Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win.

Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 9^th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.)

***

JEFFREY LEWIS "The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song" (Rough Trade, 2001)

Basically, a Craig's List Missed Connection ad as a shaggy dog story: Slacker nebbish with ponytail and backpack (you can tell from the comic strip tucked inside the record sleeve), born of the same East Village "anti-folk" scene that coughed up Kimya Dawson, walks along Manhattan's West 23^rd Street towards the Chelsea Hotel, "where Nancy and Sid and my friend Dave once dwelled." He overhears a cute tattooed girl with glasses behind him walking with a couple gay male friends and remembering some song where somebody got a blowjob there. He gets "uncharacteristically courageous," and turns around and tells her "Leonard Cohen." They wind up having a five-minute conversation in which she confesses that Leonard's song inspires naughty thoughts, but timid little twerp that he is (a fact he's going to passive-aggressively pound into our heads with every last little self-aggrandizing bone in his undernourished body if it's the last thing he does), he never gets her phone number. "I'm a schmuck, don't you doubt it/All I did was write this stupid song about it," when they could have been giving each other head in the bed that Leonard Cohen once used. "You may think it's sad, you may think it's pathetic/that I'll sing this song and she'll never hear it." He's telling us all this, of course, in the most monotonous sing-song diction, accompanied by only an acoustic guitar which he barely strums, and his voice cracks like zits popping all the way through. The girl probably thought it was adorable; we're sure supposed to. Personally, it makes me want to wring his pencil neck. Have to admit, though, I kind of like the song anyway. The actual physical object - music on only one side of the single, "33rpm" and song info rubber-stamped on its plain white label - is almost as unadorned. And the enclosed miniature graphic-novel is about how Rough Trade heard the song, which becomes "the top-selling single in the entire world," and 50 years later poor Jeffrey plays it on stage and the girl is in the audience, and they live happily ever after, except she tosses out all his music and comic books. For now, though, he's apparently half-moved to Portland, in order to badly cover Crass songs. (www.myspace.com/jefflewisband)

THE LIVE ONES "Dirtweed"/"Don't Look Down" (Slow Gold Zebra, 2008)

Muffled hard rock from a totally anachronistic - heck, already totally anachronistic if this was ten or even 20 years ago - NYC sleaze-punk trio, led by two scraggly Connecticut-born Czekaj brothers. Yeah, dirtweeds for sure. They're trying to sound like Detroit in the late ‘60s, or maybe Seattle in the late ‘80s, and they know how to look the part. Singer-who-drums Mike Czekaj slimes high and threatening through his bloody adenoids about how you're gonna get beat when you walk down the street. The beat, naturally, sounds like walking down the street. Toward the end, he starts "woooo!"-ing and "waaagh!"-ing. In "Don't Look Down" the band slows down, shooting for a black hole of Funhouse emotion, and Mike's voice gets deeper and more self-destructive: "Please take me home/I can't stay here feeling this way." He starts howling more, quoting BÖC's "This Ain't The Summer of Love," and the sound builds to a decently noisy spurt of a drone, and there's an actual guitar solo. Almost four decades after the first Stooges album, this particular brand of rock yields constantly diminishing returns. But there's something still left in it. (www.myspace.com/theliveones)

LOOKER "After My Divorce"/"Master's Gone Away" (Serious Business, 2007)

Yet another young urban bohemian snapshot that already seems somewhat dated, given the bedbug plague and all: Newly unmarried woman moves to the Big Apple from Paris (or Venice, or Pittsburgh - depends which verse you're hearing, kind of like "Gone Country" by Alan Jackson backwards), digs a chair and table out of the trash and sweater out of the hallway to make it through the autumn. Well okay, that plot conflates both songs, but they do seem related. Looker are three pretty gals and a guy drummer, and in mid-decade they put a small, steady pile of good EPs, CD-Rs, and one album along with this 7-inch, and were one of my favorite local live bands in New York. "Master's Gone Away" has a rhythm that flirts with ska, and lyrics that quote the old blackface minstrel tune "Jimmy Crack Corn," which is also where the title (and the song's last line) comes from. "After My Divorce," post-Byrds Anglophile jangle with sweet triple-girl harmonies and a taut beat turning martial, references Morrissey and Poe in consecutive lines; this charming man reads the divorcée's tell-tale heart. Toward the end, the Lookers repeat "Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La" - the Shangri-Las being one influence they list on MySpace, along with the Clash, Adverts, Talking Heads, Shirelles, Blondie, Pretenders, and Kinks. Though not the Primitives or Waitresses or Jam, all of whom probably belong there too. (www.myspace.com/looker)

LOS ABANDONED "Office Xmas Party"/"Electric Dad" (Vapor, 2006) More friendly female vocals, this time from the opposite coast - Van Nuys, L.A., Cali.  In the seasonal though not especially seasonal-sounding A-side, a working woman (like the one in, say, Martha and the Muffins' "Echo Beach" maybe) ill-advisedly hooks up with a co-worker at the annual holiday bash, beneath decorations while other attendees fall face-first into the spiked fruit punch, and as you'd expect things get awkward when the pair confront each other again in the coffee room Monday morning. The beat is skiffly with a slight lilt, though probably not quite enough of one to justify the middle part of Los Abandoned's "new wave/Latin/indie" designation on MySpace. Eventually, horns take over. "Electric Dad" does in fact seem to be recited in Spanish, but its music is just an emaciated indie-pop approximation of synth-pop: which is to say, the synth seems lazily stuck on just one setting, too unambitious and not half funky enough to have passed for synth-pop on ‘80s MTV.  Though the band does appear to dress colorfully enough to pass for new wave. (www.myspace.com/losabandoned)

Chuck Eddy is the former music editor of the Village Voice and the author of several books, including the greatest book on heavy metal ever written, Stairway To Hell. He won't admit it, but he knows more about rock ‘n' roll than the entire accumulated BLURT brain trust.

Every now and then a record comes along that rises above everything around it and hits the sweet spot that separates the sublime from the mediocre, good, or even great. It doesn't necessarily have to break any new ground, but it does inhabit it's particular space as perfectly as possible.  

Let us, then, take a breather from everything else and pay tribute to a sublime piece of honky tonk heaven, Ray Price's 1963 classic Night Life album.
First, a bit of back-story. Night Life first crossed my turntable as a gift from Dave Gonzalez, prime-mover of The Paladins and The Hacienda Brothers, who were  untouchable purveyors of modern day honky tonk and western soul until the untimely death earlier this year of Brothers co-founder Chris Gaffney. While hanging out with Dave, Gaff and Hacienda Brothers manager Jeb Schoonover, it became obvious that, in their estimation, honky tonk country in it's purest form was and is the qualitative equal of anything ever recorded--classical, jazz, whatever. This is not something they generally teach you in the College of Musical Knowledge. 

This is a belief, not a thesis, but if you needed to make that argument Ray Price's Night Life could certainly be Exhibit A. Moving directly off the honky tonk blue-print perfected by Hank Williams, Price and his Cherokee Cowboys deliver 12 tracks of straight-up, hard country that differs from 100s or 1000s of other similar albums only in that it's just a little bit to a lot better than most of the others. It's a pure distillation.  

Night Life is something of a concept album, or a song-cycle, revolving around the title cut; a series of songs exploring the night life and all the vagaries of the night lifestyle. Which includes plenty of opportunities for drinking, dancing, playing music, infidelity, heartbreak, remorse; the stuff of country & western music from time immemorial. Many of these are  classics, recorded before and since then by numerous artists. But seriously; show me a better version of "Night Life" and I'll eat Ray's black hat. 

The title cut incapsulates what is so right about this record. After a mood-setting spoken intro by Ray ("Well Hi neighbors!...We want to thank you for being so nice on our last record...we've chosen...songs of happiness, sadness, heartbreak, songs of the night life..."), the band kicks in with a pedal steel guitar swell that just takes your breath away. Ray steps up to the mic with his velvet voice, the band falls in behind him at a stately pace and it all just comes together. And therein lies the magic: Price's genuinely emotive voice embedded in arrangements that are absolutely not in a hurry to get anywhere. The pacing is everything, the key to the mansion, where macaroni becomes Mozart. It's subtle, methodical and sensual; this is music that really, genuinely swings. The band is so precise, so perfectly in synch that it's actually hard to imagine it getting any better. Ray and his voice, of course, are worthy of being on the Mt. Rushmore of honky tonk. Willie Nelson does a lovely version of "Night Life," but Ray Price owns it.

Ray's version of "Sittin' and Thinkin'" beats writer Charlie Rich's by a country mile, and Rich was an absolute master. I've listened to it a hundred times, and I'm sure I'll listen another hundred. Again, perfection: the steel guitar swoons, the lower register guitar (or perhaps a 6 string bass) picks out a walking groove, the supple rhythm section swings and Ray delivers the goods. "I got loaded last night/on a bottle of gin/and I had a fight/with my best girlfriend/When I'm drinking/I am nobody's friend/Baby please wait for me/until they let me out again." The band sounds both hard and soft, the pace is a leisurely amble, the destination the truth. The song-titles tell the whole story: "Lonely Street," "The Wild Side of Life," "If She Could See Me Now," "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women." No crap strings, no corny choruses mucking everything up. The fact that Ray only wrote one track doesn't raise any heat here. Even the cover is cool, as much cocktail lounge as road-house, with Ray looking slightly amused while a couple (illicit, no doubt) nuzzle and sip cocktails. He doesn't even wear a hat in the front cover; what confidence.

It's no secret that much (most) contemporary, Nashville-based country music sounds manufactured, calculated and insincere. There are legions of rebels, eccentrics and iconoclasts in the Americana camp, of course, turning out new twists on the twang and keeping it real. But in 1963 Ray Price was before the fall, when Nashville could still be fresh, competition was more genial, gigs were plentiful and the music hadn't yet been relegated to Squaresville by the coming tide of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, James Brown, electric Miles Davis and all that came after them. Ray Price has made many more fine records over several decades, maybe some of them as good as this one. But Night Life, with it undercurrent of sensuality and blue collart dissipation, remains a high-water mark and a good primer for any songwriter and picker with a cowboy hat who wants to get really, really real and get it right.    

 "Dude, have you been to Berlin yet?!"
 Episode Vier
 
You know the bonus disk on the KISS Vol. 1 DVD boxset? The one tucked in the sleeve as if it is of least importance in the pack? Well, somewhere towards the end of that disk, there's Ace on his knees, swaying back and forth, undulating rock style to whatever he's unleashing on the strings. It's a moment, I tell you. Then fast forward to Black Diamond, the last song on the disk, and you see Peter Criss take over the mic and push out so much natural soul it kind of staggers you for a minute, because you really didn't expect it.
 
 You should check it out.
 
 The Hellacopters out of Stockholm, Sweden, have been a band for more than a dozen years, coming up in the garage, jetting on to larger labels and even a major, then rolling back down to where their feet touched the ground again. This year they decided to break up, and in great group spirit and with respect to their legacy and their fans, the band played a soldout farewell tour through Europe.
 
 For more information, see www.hellacopters.com <http://www.hellacopters.com> .
 

Guest post this week from yet another one of my favorites (can’t help it), Australian singer-songwriter Shane Nicholson. Buy his records. All of them.

Dear Pluto,

I’ve been thinking for a while now, that possibly you are finding it extremely cold and lonely out there at the edge of the solar system. Not to mention, with the time it takes you to orbit the sun, the years must surely feel to be moving very slowly [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Dear Friends-

One hot topic in your responses to my last post was my new kitten Castro, so I decided to put together a short video of him and I.  These clips were filmed by webcam while working on responses to some of your comments.  IÂ’ll finish typing my responses and post them asap.  In the mean time let me introduce you to Castro.

All The Best- Justin XOXOXO  

This month’s brief compendium of music/music-lifestyle related whatnot --- as it pertains to our tribal interests: a tribal shortlist. First things first [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

My Imaginary Visit to the Hard Rock Park

When I was a kid, my two cousins and I thought Myrtle Beach was actually called Murder Beach.

We were scared to go there, and the fact that our parents would try to diffuse our fear by saying things like, "At least it sounds nicer than Nag's Head or Kill Devil Hills," did very little to abate our apprehension.

Over the past 20 years, I figure I've played in Myrtle Beach with Widespread Panic more times than I care to remember. And I remember all of the gigs, from the earliest at The Afterdeck - basically an outdoor deck connected to the strip club known as Thee Doll House - to a massive gig at the local raceway. Most recently, our venue of choice has been the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach.

During our last three-night stand down at the House of Blues, I was invited to check out the Hard Rock Park, an amusement park that had just opened a few miles away run by the same folks that own the Hard Rock Café and all the other mass-marketing mess associated with that particular brand.

I'll admit it: I was curious and a little bit frightened at the prospect. After all, nothing had put the fear into me more than wandering around the casino at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas a few years ago and seeing everything from Keith Moon's drumsticks to Joan Osborne's dress encased in glass like holy relics for all the tourists to drool over. Okay, maybe Keith's sticks merited it, but not Joan's dress or Vince Neil's collection of women's undergarments. The whole thing felt cheap and sickened me to the core. In my mind, some things are sacraments and others are just dirty and mundane. The corporatization of the music that made me who I am just felt wrong...kind of like most organized religion does to me. Despite my gut reaction, I looked up the Hard Rock Park on the web in anticipation of a possible visit. I was appalled, but not surprised, with what I saw:

• "Led Zeppelin: The Ride" is the big thrill-coaster where riders race at speeds up to 65 mph all to the tune of "Whole Lotta Love." I'll bet Page and Plant made a pretty penny on that deal, but wonder if Willie Dixon's estate ever got its due.

• "Nights in White Satin" is the haunted house at the Hard Rock theme park, which begs the question: was anything the Moody Blues ever did considered the least bit frightening, except possibly their brief appearance on MTV in the 80's?

• There's a bouncy house called the "Punk Pit" that advertises "slam dancing for the whole family." Now that's something unusual.

• There is even an attraction called the "Roadie Stunt Show" that allows onlookers to watch a hapless roadie on his first day of tour. Fascinating I'm sure to just about everybody, unless you're one of the lucky few who set up gear and deal with prima-donna rock stars for a living.

• Perhaps the most intriguing attraction is called "The Magic Mushroom Garden." Seriously. This is a place where children of all ages can climb and play on soft, colorful mushrooms. I guess it's no worse than the infamous spinning teacup ride at Disney World that I was so fond of as a child ...just without all the projectile vomiting.

After checking out the website, I went to bed conflicted over my pending visit to Hard Rock Park the next day. Everything I loved about rock music had been co-opted into utter silliness like some kind of heretical cartoon....and all for the profit of someone who at one time probably loved rock ‘n' roll as much as I did. And worst of all, it was neatly packaged and "fit for the whole family!"

Whether it was my own mixed emotions about visiting the park, or something freaky I ate, my dreams that night were plagued by nightmarish visions of other "attractions" I might encounter should I decide to go. Thus, in all good humor, here's what I remember from my imaginary visit to the Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach:

• After a few drinks at "Bonham's Vodka Bar" (23 shots, minimum), proceed immediately to "The Randy Rhodes Airplane Experience" and try to buzz the tour bus.

• For a little more down-to-Earth experience, give "Keith Moon's Destruction Derby Bumper Cars" a shot. Just make sure you aren't dressed as his limo driver!

• The park's creators are very concerned for the safety of their patrons so in front of every thrill ride is a life-sized cardboard cutout of Ronnie James Dio that says, "You must be at least this tall to shout at the devil on this ride!"

• Getting tired of those screaming brats? Drop them off at "Gary Glitter's Baby Sitting Service." Don't worry about a thing: the kids are in good hands!

• Be sure to visit "The Iggy & the Stooges Funhouse," consisting of a long, dark hallway filled with broken light bulbs and peanut butter. If you make it out unharmed, a lucrative publishing deal and commercial licensing opportunities await!

• If you really want a scary experience, try "Jerry Garcia's Deadhead Tour Express Train," a forty-five minute ride though a bad acid trip all set to the tune of 12 different poorly recorded bootleg versions of "Dark Star" playing AT THE SAME TIME. Free Ben & Jerry's ice cream during the drum solo!

• Towels are provided free of charge, but no sun block is needed if you want to take a permanent dip in the "Brian Jones Memorial Swimming Pool."

• Be sure to bring a handkerchief as you stroll through the memories in "Mark David Chapman's Gallery of Shooting Stars." Pow!
Besides the more obvious rock ‘n' roll rides, there are also a few intellectually stimulating attractions for the indie-rock shoe gazers in every crowd:

• Check out Wayne Coyne's one-man performance of Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain's monologues. The quirky and cerebral white-suited leader of The Flaming Lips adds his own spin to Holbrook's revered reading of America's foremost humorist by performing inside of a huge, clear plastic gerbil ball.

• Try your skill at the "Axl Rose Midway of Difficult Performers." Games like "Find Jeff Mangum," "What Kind of Band is Built To Spill Anyway," and "Will Ryan Adams Actually Show Up?" test your mental prowess and teach kids valuable lessons. You could even win your very own Wynona Ryder kewpie doll!
And realizing that all kinds of emotional stress can occur during a visit to the amusement park, management proudly offers certified therapeutic counseling in the Psych Ward:

• Arguing with your spouse? Just ask Sid or Nancy for some sage advice for couples!

• Feeling depressed? Kurt or Elliott will talk you out of falling on that butter knife!

• For those with really deep-seeded problems, we recommend several sessions in the sandbox sanitarium with Brian. For best results, be sure to wear a colorful Hawaiian surf shirt!

Lost in the park? Be sure to see one of our many tour guides dressed as Sufjan Stevens, who will compose a topographical song on the spot to help you get to where you're going!

Need a bite to eat? Scattered throughout the park are several "Elvis Presley's Blue Suede Diner," where visitors can ingest the South's most artery-clogging fare with free Metamucil chasers for the olds and Ex-Lax for the young. If only the King had known about the wonders of regularity, he might still be with us today!
And don't miss the park's thrilling main attraction: John Entwistle's Roller Coaster Tour of Las Vegas. Start off with your very own heart condition, high-priced escort, and eight ball of cocaine in your penthouse suite and end up in the county morgue! Don't worry, your longtime bandmates will go ahead and start their tour without you!

It's kinda ironic that this last attraction was the final stop in my imaginary visit to the Hard Rock Park. After all, it was at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas where John Entwistle spent his final hours. Perhaps he had a premonition of the future of his legacy and that vision was the Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach. Or maybe he decided to check out early the only way he knew how: like a real rock star.

God bless you, John!

DAS

Dave Schools blames his strange affection for submarine movies on the 20-plus years he's spent in a tour bus with Widespread Panic. When not blogging for BLURT or playing bass in front of thousands of screaming fans, Dave likes to dance...tap dance.

Photo by Josh Miller

I'm Not Giving Obama A Free Pass, Neither Should You

Dear Friends and Bloggers Alike,

Long time, no post!  "What gives?" you ask.  Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have been working on a new Anti-Flag record, or maybe it's because all those "Saved By Zero" car commercials finally drove me to violently jab my ear drums with an ice pick, or maybe it has to do with the fact that I recently adopted a new kitten from the Animal Rescue League...  Chances are it has to do with all of the above and then some - minus the ice pick, I used a pencil...

Regardless, it's nice to be back at my laptop writing to you.  My last post produced a flurry of interesting and provocative responses from you covering subjects as diverse as: a "One World Government/Illuminati" is running the world; "gargantuan evil" is in control of not one but both major US political parties; people should not vote for Obama and instead vote for a third party; and my personal favorite, which came in the form of this question: "Why did the Pittsburgh Steelers play Ben Roethlisberger against Indianapolis instead of Byron Leftwich when it was obvious that Big Ben was banged up, exhausted and in need of some rest?"  I couldn't agree more.

Regardless of your point of view, I appreciate your input immensely as it reminds me how lucky I am to be a part of such an amazing community of people, specifically those I have connected with as a result of posting on BLURT and by performing in Anti-Flag. So thanks to all of you who have posted a comment.

Within the next two weeks I plan to respond directly to some of your comments from my last post and this post, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime I want to take a moment to send a special thanks to JuliaIsabella for her post... Thanks JuliaIsabella, your words inspire me to keep doing what I do. It was a pleasure meeting you.

Now onward to today's main event...

Election night, the taste of victory was sweet.

Actually, it tasted more like Guinness as I downed a pint in celebration while leading a chorus of "We Are The Champions" at an election night party, one arm around my older sister and the other around her daughter, who coincidentally is the little girl who appears on the cover of Anti-Flag's Terror State CD. That photo was taken only a few years into the Bush White House and that little girl is now nearly eighteen!  Seeing her grown up is a firsthand illustration to me of the years that have passed and the endless opportunities to take this world in a progressive direction that have been missed by the Bush White House during that time. With those thoughts in mind it was hard - almost impossible actually - for me not to feel great about the ouster of the Republicans from the White House, and to witness history as a black man was elected to live in a house built by slaves and given a name that at this point in time strikes me as one part racist and one part absurd: "The White House..."  Really? (I wonder what they're going to do with the "Whites Only" sign now that the Obamas are going to be living there?)

Yes, once again truth is stranger than fiction and even those who would most likely be categorized as Obama skeptics couldn't contain their feelings of exhilaration at the election results.  Amy Goodman of Democracy Now certainly couldn't hide the smile on her face as she reported the news of Obama's victory, and even commentators on Fox News came across as genuinely excited and even one or two percent less Stepford Wife-ish than usual as it was confirmed that Obama had enough votes to win. Was that quite possibly a glimmer of hope I noticed twinkling from Karl Rove's eye when commenting on Obama‘s victory? Actually, no it was not...  Now I'm just being ridiculous!

Having suffered through eight years of Bush and Republican rule which brought us two  wars, a historic gap between rich and poor, ever deepening environmental devastation, a backward energy policy, and the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, the very election of Barack Obama is a victory in itself. The fact that he is an African American and the most progressive person elected to the presidency in decades shines a light on how far America has come since the days of Jim Crow and segregation, and even since the invasion of Iraq.

Yes, the Obama victory is exhilarating, exciting, and ground breaking in so many ways, but what now?  As we enter into the next historic phase of this presidential journey the question remains: Will Obama be his own man, or will he be a tool of The Man?

Hints at both possibilities lurk below the surface, simultaneously sparking within me hope and concern.

This past Sunday on 60 Minutes, Obama stated that he was committed to closing down Guantanamo Bay and ending torturing as "an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."  That sounds pretty good, right?  On the other hand, Democracy Now reported that John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials who served under George Tenet, are leading Obama's review of intelligence agencies and making recommendations to Obama's administration. Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition; Miscik was involved in politicized intelligence used in the build up to the Iraq war; which alleged that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Ok, now I don't feel so good about Obama.

Such examples, pro and con, swirl around President-elect Obama and it is impossible to know for sure which direction he will take on every issue. However, there are measures we can take to influence President-elect Obama, and the first step in that process is for each and everyone of us to write and/or call him when we feel he is on target and when we feel he is not. I am personally committed to this action, starting today, and I urge you to do the same on the issues that matter most to you; be it the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, health care, education, the environment, energy, gay rights, the Supreme Court, Wall Street giveaways, military recruiters in schools, Federal Communications Commission reform (the Fairness Doctrine) - any and every issue you hold near and dear.

The kind of change America and this world needs will not come over night and it will not come easy.  Many people feel too cynical to believe it is possible for the government to be reclaimed by or to work for the people of this country rather than the corporate raiders who currently have their claws dug into it.

Believe me, I understand your hopelessness, but as recently as November 4th many people did not believe that it was possible for an African American to be elected President of the United States. Make no mistake about it, in Barack Obama we have a leader who, despite his faults, gives us reason to believe that he is genuinely concerned about people and working for progressive change for the nation and the world.  You can give up without a fight, you can give into your cynicism and apathy and be a part of the problem, or you can take a chance and make an effort; even one as minor as periodically writing to or calling your state and federal representatives (including President

Obama) and letting them know what you believe in and which direction you want to see this country and this world take.

You can start now by writing to President Elect Obama

at: http://change.gov/page/s/yourstory

As those of you who have been reading my posts know, Obama was not my first choice for president and I continue to believe that he is wrong on many issues, but I stand by my belief that he was the only viable choice for president in 2008. That said, the change we voted for will not come at all if we don't do our part to hold President Elect Obama accountable for the actions he takes as the 44th President of the United States.  Take fifteen minutes to write to the guy!

The future of your nation and world is at least as important as writing a five minute email to a friend about what happened this week on The Office, or who was eliminated on The Pick Up Artist - Season 2.

First, best e-mail I got last week (a haiku-ish reply). From my friend Philip Price of Winterpills, who've been on this list before:

sorry. election time got crazy. i had volunteered. what a time.

i drank too much.

then my hard drive crashed and i temporarily lost everything. but i found it. [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

By Martin Bisi

The explosion of energy I saw on Brooklyn's streets after the Obama win, recedes into the background. And I feel I'm looking at an economic and social playing field that is now undeniably different. The financial crisis has brought a shift in the dynamics of how the neighborhoods will change in the coming years. And I do believe neighborhoods like everything else, occupy the 4th dimension of time, so their identity exists in the context of history and change. The result of the election also has brought about a massive shift, in the mental realm - how 2.5 million residents see their connection with the rest of the continent. That these two forces would occur simultaneously, almost gives a sense of cosmic synchronicity - paradigm shifts occur at break points.

Compared to the near spiritual feelings about Obama's election, the downsizing of the economy in Brooklyn is the yang, to Obama's yin. I live across the street from an empty lot that has been the anticipated location of a mega Whole Foods market, with rooftop parking - for years. That plan is now dead in the water. If the company does open its first Brooklyn branch, the official plan is now to do it on a much smaller scale. Atlantic Yards, the gargantuan development project for Downtown Brooklyn, is also being scaled back by an indefinite amount. Common sense suggests it will be scaled way back. That project was so iconic of the over-development of Brooklyn, that it inspired the slogan "Don't supersize Brooklyn". Well I wish I'd gotten the T shirt with those words when I had the chance. Those words are not exactly relevant anymore, and that's what happens in a paradigm shift - concepts and words need to be re-defined, discarded, replaced.

I'll throw in another word - gentrification. That word was the lightening rod for all the cultural, economic and political ire of the last 15 years in Brooklyn. At issue was the opening of many businesses that catered to economically upscale customers, and the consequences of that. I can say for myself, that the termination of the Whole Foods project across the street, is making my living status feel more secure. The closing of a Starbucks a couple miles from me - in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn - must have a similar effect on some of the residents there.

So with the heat turned down from 10, to maybe 7, the whole phenomenon of gentrification can be looked at more objectively. Some of the obvious contradictions - like the mutual reliance of valuable culture and the influx of educated, moneyed residents - make the classic 'gentrification' analysis inadequate for the tensions sure to come. We are also now stuck with the harsh downside, that economic downsizing means less employment, and a different kind of challenge.

It seems things can only be perfect for a blink of an eye - sigh. So I'm glad I hit the streets of Brooklyn on election night - definitely, a unique moment of collective elation.  

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.