Democracy is at risk. Call it creeping fascism. Call it creeping authoritarianism. But whenever you bite back, all we hear is cries from the right, the same people who had their panties in a twist when they were called deplorables!
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/the-unvaccinated/
David Crosby almost eighty years old August 14th. He can’t hold his tongue. After all these years he’s incorrigible, he told me he can’t help himself. Then again, when you’re almost eighty years old are you really interested in changing?
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2021/07/28/i-wont-stay-for-long/
From: Tom Rush
Subject: Re: Blue
Bob,
I had the honor of being the first to record Joni’s songs — before she did — on my Circle Game album. (I tried to get Jac Holzman at Elektra to sign her up, he said she sounded too much like Judy Collins.) My recollection is that, while she very much wanted to be a STAR, she was not calculating to write hit songs. Because she was (and is) a true artist she wrote her truth, take it or leave it.
The fact that the music business sausage factory couldn’t figure out how to sell her work is more an indictment of the industry than an indication of any failing on Joni’s part. The fact that her Blue album is being celebrated 50 years later it a testament to her importance. As with Dylan, she’s been hugely influential on the music scene in general, and on generations of new artists, without ever selling the tonnage required to have a wall full of platinum albums at home. (I’m told, by the way, that if you take one of those albums out of its frame and play it on a turntable — it usually turns out to be somebody else’s album. Mind you, I’ve never had any of my own to test the theory.) (And I’m assuming they went through a platinum CD phase, and then probably a platinum SD Card, but what do they do now? Platinum Downloads, if they ever existed, would be passé. How do you hang a Platinum Digital Stream on your bathroom wall? What has the world come to?!?)
Tom Rush