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June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
June 27, 2002
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahul Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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July
1, 2002
John
Entwistle's Heaven and Hell
The Ox
by Dave Marsh
John Entwistle "stood out because he played
without emotion," according to the Associated Press wire
story announcing his death. Anyone who has ever heard the Who
is advised to remember that humans are primates and primates
are mainly visual beasts. An arachnid, for instance, would never
have made such a huge mistake as to confuse Entwistle's onstage
immobility with a lack of passion. Entwistle was the other great
songwriter in the Who, author of songs like  "Heaven and Hell," "Cousin
Kevin," "Boris the Spider," "My Wife,"
and "905" (not to mention great commercial parodies
for Heinz Baked Beans and a pimple cream called Medac). Unless
humor has been eliminated from the range of human emotions, he
was as emotional as everybody else in his band, just not as agile.
Unless a sardonic vision of the beyond doesn't count, his view
of the cosmos was at least as curious as Pete Townshend's.
When it came to musical humor, Entwistle
probably stood as the funniest guy in the Who, which took some
doing. He peppered his bass runs and brief solos with quotes
and allusions and his lyric writing had the same dark, dodgy
aspect that infests the writing of Stephen King, another 6' 4"
behemoth whose saucier side the benighted often overlook. In
interviews, his perspective came through the wry just like Townshend's,
albeit at its own angle. He began his solo career playing heavy
metal, so I asked what other heavy metal he liked. "None
of it," Entwistle replied. "Can't stand the stuff."
He pondered the contradiction, then gave a look somewhere between
grin and grimace. "It's like sniffing your own farts, I
suppose."
His bass-playing really made him important.
John Entwistle was the first musician to figure out how to use
the bass for carrying forward melody and weaving additional themes
through a song, while still stabilizing the beat-that is, he
figured a way to balance the extreme playing of Pete Townshend
and Keith Moon simultaneously, a stupendous feat. In the Who's
greatest record, "My Generation," it's his ability
to carry the tune that frees Pete Townshend's guitar to clobber
the hell out of it and create the ear-bleeding feedback solo.
There wasn't any precedent for what Entwistle did, and all bassists
since-from Jaco Pastorious to Doug Wimbish and beyond-owe him
their sense of freedom.
Entwistle's bass attack forced the Who
into its high-volume assaults. "We had only two melodic
instruments, my bass and Pete's guitar," he explained. "So
I devised a way of playing with a very trebly sound, as if my
bass were a rhythm guitar.So when Pete was doing chord work,
I could get in a melodic line from the bass side. But to do this
we needed 100 watt amplifies with four cabinets each." Entwistle
became the first musician to play the high-powered amplifiers
developed at Jim Marshall's West London drum shop. Without this
combination-excessively loud Marshall stacks turned up way past
the point of distortion in competition with one another, and
bass guitar offering a thundering melodic challenge to the six
string variety-there wouldn't be any metal or grunge, and probably
no punk, either.
The puzzle of the Who was very much about
how to fit together four eccentric stylists: "I think if
you listen to my bass parts on their own, they sound unbelievably
disjointed," Entwistle said, "but when you play them
with the other instruments on the track, they fit. That's what
comes from playing with Keith." In the greatest '60s rock
band-in my opinion-each member played an indispensable role,
none of which made very much sense on its own. John Entwistle
made have been the man standing stockstill amidst the maelstrom
his bandmates created but that's precisely because he stood at
the center of it all.
(All quotes from my book, Before
I Get Old: The Story of the Who, except for the story about
metal and farts, which I've been waiting to write for 20 years.)
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. "The
Rising," Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
2. The
Modern Recordings, 1950-1951, B.B. King (Ace UK)
3. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
4. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
5. Watermelon,
Chicken and Gritz, Nappy Roots (Atlantic)
6. Sweet
Talk and Good Lies, Heather Myles (Rounder)
7. Masquerade,
Wyclef Jean (Columbia)
8. Living
in a New World, Willie King and the Liberators (Rooster
Blues)
9. Revolucion:
The Chicano's Spirit, a selection of Chicano grooves
from the early 70s (Follow Me, Fr.)
10. By
the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group)
11. The Shed Session, Bhundu Boys (Sadza,
Ger.)-Two discs of early '80s Zimbabwean guitar band music that
rocks harder and easier than any of the "world music"
that became of it.
12. Happy
Town, Tim Krekel
13. The
Houserocker! Jimmy Cavallo with Ron Spencer and Jumpstart
(Blue Wave)
14. Live, Natalie McMaster (Vanguard)
15. "Cry Cry Cry," Robbie Fulks,
""Ballad of a Teenage Queen," Rodney Crowell,
"Ring of Fire," Billy Burnette from Dressed in Black:
A Tribute to Johnny Cash (Dualton)-Honorable mention: "Pack
Up Your Sorrows," Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison.
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
June 25, 2002
June 17, 2002
June 12, 2002
June 4, 2002
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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