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June 4, 2002
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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June
4, 2002
Bono the Useful
Idiot
Ballad of the Sun and the Moon
by Dave Marsh
I can pinpoint the nadir of rock music's first
half-century: That wire service picture of Bono standing with
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the two of them wearing
local African costumes somewhere in Africa. Bono's idiocy is
here complete, since the most benighted tourist with a skin full
of rum would know better than to allow this shot to circulate.
But tourists are, for the most part, innocent of much beyond
blind pursuit of pleasure. With his African junket alongside
O'Neill, Bono practices actual evil. The trip's purpose is to
endorse the power of rich nations to control the fate of poor
ones, so long as the occasional bone is thrown.
The junket also enhances the image of
one of the rottenest characters in the Bush regime. Next time
he goes to Jamaica, Bono might take a jaunt around Jamaica to
see firsthand the  depredations of Alcoa's bauxite mining O'Neill
ran Alcoa for 12 years. Before that he ran International Paper,
devastating much of the Black Belt of the southern United States.
That is, O'Neill played a major role in defiling the places where
both the blues and reggae were born.
Bono portrays himself as the latest in
a line of rock daredevils trying to change the world. In reality,
everything Bono does-starting with his support of the Irish and
English governments-- attempts to *stabilize* the world, freezing
the globe's poor into subservience. All the rockers who changed-and
are changing-the world go about it differently. Instead of spending
their time pretending not to suck up to power at its most loathsome,
they make music that delves into their own lives and the lives
of the people they love. Those who truly work for a different
kind of world use their talent and fame to tell the stories that
aren't being told anywhere else. They make records like Alejandro
Escovedo's By the Hand of the Father (Texas Music Group).
The album, based on a stage play Escovedo
cowrote, offers beautiful, haunting music, using strings as well
as guitars to offset rock riffs. Although a couple of the songs
("The Ballad of the Sun and the Moon," "With These
Hands") appear on earlier Escovedo albums, much of the best
music is either score, with cello as the lead instrument, or
versions of specific Mexican idioms. ("Mexicano Americano"
raves on regardless.)
The first time I ever heard Alejandro,
he sang Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," the great ballad
of the migrant farmworker. By the Hand of the Father sometimes
feels like a first-hand expansion of that story, but a lot of
it is tied up in issues as quotidian as homesickness, the hope
of romance and the agony when life ruins it. That is, it is the
life of the migrant made nearly universal-so universal that the
detailed differences glare unmistakably from the tapestry.
Escovedo never stops noticing how poor
these people-his people-are. That fact carries the weight of
all his tales. But he puts his finger on the issue just once:
"You see the wicked prowl across the border / They say death's
the only peace the poor understand."
This is not anybody trying to "speak
truth to power." It's a recognition that the powerful know
the truth and that part of the truth is that nobody knows much
at all about the poor as human individuals, and that if you're
poor enough, making a living from one day to the next may come
to constitute a legitimate triumph. Those two bare lines contain
all the things you never learn sitting in conference rooms and
traveling from town to town with a potentate's entourage.
Alejandro Escovedo speaks the power OF
truth. Rock music cannot tell all of it, but for millions, all
of it cannot be told any longer without rock, and the music that
came after it, and the music that came before it. It certainly
cannot be told while standing in the shadows, smirking an implicit
endorsement of the way things are.
DeskScan
(expanded to 15 because everybody imitating it is only doing
ten and anyhow, there's a lot of great stuff out there right
now):
1. The
Eminem Show, Eminem (Universal) [Not just Detroit chauvinism;
the boy *does* get it about bass lines, he's smart and funny
and who says you have to hate everyone he hates, such as himself.]
2. Human
Being Lawnmower: The Baddest & Maddest of the MC5
(Total Energy) [I keep thinking there must be some exaggeration
here, but these live tracks, outtakes, exhortations, do add up
to a great document. Not to be missed: John Sinclair's liner
notes in which he declares that Rob Tyner had more political
influence on him than he did on Rob and that this stuff has nothing
to do with punk.]
3. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
4. By
the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group)
5. "This
Land is Nobody's Land," John Lee Hooker (from Real
Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues, Chess/MCA)
6. Mundo, Ruben Blades (Columbia advance)
7. You're
Gonna Need That Pure Religion,
Rev. Pearly Brown (Arhoolie)
8. Tonight
at Johnny's Speakeasy,
Jo Serrapere & the Willie Dunns (Detroit Radio Co., )
9. All
Over Creation, Jason Ringenberg (Yep Roc)
10. Return
of a Legend, Jody Williams (Evidence)
11. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
12. Milky
White Way: The Legendary Recordings 1947-1952, The Trumpeteers
(P-Vine)
13. Talk
About It, Nicole C. Mullen (Word/Epic)
14. The
Beat of Love, Trilok Gurtu (Blue Thumb)
15. 2
Johnsons are Better Than One, Syl & Jimmy Johnson
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
May 27, 2002
May 20, 2002
May 14, 2002
May 6, 2002
April 30, 2002
April 22, 2002
April 15, 2002
April 9, 2002
April 2, 2002
March 25, 2002
March 18,
2002
March 11,
2002
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