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April 30, 2018 Fox News headline:
No guns allowed at NRA convention when Trump, Pence speak
-------------- Esquire-UK headline:
"The NRA Believe In The Right To Bear Arms
(Unless It's At Their Own Event)"
---------------------- [from the article] ---------- In the past few months companies have been demonstrating where they stand on the gun control debate, with YouTube banning videos selling firearms, Google swapping the gun emoji for a water pistol and Bumble banning photographs of weapons on the dating app.
Their decisions to weigh in demonstrates a growing resistance to the country's relaxed gun control laws which have contributed to an epidemic of mass shootings in America.
The National Rifle Association's response to the calls for tighter laws on gun ownership has been to reiterate that the second amendment is a God-given right of all U.S. citizens, and peddle the line that guns are not dangerous, people are dangerous. They have long pushed the idea of a "good guy with a gun" to neutralise the bad.
So when the NRA announced last week that they would be banning guns for a speech by Vice-President Mike Pence to NRA members, many were quick to point out their hypocrisy.
[from Twitter] --
Kurt Eichenwald
I don't understand. The NRA has banned guns at their convention because Pence will be there. But guns don't kill people, people kill people. I know that because the NRA says so....
Amy Siskind
Gawd the irony never stops: but we can have them in our schools. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas/2018/04/24/vice-president-mike-pence-will-speak-nra-convention-dallas ...
"Guns banned for Vice President Mike Pence's speech at NRA..."
UnsilentMajority
NRA - We need guns in our schools!!
Me - You start by allowing them at your conventions and we'll talk
NRA - whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not get crazy here
Catherynne Valente
The NRA banned guns at their event for Mike Pence.
I just don't understand. Why does the NRA want the Vice President to put himself in danger?
Wouldn't he be safest if every single person in the room had an open carry AR-15 for which they didn't have a pass a background check?
Guns: safe enough for schools but not for an NRA Convention!
Fred Guttenberg
On so many levels, this is enlightening. According to the NRA, we should want everyone to have weapons when we are in public.
But when they put on a convention, the weapons are a concern? I thought giving everyone a gun was to enhance safety.
Am I missing something?
--------------------- The news prompted criticism from survivors of the Parkland school shooting, to whom Trump floated the idea of arming teachers in order to protect them. It appears that the NRA are happy to foster a gun-free area for themselves but nowhere else.
"Wait wait wait wait wait wait you're telling me to make the VP safe there aren't any weapons around but when it comes to children they want guns everywhere?" tweeted Matt Deitsch, a Parkland student. "Can someone explain this to me?"
Fellow student Cameron Kasky also mocked their announcement saying that, "The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself."
|||||||| [memo]
NRA Dallas Annual Meetings
Due to the attendance of the Vice President of the United States, the U.S. Secret Service will be responsible for event security at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum. As a result, firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum prior to and during his attendance.
(And they add, "Click here for additional information.")
--------------- end, Memo -----------------------------
March for Our Lives organiser and Parkland survivor David Hogg has called on Pence to cancel his NRA appearance, calling it, "a slap in the face to Americans -- from Parkland to Chicago to Nashville -- hurting from gun violence" in a petition that has nearly 50,000 signatures.
------------------------------ written by Olivia Ovenden
April 30, 2018
____________________________________
All the saints and sinners
They pay handsomely
MSCAE they make the weapons
And they run the prisons
And they sell the justice
'Cause being guilty is just good business
Well, we're standing on the borderline
Ain't no one here going to stop it now
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave
Ed Murrow had a child
The damn thing went wild
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave
Ed Murrow had a child
The damn thing went wild
Half-closed eyes and unconscious death
Do you feel the ooze as your brain drains out
From the pneumatic drills and sharpened knives?
Blood in the sky, are you dead or alive?
All the restless people and the bitter green
Well, it takes this gold, make the spirit mean
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave
Murrow's turnin' over in his grave...
-------------------------------
Fleetwood Mac song from the Say You Will album (2003)
written by Lindsey Buckingham
-30-
I learn, by reading an article, that Mick Fleetwood is publishing a whole book about the early years of Fleetwood Mac in England, right at the time when I've become interested in researching this band, so I'm all happy, right? Can't wait to buy the book -- I'm, like, as happy as Jacqueline (Bouvier) Kennedy would have been, to get her hands on a new book about ballet! All excited, and then I find out the Fleetwood book is approx. 500 dollars.
?? !! ?? !!
What izz -- zamatterwideezpeople??!!
I was so annoyed.
Like -- everyone makes decisions about whether to buy something that they really want, but it turns out to be expensive.
Everyone goes through those mental gymnastics -- can I afford it? Is it an appropriate and smart purchase, out of my current income? Can I justify the purchase? How much do I really want the object?
If the Fleetwood Mac book was priced $40 - $60, I would have bought it without hesitation. Enthusiasm and excitement would replace any financial-based decision-making. (I don't normally or often buy a book in that price range -- most books I want cost less than $40...)
But this sounded so terrific, and it answered an immediate interest that I was excited about, so -- 40 to 60 dollars -- would not have been debated long in my brain.
If the book was $100, I would have considered its purchase (somewhat) carefully -- (but all the while, knowing I was going to buy it!)
If the book was priced at $200, I would have thought about it longer, and really seriously looked at both sides of the question of whether I should spend that much money on a book. Then I would have probably decided to buy it.
If the book was priced at $300, I would have thought about it even longer, and really really seriously looked at both sides of the question of whether I should spend that much money on a book. Then I would have probably decided not to buy it.
But I wouldn't have been upset about it, because I would have felt like I had a real choice, and this time, even though I want the book, I made a choice which I know fits better financially with my income. I don't think I would have been upset...
But four hundred and sixty-six dollars for one book -- THAT sh-t was just pissing me OFF. ...
__________________________________
don't go to Germany in 1969
Last night on You Tube, I listened to some music of early Fleetwood Mac -- and then there was a video that was maybe 45 or 50 minutes long, about F-Mac and Peter Green. Sort of a mini-documentary.
It was discussing, basically -- What Happened to Peter Green. When the band was touring in the late sixties or early 70s, they went to Germany and Peter Green, one of the band's founding members, sort of got in with some group of people -- a cult or something, and he was basically never the same again, and never in Fleetwood Mac again.
It was -- spooky -- really, the way they told it -- like, a group of people from this -- group, or commune, or cult, or whatever it was, met the band at the airport, and they sort of ignored the other band members and kind of drew Peter Green away with them.
They ended up at some party at a large mansion, with weird scenes going on. Drugs... I don't know... I have to watch it again.
At one point Mick Fleetwood said of the group of Germans, "They were intellectuals..."
---------------------------- (How would he know they were "intellectuals" -- and what does that even mean? ... Oh! - don't tell me they were carrying books with them...?! OMG, did they bring some books that -- COST FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX DOLLARS, Mick Fleetwood?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, yeah, scary, isn't it??)
[Fade to black; disappointed and outraged grumbling heard in background...]
-30-
Two pieces of Fleetwood Mac information:
1. There were two albums titled "Fleetwood Mac" --
one came out in 1968 (the first album by the original F-Mac line-up
and one which they put out in 1975 -- the one that had "Rhiannon"
"Over My Head"
"Say You Love Me"
"Landslide"
among others.
... the album right before Rumours.
To easily and clearly differentiate between the two albums when referring to them, we can say,
"Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac"
(1968)
and
"Fleetwood Mac, The White Album"
(1975).
2. We can experience early Fleetwood Mac in live performance on You Tube:
"Peter Greens Fleetwood Mac Live 1968-70"
It is a series of live performances of Fleetwood Mac (which was a blues band, as they say...) from different concerts on various dates.
Yeah.
-30-
The statement, "Fleetwood Mac was a blues band" is imprinted on my brain because several times throughout my life, someone nearby has taken it upon themselves to make sure I was educated to that point.
I don't know if it was in college, or later, or much more recently, or all of the above.
I would have maybe mentioned Fleetwood Mac, or was listening to it, or commenting -- "I love that song!" ("Gold Dust Woman" - "Never Going Back Again"...) and someone made that statement to me, to make sure I had an understanding that the band Fleetwood Mac didn't just pop from nowhere in 1975, "starring" Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
(I suppose the people who urged this information into my consciousness were concerned that I might be mistakenly thinking that this band had only just come into being in the last couple of years... [Did they think I was some kind of airhead? ... Possible...] "Play Rhiannon again! Turn it up!)
"Fleetwood Mac was a blues band.
(pause)
"From England."
__________________________________
Recently I set an informal goal of learning all about Fleetwood Mac, in the early years, pre-Nicks / Buckingham, and also the albums they made after Rumours, which have received short-shrift of my attention.
Right after formulating this goal, I read that Mick Fleetwood has put together a book about the earliest years of the band, and it's a real nice book, with many photographs etc.
This news seemed to dovetail nicely with my current interest, so I couldn't wait to buy it and dig in -- until I found out it costs 325 English "pounds" -- I Google that, and find out that's 466 American "dollars." By the time you would pay sales tax and shipping & handling, that would be 500 dollars for this book.
I found myself very ticked off and frustrated with this. Mr. Fleetwood -- considering he's a musician, he's a little "tone deaf" to modern life, if he thinks that is a price which working humans can afford.
Maybe he only cares about selling the book to his billionaireonepercentrockstarfriends. Which does not include me. So -- thanks for nothing, Mick.
I was immensely disappointed. Grrrrrrrrrr...
I wrote a friend: I wish I didn't know about this book -- LOL. If I only had not read about it, then I would not be so appalled and annoyed.
Time machine! Turn back time, so that I don't read about the book!
(And I'm not typing in the title of the book here, because I'm not giving it any free advertising. There, that'll fix 'em....)
But I started thinking about the fact that I have Wi-fi Internet now (and the Information Superhighway, to boot!), and so I thought of researching for myself about early Fleetwood Mac albums and performances and history, etc.
... (Fleetwood Mac was a blues band. [Did you know that?...])
-------------------------------------------
LIST OF STUDIO ALBUMS BY FLEETWOOD MAC, BEFORE "STEVIE AND LINDSEY" JOINED IN 1974:
Fleetwood Mac
(also known as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac)
February 24, 1968
Mr. Wonderful
August 23, 1968
Then Play On
September 19, 1969
Kiln House
September 18, 1970
Future Games
September 3, 1971
Bare Trees
March 1972
Penguin
March 1973
Mystery to Me
October 15, 1973
Heroes Are Hard to Find
September 13, 1974
-30-
On the subject of the phrase / expression,
"picking them up and laying them down" ...
~~ There is a blog titled
Picking Them Up And Laying Them Down
(subtitle, "Running And Walking In Scotland")
~~ Toby Keith has a song titled "Pick 'Em Up and Lay 'Em Down"
~~ "Pickin em Up and Layin Em down" is also the title of a poem by Maya Angelou
~~ On a blog called Orange Crate Art, there's a post on Nov. 1, 2008, titled "Picking them up and laying them down" -- The post begins: "Elaine and I went walking from door to door in a midwestern city today on behalf of a certain presidential campaign...."
~~ John Lewis, U.S. Congressman from Georgia's 5th District, tweeted, August 10, 2015, "Keep picking them up and laying them down. Ours is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime."
---------------------------------------------
_______________________________
____________________________
So clearly, it's an expression that's "out there" and various people use it in various ways, and adapt it to suit what they need to express.
\\ people running really fast --
"picking them up and laying them down" -- as in, their feet...
\\ somebody telling just how things are in his view --
"I told them where to pick it up and where to lay it down" ...
\\ English guys playing the blues of the American South --
They "know how to lay it down and shove it back..."
---------------- That third version drops the first part of the expression, "picking it up," and states that the musicians "lay it down" -- play it -- and "shove it back" across the Atlantic, for the American musicians to hear how the English are playing their American music.... ("check this out!"...)
--------------- It occurred to me that maybe the expression originated in "Gambler-Slang" -- like, picking up cards and laying down other cards...
When I Google the expression by typing it in, or type it in with "origin of the expression" typed in in front of it, items come up but there's no definitive statement of the expression's origin that I can find, and the variety of references which advance upon me, leave me less edified than confused....
I'm going to guess "picking them up and laying them down" and variations originated somewhere in the South. Even though two known sources were people who grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania, those states have some southern influence because of people moving north during the early and middle parts of the 20th Century.
And that Rolling Stone reviewer who wrote that early Fleetwood Mac playing the blues could "lay it down and shove it back" spent part of his childhood in New Orleans,
according to online encyclopedia.
So -- Southern origins, I hypothesize.
Okay -- okay, here's another one, out of the tangled sometimes meaningless threads of yadda on the Internet -- Louis Armstrong uses that phrase: from Louis Armstrong: His Life and Times:
"We would stretch out across that floor doing the Charleston as fast as the music would play it. Boy, oh boy, you talking about four cats picking them up and laying them down -- that was us..."
And the great "Satchmo" -- born and raised in New Orleans.
That's it -- I'm going with the theory:
It is an expression that originated in the South.
Picking them up and laying them down.
Laying it down and shoving it back.
...
-30-
My cousin Brian told us about when he was a child in Ohio, he was down by a pond in the woods, and a big snake came out of the water and chased him.
He escaped the snake: to describe the run-for-his-life, he said, "I was pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down!"
I really loved that turn-of-phrase, and thought I had not heard it ever before. (Except -- maybe I liked it so much because I had heard it somewhere, and it was a long-buried memory...)
I could never forget that suspenseful, colorful phrase and stayed alert for opportunities to use it myself, but it never comes into my conversation naturally.
__________________
"I was pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down!"
_______________________
Then about two weeks ago, "The Cosby Show" was on my DVD player: in a Season 5 episode titled "It Comes And It Goes" Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable receives some teasing criticism from the women in his family, out in the kitchen.
But when he returns to the men in the living room he tries to give an alternative picture, in which he told the ladies how it was: and he says, as part of his description, "I told them where to pick it up and where to lay it down."
! ! !
I wondered whether "pick it up and lay it down" might be an expression from a certain part of the country. I never hear people where I live now say that, and I never heard anyone in Boston say that, when I lived there.
My cousin Brian lives in Ohio. Bill Cosby was from Philadelphia... maybe "picking them up and laying them down" is a phrase people got into using in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. And maybe Michigan or Kentucky...
Then yesterday I was reading and re-typing that Rolling Stone review of Fleetwood Mac's first album, and it contained a variation of the phrase:
"The English continue to prove how well into the blues they really are, and know how to lay it down and shove it back across the Atlantic."
-30-
I went on You Tube and listened to Kiln House, a Fleetwood Mac album from the early British years: it has Buddy Holly influence.
Then I looked up, what were the first FM albums in England?
1. Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
2. Mr. Wonderful
3. Then Play On
---------------------------- Last night I listened to #3.
In 1968 when #1, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, came out, a rock writer reviewed it for Rolling Stone:
By Barry Gifford
August 10, 1968
The Blues has always been popular in England. Performers like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Howlin' Wolf and even Freddie King and Bo Diddley were stars in England before making it big in their own country.
When John Mayall formed the Bluesbreakers it was out of respect and admiration to those performers; and he's stayed with the blues, cultivating a number of fine young blues musicians including guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green.
After Clapton left Mayall, moving on to form Cream, Peter Green replaced him. Now Green has formed his own group, Fleetwood Mac (along with another former Bluesbreaker, bassist John McVie).
Whereas Clapton expanded onto new horizons with Cream, Green has chosen to remain dedicated to the blues, and on this, their first recorded effort, Fleetwood Mac have established themselves as another tight English blues band -- joining Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and Savoy Brown as chief practitioners of blues in England.
Green, like Mayall, has studied the records and performances of Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Slim, Junior Wells and Elmore James carefully.
The piano riffs on "Hellhound On My Trail" are lifted directly from Slim's classic "If You See Kay," but it's done well, if perhaps a little too self-consciously. Fleetwood Mac (the name is a combination of the names of members of the group), know what they're doing, they dig the music they're playing and that's great -- but the drawback here is that they don't put enough of themselves into it instead of what they've heard from the original artists.
Green is a more than competent guitar player, and the Mac's treatment of "Shake Your Moneymaker" is just as powerful as the first Butterfield version (on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band album). The harp work is proficient in most places but rather weak on "Got to Move," the old Sonny Boy Williamson song.
Green's composition "Long Grey Mare" is one of the best cuts on the album, anchored by McVie's strong bass line. The record has a strange, prematurely vintage (if there can be such a thing) sound to it, like an old classic recording made in the late Forties or early Fifties.
Like most modern white bluesmen, Fleetwood Mac try very hard to live the kind of music they play -- not picking cotton in the Delta, but maintaining the hard-life blues tradition, gigging at small clubs in Northern England and in scruffy halls in the East End. Their music retains an unaffected rough quality.
They play well, and if it sounds a little scratchy at times it's because that's the way they happen to feel at that particular moment. The licks they've copied from other performers are natural enough -- it's more of a tribute than an imitation.
The English continue to prove how well into the blues they really are, and know how to lay it down and shove it back across the Atlantic.
Fleetwood Mac are representative of how far the blues has penetrated -- far enough for a group of London East-Enders to have cut a record potent enough to make the South Side of Chicago take notice.
-30-
Rolling Stone has an article online titled
"Mick Fleetwood Looks Back on Fleetwood Mac's Early Days"
written by Richard Bienstock (August 10, 2017).
Mr. Fleetwood, a founding member, has a book coming out chronicling the band's 1968 - 1974 years.
Mick Fleetwood, 1977
Reader Comments:
Sterling Somebody
----------- I like the current version of Fleetwood Mac quite a bit ... but the original band was a grossly unappreciated killer of a group. Kiln House is one of the best albums ever made by any band. To me, it even stands up when compared to the Beatles or Stones....
renodave
------------- Great interview. I just wish there was someone these days who could play with the same sensitivity and passion that Peter Green (and Danny Kirwan to a slightly lesser degree) did for a few years in the late 60s. They were expressing something so deep that even they couldn't keep it up for long. Those early Fleetwood Mac recordings are very special indeed....
Lorne McLeod
----------------- Good interview, I saw the original Fleetwood Mac play their first ever concert in Canada at the PNE Gardens back in the late sixties. To say I was "blown away" is a definite understatement.
I never missed the original band when they were in town, until the "new" Fleetwood Mac (Buckingham/Nicks) took the band in a whole different direction.
I still listen to portions of "Fleetwood Mac in Chicago" almost every day.
Just listen to Peter Green's version of "I need your love so bad" (Little Willie John tune), to me the best rendition of the song ever. Jeremy Spencer is one of the finest slide players of all time. In my opinion, the best English blues band ever.
I had the pleasure of meeting the band (including the new member Danny Kirwan)
on their second visit to Vancouver, they were a blast. I will absolutely get this "read" as my appreciation for this band never waned. What a personal inspiration they have been for me all these many years.
-30-
Listen to the wind blow,
Watch the sun rise.
Run in the shadows,
damn your love, damn your lies
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)...
{The Chain" - written / Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, Stevie Nicks}
_____________________________________
So many of the readers Commenting on Lindsey Buckingham's exodus from Fleetwood Mac invoke the name Peter Green, the band's founder. This is him:
I can't help about the shape I'm in
I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to...
_______________________
I got a black magic woman
I got a black magic woman
Yes, I got a black magic woman
She's got me so blind, I can't see
That she's a black magic woman
And she's tryin' to make a devil out of me...
(And before someone yells, "That's not Fleetwood Mac -- that's a Santana song!" -- yes, Santana had a big hit, but Peter Green wrote it and recorded it first....)
_______________________________
One of my favorite moments is on a show called Playboy After Dark, which you can see on You Tube, listening to a genial Hugh Hefner introduce "the Fleetwood Mac"...
People enjoy their public figures, but when I was writing here yesterday I realized that the public -- the "audience" -- also gets impatient with their famous "friends" when the notables kick their feet and throw their toys too much.
Speculating on the Buckingham - FM kerfuffle, one Commenter wrote, "never seeing another Fleetwood Mac concert again." Another said, "this isn't a stunt that would have been pulled in their early years," and added that band members should "be grateful" and learn to get along.
Like, learn something from the past, don't just keep repeating it.
"I just saw Buckingham-McVie last year, and they were terrific. I'll let that be my final Fleetwood live gig, and end it on a high note. This is ridiculous," reads another Comment.
Fans' impatience can energize and swirl into grouchy criticism and name-calling: one commenter says Buckingham brings the drama -- while another one calls Stevie Nicks "Ms. Mysterious Dwarf."
(That reminded me of something a You Tube Commenter said about NYC's former mayor, Rudy Giuliani: "Please do not elect this lawn gnome to any office, ever again.")
_________________________
two songs (You Tube)
1. Lindsey Buckingham: Never Going Back Again -- AXS TV
2. (scroll down a little from #1 and play
Fleetwood Mac ~ Second Hand News
(evie 1942, 634,000 views)
This weekend, listen to these two songs 403 times.
Or twice.
You're welcome!
-30-
