SECTION TWELVE
EMAIL PAGE TWO

sm
COLUMN 110, OCTOBER 1, 2004
(Copyright © 2004 The Blacklisted Journalist) 

SANTANA'S ENDLESS SOLOS

Subject: Fwd: SFGate: Santana's endless solos, preaching create a show for diehard fans only
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 23:26:31 -0400
From: Khunrum1@aol.com 
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com 

Never liked him....too Latin :-)

Subject: SFGate: Santana's endless solos, preaching create a show for diehard fans only
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:44 -0700
From: "black moses" moeliss@sbcglobal.net 
Organization: SFGate, San Francisco, CA
To: "godfather of love" khunrum1@aol.com 

No ass kissing for the home town boy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/24/DDG6P7AB9G1.DTL 
Thursday, June 24, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
Santana's endless solos, preaching create a show for diehard fans only
Aidin Vaziri, Special to The Chronicle

Just a few years ago, Carlos Santana's chances of selling out three nights at the Warfield in the middle of the week were right up there with his odds of playing Donkey Kong on the moon. The Mexican-born guitar player was deep into a 20-year commercial slump when "Supernatural," his celebrity-packed 1999 album, changed
his fortunes. The disc won nine Grammys and shifted 25 million units.

With its follow-up, "Shaman," putting a couple more platinum discs on the walls of his San Rafael home, it wasn't so much a comeback as full-scale rehabilitation. Now these 2,300-capacity shows, warm-up dates for a monthlong European stadium tour, are actually considered intimate. But Santana, 56, seems to have missed an important lesson behind the success of those breakout albums -- that people would rather hear tight,
accessible pop songs packed with personality and purpose than some dude with a mustache choking the living hell out of his guitar for three hours straight. This is a bit of a problem because that's what Santana has always been about.

No one can make his guitar go "Weeeee-du-dee-dee-whahhh-whooomp-whoomp" quite like him. To the true believers, this is a given. But the people who discovered him through Burger King commercials think, so what? On Tuesday, the first night of Santana's Warfield run, the long-winded guitar solos began to grate after the first hour. But it was when he stopped playing and started talking about angels, Buddha and Bill Cosby that it really
started to feel like hell. And there was no arguing. When someone asked him -- OK, yelled -- to shut up and
play, Santana barked back, "I gotta give you what you need before I give you what you want. " He continued talking for another 10 minutes, touching on everything from religion and space aliens to Janis Joplin and electric
bills.

By the time he launched into his next solo it was actually a relief. And it was no small solo, either, but a snarling, flip-flop-wearing jam that devoured both of his prime-time '70s hits, "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye
Como Va." Rob Thomas couldn't make it. Neither could Michelle Branch, nor Dave Matthews, Dido, Everlast, Seal, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Placido Domingo or any of the other guest artists who helped Santana move millions. You would think at least Macy Gray would be available these days. No big deal. 

Vocalist Andy Vargas did a remarkable job channeling them when necessary, rendering "Maria, Maria" and "Smooth" the best parts of the show. Then again, that could have had something to do with the fact that these were the only two songs that actually had verses, choruses and, best of all, endings. The live band also played with conviction, juggling cowbells, maracas and wind chimes over the caffeinated Latin groove that drove the
entire set. At least Santana, a man known for wearing tie-dye headbands and puffy painters' pants, was having a good fashion night in a checkered fedora hat and Havana shirt tastefully screen-printed with the glowing
image of the Virgin Mary. The entire venue was made to look like his living room, with patterned drapes lining the stage and psychotically colored sheets draped over the balconies. 

The audience, apparently made up of fan club members, loved every minute. They gasped every time one of Santana's fingers touched a fret board. They screamed at every elongated song intro. They danced as if their lives depended on it. They bought the shirts and badges. Someone must have dosed the air vents with ground-up Prozac. Santana spared us an encore but closed with a version of "A Love Supreme" that would have actually been better had it been played by John Coltrane in his current state. Subtract roughly 89 minutes of guitar wankery, 37 minutes of preaching (he could have just said, "Bush sucks!"), all references to the '70s, 12 percent of the mustache, plus that last cover song and, all in all, it was quite a great show.

Santana: The band performs at 8 tonight at the Warfield, 982 Market St., San Francisco.

Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle  ##

* * *

DAVE RAY WAS A GIANT!

Subject: Dave
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 09:17:35 -0400
From: Khunrum1@aol.com 
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com 

I'm at my favorite bar in Luang Prabang chatting with a professor from a college in Minn and I tell him I'm a huge Dave Ray fan. He tells me Dave died last year. WHAT!!...I get on Google and sure enough Dave is gone...A giant. Great guitar player. Al, did you know him?

Folk-blues legend Dave Ray dies at 59 

Minneapolis folk-blues legend Dave Ray, who won quiet renown for his virtuosic guitar work and sly, insinuating vocals, died at his home early Thursday after a battle with cancer. He was 59.

As part of the Twin Cities trio Koerner, Ray and Glover, he was an influence on musicians for more than four decades, from Bob Dylan and the Beatles to Bonnie Raitt and Beck.

Fittingly, his final public performance was with his partners, harmonica player Tony Glover and singer/guitarist
Spider John Koerner, last weekend at a folk conference in Princeton, N.J.

"It felt really right that the last gig he played was with me and John, 41 years later," Glover said Thursday night. He said that Ray's condition had been deteriorating and that he needed help in walking -- but still managed to play well.

Ray was a high-school student when he and Glover met around 1961. "I'd been hearing about this kid who'd been playing this amazing 12-string guitar," Glover said.

"Some people sort of hooked us up," Glover recalled. "I came by the apartment and heard this amazing kind of Leadbelly music coming out. I looked around the room, and saw this apple-cheeked kid in the corner with a guitar. It turned out to be Dave."

They and Koerner rode the wave of the '60s folk explosion, making a series of albums and playing festivals.

"Every time they play, the lights shine," wrote Dylan when they released their last album in 1996. As young Bobby Zimmerman, Dylan had listened to records at Ray's house and traveled in the same circles.

Still, the trio never achieved more than cult status, hindered by lack of support and divergent personal lives.

"It's amazing how much these guys accomplished with so little," Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke said,
referring to the 25 albums the members made among them. "The whole indie-rock business owes them a long debt of gratitude."

Ray said last week that "I don't have any regrets, because I know what you have to give up to make it."

Seated in a recliner, feet up, at the Seward neighborhood duplex where he lived for 25 years, Ray spoke proudly of how he took over his father's insurance business in 1981 and ran it until 1996. That, not music, was how he raised two kids and coped with medical bills.

In May, he was found to have stage IV adenocarcinoma. The cancerous masses started in his lungs and had spread to other parts of his body.

Still, he soldiered on. "I'm going to keep playing as long as I can," he said in an interview about an upcoming concert. "It's what I was meant to do."

"Dave told me a couple months ago, 'I'm ready to die; I've always been ready to die,' " said Minneapolis musician Willie Murphy, a contemporary whose career often intertwined with the trio's. (He and Ray were enlisted by Bonnie Raitt to record her 1971 debut at Ray's studio.)

Murphy said Ray's life ended the way he wanted: "He died at home, he played up to the last, he refused chemo. The saddest part is that just in the last few years, he had gotten out of insurance and become a full-time musician. He was at his peak artistically."

Ray is survived by his wife, Mary Jane Mueller, children Barnaby and Nadine Ray, mother Nellie, brothers Tom and Max and sister Karen.

Services are pending, but it's likely that a concert planned by Koerner, Ray and Glover for Dec. 13 at First Avenue in Minneapolis will turn into a memorial.  

Initially weaned on classical music by his grandmother, a music teacher, Ray came across his first blues records during his early teens. When he met Glover and Koerner, he was attending the old University High School in Dinkytown by day, and playing coffeehouses and house parties at night. Somehow, the trio clicked.

"It was our way to get into the cool parties," Ray said. "But it was also our way of hearing the music we liked. Popular music at the time was terrible. I couldn't take it, man."

Their first step to national recognition came in March 1963, when they traveled to Milwaukee for a 12-hour recording session with a small label, Audiophile Records. The result was "Blues, Rags & Hollers" -- an album that become a favorite of John Lennon and the Rolling Stones. Made for a pittance, it had the clean quality of folk records at the time but not the stiffness. The blues sounded surprisingly unforced and natural. 

"They gave hope to white college kids everywhere," Fricke said.

Of the 600 copies originally pressed, one wound up in the hands of Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. He re-released the album and arranged for the trio to record a second one in New York. On their way home, they picked up a gig at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. A gig at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival followed.

"And we were off and running," Ray said wryly. "Or off and crawling, anyway."

After five albums, the trio separated, but reunited periodically over the years, including a pair of Minneapolis
concerts in 1996 that became their final disc, "One Foot in the Groove."

Beck, who had Ray and Glover open his first big Twin Cities show, said of the trio: "They seemed to be one of the only people from that folk-revival period who would just completely play their music with abandon. They were just so raucous."

Ray's last Twin Cities performance was Nov. 15, a concert at the Cedar Cultural Center shared with another '60s folk-blues figurehead, Geoff Muldaur. Ray had to be helped to the stage, but once there he picked up a thick book of songs and swapped tunes all night with Muldaur.

During one song, he moved around his guitar neck with such caressing wizardry, a gasp rose from the crowd, and from Muldaur.

When the set ended, Muldaur walked up to the center's manager and joked, "How much do I owe you?"  ##

* * *

COINCIDENCE!

Subject: Fwd: (no subject)
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 06:00:11 EDT
From: Khunrum1@aol.com 
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com 

Coincidence or what... 

Subject: (no subject)
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 01:37:54 EDT
From: PeterWStolz@aol.com 

Would you believe I saw Larry Flint coming into the restaurant as we were coming out of Ruth's Chris Steak House. He's opening a Hustler Store here this week. He was right in front of me in his wheelchair with his man pushing him. I stepped right up and shook his hand and told him he was my hero. I told him he had to get that
story about Bush's abortion into the papers now before the election. He said, yeah that's from my book. I told him, right you have to get that into some newspapers or even the Enquirer before the election because it will be too depressing if Bush wins again. He said, yeah and they pushed him on into the restaurant. Some cooincidence that you showed me that article earlier today, eh?

Peter Stolz  ##

* * *

PORN STAR GINGER LYNN FUCKS DUBYA IN THE ASS

Subject: Fwd: (no subject)
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 06:10:49 EDT
From: Khunrum1@aol.com 
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com 

I wish I could get Luke Ford to find that story he printed a few years ago about Dubya.

Dubby was doing lines with porn star Ginger Lynn and after they both got loaded she fucked him in the ass with a strap~on. I begged him to find it and send it around but now he is a converted Jew Republican. Larry needs to ask Ginger about that. Maybe she is too scared to talk.

Can you picture that? If only we had film. The further President of the USA with his perched in the air getting banged by nasty O'l Ginger. Ha!  ##

* * *

GIRL, 16, HANGED FOR 'SHARP TONGUE'

Subject: Fwd: Girl, 16, hanged in public in Iran
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 17:48:03 -0400
From: Khunrum1@aol.com 
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com 

Where's Judge Judy when she's needed?

Girl, 16, hanged in public in Iran

Iran Focus (Friday, 20th August 2004) from http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php'storyid=80 .

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Ateqeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka's Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs' Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Ateqeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should
punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The judge personally pursued Ateqeh's death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her "sharp tongue." 


Let's not unfairly malign the Religion of Peace. After all, the article notes that the judge exceeded his authority. But he hanged the child anyway, in the name of Allah the merciful and the kind. We'd better get used to
this, because once Iran has the bomb we're all going to live in this kind of a society.  ##


FOR AS LONG AS PEOPLE KEEP LISTENING TO BOB DYLAN AND THE BEATLES, PEOPLE WILL WANT THIS BOOK

"A masterpiece!" --- SALLY GROSSMAN, widow of Bob Dylan's brilliant original manager, Albert Grossman.

"This book is a must-read for all rock 'n roll aficionados!"---EAR CANDY

"An essential reference for demystifying what the author refers to as: 'one of the most self-destructive binges of creativity in cultural history.'"---HAMMOND GUTHRIE, COUNTERPUNCH MAGAZINE

"Required Reading for anyone and everyone who considers themselves fans, followers, students, or those just plain curious of the Golden Age of Popular Music"---GARY PIG GOLD, FUFKIN.COM.

"I love the book. I love the way you can open it to any page and start reading and it keeps you reading. The book is just fun to read." --LEVON HELM, Drummer of THE BAND from Big Pink.

"Ellis Paul and I love your book."---RALPH JACCODINE, Ralph Jaccodine Management.

". . .perfect for our times."---WOODSTOCK TIMES

"Adam Duritz (he's the lead singer and writer for the famed Counting Crows). . .was at my studio and couldn't put the book down."---STEWART LERMAN, RIGHTEOUS SOUND INC.

". . .a must read for anyone who loves, music, loves life, loves rock and roll."---TSAURAH LITZKY, author of The Motion of the Ocean, Baby on the Water, and  Goodbye Beautiful Mother.  

"I recommend it."---DOUGLAS HOLDER, IBBETSON STREET PRESS.  

".  . .It is a fasinating, insightful read. You are such a wonderful writer."---STEPHANIE LEDGIN, Music Journalist.

"I could not put this book of yours down for a minute."---ED GALING, POET LAUREATE OF HATBORO, PA.

"Quite simply, Al Aronowitz is a living legend"---JOHN FORTUNATO, THE AQUARIAN.

"Every student and fan of The Beat Generation, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones will want to read this book"---RON WHITEHEAD, POET

"Volume One Of The Blacklisted Journalist is the kinda tome what a fella can dip into at any given point and find oneself hooked within a couple paragraphs"---DUKE DE MONDO, BLOGCRITICS.ORG.

"BOB DYLAN AND THE BEATLES: Volume One Of The Best Of The Blacklisted Journalist is a golden stash box of Al's You-Are-There history of two thirds of rock's Holy Troika"---MICHAEL SIMMONS, LA WEEKLY.

IN THIS 615-PAGE PAPERBACK, AL ARONOWITZ, ACCLAIMED AS THE "GODFATHER OF ROCK JOURNALISM," TELLS YOU MORE ABOUT BOB DYLAN AND THE BEATLES THAN ANY OTHER WRITER CAN TELL YOU BECAUSE NO OTHER WRITER WAS THERE AT THE TIME. AS THE MAN WHO INTRODUCED ALLEN GINSBERG TO BOB DYLAN, BOB DYLAN TO THE BEATLES AND THE BEATLES TO MARIJUANA, ARONOWITZ BOASTS, "THE '60S WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN THE SAME WITHOUT ME."


CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN 110


CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMNS

The Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
 
 

THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ