Sherry Darling
New Yorker
BALLAD OF THE SUN AND THE MOON
>
> 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'is idiocy is here complete, since the most beknighted
> 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 depradations 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, eerything 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
> differetntly. 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., www.joserrapere.com)
> 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
*Counts to ten. Thousand.*
Cheryl
>
>
> 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'is idiocy is here complete, since the most beknighted
> 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 depradations 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, eerything 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
> differetntly. 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., www.joserrapere.com)
> 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
*Counts to ten. Thousand.*
Cheryl
>
arrrggg
