"Some will come and some will go | We shall surely pass" Signe Anderson 1941-2016

Earlier today we heard the news that Signe Anderson, the singer on the first Jefferson Airplane album of 1966, had died at 74 on January 28, the same day the Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner had died at 74. On the cover of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, Paul and Signe are standing on either side of the propellor in the center of the band. I have to admit that it's not the Airplane album I'm most familiar with, so I put the CD in the car and went for a drive on back roads in the hills and listened to it from beginning to end. I was especially struck when the first solo appearance of Signe's voice came with the words "Some will come and some will go | We shall surely pass" in Dino Valenti's "Let's Get Together" (the hit version of this song was recorded a year later than the Airplane version by The Youngbloods).



"Love is but a song we sing
Fear the way we die"

Paul Kantner 3/17/1941-1/28/2016

If there was one album that was my interior soundtrack as I finished high school and moved into college, it was Paul Kantner's Blows Against the Empire. I knew (I know) every note and every word up to and including this final song:

Hearing the unexpected news of Paul Kantner's death tonight is hitting me hard.

They've all come to look for America in Bernie Sanders' new ad...

Ted Cruz in blackface wins the endorsement of a duck-hunting hobo...

...or something.

Presidential politics has jumped the shark and become something very very weird in 2016.

If you don't love Donald Trump's dancing and lip-syncing 'Freedom Girls,' then move back to Iran, you Commie!

This happened yesterday in Pensacola, Florida, and reminded me immediately of the Buzz Windrip campaign described by Sinclair Lewis in 1935:

Recorded at Columbia Studios on January 14, 1965

Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues":

I always find myself watching the conversation between Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth off to the left when I watch D.A. Pennebaker’s film of the song.

David Bowie 1947-2016

"Sayonara, until next time."

Syd Barrett would have been turning 70 today.

Here's one of Syd's hits (though Syd himself, perhaps appropriately, doesn't appear in the film):


As I was watching this early Pink Floyd video of 'See Emily Play,' I couldn't help thinking that it looked as if this must have had some influence on the creators of the Teletubbies. A very quick search of YouTube then revealed this:

Tinky Winky needs to start studying the choreography more carefully.

A Suggestion for Barack Obama's last State of the Union Address on January 12:

Bring Luther, your anger translator:

You will know them by their elementary-school spelling grades.

I had a philosophy professor in college who told us that she would stop reading our blue-book exams and fail us if she ran across a single instance of the name "Nietzsche" spelled incorrectly. Shouldn't we hold those self-appointed constitutional scholars and members of #YallQaeda who are currently occupying federal property in Oregon -- but don't seem to be able to spell either "Tyrannical" or "Government" correctly on their printed signs -- to the same high standards?

This screen grab of @Ammon_Bundy's Twitter page was captured at noon (EST) on January 4, 2016.

Although maybe we should give these terrorist members of Vanilla ISIS a pass. Maybe their word processor simply ran short of the lower-case letter 'n'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE 1/7/2016: It has been discovered that this @Ammon_Bundy page is a hoax, but the "tyranical goverment" sign is real, so I'll leave this post here.