How's this for a paragraph?

If Catholic Cult Leaders want the family of nations to continue to let them fill the coffers of their Fake Country with money extorted from ignorant peasants with fairy tales of eternal lakes of fire, then the very minimum they need to do is perp-walk every child rapist, every child rape enabler and every child rape co-conspirator out of the Vatican and every other child rapist safe house in the world.

More where this came from at Driftglass.

Don't blame others, don't be a victim

I liked seeing this. From the April 2010 issue of Mojo:

Coming to adulthood in the '70s "Me Decade", Peter Gabriel was on board as various '60s cults and psychological self-therapies went mainstream, notably EST (Erhard Seminars Training), of which he still remains an enthusiast.

"Anyone with an open mind wanting to explore the world was drawn to that movement. There were fairly scary adventures that could change lives. Last year I met Werner Erhard [born John Paul Rosenberg, the former salesman who created the EST course]; many people feel negatively about him, but I enjoyed him enormously. The whole system he set up felt like a hard-sell American organization but if you didn't have a year to spend in an ashram yet still wanted to shake up your life a bit, you could go for a couple of weekends and get severely challenged.

"It taught me all sorts of things, of which one was to be responsible for your life and who you are---don't blame others, don't be a victim. I'd been doing that. The analogy is of a boat in dangerous water: would you rather be in the hold bitching about the captain or standing at the helm with the power to change direction? you can only get to that position if you're prepared to take responsibility. It's very logical but very hard sometimes---I can't always stay in that place but I know life works better when you're there.

"The other thing is to be authentic about who you are, how you feel, and what's going on...It's about being real. We spend so much of our lives not actually being who we are but who we imagine we ought to be."

Several years ago, I overcame my media-induced reservations and completed the "Curriculum For Living" at Landmark Education, the current version of what used to be called EST, and I found it to be very useful and life-enhancing, and well worth the psychic and financial challenge for anyone who has the nerve to try it. Gabriel's description is spot on as far as I'm concerned. Quite a pleasant surprise to see such a glowing endorsement from a somewhat hip source.

The Coo Coo Ca Choos cover the Granite Countertops (before they existed!) at Eagle Pizza in 2007

I watched this again for the first time in quite a while.

If you find this amusing, you should see what they do with the Stevie Wonder catalog.

Thank you friends

Alex Chilton at the I-Beam, 1985, photo by J Neo Marvin



The Box Tops. Big Star. The Cramps (producing most of their best records). Panther Burns. A minefield of stubbornly haphazard solo releases (caveat emptor). A very weird, interesting and hard to find collaboration with Alan Vega from the 90s that I'm still trying to find again. Alex Chilton cut a crazy, individualistic zigzag swathe through music and did exactly what he wanted to do. We had already planned to end our new playlist with Big Star's "Thank You Friends" (a wonderfully ambiguous song: is he sincerely thanking his friends or spewing the most subtle acid sarcasm at some false friends who let him down? It works equally well both ways); now it sounds extra poignant. 59 is way too young to go.

Outside The Dial

Hey, check out Outside The Dial, an online station from Valparaiso, Indiana. They play a high energy mixture of indie, garage punk, and RRRAAAAWWWWWKK, and they just added our own Granite Countertops to their mix. Thanks for spreading the word!

We've got love, we've got music, we've got beauty

Congratulations to San Francisco's Sila and his former band The Afro-Funk Experience, for winning the NAACP Image Award for world music this year!

Here's a great performance we shot by Sila and his new band at the Sea Of Dreams New Year's Eve party at the end of last year.

Here come the painbirds

This really sucks. The world is so full of people who are nothing but useless wastes of skin who do nothing but bring harm to others, and we never hear about them getting depressed and killing themselves. No, it's only the sensitive souls with something to offer the world but don't have the strength to face the frustrations and injustices of life that end up doing themselves in.

Here's a tip, people: if you ever get that feeling that you would be better off dead and the world would be better off without you, you're probably one of those people the world needs more of. Why should you die when the Cheneys, Roves, and Limbaughs of the world continue to draw breath? This is why the world is in the shape it's in.

Check out The Bell Boys on the Haight in San Francisco!

This young band came down from Portland, Oregon for a Saturday night gig and played outdoors on Haight St. the next day. We ran into them there on our Sunday stroll and couldn't resist capturing them. Such characters, and such nice music.

So you keep croaking at every microphone you see

Various Cheneys continue to inflict themselves on the public via our compliant media, to the point where we had to write a whole song about it. The delightful Rachel Maddow mocks them here in one of her best segments ever. Thanks for the snark, Rachel.

You wanna see her, oh yeah!

That great video we linked to earlier of Sandie Shaw doing "Hand In Glove" has been pulled from YouTube, apparently at the request of Sandie herself. This is disappointing because we were just telling some friends to go to the Ear Candle blog and check it out. Oh well.

We can only hope that the reason this fun, rocking and sexy performance has been taken away from us is that Sandie Shaw and/or her management are working on a DVD compilation of her greatest moments that will include this one, and it will be available soon. Right? RIGHT?

Hey, stop peering out that Overton window for a second and look over here

Once again, Dennis Kucinich steps up and says what most of his colleagues are too chicken to:



When I was a child, I lived in a country that was committed to wading through a pointless bloody quagmire that was being fought for vague reasons that made no sense. (And yes, "fighting for freedom", then and now, qualifies as one of those.) And here we are again. Why exactly are the Democrats still trying to eke an "honorable victory" out of Bush's half-assed imperialist adventures? Is everybody so afraid that Dick Cheney will glare at them that they can't use the common sense they were born with? Give me a break.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: February 2010

1. The Mountain Goats - Psalms 40:2 - The Life Of The World To Come
2. Lou Reed (featuring Ornette Coleman) - Guilty - The Raven
3. CAN - Yoo Doo Right - Monster Movie
4. Them - Mystic Eyes - The Story Of Them featuring Van Morrison
5. Moe Tucker - Work - Life In Exile After Abdication
6. Eleventh Dream Day - The Raft - El Moodio
7. Dengue Fever - Sleepwalking Through The Mekong - Escape From Dragon House
8. Cornelius - New Music Machine - Fantasma
9. Mink DeVille - Slow Drain - Le Chat Bleu
10. Little My - Ohio - Grain
11. Incredible String Band - The Half-Remarkable Question - Wee Tam
12. The Gossip - Listen Up! - Standing In The Way Of Control
13. Tinariwen - Afours Afours - The Radio Tisdas Sessions
14. Fatal Microbes - Violence Grows - Rip It Up And Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984
15. Fairport Convention - Genesis Hall - Unhalfbricking
16. Sonic Youth - Within You Without You - Daydream Nation
17. John Lennon - Bring on the Lucie (Freda People) - Mind Games
18. Jeffrey Lewis - I Ain't Thick, It's Just A Trick - 12 Crass Songs
19. The Fall - A Figure Walks - Dragnet
20. Eric Burdon & War - You're No Stranger - Eric Burdon declares "War"