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2008:08:30:08:00. Saturday. NO!: THE BOX SOCIAL (#425, JUL 31 2008).
OK, I've finally got these clips processed. I've been sitting on a lot of stuff from the recent Toadies show, in large part because my regular camera was out of juice and I had to use the crummy old one; as such, these videos don't look great, and also could sound better. But here they are nonetheless. This show, incredibly, was packed from start to finish. Usually Madison shows, even for big touring acts, don't start filling up until halfway through the last opener's set, but there was a big crowd on hand for the Box Social to open the show with a smattering of new songs and a couple of their standard covers. This is one of a handful of shows they played around the region this summer, as high gas prices kept them off the road for the most part, but they've been writing new material and I'll be documenting their upcoming new demo sessions, so look out for that soon.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:08:28:22:29. Thursday. BALLS. Throughout the convention, ads for DividedWeFail.org and HarryAndLouiseReturn.com have been running on Comedy Central (and probably elsewhere, but I've been watching all my actual convention coverage on C-SPAN and PBS). These ads, respectively, admonish viewers to "demand action" on health care and tell the next president to "make it happen." The balls it takes for the actors from the original Harry and Louise ads, and some of their original sponsors, to reprise this foolishness would make Stephen Colbert jealous. The ads that ran in 1993 were integral to killing the Clinton health care plan, and they salted the earth in their wake. Their scare-mongering then led directly to the problems they cite in the new ads now. DividedWeFail.org's ads are, if anything, stupider and more simplistic. They're being run by the AARP, fresh off getting played by the Bush Adminstration on the Medicare Part D bill. Not surprisingly, they show the same kind of political acumen as John McCain, who's suggested the best solution to the Iraq War is to "sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’" Guess what, you schmucks. Republicans don't want a government health care solution, and they don't particularly care about pushing the private sector into doing anything that might cost them money. This is simply not something that there is a bipartisan consensus for. On top of that, health insurance companies will fight for their very existence against real health care reform. If you want something to be done about the number of uninsured, underinsured and "insured" who can't actually get care, you need to elect more and better Democrats. You need to create a mandate for a health care reform that doesn't strengthen the profit motive. The obstacle to this is not "partisan bickering," it is Republicans. Barack Obama gave his first partisan speech of the campaign tonight (making Mark Warner's horrible keynote all the odder), and I hope it's a prelude to him campaigning with the convention's other partisan warriors (more Bill Richardson, please) and for other Democrats (Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, Washington House candidate Darcy Burner, Connecticut House candidate Jim Himes, etc.). I think Obama has finally come to realize that whatever his movement is now, it can't survive outside the womb of the campaign without folding into the party. It will soon become apparent to a lot of people that Barack Obama's election is not America's redemption; rather, America's redemption can come from Obama's administration, and what he can accomplish with a strong Democratic Congress.
2008:08:28:09:29. THE BIG DOG AND THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Last night, Bill Clinton demonstrated the real value of political experience -- it's not that it makes you a better decision-maker or a wiser crafter of policy, it's that it makes you better able to see where the contours of power are. And while they exist around individuals, they are much stronger around parties and ideologies. In Clinton's speech, George Bush and John McCain are symptoms of a disease called conservatism. This passage is the most important thing anyone has said at this convention:
On the two great questions of this election — how to rebuild the American dream and how to restore America's leadership in the world — [John McCain] still embraces the extreme philosophy that has defined his party for more than 25 years.
And it is, to be fair to all the Americans who aren't as hard-core Democrats as we, it's a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress. Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades actually were implemented. And look what happened. They took us from record surpluses to an exploding debt; from over 22 million new jobs to just 5 million; from increasing working families' incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year; from almost 8 million Americans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 million driven into poverty; and millions more losing their health insurance. Now, in spite of all this evidence, their candidate is actually promising more of the same. ... They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. In just a couple minutes he articulated an argument that had nothing to do with Obama in particular, and little to do with Bush or McCain in particular, but was all about electing Obama, defeating McCain and expanding the Democratic majorities in Congress. But he fucked it all up by leading in talking about what a great guy John McCain is:
The Republicans will nominate a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam. He loves our country every bit as much as we all do. As a Senator, he has shown his independence on several issues.
Later, Joe Biden gave a solid speech, making quite a few pointed attacks on McCain. Unfortunately, he undercut himself as well:
John McCain is my friend. We've known each other for three decades. We've traveled the world together. It's a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism John demonstrated still amaze me.
It seems that as the convention goes on, John McCain becomes a better and better man and friend of various high-ranking Democrats. So, a request to Howard Dean, Al Gore, Barack Obama and all of tonight's speakers: Please ask your friend John McCain to vacate the premises so that dangerous warmonger John McCain can be brought in for our examination. This man is not your friend, this man is "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." This man is eating cake while New Orleans drowns. This man is overturning Roe and opposing the Ledbetter Act. This man is privatizing Social Security. If this man is your friend, and the harshest thing you can think of to say about him is that he's got seven or eight or twelve houses, kindly piss off. Some of us are trying to save this country and you're not helping.
2008:08:26:21:23. Tuesday. ON PARTISANSHIP. So this month has been ridiculously busy, and I've been sitting on a bunch of Toadies clips from late July that hopefully will be coming out imminently. But right now I'm watching Unity Night at the DNC, and for fuck's sake, I'm seeing another opportunity get pissed away by party leaders that simply refuse to understand the reality before them. This night at the convention is being billed as all about Hillary Clinton's speech, but the unity that's really being sold by the likes of Mark Warner, Deval Patrick and Brian Schweitzer is much darker. There are two words that are not being used nearly enough by any of tonight's speakers. The first is "Democrats" and the second is "Republicans." Speaker after speaker is going hard after McCain as an individual, and tying him to George Bush, and talking about "those folks in the White House" -- and hey, did you hear that McCain has a lot of houses or something? -- without even alluding to the fact that these people represent an entire party that holds the same or worse views on all the issues being discussed tonight. Without mentioning that a vote for a reasonable Republican House candidate is a vote for John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Without mentioning that the Senate remains the biggest hurdle to making real, effective change -- in fact, the closest to any such mention was Barbara Boxer telling us that "60 is the new 50," though that's only true as long as Harry Reid feels that Republicans don't need to actually do their filibusters. Right now Schweitzer is telling various delegations to "stand up," which I think is meant to be a big, dramatic moment, and he's just made one of the night's few (and fairly oblique) references to Iraq, but the message of this night and the convention so far is this: Obama is change, and he apparently doesn't need any help. But the fact is, your national GOP will keep on keepin' on whether Obama or McCain becomes president in January. Bipartisanship, particularly on the campaign trail, is simply not a luxury one party can afford when the other isn't on board. Seeing this happen, again, now, is like a slow-motion daydream: We did this in 1992. To be honest, the results that were borne out in Bill Clinton's first term were probably my most important formative experience with politics, but it was hardly the only example of the modern Democratic Party getting played and torn apart. Hillary just came out and announced herself as a "proud Democrat"; her second paragraph warned against allowing "another Republican" into the White House. It'd be great if some of her people could take the DNCC people aside and tell them about what happens when you don't party-build.
2008:08:08:08:00. Friday. NO!: THE HOLD STEADY (#424, JUL 21 2008).
I just can't seem to get the first Hold Steady album into my head. Earlier in the evening I stopped recording in the middle of "Barfruit Blues," thinking it was this song, which I recorded at their Orpheum show. It wasn't, obviously, and by the time I figured out that I was re-recording it in the encore I kind of didn't care anymore. So, about the Majestic. After we went there for the Dethklok live show, I decided I hated it, despite all the praise the rest of the locals seem to have for it. Since I felt like I couldn't pass this show up, this was the opportunity for the place to prove me wrong. It didn't. The first thing happened before the show -- when I went to one of the "local outlets" to buy tickets, I wound up paying $6 in convenience charges to have some undergrad go to a computer and buy tickets off the web site for me. I'm sure I don't have to point out that that's never been the case with any other venue's outlets, and it's of a piece with the biggest concern I had with the Majestic from the day it reopened -- it seems desperate to be Madison's mini-Rave, complete with frequent Cowboy Mouth and Glen Phillips shows. Meanwhile, inside, the acoustics (or the mix, it was hard to tell) were not good. The balcony lines of sight were OK, except for the constant waitstaff interference. It was an all-around unpleasant place to see a show, except for the show itself. We probably won't be going back anytime soon, and I hope they don't take up more bands that would otherwise play High Noon or Stage Door.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:08:07:08:00. Thursday. NO!: THE HOLD STEADY (#423, JUL 21 2008).
Stay Positive has three or four additions to the band's catalog of great songs, of which this is the only one I managed to record. The criminally relegated-to-bonus-track-status "Ask Her For Adderall" wasn't even played, unfortunately, but "Stay Positive" and "Constructive Summer" were both superb. On the whole, I think the new album is not quite as good as Boys and Girls in America, but it's still on the inside track to my top album of the year.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:08:06:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: THE HOLD STEADY (#422, JUL 21 2008).
I believe Madison's last Hold Steady set contained all of their then-newest album; by constrast, this show left out a couple of tracks from Stay Positive. Two that I noticed go missing -- "Both Crosses" and "Magazines" -- have musical and lyrical themes in common with this one, but I think this is the best of the three and it made for a nice late-set slow-down.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:08:05:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: THE HOLD STEADY (#421, JUL 21 2008).
Much like their last Madison show, the Hold Steady came out with some oldies and rarities early. "Modesto Is Not That Sweet" may only be available as a bonus track on the Australian edition of their debut album, but it stands with the best of their early material. Tellingly, the crowd was excited when the tune started -- more than a lot of others, this band seems to have integrated their old and new fans and used their pre-fame catalog to great effect in their live shows.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
