Hi Rhythm

Bob Mehr, the Memphis Commercial Appeal's crackerjack new music writer, just wrote the best piece I've ever seen on Hi Rhythm, one of the greatest studio bands of all time.

Click on over there and read it now.

I especially appreciated the accurate history of the musicians and the well-deserved inclusion of Archie Turner (aka Hubbie Mitchell) as a full member of the unit.

Mehr very aptly quotes the writer Robert Gordon on these guys' togetherness:

Part of the power of the Hi band derived from the close-knit nature of their players, who'd come up under the tutelage of patriarchal "Pops" Mitchell and were family in one way or another. "The fact that the same blood -- literally the same blood -- is pumping through most of their hearts, makes the beat sync up in a family way," says Gordon. "There's a level of closeness in what they do and who they are as people and their history together, that means they can take the music to a tighter place than other groups can get to."

Just so. I've described it this way: Hi Rhythm performs like a school of fish, which turns instantly without seeming to have or need a leader.

I'm privileged to have known these guys for many years; and I'm glad to hear Teenie say the entire original unit plans to play out again regularly, starting with an appearance in Stax Studio A this coming Monday night from 7-9pm, with guest singer Syl Johnson.

To get a glimpse of what that show is going to be like, see an earlier post of mine for a video shot in London of Syl Johnson and Hi Rhythm doing an immortal song Syl recorded first, "Take Me To The River."

New Rob Jungklas CD

Back a few years, local radio stations were playing a tour-de-force anthem, "Memphis Thing," put out under Rob Jungklas' name and featuring some premier players in the studio, my buds Jack Holder and Tony Thomas among them. Fast forward to 2002 or 3, and I'm at a CD release party at the Hi-Tone listening to Rob's new direction and appreciating a voice as rich as Richie Havens'. I ultimately bought Arkadelphia; and it was an in-the-van favorite for weeks. Click here for samples.

I met Rob after that; and he's a real, nice, Memphis dude.

Now, thanks to a heads-up from Mark Jordan, I'm reading about Rob's new record, Gully. Click here for samples. You can also hear two full-length cuts from Gully and two from Arkadelphia at Rob's MySpace site.

I was saddened to read that Rob's marriage ended in divorce. Sigh. Join the club, Rob. It hurts, doesn't it?





Rob will doubtless be performing songs from Gully at Otherlands Coffee Bar, 641 S. Cooper, at 8 p.m. Saturday, cover $5.

It would be good to see and hear you again, Rob.

Presidential Primary Leapfrog

Some states don't seem to give a damn about Iowa and New Hampshire being the first and so influential in the nominating process and have set their 2008 primaries even earlier.

The Democratic Party has declared that it will refuse to seat delegates elected in these "leapfrogging" primaries; and that is partially correct.

What should happen is for Congress to legislate a rotating regional primary system that has a compact group of states voting the same day. Another compact group of states in another region would vote at a later date; and remaining groups of states would follow in turn. The order of voting by region would rotate so that no one region would always be first.

Tennessee's U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander actually has such a bill, but it exempts Iowa and New Hampshire. To Hell with that exemption!

From today's Washington Post:

“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.
. . . .
Mr. Edwards, who has said his candidacy cannot be successful without a strong performance in Iowa, said the four states chosen by the national committee “need to be first because in these states ideas count, not just money.”

Oh bullshit. My state isn't unique and special? Ideas in my state don't matter?

UPDATE: New Hampshire sets its Presidential primary for January 8.

Next year's early date, less than seven weeks from now, resulted from statesaround the country scheduling their own early primaries and caucuses to attract candidates before the major party nominees are chosen. As a result, both the Democratic and Republican nominees are likely to be effectively known by Feb. 5, when 22 states vote, if not earlier.

This is just plain wrong. There may be developments between now and the election in November that would cause the American public to choose more suitable nominees later in the year if they were allowed to. Furthermore, such early nomination makes the campaign for the general election more expensive and tiresome, burning out the American public and increasing the influence of big money in the process. Do I think our so-called leaders will correct this runaway process? Hell, no; they're despicable cowards, almost to a man (or woman).

I Have a Green Streak

UPDATE: With the publication by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of its 2007 Summary for Policymakers of the AR4 Synthesis Report, it's time for me to re-publish my January 2006 post on this subject. (A few of the quotation links have expired, but they're accurate and adequate.)

Mark Twain's remark, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," is still a truism, despite recent developments and growing scientific consensus that have silenced most of the pooh-poohing about global warming:

Tim Flannery, a respected Australian scientist and author, says the world's economic powerhouses must take drastic measures over the next two decades before Earth's climate is irreversibly altered.

"We have to make deep, deep reductions in emissions within the next 20 years," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We will have won or lost the battle for climate stability in that time."
. . . .
Prof. Will Steffen, the director of environmental studies at Canberra's respected Australian National University, said Flannery's prediction is a "worst case" scenario, but is "not impossible."

"Certainly we're seeing evidence of global warming. The evidence is quite clear now that the planet is warming compared to the baseline temperature change over the last few thousand years," Steffen said. "It's been warming quite rapidly over the last century and particularly over the last couple of decades, those observations are quite clear."
. . . .
Flannery said there is "no evidence in the world today" that a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse emissions could work. Only government regulation or "market-based instruments" — such as carbon taxes, incentives and government subsidies on green energy — would have the necessary impact, he said.

But two British scientists and professors doubt that any measures will work without returning to the touchy subject of human overpopulation:

Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, and Professor John Guillebaud, vented their frustration yesterday at the fact that overpopulation had fallen off the agenda of the many organisations dedicated to saving the planet.
. . . .
"Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance, as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental 'footprint', the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero. Only the lack of the individual can bring it down to nothing," Professor Rapley says in an article for the BBC website.
. . . .
Professor Guillebaud said: "We urgently need to stabilise and reduce human numbers. There is no way that a population of nine billion - the UN's medium forecast for 2050 - can meet its energy needs without unacceptable damage to the planet and a great deal of human misery."

People, stop being greedy for offspring. Restrict yourself to no more than two natural children of your own, total, by all partners. Don't condone overbreeding in others. Don't absorb other countries' overpopulation by letting it immigrate to your country. Forget the silliness of denying family planning aid to Third World countries if abortion is part of the program.

I can hear a lot of people thinking or muttering, "That's none of your business." OK, look at what happened in a severely overpopulated China in the 20th century: the Communist government made one child per person the norm and enforced it with whatever measures were necessary. Now they're the new economic wonder of the world. If we don't do our part by having a green streak, we may all end up with a red streak.

UPDATE: We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'

UPDATE: From the Washington Post Foreign Service:

Conventional wisdom has long explained the flood of migrants with a simple formula: Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the United States for better-paying jobs. But the calculus is more complex because of pressure caused by Mexico's population explosion....
. . . .
Since 1970, Mexico's population has doubled.

UPDATE: U-S population expanding:

The U-S population is expected to reach 300 (m) million this fall.
. . . .
Taking immigration into account, the Census Bureau says the nation is showing a net gain of one person every eleven seconds.
. . . .
The bureau says Latinos comprise the largest and fastest-growing minority group. Nearly 43 million people in the United States are Latinos and that population grew at a healthy clip of three-point-three percent between July, 2004 and July, 2005.

UPDATE: Stagnation Celebration:

What looming demographic crisis? We should welcome the prospect of an aging, or even declining, population.

UPDATE: Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly.

UPDATE: Two children should be limit, says green guru.

Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.