My hometown friend George Hall occasionally used to say he’d like to start a band called “The Savage Young.”
George and I had both been caught up in the second wave of Beatlemania that swept over teenagedom in the middle and late 1970s, years after the Beatles had broken up, and a lot of us “inherited” record collections from older brothers and sisters. (I got the Beatles Greatest Hits 1962-66, a double-album, when my brother went off to college in 1975.) Second-wave Beatlemania got a boost in 1976 from the release of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Music album (with great old classics like “Long Tall Sally” and “Slow Down,” as well as Beatle-written tunes like “You Can’t Do That”), and another boost in 1977 from their live album recorded at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964-65.
At some point in 1976, I read Hunter Davies’ The Beatles: An Authorized Biography (published in 1969), and was fascinated to learn the early history of the group: Playing “skiffle” as The Quarrymen, a series of name changes, early personnel like Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe, the tiny clubs in Liverpool, then the pivotal period when they traveled to Hamburg and had to play multiple sets every night in rowdy bars in the Reeperbahn district. It was during their Hamburg period that the Beatles wore leather jackets and, under the influence of art students Astrid Kirscherr and Klaus Voorman, adopted their soon-to-be famous hairstyles. But they were still a bunch of tough-looking greasers when Astrid first took their photos in the Hamburg rail yards (above).
It also was while in Hamburg that the Beatles, performing as back-up group, recorded several tunes with Tony Sheridan, including the single “My Bonnie.” Tracks from the Hamburg sessions were eventually released in 1965 as an album called The Savage Young Beatles, and it was from that title that my friend George got the half-joking idea that there should be a rock band called “The Savage Young.” Continue reading The Savage Young →
Ed Driscoll, one of those great bloggers whom we don’t link enough, has a post about people waxing nostalgic for NYC’s seedier days. Admittedly, that was a little before my time, but it did bring to mind a funny bit from Our Dumb Century: Ah, those days.
Some humorless git seems to have left the funniest page of the book of the tubey-nets: Aug. 20, 1969: Apollo 13 Astronauts Drown as Ted Kennedy Flees Splashdown Site
Oh well, we celebrate our victories where we can.
An interesting discussion came up today regarding the idiot in Florida who burned the Qur’an, and the resulting deaths in MeS, just north of me by a couple of hours.
Burning anyone’s scripture is deplorable. Double deplorable for anyone nominally a follower of the Christ. Do you really think He’d do such? Really?
And so then you have horrid depictions of other sacred objects, connected to public figures. The image is far enough out there that I don’t care to embed it in this blog post.
The discussion went in the direction of the Florida pastor being held responsible for the Afghan deaths. While not defending the goofball pastor in the slightest, I cited the 2005 Newseek story about Qur’an flushing, which fiction cost 17 Pakistani lives. The causality gets to be challenging. The Florida pastor and the LA artist both merit public derision for tastelessness. But is the threat of a Heckler’s Veto by citizens willing to undertake violence sufficient justification for government restrictions on freedom of speech?
My counterpart in the discussion felt that the Pastor had behaved immorally. Now, from a Christian standpoint, you can build that argument, but what about a secular legal vantage? Playing the slippery slope card, I told him that we could equally decide alcohol is immoral, and outlaw beer. He said “Fine by me, I hate beer.” Great, we can outlaw all alcoholic beverages, then.
The argument concludes around the notion that we all have things we don’t like, but which others cherish. The least-worst answers here are:
Never actively offend others’ faith.
Strive to minimize passive offense of others’ faith.
When someone of your own stripe runs amok, regulate them.
Ensure the regulation is kept at the social level; attempts at codifying good taste as secular law are doomed to failure.
And may God have mercy on the creep in LA who depicted Sarah Palin getting spiked. Not asking him to like the lady; just for a modicum of decency. As art, the style isn’t completely without merit. The subject matter is the problem. Also, I’d put forward the same objection if BHO was enjoying the nine inch nail. If the artist had gone that route, the media would probably call the artist a raaaaacist.
“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. . . . If the right forces us all to either defend [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
— Spencer Ackerman, from “JournoList,” April 2008
That tasty reminder of how our tolerant liberal media friends conceive their jobs was recalled by Ed Driscoll in linking to this astonishing exclusive at Ace of Spades HQ:
Kenneth T. Walsh, in a “Special Report” for US News Weekly (2/26) titled, “Race in the Era of Obama,” writes that in May 2010, President Obama “told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent ‘Tea Party’ movement. … A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to ‘take back’ their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn’t dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a ‘subterranean agenda’ in the anti-Obama movement — a racially biased one.”
Astonishing, as I say, that the President of the United States himself would resort to such Ackermanism. But isn’t this really the same thing Obama was saying in April 2008 when he told his rich San Francisco donors that middle-class voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”?
As Ace says, we can no longer pretend that these “racist teabagger” smears are ginned up by liberal political operatives and reporters, “and that our post-racial president has nothing, nothing at all to do with them.”
Otherwise, all this extremist talk about “choice” and “women’s rights” might lead to mass murder:
A massacre perpetrated by a deranged man is not about the deranged man; it’s about “rhetoric.” But a massacre perpetrated by an abortion provider whose violations against laws of the nation and of humanity were overlooked for years is “not about abortion.” It’s about criminal behavior, and that’s all.
“Honey, I’ve got to go cover another Tea Party rally,” I tell her, and she thinks it’s all about politics — lower taxes, limited government, stuff like that — but now Frances Fox Pivens has decided she’s a Tea Party expert and lets the cat out of the bag:
Sheriff’s Department and community-college officials in Pima County are refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the man charged in Saturday’s shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and Pima Community College have declined to release documents that could shed light on run-ins they had with 22-year-old Jared Loughner in the months prior to the shooting. . . .
The school officials assertion that an FBI inquiry prevents them from releasing this information is transparently invalid.
The school official’s assertion that an FBI inquiry prevents them from releasing this information is transparently invalid. And if the FBI has indeed asked officials to suppress the information, this is absolutely unacceptable.
Six people are dead, among them a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, while a U.S. Congresswoman and 11 other people are grievously injured. There can be no “privilege” to shield government officials from scrutiny for their apparent mishandling of previous criminal behavior by the suspect in this case, given that protecting the lives of its citizens is the first duty of government.
While some media outlets are reporting “All the News that’s Fit to Edit Like a Ransom Note,” it’s good to see that the Arizona Republic is doing its job and speaking truth to incompetent power in Pima County.
It’s kind of rhetorical to ask if the sheriff, Mr. Dupnik, will apologize. But Dupnik, the sheriff, knew that Jared Loughner had written “Die, bitch” on that note to her in 2007. . . .
Will Obama say tonight in his remarks in Tucson that Dupnik acted stupidly as he did in describing the actions of the cop in Cambridge? Will Obama castigate Dupnik? No, this is not gonna happen. He called Dupnik and thanked him yesterday. . . . Why was that “Die, bitch” note covered up? I mean it’s now how many days? Saturday, Sunday, Monday — four days. Four days and we are still learning about all of this. Why did the media bury that information?
Let those in the media who have promoted Sheriff Dupnik’s dishonest scapegoating — disseminating the hateful political propaganda that None Dare Call “Blood Libel” — answer that question.
Based on zero evidence, they accused Palin — and Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, et al. — of having incited a horrific crime.
Those who have been falsely accused of complicity in mass murder — “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin” — respond to the accusation and criticize the transparently political motives of their accusers.
The accusers then accuse those whom they have previously accused of murder with attempting to politicize a tragedy.
This is why I say it is always wrong to accuse liberals of not having any standards. They’ve got exactly two: One for them, and one for everybody else.
The adult daughter of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was booked into the Pima County jail Wednesday on drug charges.
Mary Louise Alvarez Dupnik, 40, was arrested on suspicion of unlawful possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of a dangerous drug, unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and an unrelated failure to appear on a charge of having a suspended license, according to the jail.
She was booked into the jail the same day a search warrant was served at a Midtown hotel room where methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, a scale, syringes, pipes and counterfeit money were seized, according to court documents filed Friday.
It also was while in Hamburg that the Beatles, performing as back-up group, recorded several tunes with Tony Sheridan, including the single “My Bonnie.” Tracks from the Hamburg sessions were eventually released in 1965 as an album called The Savage Young Beatles, and it was from that title that my friend George got the half-joking idea that there should be a rock band called “The Savage Young.” Continue reading The Savage Young →