Ry Cooder “Better Not Shake It No Mo'”

This is so right, yet so wrong.

Right in concept, wrong in execution, marketing that is.

You can’t get your message heard. All the traditional intermediaries are long in the tooth and near worthless. Talk to the acts that get their records reviewed in the newspaper, it has no effect. Radio is in the rearview mirror. What’s a poor boy to do?

Just what he wants to.

But you’ve got to give it a good shot. There should be a lyric video. Or at least some teenager should have put the lyrics on one half of the screen. It’s hard to understand exactly what Ry is singing. But the enthusiasm! The experience of seeing a legend at work!

And Ry has no YouTube channel, which flummoxes me, he’s a guy who could use one, demonstrating technique, doing covers, isn’t that what he’s famous for? But he’s another aged boomer out of touch with today’s technology, but not its mores.

Great art comes from inspiration. And talk to a great artist and they’ll tell you it’s elusive. But they know it when they feel it/get it, and they run straight to the studio, or get a pad and pencil or an iPhone and lay it on down, you’ve got to capture it right away or it drifts away. And you’ve got to be wary of mucking it up, trying to get it right. Sometimes the initial raw take is best. Kinda like James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here.” The original, now unavailable iteration, is solo acoustic, with an undeniable groove that has you contemplating the lyrics. The finished take has a different groove and it does not resonate and the effectiveness is diminished. Same deal here, if Ry went into the studio and polished “Better Not Shake It No Mo’,” he’d probably ruin it. But you can see Ry bouncing around his house, thinking about the news, how can one not, and then he gets a flash of inspiration and decides to write a song and lay it on down.

And the best part of this video is not the song, but Ry himself. Why in hell, during the hottest L.A. fall in memory, is he wearing a toque? And the white socks with the slippers… PRICELESS! Like a granddad puttering around the house. But the playing…

This Ry can do naturally, he needs no study, no tutoring, this is his wheelhouse as the kids say today. And he’s totally detached from modern reality, it’s a blast from the past, the way he shakes his head, illustrating how motivated and into it he is, this is the opposite of what we constantly confront, Ry seems GENUINE!

As for the song… It’s oblique and it’s humorous. The way art is supposed to be. The talking heads, the newspaper writers, they lay it all down explicitly, the artist has a skewed view, which resonates with the most people. Ry focuses on a relatively peripheral element of the Kavanaugh case, Ramirez’s contention that Brett swung his penis in front of her and…

But shaking it does not have to be literal. As Tom Wolfe so eloquently wrote, you can be a big swinging dick, and certainly Kavanaugh thinks he’s one, and “dick” has two meanings and…

There’s a break where Ry picks.

And then he shakes his banjo and at the very end you hear a little girl squeal, the granddaughter, the next generation, the one that’s gonna pay the price.

This is in the tradition that Ry grew up with, folk music, hootenanny, he started playing before the Beatles. And that sound percolated and grew to the point where the songs became staples at summer camps and became anthems for the peace movement.

You’ve got to start somewhere.

And it’s always best to go back to the garden.

Ry didn’t assemble twenty writers, didn’t add a manufactured beat, hell, his foot was enough, he did it the old-fashioned way, with humanity, and it resonated.

But nothing is gonna happen. Especially not in a world where the “Times” delineates Trump’s tax evasion and it’s already forgotten. But it’s a start.

And very modern, in that you don’t think about money, you don’t try to plan the game, you just focus on the art and see what happens.

But come on Ry, help us out. With the aforementioned lyrics. Using the internet to spread the word. I’m not saying you have to employ a PR person to carpet bomb the world to little effect. I’m just saying that you’ve got to reach the people who care, however small that group might be. Via the social feeds of like-minded musicians. You start with your friends and you spread the word there.

So this is really curious. At first I was intellectually stimulated but not emotionally. The track, unlike McMurtry’s, is not a hit, it’s not something that yearns to be played over and over again, ad infinitum. But trying to decipher the lyrics, I got hooked, and it really didn’t matter if anybody else did, I was locked on, and that’s what listening is all about.

And I loved the humor. Everybody’s taking themselves so seriously. In the last era of social protest they did not, Frank Zappa built a whole career on poking fun at his own generation. People get the joke, assuming you make one.

So let this stimulate you. The system has been broken down to nothing. Unless you’re a rapper, you’re positively cottage industry. Instead of being frustrated that you can’t dominate the world and make bank, fulfill yourself.

And you just might fulfill the rest of us.

P.S. I asked the manager, Robert Cappadona, for the words, since I couldn’t figure them all out, this is how he responded:

As a manager, I’ve spent a good deal of time transcribing lyrics.

This is the my best version, knowing Ry’s writing (not the gospel).

…Where I’m unsure I will put the word(s) I believe it to be in ( ), and the words I don’t know empty in ( ).

| | | | |

Well better not shake it no mo’ no mo’
You better not shake it no mo’
Mitch McConnell told me son
You better not shake it no mo’

And you better not jump the girls no more
You better not jump no mo’
If you wanna be a Supreme Judge
You better not shake it no mo’

Well a pretty little gal come walking by
And had to shake it (that thang)
She went and told the FBI
But it ain’t no fault of mine

‘Cause I used to be a college boy
And just one thing I found
When they got their lipstick and their (boobs)
They really wanna shake it all down
Yes they do

Shake it on down
Shake it on down
Shake it on down

If the girls play hard to get
I will just play harder yet
and ( ) going to shake it all down

Play it for me

( ) a letter this morning ( ) I highly reckon it read
The words and salutations from the President
Saying those bitches at the White House
Just as fine as anything be
So come on over to my House
And shake it one time for me

Shake it on down
Shake it on down
We’ll use discretion
But it (will decline)
Tell ‘em court’s in session
Let’s shake it one more time

Shake it on down
Shake it on down
I’ll rock the majority opinion
And soon we’ll shake it all down

| | | |

Can you piss off half the population and get away with it?

We’re about to find out.

Nobody knows anything. That’s what William Goldman famously said about the movie business. Now we’ve got the same thing with news. Forget dishonest, forget facts, ignore spin, no one in the news business seems to be able to accurately divine what is going on, never mind what’s gonna happen. And all the vaunted seers have lost their luster. I used to be a believer in Nate Silver, the averager of averages, the interpreter of polls, but he got the last election wrong, and what’s worse, as only a statistician would, he said he got it right. As Joni Mitchell sang, where’s that at, if you want me I’ll be in the bar.

We were for the Vietnam War before we were against it.

We were pro-military before we were anti-military.

Bob Dylan was a niche artist before he became a legend.

So I’m at an overnight at summer camp, you know, where they bus you to nowhere and you pitch tents and everybody’s got a chore and a Drazen twin told me America was at war.

WAR?

My mother had these two bound copies of World War II photo books which I flipped through more than occasionally. Six million Jews were murdered, we could not have another war.

But it was in a place no one had heard of. And we assumed we could win. And we felt the need to combat Communism, we remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And then everything flipped.

Suddenly, people you knew were against the war. Barry McGuire sang that we were on the “Eve of Destruction.” Everything that was taboo was now on the table, like marijuana.

Those were the sixties. When the government was afraid people would riot. And they did. As they did a few summers back, but somehow the end result is support of the police, just like our veterans are lionized, as we cut treatment for them after the fact. I’d rather not send our troops into battle, I’d rather no one die, but ever since the Iran crisis nearly four decades ago it’s been fine to be rah-rah, pro-American, before that no one ever chanted USA!, USA!

So the sixties were a time of turmoil. And there was a clear generation gap. The youth were expanding their brains while the oldsters were settling into the comforts of the aged, until they were disrupted.

It was the music. It was the clothes.

And then it was the war.

History has been rewritten, if it weren’t for antiwar protests, Johnson would have run in ’68. And when I was in college, maybe the most popular course was “Revolutions In The Modern Era,” taught badly by Marjorie Lamberti. Oh, she was excited by her subject, she was just a lousy teacher. Most PhDs are. Recent studies tell us TAs are better, but there were none of those at Middlebury. But I believe in the revolution. And I believe it’s just around the corner.

It’s not gonna make everybody happy. And forget the sounds of the last era, the Beatles’ “Revolution,” the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Things changed, it’s just the outcome was not what was predicted.

Like after the 2008 economic crisis.

Bush and his cronies got us into it.

Obama and his cronies saved the economy at the price of no one but bankers believing in it. If you were rich, the crisis was good for you, but if you weren’t…

That’s how we got here. We can’t make it here. We’ve been fed a line of b.s. about the rich being job-creators, about the immigrants being the problem, but it used to be the rulers did a better job of obfuscating their duplicity, but now, an entire political party has decided one gender does not count.

It was hard to find a male of age who was for the Vietnam War. They didn’t want to go, they didn’t want to get their ass shot off in a worthless endeavor.

And after being kicked around for years, women have awakened. There was a foundation, once again nearly fifty years ago. And progress has been made. And the younger generation was complacent until…

What is the tipping point?

You know it’s coming.

And it won’t come from somebody famous, they have too much to lose. But someone like that fruit vendor in Tunisia will rise up and trigger…

It’s about making half of America second-class citizens.

And that half is never gonna forget it.

You rarely hear the Thin White Duke anymore. And I’ll be honest, I never stream the tracks, although “Moonage Daydream” is emblazoned on my brain and I find myself singing it all the time.

But this assemblage did not play that, nor did they play my other favorite, “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” The latter hit the airwaves when I was financially-challenged and sleeping in my car, at least for one night, outside the Hart ski warehouse in Reno, I heard the track and… It’s anthemic, overblown, as if its maker believes he’s ruler of the universe and everybody must pay attention, and soon everybody did like David Bowie, but primarily for “Fame,” which I still cannot cotton to, and the title cut of that LP, “Young Americans.” However, I do have a fascination with “Fascination,” it sounds like it was cut in the dark, long after dark. But that’s what being a Bowie fan is all about, not loving the alien so much as loving the album tracks.

I bought “Ziggy Stardust” because I was in the U.K. and Bowie was all over the weekly music rags, even though he meant absolutely nothing in the U.S. I remember lying on my bed after dropping the needle and hearing “Five Years,” this guy was making a statement, not that I was sure what it was at that point.

And I went to see that tour at the Boston Music Hall. One of the greatest shows ever, with the opening to the “Clockwork Orange” theme and the strobe lights and the lights up encore of “Around and Around.” Bowie had to convince us all at once, but we already were, yet it took a while for everybody else to get on board.

Eventually it was “Space Oddity” and “Changes” that hooked the mainstream. And the MTV comeback was massive, even bigger than the first time around, with “Let’s Dance,” which I thought was a cheap shot, although I did buy the album, you always did, you were invested, but then Bowie took one left turn after another and the hoi polloi disconnected but insiders always paid attention, you thought Bowie might connect one more time and now…

He’s dead.

That’s right. There’s a tour of his outfits and stuff, and I recommend it, but radio only focuses on the hits and the rest tends to fall away, until the renaissance. Which in Bowie’s case will be more about imaging and staging than the music, because at this late date the music is sui generis, Bowie exists in his own bubble.

But I’m still a fan, like I said, but David doesn’t warrant a ton of mindshare. But when his name comes up…

And I got an invitation to go to the Swing House out in Glendale, east of the 5, maybe it’s technically Atwater Village, who knows, but it’s certainly far away, and normally I say no, but how could you when Todd Rundgren and Adrian Belew are involved?

Todd is not that different from Bowie, in that he follows his own muse and refuses to repeat himself. As for Adrian Belew… An undercover giant, if you know him, you want to see him live, and I never had, so I went.

It was a charity event, a rehearsal for gigs in Iceland, with a string section and orchestra but this…

Was positively rock and roll.

This was not for twentysomethings, certainly not teenagers. This was for people who remembered when, when staying home was anathema and you went to the gig not to be seen, but to connect with what was on stage.

And having hung so much this week I punted on the reception but when I got there the music had just begun. And it wasn’t long before I was enraptured, it went on for two hours and forty minutes, there were probably fifty or sixty or people there, but it was the essence of what once was, and therefore stunningly alive today. It was a secret show, you didn’t know. But what we had was an assemblage of musicians on stage sans effects not playing to track, just putting forth the compositions of a genius, with EMPHASIS! There were few in the audience, but they were playing like it counted. You remember, when the music meant everything.

And Adrian was there, but Todd was not. Others were singing songs. Angelo Moore of Fishbone, had I come this far for…

And then they introduced the Wizard, the True Star, and he strode up to the microphone and sang…

It’s a godawful small affair

That’s the thing, you knew what they were playing by the intros, except when you didn’t. The goal was to play songs from every era, but after singing one number Todd exclaimed “Nobody knows that!” And there were no protests from the audience but Todd had broken protocol, and that’s what’s absent from music today, nobody wants to be an outsider, a party of one, and that’s what Todd is, and Bowie too, and…

Needless to say the band was tight, to hear Belew in action was a marvel but…

Todd’s paid his dues, what they call the 10,000 hours. He knows how to perform. How to spread his arms, how to grab hold of the audience with a nod and a wink, you’re in the audience merging with the man and the music and you start to smile and pinch yourself, because these aged men have captured a zeitgeist lost for years and are serving it up for people who remember. It was palpable. I was thrusting my arm in the air, I was singing along, and I didn’t expect to, I thought I was just gonna check it out, pay my dues, and leave.

And Todd killed on “Space Oddity,” and mocked “TVC15″‘s lyrics, but the piece de resistance, near the very end of the show was….

Billy rapped all night ’bout his suicide
How he’d kick it in the head when he was twenty five
Don’t wanna stay alive when you’re twenty five

Only you do. We didn’t expect cancer to get David Bowie, once you get past twenty seven we expect you to live forever. But Todd’s still here. He started as a teenager, and now he’s turned seventy, he’s gained perspective but he still recalls what it all meant, when it was still religion.

And my brother’s back at home
With his Beatles and his Stones

The Beatles survive. The Stones never sold many records and now their performances, which are better than they’ve been in decades, still seem a dash for cash. And if you’re not one of those two…

Well, we’ve got the Eagles and Michael Jackson.

Still, so much has faded away and absolutely does not radiate, kinda like “All The Young Dudes” itself.

But what made the performance so magical was the asides, from the Mott The Hoople cover, which fans know by heart, and it turns out Todd does too.

HEY, DUDES!
WHERE ARE YOU?
STAND UP!
I WANNA HEAR YOU
I WANNA SEE YOU
I WANNA TALK TO YOU!

And we were standing, and we were being seen, and we were singing along, even though the amps and PA were so loud that we could not hear ourselves.

Meanwhile, Adrian Belew is picking those notes he’s famous for, that only he can play. And Michael Urbano is pounding the skins, and even though there’s only been a day and a half of rehearsal, it’s tighter and more forceful than most acts on the road, these old guys excavating the classics from the vault and making them fresh again.

And Urbano was in Bourgeois Tagg with Lyle Workman who came up and played too, he can’t go on the road, he’s too busy being a composer.

But Fee Waybill took the stage and ripped off a version of “Suffragette City” every bit as powerful as the original.

Hey man
Leave me alone

We used to want to be left alone, to be who we wanted to be. We were not self-promoting on social media, we knew who the stars were, the people making music, they ruled the earth, they dominated.

And last night they still did.

Home 2024 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father

Milli Vanilli had to give up their Grammy, does Donald Trump now have to give up the Presidency? Then again, Clive Davis is almost as big a blowhard as Trump, and the press has bought it. Forget the overspending at Arista, forget the forgettable hits, what kind of man foists a fraud upon the public?

One with a very big ego and a ton of insecurity.

Now I happened to be online when this story broke. But my inbox did not blow up, my Twitter feed did not go insane. Which is kind of strange, Geoff Emerick dies and there are a gazillion tweets testifying to his greatness, America’s foremost newspaper blows a hole in the President’s origin story and…crickets.

But it gets worse than that. I was stuck in traffic for an hour at six o’clock, pushing the buttons on the satellite from CNN to MSNBC to Fox. Do you think they mentioned this story on Fox? NOT AT ALL! Proving we all get different news and all get different spin, and since spin wins, hell, Trump agreed to broaden the FBI inquiry after the Democrats complained, don’t expect to hear truth anywhere anymore.

And if you’re hewing to the line, you’re losing.

The job creators… The rich are better than us. They deserve our fealty. But the truth is where there’s a great fortune, as that old seer once said, there’s a great crime.

And then I found it funny. We’re now living in Italy. Or maybe Greece, that’s where they famously pay no taxes. But we laugh at Italy, as their heads of state are caught up in shenanigans and the country never seems to be able to get out of its own way. THAT’S US! They laughed at Trump at the U.N. Wouldn’t you? A lying narcissistic who’s tipped the world and admits right up front it’s America First? And for those thinking this benefits you, America First is code for “entitled white people first.” They don’t care about minorities, they want to keep them out. It’s your fault you’re poor, if we get it right we’re not only gonna plug the immigration leaks, but kick your sorry ass out of the country too. USA! USA!

Meanwhile, we’ve got the Democrats thinking they can win through honesty.

There is no honesty! The guy trying to get on the Supreme Court lies about high school slang and you’re supposed to speak the truth? Oh, you righties, don’t get your knickers in a twist, he’s gonna get confirmed or someone just like him will so you’re gonna win in the end. That bugs me most, the winners complaining, kinda like the war on Christmas, all you see on Fox is people lamenting the sorry state of affairs, how they’re oppressed, they should be having a victory party, THEY’VE WON! By promising what you can’t have. Better schools for less taxes. Lower health care costs and no pre-existing conditions. While they’re at it, why don’t they promise cars that get a hundred miles an hour and throw in a cure for cancer, the American public is comprised of nitwits who’ll believe anything.

And it’s not going in the right direction. The Supreme Court will lean right for DECADES! And the Republicans, much better organized than the Democrats, have defined the issues for decades. Taxes…BAD! Yeah, but look at our declining infrastructure, who’s gonna fix that! Private industry! Look what they did for our prisons! “The Failing New York Times.” They’ve made it so the paper of record is irrelevant, meaningless, even though the whole country is run by it, because the “Times” is the only news outlet with reporters on the ground everywhere. Hell who else could dedicate all this manpower over eighteen months for one story? Certainly not the “Denver Post,” pushed toward the cliff by financial owners. And did you see that Bain and KKR are gonna throw $20 million to Toys”R”Us employees? Out of sheer guilt? Don’t laud them, just think of how much cash they made if they’re willing to throw this amount away!

Yup, they put Toys”R”Us out of business.

But still, the average person has no idea how hedge funds work, how they load their purchases up with debt and become whole instantly while the corporation tanks.

And no one can understand the tax games in this “Times” article.

But I can. I liked tax in law school. I like math. The principles are not hard, but they’re hoping you never go deep. That’s America, it’s all surface all the time. And if you say anything negative you’re a hater. The blacks are doing better than ever! Kaepernick is over the hill! The truth is you repeat these falsehoods enough and people believe them.

Just like Trump told us he was a brilliant real estate developer of extreme wealth.

No, he was an entertainer.

That’s where facts never ruled. The gig is sold out! But it’s not. The album went gold! But it didn’t. The deal is worth a hundred mil! But it’s not.

But now this game is being played by the President. It started long before the “Apprentice.” Trump has played a very long game. Trading in one wife for a theoretically more desirable one and then one even better, completely subservient. He went on Howard Stern to humanize himself, present an identity to the public, to be known, and it worked! You keep decrying what he said to Howard, you know nothing about publicity, it made him FAMOUS!

If you ever felt powerless, now’s the time.

And you can’t follow in Trump’s footsteps, because white collar crime only works when it’s surrounded by high-priced attorneys and accountants. That’s right, tax is a game, a sport, you can say whatever you want until you get caught. But few do. Manafort. Cohen. And Trump himself. If anything, this proves you should stay out of the public eye!

But that’s not reality TV. That’s not Snooki. That’s not Kanye.

Everybody wants to be in the game.

And those who are not pooh-pooh it, or don’t understand it, but the joke is on them.

They hate the superhero movies. But wouldn’t you want escape in today’s world?

They hate the rappers promoting hedonism and sexism. But when your life is short, when you only get a little time with the brass ring, don’t you want to live it up?

And we keep lionizing these losers. And they mess with the outlets if they mess with them. They won’t give access. And one of the most important points in this article is how the “Times” itself was snowed too! They admit it, they bought the Trump act, hook, line and sinker.

But it doesn’t matter. Trump is going nowhere. His acolytes should stop complaining and start laughing. They’ve preached a platform that appeals to people, that really appeals to five year olds. I’ll give you everything and it’ll cost you nothing! And then in a few years it becomes someone else’s problem. Just like the corporations, run by CEOs for the bonus that fold right after the execs are gone.

That’s America folks.

We used to depend on religion for a moral compass. But now religion is in cahoots with the insanity.

We used to depend on artists, to tell us the truth. But now they keep complaining someone stole their lunch money and they’ve got to sell out to survive.

We used to have Mr. Smiths who went to Washington, or at least Nader. Today Ralph is seen as a chump. Who wants to live as a monk? Who wants to give up all that MONEY!

And we’ve got a Wall Street that mints millionaires but builds nothing.

And an amoral tech elite.

There you have it folks. A nation without character. Where your word means nothing.

This is not the end. As a matter of fact, it keeps getting worse. Hell, political news should be on the sports page, that’s what it now is, an adversarial contest.

All this hogwash about “originalism”… If the Founding Fathers were alive today they’d throw up!