Month: March 2019

Checking in with the the Trump voters

by digby

The New York Times checked in with the white working class to see if their “economic anxiety” has waned. It hasn’t.

As the president’s former lawyer Michael D. Cohen on Wednesday called Mr. Trump a racist, a cheat and a con man in House testimony, the solidity of the president’s base was on display here, especially the resentments of white working-class voters who turned out in droves for him in 2016.

“We had eight years of nothing,” said Diane Pappert, 75, a retired school guard, referring to President Barack Obama, “and this guy’s trying to clean up everybody’s mess.”

Her daughter Angie Hughes, 55, a nurse, had cast the first vote of her life for Mr. Trump. She said she would never vote for a Democrat because she believed that the party favored generous welfare benefits. “When you see people who have three, four, five children to different fathers, they have no plans of ever going to work,” she said.

Lou Iezzi, 68, who still works at an auto garage he opened at 19, had voted Democratic for decades before casting a ballot for Mr. Trump. He liked the way he sounded as if he were on the next barstool, and Mr. Iezzi chuckled approvingly recalling Mr. Trump’s dismissive remarks about the newscaster Megyn Kelly in 2015 that were widely interpreted as referring to menstruation.

Mr. Iezzi could vote for a Democrat in 2020 if the nominee “sounds like he’s talking honestly,” he said. His choice of the male pronoun was deliberate: “I just can’t see a woman running this country.”

Rob Kopler, a retired deputy sheriff, who agrees with the president on a border wall, voted for him in 2016, but in the midterms he supported Mr. Lamb and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

He is doubtful any of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls will win him over. “The Democrat party let their people down,” he said. “They were going so far into the different extremes they forgot about who put them in office: the middle-class white male.”

See? It’s all about the economy.

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There is no “manuscript”

by digby

Virtually everything failed lawyer Michael Cohen said in his sworn testimony last week is totally contradicted in his just released manuscript for a book about me. It’s a total new love letter to “Trump” and the pols must now use it rather than his lies for sentence reduction!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2019

The brand new manuscript for a new book by failed lawyer Michael Cohen shows his testimony was a total lie! Pundits should only use it.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2019

After more than two years of Presidential Harassment, the only things that have been proven is that Democrats and other broke the law. The hostile Cohen testimony, given by a liar to reduce his prison time, proved no Collusion! His just written book manuscript showed what he…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2019

…said was a total lie, but Fake Media won’t show it. I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start – And only because I won the Election! Despite this, great success!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2019

CNN’s Brian Stelter sent this little nugget around in his newsletter:

The president keeps tweeting about an alleged “manuscript” of a pro-Trump book written by Michael Cohen before he flipped. But there’s no evidence that this document exists. It IS true that Center Street struck a book deal with Cohen based on a proposal last year, but then the deal was scrapped… And the publisher said it never received any “manuscript” from Cohen.

Trump said Sunday morning that the “Fake Media won’t show” the manuscript. So he’s saying that newsrooms are suppressing it — a full-on conspiracy — even though there’s no evidence that the manuscript even exists.

The right has a long history of laundering its dirt through British tabloids. The Daily Mail was the first to run with this story.

The a proposal logically was a short document which could very easily have said some nice things about Trump since he was flogging the book before his office and homes were searched by federal prosecutors. Everybody knows he used to say he’d take a bullet for Trump and has since been deprogrammed.

The president, of course, is just lying for his own reasons. As usual. But it does put those rather hysterical, desperate tweets in perspective. He’s rattled.

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Fox in the White House
by Tom Sullivan

Propaganda is good business.

Rupert Murdoch explained his vision for Fox News to Reed Hundt, Bill Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in 1994. It would follow the lowbrow model of his overseas tabloids. His audience would be football fans and working-class. He would carve out a niche audience that would be his alone. Hundt told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, “It was like a scene from ‘Faust.’ What came to mind was Mephistopheles.”

In time, the Fox audience would become Donald Trump’s base. It was growth medium in a Petri dish waiting for the right spore to waft through the window.

Mayer maps out the codependent relationship between Trump and Fox. Trump needs Fox to retain control. Fox needs Trump because he keeps ratings high.

Bill Shine, the former co-president of Fox News, is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff as well as White House director of communications. Opinion host Sean Hannity reportedly calls Trump to trade notes most nights after his show ends. White House advisers consider him the Shadow Chief of Staff.

Furthermore:

A Republican political expert who has a paid contract with Fox News told me that Hannity has essentially become a “West Wing adviser,” attributing this development, in part, to the “utter breakdown of any normal decision-making in the White House.” The expert added, “The place has gone off the rails. There is no ordinary policy-development system.” As a result, he said, Fox’s on-air personalities “are filling the vacuum.”

Mayer’s latest explores both the history and familiar controversies surrounding the cable news giant whose motto in the Trump era might be “Hair and Unbalanced.”

Blair Levin, at that time the chief of staff at the F.C.C. and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, says, “Fox’s great insight wasn’t necessarily that there was a great desire for a conservative point of view.” More erudite conservatives, he says, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., and Bill Kristol, couldn’t have succeeded as Fox has. Levin observes, “The genius was seeing that there’s an attraction to fear-based, anger-based politics that has to do with class and race.”

Roger Ailes, the late Chairman and CEO of Fox News, developed programming “that confirmed all your worst instincts—Fox News’ fundamental business model is driving fear,” Levin argues.

Yochai Benkler of the Harvard Law School professor co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. The model Murdoch envisioned is not right versus left, he tells Mayer. “It’s the right versus the rest.”

A senior fellow at Media Matters, Matt Gertz believes, “The President’s world view is being specifically shaped by what he sees on Fox News, but Fox’s goals are ratings and money, which they get by maximizing rage. It’s not a message that is going to serve the rest of the country.”

The codependent feedback loop between the White House and Trump means they reflect each other like mirrors on opposite walls. Gaze long into Trump TV and Trump stares back. That’s just what Trump wants from “executive time.”

QOTD: Congressman Jerry Nadler

by digby

House judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler: "Impeachment is a long way down the road, we don't have the facts yet, but we're going to initiate proper investigations." @GStephanopoulos: "Impeachment investigations?"

Nadler: "No, no, no" https://t.co/c48QX7yddw #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/kodo923HNa— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 3, 2019

It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice. It’s very clear – 1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to – he fired – he tried to protect Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News. He – he’s dangled pardons –He’s threat – he’s intimidated witnesses. In public.

He says they have to call witnesses and lay out the evidence before the American people before they can open an impeachment inquiry.
But he says it’s obvious the president obstructed justice so …

Transcript

Huckleberry goes full Dear Leader

by digby

He’s really taking it to extreme lengths. His 2020 polling must show him in deep trouble:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a vocal supporter of President Trump and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, lauded the president on Thursday for his recent summit with North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, saying Kim “knows Trump means business” despite the sudden end to diplomatic talks in Hanoi.

While delivering his remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Graham, a hawk when it comes to foreign policy, told the audience that “Rocket Man [is] talking to Trump when he’s never talked to anybody else,” bringing back the president’s famous nickname for the dictator.

Graham continued to blast Kim, saying, “Speaking of Rocket Man, he couldn’t be here, and if he doesn’t get a deal with Trump he won’t be anywhere much longer.”

He then praised the president for bringing the Taliban to “the peace table” and for “knowing a bad deal when he sees one” when President Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal:

“Why is the Taliban at the peace table? Because they’re being kicked in their a**. Why is the caliphate destroyed? Because Trump let the military do its job. Why is Iran on the run? Because Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one.”

Graham went on to applaud the president’s performance in his first term, saying that he’s done a “hell of a job as Commander-in-Chief” and that “nobody’s stood by Israel better than Donald Trump”:

“You aren't prepared to be commander in chief of the world’s finest fighting force.” 2016 Lindsey Graham

“He’s doing a helluva job as commander in chief.” CPAC 2019 Lindsey Graham

Graham is an opportunist who did a complete 180 and sold his soul to Trump.pic.twitter.com/HiexBAELQQ— Adam Best (@adamcbest) February 28, 2019

“He’s doing a hell of a job as commander in chief, he’s rebuilt our military, he’s put our enemies on the run, and he’s a better friend and nobody’s stood by Israel better than Donald Trump. Nobody.”

Here it is, if you can stomach it:

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham speaks at CPAC 2019 touting President Trump for his wide array of accomplishments. Check out more on his remarks here:https://t.co/mJ6sG6DHR2— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) February 28, 2019

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People who think he cannot possibly win are wrong

by digby

NBC:

Democrats who want to defeat Trump have hurdles of their own. The president’s job rating remains stable with nearly 90 percent of Republicans approving of his job. And a majority of Americans remain confident in the economy, believing that there won’t be a recession in the next year.

Add it up, and 2020 is shaping up to be yet another close presidential race, say the Democratic and Republican pollsters who conducted the NBC/WSJ survey.

Remember, they cheat.

There is this too:

Personally, I think that most people want to beat Trump more than anything. But at this stage, they’re thinking of the things that affect their lives and want to be sure that Democrats nominate someone who reflects those values and commitments. Primaries are the mechanism by which we sort all that out in a big, diverse coalition.

But it’s also possible that more than a few people think there’s no way Trump can possibly be re-elected and that’s just not true. I really hope that people who know better make that clear. Trump’s base is mesmerized by him. And there’s a reason for that:

That base is amazingly solid and all it’s going to take is for him to siphon off a few percentage points and sneak in again.

I’m very cautiously optimistic. But I don’t think it’s a shoo-in. There are many ways this could go sideways.

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He just loves the guy, that’s all

by digby

EXCLUSIVE: @chucktodd asks @Jim_Jordan why the president surrounds himself with people who can't tell the truth. #MTP

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio): "The president's surrounded himself with some people that maybe he shouldn't, I don't know." pic.twitter.com/ttZTrkR5ES— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 3, 2019

You’re one of them, Gym.

CHUCK TODD:

— again, does it bother you that Donald Trump surrounded himself — kept this man as a confidant? For everything you’ve described him as, why did he keep him as a confidant?

REP. JIM JORDAN:

You’d have to ask the, you’d have to ask the president.

CHUCK TODD:

Does that bother you?

REP. JIM JORDAN:

Not really. It doesn’t.

CHUCK TODD:

Why?

REP. JIM JORDAN:

It just doesn’t. What I know is what the president’s done in his two years as president of the United States. The Democrats never want to talk about it. The press never seems to want to talk about this.

(Blah, blah, blah tax cuts, Supreme Court Nafta, Iran, blah, blah blah.)

“It just doesn’t.”

And frankly, I don’t think he really cares about any of that stuff either. If Trump decided to do nothing but executive time and rallies for the next two years he’d still back him. In fact, short of some kind of real national emergency, that’s exactly what’s going to happen because his Dear Leader can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag so the GOP agenda is dead and buried.

He just loves his man.

Cults of personality are not ideological. There have been stirrings of the same thing on the left. It has nothing to do with “issues” or accomplishment.

Jordan and his friends in the Freedom Caucus are an interesting case. They were always a purely tribal movement. They needed a leader to rally around. They found one.

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A stable genius at work

by digby

Trump in Hanoi was even dumber than he looked:

As President Trump settled into the dining room of a French-colonial hotel in Hanoi on Thursday morning, the conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader with whom he had struck up the oddest of friendships, was already turning tense.

In a dinner at the Metropole Hotel the evening before, mere feet from the bomb shelter where guests took cover during the Vietnam War, Mr. Kim had resisted what Mr. Trump presented as a grand bargain: North Korea would trade all its nuclear weapons, material and facilities for an end to the American-led sanctions squeezing its economy.

An American official later described this as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.

But Mr. Trump’s offer was essentially the same deal that the United States has pushed — and the North has rejected — for a quarter century. Intelligence agencies had warned him, publicly, Mr. Kim would not be willing to give up the arsenal completely. North Korea itself had said repeatedly that it would only move gradually.

Several of Mr. Trump’s own aides, led by national security adviser John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thought the chances of a grand bargain for total nuclear disarmament were virtually zero. Some questioned whether the summit meeting should go forward.

Mr. Trump disagreed. He had taken to showing what he called Mr. Kim’s “beautiful letters” to visitors to the Oval Office, as evidence he had built a rapport with one of the world’s most brutal dictators. While some in the White House worried Mr. Trump was being played, the president seemed entranced — even declaring “we fell in love.”

As Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim parted company, nearly a year of optimism and flattery was left poolside at the Metropole, steps from a meeting room with two empty chairs and flags that had been carefully prepared for a “signing ceremony.”

Mr. Trump and senior diplomats say they hope negotiations will continue, though nothing has been scheduled. Mr. Kim has promised not to resume weapons testing, and the Pentagon continues to hold off on large-scale military exercises with South Korea.

In interviews with a half-dozen participants, it is clear Mr. Trump’s failed gambit was the culmination of two years of threats, hubris and misjudgment on both sides. Mr. Trump entered office convinced he could intimidate the man he liked to call “Little Rocket Man” with tough talk and sanctions, then abruptly took the opposite tack, overruling his aides and personalizing the diplomacy.

Mr. Kim also miscalculated. He bet Mr. Trump might accept a more modest offer that American negotiators in Hanoi had already dismissed: The North would dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear complex, three square miles of aging facilities at the heart of the nuclear program, for an end to the sanctions most harmful to its economy, those enacted since 2016.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was tempted to take that deal, which could have turned headlines away from the damaging testimony of his former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, in Washington.

I’m sure he wanted to. But Pompeo wisely manipulated Trump by pointing out that he would obviously look like a loser if he did, and Trump actually heard him. My sense is that Trump is setting Pompeo up to blame for the failure. He’s all about blame.

But Mr. Pompeo, who knew the details of the North Korean program intimately from his days as C.I.A. director, opposed it. The president was told that if he settled for Yongbyon alone, he might appear to have been duped by the young leader of a country renowned for hiding pieces of its nuclear program in tunnels around the country.

Mr. Pompeo said later that Mr. Kim’s offer “still leaves missiles, still leaves warheads and weapons systems” — and a senior State Department official argued that sanctions relief would fund the production of more weapons.

It also would have let the North continue to produce uranium, a key ingredient for nuclear weapons, at a hidden enrichment center near the capital, Pyongyang — one of several suspected nuclear sites beyond Yongbyon that the United States has been monitoring from afar for nearly a decade.

“I think that they were surprised that we knew,” Mr. Trump said.

In the end, the president took a brief walk with Mr. Kim around the hotel’s pool, shook his hand and then canceled lunch in a glassed pavilion.

“This kind of opportunity may never come again,” Ri Yong-ho, North Korea’s foreign minister, told reporters later that night.

For a president who often complains that his predecessors only let the North Korea problem fester, the 8,000-mile trek from Washington to Hanoi was a crash course in why those past presidents failed.

And here we thought he was the very stable genius who knew how to negotiate better than any human in history.

Truthfully, we are lucky it didn’t go far worse.

He ain’t right
by Tom Sullivan

Soon enough, Donald Trump will be talking to people who aren’t there in front of people who are:

During a Saturday appearance at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), President Donald Trump called California Governor Gavin Newsom a “nice guy” and said that Newsom called him recently to tell him that he’s a “great president.”

“He called me up the other day, let’s say four weeks ago or so,” Trump told the CPAC crowd of Newsom. “[He said] ‘I just want to tell you, you’re a great president and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.’ That’s what he said. “

Trump went on, “Will he admit it? No, I doubt it.” Because it never happened, of that you may be sure.

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale reminded Twitter followers, “Trump has a long history of inventing things people supposedly told him over the phone.

CPAC each year is menagerie of conspiracy theories and conservative weirdness. It is a yearly safe space especially for men raised to believe they are the apex predators of the social food chain even as the change visible all around them tells them they are no longer. That is as disorienting as being told the Earth is round and they are not the center of the universe.

Little of the other CPAC clownishness can hold a candle to a needy, mentally unbalanced president of the United States.

Besides California’s Democratic governor calling to fawn over him, Trump regaled the crowd with a story of traveling to Iraq after Christmas. There he met a general named “Raisin Kane.” Watch.

Trump goes on a long and bizarre rant about his trip to Iraq pic.twitter.com/H9JRbmlYQL— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2019

That tale may not have been completely removed from reality. There is a Brig. Gen. John Daniel Caine listed as currently serving in Iraq. Perhaps the general was just being “central casting” for his commander-in-chief.

“Bring the cameras. I’m gonna make a movie,” his generals look so perfect, Trump told the CPAC crowd before complaining Hollywood “discriminates against our people.”

Eventually, of course, he reverted to scaremongering about Central American migrants. Including this gem:

TRUMP: "Mothers who love their daughters give them massive amounts of birth control pills, because they know their daughters are going to be raped on the way up to our southern border. Think of that. True story told to me by the Border Patrol. Think of how evil that is." pic.twitter.com/wVrBHpEbWc— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2019

So true and so sad, Trump added. Once processed through his fevered imagination, the seed of that story morphed into impoverished, desperate mothers possessing “massive amounts of birth control pills” consigning their daughters to “stone-cold killers” for maximum rape-age. He can no longer sit back and allow migrant infiltration and left-wing subversion to sap and impurify, etc., etc.

All this lunacy mixed in with the usual litany of oft-repeated falsehoods.

After a week in which Republicans on the House Oversight Committee refrained from defending Trump during Michael Cohen’s testimony, his base is sticking with him. CPAC attendees deny the seas are rising and refuse to believe the SS Trump is sinking along with its addled captain. The CEO of MyPillow declared Trump “chosen by God.”

With few exceptions, Republicans on Capitol Hill remain steadfast:

“We’re not going to turn on our own and make the Democrats happy,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who is up for reelection in 2020. “We don’t see any benefit in fracturing, but we do see a lot to lose.”

They have already lost their immortal souls. What else is left?

Power.

Another year for me and you: 10 essential albums of 1969

By Dennis Hartley

Well, this is it. 2019-last chance to celebrate a “50th anniversary” from the 60s (did I just detect a mass sigh of relief from all the Generation X and Millennial readers out there?).

2019 also marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock…so you eye-rolling hipsters best batten down the hatches and prepare for a surge of tie-tied, acid-fried, and dewy-eyed peace love ‘n’ dope c’mon people now smile on your brother everybody get together try to love one another right now dirty filthy hippies wallowing in the mud nostalgia…MAN.

In my 2009 review of the Ang Lee film, Taking Woodstock, I wrote:

“If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there”. Don’t you hate it when some lazy-ass critic/wannabe sociopolitical commentator trots out that old chestnut to preface some pompous “think piece” about the Woodstock Generation?

She wrote that in 1969. But here’s the rub: she wasn’t really there.

There was a point in there, somewhere. Somehow it made sense when I was peaking on the ‘shrooms about an hour ago. Oh, I’m supposed to be writing a movie review. Far out, man.

Now it’s been 10 years since I wrote that piece regarding Woodstock’s 40th anniversary, so I’ve had some additional time to smoke a couple of bowls and further reflect on what my point was. After careful consideration, I believe it was: “You had to BE there, man!”

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

Anyhoo, going on the assumption that the next best thing to “being there” would be immersing yourself in the music of the era, I thought I’d mosey over to my record closet-where I hope to pluck some dusty jewels for your consideration. To wit-my picks for the top 10 most essential albums of 1969. As usual, my list is alphabetical-not ranking order.

Abbey Road – The Beatles

Let it Be (1970) may have officially been the Beatles’ “final” studio album, but as it was recorded several months before the band’s penultimate 1969 release, it is Abbey Road that truly represents John, Paul, George and Ringo’s swan song as creative collaborators.

Are there any other recording artists who have ever matched the creative growth that transpired over the scant six years that it took to evolve from the simplicity of Meet the Beatles to the sophistication of Abbey Road? After a momentary lapse of reason to allow gifted but increasingly manic enfant terrible Phil Spector to (infamously) botch production for Let it Be, the Fabs wisely brought George Martin back on board. Martin, the band, and recording engineers Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald and Alan Parsons are at the top of their game here (if you decide to pack it in, you might as well go out on top).

Choice cuts: “Come Together”, “Something”, “I Want You (She’s so Heavy)”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Because” (my god, those harmonies), “You Never Give Me Your Money”, “Sun King”, and (of course) the remainder of that magnificent Side 2 “suite”.

Chicago Transit Authority – Chicago

While I’m not fond of their schmaltzy (if chart-topping) descent into “adult contemporary” territory from the 80s onward, there is no denying the groundbreaking nature of Chicago’s incredible first three double albums, beginning with this 1969 gem. The formula established here, which would continue through Chicago II and Chicago III (or what I like to call their “Roman Numeral Period”) was (for its time) a bold fusion of hard rock, blues, soul, jazz, and Latin styles, fueled by the late Terry Kath’s fiery guitar and accentuated by a tight horn section (and I’m not normally a big fan of horn sections).

Choice cuts: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”, “Beginnings”, “Questions 67 and 68”, “Poem 58” (great Kath solo) and a cover of Steve Winwood’s “I’m a Man”.

Crosby, Still, & Nash – Crosby, Stills and Nash

One of rock’s most enduring “supergroups” sort of fell together (as the story goes) after an informal jam at a house party in 1968. The trio may have never agreed as to who’s house this seminal event occurred at (it vacillates between Joni Mitchell’s and Cass Elliot’s place), but millions of fans have since concurred that something truly sublime and greater than the sum of its parts occurs when David Crosby (originally from The Byrds), Stephen Stills (The Buffalo Springfield) and Graham Nash (The Hollies) sing three-part harmonies (occasionally joined by Neil Young…when they’re not all fighting).

Their flawless debut LP has stood the test of time rather well. Choice cuts? All of them!

Five Leaves Left – Nick Drake

Look in the dictionary under “melancholy” and you’ll likely find a picture of Nick Drake.

When the day is done, when the night is cold
Some get by but some get old
Just to show life’s not made of gold
When the night is cold

When the night is cold, I like to cozy up with a good pair of headphones, a cup of chamomile, and a Nick Drake album. Yes, his music was melancholy (and likely to blame for inspiring “emo”) but it was also beautiful; spare, haunting, unforgettable. He died much too young. If you’ve never had the pleasure, this debut is a fine place to start.

Choice cuts: “Time Has Told Me”, “Three Hours”, “River Man”, “Day Is Done”, “The Thoughts of Mary Jane”, “Fruit Tree”, and “Man in a Shed”.

Hot Buttered Soul – Isaac Hayes

Singer-songwriter-musician-producer-arranger extraordinaire Isaac Hayes’ second album is, in a word, epic. Containing only 4 songs, it blew a lot of minds and set a new bar for soul music. Before recording sessions commenced, Hayes demanded, and received full creative control from Stax Records (who I’d speculate were chagrinned that there were no potential singles to mine from 4 tracks…at least not without extensive editing). I suspect Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were paying close attention, as they would make a similar push for creative independence with execs at Motown several years later.

Choice cuts: Hayes’ impeccably produced cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk on By” is a 12-minute master class in song arranging and may very well be the inception of the “slow jam” that artists like Barry White would later build their entire careers on. But the truly groundbreaking cut here is Hayes’ 18-minute deconstruction of Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”. Hayes takes Webb’s 2-minute pop song and turns it into an almost cinematic tone poem, with a 9-minute spoken word preface that adds poignant backstory to the protagonist’s already heartbreaking narrative.

In the Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson

It’s safe to say there was nothing else that sounded quite like this seminal prog-rock masterpiece in 1969. Led by avant-garde guitarist/producer Robert Fripp, the group featured vocalist and bassist Greg Lake (who would later hook up with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer to form you-know-who), keyboardist/woodwind and sax player Ian McDonald (who would later join Foreigner), percussionist Michael Giles, and lyricist Peter Sinfield (also cryptically noted as provider of “illumination”…their dealer maybe?). Many iterations of the band have followed over the years (with Fripp as the mainstay), but this remains my favorite conglomeration of personnel (Lake was their finest vocalist).

Choice cuts: Pretty much all of them…from the proto-metal/jazz fusion of “21st Century Schizoid Man” to the dreamy “I Talk to the Wind” and “Moonchild”, the melancholic cautionary tale “Epitaph” and the majestic closer “In The Court of the Crimson King.”

Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin

Despite legions of loyal fans (the author of this post among them) and the countless musicians they have inspired and influenced over the past 50 years, there’s just something about these seminal English rockers that really pisses off snooty music critics.

As an out and proud middlebrow, I’ll call this album a “classic” without reservation. It was a pretty close call choosing between this or their very strong debut album, which was also released in 1969. I could have cheated and just counted them both as one choice (which would have made my list “go to eleven”) but I’ve got principles (stop snickering).

Led Zeppelin’s unique blend of Delta blues, English folk, heavy metal riffing and (on subsequent albums, beginning with Led Zeppelin III) Eastern music has been oft-imitated but seldom matched… inviting the listener to tune in, buckle up, and ride a sonic roller coaster that takes you (as Jimmy Page described it) “from the whisper…to the thunder”.

Choice cuts: “Whole Lotta Love”, “What is and What Never Should Be”, “Thank You”, “Heartbreaker”, “Livin’ Lovin’ Maid” and “Ramble On” (best “wanderlust” song ever).

The Stooges – The Stooges

Well it’s 1969 okay
All across the USA
It’s another year
For me and you
Another year
With nothing to do

Last year I was 21
I didn’t have a lot of fun
And now I’m gonna be 22
I say oh my and a boo hoo
And now I’m gonna be 22
I say oh my and a boo hoo

They sure don’t write ‘em like that anymore. The composer is one Mr. James Osterberg, perhaps best known by his show biz nom de plume, Iggy Pop. Did you know that this economical lyric style was inspired by Buffalo Bob…who used to encourage Howdy Doody’s followers to limit fan letters and postcards to “25 words or less”? True story.

The peace ‘n’ love ethos was still lingering in the air when Iggy and the Stooges stormed straight outta Detroit with their aggressive proto-punk sound, undoubtedly scaring the shit out of a lot of hippies. While this debut album didn’t exactly storm up the charts upon initial release, it is now acknowledged as a profound influence on punk’s first wave (the Sex Pistols paid homage on Never Mind the Bollocks with their cover of “No Fun”).

Choice cuts: “1969”, “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, “No Fun”, and “Real Cool Time”.

Then Play On – Fleetwood Mac

I’ve got nothing personal against Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham; they are obviously very talented folks in their own write, but…as far as I’m concerned, Fleetwood Mac “Classic” died the day they joined up with Christine McVie and stalwart founding members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. This 1969 release is my favorite Mac album.

Guitarist and lead vocalist Peter Green would depart the band following this release (briefly rejoining later for a few live dates), but it features some of his finest work. The bulk of the songs for this outing were written by Green and newly acquired guitarist/vocalist Danny Kirwin (a gifted player and songwriter who would stay on board until some unfortunate personal issues forced him out in 1972). Very bluesy; those who prefer the more pop-oriented Buckingham-Nicks iteration may not find much to relate to.

Choice cuts: “Coming Your Way”, “Closing My Eyes”, “Underway”, “Although the Sun is Shining”, “My Dream” (gorgeous Kirwin instrumental), and “Before the Beginning”.

Tommy – The Who