Kelley Stoltz in concert at Great American Music Hall
While the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown threw many musicians for a loop and reassessment while away from the rigors of the road, Kelley Stoltz managed to stay focused mixing and making music, and get multiple vinyl releases out, even with pressing plants backed up. One such release was his Agitated Records release “Ah! (etc)” which starts strong with track one Team Earth and then piles on Stoltz penchant for poppy post punk eighties influences heard developing on his past releases.
At the majestic Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, Stoltz recently highlighted tracks from the underrated “Ah! (etc)” album and here are two clips from that release I shot of the performance using about 5 cameras I snuck into the venue.
#KelleyStoltz invites you 2 join #TeamEarth …video caught live in action behind the barricades at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco November 19th 2021
Kelley Stoltz 20th Anniversary Celebration of “Antique Glow” feat Kelley Stoltz on vox Allyson Baker on gtr Russell James Miller on drums Doug Hilsinger on gtr / doodads and Corey Largent on bass
The next song I captured from the set is the third tune on the “Ah! (etc)”album called Never Change Enough …
Kelley’s music is available from all the usual streaming and download sites, but if you want to buy physical copies direct from the musician, I can attest he is a prompt shipper! In the USA check out his bandcamp page at https://kelley.bandcamp.com/album/kelley-stoltz-ah-etc to order what’s in stock . UK/European buyers may wish to purchase his Ah! (etc) album from the Agitated Records bandcamp site at kelleystoltzagitated.bandcamp.com/album/ah-etc … and save on shipping, as they are based in UK.
Below is a video link to The Re-Volts caught live in action disgracing themselves doing a stunningly sick seventies throwback recreation as DOUBLE VISION at the Bad_Acid_Presents Hallorager VIII at San Francisco’s storied Bottom of the Hill on 10-30-2021 …
They perform two Foreigner Facsimile songs in this quickly edited clip, two corporate cock rock classics: Long Long Way From Home and Cold As Ice ( which was a top ten hit back in summer of ’77).
The posse comin’ at us is led by Spike Slawson, who has taken to heart (vest and wig) the role of Lou Grammatico in his Halloween DOUBLE VISION Foreigner Tribute. Here is backed by pedigreed punk pals including co-founding Dwarves member HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED on keys, local ne’er do ‘ell and jocular jerk of all horns Jamin Barton , Jack Dalrymple on guitar, Colin Delaney on skins, and Paul Oxborrow in the role of late great OG bassist Ed Gagliardi .
Wolves is the 9th of the 10 songs featured on the Dead Bats CD , the most recent release from Shotwell whose first 7″ EP appeared in 1995.
Twenty-five years and as many band members later Jimmy Jazz of Shotwell brought back percussionist STEVE MORIARTY (THE GITS, PINKOS, ST. BUSHMILLS CHOIR) to record & release Dead Bats. Joined on bass by JOE FUCKO (NAKED AGGRESSION, STRYCHNINE) they stuck to the tried and true, passionate political lyrics set to pissed drunk punk pacing that has defined their output over the decades.
Said Steve of the brief but feisty Shotwell Dead Bats Protest video he put together : “I made this on my I-phone, mostly using Black Lives Matter protest footage from Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Brazil and Paris France. It’s what I did for my summer vacation.”
Sad news came down the punk rock pipe yet again lasterday when I got word that Walter Lure, the affable sartorial sidekick to Johnny Thunders onstage antics for many years had succumbed to liver & lung cancer at age 71.
Walter Lure aka Waldo R.I.P. Walter Lure aka Waldo
Numerous musicians & fans took to social media to pay tribute to a guy who remained far from a household name to most casual rock music fans, played key roles in some seminal punk rock records, was there when it all went down, often in flames and had recently toured and performed with a long list of rebel rock heroes and mutual admirers.
I got a few chances to shoot video of Walter playing over the past few years, and he was a true old school rock n roll showman, and the ramshackle style made for gigs that were always a blast. I’ve included a few clips from some of Walter Lure’s last gigs in San Francisco on this page as a he salute to his bravado and role in providing us all with such great rock n roll memories over the decades.
Walter Lure was in NYC in the mid 70’s when he left his gig as guitarist for largely unheralded rock band The Demons, whose lead singer was a drug dealer to local musicians including the New York Dolls, to join up with Johnny Thunder’s post Dolls disastour outfit The Heartbreakers. Lure was already a fan of Thunders, who’d he watched at the Mercer Arts Center as they threw away the rock rule book, and eschewed the currently in vogue prog & hippie folk ditherings for a more animalistic vital 50’s influenced street rock sound. The charismatic & chaotic Thunders “could get a round of applause simply from messing with his own hair,” Lure writes in his recently published memoir “To Hell And Back”, and Walter, a banker’s son, who’d attended Fordham U and enjoyed classic literature, was eventually asked to join the rough housing unit known as The Heartbreakers in 1975 and quickly tried to fit in. ” I played my last show with The Demons on a Friday night at CBGB during a 1975 July 4th festival to about 20 people at 2 am and my first Heartbreakers show the next night to a jam packed house of probably 500 people with lines around the block. ” He let Dee Dee Ramone cut his fashionably long 70’s locks off, and then had to get on the same drug wavelength as his bandmates , writes Lure “like an idiot I said: yeah, I’ll try it. Within six months or a year became as fucked up as they were.” In addition to a dope habit, he established a role in the band as a sidekick and musical foil to the notoriously unreliable and drug addled singer/guitarist.
#WalterLure
The sole survivor of the classic #JohnnyThundersAndTheHeartbreakers era has left the building #RIPWalterLure Got to see Waldo a few times, and it was always a blast… Here he is performing an old #Contours classic #DoYouLoveMe with his 2017 #LAMF touring band featuring #GlenMatlock (@glenmatlock1) , #DannyRay (@explodingsax) , #MikeNess (@mikeness) and the mighty Clem Burke on drums ( @cbdproject )
In 1976, at the invitation of former NY Dolls manager Malcolm Mclaren, The Heartbreakers traveled to England for the potentially promising, but very soon to be The ill fated, Anarchy in the UK tour, with the infamous Sex Pistols headlining, as well as The Damned & The Clash as support. The New Yorkers had barely cleared customs at Heathrow when it became apparent the tour was going to be sabotaged by mountains of bad press, public out cry, boycotts and bans by local gov’t councils . This tumult arose as a result of the aftermath of the Pistols appearing on the live BBC Bill Grundy TV talk show and mischievously uttering some four letter expletives in the direction of the lovably lecherous lout of a host and all heck broke loose. Recounted Walter to interviewer Joe Whyte in 2017 “Malcolm picked us up at the airport in a limo and he was really nervous and muttering to himself. He mentioned something about the band cursing on a TV show, but we had no idea. The next day we woke up and every newspaper had nothing else on the front pages but the hideous outrage that some punks cursed on national TV. We couldn’t understand it at all. “
The Heartbreakers played what UK shows they could, and as they’d a bit of a reputation in the UK, unlike NYC where they just had debts and detractors, they stayed in London with their raging queen of a manager Leee Black Childers, hoping to score a lucrative or at least livable UK record deal.
“Leee Black Childers had kept some cash in reserve for a few spare meals and transport needs. Luckily the Clash’s roadie, Sebastian Conran offered to put us up for “a few days” at his parents flat in Belgravia. They were out of town – they being the founders of Conran’s department stores. The flat had around 5 floors and about 8 bedrooms and was beautiful. I knew Sebastian was nervous that we’d destroy the place but we were actually fairly well behaved didn’t wreck anything. I guess we didn’t have enough cash to get lots of drugs and booze and start vomiting over everything. The Clash members would stop by with friends during this time sometimes bringing food and booze. I know Johnny sold his Gretsch White Falcon guitar to Joe Strummer while we were there. “
Remaining in London throughout most of 1977 working on their debut album, they went from place to place, even crashing at a famous punk dominatrix residence, where they’d hang out getting high, while she tortured her clients in the back. Said Walter to Louder Than War in 2017 “Someone said they saw David Frost coming out one afternoon looking all red faced after having gone through a session with her. Quite the scene at the time. . . “
Upon getting a record deal offer Walter said he “finally quit my day job as a chemist with the Food and Drug Administration in New York and embarked on my new career as a drug addled punk rocker! It doesn’t get much stranger than that.”
While his bandmates used their spare time pursuing pints in the London pubs, or nodded out waiting for the man and calls from management, Lure took in musicals on the West End, and read Sartre. He came across a used English school girl tie, and incorporated it into his look, and adopted the Bowler as his headwear. They played many gigs with Siouxsie & The Banshees, and after the Heartbreakers one & only album was released and quickly bombed commercially they “officially” broke up, but soon began doing “reunion” gigs as early as 1978.
Living in New York in the early 1980’s, Lure was openly bisexual, had his drug habit, occasional “reunion” gigs with the ever impossible Johnny Thunders, and own band affairs to tend to with groups like The Heroes, The Blessed, The Hurricanes, The Waldos, but he still needed a job to pay bills. His father stepped in to get him work on Wall St. and Lure would suit up daily, and often cop dope on his lunch break at a brokerage firm, doing millions of dollars in trades while managing a debilitating drug regimen, and by night head to gigs and change out of his day job outfit backstage, in his book says he finally managed to clean up by the late 1980’s. Lure told interviewer Jeffrey Wengrofsky that after finally putting the needle down after Memorial Day 1988 “I was in charge of a settlement operation of 125 people, making four hundred grand a year. I had thought that music was complex, but this was like a world unto its own. It gets so complex with private equity. All through the ‘90s, I would work during the day in suits and change into my rock clothes at night – beat up pieces of shit from the other side of my closet. Sometimes, people from my job would come down to the gig, and there I’d be, on stage, singing “Too Much Junkie Business.” It would blow their minds. I lived a double life. I’d play once a month at The Continental with The Waldos.”
His former Heartbreakers bandmates attempted one last reunion in the early 1990’s, and Lure was achingly aghast at his old bandmates chronic condition, and could see the grim future for Jerry Nolan & Johnny Thunders barreling down hard. Writes Lure in his autobiography “Musically, they belonged together, and when they passed away, both in the span of nine months, they were buried within fifty yards of one another. Together again.”
Lure eventually was reunited with his long lost son Damien in the early 2000’s, and while the kid quietly told friends he didn’t really appreciate Walter’s simplistic “Nursery Rhyme” style songs, at least the two had a chance to bond and reacquaint after years of separation. Just a few weeks months before he died, Walter’s autobiography emerged in both hardback and paperback editions from Backbeat Press.
Entitled “To Hell And Back: My Life in Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, in the Words of the Last Man Standing” the tale mostly delves into the sordid stories, tawdry shenanigans, that make up the trials and tribulations of being an on/off again bandmate to the legendary Johnny Thunders for umpteen years. Walter spends much of the story detailing the “Too Much Junkie Business” they were known for until the men parted. An Epilogue and Discography are provided for those that care to follow the tale past the Heartbreakers saga. Said reviewer Jim Spaeth on Amazon of the self penned tome “I couldn’t put this book down. Non-stop excitement, craziness, drama as the weirdest cast of characters rampage through the pages. I love inside stories of the music biz; this book recounts the birth and death of punk from the inside out. Walter also tells the very human and personal stories of his bandmates as they struggle with the music industry, the music press, the fans, each other, but mostly with themselves. You root for them to make it, then you root for them to just stay alive. Most didn’t; Walter lived to tell the tale. Don’t miss it!”
“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
I spent some time with a remarkable set of jazz musicians this past month, who stay busy traversing the region gigging and providing beautiful grooves wherever they go. They are all so busy, its hard to keep up with all the music and combos they are involved with, with the musicians casually splintering off into new aggregations and amalgamations at varied venues, ever regrouping into duos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and large scale ensembles and the like as needed. The folks I’ve met and shot video of to share here are all on the forefront of a 21st century Left Coast Bay Area jazz renaissance, one that just weeks ago I barely knew existed.
One of the many talented souls I met was Anthony Thomas Martinez, a saxophonist who was visiting from San Antonio, but won scholarships as a youth to study at Berklee College Of Music, and as of late had recently been playing steady gigs not only around his hometown, but as far south as in Baja Mexico last month. He rolled through to sit in at shows around the Bay Area and as far south as Santa Cruz, for a week or two, which is all part of his itinerant musician lifestyle he calls The Hustle. His final gig here was a sold out secret session as the band leader for the night at the rustic Stow Lake Boat House in Golden Gate Park, whose weekly concert series reservations occur online, but fill up every week, even on chilly fog laden February nights.
In the embedded video seen below, he tries out his recently bartered for 1953 Ohio made King Saxophone, that he’s now dubbed “The Silver Swan”. The tune is called “Rollin’ Right” and is some of that “pain jazz”, a longer version is featured on his most recent Black Note album “Live at the Palladium”.
Performing with him in the video was fellow San Antonian raised percussionist Vince DeJesus, recent Cuban emigre Yadier Noa Chamble on bass, and Dave Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet alum Javier Santiago, originally from Minneapolis on the keys.
Wrote Anthony after the show :
“Playing at The #LakeHouse Jazz show was mad fun and is always a privilege to play with such intense and inspiring musicians. It was a packed house, 70+ people in attendance, an intimate setting with attentive ears and super grateful for the special guests who came to hang. This is my 3rd year coming out to the Bay and 4th time playing this concert series. Whenever I come, the band name I go under is “The Hustle”. I chose that name because that is very much what the gigging , working musician life is, a Hustle everyday to manifest the life you want as a reality. Most us have our own projects, play in several bands(all genres of music), do studio work, compose or arrange, produce, teach and do everything else under the music umbrella. We all strive to be the best version of ourselves and play from the heart, one day at a time, one note at a time. I believe “The Hustle” is something we all can relate to, whatever dream you may be after and that’s the place we as musicians come from when we play. To try and invoke your emotions and take you out of the Hustle for a moment, to another place while relating to it at the same time. Our release is your escape for that brief period and the greatest joy for us is for you to receive it, and hopefully touch you in some way. Until we meet again my Bay Area friends & brothers.
Ruby Ray discussing her work with friends & admirers at Vesuvio’s
Last week I attended an art show by photographer Ruby Ray at Vesuvios in North Beach. Having recently collaborated with a Swedish publishing company to compile a new coffee table tome of her photos , called “Ruby Ray : Kalifornia Kool 1976-1982” I had expected perhaps some copies for sale alongside her works.
Alas, she herself had not lugged heavy boxes imported from Sweden of her visual documentation of sticky floored band sets in dark clubs, brash backstage parties, and the seminal spawning of the “Industrial Culture” movement that happened in San Francisco. Fortunately, a City Lights employee present assured me there was one last copy that was for sale next door, and I bought the last available volume from right behind the cash register, and demanded Ruby re-sign it again for me, even though it was already signed!
If you click the link below, you won’t have to pay Ferlinghetti‘s word temple tax of full retail price, as the imported book is actually much cheaper and easier to obtain through the mail, but then again, maybe you will feel guilty not dragging it off a shelf in a serene shop.
Ruby Ray currently, as I write, still has a retrospective set of about two dozen prints framed and placed on panels in the already densely packed bar, but the stark striking faces and perfect poses caught in her classic black & white imagery always stands out despite distracting visual clutter & competition all around the room.
Ruby Ray’s punk photos on display at Vesuvio’s
There amongst the other paintings, flyers and tchotchkes that abound in the bar were photos that popped, featuring images from a truncated but 5 year period in SF from roughly 1977-1981. Many were moments preserved from inside or fairly near the Mabuhay Gardens nightclub, that capture in action bands like The Avengers, Crime, Devo, Flipper, Mutants, UXA, X and others that broke free of the bearded denim bro mold of the late 70’s schlock rock to bring to life a vital, energetic and angry new musical art form with its own merits and manifestos, that took music fans far from the middle of the arena rock road.
A few years ago, I purchased the now out of print collection “From the Edge of the World” a smaller sized book of Ruby Ray’s photos that also came with a 16-song CD compilation including rare music by bands featured in the pages: These included The Offs, Darby Crash & The Germs, The Dils, The Avengers, Crime, Mutants, Factrix, The Sleepers, Negative Trend, The Screamers, Chrome, The Bags, Noh Mercy, Pink Section, The Zeros and percussionist Z’EV. If you can find a copy, it is well worth a deep dive or at least perusal.
Out of Print Book/CD “From the Edge of the World: California Punk 1977to 1981” by Ruby Ray edition put out by Superior Viaduct
Back when it mattered, Ruby was right there with a lens, seemingly always pointed in the right direction as the purveyors of the late 70’s scene spouted their first songs/rants, played pranks, or sprawled out in chemically induced hazes. She helped make Vale‘s Search & Destroy publication such a vital document at the time, and her work stands the test of time. The cover showing a passed out Sid Vicious certainly tells a story, as do most of the other images inside her latest book.
Oddly, now 40 years on, Ray’s punk portraits and surreal snapshots of cultural icons like William S Burroughs, Jello Biafra or Exene Cervenka take on a frozen in time historical significance, with an impact that belies their lively off hand and youthful impromptu actuellement.
She’s a feisty and interesting lady and I enjoy her provocative conversation as well as seeing her artistic work, and encourage all with the ability, get out and do the same!
Viva La Ruby Ray!
Ruby’s photos are viewable at Vesuvio’s daily til 2am at 255 Columbus Ave until Feb 28th 2020
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.
Got the unique opportunity to attend a performance by SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Laurie Anderson featuring mischief maker Mike Patton and cellist Rubin Kodheli at SF Jazz last night.
creative collaborators from L – R are Rubin Kodheli on Cello, Mike Patton on vocals, percussion and electronic treatments, Laurie Anderson on vocals, violin & electronic loops
Focused around the text from “Quanjing Jieyao Pian,” Mike Patton and Laurie Anderson combined creative sonic forces to interpret the final chapter of Jixiao Xinshu – the famous military manual written in the 16th century by Ming dynasty general and Chinese national hero Qi Jiguang. Translating to “The Fist Canon and the Essentials of Nimbleness,” the text delves into ideas about unarmed combat exercises as physical training, and is the first known written document of martial arts instruction. Laurie told the audience that her late husband Lou Reed was an avid practitioner of Tai Chi and had been working on a book about these concepts shortly before he died. Having inherited Lou’s martial arts writings (as well as weapons) caused Anderson to delve deeper into the text, which she found oddly poetic despite its more pragmatic nature. The performance also featured cellist Rubin Kodheli who helped build the musical pieces into dramatic and foreboding crescendos that captivated a sold out crowd at SF Jazz Center on Fell St in San Francisco.
Here’s an excerpt of the performance I recorded like a dirty creepy bootlegger from a mic hidden inside a coat in the audience (just like ReRun did on that episode of What’s Happening when he went to see the Doobies with Roger). This audio is the tail end of the set feat. Laurie Anderson with Mike Patton and Rubin Kodheli 1 25 2020 at SF Jazz
Some of the introductory text from the performance seen below…
Laurie spoke of her experiences on a VipASSana meditation retreat where she hoped to learn to focus her mind like a beam, but instead really learned about pain. Surreptitious clip by ROBLEYE
A groovy Free Design cover performed by super talented Bloodshot Records recording artists The Flat Five from Chicago Illinois. This cover song was recorded Jan 18th 2017 on the final show of the band’s first ever Pacific Coast Tour in San Francisco.
The Chicago based quintet of Kelly Hogan, Nora O’Connor, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, and drummer Alex Hall were surreptitiously recorded for posterity (but Nora kept spotting the lil’ cameras everywhere, cuz she’s still pretty observant for a road weary mamacita). For more info on the Flat Five and to obtain their debut album visit their website http://www.theflatfivechicago.com
If ya dig it, please consider donating a $1 to keep my channel alive & kicking http://paypal.me/lilmikesf …
😀 𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣x 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙒𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜! 🚩
Video graciously hosted for free by LBRY.TV where unfettered free speech & courageous uncensored and non-corporate content can still circulate on the internet
