Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Review: Van Morrison’s Moving on Skiffle

Posted: March 12, 2023 by John Ruberry in covid, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last Friday, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison released his 44th studio album, the exuberant Moving on Skiffle. 

What is skiffle? Well, the first time I heard of it was in was in an unusual place–maybe not for an American–in the movie This Is Spinal Tap. Before joining the band that would become the heavy metal act Spinal Tap, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) was a member of a skiffle group.

Wonderful observation, you might be saying, but once again, what is skiffle? In the late 1920s, it developed as an offshoot of jug music, a genre of the American South and performed mainly by African Americans. The original skiffle was a bit country, a bit folk, and a bit delta blues. Then skiffle died once the Great Depression hit. 

Only it didn’t completely perish. 

Like a sprout from an errant wildflower seed, skiffle surprisingly blossomed again a couple of decades later in Great Britan. The UK’s biggest skiffle star was a Scotsman, Lonnie Donegan. Another skiffle performer, Chris Barber, a British aficionado of New Orleans style jazz, often recorded with Donegan. 

Growing up in 1950s Belfast, Morrsion was one of many UK youths listening to skiffle on the radio. Soon Morrison joined a skiffle band, but by the mid-1960s he was fronting Them, a blues-rock act best known for “Gloria,” before going solo in 1967. Well, you probably know the rest of his story.

Just as skiffle quickly reemerged in Britain, it all but vanished as a popular music phenomenon in the early 1960s. Only its disappearance wasn’t mysterious. The tsunami of the Beat Groups–known as the British Invasion in the United States–which included Them, was the culprit. 

The Belfast Cowboy maintained his love for skiffle thru the decades. Morrison recorded a live album with Donegan and Barber, The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998.

For Moving on Skiffle, Morrison issues a double album of additional classic skiffle songs–there are no repeats from the live collection.

Morrison, who turns 78 this summer, has been newsworthy of late because of his fervent opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns.

In 2021, Morrison released Latest Record Project, Volume 1, a double album. Many of the tracks, including “Stop Bitching, Do Something” and “Why Are You on Facebook?” pushed back on government and Big Tech power. Last year, on What’s It Gonna Take?, Van the Man more directly challenged the lockdowns and creeping totalitarianism, in such tracks as “Dangerous,” which was in response to comments made by Northern Ireland’s health minister, Robin Swann, about Morrison’s anti-lockdown stance. Swann has since sued Van the Man, Morrison has counter-sued. 

On what will likely be remembered as his”COVID albums,” Morrison penned all of the tracks. Moving on Skiffle is a covers collection.

Morrison, who is not a doctor or a scientist, has been proven, in my firm opinion at least, to be correct that lockdowns would not be an effective defense against COVID-19. The harm of lockdowns, such as an overall increase in mental illness and declining school test scores, is apparent.

Yes, COVID, along with pre-exisiting conditions, killed millions, despite lockdowns, masking, and vaccine mandates. But Florida, which didn’t pursue an aggressive lockdown and masking policy, didn’t see a higher COVID death rate compared to lockdown states like New York.

Moving back to Moving on Skiffle, this sparkling collection stays away from politics, except for the strongest track on the collection, “Gov Don’t Allow,” a reworking of the 1920s folk standard “Momma Don’t Allow,” with new lyrics authored by Morrison.

“Gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here,” he sings, “but I think it’s going overreach–gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here.”

Now that I have politics out of the way, let’s discuss the rest of Moving on Skiffle.

Other highlights of this ninety-minute collection include another musical reworking, “This Little Light of Mine” becomes “This Loving Light of Mine,” where Morrison adds “Amen” verses. “Gypsy Davy” has a Celtic feel, and there are two Hank Williams songs, “Cold Cold Heart” and “I’m So Lonely I Could Cry.” 

Overall, the collection has a Creedence Clearwater Revival flavor, partly because of the inclusion of Lead Belly’s “Cotton Fields,” which CCR covered on Willy and the Poor Boys. Their hit from that album, “Down on the Corner” has a classic has a jug band feel. 

If you are a Van and Man enthusiast from way back, you’ll adore the final cut on Moving on Skiffle, “Green Rocky Road,” a nine-minute-long track that echoes Morrison stream-of-consciousness gems such as “And The Healing Has Begun” and “Listen to the Lion.”

Skiffle has many definitions. So if you’d prefer you can define Morrison’s latest work possibly as an Americana collection, albeit one with gospel music overtones. 

Oh, I nearly forgot. As with all Van Morrison albums, the singing here, including the work of the backup vocalists, as well as the musicianship–down to the washboard–are spectacular. 

Moving on Skiffle can be downloaded from iTunes or purchased at Van Morrison.com.

Related post:

As Van Morrison turns 77, here are his ten best albums

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Brandon Johnson, the elected official who still collects big checks from the Chicago Teachers Union, will be a disaster as Chicago’s mayor

Posted: March 5, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

For all of you cynics who says there is no real choice in most elections, next month’s runoff race for Chicago mayoral election proves you wrong. 

The unpopular and incompetent incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, finished third in last week’s first round of voting, collecting an anemic 17 percent of the vote in a nine-candidate field. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas took first place with 33 percent of the vote and Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson in second with 21 percent of the tally.

Chicago’s municipal elections are non-partisan, but the remaining candidates are Democrats.

Vallas has been largely successful in other education jobs, including posts in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Bridgeport, Connecticut–but he has butted heads repeatedly with teachers’ unions, most notably the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, which has strongly backed Johnson’s candidacy. And that’s not all. Johnson, who earns over $100,000-a-year as a Cook County commissioner, also has collected nearly $400,000 as a legislative coordinator for the CTU over the past five years.

So not only is Johnson in the pocket of the Chicago Teachers Union, the CTU is in Johnson’s pocket. 

As of this writing, Johnson has not said if he will quit his CTU post and stop cashing that paycheck. 

According to the Illinois Policy Institute, over the first two months of 2023, Johnson’s campaign was the recipient of over $4 million in contributions. Over half of that came from the Chicago Teachers Union and its affiliated unions. Of the rest, most of that cash was contributed by other unions, while just five percent of his campaign funds came from other sources.

Watch out, taxpayers. 

Johnson favors, as does the CTU, an array of anti-business and anti-consumer taxes and fees, including the hated employee head tax that Mayor Rahm Emanuel eliminated in 2014, although Johnson only wants large companies to pay for a new head tax.

The 2020 riots devastated Chicago’s main shopping and tourism district, North Michigan Avenue. Johnson supports “new user fees for high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.” Such fees will finish off North Michigan Avenue and similar areas. I used to work in the hospitality industry, and Chicago’s hotel taxes, the highest in the nation, were frequently used by officials in other cities to lure conventions away–Johnson wants to hike those hotel taxes by 66 percent. The COVID-19 has devastated ridership on Metra, the Chicago metropolitan area’s public train system, Johnson wants to institute a suburban commuter tax for Metra riders.

Johnson also backs a real estate transfer tax on high-end homes, a financial transaction tax, and maybe, a 3.5 percent municipal income tax on wealthy Chicagoans. In regard to the city income tax, which the Chicago Teachers Union supports, he said that it was a mistake by another far-left group, presumably United Working Families, to wrongly says he backs it.

Fine, that very well may be true. But late last month, on his Fox Chicago Flannery Fired Up show, host Mike Flannery asked Johnson five times if he backs a city income tax. Johnson deflected–he refused to answer “Yes” or “No.”

Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and St. Louis are among the failed cities with a municipal income tax.

Most Chicagoans believe that crime is the biggest issue in the city. Where does Johnson stand on crime and the police?

“I don’t look at it as a slogan,” Johnson said of the defund the police movement in 2020, “it’s an actual real political goal.”

Since then, Johnson has waffled, he says many 911 calls are over domestic disturbances. Quite true. But the day after Election Day, a Chicago Police officer, Andre Vasquez-Lasso, was murdered by an 18-year-old gang member. Vasquez-Lasso was responding to a domestic disturbance call.

Last week, when former Chicago Police superintendant Garry McCarthy was asked by Amy Jacobson on WIND’s Morning Answer about Johnson’s support for sending social workers to respond to such domestic altercation calls, he replied, “We’re gonna end up with some dead social workers.”

And if Chicago elects Brandon Johnson mayor next month–remember, Vallas only received only one-third of the vote last week—get ready for an emptying city. The Detroit-doom scenario for Chicago is not far-fetched.

I’ll end with an apocryphal story about an Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson, who twice was the Democratic nominee for president.

“Every thinking person in America will be voting for you,” someone remarked to Stevenson. The governor replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.”

Let’s not go Brandon.

John Ruberry regularly blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

“Roald the Rotten” Dahl an unlikely hero in battle against wokeism

Posted: February 26, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Deep down every wokester is weak. Just as most bullies are. You criticize a woke person and you are called a racist, a bigot, or some sort of “phobe” or another. They expect you to cower in shame afterwards.

And if you don’t?

Like the dystopia described in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the editing of books deemed offensive has begun. The endgame in Bradbury’s storyline was the banning of all books. 

Last week the publisher of Roald Dahl, Puffin, announced it was editing some of his works–which include the classics Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda–to remove language they deem offensive. Augustus Gloop, the gluttonous German boy in the first book, will no longer be “fat,” he’ll be “enormous.” In Matilda, “mothers and fathers” become “parents.” The bald witches in The Witches will come with a disclaimer about baldness. 

Next came the backlash.

But let’s talk about the author first. 

Dahl, who died in 1990, had slight misanthropic and even more direct anti-Semitic sentiments. At the very least he was a beast of a person. Dahl’s marriage to Hollywood actress Patricia Neal–one of my late mother’s favorite performers by the way–was tumultuous. Neal suffered a stroke while pregnant, and as she recovered, she couldn’t remember the words of many things. Dahl, a serial adulterer throughout their marriage, refused to give his wife things she asked for, including food, until she used the correct word. 

Neal’s nickname for her husband was “Roald the Rotten.”

Dahl’s publisher for much of his career was Alfred A. Knopf.

After asking Knopf that a person who was “competent and ravishing” should send him dozens of Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, Dahl was sent different ones, after his first request was laughed off. Dahl made more demands and then threatened to send his writings to a different publisher.

But instead, Knopf released the popular author. Employees of the publishing house cheered when they heard the news of Dahl’s dismissal. They fought back against a bully and won.

Salman Rushdie, who lost his sight in one eye after a recent attack, was one of the prominent writers who came to Dahl’s defense. “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,” Rushdie Tweeted. “Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”

Even Queen Camilla voiced her support for him.

A few days later Puffin backed off. Oh, it will still publish the edited, make that censored, versions of Dahl’s books. But the original Dahl works will also be printed. Here’s my prediction: Woke Dahl, just like the New Coke debacle several decades ago, will go down as colossal failure. Vintage Dahl will win.

Heroes are hard to find in these complicated times. But the legacy of “Roald the Rotten” has been used to fight back against another bully, the woke movement, which deems itself morally correct and beyond reproach.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

America has its secretary of silly walks, Pete Buttigieg

Posted: February 19, 2023 by John Ruberry in Blame Trump, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Yes, we have our secretary of silly walks, Pete Buttigieg. 

More on the walks in a bit.

Often described as “the smartest person in the room,” Mayor Pete to his friends, Pothole Pete to his growing list of detractors, the former McKinsey and Company consultant and mayor of South Bend, Indiana mayor has shown a great talent for cunningness in regard to his career advancement. 

He wasn’t an effective mayor and he’s been a disastrous secretary of transportation. In his 24 months at that job, he has faced three crises.

Buttigieg was AWOL during the supply chain crisis of 2021–he was on previously unannounced paternity leave–the holiday season flight disruptions of 2022, and now, there has been a recent increase in train derailments, including the one that led to a toxic mushroom cloud in East Palestine, Ohio. 

But it’s not his fault! It’s Donald Trump’s fault! Actually, Buttigieg is wrong, the Trump era rule change on trains had no effect on the East Palestine disaster.

But Buttigieg still has a job, and because he checks a sacrosanct “box” that is so important to the identitarians of the woke Democrat Party–Buttigieg is gay–he is still being discussed as a running mate for Biden in 2024. Like Chicago’s failed mayor, Lori Lightfoot, Kamala Harris is another “triple threat,” the vice president is Asian, Black, and a woman. Harris is the “first” of all three to serve as vice president, Michael O’Shea, writing for the Federalist, says that “Harris could only feasibly be replaced with another “first.'” 

And that “first” could mean Buttigieg, despite his flops.

I endured some Buttigiegs when I was toiling in the hospitality industry. They were smug, they always knew what to say and how to say it, and they looked good, but when it came to real work, they always had other things to do. 

At one hotel where I worked, we had a management company take over operations–and the Hotel Buttigiegs would nitpick us on nothingness—“Hey, can you have that neon beer sign moved to another window?”–but the real problems we faced would not be addressed. The hotel was falling apart and when one of my co-workers would bring that up obvious problem, the reply would be, “Well, the owners won’t invest their money into rehab.” Fine, I get it, but if these “experts,” these Buttigiegs, were so smart, they would either convince the owners to open their wallets, or they could find a way to make the hotel profitable. After all, they were the experts, as they would regularly remind us.

I remember one of those Hotel Buttigiegs dressing me down one day, literally, because my shirttail was out. Okay, that’s a legitimate criticism, but the reason I was disheveled is that there was a call for all able-bodied employees to help move chairs into a ballroom because a client’s meeting attracted far more attendees than expected. I answered the call–but Hotel Buttigieg didn’t. After all, he was “management.” Well, so was I, but I was not part of the elect, I was not a member of their management class, their little club of overpaid know-it-alls. But Hotel Buttigieg always had his shirt tucked in.

Before long, shirttail-critic stopped coming by–that was an improvement–and so did all of the other Hotel Buttigiegs. The challenges facing the hotel were largely intractable, partly because of these know-it-alls. They were AWOL, while their bosses were still collecting their management fees, because these Hotel Buttigiegs didn’t want their names muddied with our crappy hotel. They were presented with challenges–and they ran away. Because the Hotel Buttigiegs wanted to look good–ah, that tie is perfect with that suit–for their next undeserved promotion.

Pete Buttigieg as of this writing hasn’t visited East Palestine. But Donald Trump will be there on Wednesday. Trump, although he has no real power anymore, has never been afraid of a challenge. Unlike, well you know who.

Oh yeah, silly walks. 

I was in the audience at the Park West in Chicago in 1987 when Graham Chapman gave a fabulous lecture on his years with the Monty Python troupe. I hung on every word. There was a question-and-answer session, and Chapman, who died of cancer two years later, was asked about the silly walks sketch, one of the many legendary bits from the greatest comedy television show ever.

His reply went something like this, “Oh yes, back in Britain we had this member of parliament, who couldn’t do anything right, but the prime minister always found a cabinet position for him. So, when writing this sketch, we came up with the most ridiculous position we could imagine for him.” 

Watch as John Cleese kicks the sketch out of the park. 

America now has its secretary of silly walks, the incompetent Pete Buttigieg. Currently he’s in charge of the US Transportation Department, yet he might be a heartbeat away from the presidency in 2025.

But the residents of East Palestine aren’t laughing at all. Nor are they impressed. Even though Mayor Pete is so smart–he graduated from Harvard, you know–and he’s a former consultant from McKinsey–and oh yeah, did I mention how smart he is? And Buttigieg looks dashing in a suit too.

UPDATE February 22:

20 days after the toxic spill, and very likely only because he was shamed into it, Buttigieg will visit East Palestine tomorrow.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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