Really Got A Hold on Me

Let me preference this by stating that the Motown Sound and me have had a thing going on since my Uncle Mike (bass player par excellence) taught and drilled me to play “My Girl” to the point that it has become second nature. To put it simply, if it has that hit record, Motown sound, I will be a fan. That being said, former Tony! Toni! Toné singer/bass player Raphael Saadiq’s latest album The Way I See It is one of the best albums that I have heard in 2008. While Metallica’s Death Magnetic was an unbelievable return to everything I liked about Metallica when I first heard the group in between Michael Jackson and Nirvana songs on MTV, Saadiq’s latest studio effort managed to be a looking glass to the vintage Hitsville USA sound while not sounding dated or trite.

The Way I See It is Saadiq’s third solo release and he makes no bones about it; Motown in the order of the day. From first glance, Saadiq’s images on the front of the album and in the liner notes calls to mind images of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles or early Marvin Gaye. The Motown feeling goes deeper than Sharkskins and skinny neckties. The first song on the album Sure Hope You Mean It, just exudes that late 60’s Northern Soul feeling. I can’t stand this term but it sounds very “authentic” to the period to which he is modeling the sound, even to the old P-Bass sound that made the Motown sound what it was. As the album goes on, the 60’s Hitsville sound stays present until Saadiq takes a sudden turn south for the fourth track Big Easy, a song in which Saadiq’s narrative in the song is from the perspective of a victim of Hurricane Katrina struggling with the loss of a child in the storm, touching on a subject matter that has rarely been broached in the medium of popular music (the notable exceptions are Jay Z and to a lesser extent Lil Wayne [I say lesser extent because Wayne has yet to release a single on the subject, while Jay Z’s Minority Report was released as a single for Kingdom Come]) while featuring The Infamous Young Spodie & the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans, incorporating a sound that can only come from NOLA and making the song all the more meaningful (the song would be more meaningful as a single, in my opinion). The record goes on to feature some pretty big names such as the great Stevie Wonder (on Harmonica) and Joss Stone, both adding to the Motor City Sound of the record. Towards the end, the album incorporates some of today’s sound by featuring the aforementioned Jay Z on its closing track.

I think this album is brilliant. It was released at the perfect time. The 60’s are becoming ‘cool’ again, as opposed to the over arching 80’s trends in music and fashion that have been the order of the day as of late. Saadiq managed to take an enormous step in the direction of what I think is a growing trend before the rest of the pop music world. While some have taken the 60’s soul revival sound to success before Saadiq, very few have been able to capture it, along with the image and not seem silly or out of place. Indeed, Saadiq dressing and singing like the Four Tops are at #1 on the Billboard charts was a huge gamble, but it seems that it has become quite a pay off. As I stated earlier, the 60’s are cool again. I am not going to attribute this all to Saadiq. The 60’s resurgence is’ like most trends coming from multiple direction, including the latest slew of mock instrument playing videogames such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero have brought about a renewed interest in guitar, drums and bass in urban America. Although Saadiq didn’t invent this new 60’s trend, he was able to make it work for him better than anyone else doing it now.

Where Do We Go From Here

More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down by an assassin’s rifle, silencing the center the American conscience forever. King is most remembered for his peaceful protest that brought about the most progressive civil rights legislation to ever pass in this country. J. Edgar Hoover declared the peaceful King to be the most dangerous man in America, because of his incredible influence in the black community. King used Gandhi’s non violent protest means to put the looking glass on the oppressor and shame them while stalling the infrastructure and economy until his opposition folded. What made his strategy so brilliant was that he found a way to destroy the old order while providing a means for the two sides to come together as a single nation as opposed to a boisterous winner and a bitter loser.

On this anniversary of his death the question has been asked in many media outlets and personal conversations; is the dream still alive? The dream in reference is his prolific I have a dream speech, which I have quoted here;

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

The dream, that the United States can move beyond its racism and its past evil of slavery toward the day when skin color is as much of an issue as eye color, is alive. It may be as Langston Hughes Dream Deferred, dried up, festering, rotten, crusted over, sagging and combustible, but it is alive. The dream to have the US Constitution live up to its Declaration of Independence is very real. Most Americans don’t believe that racism is a valid system; the disagreement is really over what is racism. Is it wrong for blacks to get extra points on entrance exams because of a crime committed by ancestors against ancestors? Is it wrong to look at Middle Eastern people differently after September 11^th? Are mandatory minimum sentences wrong for drug that affects mostly poor black people? These are the questions we wrestle with as Americans, but the question of a racial caste system has been rejected on the whole. There may be a few fringe nutcases that actually believe in white power as a legitimate political stance, but their existence in the shadows proves my point that King’s dream may not be realized, but is certainly alive.

Although this question needs be asked every so often, I believe that King asked a more pertinent question for our time today and we should be asking on this anniversary. Where do we go from here; chaos or community? King asked this question in his last book by the same title. Once we as a nation pass all the legislation, what are we going to do? Is racism over once we have a serious Voting Rights Act? If so, then why did riots erupt in major US cities after the Act was passed? Why is it that much of white America doesn’t feel the visceral rage over Hurricane Katrina that blacks felt and still feel? Why were the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s denunciations of the US so shocking to non blacks? Essentially, King said that if the United States was to seriously commit itself to justice, then the passage of legislation that prevented simple brutality is only the first step. American must understand the effect of half a century of oppression on blacks, from the stifled black economy to the undeniable rage blacks held toward the US. The hard work was just beginning. Blacks and whites must to build towards acceptance of one another as equals and not combatants. Racism could not die with the stroke of a pen in Washington. What was needed was a massive re-education of the United States to establish a new way of thinking about one another.

That is where we are today. We have yet to make the decision of which direction we are going to turn. Will we continue to go into debt to build bombs or will we make the same commitment towards education? Will we invest in our future generations with the same enthusiasm that we invest in Microsoft and Apple? Will we stand up for the idea that all men are created equal or will we allow poverty to lock many into generations of underclass life with underclass schools filled with underclass teachers telling them that they can become not much more than underclass adults? Will we continue to see world events such as the free Tibet movement or the racial conflict in the Darfur as causes of the moment to get up in arms about while its convenient but to pack away when push comes to shove all for a self congratulatory pat on the back for making a difference in the world while Tibet is still not free and the Darfur conflict rages on? Will we choose to move towards chaos or community? In 2008, I feel that the answer is an issue of personal choice. There is no march to be had or speeches to give, but rather a commitment to the ideas to make and keep. We must commit to improving our schools, to changing our outlook on the world, to re-understanding the conversation we are having on race in this country.

Ray Charles has done many sublime performances of Katharine Lee Bates American the Beautiful, and he always starts with the third verse;

O beautiful, for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life!

America! America! May God thy gold refine,

'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

The heroes felt the ideas that the nation were founded upon were valuable enough for them to lay their lives down and we as the benefactors of their sacrifice must continue to work towards and believe in those ideas. We must choose community over chaos. We owe it to our founding fathers, ourselves, and our future generations.

One More Chance

I am a pro football fan. I love the Dallas Cowboys in specific. My love of the Cowboys goes beyond their 1990’s success or their success as of late. It’s my favorite team and will be for life. Why am I writing about a football team that was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by a divisional rival in March? Because the Cowboys (and to a less successful degree, the Raiders) are the team of the second chance.

A few days ago, talk has surfaced that the Cowboys may acquire the talents of the currently suspended Titan’s cornerback, Adam “Pacman” Jones. Jones has been arrested six times for incidences all seeming to involve strip clubs. He has been suspended since April of 2007 for his many arrests. But that won’t scare away Jerry Jones. Jones signed Terrell Owens, a player characterized by his awful attitude and his past choices to throw team mates under the bus, calling Jeff Garcia gay and blaming Donovan McNabb for the Eagles failure to win the Super Bowl. Jones also hired the formerly suspended Tank Johnson who was suspended for being sentence to a s four month stint in jail for violating parole, which was cut to two months because of good behavior. Jones believes that his program and the player’s natural desire to compete will lead them from their off the field troubles.

The NFL holds player conduct (off and on) the field in almost the same value as athletic ability and game intelligence. Michael Vick is a testament to that. My real gripe with the NFL is that this standard doesn’t seem to apply to coaches. 12% of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s salary ($500,000 of 4.2 million) was taken away for being caught video taping the Jets’ defensive signals. There have been many reports that this problem has been going on in the NFL for years and with the Patriots just as long. Then there’s Andy Reid. Last year, two of the Eagles coach’s sons were sent to prison, one for a pointing a gun in the face of another driver and the other for a heroine induced car accident that left one driver injured. The judge called the Reid household a “drug emporium.” Garret Reid told a probation officer that he liked being the rich kid that sold drugs to the poor. 89 pills were found in his jail cell. If I am understanding this correctly, a player is implicated in dog fighting and is jailed and indefinitely suspended from the NFL, but a coach allows his children to live in his house so recklessly that one puts a gun in a driver’s face and the other injures another person in a heroine induced car crash and states that he liked selling drugs (poison) to the poor (people) and said coach is made gets no conduct penalty.

I know the immediate reaction is to say that the bad acts were done by his kids and not him, but that is doesn’t fly when your kids are obviously doing drugs and storing weapons in your house. Moreover, when the league suspended Vick indefinitely, the only hard fact against Vick was that dog fighting occurred at a house that he owns but is not his actual residence. The facts about Vick’s involvement in the dog fighting were not known he was given his suspension. For all the NFL knew, he and Reid committed the same act; facilitating a crime. Do I expect him to turn his drug dealing children in to the DEA? Not at all, but I do expect the league to maintain the same zero tolerance policy for players and coaches. If Terrell Owens is fined $7,500 for using the football in an end zone celebration, shouldn’t there be something done to a coach whose house held what a judge called a drug emporium along with plenty of illegal guns? Call me crazy, but this smells a lot like a double standard.

As the leader of a team, I would expect coaches to be held to a hire level of accountability than players. They cannot talk character if they their character is questionable. The NFL conduct rules should extend to everyone that is grossly overpaid by the NFL, players and coaches. If they won’t changed to be more inclusive then do it like Jerry. Make your team out of second chance guys. If punishment is given out on the basis of employment status and not actual acts, then figure out a way to deal with character and a sign some “bad apples” to free agency and prepare for a run at the Lombardi Trophy.

Go Cowboys!

change is gonna come

If I were to describe my political leaning, I would have to say it falls to the left. That is probably not a surprise to anyone reading this, especially if you know me or have heard one of my political diatribes live and in person. But the left is a big word, encompassing many people I have profound ideological differences with on many issues, so a more apt description is needed. To make my political worldview a little easier to explain, I would call it leftist until the revolution. What I mean by that is I think that to say reform is needed is an understatement, but I am wholly against dismantling the machinery of government. Some, not all, of the people that call for a revolution think of only the overthrow and the idealist world of [insert your political utopia], and not the string murders and instability that must follow a revolution. Revolution sounds like a great idea until the roads and schools fall apart. We live in a society that has grown dependant on its state to control so much of our day to day life that any revolution would require a massive relearning of how to live.

Where am I going with this? I’m getting there.

All this thought of revolution and reform pushed my mind to think about the other side of the matter; the conservative. The modern conservative has an interesting mindset. Conservatives, by definition, want to keep society from changing. If history has taught us anything, it is that society is going to move, forward or backward. Conservatives must know that they are going to loose on some battles. As the late great soul stirrer Sam Cooke sang, change is gonna come. I don’t mean to imply the Hegelian notion of an end to history that pushes society ever towards some utopia. It is not chaos then community, nor community then chaos, but a choice; community or chaos. But the fact is that the wheels are turning and society is going to go in one way or another. Conservatives are fighting against this push, trying to freeze society in its tracks so the world remains the same for, as Edmund Burke described, the dead the living and the yet unborn. This means then that Conservatism is defined by what it is resisting. If Italian Fascist were trying to change with their coup attempt, wouldn’t the liberal forces aligned against them be conservatives? In the same manner, the pro US Cubans that fled once Fidel Castro took power are also conservative. Both groups are trying to resist a force for change.

Within the US, conservatives were a coalition of evangelicals, hard-line foreign policy ideologues with a Hobbsian worldview, whites that feel short-changed by the civil rights movement, and small government laissez faire capitalist. With the collapse of the Democratic Party’s New Deal Coalition, Nixon’s silent majority could be argued to be the first culmination of this coalition, but the real impetus for this coalition was the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Reagan brought all of these groups together by taking a new stand at the right time. He was going to get tough with the Soviets, whose continued existence was seen as a failure of the old order to get the job done. Reagan was also going to peel back some of the entitlements and give more money to those at the top of the economic ladder in order to bring the nation into the black. This coalition elected the last three Republican presidents, split by Clinton who had help from Ross Perot’s third party campaign that pulled votes from the George H. W. Bush’s reelection campaign.

This conservative coalition’s dominance ended with the Presidency of George W. Bush. There was no single incident that caused this coalition to fall apart, but a series of scandals and failures that haunted the Republican Party throughout the last seven and a half years. This presidency was marred with corporate scandals, from the SEC to Capitol Hill hearings. These were no simply individual corporations and CEOs behaving irresponsibly, but many of these corporations funded the election and reelection of Bush. Add to that what is at best false intelligence and at worst out and out deception that led to the Iraq War, a failing peace keeping mission, a failure to find Osama bin Laden, what is at best an ill-equipped federal government struck by disaster or at worst a callous disregard for the lives of poor people living in the Gulf Coast, the string of lies that followed the tenure of Alberto Gonzalez, the Valerie Plame investigation, Jack Abramoff scandal, and the stepping down of many Generals during this Iraq war. Add all of this to the scandals that dragged down the Republican Party leadership, such as the Ted Haggard sex/drugs scandal or Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction. These scandals all came from the top of the Party and split young Evangelicals away from the GOP. I think this is evident in hearing the issues that young Evangelicals are concerned with (social justice and community values) and the Red Letter Christian movement. Moreover, the older Evangelical voters who voted on a basis of gay marriage abortion must feel let down by a party that made a lot of promises but failed to deliver a real blow to either system. Gay marriage is still a state issue and abortion is still legal.

So this takes us to the coming election. Senator John McCain has a hefty lead over his opponent Mike Huckabee and will more than likely be the Republican nominee, but he has no base to pull from. As a friend pointed out to me, McCain will have to move right to get some of the base on his side and then move center to get the undecided, while whichever nominee wins the democratic ticket will only have to move to the center. The conservative talk radio hosts have by and large come out against McCain, some saying that they will vote for Hillary Clinton if given the chance. With the reports of McCain’s possible infidelity with a lobbyist coming from the New York Times, one must wonder, who can he call on to win? What is left of the base seems to be against him because of his less than hard right stances on big business and his own admittance of a limited knowledge of the economy. If the center was to support him, it will not so long as he continues to trumpet the need to continue this war for 100 years if necessary. The strategy of “I can manage this war better” failed John Kerry and I don’t see it carrying over too well this time around when the war is seen by so much of the electorate as a failure, with or without the surge. In the end, I don’t believe that this is McCain’s year. He is not inspiring the right the way that they would need to be to beat the charismatic Barack Obama or the experienced Clinton election machine. This year the conservatives will watch, protest, and cringe at whatever changes happen to the world they know, be it a raise in the pay of teachers, expanded higher education, an end to this war, or universal health care. But that is part of conservatism. When society is going to change, you brace against it and let as little through as possible.

I Can't Stop, I Won't Stop, I Don't Even Know How to Stop

As I was talking to a close friend and fellow political observer, we came to the subject of what seems to be Barack Obama's unstoppable nature. Hilary Clinton has pulled out all the stops, opting to go for what her campaign is calling the kitchen sink strategy to bring down his juggernaut of a campaign. She started off by saying mailing are being sent out by his campaign about her health care plan and her stances on NAFTA are so terribly false they are strategies out of the Karl Rove play book. This is after the call for the experienced candidate didn't work and the not so subtle race card played by Former President Clinton didn't fair much better. I don't want to leave out the picture of Obama visiting Kenya

The question we began to discuss was why, when the Democrats have such an opportunity to gain control of the executive branch, is Hilary resorting to these tactics? It would seem, as though she is out of the race and she is playing a very divisive political strategy. And it’s a very good question to raise. If Hilary is going to pull it out, one would think negative campaigns are the last road she would want to travel down. John Edwards, who has yet to endorse any candidate since dropping out the race, wouldn't be a fan of this style of Washington-as-usual politics. If he was to endorse anyone before the crucial Texas and Ohio primaries, it will not be the candidate uses a divisive issue such as the fear of Islamo-fascist, to stay in, not even win, the democratic primary. She can win Texas and Ohio and still not clench the democratic ticket. Moreover, the democrats are poised to take control. Why on earth would a democrat try and divide the base and give McCain a shot at winning centrist may fear the threat of Islamic terrorist in their collective backyard? Even if she were to gracefully bow out, she could earn some political capitol in the Democratic Party for her next run.

The answer seems to be a complicated one. The most immediate one is the commitment to her supporters. The Clinton campaign went broke after Super Tuesday; I would guess they assumed a big win would knock out the Obama run. She loaned the campaign 5 million of her own personal wealth to keep it afloat. A number of people are doing jobs they were paid for before Super Tuesday for free. With so much time, money and energy (most of it not being of Clinton, but of donors, volunteers, and campaign staff members), it would be quite a discouraging moment for any future support for hr to bow out now, with the delegate count so close. When donors sit to write checks, they will remember she called it quits when the race was getting hot. The idea will be that she can't win unless it’s a landslide.

The less obvious reason is, to put is simple, "now." This is a strange time in American politics. The George W Bush presidency has been a nightmare for the Republican Party. His administration destroyed the coalition Ronald Regan built. With monstrous oil prices, a mismanaged war and peace keeping effort in Iraq, a failure to catch Osama bin Laden, a pitiful showing of preparedness with regard to the responses to Hurricane Katrina and Rita, a rising defect, and of course the litany of scandals, the Enron scandal, the Plame incident being two of the many examples. The Republican base is in disarray. Right Wing radio figures are against John McCain, who has the substantial lead, and never make note of Huckabee. This Bush administration has put the republican base into a corner. Because of the colossal failures of the Bush presidency, the next president, needs only to clean up some of the messes left behind to be re-elected. If a candidate fixes health care, makes a stand on Iraq, and does something to start to cut down the deficit, they will win four more years. Moreover, the Bush presidency has left the US with a very sour taste for Washington. This is why Obama's campaign's key word is "Change." He doesn't need to go into tremendous detail about this change because the very notion of a new direction from these last 7 years has mass appeal. So much mass appeal in a country where women still make less money than men for the same work and blacks are still stopped for driving a car too nice them to afford in a neighborhood they could never live in, a black man and a woman are the front runners for the most powerful office in the land. This is more than just an election. The winner will make history, and this is why Hilary must throw it all into the contest. Not for some vague notion of women power, because the day she gets elected my mother will still be paid less than her male counterpart and I will still get pulled over if I'm in the wrong town if Obama win. Whoever wins this contest will have an opportunity to write a positive narrative no administration on the left ever experienced. So ClintonTexas and Ohio in the coming March, as should be expected. She and Obama are fighting for history. and, as is custom of dignitaries visiting another country, adorned in traditional Kenyan attire looks enough like Muslim garb to make the point there may be something to all the internet rumors about his possible faith in Islam. will drag it out to the end, which may come in

Going Through Them Changes...

I hate to start something such as this on such a blue note, but that is the unfortunate way the cookie crumbles. This morning I was greeted with the terrible news that Band of Gypsys drummer buddy Miles died. As a fan of the whole Hendrix catalog, the name Buddy Miles carries some weight. Miles played on of the most influential and under rated albums of the late 60's/early 70's bluesy rock movement. That singular live album, performed on at the Fillmore East on New Years Eve and New Year's Day of 1970, influenced much of the "black rock" of the 70's. Bands like Sly and the Family Stone and Funkadelic would not exist without Buddy Miles, Jimi Hendrix, and Billy Cox. Even more so, bands like Rage against the Machine, Living Colour or even the Roots' latest guitar player "Capt.” Kirk Douglas were profoundly influenced by this album.

Band of Gypsys did not say together much beyond that concert. After a very bad show, the band split and Hendrix reformed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with original drummer Mitch Mitchell, whose jazz style was more flamboyant and busy than Miles' rock-solid fatback funk, and Band of Gypsys bass player Billy Cox. Miles was blamed for the performance by Hendrix's management, but it is largely believed to be the fault of Hendrix's management. The belief is that Hendrix was not as marketable without white musicians, so Hendrix's "chemical indulgence" was spiked to make for an especially bad night. Although the musicians went separate ways, they remained friends.

Buddy Miles had a record called "Them Changes." It is a staple for any beginning funk bass player wanting to get a deep groove or a drummer trying to get the funk a little longer. It has become a soul music standard. He played it with Hendrix and Cox on that fateful New Years Concert. Mile went on to be a staple with Carlos Santana, touring both as his drummer and as a separate solo act.

This is especially personal for me, because my uncle, Michael "Big John" Wiggins briefly played with Miles. The most memorable thing he recalled about Miles, aside from his massive size, was his musicianship. He was one mean drummer, but he was nothing to sneeze at as a guitarist. Miles guitar was a left-handed Stratocaster, strung in reverse, making it a right handed copy of the guitar Hendrix is remembered to play. Another thing he recalled was once, at a rehearsal, Miles showed up completely naked. He would break down in tears often. He never really got over loosing Hendrix from his life so early. They were really close and his death was a specter that never really left Miles. If there is one thing that can be taken away from this terrible loss to the music world, it’s that Buddy Miles no longer has to miss his departed friend, as they have both left this plane of existence.

When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.
- Jimi Hendrix