Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Static Multimedia posted the September 2005 edition of Recycled Goods today. This is the 23rd edition in a series that has now bagged 907 records. This was kind of a rush job after other projects chewed up most of the month, but I think I came up with a good mix of albums. Several are arguably new. Some months back I was having so much trouble getting good world music albums that I just dropped the recycled requirement. I figured that while most world records newly washed up in these parts are really old ones in their native lands, the distinction caused more confusion than it was worth. Two more records are new releases of live jazz concerts not really old enough to be classified as vault material: Sonny Rollins and David S. Ware. But starting short of material, I rather arbitrarily ruled them eligible anyway. I actually wrote them up for the Jazz Consumer Guide, but once the Voice published full reviews they deprioritized and lost out in the inevitable space squeeze. Besides, I could run them here.

We did two album covers this time. Although not identified as such, these are the Pick Hits. In that role Amadou & Mariam was the obvious choice, but I also wanted to show off the Rollins cover. Publisher had no problem with the suggestion, so this will probably be a regular feature. The mad scramble to make deadline partly contributed to the ACN, although I've done this a couple of times before, and as I notice reissues of albums worth pointing out I'll run this section. There's no reason I have to do fifty albums each time, other than that I'm trying to keep up. But it takes a lot of time, and I'm starting to worry that I don't have the time to handle this many properly.

The other frustration is getting enough of the albums that deserve to be reviewed here. This is especially a problem with world music, but the only genre I'm reasonably well supplied with is jazz. After world music, the toughest area to keep up with is recent rock, hip-hop, etc. Looking at the reissues section in Blender this month, I have 6 of 26 records reviewed, but they come from just three labels. One positive thing is the sudden uptick in country music this month, mostly thanks to Universal -- which had been largely absent from the column for the past year (excepting Verve, their jazz label). Would love to see more hip-hop and more dance music. Despite my complaints, this column can be a lot of fun to work on.

Here are the notes for the records included in last week's Jazz Consumer Guide.

• Eric Alexander: Dead Center (2004, HighNote). An appropriate title, especially since he's already used Solid. His one original is a feisty piece that lets him show off his huge tone and plentiful chops. Then he works through the covers, a range of postbop swing including one by his redoubtable pianist Harold Mabern and a pair by Lerner and Loewe that he takes to the races. The center of the mainstream, but far from dead. A-
• Scott Amendola Band: Believe (2005, Cryptogramophone). The drummer in the Nels Cline Singers moves up front, with twin guitars (Cline and Jeff Parker, a dream team), John Shifflett's bass, and most importantly Jenny Scheinman's violin. But this turns the Nels Cline Singers on their head, adding Jeff Parker's sweet guitar to Cline's sour guitar, reinforcing the string sound with violin and bass. The leader supplements his drums with electronics, producing groove and textures you'd have to be hard of hearing to take for ambient. A-
• Eugene Chadbourne: The Hills Have Jazz (2003 [2005], Boxholder). Chadbourne's skewed but bouncing take the Tadd Dameron/Count Basie piece "Good Bait" is so ebullient and good natured I wish he had returned to that mode instead of following avant-gardists Oliver Lake, Eric Dolphy, Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra and John Coltrane down the rabbit hole. Not that the latter don't have their interesting moments, but the tendency is to skew sounds there abstracted from their music. But then I also don't share Chadbourne's fascination with horror movies, let alone why he should dedicate this to Wes Craven. B+
• The Nels Cline Singers: The Giant Pin (2003 [2004], Cryptogramophone). The fast and hard ones deserve to be called heavy metal jazz, although Cline's guitar is less distinctive at that volume than Scott Amendola's free drumming. At more moderate speeds Cline gets a distinctive ring and plays with considerable poise. The slow stuff goes more for electronics and effects -- moods, and nice to catch acoustic bassist Devin Hoff on his own. As on Instrumentals, nobody actually sings. A-
• Benoît Delbecq Unit: Phonetics (2005, Songlines). This starts with an unlikely rhythmic invention, Delbecq's piano and Emile Biayenda's drums bouncing about out of synch but forming an effortless cascade. Mark Turner's tenor sax and/or Oene Van Geel's viola add color without pumping up the volume. A-
• Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra: Dancing Cheek to Cheek (2004, Stunt). Two nods to tin pan alley: "Cheek to Cheek" done Louis/Ella style, except that this Louis is Ray Anderson; and "Body and Soul" slowed to a savory crawl by Josephine Cronholm. The rest of the album is Afro-Danish big band, griots and pennywhistles, references to Mingus and Sun Ra, and a Dukish impression of Jakarta. Dørge, like his Jungle Music idol, plays orchestra, but when the occasion calls for it he also fills in smartly on guitar. A-
• Duo Nueva Finlandia: Short Stories (2005, TUM). Piano and bass improvisations from two veterans of Finland's free jazz scene, pianist Eero Ojanen and bassist Teppo Hauta-aho. Not exactly household names, but they've played together since 1962, and have played with many important players of the last forty years -- some names that jump out are Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Paul Rutherford. Ojanen's piano has bits of Taylor and Waldron -- concentrated, abstract, ready to jump, especially when the bassist lays down a rhythm. Tight, often lovely, but never sweet. B+
• Fieldwork: Simulated Progress (2004 [2005], Pi). On first approximation, this is a piano trio with Steve Lehman playing the bass parts on alto and sopranino sax, where they take on a life of their own. Lehman has such a strained, narrow tone that his work tends to duck behind the piano, anchoring the rhythm and painting the background. But then the pianist is Vijay Iyer, who can lead by the sheer force of his percussiveness and has a knack for putting the finishing touches on whatever Lehman and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee throw at him. A-
• James Finn Trio: Plaza de Toros (2005, Clean Feed). The bullfighting theme shows up in momentary flashes of Spanish bravado, the themes that the improvisations are presumably based on. One can imagine Finn's tenor saxophone center stage, exposed, engaged with an unseen but ominous force, living by his wits, which would relegate the secondary bass and drums (Dominic Duval and Warren Smith) to a role like the fanfare of the crowd. B+
• Bill Frisell: Richter 858 (2005, Songlines). Unconventional string quartet -- Frisell's guitar joining Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello). The music is based on a set of abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter. Frisell explains, "The music should not be 'pretty' in the conventional or sentimental way, because the paintings are simply not." Indeed, this starts with a burst of ugliness and it never quite recovers. This is thick with its strings, if not composed through then at least improvised with all on board, so perhaps inevitably it sounds like classical music to me -- my gag reflex kicks in too often to enjoy it much. Interesting booklet. Like the paintings -- mostly smears of oil on aluminum. B-
• Dennis González's Spirit Meridian: Idle Wild (2004 [2005], Clean Feed). The good doctor's prescription for a country "sick with Bush" is "Bush Medicine" -- a delightful calypso fragment recalling "St. Thomas" with an Ornette twist, but fractured into discrete bits. Small pleasures, take them when you can. Oliver Lake's playfulness enhances González's spiritfulness, while the rhythm section keeps things loose. Of course, Bush Medicine is only a palliative. A cure starts with surgery, and the rehabilitation is likely to be slow and wrenching, with so much damage to be undone, and so much that cannot be undone. A-
• Jerry Granelli: Sandhills Reunion (2005, Songlines). Granelli's music, constructed from clarinets and baritone sax, guitars and cello, has a spare windswept quality suited to the Nebraska Sandhills. The pictures of these hills can be taken for flat, a vastness of empty space spread out under an even vaster empty sky. They provide a setting for Rinde Eckert's words, spoken in a cautious monotone: tales of crime and loneliness and the meaning of the life as revealed at a strip joint by a singer, "a big fat black woman from Chicago." A-
• Tord Gustavsen Trio: The Ground (2004 [2005], ECM). Quiet, almost sedentary piano trio. Patient, elegant, quite lovely. Never know what to say about such things. B+
• Jim Hall: Magic Meeting (2004, ArtistShare). I doubt that there is any other major jazz player that I feel more uncertain, as opposed to ambivalent, about than Hall. He played guitar with Jimmy Giuffre as far back as 1956 and has worked consistently ever since. But aside from his support work for Sonny Rollins in the '60s I've never gotten the hang of him. It's tempting to bracket him with bop-influenced guitarists like Tal Farlow but it's hard to be sure. Is he subtle or shrewd? Enigmatic or just confusing? I'm not sure this record answers any such questions, but it rather neatly spreads the cards out on the table. This is a trio recording, a selection of not especially related pieces from a longer (probably much longer) set of live performances. The anchor is bassist Scott Colley, who also gets a share of the production credit; he seems to be the center of gravity even when he isn't playing (or is practically inaudible). Hall himself appears in various guises: his clean light notes glisten off Colley's contrasting bass notes, but he can also shift into a rhythm mode, and he uses some sort of effects to get a synth-sax sound for the head on Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas." The third leg of the trio is drummer Lewis Nash, who can be as playful and offbeat as Hall. A-
• Happy Apple: The Peace Between Our Companies (2005, Sunnyside). Not really the Bad Plus reloaded, although common denominator Dave King's drum attack is the distinctive signature here. Eric Fratzke's electric bass doesn't match Reid Anderson's virtuosity, but at least keeps them in the game. And Michael Lewis' saxophones make for a lead voice that is louder, more personable, and more anciently rockish than Ethan Iverson's piano. They alternate between going loud and going soft. In soft mode they go for avant-scratch; in loud mode Lewis shows his command of the Ayler/Coltrane basics, while King knocks your socks off. A-
• Ari Hoenig: The Painter (2003 [2004], Smalls). Led by the drummer, but Guadeloupean Jacques Schwarz-Bart could write a book on state-of-the-art tenor sax, and French pianist Jean-Michel Pilc can dazzle when he's not merely helping out. Recorded live at Fat Cat, it sneaks up on you, like the realization that you've just had a real good time. A-
• Ibrahim Electric: Meets Ray Anderson (2004 [2005], Stunt). When they turn up the heat the Danish guitar-organ-drums trio is more rockish than its soul jazz avatars. And when they dial it down they're knee deep in the blues. Neither trait is all that remarkable, but their meeting with the trombone master was inspired. After all, Anderson's first language is gutbucket, so when he growls and groans he delivers the dirt this band needs. But he can improvise on their grind, punching out lightning solos then diving back into the grime. A-
• Sherman Irby: Faith (2004 [2005], Black Warrior). Irby has a beautiful tone on alto sax, a quick wit and surpassing soulfulness. He cut a marvelous down home record in 1998 called Big Mama's Biscuits, his second Blue Note album, but he's been out of print since then, until founding his own label. This one, built around originals with titles like "Faith," "Hope," and "Charity," comes close: the sound is clean and well structured, and pianist Larry Willis injects a little gospel base. "Fight for Life" is anything but kneejerk. B+
• Javon Jackson: Have You Heard (2005, Palmetto). A pleasant but laid back funk album, which means it's nowhere near as funky as it ought to be, and is otherwise a big step backwards for a guy who used to make a big impression. Comping behind Lisa Fischer's moaning is a waste of time. Mark Whitfield has some sweet licks on guitar, and Dr. Lonnie Smith is about par. Could be a featured Dud, in which case I might get meaner with the grade. C+
• Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio: Other Valentines (2005, Atavistic). Lonborg-Holm's cello is the lead instrument, backed by bass and drums. He plays it like a big fiddle. It's not much deeper than violin, just doesn't have the scratchy high end -- solid but mellow. A-
• Russ Lossing: Phrase 6 (2004, Fresh Sound). This piano trio moves slowly but efficiently, like a team of rock climbers negotiating difficult terrain. The liner notes describe the pieces in technical terms, but the upshot is that Lossing's compositions leave a lot of variables to be resolved on the fly. Hence the teamwork is crucial. A-
• Ravish Momin's Trio Tarana: Climbing the Banyan Tree (2004 [2005], Clean Feed). Indian percussion, Chinese violin, Middle Eastern oud -- released in Lisbon, but recorded in that old melting pot, Brooklyn. Note that Jason Kao Hwang and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz are U.S. natives, and the leader is a Hyderabadi student of the north Indian classical tradition who went to Carnegie Mellon. That none of the three are too deeply rooted in their ethnicity lets them join together as a distinctive jazz group rather than limiting them to exotic fusion. A-
• One More: Music of Thad Jones (2005, IPO). The band members' names are printed in tiny type on the front cover, starting with Bob Brookmeyer and ending with Frank Wess. They are old guys -- Thad Jones' peers, and in the case of the pianist, his brother. This is Hank Jones' second tribute to his brother's work, following Upon Reflection (1993), a trio with little brother Elvin on drums. A touching, poignant record. This one joins it, in a sense completes it by adding the horns missing from the previous album -- Benny Golson, James Moody, and Jimmy Owens as well as Brookmeyer and Wess. Richard Davis and Mickey Roker fill out the group -- the other obvious drummers having passed on. A-
• Greg Osby: Channel Three (2005, Blue Note). Osby has worked steadily at Blue Note since 1990, and this is his 13th album there (or 14th if you could one with Joe Lovano, or maybe there are more). I regard them as an inconsistent series, but you break them down further: the alto saxist has impressive chops as an improviser, but as a planner his more ambitious ideas rarely pan out. I don't have a good take on most of his albums. I have five of his albums listed at B or below, but don't remember much more than a saccharine sense of harmony, and I have one at B+ (his "live bootleg," or two if you count the one with Lovano). My hypothesis then is that he works best when he keeps it simple, which he does here on this straight sax trio. In the booklet, he sees it differently, arguing that working without a piano is harder -- at least in the sense of making the trio feel whole without the chordal backdrop. So it's possible that he's as ambitious here as elsewhere, but at least here's his ambitions are tightly constrained. He plays with remarkable intelligence and craft, his tone rarely strained, and the support roles of Matt Brewer and especially Jeff Watts are impeccable. Best thing he's done, I'd say. A-
• Houston Person: To Etta With Love (2004, HighNote). The songbook is loosely associated with Etta James but none are her songs, and pieces like "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You" have been around the block so many times they just seem like songs she would like. These are Person's songs too -- if he hasn't played them before it wasn't because they didn't fit. A veteran soul jazzman, he's always had a way with a ballad, but he's rarely sounded as completely at ease as he does here. A-
• Rosenberg/Baker/Hatwich/Daisy: New Folk, New Blues (2003 [2005], 482 Music). Free jazz, rough and tumbling. Since it's every man for himself, the one I'm most tempted to praise is drummer Tim Daisy, who really keeps his head in the game. But saxophonist Scott Rosenberg is the one up front, the voice you hear most and most clearly. This could easily fall apart, but manages to engage you all the way through. Don't know what the cover art means, but part of it looks like a factory turned into a ramshackle mosque. Fronted by a parking lot, or more likely a junkyard. One more piece of rust belt saxophone, America picking at its warts. B+
• Keely Smith: Vegas '58-Today (2004 [2005], Concord). Smith played Dean Martin to Louis Prima's Jerry Lewis, a straight singer in a crooked world. It's her claim to fame, and this run through the old Prima songbook is her chance not just to look back but to have fun with it. The band is sharp, and she takes delight in their brassiness. The songs that work best are the fast and funny ones, even if she's nowhere near as funny as he was. A fun record, and she's entitled. B+
• Triot With John Tchicai: Sudden Happiness (2004, TUM). Tchicai adds a complementary saxophone or bass clarinet to Mikko Innanen range of saxophones. They play as two separate voices rather than attempting to harmonize, and at speed this approaches the sort of raucous polyphony that hasn't been in style since Dixieland -- most prominently on a piece of township jive written by Johnny Dyani. But more often the tone is somber, gray and ominous. The range and sweep are impressive. A-
• Steve Turre: The Spirits Up Above (2004, HighNote). One of the risks of a tribute is that it just makes you long more for the original, and that's ultimately the problem with this otherwise excellent album. This is Turre's tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, cut with an impeccable crew of mainstreamers: James Carter (on flute as well as tenor sax), Vincent Herring, Mulgrew Miller, Buster Williams and Winard Harper. I've played this too many times -- a sure sign of sitting on the fence -- and while I've gotten to where I like it quite a bit, I still have reservations. First I thought the problem was the two vocal pieces, but they've grown on me, and "Volunteered Slavery" features a rave-up that almost captures the spirit of the original. Carter's flute piece also connected. B+
• Doug Wamble: Bluestate (2004 [2005], Marsalis Music/Rounder). Wamble loves to shift meters, which makes for oddly fractured music as long as he just plays his guitar, but too often he tries to sing through the changes and it makes for awkward, painful even, listening. He's a serious young man -- sounds a bit like Mose Allison without a sense of humor. But this isn't all wasted. His awkwardness is touching on a straighter song like Stevie Wonder's "Have a Talk With God." His guitar is distinctive. And a guest solo by producer/bossman Branford Marsalis is a plus. B-

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The first software job I had was working for a guy who habitually referred to computers as "the confusers," and was frequently heard to say: "To err is human. To really screw things up takes a computer." I'm reminded of this because the Village Voice took a week to post my sixth Jazz Consumer Guide after it appeared in print. The reason, I've been told repeatedly, was caused by their transition to new publishing software, something called InCopy. (Looks like it's an Adobe product, wouldn't you know?) Anyhow, after much complaining on my part, it's on the web now. Still has a few mistakes, the worst being that accents in the names of Dennis González and Pierre Dørge chop off their names and any following punctuation. Hopefully, they'll get those fixed.

I managed to squeeze 30 albums in this time. The line-up as published is:

Pick Hits:

• Fieldwork: Simulated Progress (Pi)
• Dennis González's Spirit Meridian: Idle Wild (Clean Feed)

A-List:

• Eric Alexander: Dead Center (HighNote)
• Steve Amendola Band: Believe (Cryptogramophone)
• Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra: Dancing Cheek to Cheek (Stunt)
• Jerry Granelli: Sandhills Reunion (Songlines)
• Jim Hall: Magic Meeting (ArtistShare)
• Happy Apple: The Peace Between Our Companies (Sunnyside)
• Ari Hoenig: The Painter (Smalls)
• Ibrahim Electric: Meets Ray Anderson (Stunt)
• Russ Lossing: Phrase 6 (Fresh Sound New Talent)
• Ravish Momin's Trio Tarana: Climbing the Banyan Tree (Clean Feed)
• One More: Music of Thad Jones (IPO)
• Greg Osby: Channel Three (Blue Note)
• Houston Person: To Etta With Love (HighNote)

Dud of the Month

• Javon Jackson: Have You Heard (Palmetto)

Honorable Mention

• Triot With John Tchicai: Sudden Happiness (TUM)
• The Nels Cline Singers: The Giant Pin (Cryptogramophone)
• Benoit Delbecq Unit: Phonetics (Songlines)
• Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio: Other Valentines (Atavistic)
• Steve Turre: The Spirits Up Above (HighNote)
• James Finn Trio: Plaza de Toros (Clean Feed)
• Eugene Chadbourne: The Hills Have Jazz (Boxholder)
• Sherman Irby: Faith (Black Warrior)
• Duo Nueva Finlandia: Short Stories (TUM)
• Keely Smith: Vegas '58-Today (Concord)
• Rosenberg/Baker/Hatwich/Daisy: New Folk, New Blues (482 Music)
• Tord Gustavsen Trio: The Ground (ECM)

Duds

• Bill Frisell: Richter 858 (Songlines)
• Doug Wamble: Bluestate (Marsalis Music/Rounder)

Several other albums were in the file I submitted for edit, but lost out in the space squeeze:

A-List:

• Tom Christensen: New York School (Playscape)
• Anat Cohen: Place & Time (Anzic)
• Art Pepper: Mosaic Select (1956-57, Mosaic)
• Joshua Redman Elastic Band: Momentum (Nonesuch)
• Sonny Rollins: Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert (2001, Milestone)
• Larry Young: Of Love and Peace (1966, Blue Note)

Honorable Mention

• Mike Ladd: Negrophilia [The Album] (Thirsty Ear)
• Myron Walden: This Way (Fresh Sound New Talent)
• Andrew Hill: Mosaic Select (1967-70, Mosaic)
• François Carrier Trio: Play (482 Music)
• Tony DeSare: Want You (Telarc)
• Ron Blake: Sonic Tonic (Mack Avenue)

Duds

• Debby Boone: Reflections of Rosemary (Concord)

Most of these will show up in future columns, although I've already written about Pepper, Young and Hill in Recycled Goods, and a revised version of Rollins will appear in September's Recycled Goods column -- up in a couple of days. (Also a David S. Ware review I originally wrote for JCG, then never used after Larry Blumenfeld lauded the record in the Voice. Francis Davis has a review of Rollins in this coming week's Voice, to which the only thing I have to add is that the new record isn't really as good as G-Man -- only seems that way when Rollins himself is playing.)

Last few times I published a Jazz CG column I followed it up with details of housecleaning. Despite the week's delay, I don't have that done yet. (Spent all last week working on RG, and the week before blogging.) So it'll be a week or two before I get all that sorted out and start up on the next Jazz CG. Also plan to do a piece on Billy Bang, who otherwise would have loomed large this time. Quite a bit of Ken Vandermark in the queue for next time.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

After a week where I filed blog entries every day, I've gone a week now without posting anything. Two excuses: One is that I've been waiting for the Village Voice to post my Jazz Consumer Guide, so I can pass on the URL. The column is in the print edition, but hasn't been posted. I'm told they're using some new software, and having trouble with it. As a software engineer, that strikes me as a particularly lame excuse. But even if some management twit made a real dumb decision buying bad software, most times workers can go in and fix those problems by hand. Another possibility is that the Voice's labor problems (i.e., management problems) have taken another step toward making the paper dysfunctional. Rumors are that the Voice is up for sale. While the Voice has managed to keep most of its political and cultural values through several changes of ownership in the past, including a stretch under Rupert Murdoch, one always worries that the end is just around the next bend.

The other thing holding me up is that I've fallen behind in getting September's Recycled Goods done, so that's what I've been working on all week long. I should have that done later today, and hope to build up some extras in the next week so I don't get caught short next time like I did this time. I haven't made much of an effort to line up Recycled records, but it's starting to look like I might be running low, of good records, anyway.

Meanwhile, some news items:

• Iraq's constitution was dead-on-arrival, if indeed it actually ever arrived. This looks real bad for the political maturity of the ruling coalition, but a big part of the problem is the one subject that none of them dare talk about: the Bushist occupation. The one thing that should be clear by now is that the only way anything gets better in Iraq is for the war to end, and the only way that happens is if the resistance becomes a stakeholder in the government. And the only way that can happen is for the U.S. to establish that it is leaving and will no longer interfere in Iraq's internal affairs. That isn't something talked about in the polite circles of the Green Zone, because Bush has a political stake in hanging on -- the "main front of the War on Terror" -- and because most of the Iraqis in power (such as it is) depend on the U.S. for protection. No doubt, this won't be an easy discussion. But if Iraq doesn't become a big enough tent for the resistance to join, it won't work for anyone. (Q: What makes the Kurds think that there's a future in seizing the oil fields near Kirkuk then seceding? How does Kurdistan get oil to the markets? Through Sunni Iraq? Shi'a Iraq? Turkey? Iran? Syria?) It's interesting that the only political figure in Iraq who seems to have his finger on the pulse is Muqtada al-Sadr.

• We're starting to see some movement among pundits and even a few politicians toward leaving Iraq. A week ago Juan Cole made a complex proposal, presented as something Congress might prevail on Bush to do. It was based on an idea that I've toyed with: that U.S. forces, unable to win in Iraq, at least might be useful to prevent any other faction from winning, thereby enforcing stalemate that would encourage Iraqis to negotiate their own solution. This proposal was shot down almost immediately by Gilbert Achar, writing on Cole's own blog. The problem with this type of proposal (Cole's, or mine) is that Bush can't be neutral, and even if he did try to change his stripes and try to be neutral, nobody would believe him. Achar cited a piece by Andrew Bacevich in the Washington Post arguing that the U.S. has done all it can do in Iraq, so should haul out the "Mission Accomplished" banner and head home. Indeed, he argues the U.S. had done all it could do when the banner first appeared, and that the only thing that's happened since then was tragedy pursuing a pipe dream. The notion that the U.S. is incapable of making things better in Iraq has been a tough one for Americans to grasp, but some are starting to get there. At last one Senator (Feingold) has come out for a fixed time table to get out of Iraq. More will follow.

• Meanwhile, Bush's polls have continued to fall. His fear of Cindy Sheehan seems to have driven him to take a vacation from his vacation. With Texas inundated by antiwar moms, Bush fled to Utah to try to find war supporters. When he was met by 2000 protestors there, including some sharp words from Salt Lake City's mayor, he retreated to Idaho. I know some folks in Idaho he wouldn't want to talk to either, but they didn't get a crack at him. If he can't even hold Texas, what makes him think he can stay any course in Iraq?

• The American Legion not only rallied around Bush. They came out attacking war protestors as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The local rant lines have lately turned in the same direction, so most likely there's some marching orders or "talking points" out of the Bush camp prodding this kind of hate on. There hasn't been much of this up to recently -- at least compared to what we went through in early Vietnam days -- but it's a sign that things are going to get nasty. It is, of course, ludicrous to think that jihadis in Anwar are following the peace groups scattered across America for inspiration and hope. But this sets us at each other's throats in a culture war much like Vietnam did. The right figures they won the last one, so they're safe this time too. The antiwar left's increasing tendency to argue on the basis of what the war does to America's soldiers has the risk of narrowing the debate way too far. Not that there's any hope that Americans will respond to what the war is doing to Iraqis -- even the ones who've decided they love Iraqis as much as fetuses. No point trying to get all liberal over this. But the effect on America goes way beyond what's the war has done to the soldiers.

• Big breaking story: the hurricane that threatens to eat New Orleans. We'll know more tomorrow. As I've said before, I think disaster relief is going to be one of the big political issues in America and the world over the next few decades. And nothing throws this issue into the spotlight like disaster does. The $200 billion plus we've blown up in Iraq might come handy here, but the bill could well be higher: the worst-case scenarios are almost impossible to imagine.

Music: Current count 10963 [10926] rated (+37), 930 [952] unrated (-22).

• Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako (2005, Nonesuch). A small pseudo-sticker on the slipcase points out "Guest Star Manu Chao." Flip it over and the small print reads "Produced by and with Manu Chao." Flip the booklet open and you can count eight songs at least co-credited to Manu Chao, with more that he plays and sings on. Spin the disc and, quelle surprise, it sounds like a new Manu Chao album, especially with its lanky pan-everywhere riddims. The "blind couple from Mali," as they've billed themselves, have always been suspected of borrowing liberally from elsewhere, so hooking up with Europe's one-man melting pot is an economical as well as inspired move. The Malian voices take over on their own songs, the most native sounding called "Gnidjougouya" -- the booklet prints all lyrics in French, even when they aren't. A
• Ray Charles: Friendship (1984-86 [2005], Columbia/Legacy). An album of country duets refurbished to cash in on the success of Genius Loves Company, but inferior in every respect: songs, partners, arrangements, the attention span of the genius himself -- not that I was all that impressed by Genius Loves Company. The non-country bonuses are a slight plus, even the one with Billy Joel. The George Jones cut is on the expanded My Very Special Friends and, better yet, The Spirit of Country. C+
• Maria de Barros: Dança Ma Mi (2005, Narada). Born in Dakar of Cape Verdean parents, raised in Mauritania and Rhode Island, based in Los Angeles, sings mostly in Portuguese, another singer adrift in a world where home is nowhere and, just as well, everywhere; so it's not surprising that this pleasantly danceable music sounds like nothing and everything, softened a bit as is so often the case with the pan-Portuguese. B+
• John Denver: Rhymes & Reasons (1969 [2005], RCA/Legacy). First album by the folksinger who changed his name from Henry John Deutschendorf to become Colorado's official Poet Laureate. Mostly covers, including a fast one from the Beatles, a slow one from Jerry Jeff Walker, and some cornpone country from Mason Williams, plus ballads of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon that say all he has to say in 23 seconds. Incoherent, often oversung, not totally devoid of charm. C
• John Denver's Greatest Hits (1969-73 [2005], RCA/Legacy). By recycling this 1973 profit-taking exercise, you only get three of his eight top-ten hits, plus one that charted #88, plus his version of the hit he wrote for Peter, Paul & Mary, plus filler. Of the three hits, one was definitively redone by Toots & the Maytals, another beat to death in commercials, and the third's a leading cause of melanoma. When he raises his voice in "The Eagle and the Hawk," is he trying to fly, or just escape the strings? Three period bonus cuts don't help. C+
• John Denver: Back Home Again (1974 [2005], RCA/Legacy). More hits than Greatest Hits. Better filler too, but not without exception. B-
• Henri Dikongué: Biso Nawa (2004 [2005], Buda Musique). From Cameroun via Paris, if African music mapped onto rock genres, he'd be a singer-songwriter, with his folkie guitar, plaintive vocals, indifferent beats. Not that it's so simple. B+
• The Very Best of Bill Doggett: Honky Tonk (1954-59 [2004], Collectables). A-
• Bill Doggett: The Many Moods of Bill Doggett (1961, King). Actually, nothing on the label or cover (open the "booklet" and all you see is white paper) indicate the date, which I got from AMG (caveat lector). A couple of vocal cuts break his norm, but they're all right, and he keeps pumping. B+
• The Fugs: Virgin Fugs (1966 [2005], ESP-Disk). ESP's motto was "the artists alone decide what you will hear on their ESP Disk," so it's tempting to think they did this on purpose, but the story is more sordid. In liner notes that could only have been written by a lawyer, label owner Bernard Stollman admits he violated his cardinal rule in slapping this together from outtakes he picked up with he bought rights to the Fugs' first album. Fugs Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg sued him over it, and indeed it sounds primitive compared even to the not-so-lofty standards of their other albums. But when you're doing songs like the hyper "New Amphetamine Shriek" and slurpy "Coca Cola Douche" there's no point to getting fancy. Sanders was a shrewd wordsmith, and Kupferberg an inspired jokester, but neither could play much more than tambourine. The musical secret to these demos, if that's what they were, came from Rounders Steve Webber and Peter Stampfel, with the latter's voice as sour as his violin. Caveat emptor: Real short (26:47), and five of eleven songs were bonuses on Fantasy's 1994 edition of The Fugs First Album. A-
• The Fugs: Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings (1967-68 [2001], Rhino Handmade, 3CD). The level of musical accomplishment here is a curse as much as a blessing -- Sanders and Kupferberg have always been word people, and that's what you listen for, even if you have to hack through country and doo-wop and power rock and classical strings and hare krishna. This piles up four of the most uncommercial albums ever released on a major label, plus trivia. An invaluable reference for scholars. B+
• The Essential Jefferson Airplane (1966-72, RCA/Legacy, 2CD). History's ultimate verdict is likely to regard them as the confused adolescent pre-punk precursors of X, a band that built knowingly and skillfully on their folkie noir. Sure, a single disc would meander less, but would run the risk of reducing them to an anthemic pop band. They must have suspected as much when they titled their first compilation The Worst of Jefferson Airplane. B+
• George Jones: My Very Special Guests (1977-97 [2005], Epic/Legacy, 2CD). This takes the first (and best) of four one-song-per-guest-star albums and packs on 27 more, providing an extensive two-decade document of Jones' duet art. Jones is so skillful and so selfless that he contrasts to and fits in even with generations of male neotrads who grew up in awe of him, but few add up to the sum of their parts, perhaps because they dilute the greatest voice in country music, or because they're just meant to be easy product. B
• Janis Joplin: Pearl (Legacy Edition) (1970 [2005], Columbia/Legacy, 2CD). Like Billie Holiday, everything she did for anyone ultimately belongs to her, which is why Legacy was able to craft a 3-CD box, Janis, that sounded unified, complete, and utterly convincing. That left little else to do with her, but commerce carries on. The core album here was a slight disappointment but forgivable as her unfinished last. The extra disc is a Toronto concert that provides a memorable snapshot of what must have been an average night, matching the disappointment of the album, but forgivable nonetheless. Pace the liner notes, she didn't go out on a high note; she died unresolved, never figuring out that the blues are about survival, a lesson she never got old enough to appreciate. A-
• Patty Loveless: The Definitive Collection (1985-96 [2005], MCA Nashville/Chronicles). Patricia Ramey grew up singing Porter/Dolly duets with her brother Roger, who took her to Nashville, where she hooked up with the Wilburn Brothers, following in Loretta Lynn's footsteps. She married their drummer Terry Lovelace, and when they split she changed her name to an adjective. She caught a break when Tony Brown finally decided there might be a market for country music that actually sounds like country music. Neotraditionalism is what they called it, and she's their poster girl -- she has the right voice and temperament. She cut five albums for MCA from 1987-91, then moved on to Epic where she has nine and counting. If she's ever cut a bad one I've missed it. The six I've heard are so solid and consistent her best-ofs can be programmed at random, which evidently they are. This one samples the MCA albums liberally, tacking on two run-of-the-mill songs from her third Epic album to spread the year-range a bit. Problem is she's rarely great. She doesn't write much, and she keeps trying to make love songs work, even though she's sharper on the loveless ones. For example, "God Will" -- I might have graded this higher had they included it, but they didn't. B+
• Luomo: The Present Lover (2003 [2004], Kinetic). A soft beat, somewhat muted, piece of electronica, female voice, mostly quite nice. First two pieces start a bit awkward, but it rights itself on the title piece. B+
• Loretta Lynn: The Definitive Collection (1964-78 [2005], MCA Nashville/Chronicles). This 25-cut comp follows three others on CD, not counting cheapies: 20 Greatest Hits [1988, 20 songs], Country Music Hall of Fame Series [1991, 16], All Time Greatest Hits [2002, 22]. All four fit into multi-artist series: whenever MCA got ginned up for a round of best-ofs, Lynn had to be included. The obvious reason is that Lynn recorded a dozen or so songs of sexual politics so sharply detailed and reasoned that no record collection should be without them. Those songs are the core of the fifteen cuts that appear on three or more of these comps. It's not that Lynn didn't record enough -- she released something like 35 albums in a 15-year span -- but her unique genius towers over a lot of solid professionalism. Examples of the latter include five duets with Conway Twitty and a song that belongs to Patsy Cline. These are all good songs, but they aren't Loretta. As for the others, forget All Time Greatest Hits, which is this record minus "Blue Kentucky Girl," "You're Lookin' at Country," and "The Pill." But the A+ choice is still the Twitty-less out-of-print 20 Greatest Hits. A-
• Não Wave: Brazil Post Punk (1982-88 [2005], Man): This defies the prevalent, and by now ridiculous, notion that all Brazilian music sounds like bossa nova: Brazil's the second largest music market in the world, and they seem to have a little bit of everything. On the other hand, most of this loud and arty rock is pretty nondescript, lacking the wound-tight tension of most of what we know as post-punk/new wave. B
• Dolly Parton: The Essential Dolly Parton (1967-2000 [2005], RCA/Legacy, 2CD): the mid-point for two discs is 1977; the first disc starts with 1967's "Dumb Blonde" and the songs are all Parton originals except the first one and a Jimmie Rodgers cover; the second disc is down to six Parton originals, about one every four years; this partly corrects the down trend in Parton comps by splitting her career into complementary hillbilly and Hollywood discs; the only surprise is that the latter isn't as bad as we feared, and that the former isn't as good as we remembered. B+
• Come On Get Happy! The Very Best of the Partridge Family (1970-72 [2005], Arista/Legacy). I barely recall the twee sitcom, so the most striking thing about this cross-marketing is how adult all the singers sound, including the featured David Cassidy (age 20 when the show debuted); the music end of the business was run by Wes Farrell, a hack with enough budget to hire pros; at best these are amazingly complex confections, far more psychedelica than bubblegum; it's amusing to imagine them recut with a singer broad enough to redeem such kitsch, like Elvis Presley. B
• Pearls Before Swine: The Complete ESP-Disk' Recordings (1967-68 [2005], ESP-Disk). With the biblical name, cover art from Bosch and Breugel, and references back past Vietnam to the pointless slaughter of the Crimean War, Tom Rapp's early recordings have a peculiar braininess and eerie beauty to them. Classifying this as folk or psychedelica or both seems off base, although he's not consistent enough to avoid the confusion. B+
• The Best of Poi Dog Pondering (The Austin Years) (1989-91 [2005], Columbia/Legacy). A band of eclectics from Hawaii, having established a beachhead in Austin because it's warm and cheap, make a quick dash for next big thing -- or at least encourage the megacorp to think so. A shifting but mostly large group led by Frank Orrall, they're distinguished by groove and erudition, but not much else. B
• Putumayo Presents: Italian Café (1958-2004 [2005], Putumayo World Music). An analog to the "French Café" idiom of prior comps, this makes for pleasant touristy background, with whispery vocals and lithe, easy-strolling riddims; note that the only cut dominated by accordion comes from Austria. B+
• Putumayo Presents: Latin Lounge (2000-04 [2005], Putumayo World Music). By "lounge" they mean soft, innocuous synth beats, the constant in five volumes only marginally differentiated by a leading word (World, Euro, Sahara, Blues). Musicians everywhere in damn near every genre and style are turning to cheap, dependable technology like this, so the series is likely to go on indefinitely as long as anyone bothers to buy it. Putumayo's genius is to collect and sequence unthreatening exotica into pleasing packages that give you a sense of received adventure with no risk or thrill. This one is perfectly ordinary, so typical there's nothing to do but write about the whole gestalt. B
• Putumayo Presents: North African Groove (1996-2004 [2005], Putumayo World Music). Further progress on the raï front, the dance music not evolving so much as spreading across the continent it speaks to, its home base safe from the mullahs and jihadis in secular France. B+
• Tarika: 10: Beasts, Ghosts & Dancing With History (1994-2002 [2004], Triloka/Artemis). A 10th anniversary compilation from Madagascar's most famous folk-rock group, sounds like nothing else from Africa, and not just because the Malagasy's roots are in Indonesia. The rhythms are light and snappy, the guitar sweet, the voices -- sisters Hanitra Rasoanaivo and Noro Raharimalala in the lead, with males for backup and response -- elated. The remixes may be a sop to the commercial west, but they help. A-
• Trojan Dub Massive: Chapter One ([2005], Trojan/Sanctuary). Sly and Robbie, King Tubby, Tapper Zukie, Prince Jammy, Scientist, spun by Bill Laswell, who's never quite able to leave well enough alone. B+
• Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn: The Definitive Collection (1970-88 [2005], MCA Nashville/Chronicles). The love songs remind you that they're Nashville pros, not lovers, but what pros they are -- the proof is in the jokes, like "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly" and "Don't Tell Me You're Sorry (I Know How Sorry You Are)." A-
• Don Williams: The Definitive Collection (1973-86 [2005], MCA Nashville/Chronicles). Bobby Bare described Williams as a "super-talent with no crutches, no hangups, no problems"; an easy going, soft-spoken country crooner, Williams racked up a long series of hits courting marital bliss, the opposite of Nashville's usual Strum und Drang, but they key was that he never turned sappy or melodramatic, least of all in the music, what "easy listening" ought to mean. A-

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Music: Current count 10926 [10905] rated (+21), 952 [948] unrated (+4). This week mostly went to mopping up new jazz records, stuff left over from Jazz CG. Actually, it mostly went to wrapping up the Israel Peace Plan essay and working in the blog, but while doing that I played a lot of B/B+ level jazz records, which saves me from having to deal with them later. Jazz CG should be out Tuesday more/less.

• Ted Nash: Still Evolved (2002 [2003], Palmetto). Nash is impresive on tenor sax, and seems likely to emerge as a major player. The Kimbrough-Allison-Wilson rhythm section is tight as you'd expect, certainly up to the job. So let's blame this on the trumpets, a tag team of Wynton Marsalis and Marcus Printup. Not that there's a lot of blame to be shouldered: they're not bad, but they invariably bring this back to hard bop humdrum when the rest of the band hint at moving on. Or maybe we should blame Matt Baltisaris, who seems to think that hard bop orthodoxy still has legs. Nash's next album is much better. Heard good things about the previous one, Sidewalk Meeting, too. B+
• Rich Perry: At Eastman (2001 [2003], Steeplechase). A conventional hard bop quintet, with Clay Jenkins on trumpet, Harold Danko on piano, Jeff Campbell on bass, Rich Thompson on drums, but very nicely turned out. Perry always struck me as a very solid tenor sax player, but Jenkins is if anything even more impressive here. B+

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Last week I was lurking in a bookstore and noticed a book called 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37), by Bernard Goldberg. This week I went back to the bookstore and found the book on sale 30% off, indicating that it's some kind of bestseller. I'm a sucker for lists, so I thumbed through the thing, but most of the names I didn't recognize, and most of those I did recognize seemed like peculiar choices. Then an article from Common Dreams popped up in my mailbox proposing six other people as the ones "Really Screwing Up America" -- seven actually, but Ken Lay managed to make both lists -- and I hadn't heard of half of them either. Someone named Philip Dhingra posted a web page with Goldberg's list and some info on who these people are and why Goldberg hates them, so that helps. I couldn't have told you who runs the ACLU or PETA or the Ford Foundation, but they all made the list.

For balance or confusion, Goldberg picks a few names from the far right -- Jimmy Swaggart, Michael Savage, David Duke. Seems like he could have consolidated those three slots by picking Fred Phelps, but I guess he didn't look too hard. Perhaps that's because he's so busy getting offended by things normal people just laugh off. For instance, Courtney Love leaves him so speechless all he can say is "Ho" -- and after doing that, he's got the balls to dump on Ludacris. One problem is that the list is weak on people who actually have any real power. He's got one billionaire on the list: George Soros, who sure screwed most of Asia but is better known in these parts for his philanthropy. He's got two U.S. Senators (Kennedy and Byrd), and two ex-Senators (Gore and Edwards), one ex-Governor (Dean), and a few U.S. Representatives and lower politicians, mostly black; not a Republican among them, unless you count Duke, who never got past the Louisiana state house. Most of the businessmen are has-beens (Lay, Dennis Kozlowski). He's got a real problem with TV news people and celebrities. According to Dhingra's explanations, slots 12, 13 and 14 were awarded for Dan Rather's Bush National Guard story. To make that screw up -- bad evidence for what was essentially a true, if not terribly important, story -- rank so high requires a lot of forgetting, not least of Colin Powell's U.N. speech, a piece of fraud that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Rather didn't have any effect on anything, except that he provided the Republicans with an excuse to talk about something other than Bush's record. (So maybe that was catastrophic for America?)

Even given my fondness for lists, I'm not going to nitpick or pose an alternative list. Part of this is that aside from a few obvious politicos, most of whom have been attracted to the Bush administration like flies to shit, I don't know who's screwing up America. Most of the folks on Goldberg's list are symptomatic or representative of ideas or attitudes he just despises: vulgarity, irreverance for America, the notion that minorities and women feel cheated, maybe greed. I question his commitment on the latter point because he rarely employs it except when attacking something else on his list, but also because it's the only thing he dislikes that bothers me much. Were I to put together such a list, no doubt it would be symptomatic and representative as well. The reason for this is that individuals just don't have all that much power; rather, they rise to positions that we call powerful because they represent broader forces. Religion, for instance, is a powerful force in American life. Someone like Ralph Reed isn't a mastermind; he's just particularly adept as exploiting it. He would be on my list, but if he disappeared someone quite like him would quickly take his place. It strikes me as a peculiarly right-wing thing to make a list like this, partly because the right overrates individuals, and partly because the right likes to fantasize about killing off troublemakers.

The other thing I want to point out is that Goldberg obsesses over cultural matters to the relative exclusion of politics and economics, which most of us realize are the real seats of power. This, too, is a right-wing thing, because the right is all about control, and culture is out of control. Mostly: big business has a stranglehold on mass distribution, but there are ways around that, and the shrinking number of huge corporations are still competitive enough that they're a lot more concerned with money than content. The result is that culture is demand-based -- more so now than ever, which in the U.S. at least had never been under much control. Hip-hop, for instance, has found a huge audience even though it often flaunts the verities that politicos of all stripes profess to believe in. It can do this because it, unlike politics, is free from the tyranny of the majority.

But Goldberg doesn't have a clue about culture. If he did, he'd have to worry more about Steven Spielberg (not on the list) than Michael Moore (#1). Rather, he looks for obvious political signs, which leads to his rants about culture celebrities -- actors, musicians, etc. The interesting thing about an actor talking about politics is that actors aren't selected for their politics. Actors are atypical in some ways -- looks, wit, charm, fame, wealth -- but their politics are surprisingly random, much like others who don't belong to the carefully selected political class. Goldberg picks on groups he calls "dumb" and "vicious" (with special opprobrium for Janeanne Garofolo, who he deems to be both). Interesting that these are the two characteristics that never get invited as talking heads -- instead, all of us left of center are stuck with people like Mark Shields and Tom Oliphant supposedly representing us. (Do they even belong to the same species?)

Of course, the most annoying thing about Goldberg is that he couldn't have spent more than a few weeks hacking this bestseller out of his own prejudices and ignorance. I've been trying to write a book for years, and it never occurred to me that it could be done so easily.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Tanya Reinhardt has an interesting piece called How We Left Gaza. She argues that Sharon never actually intended to leave the settlements, but boxed himself into a corner, and ultimately had to follow through because the U.S. held him to the promise. If you look back over the two years from announcement to implementation, you can find lots of evidence to back this view. She quotes a NY Times piece on Middle East Security Coordinator General William Ward: "General Ward, a careful man, confirmed that two weeks ago, American pressure helped stay the Israeli military when it was poised to go into Gaza . . . He predicted that there could be similar pressure should the need arise. 'That scenario is a scenario that none of us would like to see,' he said. 'There is a deep realization on the part of the Israeli leadership, including the military, about the consequences of that type of scenario.'" She doesn't talk about the reasons Israel wanted to send the military in, but obviously had they done so the effect would have been to stir things up, leading to more bloodshed. Neve Gordon, at Counterpunch, cites figure from B'tselem: "in the first ten months after the official decision to dismantle the settlements, Israeli forces killed 563 Palestinians in Gaza, whereas during the previous ten months period 264 were killed."

Reinhardt attributes the change in U.S. tactics to the disaster in Iraq. Bush's initial attitude toward Israel was one of malign neglect: give Sharon a free hand to do things his way. Bush wiggled a bit here and there in the run up to the Iraq war when he was trying to line up allies like the U.K. and Saudi Arabia that had concerns about Israel, but in the wake of what looked like victory the U.S. applauded an unprovoked Israeli air attack on Syria. Since then the U.S. position in Iraq has gone to hell in a handbasket. And while Israel may be America's staunchest ally, it's also America's most helpless and hopeless ally. Reinhardt concludes: "Over the years we have become accustomed to the idea that 'U.S. pressure' means declarations that have no muscle behind them. But suddenly the words have acquired new meaning. When the U.S. really does exert pressure, no Israeli leader would dare defy its injunctions (and certainly not Netanyahu). And so we have pulled out of Gaza. If the U.S. continues to lose ground in Iraq, maybe we will be forced to pull out of the West Bank as well."

Just yesterday, when I posted my peace plan, the idea that the U.S. might support something like that seemed like a pipe dream. But today I find an article from a totally independent source that suggests it may make sense after all.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

I finished the first draft of my Israel Peace Plan. I've researched and tried to understand this conflict ever since the 9/11 events. At the time, I understood that the attacks occurred within the context of a long history between the U.S. and the nations of the Middle East, and that U.S. relationship with Israel was a major piece of this history. I knew the general outline of U.S. history and world history in the 20th century -- the world wars, the Holocaust, the cold war. I was draft bait during the Vietnam War, and that profoundly affected my view of the world. Everything since then I encountered as news, not history. But what I saw in the aftermath of 9/11 was a nation on a warpath that few understood or even knew much about, so I determined to understand this as well as I could. One thing that became clear to me is that the rightward trend in the U.S. following Vietnam and in Israel following the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria -- not really a defeat in the sense of Vietnam but a major scare that cracked Israel's confidence in its founding Labor government -- followed parallel tracks, in both cases the rightwing gained power through the cultivation of fear and war, descending in cycles to ever more fear and war. This spiral is not only destructive of others; it rips at the social and moral fabric of America and perhaps even more intensely of Israel. Unless we change course, it looks like Israel today gives us a glimpse of America in the near future: a nation consumed in fear and hate, lashing out blindly at imaginary demons. Indeed, in some ways the U.S. has overtaken Israel, who have never managed an occupation as ineptly as the U.S. has in Iraq. (Not that Lebanon was anything for Israel to be proud of.)

The peace plan I proposed is a complex and subtle piece of work. I recognize that the Palestinians are incapable of achieving peace, not just because they have a litany of historical complaints that cannot be undone, but because they have no partner in Israel. The Israelis are incapable of achieving peace because they have trapped themselves in a web of myths, which among other things leaves them unable to trust anything the Palestinians might offer. But Israel's most self-deceptive myth is the notion that they are winning -- that their ability to squeeze the hostile Palestinians into ever smaller spaces will result in that ever elusive security. Given that the principals of this conflict cannot come to terms, the only prospect is pressure from outside. There's actually a long history of outside pressure constraining the conflict: the 1949 armistice agreements, the rollback of the 1956 war, the cease fires in 1967 and 1973, the Camp David agreement in 1979, the Madrid conference in 1991 and the subsequent Oslo agreement, the Roadmap. If anything, international interest in resolving the conflict has intensified since 9/11, as it has become ever harder to ignore how the conflict has fed the flames of terrorism in the U.S., Europe, Russia, and throughout the world of Islam. On the other hand, plans like the Roadmap go nowhere. This is partly because the U.S., which everyone agrees is the only party capable of exerting real pressure on Israel, has conflicting motives and sends mixed messages of no consequence to Israel. It is partly because the Roadmap focuses on Palestinian management of the terrorism problem, which Israel can exacerbate at will (and frequently does): as a tactic this ensures that the Palestinians will fail, and therefore there will be no progress; as strategy this treats the symptom without addressing its cause. More generally, by focusing on Israel and the Palestinians the Roadmap pretends that this conflict is local. But it certainly isn't local, either in its roots or in its consequences. On the one hand, Israeli behavior today is deeply rooted in the tragic history of anti-semitism, especially the failure of the world powers to stand up to or provide relief from Nazi Germany and its genocidal slaughter of six million Jews. On the other hand, Palestinian and Arab behavior today is rooted in the struggle against colonialism, which in Palestine was represented by the British Mandate which, among other things, paved the way for Jewish domination. There is so much fault on all sides of this conflict that it is almost pointless to try to untangle it all, but the world powers and their international institutions are as guilty as anyone. But the international community's responsibility to face up to the conflict doesn't come from guilt: it comes from a recognition that a future without international law, without a firm universal commitment to human rights, is a future that will make difficult challenges ever more perilous. Palestine was the first major problem that the U.N. had to face, and still remains the U.N.'s first and most spectacular failure.

This or any other peace plan can only come about through a concerted political movement. How that might happen is something way beyond my competence or even interest. When all is said and done, I'm just a critic. I'm throwing these idea out to show you what's wrong with all the other ideas out there. That they take the shape of a positive plan may be because there's too many dead ends in other people's proposal to track down explicitly. To be practical, the piece itself needs to be restructured. The plan itself should be rewritten with the clarity of law, while the supporting arguments should be moved to other documents. The political strategies in support of the plan need to be developed further for each specific constituency. I don't know how to do any of these things. But here the meme has landed. Carry on.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Probably time for another little news synopsis:

• Iraq's phony parliament failed to meet the U.S.-imposed deadline for submitting a new constitution to a vote. A one week reprieve was arranged, but most reports are that the committee is deadlocked. Looks like both the Kurdish and Shia lists have decided to pursue narrowly defined group interests which are mutually incompatible. The basic differences are that the Shia, as the majority, want to rule it all (with the extra oomph of having God on their side), while the Kurds want to exempt themselves from Shia rule and go their own way, at least once they've managed to capture the oil fields near Kirkuk. Not clear where the Sunni, the Turkmen, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Baath, the Communists, or anyone else stand on these issues (not least because they're not represented in this government), but the most reasonable guess is that they're opposed to both sectarian parties. These splits do not reflect favorably on the maturity and civic-mindedness of the parties involved, but there are more obvious reasons why democracy is failing in Iraq than the immaturity of the people. For starters, this is the consequence of a profoundly flawed election that turned out to be little more than a census mapped to a set of candidates who had no public standing. The party lists turn out to be heavily dominated by the exiles the U.S. dickered with way back before the war started. In other words, these are people who had no practical roots within Iraqi society, and as such were much dependent on the U.S. for their security and power. Conversely, by driving the entire Baath party out of political life the U.S. killed any significant prospects for a popular secular party, and thereby lost most of the technical competence that the old regime had to offer. And as the resistance rose, the U.S. promoted sectarian division, ultimately driving the entire Sunni population out away from legitimate political life.

  The plain fact is that it's hard to find people anywhere in the world who know less about democracy than the Bush administration. Their election was itself an exercise in utter contempt for the free will of the electorate. They are firm believers in the old adage that winning is the only thing, and there are few things that they are unwilling to do in order to win. What they've done in the U.S. has much more to do with ending democracy than practicing it. This left them peculiarly incompetent at fostering a democracy in a nation that has known nothing but corrupt and autocratic rulers. Democracy has always been a compromise between forces that were incapable of rule alone. In Great Britain, the first compromise was between the king and the feudal lords -- the Magna Carta. Over time the compromises were extended to cover more and more of the population, at each step becoming a shade more democratic. In the U.S. the compromise was between states. Iraq will eventually have to find its own compromises. The most salient effect of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime is that Iraq is now bloodily divided between several forces, none of whom have the power to dominate. But one force, the U.S., won't let these compromises happen, because the people who represent the U.S. believe far more in winning than in getting along. Bush has played the same sort of winner-take-all game that the Shia and Kurds now play. The problem is that other forces have the power to spoil this game, even if not the power to win it outright. As the politicians have deadlocked, Iraq itself slips ever further out of control. Ultimately the politicians will find themselves fighting over nothing.

  Most of the milestones the U.S. has made for Iraq have involved picking arbitrary dates and managing to meet them. This is a common tactic in business management, mostly because dates are clearcut objectives that managers can understand. But the tactic is often disastrous: if the date can't change, the variable becomes product quality, and that can slip to the point where you meet the date with nothing actually working. That's roughly what's happened at every step, going back as far as the ultimatum that launched the war, and certainly including "mission accomplished." Managing by date only works if sufficient resources and understanding exist to achieve the product and the date -- in that case focusing on the date just keeps the mind from wandering. But if you don't know shit about what you're doing, focusing on the date does no good and often much harm. One topic that needs to be explored further is the use and abuse of MBA-type management styles in the Bush administration. In many regards, they do run the government like big corporations run their businesses, and often that is a big part of the problem.

• Otherwise Iraq continues to be a complete mess. The latest U.S. tactic is blaming Iran for contributing to the insurgency. This is ridiculous on the face of it. It's certainly contrary to the notion of supporting the Iraqi's people's democratically elected sovereign government (try saying that without cracking up). It's hard to know whether this is because the U.S. is just desperate for scapegoats, or it's part of the residual Iran Next movement. The bookstores are flooded now with books about the "nuclear Iran" threat, including such high profile authors as the guy who wrote the anti-Kerry bestseller (Jerome Corsi, Atomic Iran and the guy who wrote the big book on Iraq's WMD threat (Kenneth Pollack, The Persian Puzzle), so the publishing industry, at least, is betting on war. Meanwhile, Iran started back up its nuclear fuel program. My theory is that Iran wants to produce enough fuel that it could assemble bombs, but not to produce the bombs themselves. That would give them some level of deterrence plus whatever prestige goes with being a nuclear power, but wouldn't waste a lot of effort on a useless weapons program, and wouldn't make Iran an immediate nuclear threat. I suspect that lots of countries are in a similar position. The only difference is that Iran has an aggressive sworn enemy painting it as part of the Axis of Evil. About the only good news that has come out of Iraq is the realization that a follow-up war with Iran would be even more disastrous.

• I've already written some about Sharon's Gaza retrenchment, which is dominating the news these days, so won't belabor that here. This has much the same aura as Barak's unilateral retreat from Lebanon. At the time it was speculated that the retreat was a diplomatic cover that would make it easier for Israel to lash out at Lebanon and Syria in the future without exposing soldiers to the hazards of occupation. Actually, not much happened there. Sure, Hezbollah treated it as a victory for armed resistance, and it probably reinforced the notion among some Palestinians that the only thing Israel understands is violence (actually, a widespread view that Israelis hold about Arabs). But for the most part, Israel let Lebanon be, perhaps not wanting to stir up more trouble. The big problem with unilateral moves is that you don't have a partner to help smooth things out. Gaza was clearly meant to be that way too, but with Arafat's death and Abbas' election, and the somewhat warm feelings that Bush has for Abbas, have given Sharon a partner whether he likes it or not. It's still ugly, and it's still not a real step toward peace, but it's not as ominous as it could have been.

• A few days back an Israeli settler/soldier from a West Bank settlement opened fire on a bus inside Israel proper, killing four Palestinian citizens of Israel. Sharon was so moved by this event that he denounced the killer as a "Jewish terrorist." This got me to thinking about what the Hebrew word for "terrorist" is, and how it should be translated. The English "terrorist" carries a lot of baggage with it, but Israelis use the word so ubiquitously that they can't possibly mean what we mean by it. But if you look at how they do use it, including this latest case, eventually you realize that there is an English word that fits the bill pretty accurately: "motherfucker." So next time you're stuck listening to an Israeli running off his mouth about "terrorists," just do a little mental editing for clarity, and replace each "terrorist" with "motherfucker." The rant will make more sense.

• Bush's polls on everything, but especially Iraq, have gone south in a sudden lurch. His Crawford vacation has turned into a big embarrassment, and a healthy piece of the credit there goes to Cindy Sheehan. Bush's refusal to meet with Sheehan may be because he has no real command of his position, or indeed of his administration. He's never been bothered by facts, and never been curious about what he doesn't know (apparently everything). He's not good with words or thinking on his feet. He's basically just a glib asshole, and a lot of people find that a turnoff -- Sheehan is undoubtedly one who won't take a backslap and a dirty joke as charming. The one thing he's had going for years now is that he's President, so he can sort of float above the fray. But with Sheehan that's a lose-lose proposition. If he meets her he's stepping down from his pedestal with no chance of winning her over. If he doesn't, he just looks like a coward. Besides, how busy can he be if he's on vacation?

• Oh yeah, the price of regular gas in Kansas shot up over $2.60 this week. I'll have more on that one of these days, but meanwhile I want to point out that the Fed has repeatedly raised interest rates this year. The purpose of the latter is to halt inflation, but what happens when these gas prices start to work their way into product prices? Inflation, right? What does the Fed do about that? Raise interest rates. What happens when you raise interest rates too high? Well, you choke the economy and get a recession, or worse. There's a dilemma here, and someone's gonna get hurt as a result.

• The most obnoxious of Kansas' notorious state school board members, Connie Smith, just got her hands caught in the cookie jar. She got reimbursed for close to $3000 in expenses for a junket to Miami Beach, much of which was padded or phony, much just contrary to state reimbursement policy. When presented with receipts and itineraries, she paid most of the reimbursement back to the state. She's still too small time to work for the CIA. But it's something for the voters to think about.

• I haven't written anything before about the news story Wichita is most famous for: the BTK serial killings. Criminal cases don't much concern me because for the most part they are just about individuals, and you never know about individuals. In particular, you can't generalize from one individual. It may have been close to inevitable that a serial killer such as BTK would have been a white male church-going suburbanite cop-wannabe, but there's no way you can extrapolate any of those characteristics and come up with a serial murderer. You just never know with individuals. But I do have one thing to say about the legal proceedings, which is that they've gone a lot more smoothly because there never was a legal option for capital punishment in this case. Rader will spend the rest of his days behind bars -- the case for that is open and shut, and the punishment meets our basic requirements. What we've been spared is the debate over whether the state should execute Rader (no), in most cases posed as whether he deserves to die (yes). Without suffering that debate, we can concentrate on what Rader did, which is horrible enough.

Postscript [Aug. 18]: Last item added a day after the rest was posted, but this is where it best fits.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

The Village Voice published my review of John Prine's latest album, Fair & Square: Back From Fishing. I'm rather pleased with this one, not least because it's the first time since the '70s when the Voice has asked me to write about something other than jazz. I don't know whether they intended for me to jump on the album's politics, but the politics were there for the taking, so I jumped. I'm not in general an advocate of getting rude in political arguments -- much the contrary, I believe that respect is the single most important attribute of any decent person's politics. But sometimes some political figures lose their right to be respected, especially when they take advantage of every courtesy shown them to further their dishonorable goals. George W. Bush is such a figure, a person who deserves the honorific "president" as little as he deserved to be elected in the first place. So when Prine questions his humanity, I say it's about time.

Judy Press wrote an op-ed in the Wichita Eagle today, titled "Israeli disengagement is a bold step." Like most hasbarah, her piece is so full of errors that it defies any attempt to reply. I had trouble getting past the first paragraph:

In May 1967, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon amassed on Israel's borders in a bid to wipe out Israel. In response, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack and unexpectedly gained control over land including the Gaza Strip (which was part of Egypt) and the West Bank (which was part of Jordan). Israel later gave up about 90 percent of the territory it captured, the Sinai Peninsula, to make peace with Egypt.

Of course, in May 1967 the Arab armies weren't amassed anywhere near Israel. Much of Egypt's army was tied down in the civil war in Yemen. No Arab country expected to "wipe out" Israel. None wanted a war with Israel in any shape or form. There was merely a diplomatic crisis that had occurred with the U.N. removed monitor troops from Egypt, allowing Egypt to shut down Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba. Israel's pre-emptive attack targeted the prospects for a diplomatic solution as much as it did its Arab neighbors. Israel had been hankering for a border fight ever since the 1949 armistices. Israel tried to provoke a war with Egypt in 1954 when Mossad agents planted bombs in Cairo and Alexandria in what eventually came to be known as the Lavon Affair. Israel did attack Egypt in 1956 during the Suez Crisis, ostensibly to help the U.K. and France topple the Egyptian government and take back the Suez Canal. Israel repeatedly provoked border incidents with Syria, and occasionally attacked towns in the West Bank and Gaza, nominally belonging to Jordan and Egypt. There was nothing surprising about Israel's victory in the 1967 war: Israel destroyed Egypt's air force in the first hours of the war, leaving Egypt's tanks defenseless. Only the campaign to take the Golan Heights from Syria took the full six days. This may have been unexpected to outsiders, but Israel's military had no doubt of its plans or its success.

The Gaza strip was never part of Egypt. It was part of Britain's Palestine Mandate, and was included (along with adjacent lands) as one of the parts of the Arab partition of Palestine proposed by the U.N. in 1947. Egypt held Gaza as a protectorate pending formation of a Palestinian state, which at the time was impossible both due to Israeli opposition and Jordan's annexation of the West Bank. Had Egypt considered Gaza to be part of Egypt, they would have insisted on Gaza as well as Sinai as part of the 1979 peace deal. That Sinai might be 90% of the land area of Sinai plus Gaza is one of those meaningless numbers that propagandists throw out to confuse the issue.

And that's just the first paragraph. They're all like that. The question is how to focus on the main problem without getting lost in all the errors and innuendos.