“Hello you beautiful people! …so began an email plea from my friends that run the SF Make-Out Room, amidst all the worrisome news related to the covid-19 panic was the news that a few dozen fine people I know, and the businesses they work for are desperately struggling during to the efforts to stem the spread of some “novel” virus…
It continued “I hope everybody is holding up OK and staying safe during these unprecedented times. As many of you know, once we are free to go back to our day to day lives, the city of San Francisco, and many of our favorite bars and venues, wont be the same, if they are even there at all.”
Then came the call to action…
“That’s why the Make Out Room and the Latin American Club need your help. And why I am begging you to donate anything you can. ”
Scenes from the Make-Out Room
-click to read more at link below from my friends on the Make-Out Room Staff hard hit by the Corona Virus lockdown and if you can, help support them while their jobs are in limbo…
Or as my pal Pat Thomas (a multipurpose culture vulture whom you can see talks with here) put it more succinctly: “In 1997, my band Mushroom played their first ever gig at the Make Out Room in San Francisco. Our most recent gig (August 2019) was there too. Over the past decades for many of us – the Make Out Room has been a home away from home. Not only a place to play, but a place that has had weddings and funerals for members of the Bay Area music scene. I encourage every San Francisco musician who has ever graced the stage, every fan who attended a show, every drinker who got wasted there to donate even just $10-20 dollars – if we all do it, we can save Marty’s sweet succulent ass. click on the link here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-make-out-room-and-latin… “
Here below are some linked videos I shot to give ya an idea of the type of recent music related events the Make-Out Room has hosted over just the past 5 years… the club also hosts numerous gigs, “Writers With Drinks” & “Litquake” spoken word events, comedy, burlesque, DJ music and many other types of community gatherings ranging from birthday parties and political benefits to cumbia dance nights.
I donated instantly because music seems about main thing that makes my life worth living, and there is no where else left in SF that would serve as a clubhouse people like this… it is a creative concentration camp of affable alcoholics, cantankerous cranks, dapocaginous DJ’s, hirsute hipsters harboring bad bourgeois beards, musical misfits & morose mopers amidst the last of the loquacious & lovely ladies that all should know better. This injustice will not stand…this too shall pass. Vive La MakeOut! There’s links below to two dozen some videos of various live music I’ve edited from the Make-Out over the past few years fer yer perusal
Matthew Stoller : Literally The Guy Who Wrote The Book On The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy Alerts “Sheltered In Place” Americans To Be On Vigilant Lookout As The #CoronaVirus Corporate Coup #ShockDoctrine Goes Down In The Beltway
Congressional leaders are likely to put a very ugly deal in front of the American people, and if it passes, America may be unrecognizable after this pandemic. But there is a way to stop it, if people on the populist left and people on the populist right work together.
Here’s the situation. Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and the Trump administration is negotiating a bailout package to address the coronavirus crisis. There’s been a lot of chatter about the need to support workers as the economy goes into a freeze. This is happening around the world; the British government, for instance, is willing to pay 80% of worker wages during this downturn for those affected by the crisis.
But in the U.S., our leaders seem to be falling prey to what can only be called a corporate frenzy of favor-seeking. “Any time there is a crisis and Washington is in the middle of it is an opportunity for guys like me,” said one lobbyist.
Now first I should say that I don’t know exactly what is going to be in the final bill, because the whole process is opaque and being negotiated right now by some untrustworthy political leaders. We will only find out the details at the last minute. So all I have to go off is rumor and reporting. But if we wait until we know the full contours, it will likely be too late to act. I hope I’m wrong, but the list of what lobbyists are asking for is long, and ugly, and often the requests for money or legislative favors are done to cover up mistakes made before the coronavirus hit.
Take Boeing. The aerospace giant of course wants a $60 billion bailout. Financial problems for this corporation predated the crisis, with the mismanagement that led to the 737 Max as well as defense and space products that don’t work (I noted last July a bailout was coming). The corporation paid out $65 billion in stock buybacks and dividends over the last ten years, and it was drawing down credit lines before this crisis hit. It is highly politically connected; the board of the corporation includes Caroline Kennedy, Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein, three Fortune 100 CEOs, a former US Trade Representative, and two Admirals, one of whom is the board’s only engineer. Using the excuse of the coronavirus, Boeing is trying to get the taxpayer to foot the bill for its errors, so it can go back to making more of them.
But that’s not all. Defense contractors want their payments sped up, and I’ve heard they want to widen a giant loophole called ‘other transaction authority’ to get around restrictions on profiteering. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezo want “$5 billion in grants or loans to keep commercial space company employees on the job and launch facilities open.” They also want the IRS to give them cash for R&D tax credits.
CNBC reported that hotels want $150 billion, restaurants want $145 billion, and manufacturers wants $1.4 trillion. And the International Council of Shopping Centers wants a guarantee of up to $1 trillion. The beer industry wants $5B. Candy industry wants $500M. The New York Times reported that “Adidas is seeking support for a long-sought provision allowing people to use pretax money to pay for gym memberships and fitness equipment.” Gyms are of course closed. Meatpackers want special visas so they can undercut wages of their workers, and importers want to stop paying duties they incurred for harming domestic industries for illegally dumping products into the U.S.
Now, I’m not opposed to supporting industries. This is a crisis, and we do not want a lot of the productive capacity of the United States to fall apart because of a pandemic. But the key to supporting enterprises is to make sure that there are strict conditions, so that power doesn’t consolidate into the hands of monopolists and financiers cherry-picking distressed assets. Otherwise, America will simply be unrecognizable after this pandemic. CNBC personality Jim Cramer, for instance, is worried that after this pandemic America will have just three retailers. And he’s right to be worried about that.
Here’s how we can stop it. There are enough members of Congress to act and prevent what really looks less like a relief package and more a corporate coup. However, the problem is that this group is split into different political parties, and Congressional leadership is taking advantage of that dynamic to jam this through. Mitch McConnell wants big business to rule, so he’s playing a trick. He is refusing aid to workers. Democrats are negotiating with him to try to get unemployment assistance and social welfare. McConnell knows Dems won’t pay attention to corporate bailouts if he takes the public hostage, and Democrats know that they can hand out favors to big business if they just talk about how they got larger checks for workers.
So McConnell will put a bill down in front of Nancy Pelosi, with some good stuff like unemployment insurance, but also the really ugly stuff to hand over America to big business. The corporatists in the Democratic Party will tell her “Pass the corporate coup bill, after all we have to do something right now!” And because she doesn’t have the votes from within her own caucus because of these corporatists, and because she doesn’t particularly care if America is sold off to big business, she will do that. The only hope is to get together a bipartisan group from the right and the left to oppose this charade.
And there’s a precedent.
In 2008, when Congress was on the brink of passing a $700 billion bailout to Wall Street, something astonishing happened. A motley bipartisan group of roughly a hundred members, as well as outside experts, formed what was called the “Skeptic’s Caucus,” and organized enough votes to take down the package. Congressional leaders then attached some minor tweaks, and forced the package through after the stock market crashed. Ultimately, the skeptics failed, and the bailouts ended up shifting power and wealth to an unaccountable elite class.
But for that brief moment, it became clear that opposition to Congressional leadership on corporate subsidies is possible. We will need another Skeptic’s caucus, and quickly. And this time, it can succeed. Because this time, no one is fooled by what is happening. We can see it plainly.
So whether you are a Republican or Democrat, join a new Skeptic’s caucus. And demand your member of Congress represent YOU, and not just big business. Help the people by dealing with unemployment, rent, mortgages, not big business executives trying to save their cushy positions.
That’s the situation. I need you to take this information and repost it, forward it, and contact anyone you know in politics, including your representative. Tell them they have to help the people directly and not send out aid to big business without *strict conditions.* Otherwise after this pandemic, we will wake up living in a society with a lot less freedom.
Thanks for reading. And if you liked this essay, you can sign up here for more issues of BIG, my newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation and democracy. If you want to a book to hunker down with while sheltering in place, read my book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.
cheers,
Matt Stoller
P.S. I am releasing all copyright claims on this essay. Take it! It’s yours!
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. sed diam voluptua.
Tune In Soon For #TheInvestigation
A one-night-only theatrical event starring John Lithgow as DJT streamed live from NYC’s Riverside Church beginning at 6 p.m. Pacific / 9 p.m Easterm
The #MuellerReport reimagined by heirs to the Disney dynasty
I was challenged by a joking friend of mine yesterday to contain my most recent political rant to a bumper sticker, and to be honest I couldn’t. I had to immediately “podblast” it…
I felt disbelief and incredulous head shaking, that fermented into pent up rage after the botched Iowa Caucus results were released/not released in the first week of February 2020. Either the Democrats were sabotaging themselves to hide results that did not behoove party bigwigs and monied mainstream interests, or they just botched it outright.
Either way it was not a good look… and it still isn’t 4 days later
a news story from TheWeek.com on party preparedness
Sadly, this just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from the loyal opposition, the party of “we’ll get it right next time” who never miss an opportunity to show disorganization, incompetence and wacky weakness instead of strategic strengths.
“Incompetence by DNC” the official party fragrance
Iowa and DNC delegate shenanigans remind me of how ill prepared, corrupt, sneaky, non-transparent and awkward they often are when given authority… and for them to proclaim themselves the purity testers of our common political landscape is farcical at best.
Democrat success stories I see lately, are few, like slowly turning over the streets of my beloved San Francisco into an expensive everflowing fountain of sh/t, tents & needles, positioned in front of shuttered small biz storefronts. So many of the predatory dope dealers plying their trade openly entered our country illegally, yet enjoy being harbored by our “sanctuary city”. This was a well-intentioned Democrat construct, a policy that not only assists the poor and down trodden, but also enables those contributing nothing but misery and gang violence, whose only goal in the USA is working for cartels extracting dolar bills froma n ever expanding pool of lowly street addicts. Democrats apparently call this all a grand experiment in social services and tolerance. Would you like a gov’t supplied free needle to go with that festering abscess and fentanyl addiction? No problema, just don’t ask for rehab or an exemption from our plastic straw ban.
Outside the obvious unsightliness, and law enforcement expenses that this public health crisis entails, this achievement in compassion and poverty pimping only costs us $1 billion a year in “services” out of our meager $12.3 Billion city budget. The city budget is an astronomical sum that goes up every year, with literally billions more sucked outta taxpapayers over the last decade, yet with little new to show for it. Our small businesses shutter at shocking rates, while millions of taxpayer funded syringes line sidewalks & clog gutters, while rampant evictions and horrific homelessness are at crisis levels .
San Francisco is run entirely by a backstabbing power hungry Democrat cabal, who have manifested a behemoth city budget that dwarfs that of many larger cities with double our population and land mass. This city blows through literally $33,698,630.86 in expenses on an average day and employs 6 people per city block on the taxpaper teat. I can only wonder where and what they are doing, when despite the seeming surplus of staff, literally no one is around to hinder the eyeball peeling atrocities committed on those same blocks daily.
D is the grade I’d give Democrats in San Francisco, who have no viable opposition party to blame, taking hundreds of days on average for approval on the simplest public projects, convening endless “task forces” that issue unread reports months and years later, while billions in tax money get shoveled around, much of it divied up to fave “non-profits” who are lauded with back patting “official” city proclamations. Meanwhile, almost no affordable housing gets built, waitlists add thousands of names, despite legal mandates and a massive backlog of demand for new housing is ignored by a political class busying shaking each other down for favors.
The crowning achievements of our Democrats regionally in the Bay Area are things like billions upon billions squandered on botched bridges, and bus terminals with bogus bullet trains & fatally flawed subway cars that take decades to barely go blocks with basements to nowhere. Contractors are apparently the most important constituents, at least as far FBI investigators have discovered over the years.
What so-called “Democrats” even stand for is a giant questionmark, as their 2020 Presidential primaries begin, the curious addition of billionaire Mike Bloomberg buying his way into the process is a strikingly bleak example of how the “Democrat Party” apparently knows no real ideological bounds. A poll released in February of 2020 found that “Likely Democrat Voters” found Bloomberg to rank higher than Biden or Bernie when asked “which candidate best represents the party”
Many apparently pine for the rose colored glasses of the good ol’ days when Bill Clinton got into the White House, but most forget that was when Newt’s GOP arose to capture dominance of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1946 ushering in the neo-con era and the deep divisions that have set this country down the raggedy red rebel Republican road we’re on today.
So back then, to prove their meritorious money policy mettle, the Democrats of the 1990’s, led by guys like Bill & Biden, fought hard to bring us the AEI’s NAFTA, and the repeal the 1933 Glass-Steagall bank reform financial rules in 1999, which within ten years crashed our economy and made everyone dirt under a derivatives trader’s fingernail in a mutant mega-bank’s claws …
Eventually Bill was almost ousted for some unethical shenanigans, but Democrats circled around, called his victim a vixen and scorned the GOP, and soon we had Baby Bush to contend with for two terms. So were The Democrats the #RESISTANCE then? Maybe the resistance to common sense.
Don’t forget that Democrats “patriotically” patronized us in 2002 and marched us all like the pied pipers in lock step with Bush & Cheney to usher in the $2 trillion bloody botch job of the Iraq war (that is everyone except Oakland’s Congresswoman Barbara Lee ).
It is indeed mysterious to them, how by the date of Trump’s inauguration the donkeys had managed to have the lowest number of elected officials sitting in office in 100 years…
They are now shocked as people largely ignore their intentionally limited, ridiculously rushed and inconsequentially inadequate “managed” impeachment attempt. It is 4th down on the wrong end of the field and they are still hoping for a penalty call on a replay review after the last time out? There impeachment seemed designed to fail…and Pelosi admits she never was behind it from the start.
Oh, Democrats with their high ideals and folksy Joe Biden as their chosen “frontrunner”, a semi senile ol ‘ cooter who never met a racist predatory red lining lender or a war he didn’t like, a skeezy bad toucher who ignored his drug addled son until he was holding dual shady gigs in foreign countries that are making Trump jealous…
How are the Democrats able to throw shade on Republicans while they bring us equally unvettable ethically challenged and federally charged & convicted piece of sh/t Congressional jokes?
I’m taking their party’s puke worthy politicians like Anthony Weiner, Laura Richardson, William J Jefferson, Frank Ballance, Chaka Fattah, and Corrine Brown, not to mention Katie “Who Me Too?” Hill who was barely in Congress long enough to be ousted?
It takes some gall and nerve to put other politicians through public purity tests when your politicians include such icons of filth as the 82 Democrats reprimanded for misconduct in Congress just this century, that’s 25% of the total misconduct reprimands in over 200 years committed by elected Democrats within just 20 years! By my rough estimates there have been 127 Democrat politicians actually convicted of crimes while in state or federal office this century, including 18 in the state of Pennsylvania in just the past 5 years alone.
D is the first letter of the name of the party of national elected embarrassments like Rod Blagojevich , Alcee Hastings, Barbara Rose Collins, The Calderon bros, Fabian Nunes, Don Perata and Rod Wright in the California Assembly, or Hayward’s own corrupt feverish lying big ticket item shoplifter Mary Hayashi, who was an Assembly seat holder actually married to a sitting Democrat judge.
Democrat donors include all the usual suspects and socialites, and literally the largest dark money groups in nation. The people seeking favors from Democrats run the gamut of individual cesspool dwellers like that meth & dead male prostitute lovin’ Ed Buck, or a top Democrat donor named Charlie Kushner who ended up in prison (yeah that dudes’ daddy) or even the Chinese Govt who got caught funneling nearly a million into Democrat Pres campaigns.
Jeffrey Epstein guest lists of politicians are filled with Democratic icons, such as that parties’ fave sons including an ex-Governor who ran for President, a revered ex-Senator and a certain ex-President who all took those jaunty junkets to private islands with Prince Andrew and Alan “I kept my underwear on” Dershowitz
… Don’t even peel the onion and look at their judicial branch embarrassments and regional reprobates like our own class of political punks here in SF like Federal inmates Leland Yee, Ed Jew, and Keith Jackson, a local schoolboard hustler. Who can forget Carole “I plead insanity” Migden or our latest embarrassment in SF, the recently indicted DPW director and pocket fattener Mohammed Nuru who had close ties to the last FOUR SF mayors, even though they’ll now pretend not to know him.
But hey, how dare I say the Democrats are not the #Resistance right? If i believed in God, I’d ask the deity to help us, but let’s be honest, if anyone upstairs cared, we wouldn’t be here.
The 2019 San Francisco DA election marks the first time in more than 100 years that there is no sitting incumbent running for the District Attorney seat.
CANDIDATES In Order Of Seating On Video Live Stream At Dais From Left To Right (Moderator from ACLU is Yoel Haile)
(Advance Streaming Video Feed with Cursor to 25 Minutes Into Event To Get To Introductions)
Suzy Loftus, Legal Counsel, San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, City and County of San Francisco
Nancy H. Tung, Deputy District Attorney, Alameda County
Leif Dautch, Deputy Attorney General, State of California
The debate was organized by a coalition of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Indivisible SF, the San Francisco Eastern Neighborhoods Democratic Club and the Willie B. Kennedy Democratic Club in conjunction with event site UC Hastings College of the Law.
A recent FBI investigation has found that Amazon contract drivers were in cahoots to commit thefts with pawnshop type operations in suburban Seattle that used “Amazon Fulfillment Centers” to resell stolen goods worth over ten million dollars in suspect sales since 2013. The shady underbelly of late stage capitalism and online e-commerce is revealed in a recently unsealed search warrant affidavit for a non descript storage space outside Seattle.
In one example of how the anonymity of online transactions shield unscrupulous dealings, Gov’t evidence points to 44-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Aleksandr Pavlovskiy of Auburn, Wa as one scheme’s mastermind.
Pavlovskiy , who became a naturalized US citizen in 2011, began his Kent WA Pawn operation in 2012, and had a network of goods suppliers including lowly shoplifters, pill heads and Amazon delivery drivers who’d bring him stolen good from Amazon customers as well as regional big box retailers. The items would then be sold online under Amazon’s popular “Third Party Sellers” program through official “Amazon Fulfillment Centers”. Through just two suspect “pawn shops” operated by Pavlovskiy in suburban Seattle, over $4.1 million in quick cash was paid out to people who brought in nearly 48,000 items to be resold over the past six years.
According to investigators, Pavlovskiy used handles such as “Bestforyouall” or “Freeshipforyou,” and sold millions of dollars worth of products via Amazon Fulfillment drop shipping that ranged from shoplifted allergy and pain medication from Walgreen’s, to name brand razors, and previously undelivered power tools, video games and other egregiously obtained electronics, all listed as “new” in their original packaging to buyers using the Amazon website. On eBay, since 2017, Pavlovskiy did over 13,000 transactions under the name “InnovationBest”, which he’d gone to the trouble of of applying for a trademark and setting up a Facebook page. He had an Instagram account called hardwarestorex all managed through a gmail account set up under the name “bestlessbestless” that also linked to a Facebook page under that name as well whose 900+ person “friend” list is populated almost entirely by offshore accounts registered in Africa, and Indonesia.
InnovationBest did over 13,000 rated transactions on eBay from March 2017 to July 2019
Detectives staked out the pawn shops, Innovation Best in Kent and Thrift-Electro in Renton, and observed that they appeared to be paying shoplifters and drug users cash for new items from Home Depot, Lowes and Fred Meyer department stores. Unlike typical pawn shops, they didn’t make sales; instead, the products were moved to a warehouse and to Amazon “fulfillment centers,” from where they were shipped when they were sold on Amazon’s website by sellers using the handles “Bestforyouall” or “Freeshipforyou,” the affidavit said. –AP
GENE JOHNSON Associated Press
One of the suspect contract Amazon delivery drivers supplying stolen goods, Abbas Zghair, is already under arrest for an “unrelated” murder, and is suspected of absconding with $100,000 worth of Amazon customer ordered video gaming gear, sporting goods and computer products — items he sold to Pavlovskiy for less than $20,000.
According to the King County Prosecutor, Abbas Zghair shot 31-year-old Silvano Ruiz Perez of Kent in late March and left him to die in a field at the site of the former Auburn Valley 6 Drive-In movie theaters. The Auburn Reporter will not release the names of any of the other members of the alleged conspiracy until the federal government formally charges them.
Robert Whale – Auburn Reporter News
Amazon Fulfillment Centers are where the ill gotten goods are shipped and laundered through the illicit sales network and make their way to the general public
The investigation came to light when a local police detective noticed an Amazon driver with nearly $30,000 recent transactions recorded via Pavlovskiy’s pawn/fencing operation
Arrow de Wilde of Starcrawler (live shot by @LilMikeSF)
A wild throwback to shades of the seedy 70’s Sunset Strip nights at Rodney’s English Disco, or teetering down the steep stairs to find whatever awaited in CBGB ’s toilets, Starcrawler are actually a vehicle for frenetic millennial LA wunderkinds seemingly born decades too late to make those scenes.
The band, comprised of Henri Cash gtr, bassist Tim Franco, and Austin Smith on drums started out as raw amateurs just practicing Runaways’ covers, and have evolved into their own show biz phenomenon, fronted by the fearless gangly nymphette Arrow de Wilde on vox. Their sound and stage presence has built a solid following on the road supporting bands such as the MC5 and Spoon.
I caught one of the opening nights of their fall 2019 tour in San Francisco and Starcrawler’s musicians presented an impressive sonic spectacle, caustically cool, crunchy, captivating and a perfect foil for the caterwauling of frontperson Arrow deWilde. While deWilde’s antics at the mic stand, and mostly on the floor between songs are what draw eyeballs, do not discount the pulsating precision rhythm section that drives the throbbing sound, or the slashing guitar and vocal support of Monsieur Cash in his green satin suit looking reminiscent of something Gram Parsons might’ve left behind
Starcrawler have released their Nick Launay produced sophomore album “Devour You” on Rough Trade and are hitting the clubs across the USA to earn more cash and converts as they establish themselves as a vibrant exponent of 21st century hypnotic rock n roll abandon. The first single to the new album has a video directed bythe enigmatic Jellyclaw called “Bet My Brains” inspired by subterranean urban dwellers both real and imagined.
Says singer Arrow de Wilde “that song came from thinking about the tunnel people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River. I was fascinated with the fact that there is a whole other world happening right under our feet.” Guitarist and vocalist Henri Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”
Arrow promises “We want to put on a real show and give people some kind of escape from all the shit going on in the world,” she says.
The band make several west coast stops in the wake of their Bottom Of The Hill performance in San Francisco on October 5th, and will play two Third Man Records Halloween shows in different cities, and make it as far north as Montreal. See the complete show date list below to find a fall 2019 show near you, and click the link get your tix before they’re all gone HERE.
Starcrawler – official band photo by Arrow’s mother Autumn de Wilde
Starcrawler tour dates 10/4/19 – San Diego, CA – The Irenic 10/5/19 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill 10/7/19 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios 10/8/19 – Vancouver, BC – Fortune Sound Club 10/9/19 – Seattle, WA – The Crocodile 10/11/19 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge 10/12/19 – Denver, CO – Lost Lake Lounge 10/14/19 – Kansas City, MO – The Riot Room 10/15/19 – Omaha, NE – Reverb Lounge 10/16/19 – Saint Paul, MN – Turf Club 10/17/19 – Chicago IL – Lincoln Hall 10/19/19 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern 10/22/19 – Montreal – Bar Le Rtiz PDB 10/23/19 – Somerville, MA – ONCE Ballroom 10/25/19 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg 10/26/19 – Philadelphia, PA – Boot & Saddle 10/27/19 – Washington, DC – Pie Shop 10/28/19 – Pittsburgh, PA – Club Café 10/30/19 – Detroit, MI – Hell Night @Third Man Records 10/31/19 – Nashville, TN – Halloween @Third Man Records 11/1/19 – Atlanta, GA – Aisle 5 11/2/19 – New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa 11/5/19 – Austin, TX – Barracuda 11/8/19 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar 11/9/19 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theatre
Got to see the mighty Mekons the other night at the The Chapel in San Francisco. w/ Skokie Girls..
The two sequential songs from the sold out show in this first black & white edited video below date back to the 1988 “So Good It Hurts” album which was a sorta joint release twixt Twin/Tone and A & M labels and the second tune is from 1985’s “Fear & Whiskey” LP originally released on Sophie Bourbon’s SIN RECORDS label.
I believe the Mekons were the very first band I ever snuck in with a fake ID as an underage teenage runaway and saw at the I-Beam in San Francisco circa May 1987… In some ways, not much as changed, which is awesome and terrifying, most of the original band members I know and love are still onstage and accounted for, and sadly the world is still a greedy, stupid, venal, hostile, politically painful place in need of a good poetically poignant Mekons musical vivisecting.
However, instead of vile Tory Maggie Thatcher to rant about, there is this Boris Johnson dude…whatever. It is all the same… and most of us are aging, and if not gracefully, at least some of us had the good graces to show up for the show, at least far more paying customers than were there in 1987.
This video has slightly improved sound dynamics over a version I placed on Instagram, so rejoice in the additional camera angles and sonics here from two Mekons faves. Rumor has it Mr Langford will be back this fall as part of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass thang and, uh, he is bringing an entire two dozen member Welsh Boys Choir… you have been warned.
Here is a 360 degree video clip for the song “Thee Olde Trip To Jerusalem” (available on The Mekons album “Out Of Our Heads” and also featured in the Cd included in the 200 page book “United” that was released in 1996 via the Touch & Go affiliate label Quarterstick)
The last video I’ve pasted in below is the last song from their set, a Mekons song from their latest album, recorded some 30 years fater the earlier tunes were released, and Rolling Stone scribe Will Hermes said of the song ““How Many Stars” takes the classic form of an English folk song about a man lost at sea, and woman who dies of a broken heart, the band wondering at the sheltering sky in raggedly sympathetic harmony. “
Guess this news was off my radar last week, but I’ve just learned today that Jerome “Jerry” Lawson, the charming, but gritty voiced baritone singer and longtime frontman of The Persuasions, who recorded some two dozen albums with the vocal group over a 45 year span passed away at a hospice in Arizona on July 10th at age 75.
Jerry’s contributions to keeping the art of acapella singing alive were innumerable since that first Persuasions album arrived 50 years ago in 1969. His unlikely and long career includes being discovered by Frank Zappa singing to him over the phone, and then getting signed to the Straight/Bizarre label run by Zappa and Herb Cohen around the same time Alice Cooper and The GTO’s were also recording for the imprint. Soon The Persuasions were on the road opening for The Mothers Of Invention, and the first gig was in a segregated southern resort town… a place where none of the band members had ever dared go.
By 1971, now signed to Capitol, the Persuasions opened other shows for Zappa including The Mothers of Invention concerts at Carnegie Hall doing material found on their landmark break thru LP “We Came To Play”. Their sound was pure street vocal harmony, that combined elements of soul and gospel, but was not afraid of rock, in fact their repertoire included covers of songs by Lou Reed, Paul Simon and later even full acapella tribute albums to The Grateful Dead and The Beatles. Wrote future Persuasions’ album producer Rip Rense of the band in a 1986 profile for the LA Times, “They have Persuasioned everything from Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” to Sam Cooke’s “Good Times” to Curtis Mayfield’s “Man Oh Man.” The recording of “Papa Oom Mow Mow” heard in “E.T.” was theirs.
Of those early informal years in the 1960’s before they were recording records, Jerry Lawson recalled after moving to Brooklyn from Florida that “We’d get a crowd around us. Boy, that harmony was lovely. People would sit around, and get popcorn and Crackerjacks, and just listen to us. Sometimes we would sing until 3 o’clock in the morning,” he told music writer Jim Harrington of Bay Area News Group in 2011. “We had a crowd, and we were singing, man — even the police were all in the crowd,” Lawson told Chris Hansen of the Mesa Az Tribune in 2007. “A lady yells out, ‘Boy, y’all sound good!’ Then she said ‘If you don’t know what you’re singing, it’s called a cappella.’ So that was the beginning right there.”The Persuasions who began performing professionally after so called “Doo-Wop” records had peaked, never wanted to be known as an oldies group and instead referred to their unique sound as “contemporary a capella”.
Whether they planned it or not, by the early 1970’s, The Persuasions, whose career began a decade earlier as just a group of friends singing outside on the basketball courts and front stoops of Brooklyn, were almost single handedly keeping the youthful improvisational spirit of street corner “Doo Wop” alive yet via major label records and tours in a music industry that mostly favored “dance” records, and thought vocal groups were not worthy of airtime or promotion. Jerry was always interested in expanding the horizons of vocal music, not being boxed in, and stayed emphatic that The Persuasions not play any “Doo-Wop” oldies shows, and insisted that booking agents turn down all offers to perform or participate in any nostalgic “Doo Wop” revues.
By the 1970’s The Persuasions were putting out some two albums a year, some were great, memorable charting titles including 1972’s “Street Corner Symphony” with its stunning “Temptations Jam” medley, and the funky drums and electric piano arrangements on “More Than Before” that arrived via A M in 1974. By 1977 they’d moved on to Elektra, and fortunes waned and soon by the 80’s they were on indie labels like Rounder, but still over the years they soldiered on, and Lawson got to record and share stages with an array of artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Ellen McIlwaine, Stevie Wonder to Rod Stewart, Garland Jeffreys to Ray Charles, Paul Pena to David Essex, Leon Redbone, Sheryl Crow and even Liza Minnelli.
Spike Lee featured Jerry and The Persuasions in a 1990 documentary film he put together called “Do It A Capella” where they told some of their group history.
After 40 years with the group, a tired, bitter and worn out Lawson walked away from The Persuasions in the early 2000’s. Jerry moved to Arizona, and thinking he’d given up acapella singing for good, listening to the Johnny Otis radio show on KPFA, he’d soon stumbled upon a Bay Area group called Talk Of The Town that re-inspired him and they joined forces. The group recorded an album, toured and found a niche and can be seen performing with Jerry here on a nationally televised NBC TV show in 2010.
It wasn’t until 2015 Lawson released his own debut solo album, Jerry Lawson “Just A Mortal Man”, on Nashville based Red Beet Records that includes contributions from Jim Lauderdale. The title is a nod to a 1973 song that was sung by one of his biggest influences, the late David Ruffin of The Temptations.
Here’s a video of Jerry rehearsing “Woman in White,” a song co-written by Lawson with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter for the solo album he recorded with producer Eric Brace at a studio in Chandler Arizona in 2015.
Over the years Lawson made some remarkable music and brought joy to hundreds of thousands of people in concert on the road or through recordings, radio and tv appearances. In 2017, his hometown of Apoka Florida honored him with a special street designation, “Jerry Lawson Way”.
Aside from the street naming, and his solo album release, one of the last accomplishments he was proud of was having his Persuasions’ recordings used in advertisements, like the sample of his voice on “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” by Jamie XX that was used in a 2015 Apple I-Phone spot. Another was the Persuasions’ version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” that was chosen as soundtrack to a 2018 Winter Olympics promo spot that aired all over the country featuring young athletes preparing to head to the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang South Korea. The ad was produced by 72andSunny, a Los Angeles based advertising agency
In the years prior to his death, Jerry was excited that a documentary film was in the works that would tell his life story. That film “Jerry Lawson – Just A Mortal Man” is as yet unreleased, but will tell the story as Jerry went from street corner singer, to internationally renowned recording artist, and into his later life, when after beating alcoholism, he was a renaissance man, who became a humble, yet proud counselor and caregiver to developmentally disabled adults he referred to as “his kids”. Lawson is survived by his wife Julie, his children, and has two official personal websites that document his storied career
Amazingly, decades after the murder of a grocery store owner was the talk of a small Texas town, his 84 yr old widow has been arrested, and much of the momentum on the cold case seems to have been due to a True Crime reality show that now airs on Oprah’s network and is produced by Dick Wold of Law & Order fame.
Apparently, the host of the program Cold Justice’s Kelly Siegler, is an experienced former Harris County Texas prosecutor and had more team members available than the resource strapped actual local prosecutors so her team took off running. According to Siegler, the Leon County TX sheriff in 1984 botched the investigation by not consistently writing down notes so his research and leads died with him. The TV show producers credit younger better trained law enforcement officials now in Leon County TX with resurrecting the investigation, and bringing in the TV crew.
Oddly enough, the home where the death occurred seems to be a hot spot of shotgun “accidents” that those 1980’s Texas cops could not grasp were possibly more than accidents. Prior to Johnnie Albritton’s death by multiple gunshots to the back in 1984, apparently their 13 year old daughter also died in an unexplained shotgun accident in 1981. After Johnnie’s death, when TX cops sought to interview his widow for a polygraph, she too suffered a shotgun “accident”, and thus somehow avoided any future polygraph examination?
More on this crazy story via these links to the local regional Texas Eagle newspaper:
Flipper’s 40th anniversary is this year and they are playing later this week in their hometown of San Francisco at Great American Music Hall. I guess I gotta shell out the big bucks if I wanna see ’em again. Should I do it? It will be sorta like a family reunion, in that not everyone will be there, and those that are, might not even be recognizable the way you remembered them, or even the members you’d want to see the most.
Here’s live video clips I made featuring songs made infamous during Flipper’s early years…
One further down below is newer from the 21st century, featuring current vocalist David Yow doing Love Canal and Ha Ha Ha which were on an early single. The other just below is about 20 years older, you hear part of their final Subterranean single “Someday” and the closing song “Way Of The World” from a daytime outdoor show in the early 90’s when the reconstituted band soldiered on after the death of original member Will Shatter. At the time a guy named John Dougherty was brought in on bass, and just like Will, Dougherty too would also die of a heroin overdose shortly after this 8mm footage was shot.
Here’s a more recent live lineup performing past glories from the band’s break-thru single originally released on Subterranean Records in 1981
Both songs are masterfully jaded methed up narcoleptic noise rock takes on the American Dream gone awry, setting the tone for the emerging ennui amidst a painful wasteland of suburban consumer conformity and corporate malfeasance that would be known as the 1980’s.
For a year or two in the late eighties, I used to answer Flipper’s fan mail, not for the money, uh, just for the glory I think… besides they were too lazy. Their singer Will Shatter would show up and sit beside me at the Subterranean record label store front on Valencia St circa 10 am with a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler in hand. He was really just hoping to cash spare royalty checks before the rest of his bandmates, and seemed disinterested in the fan mail I showed him from geeky kids in far off Poland and Kentucky. The label guy would maybe throw him a few bucks to get rid of him lurking around the storefront, and Will might even pilfer a couple 7″s on his way out to sell somewhere else. But Will was a beatnik poet, and really just a guy from Gilroy, and he died soon after of an OD…
me on day will shatter’s death hit the news
The Flippant Men Who Make The, Uh, I Guess You’d Call It “Music”
Steve DePace is the entrepreneurial mercenary and life force trying to preserve the band’s legacy, Ted is more chill, a laconic Vietnam Vet, frazzled and still the easiest to be around to this day. I think Will was the sweetest of the bunch, while Bruce, now put out to pasture, was obviously the most mischievous, which is kinda cute when you’re young, less so as you creep into middle age.
When Flipper Kinda Lost Its Way In The World …
By the early 90’s Bruce’s drug taking manifested itself beyond pranks into petty feuds and worse, he became such a jerk, that after Will died, he was actually caught climbing through the ceiling vents of his own indie label warehouse to steal his own master tapes. It was all part of a coked up cash-in ploy and they sold the reels to Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins for chump change.
Bruce “Loose” Calderwood on stage 1994
Selling the tapes got a cash infusion, but sorta proved to be a stupid move, as not only did they burn the true foundational business bridge to their past glories, as soon they took the new money from Rubin, (an amount that barely woulda bought a decent new van), all the early Flipper tapes & LPs were soon out of print. Most of their legacy material was basically lost to the netherworlds of corporate negligence… They put out one new record on a major label in 1993 that stiffed, and I think Steve DePace had to sue to buy back their own music from Sony or whomever ended up owned and kept it dormant for well over a decade into the 21st century long after iTunes and eMusic downloads were already in decline.
Flipper mighta been a buncha drug ravaged idiots, but they were also brutally inspired artists without fear who made a definite caustic sonic mark on the rock music world. Really a band with no apologies, and a legacy of noise that still always makes me smile despite actually knowing the muther fuckers. Original singer Bruce “loose” Calderwood is a more than half crazy old mountain man misanthrope, constantly complaining online about his back, lashing out in recriminating rants while David Yow of Jesus Lizard cavorts the globe singing the songs Bruce made famous, much to Bruce’s chagrin and anger.
They were one of the great band’s of the early 80’s post-punk scene, and the only thing that held them back was everything. especially their own dysfunctionality. I consider them America’s nasty little answer to the pomp & circumspect Public Image Limited., but with much more sincerity, true grit and heart. They made dark deep wounding records that still stand the test of time, and their songs churn away in the background like psychic sewer dweller anthems. As Krist Novoselic of Nirvana has said of the band he briefly joined “Their music drew me into a universe where bleak was beautiful. I realized the work was as heavy and transcendent as anything in the rock echelon. Mainstream convention was shattered. Flipper were too weird and dangerous for the world. And if the world didn’t get it, that was just another loss for humanity. “
Apparently the world as another chance to catch on. Steve DePace mentioned to me in April when I inquired about the band’s 40th anniversary tour, and working on a documentary of their career “The time is right! I am going to get it all done over the next year or two! We will be rebuilding and relaunching the brand and the band in a big way. Lots of shows and many other things…”
