You Can't Drink The Kool-Aid If The Well's Run Dry

Conservatives are beginning to recognize that their intellectual well has run dry. Says one:

Every intellectual movement needs to constantly question itself; otherwise it becomes stale. But conservatives have sort of reached a position of intellectual closure. They don’t think there are any new ideas of particular interest to them. Their philosophy is fully formed. The only question is how best to implement conservative ideas in the political debate.

Maybe this is the case and maybe it isn't; I'm not privy to the internal conservative debate, nor do I care to be. But I can say this much: At one time, there was broad agreement across the mainstream political spectrum about the problems facing the country. There may have been disagreement about priorities and obstacles, but the debate was about the means to address the issues.

But starting with the Bush I campaign masterminded by Lee Atwater and continued by Newt Gingrich, Republicans began making matters personal. They impugned the integrity, patriotism, and motives of millions of Americans, polarizing the country in the interests of seizing and keeping power. The right-wing media joined in and created an amen chorus of tender voices such as Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Conservatives deliberately courted the anti-intellectual element in the country so far as to make a virtue of ignorance. So, they shouldn't complain that the teabaggers they welcomed into the house have become the face of conservatism.

Moreover, the consensus about the issues facing the country has disappeared. Although the new health care law adopts historically Republican principles, the party has moved so far to the right as to deny the existence of a health care crisis at all. Similarly with climate change, Republicans call it a hoax (why anyone would make a hoax out of climate has never been explained) and offer no conservative solution at all. Banking crisis? What banking crisis? We don't even want to talk about it.

And even when they admit to a problem, doing nothing about it remains the Republican preference. Between the cooperation required between two branches of government and between both houses of a bicameral legislature, competing committees claiming oversight, and a mountain of arcane procedures, it's incredibly difficult for the United States government to pass major legislation. (Health care took 75 years, when you get right down to it). Both parties are masters of delay, and Republicans have flogged and demeaned government for thirty years, ever since Ronald Reagan famously declared it to be the problem and not the solution. Moreover, Republicans have championed the slowness of the process as a civic good, since it prevents the federal government from passing laws willy-nilly.

So it's especially galling when the same week that he refused to introduce climate change legislation because Harry Reid wanted to take up immigration reform first, Republican Lindsay Graham sanctimoniously pronounced the Arizona immigration bill as bad law that reflects "what good people will do" when they have no other choice. He added that immigration reform is "impossible" until the border is "secure" (whatever that means). But would Graham support raising taxes to recruit additional Border Patrol agents and take other security measures? I think we know what the answer to that is.

Immigration reform vexes Republicans because there's really no approach other than one negotiated by the federal government. But the paucity of ideas among conservatives has become so pronounced that all they can do is the blame government inaction and then refuse to take any steps. No wonder the Democrats will move forward on their own. They had to on health care, and had to threaten to financial reform. Why should this be any different? It's not like the Republicans have any ideas of their own...

The New Orleans Ladder is performing a banner job providing links to stories, web sites, and blogs about the  unfolding free-market environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. From what I've read, the Gulf Coast may have to prepare itself for the possibility that the leak cannot be capped and that the ensuing disaster will be greater than the Valdez spill into Prince William Sound. While British Petroleum operated the blown rig, it's beginning to look to as if the most culpable party may be Halliburton. You may have to go back to the British East India Company to identify a single corporation that has had a more malign influence on the world...

Between predatory bankers, rapacious Wall Street traders, the mine disaster in West Virginia, and the oil spill in the Gulf, you'd think that people have had a belly full of an unregulated free market. We'll see...

Thirty Days Out has a complete 1977 concert by the great NOLA funk group The Meters here...

Timothy Noah asks, if the Republicans are riding so high, how come they're running so scared?...

Seattle Seahawk great Walter Jones retired today. The Seahawks retired his number immediately. Beloved in Seattle, Jones will go down in NFL history as one of the great left tackles ever. A quiet, proud man who let his play speak for him, Jones' teammates loved him and rarely missed a chance to tell the world what a great player he was. Mike Holmgren, whose charges included Steve Young and Brett Favre, said that Big Walt was the best offensive player he had coached. A couple years ago at a Seahawks game, I handed my son a pair of binoculars and suggested that he watch #71 in action. "It's like he's not even trying!" And this was a compliment, believe me. Walter Jones, who started 180 consecutive games and surrendered a little over one sack per season, was that dominant.




William Bell sings "You Don't Miss Your Water" with help from Marvell Thomas on piano:

Interview with Reggie Scanlan of The Radiators (Part 2)

Last Tuesday, I posted Part 1 of my interview with Reggie Scanlan, bassist for New Orleans' beloved rock band The Radiators (www.theradiators.org). Among other things, we discussed the roots of New Orleans music; Wild & Free, the CD celebrating the band's 30th anniversary, and the impact and importance of Hurricane Katrina to the New Orleans music scene. We went on to discuss the longevity of the Radiators, why New Orleans musicians are such terrific guest performers, and life on the road.

You guys have been together for a long time – we’re talking Z. Z. Top territory here. 

Los Lobos might be the only band that’s working continuously longer than us. They’re great guys.

Tell me, what do you know now that you wish you had known then?

I wish I could have played then like I play now!

Have the Radiators ever come close to breaking up?

I would say yes.

What happened?

We’ve never had artistic differences. Katrina was a real fly in the ointment, but it almost made us feel like the band was the one place we could put it behind for a couple of hours. We had issues with a manager once. There were different opinions of how it should be dealt with. Other than that, there’s never been an issue.

We’ve always had gigs, and it’s hard to find a guy who writes songs as well as Ed. He expects other to bring something to song. Ed cut the band in for a slice of the songwriting business and that helped the band stay together as a band.

We have never had a plan. Originally, we wanted to stay together a year. When we were with CBS the specter of being in business loomed: We suddenly needed attorneys and booking agents. When that ended, we reactivated own record company and kept moving. We expected a certain amount of fan attrition from people who liked one song, but we found a niche.

Often the presence of "special guests” on an album is the kiss of death. It almost invariably suggests a cover for a lack of anything interesting musically. But I’ve discovered that it’s the opposite with New Orleans artists, that a guest performer typically enhances the sound. Warren Haynes and Theresa Andersson provide perfect examples of this on your Live at 2006 Jazz Fest recording…

We played Warren’s wedding.

Why do you think that this the case?

New Orleans is incestuous: Everybody plays with everybody else. When they play with you, it’s “what song are you going to do?” People bring their ears. I played with the Mardi Gras Indian Orchestra and it sounded like we had rehearsed for weeks when we had barely rehearsed at all. There’s a whole book of New Orleans tunes. Everybody knows The Meters, James Booker, Earl King…someone calls out “Hey Pocky Way” and everyone can play it. There are fifty or so songs like this.

The Radiatiors have used the Bonerama horn section with no rehearsal. We told them to just come up with a horn part. They’ve played with us so much over the years they have something in their head.

Who over the years have you especially like working with?

I love playing with Michael Skinkus, a percussionist. We work together in Ed’s side band. George Porter and the two bass thing…he’s one of the guys I grew up listening to and learning from. I like playing The Meters part while George is off playing something else.

In the dedication you wrote for Wild & Free, you thank WWOZ for “letting me bore listeners with road stories when they could have been listening to more tunes.” Go ahead: In closing, bore me with a road story!

I was in St Petersburg [Florida] a few days ago. We did a gig there and were staying on the beach. We pulled over to a Church’s Fried Chicken at 1 a. m. and the driver got off. All of a sudden a six-and-a-half-foot black woman in short shorts gets on saying “I know Michael Jackson is on this bus.” She’s already walking down to the back of the bus and starts taking clothes off, then talks about how she wants to get in a bunk with all the men. Our driver, who is little guy but tough, got back and had to wrestle the woman down the bus and get her dressed when he was one-third her size. He finally got her off bus. We learned to keep door shut!

Here, The Radiators perform "Walkin' The Dog" and "Chicks Too Young To Fry" at a private party in 2007:

Interview with Reggie Scanlan of The Radiators (Part 1)

The New Orleans band The Radiators (www.theradiators.org) epitomize the backbone of rock-and-roll: The working regional band that makes continuously high quality music and that remains true to itself artistically. 2008 marks their 30th year together: Thirty years of rehearsal, of road trips, of gigs before large audiences and small.

The Radiators celebrated the anniversary with the release of Wild & Free, two CDs of mostly live material that they call “Fishhead Music.” Wild & Free dates back as far as their formative year of 1978 and also includes new songs written for the release. Bassist Reggie Scanlan spoke with me about the group, the new release, Fishhead Music, Hurricane Katrina, and the inimitable world of New Orleans music. Here’s part 1 of the interview:

I went to Jazz Festival last year and came back wanting to immerse myself in the music of southern Louisiana. The diversity and depth are such that it’s impossible to say that there is a such thing as one Louisiana Sound or a NOLA Sound.

It’s all delineated. People want to put in a bucket and it’s not like that.

Yet, the first piano notes of Wild & Free pretty much announce that The Radiators are a New Orleans band. What have the Radiators absorbed musically that make them a distinctly New Orleans band?

The stuff we grew up listening to – Earl King, Professor Longhair, The Meters – I heard it in college when white kids first getting turned on to this stuff. You could go see these guys any time you wanted to. For me as a bass player I could watch these guys all night & see what they were doing.

There’s a lot of old influence. The city founded by French and Spanish, and the music has what Jelly Roll Morton called a “Spanish tinge." It’s just a looser feel. Then of course slaves could gather and play music in Congo Square. For them, that was a way of passing down their music. Congo Square might be first place a stringed instrument and drum played together. Growing up here, hearing those rhythms…that stuff was going to effect your music.

We were Earl King’s band for several years. We got to look at the clockwork from the inside. It was a real schooling in how to prepare for a gig: You had to be ready. Those older guys didn’t cut a lot of slack.

So, what is Fishhead Music?

We started out in 1978 doing original songs, which was at the bottom of the list of what people wanted to hear. It wasn’t quite R&B, It wasn’t quite rock...one day [vocalist and songwriter] Ed [Volker] said “it’s fishhead music!” Fans started calling themselves Fishheads.

In some ways the name underscored the problem of what we were doing. Any night, we had no preconceived notion of what we wanted to do. The rule of band is, you can play whatever you want as long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes. 

Tell me about Wild & Free. It’s not a typical anniversary celebration CD. The sequencing of the cuts is not chronological. What was thinking behind that?

We taped everything from the beginning, We tried to arrange Wild & Free more like a set and mix it up with different time frames. We wanted to include stuff that had never been played live and include different versions of previously released songs. We weren’t interested in greatest hits; it’s an overview audio scrapbook of thirty years of songs and gigs.

An amazing guy named Bruce Barielle did the mastering. He retrieved stuff lost in floodwater and still made whole project have an overall compatible sound.

Hurricane Katrina appears to have had a profound affect on the New Orleans music community, but maybe not in the way one would expect. During my visit, I came away astounded by the quality of the music. The funk scene, for example, is amazing. It’s as if musicians have collectively made the statement, “This is our city and we’re not giving it up.”

That’s exactly what happened. I was home by last week in September [Note: One month after the flooding.] The owner of the Maple Leaf Bar was determined that nothing was going to close his club. He put out a call to musicians to play and whoever showed up could play.

We all has the attitude of “the government has abandoned us, but this is our city and we’re taking it back.” People turned gas themselves, made street signs that are still up, cleaned up. You didn’t go anywhere without a weapon. The National Guard would shut down club right at 1 [a.m.] and somehow you had to get home after curfew.

How has Katrina affected your music?

Well, the first gig at Tipitina’s after the storm was extremely emotional. Our Katrina project was Dreaming Out Loud. We had to do something to get it out of our system.

You are also a photographer…

As photographer, I set out to document what happened and what didn’t happen. It was almost surreal…block upon block of houses sitting on cars, houses in the middle of streets…Except for Uptown and the Sliver By The River [Note: Most of the French Quarter], everywhere you went looked like Dresden.  

What we’ve accomplished is amazing because it happened in spite of federal, state, and city government. Katrina really gave people a bad taste for anything to do with bureaucracy. People are still fighting for insurance monry and medical bills. Despite it all, the population that came back is super determined to maintain the culture and not lose any of it.

(End of Part 1. Part 2 of Citizen K.'s interview with Reggie Scanlan appears Thursday.)

The Radiators perform "Doctor Doctor" in 1991: