“One man however kept faith in the original concept, dropped out of the prog scene completely, stayed in his room, kept writing new material and revising songs and waited.and waited.His name I don’t recall but that’s not important right now. Suffice to say it was hoped these mini-rock symphonies would, at some point in the future, see the light of day and find an appreciative audience. And so it was, thanks to those who kept faith in the music, the new incarnation of COMEDY OF ERRORS came to release their debut album ‘ DISOBEY ‘, a difficult birth, a long time in the making, but well worth the wait.”

Fanfare and Fantasy is the follow-up album to Disobey and for me it’s a good one, great musicianship and vocals, with interesting songs! The musician line-up for the album includes:

Joe Cairney / vocals
Jim Johnston / keyboards and backing vocals
Bruce Levick / drums
Mark Spalding / guitars, bass and backing vocals
John Fitzgerald / backing vocals

I particularly like Johnston’s keyboard work and Mark Spalding does a great job on guitar.

The album received an overall 4.13 rating at the Prog Archives and they say it’s an excellent addition to any Prog Rock collection! You can check out more including reviews at the Prog Archives here

Let’s go off to Target with “In a Lifetime” from Fanfare & Fantasy!

Here are the scantily clad women on the beach!!

On the waters of Barnegat Bay!!

Here’s a photograph of the train station at Loveladies.

Of course if you have a train station, you need a train!!

The first photograph reminds me of a passage that I read last night in The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley:

….Princess Alice (Roosevelt) donned a bathing costume – a high-necked, long-sleeved mohair dress with long black stockings and bathing shoes, her hair tucked under a tightly fitting cap. Alice recalled, “Mr Taft thought that there was too much skin showing,” and that he pleaded “With photographers not to take photographs of me in my bathing suit. It was considered a little indelicate”

My, how things have changed!!

“Have you talked to Jesse Winchester? You can’t talk about

Way back in the early 70s my then girlfriend told me I had to listen to this new singer-songwriter that she loved Jesse Winchester. She particularly loved the song “Yankee Lady”. I listened she was right and through the years I’ve become the bigger fan! Today we celebrate Jesse’s 69th birthday! It is a birthday that last year fans were afraid he would not celebrate, because he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He had to cancel his tours and undergo treatment for the next couple of months. But he has been given the all clear from his doctor and has restarted touring! For those of you unfamilar with Jesse. Here’s the obligatory biographical information from Wikipedia:

Jesse Winchester (born James Ridout Winchester; May 17, 1944) is an American musician and songwriter who was born and raised in the southern United States. To avoid the Vietnam War draft he moved to Canada in 1967, which is where and when he began his career as a solo artist. His highest charting recordings were of his own tunes, “Yankee Lady” in 1970 and “Say What” in 1981. He became a Canadian citizen in 1973, gained amnesty in the U.S. in 1977 and resettled there in 2002.[1]

Winchester is probably most well known as a songwriter, with his works being recorded by many notable artists, including Patti Page, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez, Anne Murray, Reba McEntire, The Everly Brothers and Emmylou Harris.[2][3] A number of these recordings have had success on various charts.[4] Continue Reading

Back in 2010 Tom Russell wrote this post on his blog The Lion In Winter and wrote this about Jesse’s music:

..last week, my friend Alec delivered a link to a video of Jesse Winchester singing a song on Elvis Costello’s TV show. It’s a heartfelt saga of teenage love, rendered by a true master; with sincerity and quiet passion. We tend to forget about Jesse, but there he was. Telling me again why in hell we’re in this game. Cutting to the heart of the matter. Right near the end of the song the camera slides over to Neko Case; sitting next to Jesse on stage –and a tear rolls down her cheek. Do I have have to say more? That’s it. That’s why we’re here. In this age when we’re drowning in the worthless bilge water of tired celebrity – like who cares if Willie Nelson duets with Norah Jones, or Bono sings with Springsteen? It’s a ragged dress rehearsal of a celebrity circus that carries no original, gutsy spark. It’s all rote; a Starbucks CD sitting next to the Sugar Cookies. Then Jesse Winchester nails it. One to the heart and head; that tear rolls down Neko’s cheek. What songs are supposed to do…

Yes it is, and when I listen to Jesse, I am moved, maybe back to his hometown in Mississippi – where “I think I see a wagon rutted road, with the weeds growin’ tall between the tracks” or to Club Manhattan, where I can hear a young Steve Crooper and it’s 1963, I can find love and lose love, but I will always feel and live the songs he writes! So Happy Birthday, Jesse and I hope there’s many more birthdays and songs to come!!

Here’s a post I found when I was researching this post it has some nice quotes from Jesse: Jesse Winchester- More Than Just a Showman 

Here’s the song that Tom Russell wrote about in his post!

On May 16, 1980, Los Angeles Lakers point guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson steps in for injured center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and scores 42 points, leading the Lakers to a four games-to-two series win over the Philadelphia 76ers for their first championship since 1972.

I can remember feeling very confident that the Sixers would tie the series at 3 and send the series back to LA for a Game 7 – not – that damn Magic Johnson, bit giving credit where credit is due. He played a hell of a game!

In the finals, the Lakers met the Philadelphia 76ers, led by forwards Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Darryl Dawkins, defensive specialist Bobby Jones and guards Maurice Cheeks and Doug Collins. Abdul-Jabbar dominated the first five games of the finals, averaging 31 points and 12 rebounds per game, as the Lakers went up 3-2 in the series. When he twisted an ankle in Game 5, even the Lakers front office assumed that the team would travel without their star center to Philadelphia and lose Game 6, a fact made evident by the team’s decision not to take their celebratory champagne with them to Philly.

 

No one expected that Magic, at 6 feet 9 inches the tallest point guard in league history, would so easily make the transition to center. Magic rang up 42 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists to lead the Lakers to victory and was named Most Valuable Player of the finals, the first of three such awards in his career. The Lakers went on to dominate the NBA, winning a total of five championships in the 1980s.Full Story at History.com

From Philly.com Magic makes Sixers disappear

In 2005 Malek Ben Arbia the band’s founder and guitarist traveled to Nancy – France and enrolled in the famous Guitar school, Music Academy International (M.A.I.) After graduating, Ben Arbia returned to Tunisia intending to pursue an international music career with MYRATH. At that time,experienced bass player Anis Jouini joined the band and the band had a line up that consisted of four skilled musicians! MYRATH spent the next three months or so writing new songs for the second album.

Their second album Hope was recorded in 2006, with Kevin Codfert as sound engineer and producer.The album was a turning point in the career of MYRATH. As a result of Kevin’s valuable assistance, and superb work, the band was signed by the French label Brennus Music who released “Hope” in September 2007.

Today I listened to the bands third album Tales of the Sands and I loved the sound and music of the band. I particularly enjoyed the title track!

The musicians on the album include:

Anis Jouini / Bass
Saif Ouhibi / Drums
Malek Ben Arbia / Guitars
Elyes Bouchoucha / Keyboards, Vocals
Zaher Zorgatti / Vocals

The album has a 4.07 rating at ProgArchives and is labeled as an excellent addition to any ProgRock collection!!

Reviewer at ProgArchives – Conner Fynes wrote this about the album back when it was released in 2011:

Over the past few months, the world’s eyes have been set on the Arab world, with breaths held in anticipation of the rapid political changes that are taking place. Myrath is a progressive outfit emerging from one of the region’s smaller nations, Tunisia. Being the first metal band in the country to ever reach a wider audience, Myrath (the Arabic word for ‘Legend’) have engaged audiences already with two albums of top-tier progressive metal, fusing Middle-Eastern traditional musical influences in with their brand of melodic metal, much as the more established band Orphaned Land does. With a unique mixture of sound, excellent songwriting, and great execution, Myrath’s ‘Tales Of The Sands’ is a fantastic album in its own right.

 

Being someone who was under the impression that exciting melodic prog metal died around the turn of the millennium under a blanket of Dream Theater clones, it has been a huge refreshment to hear a band that may be doing something similar to the legends of the genre, but are putting a validating new angle on their sound. Before listening to what Myrath had to offer, I was admittedly fighting a doubt that this could be a run-of-the-mill power metal band, using sounds of their homeland as a gimmick to pull in listeners, but as is fairly rare for my experience with metal music, I was proven wrong. While progressive power metal mixed with Arabic music sounds pretty much as one might expect, the Oriental sounds in the music are infused superbly in with the metal, not sounding contrived, but instead as a sincere element of the songwriting Continue Reading

So check them out, again as for me, I need to go back and listen to those first two albums….. Let’s go “Into the Night” with “Tales of the Sands” from Myrath…..

Many of you soon-to-be college graduates are determined to make the world a better place. Some of you are choosing careers in public service or joining nonprofits or volunteering in your communities.

 

But many of you are cynical about politics. You see the system as inherently corrupt. You doubt real progress is possible.

 

“What chance do we have against the Koch brothers and the other billionaires?” you’ve asked me. “How can we fight against Monsanto, Boeing, JP Morgan, and Bank of America? They buy elections. They run America.”

 

Let me remind you: Cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You have no chance if you assume you have no chance.

 

“But it was different when you graduated,” you say. “The sixties were a time of social progress.”

 

You don’t know your history. Continue Reading

Having graduated in 1970 only two years behind Robert Reich, I do know my history and the rest of Mr. Reich’s post lays it out very well…. some of the changes that have occurred over the last 43 to 45 years have been mind-blowing! Could we have imaged the iPhone or iPods? And the election of Obama and many of the other things that Mr. Reich points out…. the world is changing and we as progressives and liberals MUST fight to keep it moving in the right direction FORWARD, not back the direction that most Republicans want to take us!!

The other night, I was looking for some music that both my wife and I would like, and decided on Joe. I put on Darkling and the Bluebird Jubilee and she appeared to like it but said nothing. So I was surprised when she commented on another song the next day saying that it was like that “Good Luck, John” song that I played the night before, and that she never heard the end of the song! Her only complaint was that there was too much Dobro and guitar in the song, spoiling it!!

So here’s a more striped down version of the song from a Folk Alley performance by Joe! I hope all that guitar at the end of the song doesn’t ruin it for her!!

The three-week search for victims of the worst garment-industry disaster in history ended on Monday [AFP]

After H&M, the largest purchaser of garments in Bangladesh, announced on Monday that it would sign a fire and safety upgrade plan in the country, four other retailers have similarly signed on: Spanish retailer Inditex, owner of Zara, Dutch retailer C&A, and British retailers Primark and Tesco. Europe accounts for 60 percent of the country’s clothing exports. American company PVH, which owns Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Izod, also signed onto the deal, a more expansive version of one it had already signed, and pledged to contribute $2.5 million to underwrite factory safety improvements.

As the New York Times reports, “The agreement calls for independent, rigorous factory safety inspections with public accountability and mandatory repairs and renovations underwritten by Western retailers. It also enhances the roles played by workers and unions to ensure factory safety.” It will last for five years.Continue Reading

After the Boston Marathon Bombing, my daughter and I were discussing that it was better that the bombing happened in Boston and not LA ,after the way the LA police handled the Christopher Dorner case, the indiscriminate shootings that occurred and the eventual killing of Dorner, there response would have no doubt resulted in the death of the bombing suspect and maybe others. It seems that you can add the California Highway patrol to the list of California police who overact to incidents. From Truthdig:

Officers Reportedly Beat California Man to Death as He Begs for His Life

A 33-year-old California man and father of four died after sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers responded to reports of a possibly intoxicated man outside a Bakersfield medical center last week. The Kern County Sheriff’s Office says David Sal Silva initially resisted arrest. More law enforcement officers eventually arrived and they began beating him with batons, according to Digital Journal.

Witness Ruben Ceballos, 19, says he saw two officers beating the victim with batons. “They were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head.” Ceballos added that he could hear Silva screaming for help, but says those cries didn’t stop officers from continuing to beat the man.Continue Reading

I love it, the Republicans can get nothing right when it comes to the Hispanic Community!

RNC Director Of Hispanic Outreach Quits Party And Registers As A Democrat

When Republicans appointed Pablo Pantoja to State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, they hoped he would be able to bridge the sizable gap that only expanded during the 2012 elections, when the state’s 4.3 million Hispanic voters supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a 20 percent margin.

But after months of inaction by Congressional Republicans on comprehensive immigration reform and stiff resistance by Republican-leaning groups like the Heritage Foundation, Pantoja has had enough; on Monday, he announced via email that he was leaving the party and registering as a Democrat: Continue Reading