Harry's Place

Dead at 90.
I never saw him perform live, but what would rock and roll have been without him and Little Richard? Could the Beatles and the Stones have even existed? Ninety percent of what came after Berry and Richard has been forgettable dross in comparison.
Not just great musicianship and great songs, but some of the [...]

Dead at 79.
He is remembered for “Okie from Muskogee,” a reactionary song which I happen to like very much. He was an unashamed American patriot.
But I’m especially fond of his part in “Pancho and Lefty” with Willie Nelson.

And I appreciated his cover of Woody Guthrie’s angry, class-conscious “Jesus Christ”– where he left no doubt [...]

London-based band The Sighs of Monsters has released a new track commemorating the slain Parisian Jews on Charlie Hebdo anniversary and is donating the proceeds to the

Theodore Bikel, who died Tuesday at the age of 91 after a very full (and politically active) life, was known for many things, especially his numerous portrayals of Tevye in productions of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
But I will always remember him as a continuously-heard voice from my childhood; the wonderful album of worldwide folk [...]

I just saw a bumper sticker making that boast. Which got me thinking…
I was never an inveterate concert-goer, even in my youth, but I did have the opportunity to see performances by:
· Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
· Muddy Waters
· Howlin’ Wolf
· The Band
· Janis Joplin
· Frank Zappa
· Jefferson Airplane
· Rod Stewart (during the brief period [...]

On the subject of Jesus, there are two contradictory ways that people on the Left have looked at him.
One, expressed by the British singer-songwriter Leon Rosselson in “Stand up for Judas,” portrays Jesus as a sell-out to the Romans, dividing the poor into believers and non-believers and preaching quiescence in the face of suffering and [...]

In the cringe-inducing tradition of the Young Cons and Lowkey, here is Marcel Cartier– who, John Wight at Socialist Unity informs us, has relocated from New York City to London.

You lucky Brits, you.
Update: Oh, great. Mr. Cartier is an apologist for the regime in North Korea– after a carefully-controlled visit of a few days convinced [...]

It was on this date 73 years ago that the German battleship Bismarck, which three days earlier had sunk the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, was itself sunk in the Atlantic.
Only three of the Hood’s crew of 1,418 survived, as did a little more than a hundred of the [...]

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi blogged last year about the pro-Hezbollah, pro-Assad Lebanese Christian singer Julia Boutros, whose martial song “Atlek Neranak” is routinely played on Syrian State TV and on pro-regime YouTube videos.
You can hear it in this recruiting video for Women’s Battalion of the Syrian National Defense Forces:

According to “SovereignSyria,” which posted the video:
Syrian National [...]

The City of Longview, Texas, has paid rocker Ted Nugent $16,000 not to perform at a Fourth of July Festival.
A city spokesman said the Motor City Madman was “not the right feel for this kind of community event.”
The city had reached a verbal agreement with Nugent, scheduling the rocker as the headliner who would play [...]