« May 2006 | Main | August 2006 »

June 26, 2006

"Everything Was Right: The Beatles' REVOLVER"

My voice is one of many included in a two-hour documentary by Paul Ingles, titled Everything Was Right: The Beatles’ Revolver.

My wife, who was an original Beatlemaniac (age 14 when they played the Sullivan show), really loved this program, and said it not only enriched her knowledge of the Beatles, but also improves her understanding of music in general.

The program is airing at various times around the country on PRI (Public Radio International) affiliates. Check your local listings, and demand that your local PRI affiliate put Everything Was Right: The Beatles’ Revolver on the air if they haven’t already.

Paul’s web site includes extended interviews with many of the participants, including Beatles historial Mark Lewisohn, musician Shawn Colvin, author and critic Jim DeRogatis, myself, and others.

There’s also a brilliant “Revolver” montage created by Douglas Grant.

Posted by gans at 1:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Gans at the Happy Dog in Cleveland 6/29

060629davgans.jpg

An Evening with DAVID GANS

Thursday, June 29, 2006
9:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.

The Happy Dog
5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland OH
216-651-9474

No cover charge!

Posted by gans at 1:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 25, 2006

Gans on tour this summer

Hello, friends - happy SUMMER!!

I’m in the middle of an online interview at www.well.com/inkwell - talking with Gary Burnett and other interlocutors about my adventures in the music bizniz, the mysteries of creativity, and various other subjects. You can contribute to the dialogue by sending email to inkwell@well.com

There are some samples of my new recording work at www.dgans.com/private-tunes.html . The new CD will be called Cloud Surfing; I had hoped to have it ready in time for Grateful Fest, but these things take time, and it’s better not to rush. I have been working with two brilliant sound designers - Jeremy Goody and Jim LeBrecht - and I’m just delighted with the work we’ve been doing.

This month has been a tough one on a personal and professional level. My dear friend Tina Loney, who was the “best man” at my wedding and was my close friend and most trusted counselor for twenty years, lost her long battle with lung cancer on June 8. You’ll find a picture of her and a few words at gdhour.com/logblog/?p=126

And before we lost Tina, on June 2, Vince Welnick took his own life. Vince was a member of The Tubes for 20 years and the Grateful Dead for five; in the decade following the end of the Dead, I had many opportunities to play music with him, each of which was a great pleasure and a learning experience to boot. I also worked with Vince on Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, which I co-produced with Jerry Lawson. Vince and Jerry hit it off during those sessions and remained friends from then on. You’ll find a lot of music, and numerous tributes to Vince’s soulful nature and musical brilliance, all over this site.

I stayed home for most of the month of May in order to spend time with Tina, and I experienced a great burst of creative energy that I’m sure was fallout from the powerful emotions surrounding her passing and Vince’s. The music I play this summer will reflect the energy that came through our lives through these experiences.

—

Here’s what I know about the summer as of now:

—

More dates will be added for July, August, and September. Stay tuned.

More information, web links, etc., at www.dgans.com/gigs.html

Posted by gans at 9:47 AM | TrackBack

June 22, 2006

DG's musical adventures: this weekend and beyond

Hello, friends - happy SUMMER!!

I’ve got three Bay Area gigs this weekend, and I hit the road next week for my first festival of the season.

The in-between gigs are still being confirmed; please see http://www.dgans.com/gigs.html for the latest.

I’m in the middle of an online interview at www.well.com/inkwell - talking with Gary Burnett and other interlocutors about my adventures in the music bizniz, the mysteries of creativity, and various other subjects. You can contribute to the dialogue by sending email to inkwell@well.com

There are some samples of my new recording work at www.dgans.com/private-tunes.html . The new CD will be called Cloud Surfing; I had hoped to have it ready in time for Grateful Fest, but these things take time, and it’s better not to rush. I have been working with two brilliant sound designers - Jeremy Goody and Jim LeBrecht - and I’m just delighted with the work we’ve been doing.

This month has been a tough one on a personal and professional level. My dear friend Tina Loney, who was the “best man” at my wedding and was my close friend and most trusted counselor for twenty years, lost her long battle with lung cancer on June 8. You’ll find a picture of her and a few words at gdhour.com/logblog/?p=126

And before we lost Tina, on June 2, Vince Welnick took his own life. Vince was a member of The Tubes for 20 years and the Grateful Dead for five; in the decade following the end of the Dead, I had many opportunities to play music with him, each of which was a great pleasure and a learning experience to boot. I also worked with Vince on Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, which I co-produced with Jerry Lawson. Vince and Jerry hit it off during those sessions and remained friends from then on. You’ll find a lot of music, and numerous tributes to Vince’s soulful nature and musical brilliance, on the logblog

I stayed home for most of the month of May in order to spend time with Tina, and I experienced a great burst of creative energy that I’m sure was fallout from the powerful emotions surrounding her passing and Vince’s. The music I play this summer will reflect the energy that came through our lives through these experiences.

—

Here’s what I know about the summer as of now:

—

More dates will be added for July, August, and September. Stay tuned.

More information, web links, etc., at www.dgans.com/gigs.html

Posted by gans at 9:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 17, 2006

Cheap-shotting Paul McCartney

I really need to have someone explain to me the San Francisco Chronicle’s reason for publishing Aidin Vaziri’s piece on Paul McCartney’s “When I’m 64” as Macca turns 64 himself. From where I sit, at age 52, it struck me as content-free, a poinltess attack on an obsolete coltural icon. Offending geezers is fine if you’re giving value to younger folks, but I’m hard pressed to see what anyone younger would get from this steaming heap.

Will we still need him, will we still feed him after tomorrow? That’s when Sir Paul McCartney fulfills the destiny of the worst song — “When I’m 64” — from the Beatles’ best album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
8. George Harrison died of throat cancer at 58.

Deep, ain’t it?

Posted by gans at 10:34 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 15, 2006

The Humble Stumble goes to (SpringFest)

Roy Schneider’s alter ego in his comic strip The Humble Stumble is a finalist in the songwriting competition at “Squirrelfest,” which is in turn the alter ego of our beloved Suwannee SpringFest

The adventure is under way. First strip in the story line is here.

P.S. The dog in the strip is named Grisman!

Posted by gans at 11:11 AM | TrackBack

June 13, 2006

The United States of Torture

From today’s Jon Carroll column:

I have heard the arguments in favor of increased prisoner abuse. This is a new kind of war with an enemy that kills civilians without mercy. This enemy has bombed the World Trade Center; it bombed nightclubs in Indonesia when the discos were crowded; it bombed subways in London at rush hour. It has bombed busy intersections and markets and even mosques all over Iraq. Its own record of prisoner abuse is horrible; it even kills its own people if they fail some ethnic or religious litmus test.

This week’s suicide at Guantanamo has given the Bush barbarians another opportunity to display their pathological personalities, calling it “a good PR move” and an act of “asymmetrical warfare.” The collective narcissism, the sociopathic self-interest, and sheer inhumanity of these bastards becomes more manifest every day. Not only are they incapable of admitting error, they are incapable of recognizing the ugliness and immorality of their souls.

A* C* and Michael Savage are not as extreme as we’d like to believe; I fear they are expressing the true souls of the administration. I feel increasingly desperate for a way to make the sleeping middle of America awaken to the viciousness of the leaders they elected. If we don’t turn this around soon, it will be too late.

More from Jon Carroll:

I do not think we should be fighting the war in Iraq; I’m not sure there would even be a war if we had not declared it; still, I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists. I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists so much I want to make sure my side, the one supported by my money and representing my country, does not fall into the same pit of barbarism.

Torture — and let’s call it by its right name, because that’s what the Defense Department wants: the freedom to torture — does not just harm the tortured; it injures the torturer as well. If you listen to interviews with the men and women who were at Abu Ghraib, they were stunned by what they had done. They felt at though they had been reduced to beasts.

Debra J. Saunders, in today’s Chronicle, parses carefully the words of Al Gore and attacks his character in an attempt to sidestep the overwhelmingly persuasive facts adduced in An Inconvenient Truth:

Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming….

Now he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community.

There are a number of well-known scientists who don’t believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic.

How has the compassionate, liberal America I grew up in become such a vile, destructive (and ultimately self-immolating) hell? How is it possible for so many to remain willfully ignorant of reality and actively hostile to humanity?

Is there a way out of this lethal spiral?

Back to Jon Carroll:

Restraint and generosity do not seem to be hallmarks of this administration. Already, after unrestrained bombing in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, we were pulling troops out and reneging on our promises to rebuild Afghanistan so it no longer has to rely on the opium trade. We’ve decided, heck, let ‘em grow it; we’ll handle the problem later when the refined product gets to our borders. Yeah, that’s worked.

Oh, wait, there’s another difference between then and now. During World War II, war profiteers were frowned on. It was not considered cool to make billions off misery and death. Today, war profiteers run the country. One might make the case that this administration is so busy figuring out how to reward its friends and campaign contributors with pieces of the war pie, it hasn’t spent all that much time coming up with innovative plans for fighting a war of attrition in a desert half a world away.

It seems pretty obvious to me that war profiteering is the number one motivation here. It is not a coincidence that the oil industry and Halliburton are the principal beneficiaries of this administration’s policies.

From the LA Times:

A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened after White House officials rejected it amid complaints by energy companies that it was too restrictive and after a well-connected Texas oil executive appealed to White House senior advisor Karl Rove….

In 2002, a Texas oilman and longtime Republican activist, Ernest Angelo, wrote a letter to Rove complaining that an early version of the rule was causing many in the oil industry to “openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity.”

“Supidity” = “affecting my profits.” Fuck everyone else. Fuck the planet. GIMME!!!!!!

Posted by gans at 8:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Church Sign Generator

I’ve been seeing these things for a couple of years, and I should have figured out by now that they were artificial. Sent to me this morning by Ric Findlay:

churchsign_gans.jpg

And Ric also told me where he got it: The Church Sign Generator, of course!!

Posted by gans at 8:05 AM | TrackBack

June 6, 2006

Another great Jon Carroll column

There really isn’t any point in excerpting this particular column. It’s a grand slam. Please read it all.

Being in Congress is not like living in America. You have a hired car and driver, and you don’t carry money. You don’t buy groceries and you don’t pay plumbers. You spend every day raising money so you can go back to Congress, where you will raise more money. People want to buy you dinner, take you golfing, give you … what do you want? There are people who will give it to you, and other people who make it look OK. Unless you do something dopey like keeping cash in your freezer, you’ll never get caught.

You are supposed to represent the people in your district, but you don’t live like the people in your district. Hell, most of the time you’re not even in your district. You live in a bubble, and you take seriously stuff that other people find silly, and you ignore stuff that other people find important. Tim Russert: important. Working two jobs while trying to find health insurance to cover your pre-existing condition: not so important.

People in Congress do not speak the way other people speak. Have you ever listened to a congressional hearing? Congress members do not ask questions when it is time to ask questions; they make speeches. Sometimes they pretend it’s a question by starting with “Wouldn’t you agree… ?” — but that doesn’t make it a question. They seem to be utterly indifferent to their routine pomposities. They frequently call themselves “the American people,” as in, “The American people are shocked by midnight break-ins at congressional offices.”

And:

Basically, we’re screwed. The Congress was supposed to save us from the executive branch, and the Supreme Court was supposed to save us from both, and now all three are playing some game that does not involve protecting citizens, spending money wisely or making sense.

Posted by gans at 10:17 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack