Taking It Back With Barack

A new video by Will Galison – for swing voters!

Sugarland @ Meadowbrook – Postponed

Just received this email from Chris Lockwood, Marketing Director at Meadowbrook U.S. Cellular Pavillion.  The Sugarland show scheduled for Sunday, September 28 is postponed:

The show is re-scheduled due to Jennifer Nettles being ill.  We do not have a make-up date yet but that information will be made available soon.  Hold on to your tickets as they will be valid for the new date.  Refunds are available at point of purchase. Please forward this to people in your address book as it is very late notice to get notification to everyone.

Thanks,

R. J. Harding, President & G. M.

Local Rhythms – What’s Not For Sale?

With all the Chevrolets and Cadillacs in his songs, Bruce Springsteen probably sold a lot of Detroit steel over his career.  What if it turned out GM paid him for all that product placement?

Is it an accident that the working girl in Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” takes American Express?  Did Mark Knopfler write the song on commission?

Recent news reports have me wondering.  It turns out there’s a PR firm, called the Kluger Agency, solely devoted to getting brand names into pop music.

Wired.com did a story about the California agency’s attempts to court seemingly chic Double Happiness Jeans with an “oppertunity” to “participate in a brand integration campaign within the actual lyrics of one of the worlds most famous recording artists upcoming song/album.”

That’s an actual quote – I guess spelling and grammar isn’t their forte.

A visit to their web site shows a company that looks to be doing quite well at selling out art for commerce.  Puff Daddy, Ludacris and Kid Rock are featured prominently, hawking Mercedes Benz, Cadillac and Beck’s Beer, respectively.

Though I’m curious how a company founded in 2006 takes credit for “Cowboy,” a song Kid Rock recorded in 1998.

In a world where John McCain invented the Blackberry, I suppose anything’s possible.

There’s one big problem, however.  Double Happiness doesn’t make jeans.   It’s an art project – a virtual sweatshop in an online gaming world, to be precise.

Created by a guy named Jeff Crouse as part of something called the “Anti-Advertising Agency” – probably not the best product placement partner.

Crouse wrote Kluger back, requesting the Jonas Brothers – “their Disney-fresh style just screams “Virtual Sweatshop Jeans” to me.”

He posted their exchange on the AAA blog, and within an Internet nanosecond, the modern day “Mad Men” of Kluger were heaped with global snark.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Like the song said, it’s hard out there for a pimp, but I had no idea it was this bad.

20 years ago, I died a little the first time John Lennon’s “Revolution” was used to sell Nikes.

Now, the sneaker company just pays Nelly to write and record a song about “Air Force One” sneakers.  Because, according to Kluger’s ill-fated e-mail, “lyrics play an important part in the use of music as marketing.”

You say you want a revolution?  Don’t change the world – brand it.

Makes me want to crawl into a Posturepedic® bed and pull the covers over my head.

Great – that should pay for next week’s beer tab, speaking of which:

Thursday:  An Evening of Jazz, New England College – A benefit for Uptown, the New Orleans-based musical theatre company founded by trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, who also performs.  The show also features the Dave Tonkin Group, and the Kearsarge Regional High School Jazz Ensemble.     Uptown provides musical theatre training for young adults, offering original performances focused on community unity.

Friday: Bradford Bog People, Sophie & Zeke’s – I loved “Cold Mountain” for the music, and this duo – Woody and Beth Pringle of Bradford, New Hampshire – faithfully re-create the Civil War sound curated by T-Bone Burnett in that movie.  If we ever run out of oil, and the electrical grid goes dead, there will always be fiddles, banjos and Appalachian music.  Small comfort, I know, but take what you can.

Saturday: Vermont Life Wine & Harvest Festival – The weekend long festival begins Friday with a bluegrass BBQ featuring the Stockwell Brothers and continues today with a farmers breakfast.  The Mount Snow event’s entertainment also includes the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Brass Trio “Fanfare,” along with the Will Patton Trio, performing Gypsy music, Brasilian choros and Appalachian waltzes.

Sunday: Sugarland, US Cellular Meadowbrook Pavilion – This show’s practically sold out – only a few lawn seats remain.   But if the weather cooperates, I can’t think of a better place to be today than Meadowbrook, to my mind the finest outdoor music venue in New England.  Sugarland is among the hottest bands in American, with multiple CMA nominations and a number one album in the charts.

Monday: Northern Harmony, Norwich Congregational Church – This “shifting collaboration of accomplished singers and instrumentalists, based in Vermont,” as their web site describes them, perform everything from shape note to “Stormy Weather”.  Seriously, their take on the Depression-era chestnut sounds like the Mamas and Papas.  Yet, Northern Harmony appears mostly in churches, including an upcoming tour of the UK, France, Italy and Switzerland.

Tuesday: Cesaria Evora, Lebanon Opera House – An ambassador of Cape Verdeen culture, this singer has been called the “one of the world’s masters of happy-sad music.”  Funny, I thought Matt Nathanson ruled in that department.  Seriously, the “Barefoot Diva” has won a Grammy (best World Music Album, 2003), and performs over 150 concerts a year of moma and coladera music.  This week’s eclectic pick.

VSO Makes Its First Stop In Bellows Falls 1 October

When he’d finally convinced the Vermont Symphony Orchestra to bring the annual “Made In Vermont” tour to the Bellows Falls Opera House, says Ray Massucco, “I felt like the dog chasing the car – now what am I gonna do?”

A year of back-and-forth emailing between Massucco, a lawyer and part-time concert promoter, and VSO Executive Director Alan Jordan led to a site visit early this spring.

Jordan was immediately taken by the recently renovated opera house. “I don’t think they were here an hour before Alan said, ‘we’re coming to Bellows Falls this year,’” recalls Ray.  “He told me, ‘this is ideal acoustically for the kind of show we present.’”

So, on Wednesday, October 1, the oldest state-sponsored orchestra in the country will make its first appearance in Bellows Falls, with a musical salute to autumn.  The program includes “Holberg Suite,” Grieg’s Baroque homage to the Danish writer originally written for piano, George Gershwin’s lilting “Lullaby,” and Vivaldi’s masterpiece, “The Four Seasons.”

The centerpiece of the performance is the premiere of “Autumn Rhapsody,” a commissioned piece composed by Pierre Jalbert.

Jalbert grew up in South Burlington, winning regional composition and piano competitions while still in his teens. Later, he studied at Oberlin Conservatory and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.  Most recently, Jalbert was awarded the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2007 Stoeger Award, given biennially “in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory.”

Currently, Jalbert serves as an Associate Professor at Rice University, where he’s taught since 1996.

The show began as a labor of love, but as it started to gel, Ray Massucco saw an opportunity to meld it with another big part of his community work, the Rockingham Free Public Library.  He chaired the organization for many years, and recently stepped down to become secretary, and head up the library’s Centennial Committee.

He realized the show corresponded almost perfectly with another important event in the town’s history.

“This concert is 100 years to the week of the day we laid the cornerstone for the library – October 8, 1908,” says Massucco. With that in mind, he decided the concert should kick off a year of celebration, in advance of marking the centennial of the building’s official opening, in November of 1909.”

“The inaugural concert of the VSO in BF kicks off the centennial year,” says Massucco.  “It really brings it all together.”

He’s faced significant challenges organizing such a large undertaking.  For starters, there are 35 musicians to house and feed.  There’s marketing for an event that’s worlds away from the “Roots on the River” Americana music festival he’s been staging since 2007, or the occasional shows he promotes at Boccelli’s on the Canal.

Realizing that, under the best of circumstances, he’d only make back 60 percent of the show’s costs – that was when he most felt like the dog catching the car.

Massucco has succeeded in courting underwriters for the show, “Angels” paying up to $500 a ticket to defray his expenses.  He’s also sold many second-tier underwriter tickets, which include a pre-show reception with Pierre Jalbert and VSO conductor Jaime Laredo.

Laredo will both conduct and play violin.  Classical neophyte Massucco said, “I had no idea how famous he is everywhere else.” The Bolivian-born musical prodigy began his musical career at age five, and has recorded with Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax, as well as collaborating with Glenn Gould.

“It’s been steep learning curve, but I’m getting excited,” says Massucco. In typical fashion, he’s already looking towards the future.  “I asked them, ‘if I sell out the house, will you come back next year?’”

“They said, ‘if you sell out the house, we will be back next year.”

Jackson Browne – “Time The Conqueror”

Wearing sunglasses and sporting a grey beard, Jackson Browne stares out like a soft rock Unabomber from the cover of his new album, “Time The Conqueror.”  The name perhaps refers to the toll on his mind and body over 60 years.

“Time may heal all wounds, but time will steal you blind,” Browne sings on the title track leading off his 13th album of new material, the first since 2002’s “Naked Ride Home.”

But given the often too-literal content of “Time the Conqueror,” and his penchant for double meaning, it could also mean that age has compelled Browne to vanquish all urges to conceal his strong opinions, or for that matter, adorn them in any way.

“I’m gonna go down singing,” Browne intones on “Giving That Heaven Away,” as he grouses that it’s become his job “to show the whole world how to rebel.”

“Seems like the whole world’s at a fire sale,” he muses – and that’s during one of the happier songs on the record.

Browne is no stranger to mixing politics and music, but “Lives In The Balance” and “World in Motion,” his two most pointed albums prior to “Time the Conqueror,” were at least a little poetic, and punctuated with a few love songs.

This time around, he’s seething – and naming names.

On “The Drums of War,” he sounds more like a talk show guest than a songwriter.  “Where are the courts now when we need them?” sings Browne.  “Why is impeachment not on the table? We better stop them while we are able.”

“Where Were You,” a 10 minute indictment of the government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina, and how it reflects on America’s national character, might be the angriest song anyone’s written since Neil Young rush-released “Living With War.”

The song, a percolating blues number tweaked with synthesizers and sampling, lays out the charges in a way that recalls Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”:

“Where were you in the social order?
The Lower Nine or a hotel in the Quarter
Which side of the border between rich and poor?”

It’s all there – the horror in the Superdome, failed attempts to move from the convention center to higher ground, “the newborn and the elderly exposed to even more misery” and National Guard soldiers arriving five days late.

“Mainly they were used to keep the looting down,” laments Browne.

The song works, however, because it’s more than just a list of accusations.  After a snarling reminder of President’s Bush fly-by photo op (“shaved face, rested eyes, looking down he circles twice/on his way home from his vacation”), Browne turns the camera around.

“Where were you,” he sings, “when you got the picture?”

His rage never quite ebbs, even during the easygoing, mojito and gardenia soaked “Going Down To Cuba.”  He trips from visions of walking on a beach, “in one hand a Montecristo/in the other an ice cream cone,” to discussing the embargo, and reminding listeners that, whatever their faults, Cubans “do know what to do in a hurricane.”

It’s hard to believe that the same person who wrote “Late For the Sky” would include a line like “they make such continuous use of the verb ‘to resolve’” in a song, but there it is.

The record has a few nostalgic moments, including “Off Of Wonderland,” which name checks RFK and Martin Luther King, and recalls Browne’s days living in Laurel Canyon “with an unknown band” (presumably the Eagles), his ideals still intact.  “Giving That Heaven Away” finds him “still looking around for that Sixties sound,” even though he knows “those days are gone.”

“Just Say Yeah” is a more typical Jackson Browne love song, with lines like “it’s hard to tell where the relating leaves off and where love begins,” but it’s a small oasis in an otherwise hard and strident effort.

Though it will no doubt speak well to fellow travelers, it’s doubtful that “Time The Conqueror” will win Jackson Browne many new fans.

Maybe time conquered his need for those as well.

Local Rhythms – A Genius Move

I have over 17,000 songs in my iTunes library.  Some have been played a lot, others once or twice.  Hitting “shuffle” is a great way to revisit a track that may have slipped by the first time, but it’s not very scientific.

Last week, when Apple announced an upgrade to their popular music software, I immediately latched on to the new “Genius” feature.  Pick a song, click on the Jimmy Neutron button, and presto!  A playlist of like-minded music appears.

Choosing a Genesis tune will spawn tracks by Rush, Yes and ELP; pick the Decembrists, you’ll get Broken Social Scene, Stars and New Pornographers.

When I’m in the mood for Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, a random Stooges track can really bust up the mood. With shuffle, everything gets mixed willy-nilly.  Though I’m pretty sure my iPod play more Beatles songs by design.

Genius lets you put the peanut butter with the jelly, and leave the mayo for bologna.

It also (big surprise) suggests songs for purchase at the iTunes Music Store.

That seems a lot like Pandora, the Internet radio service that’s already installed on many an iPhone and iPod Touch.

But Genius is based on stuff that you, and others like you, already own.

Like Pandora, the information iTunes sends to Apple includes data about what you listen to and how often, as well as the playlists you make.  Both services make recommendations and provide an easy path to purchase digital music.

But there are a lot more iTunes users in the world.   The music store has sold 300 million tracks since its inception.  5 or 10 percent of the tracks on a typical iPod are bought from digital music stores.

So that mean there’s upwards of 3 to 4 billion songs in the iTunes listener “cloud” for Genius to study.  As listener data aggregates, playlist accuracy improves.

Forget the election, this is the kind of polling data I’m interested in.

Genius lets you delete songs from playlists before saving them, but it’s not clear whether information about that behavior is sent to Apple.  More straightforward is Pandora’s ‘thumbs up or down’ method of rejecting recommendations.

But size matters.

Two factors govern the future of music.  First, understand the customer.  Second, and most important, earn the customer’s trust.

As long as iTunes users believe Apple isn’t colluding with the RIAA or selling customer lists, this is a Genius move.

What’s up this weekend?

Thursday: Chris Kleeman Band, Inn at Weathersfield – A nice combination of award-winning food and an ace blues man, who traverses the history of American music and gives each performance a unique stamp.  Kleeman finishes the series he began back in May with selections from Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Blind Willie McTell and B.B. King (who produced Chris’s first album back in 1970. Note the early (6:30 PM) start time.

Friday: Loose Cannons Acoustic, Salt hill II – These guys rock pretty hard for an all acoustic band, covering guys like Clapton and the Beatles, as well as grooves from Bob Marley and Stray Cats rockabilly.  Eclectic is the word that best describes them, with a musical outlook spanning decades and styles.  Of course, the room they’re playing is pretty nice too, with great pints and an excellent pub menu, as well as a fine restaurant downstairs.

Saturday: Humane Society Benefit, Hit or Miss – The hard rock community converges at this Rockingham club for another good cause.  The show includes Stonewall, d’Brotherhood, TranScent, Bow to None, Anger Rising, Mercy Machine and (considering the beneficiary) the most aptly named of the bunch – Mongrel.  Proceeds benefit the Springfield Humane Society.  Seeing all those hard-edged rockers on a poster with cute little kitten eyes – priceless.

Sunday: Sunapee SunFest, Mount Sunapee – New York City based singer-songwriter Shannon Corey, with plenty of Tori/Alanis influences, headlines the music portion of this day long celebration of sustainable living and holistic health. I wonder which friolator oil works better as a bio-diesel fuel – trans-fat or non?  Ponder these questions while enjoying Click Horning, Carey Lee Rush and others.

Tuesday: Jason Cann, Firestones – My favorite unrecorded area singer-songwriter plays while special guest chefs cook (featured every Tuesday in September), though I like the simple pleasures at this Quechee restaurant.  Their burgers and beers are top-notch.  There’s plenty going on every night at Firestones, including a Cann-hosted open mike night each Thursday.

Wednesday: Sonya Kitchell, Higher Ground – Touring behind the recently released “This Storm,” Kitchell originally got attention for her precocious jazz singing as a 16-year old in Northampton clubs.  She’s 19 now, and rocking harder, though she keeps it jazzy on “From Here to Now,” and “Walk Away” is a gorgeous ballad.  Mostly, though, she’s copping a rocked-up Suzanne Vega pose.  I like it.

Lenny Clarke – The Prince of Boston Comedy

When comedy was king, Lenny Clarke held court as the prince of Boston.

“The thing was, I was the man, because I was crazy,” says Clarke. “I was a nut job.  I had no training, no idea what I was doing.  Because of that, I blazed a trail in Boston comedy where the only rule was, there was no rules.”

Clarke hosted an open mike night at Cambridge’s Ding Ho restaurant that launched the careers of many comedians, including Steven Wright and Denis Leary.  “We we’d get as many as 35 comics a night, Paula Poundstone, Steve Sweeney, Bobcat Golthwaite, Janeane Garofalo, Gavin would try out their stuff.”

Week after week, the same crowd came to watch, Clarke says. “It would force me to come up with new material.”

“The Boston crowds are what made it so good, because they wouldn’t settle for mediocrity.   They would boo you off the stage.”

The Cambridge-born comic, who turned 55 Tuesday, has mellowed considerably since his mid-80’s heyday, a time when he and other successful comics were, says Clarke,  “rock stars.  It was unbelievable …the best tables, best champagne, women, drugs, you name it.  It was the greatest years of my life.  It will never be copied.”

“Now I’m clean and sober for a long time, and thank god for that. But I was loony – there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t try.”

These days, he’s busy with movies and television, currently playing Uncle Teddy on “Rescue Me.” When the series began, Denis Leary (who he also worked with on “The Job”) wrote the role of the chief for Clarke, but Lenny had committed to another series (“It’s All Relative”), which ended up only lasting a season.

He was slated to be in the cast of the upcoming ABC series, “Life On Mars,” but after a successful pilot episode, the show was reworked. Clarke, director David Kelley and three other actors were replaced.

“Let me tell you,” says Lenny, “I’ve had more failed pilots then the Iraqi Air Force.”

Clarke brings his stand-up act to the Claremont Opera House this Saturday (September 20).  He’s looking forward to performing for a “theater crowd – I’ve worked in places with a cage, where people are throwing bottles.”

“I’m only hoping that that people want to be entertained,” he says, “where they’ll let me spin my string of pearls.  People heckle me because they think they’re helping.  After 35 years of doing this, I don’t need any help.  Let me entertain you.”

His act covers his life – growing up, his wild ride as a comic and pals like Leary.  He stays away from politics. “I’m not one of those so-called celebrities who want to shove their views down your throat.  That’s why we vote in private,” he says.  But he will talk about his failed run for mayor of Cambridge against Joseph Kennedy, a campaign fueled by a unique (and unprintable) slogan that ended when Clarke headed to California.

“Basically, I’m glad I didn’t win,” Clarke says.  “If I did, god knows what would have happened.”

He’ll probably talk about the Boston Red Sox, and his surreal experience working on “Fever Pitch” in 2004, the year his home team finally won the World Series.   Clarke worked a lot in New York City before the Sox shook off the so-called “Curse of the Bambino”

“It was torture,” he says.  In “Fever Pitch,” Clarke played Uncle Carl, who early in the film warns a young Jimmy Fallon to “be careful – they’ll break your heart.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe, aw sh*t – Bucky f’in Dent,” he says, recalling years of frustration as a Sox fan.  “You know where you were when Kennedy was shot; you know where you were when Bucky Dent hit that homer.”

Clarke was at a friend’s house with two unfortunate Jehovah’s Witnesses. “We told them if they sat and watched the game with us we’d give them 50 bucks,” Clarke remembers.  “When Bucky Dent hit the home run the guy who owned the place said, ‘get the —- out of my house! – and chased the poor bastards out.”

Lenny nearly missed his chance to see the Sox play in the 2004 World Series. He had a gig (booked by his brother Michael, who manages several comics and runs a club in Saugus called Giggles) for game one, and auctioned his game two dugout seats to help a firefighter friend who was battling brain cancer.  Fortunately, a close friend flew him to St. Louis for games three and four.   He calls seeing them win it all “one of the joys of my life.”

The comic devotes much of his time to charitable work, including the annual “Comics Come Home” event in Boston this November, which raises money for the Cam Neely Foundation.  He’s done several benefit shows for Boston-area children’s hospitals, and he helps out with Leary’s New York-based firefighter charity.

“It’s the thing that makes my mother the happiest,” says Clarke.  “She says, ‘it’s really nice to see your name in the papers and on TV, but it really makes me proud when you help other people’.”

Earth, Wind & Fire/Michael McDonald @ Meadowbrook

Thursday night’s show at the U.S. Cellular Meadowbrook Pavilion began on a somber note.  Following an a capella rendition of the national anthem by “New Hampshire Idol” winner Anthony Torres, Michael McDonald offered his own 9/11 tribute, a Christmas song called “Peace.”

“With all the ways the world has changed, it seems appropriate now,” he said.

Once that was behind him, a party vibe prevailed, as Earth, Wind & Fire kicked of a fall tour with the former Doobie Brothers front man.  The R&B band stuck to their mid-70’s sweet spot, with multilayered harmonies and funked-up jazz fueling hits like “Fantasy” and “September.”

The 12-member band wasted no time turning up the energy level, opening with three of their biggest hits in rapid succession – “Boogie Wonderland,“ Sing a Song” and “Shining Star.”  Throughout their 90-minute set the focus remained on the players – longtime vocalist Philip Bailey, founding bass player Verdine White (whose dreadlocked dervish antics haven’t lost a step), and the band’s newest member, Kim Johnson, who split lead vocals with Bailey.

Along with a three-man horn section and twin percussionists, the group was in perpetual motion most of the night, flashing Four Tops-like choreographic flourishes and other dance moves.

Eschewing flashy stage props and graphics for a tasteful light show, they reminded the audience that they were one of the most inventive bands of the era, stitching a free form jam onto “Sun Goddess” (one of the evening’s highlights).  On “Serpentine Fire,” White slapped out a rhythm that sounded more like a conga than a bass guitar.

Bailey’s vocal gymnastics helped push aside the fact, with lines like “I’m longing to love you just for a night/the reasons are that we’re here,” “Reasons” is as smarmy as it is pretty.  “September” sparked mass crowd hand waving, while “That’s the Way of the World” provided a perfect, mellow close to the evening.

Michael McDonald’s set drew from his Doobie Brothers catalog, including “Minute By Minute” and a syncopated, loping R&B version of “It Keeps You Running.”  A band of young Nashville players, along with long-time horn man Vince Denham, brought new energy to McDonald hits like “Sweet Freedom,” “I Keep Forgetting” and “Take it To Heart.”

But the focus was on the boomer hits that have given the 55-year old (“I’m a card carrying AARP member”) McDonald’s career a recent shot in the arm – “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”

The evergreen music of Motown will always have an audience as long as blue-eyed soul men like McDonald have something to say about it.  But it was a rousing rendition of “Taking it to the Streets,” with Drea Rena sharing vocals, the got the biggest response of the night.  The young Rena brought a lot to the show – she’s definitely a singer to watch.

Oneside – First, To Last

A hoedown mood opens Oneside’s new album, signaling a shift away from the country jazz permeating their earlier work.  New banjo player Chris Hersch picks out a spare figure, backed only by Ned deBary’s delicate acoustic guitar, then handclaps.  The singer begins, and a kick drum roughs up “The Letter,” the first track on the Boston-based band’s new CD, “First, To Last.”

Then, as deBary wryly sings, “don’t tell me I’m going down the wrong path,” there’s a crackle of snare from drummer Jake Brooks, and the song is off and running.  Within the short space of four minutes, Oneside moves across time, beginning at Cold Mountain and ending at the Moondog Show.

Oneside covers a lot of musical ground in “First, To Last.”  “Oh Sun” is a spiritualized Americana rave-up, while a reworked “Got To Go” (the song appeared on an earlier EP) is a pure slice of country pie.  “Lisa” suggests that someone in this band listened to a lot of Gram Parsons at one time or another.  Since the entire band is given songwriting credit for each of the album’s 11 songs, it’s hard to know just who.

Anyone who says the long player is dead should listen to this, and think again.  Apart from one desultory instrumental (“Four Corners”), there’s not a wasted moment here.  Standout tracks include the jazzy “Out of My Tree” and “Josephine,” a roiling murder ballad that’s evocative of Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider.”

The band produced itself, and they show off their studio talents on  “Into the Night,” which starts small and ends big. “Our Song” is a guardedly optimistic ode to the musician’s life.  The interplay between the four band members – deBary, Hersch, Brooks and bassist Grafton Pease, is stunning.  No one element dominates, and what results is a gorgeous balance of flourish and restraint.  “Feel the song from both sides,” sings DeBary, and indeed they do.

The record’s tour de force is “Last Radio,” a darker look at the musical profession. The song metaphorically buries what’s left of the business, and waits to see what grows.

“Put your ear to the ground,” they sing, “listen a million miles down, hear a brand new sound, melodies escaping.”  As the Band and the Grateful Dead did, along with their modern disciples Wilco and Son Volt, Oneside is setting out to mine the deep.

Like those bands, they’ve burned their maps and manuals, preferring to work on instinct.

Or perhaps a better analogy can be found in the kitchen, where the trick is reconstructing familiar ingredients in new, inventive ways. Oneside has stepped away from being Bela Fleck acolytes to charting a different course.  With this effort, Oneside distills a long American musical history into its pure essence.

Oneside plays Friday at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon.  Show starts at 9 PM.

The Ownership Society?

This is the full text of an email sent to Bob Lefsetz from Larry Hoppen, former member of Orleans.  He wrote the great mid-70’s ode to marital fidelity, “Still the One”.  The song has been appropriated by many political candidates since then.  Hoppen takes issue with how the song’s been used and abused, typically without permission from the artist.  Even lawsuits won’t stop this artistic theft, he says, speaking from experience.

More importantly, he slams one party’s cavalier behavior when it comes to compensation.  In short, one party talks alot about an “ownership society” but seems unwilling to abide by the rules of the game.  I think this is blatant hypocrisy, and speaks greatly to the character issue.  Hoppen points out that the other party asks permission, and pays for use of music.

Here’s the letter, draw your own conclusions:

Bob, the recent unauthorized McCain Campaign use of Heart’s “Barracuda” is the latest in a decades-long tradition of (mostly Republican) misappropiation of popular Artists’ work.  I applaud the public response Heart had to this fresh offense. I REALLY applaud Jackson Browne for filing suit against the unauthorized use of “For Everyman” recently.

As lead singer and a royalty artist on the 1976 hit “Still The One”, I have hands-on experience with the anger, embarrassment and false image this outrageous practice causes. When George Bush and the RNC were caught using STO as W’s new re-election “Theme Song” by its co-author John Hall (now a Congressman, D-NY, 19 😉 and myself, the usual “cease and desist” legal letter went out. The RNC claimed, as McCain did with Barracuda only days ago, that  they had paid “all the required licenses” because they “respect artists’ work”.

The truth is, they only get a “Blanket License” from one of the performance rights societies, which covers mainly ‘background’ use – and then they use these songs as featured thematic material in major venues – like national campaigns that are televised and/or potentially reach hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, on a given Campaign tour.

The first time I remember this happening was Reagan using Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” ( in 1984, I believe). He was asked to stop … and there are many other examples.

In fact, McCain ALSO started using Still The One recently, and was VERY quickly sent the standard cease and desist letter. Another example of his similarity to Bush, I guess.

For the record, Sen. Ted Kennedy had PERMISSION from the author and artists to use Still The One both in 2000 and 2008. I presume Fleetwood Mac authorized Pres. Clinton to use “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”, or it wouldn’t still be a Clinton ‘signature song’!  Sure seems like only one Party ever asks.

Also for the record, only months after the RNC pledged to stop using STO with Bush’s re-election in 2004, I saw a film of a Tom Delay rally using the same recording of ours.

I bring all this to your attention because I think it’s timely and important to say:  When people who think nothing of doing this say that they are being respectful of artists’ work, when they say they are respectful of Copyright Law, when they say they are in favor of an “Ownership Society”, they are LIARS.

Let’s call the unauthorized use of massively popular hit records what it is: grand theft, at the very least.  One unanswered uestion is: WHO is accountable for this behavior? And let’s point the finger at who’s doing this most of the time: Republican candidates.