Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Grateful Dead Hour #1035
Support for the Grateful Dead Hour comes this week from: The Gathering of the Vibes July 31st through August 3 in Bridgeport CT. Phil Lesh & Friends, The Black Crowes, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Neville Brothers, Zappa Plays Zappa, Donna Jean and The Tricksters, Dark Star Orchestra, Jackie Greene Band and many more. Tickets, directions and complete information at gatheringofthevibes.com. And from Roy Schneider and the Roadside Turtle Rescue. Friendly, funny, smart American songs in a down-home style. On CDBaby.com and royschneider.com
Hosting “Golden Road” solo today
I’m hosting “Tales from the Golden Road” alone today so Lambert can go watch the final performance of “Passing Strange.”
Tune in to Sirius 32 from 4 to 6 pm EDT and we’ll talk about whatever comes up!
1-888-89-SIRIUS to join the conversation.
www.sirius.com/gratefuldead for a free three-day online trial.
P.S. Here’s a picture of Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics editor David Dodd in my studio last week, while he was a guest on the show.
Kay Ryan in the Washington Post
Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, says Ryan has “the gift of being simultaneously very funny and very wise.”
The article, by Bob Thompson, includes a video of Kay reading.
Another R for Obama
Larry Hunter in the New York Daily News:
I’m a lifelong Republican – a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp’s Empower America.
This November, I’m voting for Barack Obama.
When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that’s antithetical to almost everything I believe in?
The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies – this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.
Taxes, economic policy and health care reform matter, of course. But how we extract ourselves from the bloody boondoggle in Iraq, how we avoid getting into a war with Iran and how we preserve our individual rights while dealing with real foreign threats – these are of greater importance.
John McCain would continue the Bush administration’s commitment to interventionism and constitutional overreach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. That’s what conservatism used to mean – and it’s what George W. Bush promised as a candidate.
Music for Democracy interviews
I’m working with a new organization called Music for Democracy, a grass-roots movement to inspire music lovers to participate n the political system so we can rescue democracy from the clutches of rapacious corporatists. The Republican Party is the principal offender – virtually nothing but a front group for pious thieves – but the Democratic party is to an alarming degree complicit. My attitude is that we have to get the Republicans out of office before they do any further damage, and then either fix or replace the Democratic party. It is going to take generations to undo the damage of the last 25 years.
One of MFD’s tactics is to get cultural heroes to talk about this stuff. There are a number of interviews online already – David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, DJ Spooky, et al. – and we have more in the works.
Barry Smolin, my Pacifica radio colleague, a fellow musician, and an inspiring teacher of high-school English in Los Angeles, has just posted an interview with his old friend and former bandmate Stew.
From the intro:
The artist who goes by the nom d’art Stew is best known these days as the Tony-award winning creator and star of the musical Passing Strange, a breakthrough piece of theatre-making that has galvanized Broadway with its witty script and raging rock and roll score. Stew is no overnight success, though the mainstream press is just now catching up with the guy. He has been plying his trade in a variety of styles — from L.A. punk bands, to the European avant-garde, to the L.A. art-pop scene, to his current foray into musical theater — since the late ’70s.
From the interview:
Barry Smolin: It would seem that Passing Strange‘s world of black middle-class “savings bonds… real estate, college funds, jobs with benefits, homeowners, debutantes,” as your lyrics describe, would have already produced a multitude of Barack Obamas. Yet Obama’s arrival on the national scene is viewed as something “new,” though the archetype has populated the African-American community for decades. What’s your reaction to the political rise of Senator Obama, and why do you think it’s happening at this moment in US history?
Stew: I really don’t think it is possible to consider Obama’s rise without considering Bush’s fall. And by that I mean America’s fall. Obama did not come out of nowhere and he is not merely the result of some racial epiphany that white America has suddenly had. Bush and Cheney created Obama, inadvertently, mind you. Bush’s sickening fascism opened the door, and look who’s coming to dinner: the Savior. Bush stank up the joint. Obama is supposed to clean it up. And I choose that metaphor carefully. Obama is expected/elected to be the janitor of Bush’s lunacy (apologies to Nico).
Please read the whole interview: these are two of the smartest people I know, and here is much to learn from this dialogue. And please visit the rest of the Music for Democracy site; we have a ton of work to do.
And one more quote from the amazing interview with Stew:
….large sections of the black community have historically bought into a lot of the stereotypes that were supposedly sold to or forced on us. How many black kids still buy into the story that being smart or interested in things beyond your neighborhood is “acting white”? I used to get that shit all the time. When did being curious about the world become a “white” thing? And is the “great white conspiracy” against black people responsible for that mentality? I don’t think so. I would never ascribe that much power to white people to credit them with fucking everything up for me. As long as they don’t charge me to get into the library, I’ll find a way.
I grew up experiencing more oppression from black people in the form of pressure to conform than I ever did from white racism. I think black people got so caught up in a confused sense of black pride that they actually cut themselves off from the ability to be full cultural players. Two unlikely heroes of mine, Maulana Karenga and Robert Redford, taught me the exact same thing: don’t wait for an institution to be built to get you what you need, build the institution your own damn self.