#483 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Saturday October 15)
Good morning,
MUSIC
One of my favorite groups was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They recorded several albums together occasionally mixing and matching over the years. But each had a solo career as well, often singing backup for each other. Despite their well-publicized differences, they were always best when together and always seemed to find their way back together after breaks-ups. Here are my favorite solos for each:
David Crosby, “Cowboy Movie (If I Could Only Remember My Name)”
According to the website Louder, this as “an allegorical epic about CSNY’s first break-up, served up as a Wild West tale about four compadres hiding out after a bank job. Crosby is Fat Albert with the 12-gauge, Neil Young is Young Billy the sentry, Graham Nash is Duke the dynamiter and Stephen Stills is Eli, “our fastest gunner, kind of mean and young from the South.” Rita Coolidge is the Indian girl who comes between them.”
Steven Stills, “Love the One You’re With”
From Wikipedia: Stills wrote the song after being inspired by the tag line — "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" which was a frequent remark by musician Billy Preston. Stills explained in 1991, "This song has been very good to me. The title came from a party with Billy Preston. I asked him if I could pinch this line he had, and he said, 'Sure. ' So I took the phrase and wrote a song around it. It's a good times song, just a bit of fun. My favorite part is the steel drums. I played them before a little bit but I just kept diddling around till I found the right notes.
Graham Nash, “I Used to Be a King”
Although he was the writer of many of the greatest songs for CS&N (e.g., Our House, Teach Your Children, Marrakesh Express, Just a Song Before I Go, Wasted On the Way), he had relatively few solo hits. Here is one great one:
Neil Young, “Heart of Gold”
From American Songwriter, “In the song, Young sings of being in Hollywood, Redwood (forests, presumably), and crossing oceans in search of a heart of gold. Indeed, the song is about salvation—either someone or something—that can give him the treasure—metaphorical or actual—that he requires.” Here he is at FarmAid:
POETRY
In honor of the great Salman Rushdie, who is recovering from an attack when he was speaking on free speech, some of his most moving quotations on freedom of speech:
“Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world... The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.”
-- Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (1992)
“What is freedom of expression? Without freedom to offend, it doesn’t exist.” –Salman Rushdie
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people…I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it…” –Salman Rushdie
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. —Salman Rushdie
Have a great weekend,
Glenn
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