Laura Kennedy bass player and co-founder of the legendary New York punk/funk band the Bush Tetras passed away in Minneapolis this past Monday. She had been struggling for years with Hepatitis C and despite receiving a liver transplant in 2008 was unable to survive what she described as a “scourge of an illness.”

Kennedy was in the center of the musical vortex that thrived in downtown Manhattan through the 1970s and into the early 80s. It was a time in which rock and roll was stretching its wings while simultaneously banging its head against the walls and sidewalks of a city both bleak and beautiful.

The Bush Tetras pulled uptown downtown and showed the Studio 54 crowd that there was some tribal thunder brewing below 14th street and you didn’t have to beg to get in. The BTs made it clear: funk was Universal and could not be tamed or commodified. It was in our flesh and bone and in the concrete. The city’s jittery pulse ran from the Bronx to the Bowery, a visceric train on tachycardic tracks where each station crepusculated pinpoints of chakric light. The bloodbeat pinballed and banked against Time’s Square and then veered drunkenly and divinely into the throbbing core of Manhattan’s tattered rock and roll soul: CBGB.

Kennedy wrote of her time living in downtown NYC:

Us New York City kids from the ‘80s, often transplanted from other cities, other countries, occasionally other planets (take a wild guess who I’m talking about) - we’ve kicked ass. We’ve taken names, too - and a good many of us have not only lived to tell, but are rockin’ the telling and rollin’ the living in a way that’s inspirational… We keep going, and going and going. I defy you to tell me that all of us weren’t defined by that moment in time that we shared. This has been apparent to me for a while, but more so now that we’re a decade into the oughts. We were blessed to come together in this life at a time that defined the End of a Century.”

The Bush Tetras harnessed the paranoia that snaked thru the shadow side of Manhattan and with their streetwise alchemy of raw beats and angular riffs transformed the fear, the edge, into something you could dance to. Laura Kennedy laid down a groove as deep as a subway tunnel and as persistent and essential as blood.
 

 
A look at lick-spittle lackey of the 1%, Republican House Majority leader Eric Cantor, getting “mic-checked” by Occupy Houston and some Rice University grad students.

There is no schadenfreude quite as satisfying for me as Republican schadenfreude, but when something uncomfortable happens to Eric Cantor in particular, hey, it gets even better!

On a related note, read The Republican Party’s time has come— and gone by Laurence Lewis over at Daily Kos:

The Republican Party needs to be put out of its misery. A functioning Republic needs at least one opposition party, but the current and likely final iteration of the Republican Party is not it. The current iteration of the Democratic Party could be it, should it continue to fail to live up to its greatest history and increasingly mythological ideals, but that would depend on the creation of a legitimately viable progressive party, and for now at least that is not going to happen. But for the Democratic Party to recapture the magic of its greatest history, or failing that for a legitimately viable liberal party to emerge from the wreckage that is our current political system, the Republican Party must be put out of its misery. Whether you are a loyal Democrat, a wavering frustrated Democrat, a progressive Independent, or whether you are dreaming of the emergence of a legitimately viable liberal alternative, the Republican Party must be put out of its misery. All liberals and progressives should be able to unite behind that idea. Because if the Republican Party is put out of its misery, the Democrats no longer will be able to use the Republicans as excuse or foil and will once and for all finally be forced to prove what they are or aren’t really about.

The embarrassment of embarrasments that is the Republican presidential field ought to be the final proof that the Republican Party has ceased to serve any valuable role in our political system. The lunatics have taken over. The Republican rejection of science and rationality once served various tactical purposes, but in previous generations it always was a feint to the theocrats whose primary political purpose for the Republicans was to enable the kleptocrats and the neo-Royalists. But while the Republican financial base continues to be those extremely wealthy who lack all conscience, its voting base now is the ignorant and the reality challenged. Most of the current Republican presidential field is not merely playing to this base, it is of it. No serious person can look at Herman Cain or Rick Perry or Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum and see a future president. In a less surreal world these would be but cartoon characters. And yet one of them or someone equally absurd still may become the Republican presidential nominee. The base of the party desperately hopes so.

Continue reading The Republican Party’s time has come— and gone (Daily Kos)
 

 
Rastafarians Joseph Hill, Albert Walker and Kenneth Dayes recorded one of the seminal reggae albums of all time, 1977’s deeply soulful and rootsy Two Sevens Clash. With their raw and elemental sound, Culture were a significant influence on Britain’s exploding punk and ska scene.

Propelled by the relentless grooves of Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar, Two Sevens Clash is pure reggae with a heavy dose of Rastafari gospel—one of the truly indispensable records to come out of Jamaica.

I had the pleasure of seeing Culture play in New York City in the late-80s and it was one of the most splendid live shows I’ve ever seen—passionate, powerful and uplifting.

This is a terrific performance by Culture from July 19, 1987. They’re playing in Woodbury, Connecticut. The visual quality of the video isn’t great but the audio is more than solid.
 

 
In the mess that is Lulu one song that is generally singled out as having some of the vibe and feel evoking vintage Lou Reed is “Junior Dad.” Last night, during their concert in Cologne, Germany, Reed and Metallica performed the song and, lo and behold, it’s the first live video I’ve seen of the band that actually moves me in a good way.

Reed seems a shitload more engaged with what he’s doing in this video than during his addled performance on Jool Holland’s show from a few nights ago. World weariness has displaced death warmed over.

Is it possible that as Loutallica tours behind Lulu they may actually discover the heretofore untapped magic in their collaboration? Perhaps, if they replace their current drummer with Mo Tucker.

You can visit the Lou Reed/Metallica Youtube channel for more of the Cologne concert.
 

 
Loutallica take another shot at ‘White Light/White Heat’ after the jump…

 
Lou Reed and Metallica in hit and run accident leave White Light/White Heat dead on the side of the highway - rock and roll road kill.

Everything about this is just plain wrong, from Metallica’s dunderhead playing to Reed’s total inability to find the pocket of the song…which is understandable because there is none. What is not understandable is why Reed continues to trash the Velvet Underground’s legacy. Can the surviving members of VU get a cease and desist order?

This is like watching a beloved friend racing toward the edge of a cliff in an out-of-control 1978 Ford Pinto - a sense of helpless dread overcomes you as you avert your eyes and pray for Divine intervention.

Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, Loutallica shows you just how bottomless the pit is. And that Lars fuck should have his hands bound with chicken wire and never allowed anywhere near a drum kit.

“If all this makes you feel sorry for him, then you can compliment yourself on being a real Lou Reed fan. Because that’s exactly what he wants.” Lester Bangs, 1973.

Later With Jools Holland, November 8, 2011.
 

Photo: Dan Solomon.
 
In this genuinely heartwarming video, Henry Rollins officiates the wedding of Page King and Stephen Hart at last weekend’s Fun Fun Fun Fest.

I’ve never cared much for Rollins’ post Black Flag schtick, but he sure as hell makes for a charming minister as he leads this sweet couple from Dallas, Texas through their marriage ceremony. Henry does the delicate job of balancing wit with spirituality while adding a dose of rock n’ roll energy to the conventional solemnity of the marriage ritual. It looks like everyone is having fun.

I wonder if Rollins has done this before? He’s always been a preacher of sorts but this is taking it to a whole other level.

Lovely.
 

 
Comedian Joe Rogan rants with some serious observations on what’s going down.

“Is this fuckin’ Chicago in the sixties? What the fuck is this?”

Audio excerpt from The Joe Rogan Experience podcast put to some appropriate visuals.
 

 
Revolutionary chic is back in a big way these days and it just warms my heart..We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists is an upcoming documentary from Luminant Media that will tell the story of today’s online cyber activists “Anonymous” by tracing the origins of the movement from the earliest days of the incipient hacker scene to the present day. “We Are Legion is promised in 2012 so… expect it.
 

 
Zennie Abraham, a blogger at Veterans Today, has lived in Oakland since 1974 and believes that the crowd estimate of the Occupy Oakland General Strike provided by Oakland police is way off. Abraham claims the crowd was much closer to 100,000 than the official count of 7000.

You can’t take a snapshot of an event like this, because of its time length; you have to think of it as a dynamic. In any population there are births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration. For the Occupy Oakland General Strike, there were no births, thankfully no deaths, but a lot of in-migration and out-migration.

What was so amazing about the size of the crowd both inside the plaza and just outside of it, then marching to the Port of Oakland, was that it did not decrease in size; it increased. And that was with some people leaving it, and others coming in from BART and from around Oakland via foot or other parts of the Bay by car.

For that to happen all day long and considering the capacity of the plaza and the crowds outside of it points to 100,000 people. I’ve never seen anything like that in the entire history of this city.

And that is why it must be said that much of the media should be drawn and quartered for the most irresponsible coverage I’ve ever seen. Many outlets just waited for something bad to happen, or looked for it. But there were so many people more having a great time, that whatever happened was far away from downtown Oakland.

The Whole Foods Oakland Facility is on 27th and Harrison and outside of downtown Oakland, and a good mile away from City Hall Plaza. But to the media eye, the vandalism that happened there made headlines. Let’s just get this out of the way: it should not have happened, but that’s no excuse to get the whole story wrong.

The video below is all the proof anyone would need that the official numbers were way, way off, but 100,000? Oakland’s population is around 300,000, even accounting for the folks who came in from the rest of the Bay area (population 4.5 million) to march, that’s still probably too high a number to be realistic. Still, I’m willing to go along with a tally that’s several times higher than what the Oakland police—and the mainstream media—told us.

What’s important to remember as you watch the size of these marching masses, is that less than two months have passed since Occupy Wall Street began. It’s only going to get more interesting from here on out.
 

 
Above, a bird’s eye view of a static crowd of 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl posted by redditter BdotTS.
 

 
Via reddit

 
Texas has been suffering through a drought for what seems like an eternity. The past year has been the driest since 1895, when the state began keeping rainfall records. Not even Rick Perry’s prayers have brought a respite from the desert-like conditions in my neck of the woods, Austin.

In this collection of photos shot by my wife Mirgun Akyavas at this past weekend’s Fun Fun Fun Fest you can see how some folks dealt with the clouds of dust being kicked up by a steady and unrelenting flow of gusty winds. The fans and bands were assaulted all day Saturday by nasty little dust devils and an incessant mouth and nose clogging mineral mist that resulted in some rather stunning fashion statements both utilitarian and expressive.
 

 

 

 

 
Nomadic rockers Tinariwen (The Deserts), who hail from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali, arrived from their homeland well-equipped to deal with the gritty conditions in Austin. They must have felt at home in the swirl of sand and dust. Their performance at FFF Fest was a highlight of the three day gathering - soulful, bluesy and beautiful. Check out the live footage of the band after the jump. And if you’re not familiar with their music, the new album, one my favorites of 2011, Tassili, is an excellent place to start. Watching their performance at FFF Fest, I was once again reminded of how every culture has its blues music and how fundamentally similar they are. The music goes deep into something universal - the heart that hurts.
 
More dust bowl fashion and the deep grooves of Tinawiren after the jump…