"Marigny Girl," by collagist and printmaker extraordinaire Tony Fitzpatrick, graces the cover of Stew Called New Orleans, the fine new CD from Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. The pair knocked out the CD in a single session. Stew glows with a relaxed confidence, starting from the very beginning with Boutte's sterling reading of Paul Simon's "American Tune." Boutte and Sanchez trade vocals throughout, augmented greatly by Leroy Jones prowling trumpet and an occasional solo from guitarist Todd Duke. But what really makes this CD shine is not so much the material -- excellent though it may be -- as the obvious friendship and affection between the two men bulwarked by arrangements built around Sanchez' rhythm guitar. Individual CDs from both made my end-of-year Best Of list, and I can't imagine that Stew will be any different...You can listen to tracks from Stew Called New Orleans at the Lousiana Music Factory here...
"Marigny Girl" is part of a exhibition called Chapel Of Moths: A New Orleans Project, assembled by Fitzpatrick for last years biennial Prospect.1 New Orleans. You can view the exhibit here...
Fitzpatrick has been designing Steve Earle's CD covers for nearly fifteen years:
Washington Square Serenade (2007)
The Revolution Starts...Now (2004)
Just An American Boy (2003)
Jerusalem (2002)
Sidetracks (2002)
Transcendental Blues (2000)
The Mountain (1999)
I Feel All Right (1996)
So Arlen Specter is now a Democrat. I've always been lukewarm toward party switchers because the act usually has more to do with self-preservation than principle. Specter is no different: The 79-year old faced a stiff primary challenge from his right. More than anything -- and way ahead of principle and party loyalty -- these guys want to be United States senators. Specter has already said that he will continue to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), I hope he doesn't get a free ride in the Democratic primary of heavily unionized Pennsylvania...
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12 comments:
Sounds like a good cd. Those album covers are killer-- I especially like "Just an American Boy" & "Transcendental Blues," but they're all great artwork.
Sounds like the deal is done as far as the free ride in the primary is concerned, at least as far as party backed candidates are concerned. Still, I'm happy about it. One less! It may be too late for him to come around on the EFCA, but he claims to support the Democratic agenda. We'll see about that, of course. I do like that he said that the GOP has moved far to the right in the years since he was first elected. It has. To the right of anyone sane and rational at all at this point.
He's right about the party changing. In fairness to Specter, he made his bones in the days of Mark Hatfield, Charles Percy, Jacob Javits, and Clifford Case. I doubt that any of them would be Republicans today.
I wonder where this leaves Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe? On the one hand, they're entrenched in Maine. On the other hand, they have much more in common with Specter than Jim Bunning or James Inhofe.
Tony Fitzpatrick's work looks a lot like the work of Alison Saar, who also does mixed media collages and prints, although the bulk of her work is in sculpture. She's done artwork for the Neville Brothers in the past.
As for Specter switching parties... We have someone in RI who a lot of us had wished would switch parties, but he had too much integrity to do it. I'm talking about former RI Senator Lincoln Chaffee. Linc was a moderate Republican, very much concerned with conservation and the environment and not at all in lock-step with the party under Dubya and his band of thugs. He lost his senate seat in 2006. In the primary, the Rove/Cheney machine backed one of their own type of vicious neocons to run in what turned out to be a very nasty, name-calling race, geared at pointing to how Chaffee was a traitor to the party. Linc won the primary, but he lost the election to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, not because of who he was or what he believed but more to break the Republican stranglehold on Congress. Linc dropped out of politics soon after, a bitter, unhappy man. He resigned from the GOP because he felt betrayed. He went back to education, a professor in political science at the University of Rhode Island. But he's been making some moves lately, and he may be running for governor as an independent in the next gubernatorial race in 2010. I'm pretty sure I'll be voting for him.
The specter haunting PA did a deal with the dems: he gets to keep everything. Feh.
Next thing you know lieberman's going to have his very own come to jebus realization that he is a dem after all, omisolomio. quadruple feh.
Ancient of daze too is da specter. 79. They stay far too long, which is part of the problem of gummit. Plus they really believe that they are essential.
Newsflash on that: Nope.
Not to mention that the PA dems were working very hard for their primary candidate -- and now -- poof. The Pennsylvanian dem voters have no say at all. Nor does the state dem party. This just freakin' stinks.
Love, C.
Roy, Alison must have done the covers for Yellow Moon and Brother's Keeper, which are excellent. Good CDs, too!
These prints are just the BEST! WoW! What a collection!!!
Hey K,
surely you have seen this, Editilla titled it:
"New Health and Human Services Secretary: 30 year Jazz Fest patron!"
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1240896762309730.xml&coll=1
Poor thing was correct in her statement to the reporter, as today I have found this article referenced in about 2 dozen media outlets on the net. None of them highlighted her patronage as a necessarily good thing in their titles though, as I did.
I feel refreshed and reassured that such a prominent member of Obama's cabinet says she Loves New Orleans and has shown it by coming to Jazz Fest for the past 3 decades, 30 years... that is a long time coming --her husband even longer!!!
Is that not just Cool As Hell????
Somebody fucking PINCH EDITILLA.
Is this not Cool As Hell?
Yes!
This is a very good thing indeed.
Thanks youz,
Editilla~New Orleans Ladder
A columnist in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wondered in February why Specter stayed with a party that was listing so far to the right. She also pointed out some of his more moderate views:
He's voted in favor of consumer, civil and abortion rights, a guest-worker program, increases in the minimum wage and other pro-labor policies. He also refused to cast a "guilty" vote during Bill Clinton's impeachment and expressed deep reservations about the Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department.But she also pointed out he's pro-death penalty and against most gun control. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what his real intentions were, but he is pro health care reform and we'll need him on that vote.
Sorry, I don't know why a space didn't appear between my italicized sentences and the last one. :-(
Editilla: Lessee, Kathleen Sebelius goes to Jazz Festival, Bobby Jindal sees Celine Dion. Nuff sed.
Kathy: That column certainly was prescient. I doubt that a Pennsylvania politician of any stripe can support gun control, so I'm not expecting a major change of heart there. But who knows? Maybe his inner liberal will have the space to emerge.
Editilla,
;-)
ha, ha, ha
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