Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 191

A Staple in Stones' Repertoire?

If you're wondering where the Stones got chorus and vocal inflection for early hit "The Last Time."  Uncredited.  Then again, this is a traditional song and they only used part of it. But the Staples' rendition is fantastic in any case:

Your Daily USA Child Gun Tragedy

Today's example from gun nutty Fayetteville, NC, where a girl, 2, shoots and kills herself with loaded handgun. "According to police, the girl's father was inside the home at the time of the shooting. No one else inside the home was injured." Police say it was an "accident."  No, not really, right?

Over the Alps

When we did a flyover some October a few years back.

Saturday Night Music Pick

Not much remembered Sam Cooke album cut (which Springsteen sort of "borrowed" not too long ago), fantastic "Meet Me at Mary's Place" (his old gospel group the Soul Stirrers backing).  Below that, the other side of Saturday night, hanging with your gal or guy.   If you're late to Sam Cooke--you have quite an adventure awating you, going back, especially, to the early gospel years.  

A Heart Needs a 'Homeland'?

Rolling Stone writer IDs 7 ways to save Homeland, now stinking in its 3rd season (after sinking in its 2nd).   It's true, Brody needed to die at the end of season one.  I gave up on it last week.  So will miss the fun if Carrie does sleep with Quinn.  Oh, Mandy, you gave without taking!

Bird Brains Bigger Than Little Betty's?

Nick Kristof's Sunday column, just up, recalls his days as a farm boy, arguing, in the wake of the latest salmonella outbreak, that geese are more moral than humans and chickens smarter at math than the average toddler--on the way to declaring that we treat our farm birds too cruelly in how they are raised and slaughtered and maybe we should not eat them at all.

Look, farmbirds are not Einsteins. But evidence is mounting that they’re smarter than we have assumed, and just because they don’t have big brown eyes doesn’t mean that they should be condemned to spend their lives jammed into tiny cages in stinking, fetid barns, with bodies of dead birds sometimes left rotting beside live ones.

'NYT' Review Hits WikiLeaks Flick--Which Is Bombing

Update: Variety late Friday says the film is tanking, at the box office, with the 2nd worst Friday opening for any major film all year.  But it seems to be helping the Gibney doc, viewed by many reviewers as better.

A.O. Scott's review just posted and it's not exactly a rave, not a good sign for a movie that may be  box office (not to mention factually) challenged to begin with.  UPDATE: As more reviews pour in, Rotten Tomatoes has it with very poor 31% favorable rating.

This version of the WikiLeaks story, directed by Bill Condon from a script by Josh Singer, is a moderate snoozefest, undone by its timid, muddled efforts at fair-mindedness....

As we zoom from squatter apartments to newsrooms to government offices (where Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci and Anthony Mackie worry about their jobs and their diplomatic contacts), the picture grows fuzzier, and the vital questions it wants to raise about privacy, transparency and security grow muddier. 

Of course, the Times is part of the story--but that's an old, and long, story.    See my two books on WikiLeaks and Manning over on the right rail of this blog.

The Know-Nothing Parties

All you need to know about the viral cluelessness--so damaging to the country--of GOPers and especially Tea Partiers is revealed starkly in a new Bloomberg poll.  Think about the ramifications of this (as we've just seen):

Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree.

Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion.

Van the Man With a Plan

I posted here earlier this week about the new Van Morrison five disc set of alt-takes and outtakes for his classic Moondance album.  Now Twitter friend Ray @Radlein points me to something I have somehow missed despite my Van fandom for lo these many decades:  To fulfill and get out of his contract with Bang records in '67 he recorded over 30 one-minute "songs" in a session that took less than an hour and was a goof from start to finish.  Songs had titles like "Do You Want a Danish" (he rhymes sandwich with danish) and "You Say France and I Whistle."   And the pointed, "Big Royalty Check."  Here's perhaps the greatest of them all, the immortal "Ringworm."

Patti, the Notorious Mr. Brooks, and 'CBGB'

Wild:  Patti Smith in 1979 clip from children's show singing (after brief interview) "You Light Up My Life" with the composer Joe Brooks at the piano. Yes, that Joe Brooks--charged a few years ago with numerous felonies related to him luring women to his apartment via Craig'sList and then sexually assaulting them.  He committed suicide before trial started.

BTW, I saw that widely-panned CBGB film last night because son of a friend (who once appeared in a school play directed by my son) plays Tom Verlaine, and very well.  Among the howlers:  They Patti Smith singing "Because the Night" as an unknown in 1974, when she was already a star when the tune (written with Springsteen) was released in 1978.