We’ve been home over a month now, baseball season has started, the Yanks are off to their best start in ages, my body is back on California time, and I’ve been listening to the new Buddy Holly box set, a lot. Everything is in kind of a holding pattern as we wait for another break in the clouds that is everyone’s schedule, so we can land the tin can that is our band and get back to it. As for me, I’m still spinnin’ with the whole idea of a new Del-Lords record. (Spinnin’-record, get it? I did NOT do that on purpose, I swear! Just some kinda crazy songwriter third-eye Kundalini shit. And now, for my next trick.)
I am also trying very hard to avoid the news for a bit. I get so fuckin’ pissed off, I, I, I ….well, actually first, yes, I get mad, then I get a bit incredulous at the things you can get fairly large numbers of people to believe if it confirms something they feel real hard deep inside but cannot express because well, society sort of frowns on ya know, calling them people THAT word, and now that one of THEM is in the White House, and he’s a Muslim terrorist, ya know, and a Socialist, and I sure hate Socialists, that’s evil shit, friend, and he’s got these Death Panels, too, and did you know he hates white people, and he…he…he… it ain’t good! It’s bad. It ultimately makes me very very sad for our country. And, that’s because it has exposed such unbelievable anger, and racism, and frustration, and, willful ignorance of information, and all the reasons I really never thought we could elect a black man in the first place, coming back, rising up in a firestorm of barely contained and impending violence. The exposition of it is not the reason to be sad, it’s the seemingly unstoppable nature of it this time. That’s what worries me. Someone on the right needs to step into the breach, step the fuck up, and be the voice of reason here because the price not to is too fucking high to pay.
I think everyone who has ever listened to us knows where I stand, and I don’t make a secret of it. I have to say though that I’ve never seen anything quite like the political climate we’re experiencing right now. My anger at the Rebublicans and their refusal to even join the discussion, offer something, anything, besides obstruction, lies, implicit and explicit encouragement of violence, explicit and implicit racism, not to mention demonizing a mild first-step Health Care Bill that is more similar to what was proposed by the GOP during Clinton’s tenure than anything the Left wanted that they want to describe as Socialist, is at boiling point. I do feel that although there are several folks I dislike almost as much on the other side of the aisle, at least the Dems are willing to argue, compromise, disagree, and put some effort into running you know, the country. We NEED to talk to each other. I mean, this word they throw around, Socialism, don’t they even know what Socialism means? If not, they can examine Unemployment Insurance, Medicare & Medicaid, and Public Education as thriving examples of Socialism and see if they wanna tear them down, too.
I wonder if those Tea Party saps will have a problem with police stopping folks on the street in Arizona and demanding to see their papers, like the Gestapo in a WWII movie. I mean, they should it would seem, shouldn’t they? Isn’t that an infringement of somebody’s rights? Ya know, the country they want back (psssst! the white one), it ain’t a-comin’ back. Ever again. We are becoming more non-white as a nation every day, and in forty years or so, non-whites WILL be the majority of the population. And, THAT’S what’s really going on here. Does anyone REALLY not know that? Ok, I’m done. Thank you for reading and I apologize for ranting a bit, but I can be that way, I guess.
Ok, what else? Let’s see. What have I been doing with my time off? Well, the Yankees first & foremost. My goal every season is to see every single inning of every single Yankees game. I know I will fail at doing so but it is the goal and I try and come as close as I can. I do have my MLB cable package so I can even hear my own YES Network (for those who don’t know, YES stands for Yankees Entertainment Network. I had a dream when I was about eight years old about an all Yankees TV network, and doncha know, forty years later I got my wish.) broadcast team So far so good. I have really been digging the Buddy Holly box set, which is the non-stop musical equivalent of pure happiness. Such a magical sound. And, so much output in such a short time. AND, it’’s all great! I listen to a half hour or so pretty much everyday.
Funny thing happened a few weeks ago. During the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame inductions, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day (whose incognito Garage rockin’ Foxboro Hot Tubs record I absolutely love, with its super cool rewrites of You Really Got Me, I Need You, Tired Of Waiting, as well as a few My Generation LP rewrites for good measure) inducted The Stooges, one of my all-time favorite bands into the Hall. He began his speech, much to my amazement, with a quote of mine (!!???) I had given to Legs McNeil for his & Gillian McCain’s punk opus Please Kill Me. It was a description of the first time I saw The Stooges, which was the summer of 1970, a month or so before the release of FUN HOUSE, and also the night I first met Richard Meltzer, the Dictators’ Godfather. The quote seemed to go over well with the audience, including the Ig himself. Even my name, and the Dictators name got a nice little hand. Well, I got more phone calls and emails in the next coupla weeks from that little incident than I think I had in any two week period of my life. I heard from folks I hadn’t heard from in 20 years! This one from here, and that one from there, and another one, and a cousin and….Oy, vey!
So, back to the holding pattern for a while. Try to stay busy. Try not to jump out of my skin. I am so excited about the band again, that it’s like the minutes, hours and days are just crawling by. I have been writing a bit, which is my way of keeping my hands and mind occupied. Ok, I gotta get going. the Yanks are on in about an hour. They’re in Baltimore, fresh from meeting President Obama at his pad yesterday. I’ll be checkin’ in in a few weeks, see how youse are doin’. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and please take care of each other, as we will certainly need each other before long .
Hey Buddy:
Loving “Under Construction”, and eagerly waiting for more music and *gasp* a TOUR !!!
Glad you’re well, and I’m glad your Band is Back. I missed it.
Cheers Scott
Cam Traviss
Preach on Top Ten!! What I absolutely can not stand about today’s political climate is the fact that every issue or comment is a sound bite to try and advance one party or another. It is like 365 days a year of political stumping. No fucking compromise, no real negotiations. Maybe I am too idealistic, but these bastards were elected to do what is best for the country, not to only advance their political careers. We have totally lost our way as a society, and the taste of betrayal should be appalling to everyone, yet somehow we are more wrapped up in the Rush Limbaugh sound bites of Socialism, echoed by the monkeys at Fox News to even notice. I don’t care Republican, Democrat, Black, White, Purple, just do what is right for the people.
Well, with the passage of the immigration bill in Arizona, it just seems like it’s going from bad to worse in this country. Find the poor, the down trodden and make them the scapegoats. But, that’s enough of my negative thinking. Scott, I’m thrilled to hear that you are writing and excited about the band. SO AM I!! Tell Eric, Frank and Manny that it’s time to stop “spinning the record” and get the record in the can, on the shelves and HIT THE ROAD!!
By the way, my Padres are in first in the NL West and the hated Dodgers are in last! My wife, the ever loving Dodger fan, tells me to enjoy it while it lasts. But you see, the nice thing about being a Padre fan is even if the Padres lose, I can still relish in the joy of the Dodgers flailing around in last place. But I really think the Yankees will be the team to beat this year. If their pitching can hold up and avoid the injury bug, watch out.
I hear you Scott! Now the idiots are trying to use the BP gulf oil mess as a political tool against Obama. Do they have no conscience at all? Haven’t the people of Louisiana had enough crap already? I just spent a weekend in Gretna, LA and Slidell, LA at a neighborhood block party and a bayou benefit with Dash Rip Rock. The band gave us a van ride from one show to the next and the locals stuffed us full of gumbo and cold beer. Bill Davis of Dash even invited us to go night fishing on Lake Ponchartrain after the last show. These are some of the most sharing, real people in the world and BP is destroying their culture! Does the GOP care about anything but using the situation as a political tool? Hell no! There are a few people who need us to drill baby drill – their skulls!
Come on up and be my guest at Lake Tahoe. The fishing and skiing is awesome and I have some great contacts here for gigs when the tour gets going. There’s a helluva vibrant music scene here at Truckee/Tahoe!!!
Scott, are you and the rest of the band still planning on a new Del Lords CD? By the way, congrats on the Yankees getting back to the top of the AL East. By taking 2 of 3 from the Dodgers this past weekend, my Padres were able to pad their lead in the NL West! Thanks Yankees!
Man, have I loved your music for decades, but for crying out loud you don’t understand the first thing about economics nor the effort to enforce our immigration laws.
You think socialism actually works? Look at the train wreck of entitlements all of those programs you listed ARE.
We are utterly bankrupt becasue of altruistic social benefit programs like those you mentioned, and now insane people like you are pushing MORE free lunches onto our grandchildren’s already ridiculous debt burden. We are BANKRUPT. Kaput. All because Marxists like Obama(Obama was suing CITIBank back in 1994 as ACORN’s lawyer) started suing and shaking down banks to force them to make loans to deadbeat minorities decades ago, and as the train wreck chugged along, all financial and lending standards were destroyed–just so egalitarian delusions of houses for everybody could be chased.
Go ahead, blame Wall Street, blame capitalism, and destroy free markets until you are BEGGING us to bring back free enterprise and to get rid of government central planning so that we can all prosper again.
You WILL beg, after your socialism fails even worse than it already has, and it WILL. Socialism never works. Centrally-planned economies DO NOT WORK. Only freedom works. Not coercion, not state-forced wealth redistribution schemes, not thugs siezing private earnings at gunpoint and destroying incentives for production…only liberty, only capitalism can save this train wreck of a nation–you WILL realize this before you finish this life.
Leftists like you want to force people to produce at gunpoint for those who do not produce. It does not work! Look at the fruits of these free lunch and free house and free/mandated medical services schemes–higher prices and lower supply, lower quality. Get a clue.
Read Atlas Shrugged, maybe it will get you started on the right path to understanding.
And stick to making awesome rock and roll, otherwise, at least until you learn something about economics and why electing an anti-American racist was the wrong thing to do.
Hmmmm…..as I remember, it was a republican president who signed the first bank bailout (TARP), somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 billion. It was a conservative president who instigated two costly wars that have done far more damage to our debt than you comprehend. It was the greed of Wall Street capitalists who extended high risk loans to pour more money into their coffers. It IS the Wall Street capitalists who continue to pay outrageous, triple-digit million dollar salaries to CEOs when their companies are failing. Give me a break dude and try a dose of reality.
It’s tragically true that Bush was a big-government socialist republican who grew government and government waste at a rate that boggles the mind, but Obama is MUCH worse of a big government socialist than Bush. Obama and the democrat congress has spent more in Obama’s first 2 years than Bush did in 8!
Bush got one huge thing right: That tax cuts–more resources in the hands of private citizens rather than in the wasteful mitts of government bureacrats–are what really stimulates an economy. Lower taxes = higher tax revenue, because that increased economic activity, even at lower tax rates, results in more transactions and employment to be taxed. It’s called the Laffer Curve. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Record revenues tumbled in during the Bush years of tax cuts for everyone (which were mischaracterized as “tax cuts for the rich”).
And spending on the Iraq war was only a small fraction of spending on Medicaid for the same period. I agree that it was mostly wasted, we should have just brutally blasted any opposition to bits, avoided nation building and altruistic crap over there, we should have taken the oil(which despite refusing to do so, we were nonetheless and still are accused of doing), and we should have come home. But no, we act as if playing nicey-nicey with atavistic Muslim savages, and allowing them to write into their new “constitution” a theocratic Islamic imperative, is going to result in anything but total disaster. Watch.
Who cares what Wall Street pays their chiefs? It is only because big government do-gooders like Bush and Obama who are in bed with them all, that Wall Street can be bailed out and run scams which pass all the losses onto the taxpayers and allow the fatcats to make off with all gains. Besides, Wall Street throws far more support and funding to liberals like Obama and kerry than it does to less-liberal big government RINOs like Bush and McCain. Check the facts.
I highly recommend Peter Shweizer’s “Architects of Ruin” which explains how the egalitarian altruists of government, such as Barney Frank, Obama, Chris Dodd, et. al., are behind the entire high-finance catastrophe.