Farrah Fawcett

June 25th, 2009

I did get to meet Farrah Fawcett once, but as with many of my celebrity encounters, it was somewhat embarrassing.

It was at a so-called “Bessman Bash” a few years ago at my pal Bob Merlis’s in L.A. He throws one of these annually at the end of summer, a great opportunity for me to see a lot of people I know out there at once.

Our buddy Billy Gibbons was invited of course, but if I remember right (always questionable), ZZ Top’s legendary vocalist/guitarist  called during the party to say he couldn’t make it, that he was home in Texas (though he also lives in L.A.). Ten minutes later who should walk in but Billy Gibbons! He had called from his car just to set me up for what truly was a wonderful surprise. He was with an attractive middle-aged blond and was carrying a huge container of one of his famous guacamole varieties.

Maybe an hour or so later I was in the kitchen, no doubt pretty soused. I think I was talking to my friend Dave Schulps when the blond that was with Billy wandered in looking for the bathroom. I pointed the way and that would have been that, except that when I walked into the dining room to get more food, a record company publicist friend stopped me.

“You know, this party could make a Rolling Stone ‘Random Note,’” she said. “Whaa?” I slobbered. “Yes! Billy Gibbons, Farrah Fawcett….” “Farrah Fawcett?” I barked. “She’s here? Where?”

“She’s the woman you just told where the bathroom was!”

I sensed a certain disbelief, if not disdain, in her tone, and when Farrah returned to the kitchen I apologized profusely for not recognizing her and told her how much I enjoyed her work in Robert Duval’s “The Apostle” and Robert Altman’s otherwise awful “Dr T and the Women.”

At least I can say that Farrah was just great. She hung with us in the kitchen for quite a while and it was a real treat talking with her—about what I can’t remember.

Posted in Cinema, Personal | 1 Comment »

To Twitter or Not to Twitter

June 10th, 2009

One of the most important “life lessons” to be gleaned from reality shows, according to New York Times columnist Gail Collins, “is that people who embrace 21st-century public life, whether it is lived on Twitter or TLC, aren’t allowed to complain about the downside.”

She was discussing the  endless “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” shenanigans that are hard to avoid if you waste most your day reading up on useless information, but it struck a note with me, who’s never watched “Jon & Kate,” but has indeed complained about the downside of embracing 21st-century public life.

Then again, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I’ve offended, let’s see, close to 100 Facebook “friends,” 53 Plaxo “connections” and eight LinkedIn “contacts”—all of whom I’ve coldly let slide without “confirming” their requests, and probably another 80-some Twitter “followers” whom I haven’t reciprocated. I think I might have had a Myspace request once, too, but it’s been so long I can’t remember.

Obviously, I haven’t used any of these services (except for Twitter). I only signed up on them because I had to in order to research people who were already on. It was a necessary mistake.

Especially Facebook. I immediately got swamped with requests from people who wanted to be my friend. What was so disconcerting was the fact that most of them were already my friends! And those that weren’t I didn’t even know!

So I let them slide. Except for one or two, whom I contacted by email to personally testify to our current and continuing and presumably lasting friendship–only to find that they were deeply hurt that I didn’t want to be their Facebook Friend. What kind of fucking heel was I?

Then there’s apparently a “Friends of Jim Bessman” Facebook “page” or whatever it’s called. “Apparently,” I say, because I’ve been told about it by several “friends” (interesting, isn’t it, that I’m no longer sure exactly what I mean by the word “friend”) who are on it, apparently wondering why I haven’t “updated my wall,” if in fact I understand the Facebook methodology correctly.

So I’ll tell you why: I really don’t have anything to say. I’m not doing much of anything but writing about not doing much of anything, nothing, that is, that can’t be expressed in 140 characters or less.

Which, of course, brings me to Twitter. I can’t remember when I signed on, but I’m guessing it was back in January, around the time I re-started my web site. My first update was April 6, so it took me that long to motivate myself. But at least I didn’t start with “I’m trying to figure out this Twitter thing” or anything like that—like so many other newbies. Once I realized that I could use Twitter to essentially confirm my existence I hit the ground running.

No, it’s not about what I’m eating for breakfast—though I do play up my friends’ neighborhood biscotti shop Bis.Co. Latte a lot. It’s really about letting anyone who’s interested know I’m still out there, actively seeing shows and going to events and writing on this site, even if I don’t have the outlets and work opportunities I used to in this era of steep decline in both the music and publishing industries.

Strictly self-promotion, with minimal effort. And while I probably have a relatively low following-to-follower ratio, there are a few Twitterers whom I follow that I’d like to promote here.

First, of course, is Arianna Huffington. I’m a huge fan of Arianna since meeting her during the Bush-Gore campaign. No one has done more in turning this country in a progressive direction than Arianna, and it’s always a pleasure keeping up with her.

I became a fan of women’s magazine super-publisher Bonnie Fuller’s writing via Arianna’s hugely influential Huffington Post, and while her Tweets are all very girlie, for some reason I enjoy them. And even more girlie and no less enjoyable are Meghan McCain’s. With over 44,000 followers, she—and not Palin, Gingrich, Limbaugh or Coulter (in fact, she famously picked a fight with Coulter) is the true face of the Republican party’s potential—that is, if the party can follow her lead in embracing gays and anyone else who doesn’t fit its dominant and repressive older white male demographic (not likely).

That leaves the one and only Sandra Bernhard.

There’s something somehow so indescribably beautiful about this recent Sandy Tweet: “special promo, all my favorite summer fruits are out, cherries, hard grapes, and above all my beloved watermelon! cooling and soothing!”

Without making an issue out of it, she’s telling all of us to eat healthy!

Or this two-parter from her recent trip to London: “if you are measured by the depth of your friendships than i am blessed 1000 fold, what a birthday night of singing smashing plates laughs [break] galore, right here in london, with some of the greatest folks i know, this is what it’s all about, continuity, the deep connections of love.”

She’s just so positive, sharing all the good things in her life.

“maybe it is finally time for peace in the middle east obama is not afraid of love and showing it with strength and certainty people all over [world] the world join hands start a love train tell all the folks in egypt and israel too, join the train at the station! all aboard!”

Sending out only good thoughts and encouragement, she is–she who can and does turn on a dime to righteous ranting and raving anger: “what are we back in the dark ages?” She tweeted in reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. “this is some sick shit! just when you think we’ve arrived, you discover it’s all been put on hold, we’ve got to hit the streets again and never stop! darlings love.”

One of the most brilliant, complex, courageous social observers out there, she summed herself up thusly: “it’s not hard to be me at all but it’s very hard being someone who has no resources and that’s the problem, we who have what we need don’t have to bitch, i do it in the name of those who don’t.”

Reading Sandy’s tweets is like seeing her shows—spontaneous, sizzling, hysterical, inspiring. To use my favorite Peter Tosh word (from “Lesson in My Life”), upful.

And as for Facebook et. al., I’m finally saying yes to everyone, confirming every “friend,” “connection” and “contact” request. I can no longer handle the guilt over the wrongly perceived rejections.

Posted in Observations | 1 Comment »

In Praise of Polka

June 9th, 2009

My knee-jerk initial reaction to the news that the Recording Academy had eliminated Best Polka Album from its Grammy Awards categories was rage against the machine.

It wasn’t the first time.

As a voting member of the Academy (you have to have at least six album credits to be a voter, mine being CD liner notes), I served two terms on the New York Chapter’s Board of Governors several years back, and was regularly incensed by the regular put-down of polka—or what us afficionados call “that happy, snappy music”–by the prejudiced music business professionals who also made up the board. It was the height of Eminem: I wasn’t a fan, but everyone else on the board—some of whom were top producers—loved his records. No one besides me saw any problem with his lyrics.

Yet this cream of New York’s record business, elected to guide the association behind the Grammys—according to grammy.com “the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position”—frequently saw fit to gratuitously  ridicule one of its constituent genres. Some members of the board even then lobbied to have the polka Grammy category eliminated.

Typically, I didn’t sit still. Much to the chagrin of the rest of the board, I always stood up for polka and voiced my disapproval of any polka put-downs by fellow governors during board meetings, and when the president of the board got into the act, I wrote him a highly personal letter essentially accusing him of racism.

“I was extremely hurt and distressed at the way you and a good number–if not the majority–of the board denigrated the heritage music of millions of us ethnic European-Americans at Tuesday’s meeting,” I wrote. “This is hardly the first time that board members have singled out polka music for mockery and condemnation, but I do not recall you ever leading the charge. I have been assured by another member of the board that you were joking in your comment that you were personally going to see that polka was eliminated as a Grammy category, but if you were, I want you to know that it didn’t seem that way to me–or to another board member whom I’ve also contacted to make sure that I’m not being overly sensitive. If it was a joke, it wasn’t very funny, especially considering, again, that a number of clearly elitist snobs on the board, if not a majority, would also love to get rid of polka.”

I’m editing this slightly both to protect the guilty and to save you some of my own self-serving shit. But there remains some good, basic polka information here for the uninitiated, and I’m just too lazy to rewrite it. And sadly, my cause for protest still rings true today.

“If it was not a joke,” I continued, “then you need to know something about those of us who prize polka and our proud heritage. I’m presuming you’ve never read any of the many articles I’ve written about polka in Billboard and elsewhere, or the many polka album liner notes I’ve written. So I’ll give you the first three paragraphs from a recent piece I was asked to write for Rhythm Music magazine:

‘Face it:  No other music genre gets dissed like polka.

‘Say the word and people think Lawrence Welk, beer barrels, tubas, oom-pah, fat Dutchmen with fat accordions, fat women dancing.  You’re probably laughing now just thinking about it.

‘Not that you’d be wrong, you’d just be selling it short.  Way short.  For if there’s one music that deserves to be called world music, it’s polka.  There’s Polish polka, of course, but there’s also German, Slovenian, Czech, Tex-Mex.  There’s even Native American polka:  It’s called waila, which derives from the Spanish word for dance, though it’s also known as “chicken scratch,” because of its sound and the look of its dancers.  It’s played best by the Southern Arizona Tohono O’odham tribe–who picked up accordions, polka, and other European dance forms from the Germanic settlers of Tucson in 1870–and includes such renowned chicken scratchers as Southern Scratch, the Joaquin Brothers, Papago Raiders, and the Molinas.’

“Let me add here that polka is also a populist, working class music, much like rock ‘n roll once was, and like rock ‘n roll once was, it’s easy pickings for music establishment elitists.  I never would have figured you to be one of them, indeed, as president of the New York chapter of an organization that purports to promote all kinds of music and musicians, you are the last person who should be voicing objections to any kind of music, whatever your own prejudices.  And if you or anyone else wants to pick on polka, is gospel next?  Bluegrass?  Blues?  Folk music?  What about Latin, r&b, rap, country, classical, and any other genre of music not deemed mainstream by the woefully inadequate Grammy TV powers–and establishment New York chapter board members?

“Hey!  I don’t particularly care for a lot of the music–if not the bulk of it–that gets recognized by the Grammys.  But I surely recognize that others do, and that that’s enough for it to be valid.  Indeed, that’s the beauty of the music business–that everyone can be a critic as well as a fan, and that if it’s good, it’s good no matter what genre–or what anyone else says.

“As for polka, I am at least as proud of my membership in the International Polka Association as I am of my membership in [the Recording Academy]–if not more so.”

I made note of my Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hometown (where the late, great Frank Yankovic was crowned Polka King) and said that despite my lack of higher education (not to mention middle education) and lowly freelance music journalist stature compared to the mainly big-time income/expense account corporate types making up the rest of the board, I’d stack my taste, credentials, reputation, ability, and support for all kinds of music up against anyone’s. “I abhor political correctness and most certainly can take a joke–so long as it’s a joke,” I declared. “Indeed, polka people laugh at themselves harder than anyone. But we’re a proud people, who understandably chafe at the scorn heaped on us by those who may tower above us in social class, but haven’t half the heart.”

Here I saluted the record man—to use an archaic music business term conveying the highest respect—with the biggest heart of all, Steve Popovich. The founder of Cleveland International Records, Steve discovered Meat Loaf, and put out “Bat Out Of Hell,” one of the biggest rock albums of all time. In various major label positions he was also responsible for signing such diverse artists as Michael Jackson, Ted Nugent, Charlie Daniels, REO Speedwagon, Johnny Cash, Boston, Cheap Trick, Kris Kristofferson, Southside Johnny, Sly & The Family Stone–and Frank Yankovic. One of the most important boosters of polka music, he had just put out a pair of incredible polka compilations, both entitled “Here Come The Polka Heroes” (and both including my liner notes). The discs featured the great polka artists including Chicago “push”-style Polish polka ace Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones (whom I brought to Central Park SummerStage the preceding year after three years of hounding the producers), Texas progressive polka-rock band Brave Combo (whose leader Carl Finch was in the process of compiling a polka anthology for Time-Life), and Yankovic.

“I’d be happy to have Steve send you these albums and others,” I blathered on—casting away all remnants of self-promotional constraint: “I’d also be happy to take you along with me to my favorite concert venue, the Bay Way Polish Home in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where my friend Jimmy Sturr, for whom I wrote liner notes on his Grammy-winning ‘Living On Polka Time,’ is playing on May 1. In case you don’t know, Jimmy has sold hundreds of thousands of records, has sold out Carnegie Hall seven times and Lincoln Center four times, and is the highest-rated guest artist on TNN’s ‘Prime Time Country’ program, drawing more fan mail than even Garth Brooks.”

Finally, I concluded with a threat and a promise: “I’ll understand if you’re not interested, but I also want you to understand that I won’t sit still the next time you or anyone else on the board sees fit to maliciously slight any kind of music that I like–or any kind I dislike.”

Steve Popovich. I’d seen Frankie Yankovic at a Milwaukee Summerfest some 30 years ago (I have an “I’m a Frankie Fan” button picturing him with an accordion lying around somewhere) but it was only when Steve handed me a copy of Eddie Blazonczyk & the Versatones “25th Anniversary Album” from 1988 that I realized the stylistic breadth of polka. And after I convinced the SummerStage people to book the Versatones, Steve spontaneously got on stage during their set and offered $50 to the best dancers.

(My late friend Dave Nives was there, too. The last of the great record men, he’d worked in all areas of the business at one time or another, and knew indie music and especially vintage country and r&b better than anyone. He was then doing a&r over at Koch, and I had Steve send him a Blazonczyk record–which Dave rightly recognized as “real rock ‘n’ roll” [under the name Eddie Bell, incidentally, Eddie B (as he's known in the polka world) had toured with the likes of Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and Brenda Lee during an early rock ‘n’ roll recording phase]. He wanted to sign the Versatones, but his superiors, as is the case so often with superiors, just didn’t get it.)

“Who needs the Grammy category?” Steve said when I called him to commiserate. He brought up the Versatones’ annual “Polka Fireworks” festival on July 4 in Seven Springs Resort in Champion, Pa. (this year’s five-day fest will be the 35th, with thousands of polka fans in attendance to see 18 of the country’s top polka bands), which he took me to when I was doing the Billboard piece (I’ll never forget seeing Henny & the Versa J’s, featuring young Ryan Ogrodny, who couldn’t have been more than 10, singing “If I Could Be Like You” with his hero and mine, Eddie B—whom the song was about! And I’ll never forget the floor actually shaking from thousands of dancers hopping simultaneously.)

“Each weekend tens of thousands of people dance to polka at city festivals in the Midwest,” Steve continued. “To them, polka is more than a category—it’s their lives.”

Polka people, Steve noted, fought all of America’s wars.

“Frank Yankovic fought in the Battle of the Bulge and they wanted to amputate his hands when he got frostbite,” he recounted. “Then they put an accordion in his hands and [the use of his fingers] magically came back! [Fellow legendary Slovenian polka bandleader and former Yankovic bandmate] Johnny Pecon was a Seabee. These people built our country! Tens of millions of Eastern Europeans.”

Anyway, Steve, concluded, “polka deserves underground status. It’s not commercial shlock music made for TV, but serious music that stays with serious people their whole lives. And Brave Combo is the hippest band in the world the last 30 years!”

None hipper, that’s for sure. The two-time polka Grammy-winning band’s Finch told the New York Times that the elimination of the polka Grammy category was “devastating.”

“Polka is so misunderstood, you know, the butt of jokes,” he said. “Having a polka category was the most important step to legitimacy that we could ever hope to achieve. To have that taken away, it’s like it was all for nothing.”

The polka Grammy was purged to ensure that the Awards process “is pertinent within the current musical landscape,” said Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow in a prepared statement. He further declared the goal of “keeping the Recording Academy a relevant and responsive organization in our dynamic music community”—altogether indicating, of course, that polka is now considered neither pertinent nor relevant.

I called the Recording Academy and spoke with its vice president of awards Bill Freimuth.

“We certainly hope that this isn’t viewed as the end of Grammy Award participation for polka artists, because that’s certainly not our intention,” he said, then explained the Academy’s action. “We have a very formal awards and nominations committee made up of 35 to 40 professionals who meet once a year for two days to go over proposals for adding and changing categories and anything else that’s awards-related. There’s a standing, mandated procedure to review categories with low numbers of entries, and polka had fallen below the threshold.”

The first polka Grammy was awarded in 1985 to “America’s Polka King” himself, Frank Yankovic, for his album “70 Years of Hits”—which Steve originally released on Cleveland International.    Since then the category has been dominated by “Eastern big band”polka stylist Jimmy Sturr, the only polka artist signed to anything other than a tiny independent label (he’s with Rounder), who has won 18 polka Grammys–one fewer than Bruce Springsteen, as the Times piece noted. He’s easily the genre’s biggest star in terms of sales and name recognition.

“We noticed a few years ago that after some 20 years, polka, which had been really healthy, had a low number of [album award] entries,” Freimuth continued. “So we said, ‘Let’s give it another chance’ with the hope that entries would rise again, and they did come up a little over the next couple years, but then declined again.”

The current guidelines dictate that any Grammy category that falls to 25 or fewer album submissions is subject to scrutiny of its “viability” as a category, said Freimuth. “Polka did that this year, and the committee said it didn’t feel right to be giving one Grammy per every 262 entries in the rock field–and one for every 23 in the polka field. It was an equity issue, so they decided it was best at this point to eliminate the category.”

I’d suggest an equity issue, too, in comparing the relatively immense rock field with polka, but then again, rules are rules, and if polka doesn’t meet them, well, that’s not necessarily the Academy’s fault. Or is it?

“When the polka category was established, it acknowledged our music and put us on the map,” said Ed Blazonczyk, Eddie B’s son, who has taken over his father’s band since his retirement. “It said, “This is American music–a folk-ethnic music form that has evolved in the U.S. and is now truly an American artform.’ It gave us the respect of other music genres, and it was wonderful.”

But Ed also takes into consideration the inherent inequities in the Grammy system—and their consequences.

“Because of flaws in the voting process, there are ways to skew votes and maybe favor larger artists over newer names—and that’s left sour tastes in the little guys’ mouths,” he said. “We have indie label releases where people haven’t even bothered submitting them in the last few years because it felt like pissing into the wind.”

He recognized that the polka category has only received 20 to 30 entries of late, when “maybe 50 to 80 recordings a year” are released.

“Money’s tight with everybody, and it costs $100 a year for membership for you to cast a vote that essentially doesn’t mean anything to you,” he continued. “Many polka patrons joined the Academy and were excited about being part of it 25 years ago, but maybe 15 percent of them are still voting members–and new people don’t want to sign up and pay to cast a vote that means nothing. So the interest in the Academy in the polka community is kind of a joke. It isn’t taken seriously. It’s a fantastic organization for larger genres of music, but for smaller ones where you can skew the results so easily, it’s hard to feel that you can make a difference.”

Ed referenced an article he read after Norah Jones won eight Grammys for her 2002 debut album “Come Away with Me.”

“`How could a newcomer come on the scene and win them all?’ it asked,” Ed recalled. “Being Ravi Shankar’s daughter didn’t hurt, but the album was recorded in six different studios featuring over 30 engineers, and nine different producers. They all have friends and cash in favors, and it’s like Facebook: It grows and grows and grows—a snowball effect. So you’re on an indie label with one studio without major label support, up against 12 producers with bazillion friends–and want to be Grammy-nominated?”

He saw a direct correlation here with polka.

“I read the article and saw the flaw in the voting process,” Ed said. “So many people vote for records they don’t know about, because of their alliances and friendships. It becomes a political machine versus truly acknowledging great artwork for great artwork—and that’s very unfortunate.”

To this end the former governor of the Academy’s Chicago chapter said he had suggested finding a technological means of requiring voters to listen to snippets of nominated recordings before being able to vote. “I very much enjoyed my time on the board and serving the Academy and learning about it,” Ed added. “It’s great for music and music industry professionals. I’m just sorry the polka community is so small that it doesn’t trickle down far enough to help it.”

The Versatones were nominated 18 times for the polka Grammy (they did win in 1986 for their “Another Polka Celebration” album).

“Whenever we were up for a Grammy, we always felt honored and wanted to recognize the Academy for honoring us,” Ed said. “So we always went to the awards show, and it was wonderful to meet and greet other people in the music industry. We took great pride in it–we really did.”

But Ed pointed out, too, that of the 109 Grammy categories, only a dozen or so get any quality broadcast time. And here he picks up on another one of my big problems with the Grammys.

“What about the other 97 categories?,” he asked. “What if every year they pick one of the smaller ones? Maybe let the Native Americans or Southern Gospel artists play half a tune. Or give all the nominees a 30-second spot and highlight them. These are five artists that no one ever has the opportunity to get exposed to, that are good and exciting and have been nominated by their peers. Present them to the people, for Christ’s sake!”

But Ed learned, as I did when I brought this up to the New York board, that “it’s all about advertising, and that means Kanye and U2. Because if people change the channel because they put on Native American or Southern Gospel nominees, they lose that ad money. Business is business, and the largest business of the Recording Academy is the Grammys telecast.”

Ed concluded on a note of caution.

“We all saw what happened here,” he said of the polka category elimination, “and I don’t see it coming back. But hopefully other categories can learn from us—and the Academy can fine-tune to avoid skews like the ones that affected us.”

Polka entries will now be accepted in the folk field (newly renamed American Roots Music), according to Freimuth. “The competition will be a lot stiffer, but I’m a great believer in the cream rising to the top,” he said.

It was intimated to me by another Academy member familiar with the Grammy procedures that if the polka community was able to “reorganize itself with some of the younger artists becoming more vocally and visibly active voting members,” polka album entries might increase and the Academy would reconsider the category’s viability. But membership costs aside, the polka industry itself is also in decline, observed Ed Blazonczyk.

“The older fans are in their 70s and 80s and are dying off—and their children aren’t coming back to it but going to other music forms,” he said. “We’re not filling dancehalls like we used to.”

Back when I was on the New York board, one of the Academy’s proudest activities was its educational outreach programs. But it was the wrong kind of education, generally geared toward helping high school students learn about and find jobs in the music industry. Last month, for instance, the chapter presented Grammy Career Day, in which Tri-State area high schoolers participated in “Songwriting,” “Vocal Technique” and “In the Studio” workshops prior to the horribly-named “The Playaz” panel of industry professionals dispensing career advice.

Until recently, the Recording Academy was called The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS). I much prefer the old name, mainly because of its focus on “recording arts.” If the New York chapter and the national Academy as a whole would refocus its educational efforts on arts over industry, maybe polka, along with other less mainstream but no less worthy music genres, would deservedly gain a wider audience, not to mention Grammy-friendly “viability.”

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

Coming Soon! The Jim Bessman Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

June 4th, 2009

For many years I was a member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. Then I and a number of others got a form letter in the mail informing us that we were no longer on the committee, that our terms had expired (I don’t remember ever hearing anything about terms) and that they were looking to bring in people who were knowledgeable about the 1970s.

It wasn’t the first committee I’d been kicked out of (nor, most likely, the last). Some years ago I was appointed to the “secret” NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, now known simply as the Recording Academy–the people who bring you the Grammy Awards). This committee, made up of knowledgeable pop music industry types, had been delegated to come up with the nominees for the four general Grammy Awards–Record, Album and Song of the Year awards and Best New Artist–mainly in order to ensure that what had been considered award travesties by the media, like Tony Bennett’s 1994 Album of the Year win for his “MTV Unplugged,” would not be repeated.

NARAS, in effect, wanted to project a younger, hipper presence to the media than its older classical and traditional pop music foundation. Hence, the secret committee (secret so that it could not be influenced by outside pressure–and so that its questionable inner workings could not be questioned)–and in the years to come, a complete shift toward artistically dubious contemporary pop and hip-hop in its TV award show focus.

My problem, as always, was going against the grain, this one being the head of NARAS, who established the committee and led it according to which nominees would cover the broadest spectrum of commercial pop music while being acceptable, if not credible, with pop music critics. My guess is that the last straw was my fierce fight for John Fogerty’s “Blue Moon Swamp” for Album of the Year in 1997. I was convinced that it was a masterpiece, but it hadn’t been a huge seller, and Fogerty was hardly the TV household name that, say, Bob Dylan was–Dylan being the winner that year for “Time Out of Mind.” But I consider myself vindicated in that “Blue Moon Swamp” won for Best Rock Album: It was Fogerty’s first Grammy–and my final year on the committee.

I took this pretty much lying down, but was mightily miffed when I got the termination letter from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. Like I said, I didn’t know nothing about no term limits, and people knowledgeable about the ’70s? Hello! I wrote the first fucking book about The Ramones! So I angrily emailed the big guy in charge and he was decent enough to respond apologetically for the coldness of the form letter.

And that would have been that, except this year I didn’t even get a ballot! So I called the girl at the Hall of Fame, who assured me that I had been sent one, and then said she’d send me another. A couple weeks went by, and still no second ballot. I called her again, and she assured me again, this time that she’d sent me a second ballot. As the voting deadline was days away, she said I could just email back my picks. Did they get them? Did they count them? All I know for sure is that my top pick The Stooges, once again, were not elected.

Around the time of the induction dinner in March I received an email from my friend Camp, asking the kind of question I get all the time–that rock fans everywhere ask amongst themselves. “Explain this to me,” he wrote. “How are The Stooges and Alice Cooper not in the Hall of Fame, yet Billy Joel and John Mellancamp are? Just wondering.”

I responded thusly: “John definitely should be. Billy’s a judgement call. The Stooges definitely. Alice, too. What about Kiss? What about New York Dolls? But I got kicked off the committee because I always brought up Lesley Gore. The Hollies. The Turtles. Nancy Sinatra. Joan Jett.”

I noted the heavy influence of the late Hall of Fame founder Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records, and fellow Hall of Fame founder Jann Wenner, who founded Rolling Stone. “All you have to do is look at what Rolling Stone has always supported and take it from there, that and the makeup of the committee and the electorate which skews toward r&b and singer-songwriter.”

You could go on and on about the deserving artists who aren’t in the Hall and lesser ones who are–and maybe you have. But Kiss is a good case in point.

“The beauty of America is that you can basically start any kind of private club you want to,” Paul Stanley said in an interview on the Kiss web site. “This one happens to be called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s a very impressive name for a club, but it’s an illusion. It’s the creation of a group of industry people and critics who decide who they deem as qualified to be in their little admiration society. It’s their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it’s not the people’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

The Jim Bessman Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then, is but one person’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame–mine. But like the rest of this site, it gives me the opportunity to play up those who have paid their dues, but haven’t gotten their due. I figure on 20 or so inductees, including, of course, Kiss. And it will go pretty much according to Stanley’s criteria: “A band or musician’s impact is measured by how they change and influence society and other musicians. That and how many albums and concert tickets they sell should be what gets them into the Hall of Fame.”

Stanley actually gave me the last word on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame himself, when I expressed my regret personally that Kiss hadn’t been inducted.

“We have our own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” he said. “It’s in the record store bins!”

Posted in Bessman News, Hall of Fame, Music, Theater | 3 Comments »

In Search of Al Goldstein

June 4th, 2009

I’d call reading Page Six a guilty pleasure, except it’s no pleasure. But I am guilty of it, though, and feel a whole lot guiltier because of an item I saw last week about Al Goldstein.

The “portly porn potentate,” it said, has been living in the psych ward of the Veterans Administration hospital on East 23rd Street since last October. I’m guilty for not knowing, and for not having seen him in a couple years at the very least.

I’ve been in touch with him off and on since his weekly Screw magazine and “Midnight Blue” cable TV show went down in 2003, having become big friends with him at the tail end of his glory years. I used to sit in at Screw staff meetings (he’d always order pizza for the staff), take him to shows, bring him CDs. I even had Phil Spector—one of his heroes—autograph a “Back to Mono—1958-1969” box set for him.

It made sense he loved Phil so much. They were both geniuses, misunderstood geniuses. Al, of course, was also outrageous, obese and disgusting–yet lovable, too, and outgoing. And while he could be hateful to the extreme, turning on everyone at one time or other, he was also extremely generous (like Phil, Al picked up the check at large dinner parties all the time, most often at his beloved Katz’s or 2nd Avenue Deli).

I was actually on “Midnight Blue” once, when I brought Tammy Faye Starlite—the atrociously hysterical born-again, pornographic, anti-Semitic country star shtick act–in for a two-part interview, and Al decided to use me as a straight man/object of derision between the two of them. And after I told him how much I enjoyed a limited Broadway revue of Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs and he went and hated it, he did one of his infamous “Midnight Blue” “Fuck You!”’s to me, ranting and raving in the most filthy manner for two minutes off the top of his head at what a despicable person I was.

Indeed, even after I visited him in the hospital—maybe it was when he had his stomach stapled (he dropped 150 pounds), or at the psyche ward at St. Vincent’s–he couldn’t let go his anger and in the middle of another “Fuck You!” to someone or something else (usually a person, company or product that didn’t live up to his expectations or downright offended him), he somehow returned to me and the Bacharach-David revue and concluded, “Jim Bessman. You came to visit me in the hospital. This is the thanks you get. FUCK YOU!”

Of course, there can be no greater honor in life than to be the subject of an Al Goldstein “Fuck You”—and I was one, two weeks in a row! “There were few sights more inspiring on Manhattan Cable than Al’s crazed monologues aimed at any number of persons or companies that slighted him in some way,” noted a 2004 blog post, “Screwed: Al Goldstein’s Sad Fate,” on the Can’t Stop the Bleeding web site.

The bottom fell through for Al shortly thereafter. The portly porn potentate, who had launched Screw in 1968 but had seen it lose circulation and relevance as porn became commonplace while his ever volatile personal life spun out of control, went bankrupt and had to close the magazine and cable show, and sell his mansion in Pompano Beach (home of the notorious 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger). Convicted of harassing an ex-wife in the pages of Screw (where he also waged a dreadfully obscene campaign against his son), he claimed to have spent a month sleeping in a borrowed car behind a Boston Market and at a homeless shelter in Fort Lauderdale. His probation officer wouldn’t let him leave New York to find work, and as he told the New York Times in 2004, “”They want me to get out of the men’s field, the only field I have expertise in. They want me to take a job at Burger King for $5.50 an hour. But who’s going to hire me with a criminal record? On probation?”

Then 68, he added: “Anyone who wishes ill on me should feel vindicated because my life has turned into a total horror.”

There were probably plenty of people who wished Al Goldstein ill, but there were plenty more who looked up to him for his brilliance—and fearlessness. He reveled in freedom of speech and took it to the limit, winning a major case in 1982 when he beat Pillsbury, which had sued him for pillorying its Doughboy character in typically tasteless Screw fashion. He wasn’t afraid to take on politicians, company presidents, divorce lawyers, anyone with the power to oppress the little guy.

He really was the true American Hero.

And now, according to Page Six. He’s in the psych ward of the VA hospital on East 23rd.

I’ve called Al periodically over the last few years. But his numbers, like his home addresses, are always changing. After I get the message that the number I have is no longer in service, I call his lawyer or his only other friend that I know of, and usually one or the other gets back eventually with a new number. Since Al usually doesn’t know how to access his voicemail it takes a while to catch him live on the phone, at which time we commiserate on our sad lots as has-been writers and promise to get together–and never do.

We did come close last time, about a year ago. I got his then new number from his only other friend that I knew of (but who had just fallen out with Al and moved to L.A.). When I got through to him, he was living somewhere in Queens and coming in every Monday for outpatient psychiatric care at the VA on East 23rd. So I went over there to meet him for a cup of coffee at McDonald’s, but we got our signals crossed and he wasn’t there—and I kept getting his voicemail when I called to find out where he was.

So putting down Page Six, I called the VA and asked for Al Goldstein.

“There’s no one here by that name,” said the switchboard lady. “Today’s paper says there is,” I replied. “It says he’s been there since October.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, though it was unclear if she was sorry to hear that he’d been there since October, or sorry because he hadn’t been there since October.

Turns out she was right, however. I checked Booble.com, the “100% free adult search engine” that Al had been blogging for—sort of a written version of his old “Fuck You”s. The last one, “Rotting Corpse Mistaken for Al Goldstein,” was dated April 16 and addressed to “you lowlife scumbag pricks,” and declared himself to be “a fucking viable, living human (albeit demonstrably worn out)” who could not continue to write his blog (via his lawyer’s transcriptions of his notes) from “this gulag”—the 13th Floor of the VA Hospital in Brooklyn. He then requested all visitors to bring along Katz’ pastrami only, closing with the traditional “FUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!” signoff.

I called, but couldn’t get a human to answer at the VA Medical Center Brooklyn. So I called Al’s lawyer, who didn’t know about Page Six but didn’t have time to talk about Al being that it was a short week.

So I called the last number I had for Al. After several rings, someone answered, a man, maybe heavily sedated, maybe half asleep. Maybe a rotting corpse. But I had no idea what he was saying, though “you have the wrong number” seemed most likely.

I went back and found Al’s previous post on Booble, undated but post-inauguration and titled “Bronze Barack’s Cock.”

“I am a lowly, diseased Jew bastard, a white nigger,” Al blogged. “Barack Obama – you have fulfilled the dreams of millions of street niggers, the trampled underclass that has persisted in this country for over 300 years.”

He concluded: “If you need any help during your service to this country, feel free to reach me at the Brooklyn VA Hospital.  I usually don’t accept calls, but just have your Chief of Staff mention ‘Niggah-in-Charge.’ I will be waiting for your call! You are the fuckin’ man! I love you, Obama!”

A true American Hero. Citizen Goldstein.

I love you, Al!

[To be continued...hopefully.]

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »

Twittering Phil Spector

June 3rd, 2009

After I started getting Google Alerts regarding Twitters by Phil Spector, I contacted his daughter to see if this could possibly be true, especially since some of them–”If you talk to God, you’re praying. If God talks back, it’s schizophrenia.”—seemed so real.

“Absolutely not,” she responded. “Someone is impersonating him, right?”

Right. But whoever it was, a lot of people were falling for it. Today’s Washington Post is the biggest but hardly the only media entity to pick up on it (Britain’s Daily Mirror yesterday opened its report with “Mad music producer Phil Spector has complained that prison officials confiscated his wig, in a string of angry Twitter posts.”

Quite remarkable, isn’t it? That we might think a man in jail on a murder conviction would be allowed laptop or cell phone privileges!

So I went back to Phil’s purported Twitter page this morning and sure enough, the person responsible had owned up to the hoax. “I didn’t expect this to go so far in the media,” he wrote. “I copied many of Phil’s quotes and I made up half of them. I even fooled many media outlets. It was fun but I feel it has run it’s course.”

But “there is a message to Twitter in this,” he added, presumably about the potential for Twitter fraud and abuse. But I find another message relating to Phil: Even convicted and jailed (and those who have read my previous post on Phil know I believe him to be innocent–and unfairly tried, I will now add), Phil remains a subject of intense curiosity and fascination—as befits the enigmatic creator of an immortal rock ‘n’ roll hit catalog.

Posted in Music, Observations | 1 Comment »

I Wanna Be Your Dog

June 2nd, 2009

[Somewhere in the back of Nellie McKay’s mom/manager’s station wagon is my little Staples yellow spiral notebook—or else it fell out of my pocket when I rather dizzily stumbled out of the car when they dropped me off at 45th and 8th Ave. after Nellie’s remarkable—even for her—show late Friday night at the New York Uke Fest May 29 at Baruch College. So I can’t guarantee that what follows is entirely accurate. Then again, if I had the notebook I probably couldn’t have read my writing anyway: Basal thumb joint arthritis, that and my naturally horrific penmanship. Plus a new fat pen I’m trying to get used to. About the only thing I can say for sure is that the back seats were down in the car to make a perfect travel bed for Nellie’s dog—so I kind of rolled around a lot. And I did play with the doggie toy—despite mom/manager’s admonishment. And if what follows isn’t 100 percent true, well, it’s close enough.)

I had to leave the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg’s May 29 performance of “Onegin” at City Center—and New York ITAR-TASS bureau chief Vladimir Kikilo and assorted other Russian dignitaries—midway in order to catch Nellie McKay’s 10:30 show at Baruch College, where she was headlining the opening night of the New York Uke Fest May 29.

Uke Fest? Nellie McKay?

No doubt the greatest musical talent of her generation, Nellie usually performs solo, accompanying herself splendidly on piano (the last time I saw her, though, she spectacularly led a swing band for last year's Midsummer Night’s Swing series at Lincoln Center). She often ends her gigs with a ukulele tune.

I got to the venue on time, but the Fest’s organizer determined that Nellie hadn’t. Contractually, she was supposed to start at 10:30, but she hadn’t arrived by 10:20, when the preceding act, Hawaiian songstress Mihana, finished. So the guy, while noting that cell phone service in the auditorium in the lower levels of the building was limited, told the packed room that he had not heard from Nellie, declared her a no-show, and “dismissed” the attendees an hour early.

I don’t know how many people were there to see Nellie specifically. Probably not too many, though she’s for sure well-known in some circles for her incredibly original three albums (the first two being double-disc sets), her endearingly delightful performances, her award-winning Broadway turn as Polly Peachum in “The Threepenny Opera,” her contributions to The New York Times Book Review, and her award-winning dedication to animal rights and other tireless involvements in various causes.

But I was there to see her (I also corralled old friend Jim Beloff, a former fellow Billboard staffer and now one of the uke world’s foremost players, authors and manufacturers, into attending), and utterly dejected when the guy outright canceled the gig. An opportunity to see the wondrous Nellie McKay, suddenly withdrawn with no explanation: Was she ill? In an accident? Stuck in a stalled subway car?

Worried and weary, I ascended the four flights of steps slowly (chronically torn ankle tendons more sore than usual), head down, making my way to the exit without looking up at the handful of Uke Fest folk hanging about by the door. Still looking at my shoes, I had turned the corner and was nearing the subway when I saw the beautiful golden flats moving purposefully in the other direction, followed them up a bottom-fringed, black flapper dress to the mouth of the striking blond who could only say, “Oh, hi,” as she continued onwards, preoccupied but without any concern for the time. That’s how she always is before a show.

So I turned around and followed, still dazed, unable to react further. How could I tell her her gig had been canceled because they thought she was a no-show? “She’s always late!” manager/mom would bellow moments later in an angry showdown with the organizer, “But she always shows up!”

I had to find some way to lift up Nellie’s obviously sagging spirits after I finally mumbled out the news of the cancellation. As usual, I dramatically fell to the occasion—muttering inaudible gibberish as I led her down the steps to the auditorium. Manager/mom met us at the bottom, and became understandably irate when I filled her in on the situation.

Essentially, it was a culture clash. This was a folk music festival, really, with Nellie the only artist to have recorded for a major label, appeared on Broadway, and have high-powered (Creative Artists Agency) booking. They expected Nellie to have been there hours earlier, hanging out with the other artists and supporting them during their gigs—not at all unreasonable had she in fact been a folk artist at a folk festival. And as it turned out, Nellie’s camp had tried numerous times during the day to reach the organizers to find out the logistics (and make sure I was on the list), but as had been noted, cell phone signal down there was nonexistent, and the guy apparently hadn’t bothered to check his messages.

Different levels of professionalism—and different interpretations.

But the now empty room was still open: Nellie was there, I was there, and so were a mother and son from a town near Tel Aviv who were staying over an extra day just to see Nellie and hoping the now annoyed and embarrassed organizer would allow her to perform—even to the dozen or so who had been slow in leaving. So I snapped into what for me passes for action: I ambled over to the handful of uke players who were jamming folk-festival style just outside the auditorium and informed them that Nellie was indeed present and about to play, then did the same for the few remaining stragglers along the way. Maybe there were 30 people altogether who returned to the hall, some with their own ukes—which they played along with Nellie and with her encouragement.

She began with the lilting “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo," which was sung by Leslie Caron in the 1953 musical "Lili"--with a puppet (it was also recorded, by the way, by sweet Gene Vincent). In the same standards vein, she did “Side By Side” and “Don’t Fence Me In,” the latter I know best from cowboy music conservationists Riders In the Sky, whose vocalist/guitarist Ranger Doug Green moonlights in the Time Jumpers, a popular Nashville swing band that Nellie said she saw on a recent trip to Nashville. She also did “P.S. I Love You,” which she performed—also with uke—on the soundtrack of the 2007 film of the same name, in which she also starred. (She told a funny-sad story, too, about how she took a movie-related meeting in L.A. at the Judy Garland Building, now the home of Adam Sandler’s production company, that is plastered with huge posters of Sandler—and one tiny picture of Garland.)

But as impressive as the standards side of Nellie’s uke-work were her 1960s song choices. These included “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” Herman’s Hermits’ broken-hearted chart-topper from 1965, sung by Nellie in appropriately melancholic English accent with her singing the backup parts as well; Peter and Gordon’s 1964 Beatles-penned chart-topper “A World Without Love”; and The Seekers’ 1967 No. 2 hit “Georgy Girl,” the titletrack of the 1966 English movie hit written by Dusty Springfield’s brother Tom Springfield, with lyrics by Jim Dale—with whom Nellie starred so many years later in “The Threepenny Opera” (also with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper). Here she expressed her awe of Dale—and did him justice by singing the song replete with its sprightly instrumental intro (approximated vocally by singing a string of “bob-bob-bob” syllables).

She sang everything beautifully and with utmost poignancy—as her set list demanded (except for songs like her own caustically tongue-in-cheek “Mother of Pearl”). The recipient in 2005 of the Humane Society’s Doris Day Music Award for her support of animal rights, she also revealed that her next album will be a tribute to Day, whom she praised in a scholarly New York Times book review in 2007. (But please, Nellie. Do a swing album with that band you put together last year at Lincoln Center! Do it for me!)

She ended with Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Meditiation,” then graciously thanked everyone who had stayed there for her, when others had lost all hope.

[Sure enough, Nellie’s mom Robin just called and said she found my notebook in the back of the car with the doggie toy. And sure enough, she couldn’t make out one word in it. So I couldn’t ask her what the complete quote of Nellie’s heartfelt good-bye line was, but it was something like this: “In this filthy rotten city, you brought smiles.”]

[Also, it dawns on me that I might have been too cute for my own good here. My title comes from The Stooges classic song “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” And calling the late, great rock ‘n’ roller Gene Vincent “sweet” is a reference to the late, great rock ‘n’ roller Ian Dury’s “Sweet Gene Vincent.”]

[Update: Just got my notebook in the mail from Robin! She sent it in a big envelope sprinkled with colorful commemorative postage stamps (Edgar Allen Poe, Medgar Evers, Abraham Lincoln, Bette Davis, Lunar New Year, Gee’s Bend Quilt), a heartbreaking PETA “Animals in Laboratories” sticker and a beautiful peacock sticker. She also had a Human Rights Watch address sticker. So here’s Nellie’s actual goodbye line: “Thanks for coming! You make this big rotten city smiling and rosey again!” And the mother and son were from the Tel Aviv area town of Savyon, one of the wealthiest municipalities in Israel. He was getting ready to move here to go to school and had learned of Nellie from the Internet and then turned his mom on to her.]

Posted in Cinema, Music, Theater | 1 Comment »

Bessman News

May 29th, 2009

My 10-second interview about the Amitabh Bachchan wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s in Time Square is up on the AVS web site, avstv.com.  It’s the first clip, “Big B in Wax.”

Posted in Bessman News, Television | No Comments »

Bessman News

May 28th, 2009

Have completed liner notes to the upcoming Reader’s Digest box set “Are You Lonesome Tonight.”

Posted in Bessman News | No Comments »

Good Morning Ameri-Can Idiot

May 25th, 2009

I’ve always regretted never seeing Green Day live except for seeing them do “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Teenage Lobotomy” when the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Having authored “Ramones—An American Band,” I can say with some degree of authority that no band of this era is more worthy of wearing the Ramones mantle.

That said, I’m glad I got in at their SRO show at Webster Hall Wednesday night—one of several small-venue appearances in New York last week to kick-off their new album “21st Century Breakdown”—though I didn’t get to see much standing in back of people in the balcony. But I heard plenty.

The Ramones. The Clash. All the great punk bands everyone compares them to are indeed credible comparisons. And I did at least see a packed room of fans ranging from Green Day’s contemporaries to music business veterans my age mouthing the lyrics to socially-conscious, politically-charged hits like “American Idiot” and “Minority” and current “Know Your Enemy” that make the band the only one of its time that I can pretty much guarantee will make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its own right. All this, and encoring with the Isley Brothers’ “Shout”!

I mentioned this gig at Joe’s Pub the next night to my contemporary James Mastro, the versatile guitarist, formerly of The Bongos, who now plays with everyone from Ian Hunter to Iranian-American singer-songwriter Atoosa Grey (James was playing in her band at Joe’s Pub). He had asked the ever-dreaded question, “Is there anything you like now?”

“You know, I believe them,” he said, in response to my praise of Green Day. He then added, his tone as jaded as my own, “That’s all I want from music these days.” Incidentally, his 15 year-old daughter Lily was also a believer–and excited about seeing Green Day for the second time the following night.

Howard Stern being off on Fridays, I forced myself to watch “Good Morning America” to get a televised view of the band as they opened this year’s Walgreens-sponsored “GMA Summer Concert Series” in Central Park.

When I tuned in, it was in the middle of an apparent regular feature, “Americ-Cans Making a Difference”—or some such feel-good shite. No, I don’t mean to slight the story of the homeless vet who has a place to live thanks to the contractor who was supposed to tear down the house but fixed it up instead. Or the Florida State student who raised money to save the professor’s job. Or the other haves helping the have-nots.

No, I just very much resent the “Good Morning America” declaration that “the Ameri-Can spirit is all around us.” Like the vile Pepsi rip of the beautiful Obama “O” logo graphic, GMA co-opts the President’s winning “Yes we can!” campaign slogan, mixing it in with its irrepressibly self-promoting happy-talk. And talk about the anchors! These utterly clueless squares could never have ever listened to a band like Green Day—not that any of them ever would have wanted to. Like Diane Sawyer, the spineless celebrity interviewer and one-time Nixon assistant, listens to “Dookie” while lighting a doobie? I don’t think so! Or the whole lot of them singing along to the original version of “Money (That’s What I Want)” after the “Make Money in May” segment, and knowing it’s by Barrett Strong and not The Beatles? Shit.

Green Day were halfway through their first song when GMA disrespectfully picked it up after a commercial break, adding to the injury with intermittent sound trouble. The GMA team then cut in to hype an upcoming barbecue segment, break for the weather, and come back to ask Billie Joe Armstrong requisite morning network news show questions about whether they got any sleep the night before and if they were really awake.

Billie Joe took it a whole lot better than I did. He and the rest of the guys also took the dipshit-dressed-in-white’s inane exclamation, “There’s absolutely nothing cooler than this!” better than I did. Then again, they didn’t have to deal with the TV picture freezing, the dizzying camera zooms in search of the dumbest doofus crowd reactions (and any hint of moshing), the cutting in and out for commercials (whatever you do, don’t miss the “Here Come the Newlyweds” season premiere!).

Yet there was unintended joy in seeing the kids singing the heavily bleeped “Don’t wanna be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information nation of hysteria/It’s going out to idiot America.” And “Know Your Enemy”—the enemy being everything that “Here Come the Newlyweds” represents.

So here it is where Green Day actually beat the enemy: Beneath the banner of Walgreens, the band that steadfastly refused to censor “21st Century Breakdown” for Wal-Mart was accomplishing what its punk forebears could not even dream of, that is, getting the enemy to play their music. Not only that, showcase it!

There’s absolutely nothing cooler than that.

Posted in Music, Politics, Television | No Comments »

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