Penguin Guide crown -- I have it at B+(*), as the weakest of Barbieri's Impulse "Chapters."

What got me looking at Barbieri was working on collecting reviews and database entries for my jazz guides. I've finished going through my notebook and the various column archives, and have gone through the first four database files. I'm currently 7% into Jazz (1960-70s) (i.e., at Gary Bartz). It's a slow, tiring process, with a lot more to process (looks like 10,939 rated albums, assuming I am indeed 7% through the current file). The jazz guides are divided into two books, one for 20th and the other for 21st century records. The former has virtually all of the known reviews, so I'm mostly adding stubs for records I rated before I started blogging everything. It currently stands at 554 pages (260,890 words), and will probably top 600 pages before I'm done (or start writing new reviews, like this week's Gato Barbieri records).

The first draft of the latter was constructed from Jazz Consumer Guide reviews. I took all of the column reviews and stuffed them into a huge text file, and I've been pulling those reviews out and adding them to the book as I go through the database files. It currently runs 217 pages (91,123 words) and is growing rapidly. (The text file has 1,097,330 words, but that's inflated with redundant reviews and metadata, but at least half of that will eventually be copied over, so I'd swag the 21st Century book upwards of 1300 pages.)

It remains to be seen whether those books will interest anyone, or even be fit to be published. There is, for instance, a lot of redundancy that should be moved to introductions to each artist. There is also the question of whether what's left, aside from the ratings, will be worth reading. My opinion waxes and wanes as I sort through this stuff. I also note lots of stuff missing (I developed my database as a sort of search list, so it has a lot of stuff that I've seen favorably reviewed but never got to myself) -- especially early on, while the 21st Century book has numerous albums of no lasting interest whatsoever.

By the way, I'm using a numeric grading system for both books, but I needed to map my letter grades mechanically. I considered two possible scales, one where A- == 8 and another where A- == 9 and B == 5, and decided to go with the latter (against, I should note, the advice of pretty much everyone I consulted). One reason is that for all practical purposes I've stopped issuing A+ grades (the last jazz record to earn one was James Carter's Chasin' the Gypsy in 2000, and before that you have to go back to 1990 for Pharoah Sanders' Welcome to Love, then 1986 for Don Pullen's Breakthrough and Sonny Rollins' Plays G-Man, then 1980 for Art Pepper's Winter Moon). Further back you'll find a couple dozen A+ albums: a handful each for Armstrong and Ellington, a couple each for Hawkins and Hodges, a few landmarks from Fletcher Henderson, Tatum, Monk, Mingus, Coltrane, Coleman, Davis, and Roswell Rudd (oh, and singers: Holiday, Fitzgerald, and Rushing).

Still, I'm not sure that those records are so much better than the 400 (or so) plain A jazz records; most took on added significance for me as I sorted through the tradition. Even those A records peter out over time: including A+, I count 64 since 2000 (15.2% of 420); the only repeat artists are: Billy Bang (2), Steve Lehman (2), Mostly Other People Do the Killing (2), David Murray (3), William Parker (7), Matthew Shipp (2), Ken Vandermark (5). (One each for: Nik Bärtsch, Tim Berne, Arthur Blythe, Anthony Braxton, James Carter, Ornette Coleman, Jon Faddis, Avram Fefer, Rich Halley, Craig Harris, Michael Hashim, Benjamin Herman, Jim Hobbs, Vijay Iyer, Pandelis Karayorgis, Martin Küchen, Adam Lane, Mark Lomax, Allen Lowe, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Billy Martin, Nils Petter Molvaer, Michael Moore, Barbara Morrison, Houston Person, Roberto Juan Rodriguez, Sonny Rollins, Roswell Rudd, Randy Sandke, Bernardo Sassetti, Jenny Scheinman, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Irčne Schweizer, Paul Shapiro, Tommy Smith, Sonic Libration Front, Assif Tsahar, Velkro, David S. Ware, World Saxophone Quartet.)

End of month is coming up fast, so I need to post Streamnotes this week. Hopefully I'll come up with something new in the next couple days.

Too late for last week's "recommended links," but Robert Christgau published a piece at Billboard on Chuck Berry: Yes, Chuck Berry Invented Rock 'n' Roll -- and Singer-Songwriters. Oh, Teenagers Too.

Added grades for remembered LPs from way back when:

  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry's Golden Decade (1955-64 [1967], Chess, 2LP): A
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry's Golden Decade (1955-64 [1973], Chess, 2LP): Built a playlist to re-check this: contains some of my favorite Berry songs, things that reappear in later one-CD anthologies, but also had a lot of non-canon songs, most of which proved delightful. A-

New records rated this week:

  • Greg Abate/Tim Ray Trio: Road to Forever (2016 [2017], Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Bill Hart: Touch of Blue (2016 [2017], Blue Canoe): [cd]: B-
  • Doug MacDonald: A Salute to Jazz Composers: Jazz Marathon 2 (2016 [2017], BluJazz, 2CD): [cd]: B+(***)
  • The Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra: Welcome to Swingsville! (2016 [2017], BluJazz): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Nicole Mitchell: Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (2015 [2017], FPE): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Miles Okazaki: Trickster (2016 [2017], Pi): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures: Glare of the Tiger (2016 [2017], Meta/M.O.D. Technologies): [cd]: B+(***)

Old music rated this week:

  • Gato Barbieri: In Search of the Mystery (1967, ESP-Disk): [r]: B+(*)
  • Gato Barbieri: The Third World (1969 [1970], Flying Dutchman): [r]: B+(***)
  • Gato Barbieri: Fenix (1971, Flying Dutchman): [r]: A-
  • Gato Barbieri: El Pampero (1971 [1972], Flying Dutchman): [r]: A-
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry's Golden Hits (1966 [1989], Mercury): [r]: B-
  • Chuck Berry: From St. Louie to Frisco (1968, Mercury): [r]: B+(*)
  • Chuck Berry: Concerto in B-Goode (1969, Mercury): [r]: B+(*)
  • Chuck Berry: Back Home (1970, Chess): [r]: B+(***)
  • Chuck Berry: San Francisco Dues (1971, Chess): [r]: B-
  • Chuck Berry: The London Chuck Berry Sessions (1972, Chess): [r]: B
  • Chuck Berry: Bio (1973, Chess): [r]: B+(**)
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry (1975, Chess): [r]: B+(**)
  • Chuck Berry: Rock It (1979, Atco): [r]: B+(*)
  • Chuck Berry: Rock 'N Roll Rarities (1957-64 [1986], Chess): [r]: B+(***)
  • Al Green: Truth N' Time (1978, Hi): [r]: B+(**)
  • Al Green: Tokyo . . . Live (1978 [1981], Motown): [r]: B+(***)
  • Al Green: Precious Lord (1982, Myrrh): [r]: B+(***)
  • Al Green: I'll Rise Again (1983, Myrrh): [r]: B+(**)
  • Al Green: Trust in God (1984, Myrrh): [r]: B

Grade changes:

  • Al Green: Al Green Is Love (1975, Hi): [r]: [was: B+] A-
  • Al Green: Love Ritual (Rare & Previously Unreleased 1968-76) (1968-76 [1989], MCA): [r]: [was: A-] B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Billy Jones: 3's a Crowd (Acoustical Concepts)
  • Keith Karns Big Band: An Eye on the Future (Summit)
  • Michael Pedicin: As It Should Be: Ballads 2 (Groundblue)
  • Jason Rigby: Detroit-Cleveland Trio: One (Fresh Sound New Talent): April 28
  • Scott Routenberg Trio: Every End Is a Beginning (Summit)
  • Jeannie Tanner: Words & Music (Tanner Time, 2CD): May 5

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Weekend Roundup

We went to two funerals on Saturday: the first for long-time peace and justice activist Mary Harren (91), the second for my last uncle, James Hull (85), who spent 26 years as a mechanic in the Air Force, and was well known to Wichita Eagle readers as a right-wing crank. Main thing I was struck by was the difference in the crowds: close to 300 turned out for Mary, compared to about fifteen (not counting the Color Guard you taxpayers provided) for James. The former was quite properly a celebration of a long and fruitful life. The latter was rather sad, bitter, and pathetic.

We spent much more time with Mary over the last fifteen years: she was one of the first to welcome us to Wichita's small cadre of anti-war activists; she was quick to visit whenever we ran into troubles; and she was a frequent (and delightful) dinner guest. But she was so active and engaged that even while she made you feel special, you knew that she had dozens of other people and groups she did the same for. And she had been doing this for ages, sometimes regaling us with stories of political struggle over events I only vaguely remember from my teen years.

My interaction with James dates from those same years. Seems like he spent most of the 1950s stationed elsewhere -- Germany and somewhere near Las Vegas are places that stuck in my mind, although he joined in 1950 so was involved in Korea -- but after 1960 he was mostly based at McConnell AFB here in Wichita, and his family stayed here through two tours in Vietnam. After I turned 17 he lobbied me hard to sign up, but by then I was resolutely opposed to the Vietnam War and detested pretty much everything related to the military, so he was one of the first people I can recall arguing with about politics. (I was so withdrawn I'd scarcely speak to anyone, but he was so unflappable you couldn't help but argue with him.) After I moved away from Wichita, I had very little to do with him: while he was always very affable and loved a good (even a dirty) joke, his wife (Bobbie Ann) had terrified me as a child, and was so dim-witted and erratic I actively avoided her (and less actively their two shell-shocked sons -- the younger was what we used to call retarded; he wound up in some kind of special care facility and died at age 21). But I did run into him a few years ago, after Bobbie Ann had died, and he was cheerful as ever. He gave me a book he had written: a memoir plus a compilation of poems and political letters and a piece of his "scholarly" research which claimed that American economic performance correlates with frequency of executions, so to get the country moving again we should execute more felons.

He titled his memoir I Survived!, but there was virtually nothing in it about his wife or sons, so it's hard to imagine readers without personal knowledge making sense of his point. His work, and his bowling, and probably even his politics, make more sense as an escape from a disappointing home life. One pleasing thing about the funeral was that the pastor was a neighbor and friend, as was another person who spoke. So they made an effort to talk about the actual man rather than wander off into the hereafter. And they pretty much agreed that the man himself was a difficult, cranky person to be around.

The most revealing story was one where the pastor asked James what he had been doing today, and James answered "spreading hate and discontent." Asked what he had done yesterday, James answered the same, as he did when asked what he was planning on doing tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly what he thought he meant by that, but his politics was rooted in state violence, something he celebrated both in war and in his obsession over executions. Hate just greases the skids toward violence, which is part of why Trump has escalated the killing in places like Yemen and Syria despite claiming he opposes the disastrous wars Bush and Obama led. You can't sustain those wars without engendering and feeding off a lot of hate.

Another possibility was that James was conscious of how he rubbed people wrong with his crackpot theories. He did on occasion joke about the Secret Service coming after him after letters he wrote to the president. I suspect that in some cases he was contrarian for its own sake. Indeed, like with my father, his sense of humor was often rooted in irony against invisible foes. Still, at some point his right-wing bent hardened, probably egged on by the Fox News cabal. (Several people commented on how every time they saw him he had Fox News blaring -- his father and mine were very hard of hearing, and having worked around jet engines for many years I'm sure he was too.) That he wound up bitter and cranky and full of "hate and discontent" was, I think, baked into his political bent. The contrast to Mary couldn't have been more stark. She was probably every bit as critical of the world as he, but everything she did was imbued with hope and love. Even toward the end, she was full of grace. His pastor talked about grace, too, but it seemed like a long shot for James.

By the way, speaking of crowd numbers, there also was a "Make America Great" rally for Trump on Saturday. The Eagle's headline on the story was Dozens brave cold winds to rally for Trump. Not sure if the numbers are exaggerated, but the adverse weather sure was.

I got into a bit of a Facebook argument with Art Protin, who had posted a meme-pic showing the left half of Hillary Clinton's head and the caption (imagine in all caps): "The next time someone tries to tell you that Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate, remind them that it took the RNC, Wikileaks, the FBI and Russia to narrowly bring her down in an election she won by nearly 3 million votes." Being a reality-based sort of guy, my initial response was to list a dozen or so areas where she had acted or had taken positions that proved detrimental to most Americans, as if voters had been rational in rejecting her. That's not quite it, although we certainly shouldn't neglect the fact that, rightly or wrongly, she's picked up a lot of unfavorable baggage over the years, and that she's been the target of an awful lot of focused political hate -- both personally and due to her association with two Democratic administrations that promised much and delivered little to their neediest supporters. Those things worked to weaken her credibility and to tarnish her integrity, and that's the main thing we mean when we describe her as a weak candidate.

But really, the more glaring proof of her weakness is that she lost to DONALD J. TRUMP, who even before the election had the most negative approval ratings of any major party candidate ever, and who afterwards was subject to the greatest "buyer's remorse" we've seen since Nixon in 1972. Clearly, a lot of people hated Clinton so much that they voted for a guy they didn't like instead. I think a lot of factors entered into that choice, and I don't think any of them were very rational. (Sure, she's dishonest and corrupt and much more, but is she worse in any of these respects than Donald Trump? That comparison should have been laughably easy, yet somehow lots of people didn't realize it.) Given all of the points one could make against Trump, it's pretty much axiomatic that anyone who could still lose to him was an awfully weak candidate.

The meme also has several other faults. Leave aside the RNC for the moment, the other three forces arrayed against Clinton are/were pretty lame: Wikileaks, the FBI, and Russia. What Wikileaks did was one-sided (does anyone doubt that a hack of the RNC would have made them look like buffoons?) and Comey's dredging up of the whole email mess was unfortunate, but it's hard to believe that they had any more than the tiniest of impacts. And I have no idea what Russia did (beyond the DNC hack, and that's not clear) other than to soften the heads of some DNC types, who thought that red-baiting Trump as soft on Putin would be an easy score -- I can't prove it, but I think the net effect was to make Hillary look more recklessly hawkish, and that was something that hurt her. Of course, the continuing Russia obsession of frustrated Hillary-bots means something else: how hard it is to them to admit that they might bear any blame for policies or organization or candidate. Indeed, the whole meme is just another instance of scapegoating.

The three million vote margin is also at risk of being overplayed. Sure, it points to a structural problem (which Republicans will never allow to be fixed), but the problem is not just the structure for how it has been gamed, not least by the Democrats. Trump supporters can point out that they lost in states where they hardly campaigned at all (New York, Illinois, especially California), but the same was true for the 20-30 states Clinton didn't campaign in at all (including a couple she thought she'd carry): the net result being that the popular vote is bogus both ways. I think the net result is a wash, so Trump's failure to gain a plurality is a leading indicator of his unpopularity, but that only gets you so far. As Trump likes to say, "I'm president, and you're not." So while it properly embarrasses him that he only got paltry inauguration crowds, that his rallies regularly play to empty seats, and that he can only get 80 marchers out on a Spring day here in Wichita, it doesn't amount to much.

Biggest story this week was the demise of Paul Ryan's health care bill, which Donald Trump had pledged full allegiance to. Some links:

  • Ross Barken: Trump tried to burn down Obamacare. He set his hair on fire instead

  • Zoë Carpenter: Donald Trump Can't Make a Deal: "Now that the GOP's health-care bill is dead, plan B is to sabotage Obamacare."

  • Michelle Goldberg: The Biggest Lesson From the Trumpcare Debacle: "It showed us how government by misogynists actually translates into policy." This fits in with a picture that's been going around, depicting the "diverse group of people" brought together to craft the bill -- all white males, about equally divided between those with pattern baldness and not.

  • Paul Krugman: The Scammers, the Scammed and America's Fate: Krugman's favorite sport is "I told you so," and he's been telling us that Ryan is a fraud for many years now -- he cites a 2010 post called The Flimflam Man -- so he understands that this is no time to let up. He notes how the media has repeatedly promoted Ryan, and he think that this is due to "the convention of 'balance'." "This meant, in particular, that when it came to policy debates one was always supposed to present both sides as having equally well-founded arguments." I suspect that the truth is crasser: that Ryan was a pet project of the Kochs and their think-tanks long before you heard of him, and the people backing him have ever since been whispering in the ears of media managers and pundits.

  • Tom McCarthy: Health insurance woes helped elect Trump, but his cure may be more painful: Some Republicans, including most of the so-called Freedom Caucus who torpedoed the Ryan-Trump bill, believe that any form of government regulation in the health care markets is improper, that people should not be required to have insurance, that businesses should be free to sell any form of insurance (even policies that don't cover anything). Moreover, such people have no idea what such a world would look like, in part because nothing like that has ever been allowed in America. But most Republicans have done this hand-waving thing, arguing that if they were in power they'd "replace and repeal" Obamacare with something which would be so much better for everyone: that costs would go down and care would improve and everyone would be better off. They've never detailed how that might work, because they've never been in a position to pass it, until now, when it turns out that their proposals would quite obviously, one way or another, make it all worse. And this is not just health care: Republicans often feel the need to argue that their proposals will benefit everyone, even when it's clear that they'll be massively harmful.

  • Alice Ollstein: Trump to House GOP: Vote Yes on O'Care Repeal or Lose Your Seat: Early-week threat from the White House. Trump campaigned in the primaries on a relatively heterodox (or schizophrenic?) platform, but wound up stuck with a straight Republican Congress (well, actually one that is split between a hardcore conservative majority and an even more extreme right-wing faction), with virtually no personal commitment to the president. The effect is to allow him to pivot only one direction (right), which means he can only pass what they let him pass. So there's always been this fleeting fancy that Trump might try to steer the party his direction by purging uncooperative Republicans in the primaries. So that's sort of what's going on here, except that Trump didn't produce his own health care bill -- he acceded to Ryan's bill -- and most of the successful primary challenges lately have come from the right (Tim Huelskamp in Kansas was a rare exception, but he was very far out, and specifically his extreme anti-government stance offended agribusiness interests, who control damn near all of the economy in his district). So it's interesting that Trump made this threat, but it didn't work, and now seems pretty hollow.

    Another view of the purge story is: Daniel Politi: Bannon Pushed Trump to Use Health Care Vote to Write Up "Enemies List": After all, if Republicans only understand one big thing, it's how to exploit a list of enemies.

  • Amber Phillips: Donald Trump is giving a lot of mixed messages about whom to blame on health care; or pretty much the same thing: Joanna Walters: Trump blames everyone but himself for failure of GOP healthcare legislation.

  • Andrew Prokop: On health reform, Donald Trump followed Republican leaders into a ditch: Many of these pieces assume that Trump promised something better (even "really great") and got blind-sided by Ryan. More likely is that Trump never could care about health care, and was only mouthing words (including blatant lies) fed to him by right-wing propagandists, because that's easier than actually thinking.

  • Heather Richardson: The showdown that exposed the rift between Republican ideology and reality:

    Republicans have been able to paper over the vast gulf between their ideology and reality, so long as they could blame Democrats for their inability to put their ideology into law. They could rail about lower taxes and liberty, and then, when Democrats saved the policies that voters liked, could blame the socialistic Democrats for Republicans' own failure to enact their ideological vision. This tactic was at the heart of their rage against Obamacare, the symbol of their oppression since it passed seven years ago. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted more than 50 times to repeal the law, knowing they could count on Obama's veto to protect them from voters who would, in reality, be furious at the loss of their healthcare. . . .

    The initial draft of the bill reflected Republican ideological principles by giving the wealthiest Americans an $880bn tax cut. Even still, its retention of government regulations on healthcare were too much for purists. Members of the far-right Freedom Caucus insisted that the government must not interfere in healthcare, defending the principle that the law must be repealed entirely to resurrect American liberty. Other members of Congress, swamped by popular outcry against repeal, had to bow to reality: Americans actually like the law.

    The showdown over Obamacare finally brought into the open the fundamental rift between Republican ideology and reality. Speaker Ryan and President Trump tried to skirt that gulf by forcing the bill through in an astonishing 17 days. When that failed, Trump tried to bluster it out with the old Republican narrative, blaming Democrats, who are in the minority, for this epic failure. Neither worked. Since 1980, the Republican party has won power by hiding its unpopular ideology under a winning narrative, and reality has finally intruded.

    Also see: Matthew Sheffield: Downfall of a policy wonk: Paul Ryan becomes the latest victim of the American right's fundamental dysfunction.

Some more scattered links this week in the Trump swamp:

Also a few links less directly tied to Trump, though sometimes still to America's bout of political insanity:

  • Dean Baker: Why the NY Times Is Chiefly Responsible for the Mass Ignorance About the US Budget

  • Steven A Cook/Michael Brooks: Bill Maher makes us dumber: How ignorance, fear and stupid pop-culture clichés shape Americans' view of the Middle East: "Americans used to be just ignorant about Muslims and the Middle East. Now we're also fearful, stupid and wrong."

  • Richard Falk: The Inside Story on Our UN Report Calling Israel an Apartheid State

  • Frank Rich: No Sympathy for the Hillbilly: Alerted to this piece by a Matt Karp tweet: "Elite liberals keep writing about sympathy because they have no concept of solidarity." Headline-wise this reinforces stereotypes as much about New York liberals as about hillbillies, Down in the text Rich cites various (mostly right-wing) studies complaining that hillbillies are morally degenerate (Charles Murray, really?). Not that Rich is really that stupid -- I can't object to his pull quote, "Instead of studying how to talk to 'real people,' might Democrats start talking about real people?" Also, this starts out accurate enough before plunging over the deep end:

    Trump voters should also be reminded that the elite of the party they've put in power is as dismissive of them as Democratic elites can be condescending. "Forget your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap," Kevin Williamson wrote of the white working class in National Review. "The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible." He was only saying in public what other Republicans like Mitt Romney say about the "47 percent" in private when they think only well-heeled donors are listening. Besides, if National Review says that their towns deserve to die, who are Democrats to stand in the way of Trump voters who used their ballots to commit assisted suicide?

    The problem here is that the Republicans aren't the only political party who have written off the vast expanses of America outside the mostly coastal urban areas. The Democrats offer a bit more generous "safety net" but they still make it look and smell like welfare, and with their trade deals and bank deregulation and indifference to unions (which in any case are out of reach to most workers) the Democrats been as complicit in the decline of the heartland as the Republicans. The main difference is that Republicans have been much more successful at blaming Democrats for policies that both parties' elites support, at least in "red states" where Democrats have abandoned and no longer campaign in -- partly due to the ascendancy of snobs like Rich, and partly from sheer expediency.

Got a late start on this, so it feels more scattered than usual. So much crap to deal with these days. So little time.

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Monday, March 20, 2017

Music Week

Music: Current count 27921 [27888] rated (+33), 403 [389] unrated (+14).

More old music than new this week. For one thing, I've been playing CDs from the travel case when I get up in the afternoon instead of things I'd have to work on. Rated count still seems robust as I spent the late nights picking off old Ken Vandermark records I had missed (my rated list here, although this doesn't pick up things where his name wasn't listed first -- a quick count shows 35 of those, including a couple of groups I catalog separately; my chart shows 11 more records I haven't gotten to, including several multi-disc sets). And over the weekend I started listening to the late Chuck Berry's old albums. I must have heard some Berry singles during his heyday, but never owned any of his records until I got to St. Louis and picked up Chuck Berry's Golden Decade (released 1967) and followed up with Vol. 2 (1973) -- though I don't recall Vol. 3 (1974). So I've always known him through compilations, especially the canon-defining The Great Twenty-Eight (1982), and the even better The Definitive Collection (2006), but also the 3-CD Chess Box (1988), which shows the pickings thin out past one disc, but don't disappear entirely.

I mentioned three deaths up top in yesterday's Weekend Roundup post: Chuck Berry, Jimmy Breslin, and James Hull. One more troubling still is pending: Mary McDonough Harren, reportedly in the final stage of her terminal cancer. She is the grande dame of the Wichita peace movement, a founder of the Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas, and a dear friend over the last 15 years. Her passing will leave an unfathomable hole in our lives.

A couple links that popped up on Chuck Berry:

New records rated this week:

  • Jason Anick & Jason Yeager: United (2016 [2017], Inner Circle Music): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Bat for Lashes: The Bride (2016, Parlophone): [r]: B-
  • Alex Cline's Flower Garland Orchestra: Oceans of Vows (2016 [2017], self-released, 2CD): [cdr]: B+(***)
  • Akua Dixon: Akua's Dance (2016 [2017], Akua's Music): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Jill Jack and the American SongBook Band: Pure Imagination (2016, UpHill Productions): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Kirk MacDonald Jazz Orchestra: Common Ground (2015 [2017, Addo, 2CD): [cd]: B
  • Ben Markley Big Band: Clockwise: The Music of Cedar Walton (2016 [2017], OA2): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Nate Wooley/Ken Vandermark: All Directions Home (2015, Audiographic): [bc]: B+(***)

Old music rated this week:

  • Chuck Berry: After School Session (1955-57 [1957], Chess): [r]: B+(***)
  • Chuck Berry: One Dozen Berrys (1957 [1958], Chess): [r]: B+(***)
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry Is on Top (1955-59 [1959], Chess): [r]: A-
  • Chuck Berry: Rockin' at the Hops (1960, Chess): [r]: B+(**)
  • Chuck Berry: New Juke Box Hits (1961, Chess): [r]: B+(*)
  • Chuck Berry: Twist (1955-61 [1962], Chess): [r]: A-
  • Chuck Berry: On Stage (1963, Chess): [r]: B-
  • Chuck Berry: St. Louis to Liverpool (1957-64 [2004], Chess): A-
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry in London (1965, Chess): [r]: B+(***)
  • Chuck Berry: Fresh Berry's (1965, Chess): [r]: B+(**)
  • Chuck Berry: Chuck Berry in Memphis (1967, Mercury): [r]: B+(*)
  • Chuck Berry: Live at Fillmore Auditorium (1967, Mercury): [r]: B
  • Bob Brookmeyer: The Dual Role of Bob Brookmeyer (1954-55 [1990], Prestige/OJC): [r]: B+(**)
  • Cinghiale [Mars Williams and Ken Vandermark]: Hoofbeats of the Snorting Swine (1995-96 [1996], Eighth Day Music): [bc]: B+(***)
  • Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry: Two Great Guitars (1964, Chess): [r]: B+(*)
  • Vic Juris: Songbook (1999 [2000], SteepleChase): [r]: B
  • Barney Kessel With Shelly Manne and Ray Brown: The Poll Winners (1957 [1988], Contemporary/OJC): [r]: B+(*)
  • Barney Kessel With Shelly Manne & Ray Brown: Poll Winners Three! (1959 [1992], Contemporary/OJC): [r]: B+(***)
  • Rara Avis: Mutations/Multicelluars Mutations (2012 [2013], dEN, 2CD): [bc]: B+(*)
  • Rara Avis (2013 [2015], Not Two): [bc]: B+(**)
  • Reed Trio: Last Train to the First Station (2008-10 [2011], Kilogram): [bc]: B+(*)
  • The Vandermark Quartet: Big Head Eddie (1993, Platypus): [bc]: B
  • Vandermark 5: Drink, Don't Drown (1997, Savage Sound Syndicate): [bc]: B+(*)
  • Vandermark 5: Thinking on One's Feet (1998, Savage Sound Syndicate) B+(**)
  • Ken Vandermark/Tim Daisy: August Music (2006 [2007], self-released): [bc]: A-
  • Ken Vandermark/Tim Daisy: The Conversation (2010-11 [2011], Multikulti): [bc]: B+(***)
  • Ken Vandermark/Paal Nilssen-Love: Letter to a Stranger (2011 [2012], Smalltown Superjazz): [bc]: B+(***)
  • Witches & Devils: Empty Bottle Chicago (1997 [2000], Savage Sound Syndicate): [bc]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Antonio Adolfo: Hybrido: From Rio to Wayne Shorter (AAM): April 7
  • Bryan and the Aardvarks: Sounds From the Deep Field (Biophilia): April 28
  • Ernest Dawkins New Horizons Ensemble: Transient Takes (Malcom)
  • Duo Baars Henneman & Dave Burrell: Transdans (Wig)
  • Tristan Honsinger/Antonio Borghini/Tobias Delius/Axel Dörner: Hook, Line and Sinker (De Platenbakakkerij)
  • Abdullah Ibrahim: Ancient Africa (1973, Delmark/Sackville): March 24
  • Jentsch Group Quartet: Fractured Pop (Fleur de Son): April 7
  • Mike Longo Trio: Only Time Will Tell (2017, CAP): March 31
  • Linda May Han Oh: Walk Against Wind (Biophilia): April 14
  • Michael Rabinowitz: Uncharted Waters (Cats Paw): April 28
  • Sult/Lasse Marhaug: Harpoon (Conrad Sound/Pica Disk): advance
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 1: Titan (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 2: Tarvos (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 3: Pandora (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 4: Hyperion (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 5: Rhea (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 6: Saturn (Leo)
  • Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of Perelman-Shipp, Volume 7: Dione (Leo)

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Sunday, March 19, 2017

Weekend Roundup

Chuck Berry died. Jimmy Breslin died. My uncle, James Hull, died. It's been one of those weeks.

The big thing Trump did this week was to release a new budget proposal. Some reactions:

  • Who Wins and Loses in Trump's Proposed Budget; also The 62 agencies and programs Trump wants to eliminate.

  • A grim budget day for US science: analysis and reaction to Trump's plan: E.g., "NIH cuts could mean no new grants in 2016."

  • Graham Bowley: What if Trump Really Does End Money for the Arts? Public arts funding has been a political hot potato for many years now, so it's not surprising that conservative churls would take this opportunity to slash it, indeed to cut it out altogether. I could nitpick myself, but I also recall that during the 1930s the WPA financed all sorts of public art, some of which we're still fortunate enough to enjoy. One cannot even imagine government funding programs like that today, but if you give it a wee bit of thought, you might wonder why. Given today's technology, the ability to digitize sound and vision, to reproduce and disseminate those bits at zero marginal cost, there has never been a better time to make a big public investment in the arts. Sure, we need to come up with a funding scheme that isn't subject to arbitrary commissars, but the costs and risks are almost trivial. Especially compared to the Defense Department; after all, without art and entertainment, what is there left to defend?

  • David S Cohen: Trump's Budget Is Pure Cruel Conservatism

  • Jeff Daniels: Rural America and farm sector to take a hit with Trump's budget plan

  • Zaid Jilani: Trump the Outsider Outsources His Budget to Insider Think Tank: Explores how "many of the White House proposal's ideas are identical to a budget blueprint Heritage drew up last year." Also quotes from a statement put out by Heritage praising the Trump budget, with one little demur: "it complained that Trump's call for an additional $54 billion in defense spending just isn't big enough."

  • Eric Levitz: White House Says Cutting Meals on Wheels is 'Compassionate': Quote comes from White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who you'll read more about elsewhere. Levitz also wrote 6 Promises That President Trump's Budget Betrays.

  • Charles Pierce: This Is the Ending Conservatives Always Wanted:

    This budget is short-sighted, cruel to the point of being sadistic, stupid to the point of pure philistinism, and shot through with the absolute and fundamentalist religious conviction that the only true functions of government are the ones that involve guns, and that the only true purpose of government is to serve the rich. . . .

    A lot of this is going to make the members of Congress choke, so a lot of it may not pass. Its very existence is important, though, as a document that lays out quite clearly the vision of government shared almost everywhere in modern conservatism. This is a DeMint Budget, a Heritage Budget, a Gingrich Budget, a Reagan Budget, and a Tea Party Budget. It may be crude and lack a certain polish, but its priorities and goals are clear. There is no modern Republican Party without movement conservatism, and this budget is the most vivid statement yet of that philosophy.

    By the way, Piece also wrote: Chuck Berry and Jimmy Breslin Reinvented the English Language.

  • Jordan Weissmann: Trump's Budget Director Has a Breathtakingly Cynical Excuse for Cutting Aid to the Poor

  • Matthew Yglesias: Trump's budget blueprint is a war on the future of the American economy: I caught a whiff here of Robert Reich's old scheme for education transforming American workers into highly paid "symbolic manipulators" -- sure, boring old manufacturing jobs get stripped due to "free trade" deals, but we'll all wind up richer than ever. That was bullshit then and is bullshit now, but that doesn't mean the opposite is even close to right: you don't need Friedman to realize that business today requires more technical skill than ever before, and the future more so. So why would anyone push a government budget that seriously undermines scientific research and education?

    But Trump's rhetoric, and now his spending blueprint, don't just push back against techno-utopianism. They constitute a denial of the obvious truth that a prosperous society is necessarily going to be one that is evolving and changing over time. . . .

    One of the main things that was good about the "good old days" is that they were a time of massive progress, expansion of higher education opportunities into the middle class and rapid development of new products and cures. This happened while the government invested more -- not less -- on health, education, science, and regional development.

    Didn't Trump spend much of his campaign complaining about how we've neglected essential investments in infrastructure? Science, research and engineering are what infrastructure is built on, and education is fundamental to all that.

Some scattered links this week in the Trumpiverse:

  • Zoë Carpenter/George Zornick: Everything Trump Did in His 8th Week That Really Matters:

    • Released a very skinny budget.
    • Moved to loosen fracking rules.
    • Delayed chemical-safety regulations.
    • Fired 46 US Attorneys nationwide.
    • Made a formal apology to United Kingdom over wild spying claims.
    • Put military action against North Korea on the table.

  • Doug Bandow: Why Is Trump Abandoning the Foreign Policy that Brought Him Victory? Starts by pointing out that Trump was often critical of the neoconservatives who had plunged America into endless war, quoting him as saying, "unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct." Indeed, many single-issue neocons like the Kagans were quick to flock to Hillary Clinton, trusting her record for hawkishness. Still, although Trump has been able to torpedo much bruited nominations for the likes of John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, his administration has done a lot of sabre-rattling so far. But the author ("a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan") has a selective memory of Trump's campaign -- he also insisted he'd crush ISIS and increase military spending. Unlike anti-war conservatives (like Justin Raimondo) who fell for Trump's promise, I actually considered him more bellicose and more dangerous than Clinton (and I've repeatedly attacked her on just this issue). The reasons: the Republicans Trump would surround himself with would be more consistently hawkish (many Democrats have better things to do), and Trump himself is ignorant of and prejudiced about the world, and much given to macho posturing. A good example of this is the rapidly developing crisis with North Korea; e.g., see two recent Jason Ditz pieces: Tillerson: North Korea Diplomacy Has Failed, and Tillerson: Attacking North Korea Remains an Option; also Charles P Pierce: Don't Poke North Korea with a Stick Just to See What Will Happen.

  • Michelle Chen: Trump's Obsession With Cutting Regulations Will Make America Sick

  • Julie Hirschfield Davis: Trump, Day After Merkel's Visit, Says Germany Pays NATO and US Too Little: Trump's been complaining for some time about NATO member not paying enough for their common defense, and he's sent Rex Tillerson out to shake down America's supposed allies, so this isn't exactly new. There's much Trump doesn't understand, but one thing is that a big part of the reason the US has so many subservient allies is that the US pays for the deference, not just in allowing the US to base troops on foreign soil but in ways like generous trade deals that help countries develop through exports. Take those perks away and won't people start wondering whether it's all worth it?

  • Allegra Kirkland: Huck: Trump Should Ignore Travel Ban Ruling, Like Jackson With Trail of Tears: Says a lot when you take inspiration from one of the most shameful facts in American history, but that's where many Republicans are at: until they manage to stock the courts with like-minded conservatives, they invite like-minded executives to run amuck over niceties like law and constitution. Not clear that Trump, a man who has put a lot of stock into using the courts for his own gains, is there yet, or that if he was he wouldn't be facing a widespread revolt from civil servants forced to choose between the legal system and his executive ego.

  • Ezra Klein: Does Donald Trump know what the GOP health bill does? Conclusion: "maybe not"; more to the point: "the AHCA does literally none of the things Trump says it does."

  • Nancy LeTourneau: Checking in on Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter': This is becoming a staple piece on the left, dredging up Trump campaign promises and showing how few of them -- especially the relatively decent ones -- have been implemented, or even followed up on. This doesn't seem to phase Trump's actual supporters yet: they have, after all, almost by definition become jaded cynics about the political process, leaving them more inclined to see Trump's failures as subversion by unseen forces. On the other hand, LeTourneau's list includes a lot of "not introduced" Acts, which goes to show how the Republicans in Congress have proceeded their own agenda, regardless of how that fits in with Trump's own promises. Ryan, in particular, seems to view Trump as his stooge, aided by the fact that Trump is too lazy to work on his own agenda, and too hamstrung by the people he's allowed himself to be surrounded by. Still, I suspect the day is coming when we'll consider ourselves lucky anytime Trump breaks a campaign promise.

  • Josh Marshall: He Seems Nice: Irony still in plan: "he" is Greg Knox, described in a Pence tweet as "a small biz owner hurting under Obamacare." So here's some context: "It shows Knox to be what policy specialists refer to as a 'toxic right wing asshole.'"

  • Ian Millhiser: Paul Ryan says he fantasized about cutting health care for the poor at his college keggers: "Meet the most insufferable frat boy in human history."

  • Tessa Stuart: Four Things We Learned About Trump's Tax Returns From Rachel Maddow: Explained much more succinctly than what you got from watching Maddow's program.

  • Amy B Wang: Why Trump's plan to slash UN funding could lead to global calamity

  • Paul Woodward: Donald Trump's deceitful and misleading statements have consequences: This keys off a long quote from John Cassidy: Donald Trup Finally Pays a Price for His False and Reckless Words, but I found Woodward's commentary more to the point:

    Donald Trump could accurately assert: "I didn't get where I am today by being honest."

    Like many people who believe in the supremacy of will power, he may believe that being faithful to ones own interests and objectives is all that matters.

    Trump is consistent in his unwillingness to bend to the will of others. His America First policy is merely an inflation of his Trump First practice.

    The idea that Trump might have the capacity to mend his ways -- to see that his dishonesty no longer works -- derives, perhaps, from a misreading of his pragmatism.

    Trump isn't bound to any ideology. At the same time, he exhibits no psychological flexibility whatsoever.

    Trump believes in his own innate capabilities with which, in his own imagining, he is so richly endowed he has no need to learn anything.

    This reminds me a bit of another president not bound to any ideology: Franklin Roosevelt. The difference, of course, was that Roosevelt did learn from his mistakes. He saw, for instance, that his more conservative impulses -- especially his fetish for balanced budgets -- were harmful, while his more generous, more liberal, impulses worked much better. The result was the most progressive administration in American history, but few voters imagined that at the start. They simply wanted to try something different, because the reign of Andrew Mellon and his three presidents had been so disastrous. The election of Trump was based on much the same reaction, but less decisive because disaster was much less universally recognized (let alone commonly understood) in 2016, and because quite a few people understood that Trump and/or the Republicans didn't offer any real solutions -- indeed, they were major problems.

Also a few links less directly tied to Trump, though sometimes still to America's bout of political insanity:

  • Patrick Cockburn: Yemen Is a Complicated and Unwinnable War. Trump Should Stay Out. Should, but thus far Yemen is the war Trump has most dramatically inserted himself in.

  • Tom Engelhardt: How the Invasion of Iraq Came Home: Actually, his third-tier title, after "Walled In" and "President Blowback." I'm not sure "blowback" is correct, because most of the damage done to America since Trump took office has been self-inflicted: the problem is less that others are attacking so much as we've internalized the scars of fifteen-years of the shocks of war:

    It's clear, however, that his urge to create a garrison state went far beyond a literal wall. It included the build-up of the U.S. military to unprecedented heights, as well as the bolstering of the regular police, and above all of the border police. Beyond that lay the urge to wall Americans off in every way possible. His fervently publicized immigration policies (less new, in reality, than they seemed) should be thought of as part of a project to construct another kind of "great wall," a conceptual one whose message to the rest of the world was striking: You are not welcome or wanted here. Don't come. Don't visit.

    All this was, in turn, fused at the hip to the many irrational fears that had been gathering like storm clouds for so many years, and that Trump (and his alt-right companions) swept into the already looted heartland of the country. In the process, he loosed a brand of hate (including shootings, mosque burnings, a raft of bomb threats, and a rise in hate groups, especially anti-Muslim ones) that, historically speaking, was all-American, but was nonetheless striking in its intensity in our present moment.

    TomDispatch also published Michael Klare: Winning World War II in the Twenty-First Century, on Trump's nostalgia for the days when America actually won wars -- ignoring that times have changed as pre-WWII empires have been rolled back on every front, and that the US is no longer viewed as a country normally content to mind its own business, that only joins wars when attacked, and that doesn't plot to keep and plunder other nations. Indeed, the real problems the US military face today aren't the sort that can be fixed with a few more ships, planes, and troops.

  • Matea Gold: The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built: Robert Mercer is a hedge fund exec, the plural evidently refers to daughter Rebekah, and the article goes into some depth on how they've sowed their millions to promote right-wing causes, especially through Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

    While other donors gave more to support Trump's presidential bid last year, the Mercers are now arguably the most influential financiers of the Trump era. Bannon, who went on to manage the final months of Trump's campaign before joining the White House, is the senior architect of the president's policy vision. He is joined in the West Wing by counselor Kellyanne Conway, a friend of Rebekah Mercer who led the family-funded super PAC that backed first Cruz and then Trump in the 2016 race.

    People who know them say the Mercers, who soured on traditional political operatives, appreciated Bannon's business savvy and share his belief that the conversation around politics must be changed for their ideas to prevail. For all of their power and privilege, both the family and their longtime adviser see themselves as outsiders, fighting the grip of elite institutions.

    One thing I was surprised by here was a $4 million donation to John Bolton Super PAC. I wasn't aware of such a thing, but it probably explains why such a useless and incompetent buffoon keeps managing to get his name in the news.

    Gold also wrote a comparable analysis of the Kochs (in 2014): Koch-backed political network, built to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012 elections; also co-wrote one on the Clintons (in 2015): Two Clintons. 41 Years. $3 Billion.

  • William Greider: Here's What You Need to Know About the Federal Reserve: "We demand way too much from the central bank -- but that's because our elected politicians have done almost nothing to revive the economy." The Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates last week, in an effort to throttle back the economy lest it grow to the point where wages actually start to rise. That would normally be bad news for a sitting president, but not for the bankers who sit with this particular one.

    Greider also wrote: Trump Is Fighting a New Trade War -- and This One Is Intramural, about the "nasty White House battle [that] has broken out between right-wing nationalists and globalist financiers," asking the question: "Who owns this president -- the folks who voted for him, or the power hitters of big business and banking?" That's actually a novel question for a Republican president: with leaders like the Bushes, Republican voters were merely consenting to oligarchic rule, but didn't Trump promise something else? I'm not sure, but given how readily Clinton and Obama turned against their voters, I hardly expect Trump to show much spine.

  • Eric Levitz: The Case for Countering Right-Wing Populism With 'Left-Wing Economics': Article spends too much time rebutting a red herring from Zack Beauchamp. My own suspicion is that the key to making an "Left-Wing Economics" argument work is to name enemies and show how those enemies take unfair advantage of working people, especially through their bought influence on government, how their lobbying perverts the course of justice. Not that we needed more examples, but the Trump administration is rife with them. (Trump sure had a field day painting the Clintons that way.)

  • Richard Silverstein: Knesset Votes to Ban Palestinian Parties, Destroy Israeli Democracy: In 1951 Palestinians still residing in Israel were granted citizenship (a right that was not extended after 1967 as Israel occupied and in some cases annexed additional Palestinian land), and since then Palestinian political parties have been represented in Israel's parliament (Knesset) -- to little effect, of course, as ruling coalitions have very rarely even considered including them, but it's always been a talking point, a big part of the Israel's claim to be a democracy.

    This paragraph is meant as an aside, but is noteworthy:

    Coincidentally, today a UN body issued a report finding that Israel had become an apartheid state. It further urged that the UN reactivate the methods, resolutions and commissions it used to ostracize South Africa, when it too faced international opprobrium for its racist policies. The new version of the Basic Law further strengthens such findings.

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