marco

Here's a roundup of shorts, er uh ground up sorts, um, I mean some wound up sports, or wait, I know, a Roundup of Sorts...

My heartfelt version of Flatt and Scruggs' "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms" (written by Charlie Monroe) in honor of the late Earl Scruggs. (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/9464509

Looking over my record deal I consider how much better mine is than ones my friends signed with majors the past decade or so.

OK please support Jay Roc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3u8H-G_FR4

Friend of a friend sort of, really kind of a distant cousin's son!

Some old guy in this bkfst nook just asked his buddy how he can get a vibrator for his fone.

A guy behind me just told his mom he can't talk with her on the phone anymore because he's "coding."

what was he doing? WOW online.

Yes, my peeps - be ready to look for it. I'm taking my album art inspirations most deliberately from a Zeppelin, a Miles Davis, a Melanie Safka and a Duane Eddy rekkid.

My luthier just compared my production style in a rendition of "Follow the Drinking Gourd" to Lennon's "working class hero" recordings. That compliment made my day!

What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?

Listen, I know everyone feels great about their new releases, etc., and we all work so hard and want to hype ourselves, but I can tell you, my debut folk full length that I'm releasing 12apr12 is very very good. And as they say in the middle school where I sub the most, it's "mad beast." :Phttp://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_12648062

Old and dear friend of mine, David Rovics singing a great new song that really got my attention. Except for the pointed slam at Bruce Springsteen and who I'm going to assume is Little Steven Van Zandt pretty much every lyric in this song is spot on.

We all still live and die by this punk rock sensibility that everyone who makes it is a scumbag, like so many crabs in a bucket.

Having hung out a lot with people like Robbie Robertson, John Densmore, Warren Buffet's son Peter, Jacob's dad from Twilight and the old blue guy from Avatar, I can say it's more about what you're doing and how you live your life than what amount of dollars or checkbooks you carry around in your pocket.

And not trying to rib David too much, if you're not talking about Silvio Dante, you must mean Rodriguez and not Berlusconi, right? What are you doing man? Tell me what's up! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkw6Uq7nhBs


"Marc, I don't remember if I told you this, but I'm a group leader for a group of Tiger Cub Scouts. We had our monthly meeting last night, and we do some sort of activity as a group. Well, I chose to teach those kids a few songs. We did "Frybread" and "The Shortest Song You Ever Heard." Can you imagine a group of kids singing "Frybread, frybread, make me some frybread." I concluded the meeting by telling the kids to sing those two songs at school tomorrow. Neat, huh?"

-- Patrick Moore

A feedback recovered from the old IUMA website, thanks be to the WAYBACK MACHINE!!!

http://web.archive.org/web/20051208014506/http://artists3.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Marco_Capelli/lyrics-0.html

"I hope as my kids get older they stay compassionate, stop to talk to old people, the homeless, the sick...sing to our military, continue to brighten peoples days and bring them hope." -- Mistr Grits http://www.gritsworld.com/press_page

Holy cow! 61st nationally in the Folk charts. Thank you everybody, for helping my music climb like this! (In January it was 300th!!!) Alls I ever wanted "when I grow up" was to have people hear some of the songs I write, and you've helped me make that happen. I'm quite grateful! http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_9895127

Two NYE's ago my Rosebud friend Frank gave up a heavy gig with Baby Phat because it just didn't feel right. I'm sure he had to do some serious soul searching to turn away from something such as that! Now he's learning Recording Engineering at a cool school in Chicago. Big ups to Frank Waln; you rock bro!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3kPW-fE5Yc

It was while substitute teaching in either Windham or Baltic I came to the realization I can track each and every success and failure in my life back to a specific teacher's words and deeds when I myself was but two feet tall or so. And may I repeat, Governor Scott walker you are meanspirited and just generally a very bad person.

My midwestern eeuu friend Jill says she's already seen a bunch of RWBB's and SandHill Cranes! I have yet to see either although there have been a handful of robins lately. In my preparation for the first chance encounters with some RWBB's (you already know I have an affinity type friendship with the little black, red, yellow & white critters) I give you this song from last year. :) enjoy...

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_11152313

And if you are guessing I might be finally getting ready to start publishing my humble little weekly 'Zine again soon, you umm... Might be right...

;)

For everything else I do in life, the main reason I do any of it really is so you can hear some of my lyrics. That's why I play, that's why I sing, that's why I write.

Please check out the lyrics to my song "Frybread." It's up for some awards, but more important than that is how excited I am that more and more people are getting to hear this song. Yay!



http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_7188358

Current Mood: cheerful

The blood lust of so many of my “countrymen” (and women) this week over news of Osama Bin Laden’s death frightens me greatly as a human being but also as an army signal corps veteran.




There should be somber reflection and subdued “joy” regarding Osama Bin Laden’s demise.

There should be a search for closure and catharsis throughout the land perhaps, and especially among those who lost loved ones but there should not be all this demonstrative applause and neo-patriotic joy. A real Warrior prays for and seeks peace only killing as a last resort and necessary “evil.”

All this armchair warrior behavior gives me great pain. Not to mention I find it rude because come on now! It shows very bad form.

A songwriter friend of mine named Spook Handy puts it this way:

WORSE, HOWEVER, IS THAT HE BROUGHT OUT THE WORST IN SO MANY AMERICANS. PEOPLE I KNOW, FRIENDS AND EVEN RELATIVES, ALLOWED THEIR DARKEST DEMONS TO RULE THEIR RATIONALE AND EMOTIONS - COLLECTIVELY PRETENDING THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW WE WERE WRONG TO TEAR APART IRAQ, TORTURE PRISONERS AND DISREGARD THE SPIRIT OF BOTH THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AND GENEVA CONVENTION.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/spook-handy/thoughts-on-osama-bin-laden/10150560528145654






My friend Lucy put it this way:



IT RATHER BOTHERS ME THAT ONE OF THE SEALS COMMUNICATED TO HIS SUPERIORS THAT ‘GERONIMO’ (OSAMA BIN LADEN) HAD BEEN KILLED IN ACTION.

GERONIMO WAS A GREAT NATIVE HERO. WHAT AN INSULT — OF THE GREATEST MAGNITUDE!

WHY WASN’T THE CODE NAME COLUMBUS, HITLER, STALIN, CUSTER, JACKSON, OR SADDAM USED ?????

Shepard Smith and Christiane Amanpour are both very excited about this new path that the United States is

taking now that Seal 6 team took Bin Laden and four other peoples’ lives away two days ago. If you follow their careers with any kind of discerning eye you will see they do not go anywhere that they can’t make low millions of dollars and high hundreds of thousands of dollars exploiting death, war and conflict. Falluja, Palestine, Tokyo, Britain, New Orleans or a vote count in Florida or Ohio. Doesn’t matter. If there’s conflict, if there are people grieving dead relatives, they will be there with their teleprompters and microphone. “How does it feel, Mrs. Metacom, to see your dead husband’s skull rotting on a pike at the gates to your neighbor’s village?” “This just in, we have a 9 year old grieving his dead dad, Metacom junior, please speak clearly into the microphone, your dad is dead, you are in shackles, they are beating your mother nearly to death and tonight they’ll be boating you down to Bermuda to be slaves, how are you feeling right now?”





And here’s some of what Rabbi Lerner has to say about all that:



THE TASK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES AT THIS MOMENT IS TO REAFFIRM A DIFFERENT CONSCIOUSNESS —

TO REMIND OURSELVES THAT WE ARE INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO EACH OTHER AND TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM WILL NOT BE WON THROUGH KILLING, NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE

WE ASSASSINATE. IT WILL ONLY BE WON WHEN WE IN THE WEST CAN SHOW GENUINE LOVE, CARING,

AND GENEROSITY TOWARD EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/tikkuns-spiritual-response-to-the-assassination-of-osama-bin-laden




Last word goes to my friend Rachel who asks this!


What does this say to our children?
Did you know Native Americans historically
serve in the United States Armed Forces
in higher numbers per capita than
any other ethnic group.

How it is with me.

My CD released the end of March and I've gotten CDBaby to carry it good and cheap.

http://www.cdbaby.com/marcocapellifrucht

I'm still waiting not-so-patiently for it to make it onto iTunes and amazon cloud and stuff. First they said 4-7 days after it gets to cdbaby, now they're saying anywhere from 2weeks to four months. Yikes.

Oh well, what can you do except keep complaining or not complaining right?

In the mean time please listen to samples and download lots of extras for free over at my Reverbnation site, ok?

http://www.reverbnation.com/marcofrucht

cheers,
marco

All the CDBaby issues are worked out. Actually it was just issues of them moving from one building to another in Portland the past couple weeks.

Anyhew, here's an image and a link to the CDBaby site.

Sincerely,
Marco Capelli Frucht

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/MarcoCapelliFrucht

How about a Truth And Reconciliation process for quite a long time,

Perhaps two or three full years across a couple administrations so we can name names on exactly who gutted the treasury in the late 80s early 90s and who did it again 5 years ago.

Let's go wide on Abramoff and Bernenke Madoff and see that it wasn't just Enron and Merrill Lynch, that it was business as usual for so many people and they did all this no money down stuff and building extra jacuzzis for their cronies and packer skybox tickets ( jets and Uconn too!) AT THE EXPENSE OF WORKING POOR PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO SOME OF US LIVED AND SOME OF US DIED AND IT WASN'T PRETTY AND IT STILL ISN'T AND SUFFERING IS WORSE THAN WE THINK UNTIL WE PUT DOWN OUR consumer products and reflect on what we really have and what we really don't. And let's not stop at Chris Dodd and his 300thousand dollar balloon payment sponsored by banking commissions he sat on,

Let's realize that it does NOT KNOW PARTY AFFILIATION AND IT DOES NOT KNOW RACE OR GENDER, only class. It's time for either a nonviolent revolution or the one where these spineless fat takers hang from lamp posts, dead and smelly.

I cry out for one, and fear the other, knowing they're both coming. For now I'll just keep asking, is it a good time to call a general strike.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTHo5CBeIRk

Current Mood: determined

I'm reprinting this from Climate Voices blog. Linkback to their obit at the bottom of this blog.





Farewell to the Utterly Unique John Ross

By FRANK BARDACKE

John’s gone. John Ross. I doubt that we will ever see anyone remotely like him again.

The bare bones, as he would say, are remarkable enough. Born to show business Communists in New York City in 1938, he had minded Billie Holliday’s dog, sold dope to Dizzy Gillespie, and vigiled at the hour of the Rosenberg execution, all before he was sixteen years old. An aspiring beat poet, driven by D.H. Lawrence’s images of Mexico, he arrived at the Tarascan highlands of Michoacan at the age of twenty, returning to the U.S. six years later in 1964, there to be thrown in the Federal Penitentiary at San Pedro, for refusing induction into the army.

Back on the streets of San Francisco eighteen months later, he joined the Progressive Labor Movement, then a combination of old ex-CPers fleeing the debased party and young poets and artists looking for revolutionary action. For a few years he called the hip, crazy, Latino 24th and Mission his “bio-region,” as he ran from the San Francisco police and threw dead rats at slumlords during street rallies of the once powerful Mission Coalition.

When the not so ex-Stalinists drove him and others out of P.L. (“break the poets’ pencils” was the slogan of the purge) he moved up north to Arcata where he became an early defender of the forest and the self-described town clown and poet in residence. From there it was Tangier and the Maghreb, the Basque country, anti-nuke rallies in Ireland, and then back to San Francisco, where he finally found his calling as a journalist. “Investigative poet” was the title he preferred, and in 1984, he was dispatched by Pacific News Service to Latin America, where he walked with the Sendero Luminoso, broke bread with the Tupac Amaru, and hung out with cadres of the M-19.

In 1985, after the earthquake, he moved into the Hotel Isabela in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, where for the next 25 years he wrote the very best accounts in English (no one is even a close second) of the tumultuous adventures of Mexican politics.

During the Mexican years, he managed to write nine books in English, a couple more in Spanish, and a batch of poetry chapbooks, all the while he was often on the road, taking a bus to the scene of a peasant rebellion or visiting San Francisco or becoming a human shield in Baghdad, or protecting a Palestinian olive harvest from marauding Israeli settlers.

John Ross at Dead of the Dead celebration.

He died this morning, a victim of liver cancer, at the age of 73, just where he wanted to, in the village of Tepizo, Michoacan, in the care of his dear friends, Kevin and Arminda.

That’s the outline of the story. Then there was John. Even in his seventies, a tall imposing figure with a narrow face, a scruffy goatee and mustache, a Che T-shirt covered by a Mexican vest, a Palestinian battle scarf thrown around his neck, bags of misery and compassion under his eyes, offset by his wonderful toothless smile and the cackling laugh that punctuated his comical riffs on the miserable state of the universe.

He was among the last of the beats, master of the poetic rant, committed to the exemplary public act, always on the side of the poor and defeated. His tormentors defined him. A sadistic prison dentist pulled six of his teeth. The San Francisco Tac Squad twice bludgeoned his head, ruining one eye and damaging the other. The guards of Mexico’s vain, poet-potentate Octavio Paz beat him to the ground in a Mexico City airport, and continued to kick him while he was down. Israeli settlers pummeled him with clubs until he bled, and wrecked his back forever.

He had his prickly side. He hated pretense, pomposity and unchecked power wherever he found it. Losing was important to him. Whatever is the dictionary opposite of an opportunist—that’s what John was. He never got along with an editor, and made it a matter of principle to bite the hand that fed him. It got so bad, he left so few bridges unburnt, that in order to read his wonderful weekly dispatches in the pre-internet years, I had to subscribe to an obscure newsletter, a compilation of Latin American news, and then send more money to get the editors to send along John’s column. [John had a relationship lasting many years with CounterPunch, publishing hundreds of dispatches, with only trifling hiccups with the editors. AC/JSC.]

He had his sweet side, too. He was intensely loyal to his friends, generous with all he had, proud of his children, grateful for Elizabeth’s support and collaboration, and wonderful, warm company at an evening meal. When my son, Ted, arrived in Mexico in 1990, John helped him get a job, find a place to live, introduced him around, and became his Sunday companion and confidant, as they huddled in front of John’s 11-inch TV watching the weekly broadcasts of NBA games.

He was a great, true sports fan, especially of basketball. One of the last times I saw him was at a friend’s house in San Francisco, in between radiation treatments, watching a Warriors game on a big screen TV, smoking what he still called the “killer weed.” Joe and I listened to him recount NY Knicks history, the origin of the jump shot, and Kareem’s last game, which somehow led to a long complaint about kidneys for sale in Mexico that had been harvested in China out of the still warm body of some poor, rural immigrant who had been legally executed for jaywalking in Beijing.

The very last time I had the pleasure of his company was at breakfast in Los Angeles when Ted and I saw him off on his last book tour, promoting El Monstruo, his loving history of Mexico City. He was in great form. His cancer was in remission—a “cancer resister,” he called himself—and he entertained us with a preview of his trip: long, tiresome Greyhound rides, uncomfortable couches, talks to tiny groups of the marginalized, the last defenders of lost causes without the money to buy his books. It would be a losing proposition, like so many of his others, all of which secure his place among the angels.

Frank Bardacke taught at Watsonville Adult School, California’s Central Coast, for 25 years. His history of the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez, Trampled in the Vintage, is forthcoming from Verso. He can be reached at bardacke@sbcglobal


[ref] = [ http://climatevoices.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/john-ross-rebel-journalist-dies-in-mexico ]

Current Mood: sad

I commented this out in the Day online news. I figured it had wider appeal to people who don't read that paper as well. Here:


In blindly defending the local police, Lisa Coe wrote several opinions which were not on point and perhaps dangerous in their own tight context. I will help her with better context on just three of them.

"Only a twit like Collins would try to point blame?" there are many of us who will. A large portion of the local community is desperately seeking added blame in an effort to understand how six young people can conduct a beat down in cold blood on a fairly busy street at around 11pm in what appears on its surface to be a random act of wilding. If we don't seek a more comprehensive understanding of what went wrong with our local environment; then Lisa and David Collins are not safe, I'm not safe, we're all not safe. Heck if we all stay in denial of what's become of our sleepy little town half way between Boston and NYC, half way between Providence and New Haven, then even police officers we admire and trust are not safe.

No, David Collins is less the twit, and more the thinking, rational, yet emotional being who spoke up and said what many of us have been saying around watercoolers all over this county not just the town. I see that there is a tiny bit more foot patrolling going on downtown on both weekend nights and weekday nights. Better late than never I say flippantly; but THANK YOU, I say from the bottom of my heart. When I was a little kid there was always "officer so and so," or actually several officer-so-and-so's who walked up and down streets, said hi to the letter carrier, waved at bus drivers, and played hoop with us kids. You knew our moms, you overheard things in places like Truman Street Laundry and the Black and White Elks clubs. If those longstanding traditions continued, I won't get all romantic Pollyanna and say we'd still have Matt Chew alive right now, there's a slim to none chance of that, but you dang sure would've caught _______ a week after what he's suspected of doing instead of a month. And the other five young adults would've been gathered up with simple math. Perhaps 5 games of 21 later (or Horse, or full-on pick up 5 on 5) on a basketball court you would've had some youth away from snitch culture and willing to say things off the record, (unattributed but helpful) and solved this thing without having to leak out stupid stuff to see what comes back sideways and accidentally.

I'll challenge David and others at the local papers too though. If the police won't do that why don't you? Just 2 days after Matt Chew got brutalized, I went and did a load of laundry at Truman Street for the first time since a Day employee's sister's family used to own it back in the 90s. I smoked a Camel unfiltered outside on the sidewalk hoping I might overhear something. Nothing direct came up but I sure got an eyeful and an earful let me tell you. My walk past the halfway house back to Two Wives to try that Pear and Gorgonzola thing told me everything else I needed to know; we are not safe no matter what our police force told us. And that's broad daylight on a weekday.

"...only villains here are the street thugs and murderers, and not anybody at any level at the NLPD?" There WERE villains in the NLPD, maybe they're all gone, I doubt it. Chief Ackley talked one of them into resigning. I won't name him, I've done that before -- too much is too much. Just trust me, every chief before her all the way back to Sloan and perhaps earlier tried to let him go. Unions and cronies kept this violent, ignorant hater strong and employed. In fact, people want to scapegoat Ackley right now, her only vote of no confidence so far probably has more to do with telling him to his face that if he didn't resign she'll risk everything and summarily fire him; than anything else we could dream up.

I just thank G-d every day that New London is not like Hartford and Chicago yet where the Police have given up and just done the best they can to fully infiltrate the Latin Kings and so have the Kings so they just went ahead and infiltrated the police department. I'm not defending Chief Ackley, I'm just saying cut her some slack, she's trying to accomplish what no man before her was ever able to do, and ironically (I hope it has more to do with the economy than just that she's a woman!) she has about 2/3 the budget to work from before she even raises her hand and says "I will."

Lastly, what I "would do in the same set of circumstances with the amount of information given?" Despite you trying to drive me away calling me nothing but an arm-chair warrior? Well first off, I would scour facebook and see that several of our early suspects are explaining to their g/f's why they don't have a cellphone anymore and what they like about their new digs and why they don't like New London from now on. I would look over Matt Chew's messages and voicemails trying to understand every nuance of what looked at first like him trying to score drugs. Perhaps he was making sure that the people who were going to dance at his haus music party were only bringing raver drugs because he can't stand the smell of pot, and if anyone brings heroin, cocaine or drama he's kicking everyone out in five minutes anyhow. And I certainly would not have instructed Marshall Segar to say "drug related," "suspect at large" "no threat to the public!" I would have had him say everyone's safety is our biggest concern, leads are pouring in, including home videotape (ok cops shouldn't lie, leave that one out, is there a way to imply that heavily???) some suspects have already been questioned, and while we don't consider these kids armed and extremely dangerous, the community should remain cautious. We're actively relating this to Matt Potter's near death and several other beatdowns that look like we just might have to start kicking teeth again and drive some Latin King wannabe gang out of our sleepy little town again.

Yeah, fantastical I know, but if I'm going to be nothing but an arm-chair warrior I'm going to be the best one I know how to be. Our community requires that of not just me but so many other people.


[ref]=[ http://www.theday.com/article/20101201/NWS05/312019869 ]

For the rest of my life I will miss Matt Chew who murdered late last night on his way home from work. He made some of the best hand-tossed wood-fired pizza at a place called Two Wives and was also an incredibly eloquent DJ.




I feel angry/sad/horrified. One of the first new friends I made when I moved back here to southern New England from Oregon in '05ish '06ish. He and I have many common friends. Matt was incredibly kind, thoughtful and wise beyond years.





Fellow DJ PKAT PLUR sends up this mp3 because it was known to be one of Matt's favorites:

http://pkat.plur.ca/plurtrain/ha-p-kore%20sessions/Pkat%20-%20Ha-P-Kore%209%2091703.mp3