ROCK & RAP CONFIDENTIAL – September 2007

The new issue of the RRC newsletter is out and as always it is loaded with interesting articles, record reviews and the usual mix of music and politics and the always cool downloads of the month picks.

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Below is an edited version of the newsletter.

ROCK & RAP CONFIDENTIAL

No. 221 / September 2007

THE BONO WATCH… We checked out the web site of Forbes Magazine, co-owned by Bono, in late July and found an endorsement of pro-censorship lunatic Sam Brownback’s flat tax proposal and a relentless drumbeat for lower taxes for the rich. This is fine with Bono, who moved his corporate headquarters from Ireland to Holland to avoid paying a 12.5 corporate tax rate, less than Irish plumbers or teachers pay.

Indeed, one reason Bono’s such a fan of George Bush is that Dubya has blocked European attempts to eliminate Continental tax havens.

Bono also says that “Bill Clinton did an incredible thing on starting this debt cancellation. He deserves real credit. And now, President Bush deserves credit for finishing it out.”

Bush “finishing out” debt cancellation? Bono is not telling the truth. The May/June issue of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! breaks it down: “Before the G8 summit, African countries owed a combined total of $15 billion a year on debt payments; after the vaunted debt relief agreements, they owed $14 billion a year.

Only a quarter of African countries were even eligible for the debt relief program, which required them to enact harmful neoliberal economic stipulations, like privatization of vital services such as water and education, and acceptance of heavily unequal trade rules that prevent true economic development. What’s more, none of them actually received 100 per cent debt cancellation.”

At June’s Technology Entertainment and Design conference in Tanzania, Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist and social worker, spoke out against reliance on foreign charity, pointing out that it had never succeeded in reviving an economy anywhere in the world, least of all Africa. He made his points only with difficulty however because throughout the speech he was heckled from the back of the room with shouts of “Bullshit!” and “Bollocks!” The heckler was Bono, who apparently believes that the nonsense he’s been spoon-fed by the likes of Bush and Tony Blair is gospel.

What Bono doesn’t want to hear is the truth: He’s not one of the oppressed, the oppressed never asked him to speak for them, and he has about as much chance of leading Africa out of its economic and political problems as his political pals do of creating peace and justice in Mesopotamia.

*****

DEAD EARTH WALKING… Al Gore’s biggest hypocrisy isn’t the fact that, after two decades of telling us how to raise our kids, on July 4 one of his offspring was yet again arrested for drug possession.

Gore’s biggest hypocrisy isn’t even the fact that he started an anti-rock witch hunt via Congressional hearings and the PMRC in the 1980s and then was a front man for the July 7 Live Earth concerts at which Madonna and the Beastie Boys—artists attacked as scum by the PMRC, starting with Mrs. Gore–performed.

Nor is Gore’s most devious double standard the fact that the rightwing group Focus on the Family—spiritually and structurally a part of the PMRC—opposes Earth Day.

No, Al Gore’s biggest hypocrisy is that he portrays himself as an environmentalist at all. Gore is a major shareholder of Occidental Petroleum, one of the world’s worst polluters. He is pro-nuclear war (ask the Japanese what that does for the environment), having voted for the first-strike MX missile after promising he wouldn’t.

Al Gore says nuclear power is the solution to climate change and he’s backed both Gulf wars, which have done untold damage to the ecosystems we all need to survive. He is an avid supporter of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), whose founder John Bryson is the head of major polluter Southern California Edison. NRDC helped ram through Gore’s pet project NAFTA, which has undermined environmental standards throughout the western hemisphere. When WTI Corporation, financed mainly by major Gore contributor Jackson Stephens, wanted an operating permit for a hazardous waste incinerator located near an Ohio elementary school, Gore as vice-president did not object. The permit was issued.

As for global warming itself, Gore worked to derail the international Kyoto Protocol by making sure it wasn’t submitted to the U.S. Senate for approval.

Al Gore works the same hustle that Bono does. He describes himself as a leader who reveals important new dangers, then fronts for the people and institutions who’ve caused the problem in the first place.

We don’t need to be told that global warming exists. We already know that. We need to actually solve the problem but we can’t because we let someone like Al Gore speak for us while he co-opts our culture, a culture that he said as a Senator that he hates and wants to destroy.

*****

SICKO… In 1993 three Arkansas teenagers—Damien Echols, Jesse Miskelly, and Jason Baldwin—were convicted of the murders of three children. Echols was given the death penalty. As anyone who has seen the excellent documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills knows far beyond a reasonable doubt, Echols, Miskelly, and Baldwin are innocent.

The clothing the alleged killers wore and the music they listened to were admitted as “evidence” by the court, not because they contained clues, but so the jury could by outraged by their style.

The West Memphis 3 were convicted because they were heavy metal fans living as best they could in a country where Al Gore and a bizarre amalgam of rightwingers had created anti-metal hysteria through Congressional hearings, the PMRC, and a pliant mass media. Watching Paradise Lost (made with the support of PMRC target Metallica) and seeing the lunacy unfold in the courtroom, you half expect to see Tipper Gore called as a prosecution witness.

Now that the censors have stolen the youth and then some from those who were convicted, there is finally some good news. New DNA testing by defense lawyers this summer shows that none of the genetic material recovered from the murder scene is from Echols, Baldwin, or Misskelly. Prosecutor Brent Davis admits this is true and has agreed to allow the defense to do more DNA testing. But there’s no guarantee that their innocence will get the West Memphis 3 out of prison.

Tawn Mastrey was a key figure in the heavy metal scene at a time when the Gore-led attacks were at their most intense. She was a DJ at seminal Los Angeles metal station KNAC-FM from 1986 to 1989 where she was known as “The Leather Nun” and could be found wherever metal titans played or partied. Recently, Tawn was diagnosed with Hep C and told she must have a liver transplant.

In 1996, heavy metal hater and vice-president Al Gore helped to preside over the Democratic Party convention where universal single payer health care was removed from the party platform. Tawn Mastrey has no health insurance. Metal musicians are, of course, coming out of the woodwork to play benefits for her (you can donate at tawnmastreybenefit.com). Musicians have to try to do the impossible because Al Gore and other American politicians haven’t done what is possible.

They refuse to do what politicians in every other industrialized country have done—provide their citizens with free health care. Thus there’s no guarantee that Tawn will be able to pay for a new liver if she finds one.

*****

WORD UP… On the Fourth of July, author/filmmaker Nelson George posted the following on his blog:

Word has arrived on the web that I’m directing a documentary on the life and times of the word “Motherfucker.” I’m looking for stories, songs, novels and personal memories of the word. I wanna know how MF has played a role in your life or the baddest MF’s you’re ever met. And also what makes for a bad or sexy MF.

If you live in another country or speak another language I’d like to know how to say MF in your native tongue. Or if there is a mother-based insult that you know of your peeps use instead of MF let me know. I plan to shoot in the fall so any great info will be used in the film and you’ll be credited with a special thanks in the credits. There’s no time limit — just keep hitting me with material.

RRC’s 15 Suggested Songs for the film:

Dreams Are Free, Motherfucker, The Minutemen

Shit, Damn, Motherfucker, D’Angelo

Kick Out the Jams (Motherfucker), both the MC5 and Afrika Bamabaata versions

Go!! (Muthafucka), Angie Martinez

Surfin’ Motherfucker, Sonny Vincent

Ego is a Motherfucker, U.T.F.O.

Suicyco Muthafucka, Suicidal Tendencies

Go Motherfucker Go, Nashville Pussy

Sexy M.F., Prince

Run Like a Motherfucker, Supersuckers

Next Motherfucker, Marilyn Manson

Hit A Muthafucka, Three 6 Mafia

Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, David Peel & The Lower East Side

Mutha Fucka, Funky Aztecs

Muthafucka, Xzibit

Send your suggestions to Nelson George at www.myspace.com/nelsongeorge.

*****

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH… “Can Rap Regain Its Crown?” That’s how USA Today addressed the Imus/Oprah backlash, with a June 17th weekend edition cover story that predictably declared rap to be not only morally and artistically bankrupt, but also to blame for the woes of the record industry.

The lead paragraph was just plain wrong. It declared that since The Eminem Show sold 7.6 million copies, ” no rap album has sold so well.” OutKast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below sold 11 million copies in 2003-2004. What’s more, 20 out of 2006’s top 50 albums, all selling platinum or better, feature hip hop production and use rappers throughout.

The article argues that rap is currently being outshown by country and metal. But 40 of today’s Top 200 acts are either straight up rap acts or have strong hip hop identities. Of the 2006 platinum albums, yes, only seven would be called straight rap, but twice that number are hip-hop influenced and only nine could be called country at all and only three could be called metal.

After this shifty numbers game, USA Today brings in industry representatives, along with the other usual suspects, to blame rap’s commercialism, misogyny, violence and racism for its supposed weak sales.

Commercialism? Virtually every genre of music has well-known artists selling beer and SUV’s, yet USA Today singles out Snoop and 50 Cent for selling out with sneakers and bottled water. USA Today itself regularly carries ads for such products.

Is today’s hip hop misogynist? It features 9 front women in its Top 20 while the modern rock chart, for instance, features none, not even Avril and Pink. Of the 14 female acts in the Top 40, 10 come from a hip hop background, but USA Today dismisses someone like Fergie as “quasi-hip hop” despite the fact that everyone knows her as the woman from the Black-Eyed Peas. At mid-summer, the Rihanna song with Jay-Z sat at the top of more charts than any other record.

It’s almost laughable to read that metal and country are doing better than rap because it’s too violent. This decade’s rap has not been nearly as violent as rap in the 90s and that’s obvious to anyone who actually listens. And metal and country have never been known for their non-violence. Carrie Underwood’s Some Hearts–loved to death for its explosive revenge fantasies—has been at or near the top of the country and pop charts for nearly two years.

Finally, the article argues that there’s not enough variety in the music, a favorite fallback of anyone who doesn’t really know what they’re hearing.

As we go to print, the Top 10 rap albums are by three Atlanta MCs (one self-proclaimed King of the South who gets away with his moniker for a uniquely authoritative flow, another a manic preacher with Haitian roots and the third a Macon, Georgia boy all about gravelly deliberation), some crunkers out of Atlanta mocking the double standard of rock versus rap, a Palestinian out of Miami who promises to take over, multi-platinum rappers out of Cleveland whose bestselling current single features another multi-platinum St. Louis guy raised up in Senegal, a Brooklyn rapper all over the radio right now for splitting a pro-woman single with Ne-Yo, a New Orleans-born/Bermuda bred dancehall act, a face-painting white rap duo from Detroit and a Baton Rouge kid with a brand new dance. None of them sound alike.

Like the rest of the music industry, rap’s going through a transition. But it’s not because the art lacks value. Nowhere else do we get so many defiant women’s voices, nowhere else do we get so much celebration of lower income men and women, nowhere else is the power of unity so obvious. Rap is racist? All over the radio, Shreveport’s Hurricane shouts out “a bay bay” to “white folks, gangstas and them thugs.” Where else is that party going down?—D.A.

*****

JUST EXACTLY WHY DO WE NEED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?… Maybe in the beginning the RIAA sincerely thought its lawsuits against downloaders would scare people away from file sharing. But the RIAA admits that the number of “illegal” file sharing households in the U.S. hasn’t gone down since 2003.

So why the 20,000 lawsuits? Because it’s a way to, in effect, sell music at wildly inflated prices. Sisouda Soysouvanh of Seattle paid the RIAA $8,250 for downloading eleven tracks. That’s $750 for Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” and each of ten other songs. According to Levi Pulkkinen in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the average settlement paid by western Washington residents to record companies is $4,924.

The average fine for those who just ignore the lawsuit is $6,100. Applying those figures to the nationwide total of 20,000 lawsuits, that’s over $100 million in blood money to the record companies without having to prove anything in a court of law.

According to Seattle attorney Lory Lybeck, the record companies deliberately pick on those who can’t afford to fight back: “There’s a predominance of these lawsuits filed against people who can’t participate in the federal legal system.” Jane Winn of the University of Washington points out that “[only] the richest Americans–those in the top 20 percent when it comes to wealth—can afford help.”

Few of those who owe the RIAA money can pay cash, so they have to go to the bank to take out a loan, making the actual payout even larger and providing an unexpected boost to the bottom line of financial institutions… An email sent out by DJ ProFusion details how the RIAA’s own devil child, Sound Exchange, has taken over Internet broadcasting. Web radio stations, by law, now have to pay Sound Exchange a royalty on any music they play, even if it’s on a label that isn’t a member of the RIAA.

Of course we can rely on Sound Exchange, which already says it cannot find thousands of artists it owes money to including many household names, to make sure the artists get paid. In order to have even a theoretical chance of collecting those royalties, an artist has to pay a fee to become a member of Sound Exchange.

It should be noted that the Internet was created entirely at public expense. How did the buffoons at Sound Exchange wind up controlling it?… In June, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) threatened to cut off federal funding to universities which don’t stop file sharing on their computer networks. In the last election cycle, Feeney took money from Sony, Universal, Time Warner, Disney, and the RIAA… Three million copies of Prince’s new CD, Planet Earth, were given away inside the July 15 issue of the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday.

The entire CD immediately appeared on countless web sites worldwide where it could be easily downloaded. While the industry whines about developing “new business models” and well-meaning artists attempt to craft some kind of middle ground between free distribution and the legal fascism of current copyright law, the world is moving more or less rapidly toward the model that it wants: Free.

The sooner we embrace this fact of life, the sooner we can have an intelligent discussion of how we can provide for artists in the brave new world we are entering… “If you turn back the clock when all this stuff was still on the horizon, the key realization to have made was that we had lost the war already,” Blur drummer Dave Rowntree recently told OUT-LAW Radio, a weekly technology law podcast. “That’s what I was going round telling everybody ten years ago, saying ‘the horse has bolted, there’s no way of undoing what’s been undone already.’” Told that the last Blur album was leaked on the Internet, Rowntree said: “I’d rather it gushed.” On a recent Dawn and Drew Show podcast, Ziggy Marley added: “Close in the future, music’s gonna be free.”

*****

JUST EXACTLY WHY DO WE NEED THE CONCERT INDUSTRY?… According to a Fourth of July article in the LA Times, the average concert ticket cost $61.58 in 2006, up from $25.81 in 1996. Even that figure is low, since the tickets for many concerts sell out immediately only to be resold by various types of ticket brokers for two, three, or ten times face value.

How far can this go? Consider that Prince charged $3,121 for a pair of tickets to a recent series of shows at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This was no princely aberration—this summer also saw a concert series in Long Island, New York featuring Billy Joel, Tom Petty, James Taylor, Dave Matthews, and Prince where tickets were $15,000 each.

Amid all the blather about “charging what the market will bear” is the fundamental question: Don’t we have a right to go to concerts?

The patronage of tens of millions of fans over the past 35 years built the concert industry. The public has paid for the stadiums ($16 billion in tax money over just the past ten years) and arenas where many high profile shows take place. Even the venues built with private financing ultimately dip into the public’s pocket because of the huge tax breaks such buildings are given.

Basing the concert industry mainly on those with lots of disposable income may threaten the very existence of star level live music, especially since the growing gap between wealth and poverty eliminates many potential concertgoers every day. This is probably what led Ozzy Osborne to give away the 428,000 tickets for this summer’s Ozzfest tour (not that fans aren’t being gouged by LiveNation for parking and concessions).

The right to hear live music isn’t in the Bill of Rights. It should be.

*****

Funding rules encourage cops to arrest small-time criminals….Davey D

I addressed issues surrounding police informants and the so-called Stop Snitching campaign in my last column (” ..Stop Snitching’ campaign runs deeper than most think,” Eye, July 5). Here’s more.

Feeding the flames of controversy was an April “60 Minutes” interview with rap superstar Cam’ron, in which he resurrected every negative stereotype, including the notion that people in the ‘hood aren’t worried about being protected from criminal activity.

When we see rap videos with artists posturing as big-time “gangstas” who never cooperate with police, we might believe Cam’ron’s assertions. However, it’s essential not to confuse fact with fiction.

The significance of the Stop Snitching movement is widely misunderstood, says Kenavon “K.C.” Carter, a lawyer from Austin who leads the organization HipHop Against Police Brutality.

Carter says the criteria by which federal funds are granted to police departments fuel the use of snitches. Many departments, he says, depend heavily on federal resources, including Byrne Grant funding, whose benchmark for success is the number of arrests made. As a result, he says, police go after small-time dealers, rather than kingpins, because it’s strictly a numbers game.

Recently the American Civil Liberties Union held a round-table in Atlanta titled “Undercover, Unreliable and Unaddressed: Reconsidering the Use of Informants in Drug Law Enforcement.” Taking part were rap stars, community activists, professors, attorneys and law enforcement officials. Former Baltimore police detective Ed Burns, creator of the HBO crime drama “The Wire,” underscored Carter’s point. “Each arrest counts as one,” Burns said. “It doesn’t matter if you spent three years working on a case to bring down the leader of major drug ring or if you arrested a petty seller; each arrest counts as one.”

Burns also said more officers have turned to informants to raise their arrest numbers. He added that informants may be dangerous to the community, but their criminal activities are overlooked or charges against them are downgraded because they guarantee a steady stream of arrests. During his own law enforcement career, Burns’ main informant was an assassin for the major drug gang in Baltimore.

Carter argues that police partnerships with criminal informants often discourage community members from helping law enforcement. He says in Texas towns such as Madisonville, Hearne, Jasper and Tulia, 20 to 30 people at a time have been arrested because of coerced and false testimony by informants. He also went on to add that through his work they have discovered that all too often it’s the police themselves who actually snitch on those reporting the crimes to their ‘protected’ and paid informants.

Ironically, while hip-hop artists have been blamed erroneously for advocating an end to snitching, no one has paid much attention to their allegations of police collusion in the drug trade.

T-Kash, an Oakland artist signed to Guerrilla Funk and the host of the “Friday Night Vibe” on KPFA-FM (94.1), points out several songs with references to police involvement in illicit activities, including the late Mac Dre’s “Punk Police”; Scarface’s “Look Into My Eyes” (where he points to activities of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent he believes to be corrupt); and “Desperado Outlaws” and “Deadly Games” (where C-Bo singles out officers “John Green” and “Martinez”). T-Kash says for their case against Mac Dre, police used an informant who claimed to have ridden in a car with Dre on the way to rob a bank. Dre served four years on conspiracy charges but maintained his innocence until the day he died.

Carter points to the song “Hip Hop Police,” in which Chamillionaire and Slick Rick rap about officers trying to get them to snitch on fellow rappers. Carter claims everything they rapped about was depicted accurately.

He adds that, after releasing the popular track “Riden Dirty,” which addresses police harassment of young black men in nice cars, Chamillionaire became a victim of harassment himself. Carter says the hip-hop artist’s tour bus was pulled over by police who wanted to see if the rapper, who prides himself on not smoking, drinking or cursing, was “riding dirty.”

Davey D’s hip-hop column is published biweekly in Eye. Contact him at mrdaveyd@aol.com.

*****

ROCK CRITIC OF THE MONTH… Nelson George writes: I first saw Prince at the now defunct Bottom Line cabaret in Greenwich Village in November 1980. The Dirty Mind album was just being released so I, and the college friends with me, hadn’t heard things like “Sister Sister” and “Head.” So he blew us away with his musicianship and sexuality.

Cut to several lifetimes later. Specifically, last night [June 29] at the Roosevelt Hotel where I saw a sweet set by Prince and a tight band. Hollywood was in full effect–starlets, rock stars and rich kids composed much of the crowd. The funny thing for me was how old school Prince has become. Back when I first saw him perform he was the new wave in black pop whose rock flavor, crazy outfits and gender bending was considered as hip hop would be eventually.

Now he’s the last major star standing who can reference James Brown and traditional blues and R&B styles, both as a musician and a showman. No one of his stature working today can bring you back to the glory days of the chitlin circuit with all the confidence and style that era required. His new single, “My Guitar,” has got a great guitar riff holding it together.

It was one of the better songs of the newer material he performed. Word is Wendy & Lisa co-produced and co-wrote his new release with him, so I’m looking forward to that. A thought: Wouldn’t it be great if Michael Jackson came back and just played a ball room and acted like a performer and not a superstar again? Michael could rebuild his entire career if he just reminded us he was once a great showman. Food for thought.

[Nelson George is the author of The Death of Rhythm and Blues and the director of the HBO film Life Support]

*****

TALKING BOOK… Ben Sidran was once the keyboard player in a band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs. He played on sessions with Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. But his true passion was jazz, which led him to write the 1967 book Black Talk: How the Music of Black America Created A Radical Alternative to the Values of Western Literary Tradition.

Now there is, in a sense, a sequel: Talking Jazz: An Oral History (Unlimited Media). This is sixty interviews from Sidran’s mid-1980s NPR show, spread over 24 CDs. Sidran’s subjects range from Miles Davis to Grover Washington, Betty Carter to George Benson, Dr. John to McCoy Tyner. Collectively, these interviews serve to take stock of the growth and consolidation of jazz as a world-shaking art form, as they were done at a time when the peak of jazz was still in the rearview mirror.

As I spent several days immersed in this collection, the first thing that struck me was how unique and striking each voice was–if someone listened to these interviews who had never heard jazz they would start downloading it immediately to find out more about these extraordinary people. On the other hand, these artists had much in common—a love of life, a sense of humor and of history, a passion for music and other musicians, a burning desire to get better at what they do. Sidran shares these qualities and each morning I couldn’t wait to enter the world his conversations revealed.

These are ten of my favorite moments, in no particular order:

Sonny Rollins describing how sax men used to battle each other (battles which find their parallel today in the faceoffs between rappers). Rollins also gave a fascinating description of how circular breathing is done.

Dr. John at the piano giving a musical description of the history of New Orleans music.

Tony Williams playing drums for about a minute, revealing a whole new way to hear rhythm.

Gil Evans on how his never-locked mid-Manhattan apartment became a laboratory which helped to shape the development of bebop (also Evan’s answer to the question of why he was absent from 1949 to 1957: “I was waiting for Miles”).

Miles Davis on the limits of formal training and how he often wanted to send his over-playing sidemen to “Notes Anonymous.”

Dizzy Gillespie returning over and over to the theme of using music to promote world peace.

Drummer Steve Gadd on how he got his start as a tap dancer.

Art Blakey on forging a band through love.

Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen’s love for jazz, which served as a reminder that there was a time when the love of jazz by many rock musicians, from Roger McGuinn to the Allman Brothers to Jimi Hendrix, brought jazz and rock onto common ground rather than holding them apart, as many jazz musicians do today.

Marcus Miller on how he overcame his indifference to samba by watching the dancers.—L.B.

*****

AFTER THE FLOOD… An article in the July 23rd New Orleans Times-Picayune says it’s about college kids volunteering to help the city this summer. In fact, it’s about Christian college kids, highlighting the 2300 who came through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. As the paper quotes one: “The main point is to spread the word of God and to clean the city.”

The piece doesn’t mention non-religious organizations. For instance, Common Ground. By last fall it had brought in over ten thousand volunteers and houses a year-round, constantly rotating group of some three hundred kids. What’s the word it’s spreading?

“With few houses remaining to muck and gut, Common Ground will be shifting its focus to rebuilding a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable New Orleans. We want to strengthen our programs that confront socio-economic inequality and environmental degradation. In addition, we will continue to develop programs that address unemployment, drug addiction, hunger, food insecurity, homelessness, and police corruption.”

Among those Common Ground thanks for help in this effort is the reggae band Steel Pulse, which has raised over ten thousand dollars for the organization; Laurie David, Sheryl Crow and the Stop Global Warming Campaign; and Michael Franti of Spearhead who’s going to feature Common Ground and Lower 9th Ward residents on his new cable television show.

Also seen on TV has been Oscar-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s Right to Return: New Home Movies From the Lower 9th Ward, five short films about the efforts to rebuild New Orleans. Among those featured are Herreast Harrison, whose late husband Donald was chief of one of the traditional Mardi Gras Indian troupes, Melvin Jones, a New Orleans pastor who runs a ministry for homeless men, and Annette K-Doe, the widow of Ernie K-Doe and the owner of the legendary Mother-In-Law Lounge. RRC’s Daniel Wolff served as co-producer.

Ninth Ward residents Tenel Curtis and Kennieth Williams have just released The Minority Report, their second film about Katrina,. It details both the brutality of the Army and the police in the immediate wake of the storm and the mounting frustration of New Orleans residents since. New Orleanians know all too well that billions of dollars have been funneled to corporations yet little aid has found its way to those displaced by the hurricane.

Curtis himself is still waiting on a promised check from FEMA. Several local musicians appear in the film, which is packaged with a soundtrack CD (www.d-americanzdream.com).

*****

A Tale of God’s Will (a requiem for Katrina), Terence Blanchard (Blue Note)—The album begins with “Congo Square,” a fiery Africanesque tribute to a corner of New Orleans that was both a birthplace of jazz and a showplace for slavery. The chanted refrain is “This is the tale of God’s will.” But it isn’t. This is the tale of a band of New Orleans jazz musicians who admit they don’t know why it happened.

They write songs and liner notes to express their bewilderment, pain, sadness, anger and, yes, hope. Aided at times by an orchestra, they create a concept album of great beauty, an album that forces you to slow down and think about what happened to one of America’s great cities. As for why it happened, Blanchard’s tune “Ghost of 1927” caused us to revisit John M. Barry’s great book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. Barry leaves no doubt that Katrina was not God’s will, but the will of a handful of powerful men and their political and financial allies.

“Dead bodies floating. Dead bodies on top of cars. Dead bodies in the grass. Dead bodies in places I knew. Dead bodies in neighborhoods I grew up in. I saw these bodies in the Spike Lee/HBO documentary When The Levees Broke. One dead body I didn’t see in the video, the body of XXXXX, an old neighborhood friend who died trying to help people stay on their roofs while flood waters raged beneath. I never cried so much, shedding tears for the many bodies I saw and the many, many more I didn’t see. This dirge is my tribute to these brave, valiant, fallen heroes. God bless them.”—Terence Blanchard (from the liner notes)

*****

DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED… Movement Soul Volume 2 (esp-disk) sprawls across the history of the civil rights movement, taking us back as far as 1939 with speeches, songs, and news broadcasts. This collection of documentary audio isn’t designed to be a coherent history but it helps to make our history coherent, filling in the cracks with fascinating bits and pieces (Volume 1, which is on Smithsonian Folkways, is also indispensable).

There’s William Campbell, a Tuskegee airman interviewed in 1943 shortly after dropping bombs in Italy; a news account of dancer Josephine Baker’s 1951 Los Angeles citizen’s arrest of a man who called her a nigger; the first person account of Geneva Tisdale, the Woolworth’s employee who became the first black served in the wake of the 1960 sit-ins in Greensboro, NC.

There’s plenty of music, too. It’s mostly gospel—such as the unreleased and utterly prophetic 1959 track “Sit Down Children” by Chicago’s Helen Robinson Youth Choir—with some jump and jive by Sugarchile Robinson (“Sticks and Stones”) and Babs Gonzalez (“These New York Neighbors”). There’s a manic one-minute aircheck of Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips, a white man who played black and hillbilly music and in 1954 became the first jock to air Elvis Presley. This moment comes across less as a cultural artifact and more as a signpost of the movement’s multi-racial strategy.

Far more than just fascinating history, Movement Soul speaks urgently to us across the decades, offering guidance as we seek to take the struggle for freedom to its conclusion.

When Eloise Wilson reads her epic poem “Don’t Let Me Be Wrong” in a Chicago church, her passionate embrace of black men (“my brothers who’ve never really been free”) stands in stark contrast to the relentless scorn heaped upon black males today. Allowing young blacks—whether it’s Michael Vick or Snoop or some kid on the corner—to become defenseless punching bags only allows the onrushing police state to gather momentum.

The civil rights movement was led by the victims of discrimination themselves and the celebrities who got involved were supporters, not wannabe leaders. The evolution of rock star charity involvement has almost completely flipped that script.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s powerful recounting of the terror faced down by Mississippi activists reminds that when Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party tried to be seated at the 1964 Democratic convention, it was northern liberals who blocked them. Fast forward to 2005 and Katrina when northern liberals allowed Bush and FEMA to do their dirty work in New Orleans.

Interviewed in 1944, Congresswoman (and former Broadway star) Helen Gahagan Douglas seems almost quaint in explaining why America needs a specific law against lynching. Today, lynching is no longer the province of nightriders but of the police. The city of Los Angeles cannot even enforce a policy that forbids its cops from shooting fleeing motorists in the back. We need legal protection against such lynchings. What politician supports it?

We should take to heart the echoes of the sounds on Movement Soul while remixing them in tune with today’s conditions. We need to follow Dewey Phillips’ example of connecting people and sounds who might seem different on the surface. There’s a lot at stake. What Eloise Wilson termed “the great leap from slavery to freedom” may not be completed if we don’t use the lessons of the past to help plot our future.

*****

Change Is Gonna Come: The Voice of Black America 1963-1974 (Kent UK)—From the seemingly bottomless trove of black popular music that emerged alongside the civil rights and Black Power movements, come gems familiar (the Staples’ “When Will Be Free,” Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free”) and ultra-obscure (George Perkins and the Silver Stars doing “Cryin’ in the Streets,” “Have You Seen the Blues” by Yaphet Kotto [!?], Patrice Holloway’s “Stay with Your Own Kind”).

The fiction is that soul singers tried to stay out of politics but this record features tracks by some of the genre’s biggest stars: Otis Redding, the Impressions, the Drifters, James Brown, Parliament, the Chi-Lites, the Temptations. It would be virtually impossible to put out a compilation of comparable excellence with so many contributions from major rock bands.

*****

THIS MONTH’S DOWNLOADING PROSPECTS… La Llave De Mi Corazón, Juan Luis Guerra y 440 (EMI Latina)–The most important Dominican performer ever swoops through his usual playfield, dropping merengue here, bachata there, hints of rock but salsa everywhere. He even does a version of the title track in English (as “Music for My Soul”) as a kind of starter kit.

This is Guerra and his band, no attempt to “modernize” (and date) the sound with electronics with obvious benefit to such sweet-tempered songs as “Te contarán” and “Que me des tu cariño.” Although not as great as Bachata Rosa, his 1990 album which is the Born to Run of contemporary Latin records, this is arguably his best, certainly his most confidently integrated, since then.

War Stories, Unkle (Surrender All)—Functions as an alternative soundtrack to Michael Mann’s Miami Vice movie. That’s true both because its mix of thrilling rockers and ambient soundscapes would serve that functional purpose and because, like the film, each scene/song is beautiful and makes sense in itself yet the overall plot borders on nonexistence. Also like the film, the more attention you pay to War Stories the more you notice additional details and the way they serve each other.

Heavy programming, live drums and bass, singers who coo and singers who shout, harmonium, synths, cello, bells, guitar attacks—what could be pointless eclecticism serves instead to flesh out the cohesive sonic vision of Unkle major domo James LaVelle.

Double Wide Vol. 1: The Best of Roy D. Mercer (Capitol/EMI)— Mercer is actually the KMOD-FM/Tulsa duo of Brent Douglas and Phil Stone. Prank calls are made to businesses by Mercer in a voice too country for Hee Haw, the premise being either that there was a defective product (exploding pager, dead rooster) or that some indignity was inflicted by an employee upon Roy’s beloved wife Sharon Gene or upon his dog Bon Jovi. Outrageous demands for reimbursement are made and, when refused, Mercer threatens to come down and “whip some ass” (“Just how big a boy are you?”). The funniest bits are when the call recipients turn out to be comedians themselves. A worthy sequel to the Jerky Boys.

T.I.VS T.I.P., T.I. (Grand Hustle/Atlantic)–To appreciate T.I., you must listen deep and wide, like you’re settling into a Southern Gothic big enough to tackle the American West. Anchoring a panoramic vision, T.I.’s understated swagger whispers off distant mesas with “To anyone who ever said hip hop finished,” before he draws his weapon. Then adds, “It can’t be dead while I’m still in it.”

Though he’s every bit as fast talkin’ and verbose as Clint Eastwood’s gunslinger is silent, T.I. proves himself just the hero to up the ante on the moment. This three part tale earns its supporting cast—Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Eminem and Wyclef—each name suggesting the grandeur, the grit, the humor and the political grounds of the vision. Just as important, this album really serves as the rising action for a larger epic, its closing meditation on death only midnight reflections before the battle yet to come.

Balls, Elizabeth Cook (Tigers Inc.)—Rodney Crowell came out of self-imposed retirement as a producer to make this album, and from time to time (“Don’t Go Borrowin’ Trouble”) Cook shows off the kind of chops and sensibility that made Crowell’s Rosanne Cash records so engrossing (before she became literary and all).

Cook is as much rocker as honky tonker, with enough nerve for both: The title track is about exactly what you were afraid it was about. “He Got No Heart” is about Clive Davis and Simon Cowell (not exactly a lie, she just doesn’t know it). Truly inspirational verse: “Reasonable to feel this way / Rolling Stone has seen its day / All my feelins, all my fears / Were confirmed with Britney Spears.” (She writes straight stuff too but it’s not nearly as much fun to talk about.)

New Wave, Against Me! (Sire/WB)—Putting this anarchist folk-punk band on a major label hasn’t tamed it any, not the music and certainly not the lyrics of “White People for Peace,” “Piss and Vinegar,” and best of all, “Americans Abroad” in which a hip tourist, observing his fellow Yanks, gets a queasy feeling that has nothing to do with food or drink: “Well, I hope I’m not like them / I’m not so sure.”

Little Steven’s Underground Garage Presents CBGB Forever (Wicked Cool)—Tribute to the late, legendary New York punk club has the noise blasts you might expect from the likes of Dead Boys, The Damned, and the Ramones, but it also features a garage-sounding U2 channeling T Rex (“Beat on the Brat”), Patti Smith veering toward pop and Velvet Revolver veering toward punk, and “Cochise,” Audioslave’s best song.

Shadows and Cracks, Peter Karp (Blind Pig)—Imagine a contemporary white blues / rockabilly singer who writes songs good enough to make you glad they printed his lyrics, sings well enough to put those words over and plays guitar, harp and organ with economy and intelligence. Karp’s a natural-born story teller with a devilish wit, and he not only knows how to ride a beat, but (apparently) figured out that blues songs can be written while living in Turkey, New Jersey, and even Nashville. Highlights: “I Ain’t Deep,” “Goodbye Baby,” “Strange Groove.”

War Song, Steven P. Richards (myspace.com/stevenprichards)–A North Carolina Gulf War vet’s protest against the continued waste of lives—not just American lives—rings out with the spirit and some of the sound of late ‘60s rock (think “Sky Pilot” without the histrionics). Richards considers this a demo but it’s one of the most effective pieces of music about the current conflict we’ve heard.

You’ll Never Be a Stranger at My Door, Tracy Nelson (Memphis International)—Often too much of a belter in her youth, Nelson’s acquired more graceful control of her big voice, so that she can sing anything from “Cow Cow Boogie” to “I Wonder If I Care As Much,” even that apogee of corn, “Three Bells,” with credible emotion and meaningful finesse. The highlight is her duet with Guy Clark and Alice Newman on “Salt of the Earth,” her own song, maybe the best she’s written.

Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna (Def Jam)–Three years in a row, the reigning queen of the summer album has bested herself with emotionally precise and kaleidoscopically vivid music. Much is made of her loss of innocence here, but Rihanna’s not new to rounding out her character (as last year’s “Unfaithful” testified so clearly). What this album does do is toughen her up a little–tackling those long hours after midnight complete with dish-breaking anger, withdrawals, self doubt and, yes, much liberation. It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of the latter than her answer to all those girls as cars songs, the rocking second single “Shut Up and Drive.”

Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis, Marie Knight (M.C. Records)—In Knight’s half-century career, she has been rightfully acclaimed as a golden age gospel diva and a smoking R&B singer. Now, former Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell reinvents her as a gospel-blues performer, with minimal accompaniment but with her voice in perfect shape on Davis-associated classics like “12 Gates to the City,” “When I Die,” and “Samson & Delilah.” The finest performance of all is the title track, which proposes doing all the stuff generally reserved for heaven “right down here.”

The High Above and the Down Below, Cliff Eberhardt (Red House)—Best known as a guitarist (he was Richie Havens’ accompanist for years), or as a rather gentle singer-songwriter, Eberhardt comes across this time as an acoustic Pete Townshend, ranting his way through a collection as tough as it is witty. Not that he’s abandoned the things that he used to do. Most notable: “The Next Big Thing,” “The High Above and the Down Below,” “Let This Whole Thing Burn.” Recorded live in the studio and it shows.

Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Volume 4 (7 Grand)—Only a few tracks even attempt a jazz/hip-hop fusion, although Guru’s synthesis works well on “Universal Struggle” with Brownman on trumpet or “Living Legend” with Dave Sanborn on sax. The album is more of a fusion of hip-hop with R&B singers, with fine showings by Dionne Farris of Arrested Development on “Fly Magnetic,” Bobby Valentino on “International,” and Raheem Devaughn on “Wait on Me.” Best of all is Caron Wheeler’s gorgeous star turn on “Kissed the World,” an effective anti-Bush song (“Georgie Porgie kissed the world and made it cry.”) Guru’s deadpan delivery gives a different spin to routine boasts and political messages alike.

Live at B.L.U.E.S., Jimmy Burns (Delmark)–Burns phrases a little like Jimi Hendrix—we mean vocally, of course. Instrumentally, he owes much more to the two main heroes of late ‘60s Chicago blues, Otis Rush and Magic Sam. Like them, he’s a serviceable singer, and he apparently has a raft of licks to turn into pretty good songs, too. Jimmy Fortune’s turn at the mic on “3 O’Clock Blues” is an entirely pleasurable addition.

Yo Soy Del Mundo, Cosmic Jibaros (Homegrown Studios)–Latin rock fusion, with a salsa base because most of the players in this Bridgeport, CT based group come from that background, but with heavy doses of cumbia and rock guitar that owes its heart to Santana and its soul to a deep familiarity with all the genre’s permutations down the years. If you like trends, you could make one out of Ozomatli, Charanga Cakewalk, Los de Abajos and these guys. Pick Hit: “Vida Diferente” (www.cosmicjibaros.com).

You Better Believe It, Jimmy Cavallo (Blue Wave)—“I Feel That Old Age Comin’ On,” which opens the record, rocks harder than any record ever made by a 74 year old. It’s the best track here, and should have been the title cut, except that there’s absolutely no indication anywhere else that he feels old at all. Cavallo, a white guy who played the Apollo before Buddy Holly, owes a big debt to Louis Prima but he’s still his own man here.

In Times Like These, Arlo Guthrie (Rising Son Records)–Arlo on his 60th birthday, live with an orchestra—it’s his best recording project in decades. Strong material helps, though the only new song here is the title track, which describes a time when the storm comes, the songs stop meaning, the leaders take names between commercials, all of it “just another link in slavery’s chain.” It’s the mood of the whole album, yet the tone never feels defeated; it’s enduring, despite all the misery, based on a simple faith in the coming of “Freedom’s Highway”: “In times like these, it’s good to remember / These times will go, in times to come.” The times darken the rest of the material, revealing a surprising depth in his work from the early ‘70s onward (“Darkest Hour,” “Last to Leave”) and a beautiful courage in Charlie Chaplin’s “You Are the Song” and Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

Blue Collar, Rhymefest (J/Alldo)—Rhymefest got his start whipping Eminem in freestyle, then co-wrote “Jesus Walks,” which is what it took to get him a record deal. He uses Q-Tip to introduce himself, then spends the second track, “Dynamite (Going Postal),” claiming everything: the Torah, the Koran, Chicago, Cadillac DeVille, immunity from the Patriot Act, and that “if King was alive, this is how he would sound.” He also establishes that he doesn’t like the cops much, or respectable folks in general, and that he works for a living. But with the skit, “Blue Collar,” which is essentially a very political street corner toast, he brings it all clear: “We got two things / A dream and a gig.” Then “Mr. Blue Collar” describes the life of a typical ghetto kid, who wants to go to college, joins the Air Force to make it possible, and gets shot; the life of another who needs to make it and becomes a player, maybe a pimp, and gets AIDS; and in the end, appearing as himself, a guy whose wife and mother think he’s hard, but who in the dark spends his time curled up. The pop rap crammed in by producer/label owner Mark Ronson lightens the tone, but this is essentially as brave an album as could be released by a major label right now.

Coming Home, Elliott Murphy (Last Call)—Murphy’s not coming home to the United States—he’s still the Parisian he’s been for a quarter-century—but to a greater balance between music and lyrics, so that when he rhymes “Pneumonia Alley” with “Long Tall Sally” it sticks to your ribs, because it fits in the groove. As literate, personal and musically adept a set of songs as anything you’ll likely hear this year.

Just a Blur in the Rear View, Robbin Thompson (Out There Records)—Richmond’s favorite son (once a member of Springsteen’s Steel Mill), basically makes his living from local gigs and writing for movies and commercials. Also, an R&B singer in the Southside Johnny mold—meaning, he’s got the voice and the chops to do it right. He’s best on a dark-as-night blues like “Standin’ in the Rain,” but he can pull off a straight blues-rocker like “I Won’t Quit (‘Til I Get Home),” too. This is his best album—best material, best singing, best arrangement and accompaniment.

Astoria, The Shys (Sire/WB)—Sounds like pre-CBGB’s New York City rock, meaning the sound owes its heart to the Dolls, not the Ramones, and that the songwriting is more extended. The singing is pretty much straight-up Johnny Thunders. It all comes together in the album’s center, with “Having It Large,” “The Resistance,” “Radio Rebellion” and “Two Cent Facts.”

Pretty World, Sam Baker (An Independent Release)—Being on a Peruvian train that got bombed left Baker with a singing voice that resembles Todd Snider and John Prine, an acquired taste. But his delicious narratives also resemble Prine and Snider’s, especially in their deadpan, matter of fact incorporation of oddball facts. Several songs here are set in a whorehouse, but it’s no Springsteen nightmare nor a Kinky sportin’ house, mainly a place where folks live and work amidst a certain strangeness. In this context, it makes perfect sense to open “Odessa,” a song about a rich West Texas kid who resembles so much as a slightly more benign (no high office) version of George W. Bush: “He killed a girl when he rolled the Corvette / Daddy’s money made her lawyers go away / His mother bought vodka with all that cash / She kind of knew / She kind of knew.” In the end, as beautiful as it is strange, and vice versa.

*****

THIS MONTH’S USED CD BURNING PROSPECTS… By Way of the Drum, Funkadelic Hip-O Select)—The album the idiots at Universal rejected in 1989 finally surfaces after years of rumor and bootleg. It shows George Clinton effortlessly keeping up with the main competition of the day, Prince and Michael Jackson. Remarkably, these songs now sound classic, not dated at all, even the psychofunk remake of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” on which the “band” is DeWayne “Blackbird” McKnight.

Gary Shider sings as well as he ever did (or a little better), and Eddie Hazel stars with McKnight on same fierce guitar interplay on “Some Fresh Deli,” which takes the “Sunshine” rhythm track into the ionosphere. But the masterpiece is the title track, presented here in four versions, the longest over nine minutes—and this is a place where longer is unquestionably better. One of the great Funkadelic records and the fact that it took 18 years to reach you is enough to make Nuremberg Trials for corporate record execs seem like a reasonable proposition.

Learning to Crawl, Pretenders (Sire/Real/Rhino)—Begins with a great fusing of the personal and the political (“Middle of the Road”), although it could be argued that the whole album represents that as the band had to be resurrected in midstream when two of its members fell victim to the international drug trade. The imitation of Lazarus worked, as evidenced by a new configuration’s classic tracks—“My City Was Gone” and “Back On the Chain Gang.” Bonus tracks include raw, compelling demos and a live version of “City” that has even more bite and snarl than the original.

Baduizm (Special Edition), Erykah Badu (Universal)—Her 1997 debut revealed an artist who utilized a boatload of producers in pursuit of a singular vision, one in which the hip-hop is implicit, the jazz explicit, the R&B tradition has no dust on it, and the hook-laden pop songcraft sneaks up on you. Highlights include “Next Lifetime,” about what happens when you meet your soul mate when you already have one and “Certainly,” the same story from the man’s point of view. The show-stopper is “Other Side of the Game,” a gorgeously wrought epic tale about a family one step ahead of the law which ends: “Don’t I know there’s confusion / God’s gonna see us through / Peace out to revolution.” The bonus disc of remixes and a duet with Terence Blanchard reveals Badu’s experimental side, which previously had seemed to bloom only with her third album.

The Definitive Collection, Bo Diddley (Geffen/Chess)—The first black artist to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (in 1955), Mississippi native Bo Diddley’s heavy emphasis on rhythm had more in common with later north Mississippi bluesmen than it did with the Delta musicians who preceded him by a decade or two. His humor and his Latin rhythms (with the infamous Jerome Green on maracas) set him apart, along with irresistible songs whose influence was extended by the covers done by Buddy Holly and a host of Brits, not to mention countless frat bands of the time. “Road Runner,” with its stunning intro, combined the car song with boasts of male prowess, “Crackin’ Up” is rock en espanol (in English) and the basis for “Love is Strange,” the Mickey and Sylvia hit that Bo wrote, while “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” perfectly captured (“I look like a farmer, but I’m a lover”) the massive Southern migration that made Bo Diddley possible in the first place.

The Definitive Collection, Foreigner (Atlantic/Rhino)—Their instrumental prowess was limited, so at times they sounded like they were a cover band covering themselves. But there’s no denying the solid satisfaction of one chunky hit after another. At times, they took it to a higher level—collaborating with Junior Walker on “Urgent” or on the ballads “Waiting For a Girl Like You” and “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Tiny Topsy and Friends (Rock and Rhythm)–As tough, smart and sometimes funny as Big Maybelle, Tiny Topsy did the kind of blues shouting that nobody does anymore, what with Koko Taylor held prisoner at Alligator and all. “After Marriage Baby,” “Aw! Shucks Baby,” “Western Rock’n’Roll” and ten others from her lead into another 20 tracks from “friends,” who include Maybelle, herself, Shirley Gunter, Annie Laurie, Linda Hopkins, Marie Knight, a whole roster of R&B’s most powerhouse female shouters.

Recorded Live at Sing Sing with Harlem River Drive, Eddie Palmieri (Fania)— Aided greatly by his brother Charlie on organ, Palmieri takes Harlem River Drive through four extended jams that may occasionally flirt with rock but mainly ride deep in the sweet, sweaty essence of classic salsa. HRD was Eddie’s “political” band–on this 1971 concert disc that’s best represented by explicit solidarity with the inmates and by the poem by Felipe Luciano (“Jibaro/My Pretty Nigger”), which is both a scalding indictment of the system and a love letter of great beauty to the African diaspora. This CD documents a high point of an era when it seemed that music could (and did) follow the muse wherever it went and effectively expressed the revolutionary ferment bubbling up from the streets.

A Bluish Bag, Stanley Turrentine (Blue Note)—The arrangements by Duke Pearson are gorgeous, setting one section of a not-quite big band against another, one degree of muted intensity against another, creating the spaces and places for Turrentine’s muscular tenor to do its work. It’s a mix of Brazilian tunes with obscure ones by Henry Mancini, plus a fine cover of the 1967 Platters hit, “With This Ring.” The flutes (Joe Farrell, Jerry Dodgion) are given unusual emphasis while McCoy Tyner, by then already a seasoned vet at 29, does his usual job of making the piano into a chameleon, taking it wherever Pearson’s charts need it to be.

Regulate…G Funk Era (Special Edition), Warren G (Def Jam)— Unlike the inland claustrophobia of Compton’s G-funk, the Long Beach version has a park vibe, with ocean breezes oozing through palm trees. For instance, “Regulate,” with keyboards cool and sweet as ice cream, Nate Dogg cooing, and Warren G tossing off lines like a streetwise Cary Grant in an ode to partying, music, and revenge. Why the violence? Gil Scott-Heron enters with the answer: “Why should the blues be so at home here? Well, America provided the atmosphere.” This segues into the autobiographical “Do You See,” which squeezes a Junior sample like a roll of Charmin, killing it softly in service of a track that seems to float above your stereo. The bonus disc features remixes which alternately pump up and strip down the originals to telling effect.