Tag: big changes

We’re a Week Out From the Thing

Brazil did it. Can we?

For all that I wish to move the capitol by having my region secede from the larger country, the fact is that we’re here in the world as it is. Stinky Don is the president. He is surrounded by goons and sycophants, including some that have a (D) after their name on certain ballots. In general though, it seems that if you’re voting for anyone with an (R) after their name on any ballot, you’re voting for someone who supports Stinky Don. And if you’re voting for a supporter of that guy, you’re voting against a democratic society.

It’s just that simple. You’re voting for cruelty without consequences. You’re voting for someone who supports the idea of no accountability for certain Stinky people. We know this because we’ve been living through this particular Stinky chunk of history.

Stinky Don is offering all sorts of cash prizes, all conditional on a win for the (R)s in this coming election. No changes in policy, no promises to do better. Just spread the corruption to the average voter, for the one act of importance we each have the opportunity to commit every couple of years. It’s all bribes, it’s all corruption. He’s saying, “If you let me continue robbing the country blind, I’ll give you a stinking Werther’s® for your trouble.”

google screenshot page showing various electoral maps of the US
A screenshot I took from Google.

Please remember that his operating budget is your money anyway, and that if you let him have his way, he’s only going to pick up the pace of putting your tax dollars in his own pocket and those of his friends and allies, killing kids, putting the youth of America in harm’s way, and further destroying whatever good will and political capital this country has in the world community. It’s not a good deal. I’d go so far as to say that no deal with Stinky Don is a good deal for anybody but Stinky Don. And not even that, necessarily. Gerrymandering Texas seems not to have done him any actual favors. The five new “safe” districts he had the state legislature create there are not so safe after all.

In fact, for those who have a numbers fetish, here’s a link to Nate Silver’s FLIPR forecast for the midterms. It’s narrowing a little bit, it seems, but it’s still looking pretty good for the Democrats. Polling in the modern era is a bit less than perfect, but it’s still info.

To that end, Brazil had their elections this past Sunday, and against conventional wisdom and the best polling available, Lula da Silva won a fourth term as President of Brazil. That election day was wild. Municipalities closed down their public trans portation to keep people from being able to get to the polls. People came by boat out of the remostest areas to make their way to the polls, against everybody’s expectation. Bolsonaro tried unsuccessfully to get the polls closed early with tons of people still on line to vote. In the end, instead of the predicted loss, Lula won by about 3,000,000 votes.

And of course Flavio Bolsonaro is refusing to concede, and is asking Trump to intervene and hand him the presidency. Time will tell if Trump has the will and resources to do so. It’s worth remembering that Stinky Don has his own troubles, a host of them, all of his own making.

Jethro Tull’s Second Album

In which The Ghost of Mick Abrahams is exorcised.

I’m working my way through the Jethro Tull catalogue, one record at a time in chronological order. This Was was a shock to me, because it sounded like a different band entirely. All they changed, on the most physical level, was to switch out their guitar player. On a policy level, Tull became Ian Anderson’s baby. That narrowing and defining of leadership led to a huge expansion of the band’s artistic territory.

I can’t know this for sure, but I suspect that Mick Abrahams left Jethro Tull under a cloud. In the context of the band, he needed to be saged out of the space. Not to keep anyone in suspense or anything, but they 100% accomplished their goal. MA is pretty much a footnote in the Tull story, an early fork in the road. They become Tull as we know them on Stand Up.

In fact, by the third song on side one, the Brubeck-inspired “Bouree,” we’re already so far beyond the blues rock of what’s-‘is-name that the clock can never be turned back, and it becomes completely unfair of me to link everything that happens here to that guy.

But even though a listener who only had This Was as a reference point would feel his absence throughout, one would also hear the future. A great future. This album led to Benefit, and Benefit led to Aqualung, and everything that followed.

And Mick Abrahams could never have been the guitarist for Stand Up or any record that was made by Jethro Tull afterward. Martin Barre blows him out of the water, all while acknowledging that Ian Anderson is the boss. Where Abrahams wrote about half of the previous record, all of the songs here are Anderson’s, and collectively an upgrade from what had come before.

That’s Martin Barre in the middle, making eye contact with you. Hi, Martin! Photo of my copy of Stand Up by me.

While the Ghost of Mick hangs over this record, by the end of it, the listener is only looking forward, not backward. The band virtually never went back to the blues rock well from which This Was sprang.

And that’s what I like most about that time in rock music, bands grew and developed. Each new album was a chapter in the larger story arc. Taking a big chance such as completely redefining a band’s approach could be either a horrible disappointment or a thrilling expansion of what a band could be. It may be true that in most cases it would be the former, but in this case, it’s absolutely the latter.

So many bands went through these changes around that time. Yes booted Peter Banks in favor of Steve Howe. Genesis lost Anthony Phillips but added Steve Hackett and got Phil Collins in the bargain. In the larger context, the music was changing, but this round of changes seems to have codified things in such a way that they began to become stagnant. Less than a decade later, all of these revisions up in quality became an unassailable status quo which necessitated a revolution.

From this decades-later standpoint, one can see that things were both gained and lost amidst all the changes… as they always are.

Here’s to change. We all need it, from time to time.

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