Folk legend Odetta dead at 77

Sad news out of New York.  Here’s her low range…

And here’s her higher range…

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The annotated Dylan administration

A lot of protest music has been written over the last eight years: some good, some not so much.  (Neil, you know I love you, but “let’s impeach the President for lying” is just lazy.)  Amidst this, the old standards have also been dragged out for a walk around the block.  The master himself recently [...]

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Approximating a summary

“Somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted.”
-Eldridge Cleaver on Rosa Parks
I haven’t Cleaver’s way with words, so I hope you’ll forgive my reducing history to one man’s personal narrative of 12 hours of chaos.  At best, this will fade into the millions of personal sketches that comprise the people’s history hiding behind [...]

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Gagner épique!

A comfortable four years removed from my last French class, I’m not even sure that translates right.  But consider it your cheap setup for election year zydeco:

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Pitch-perfect campaigning (with lots of hidden music videos)

As we recently discussed, the Obama team has perfected the zeitgeist campaign.  Some of it is intentional, (the text messages, the basketball,) while the rest (the internet memes) just sorta happens.  Music is another important element of this.  Everyone knows Republicans make poor DJs, and Senator Obama has collected an impressive variety of musical endorsements.
Democrats [...]

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Warhol’s nightmare

Everyone gets their quarter of an hour:
“Move over, Sanjaya, and tell William Hung the news: Joe the Plumber is being pursued for a major record deal and could come out with a country album as early as Inauguration Day.”
Politico reports that Joe/Sam the not-plumber/tax evader has signed with a Nashville PR firm for “a shift [...]

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Ban Ki-Moon raps

I know you all read OGhiphop.com, so you’ve probably seen this already.  But if you haven’t, well, the United Nations Association recently gave an award to Jay-Z.  Following Signor Carter, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon dropped a rhyme of his own:

While I like to think he just freestyled that, it’s was [...]

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Hot Buttered Soul

Last week, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Corruption) introduced a resolution honoring the life and music of the late Isaac Hayes. With 20 co-sponsors, the bill praises Hayes for his “vocal performances, songwriting, humanitarian work, and television and motion picture endeavors, and as a radio show host, pianist, saxophone player, restaurateur, and cookbook author.” [...]

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political theatre–Les Misérables edition

I see my campaign contributions are being put to good use.

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Follow-up: Republican DJs

Mireille’s post on Republican DJs reminded me of National Review Online’s list of the top 50 conservative rock songs.  The Review has a complex relationship with rock music, praising Elvis’ appeal to “love” and “heterosexual sex” while criticizing the emergence of “homosexual rock”.
So this is really too easy, but it’s worth a rundown of the [...]

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