In Los Angeles there is a great photo every 3 feet. o

o

This song is a straight up Merkley joint. He brought this in fully written and the rest of us just added a few touches here and there. Merkley bought a sampler and began to bring in songs he did fully composed. I think I added a some of the keyboard sounds on this one (clavinet, whoosy synth) but Merkely brought it in with some of them. Plus, the sax solo is a ripping good one.

I believe we recorded this at the less expensive studio where we did our first tape and if that’s so, I’m surprised at how big this sounds given the 16 track limitation. I’m a little disappointed at where the keyboards live in the mix, but no amount of tweakage during my remaster sessions could rescue them. At the beginning, you can hear a click, but it’s the air moving out of the trombone and into the mic. We didn’t discover this until it was too late. It’s not too bad in the middle of the track, but it’s there during the fade in.

Mixing this kind of super heavy guitar-laden song is an enormous challenge, especially given the wall of guitars in the breaks. Super loud and super hard to remaster objectively. This track was a direct result of listening to too much Fishbone. It’s a good track, just a departure from the brand of ska we had been up to.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download:
Swim Herschel Swim – burn swim burn – Scourge – Remastered, MP3, 320kbps, 11.3MB

o

HI!

Remember last spring and summer when I started sharing and remastering tracks from Swim Herschel Swim? And then we had our second baby? And then we launched a new section of dooce.com? And then Heather got signed by HGTV? We’re back!

This song is one I take a modicum of pride in writing. I wrote all the music for this one and of all the songs we did, this embodies what I heard in my head when I met with Rich and Rod to discuss linking up as a ska outfit. I had composed this on my Ensoniq EPS (old school 16-bit sampler with an eight instrument limit) and when the band showed interest, I felt like I could die. Once the horns kicked in during the first rehearsal of this song I did actually die for about 2 minutes.

We recorded this one during one of our all nighters and I fought very very very hard to make sure this wasn’t too fast. I won, but not after making several control room guests uncomfortable. I think this was the one where outside observers felt that Pat and I should get a room. I absolutely love this horn line and playing it faster would ruin the vibe.

For this session, our tenor sax guy, Andy, doubled up on Baritone sax and we enlisted a trumpet sideman as well. I think we had six or seven horn tracks by the end. Sloppy and beautiful. I also got to play the massive grand piano in the studio. We tracked this mostly live in a few takes; only vocals, horns and the shout chorus were overdubbed. The bass is a real stand up double bass that Kent smuggled out of BYU late and returned super early so no one would notice its absence. It was tricky as shit to record, if I recall and we struggled to get a good tone on tape. Once we started rehearsing this, Rod thought it would be great if we added some Cab Calloway shout to the chorus. While we are screamingly white in how we sound, I think it adds a nice touch.

Lyrically, Rod wrote the words after we played a show for the Anti-Defamation League (if I recall correctly) and some dipshit skinheads showed up outside and beat up our biggest supporter, the legendary Ska Bob after Bob defended a person of color in the parking lot of the show. Douchebag racists.

This remaster should feature much punchier horns and capture the live quality of the session:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download:
Swim Herschel Swim – burn swim burn – Bob – Remastered, MP3, 320kbps, 10.8MB

Enjoy. o

Holy shit:

ksl.com – BREAKING NEWS: Hazmat called to IRS facility in Farr West

And of course, the comments are pure gold. If ignorance and extremism can be considered gold.

THIS IS THE REASON I WRITE ABOUT CONSERVATIVES SO MUCH. The invective from the conservative punditry, including Glenn Beck, is dangerous. o

Republicans are stalling. And if their tactics prevail, it will cost the U.S.

This is typical Republican theater; argue that they’re the party of fiscal responsibility while at the same time acting entirely opposite. Under the last president, with Republicans in the majority, they cut taxes and didn’t fund two wars. The irresponsibility of their actions have gone ignored by most in the media, including the supposedly “liberal” outlets.

Republicans are behaving reprehensibly, because they have become accustomed to claiming a moral high ground. In the case of healthcare reform, Republicans are 100 years behind the times, backing policy from their last popular dead president, who espoused that the government was the problem. The same president expanded government, changed the tax code and ran up the deficit, leaving a Democrat to fix it. That’s the narrative that Republicans are in deep denial over. No amount of Fox/Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh/O’Reilly is going to change the fact that Republicans are not facing the music. 2010 will not be 1994, if the Dems nut it up and pass healthcare reform legislation. The irony is that passing the evil Democratic legislation in front of Congress, which contains Republican ideas (before they flip flopped on those ideas; another in a long list of deep hypocrisies plaguing supposed fiscally responsible conservatives).

That aside, if the GOP continues its strategy of obstructionism, there is a human cost, one that will only ensure future GOP losses at the polls if nothing is done to fix the broken U.S. healthcare system:

The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care

Nearly every mainstream analysis calls for medical costs to continue to climb over the next decade, outpacing the growth in the overall economy and certainly increasing faster than the average paycheck. Those higher costs will translate into higher premiums, which will mean fewer individuals and businesses will be able to afford insurance coverage. More of everyone’s dollar will go to health care, and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid will struggle to find the money to operate.

Personal sidenote: I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of low class sore loser pussies than the GOP this cycle. At least in ‘94, Newt Gingrich pretended to be an intellectual leader. There is no such thing now. The Tea Party is not even close to having the momentum that Newt had in ‘94.

p.s. Dems, time to unify and pass it. o

I’m very curious about the crumpled pack of Newports and the rubber glove. o

I was gonna nap during the Sunday morning news junkie shows, but once I heard the tone of Colin Powell on Face the Nation, I perked right up. Powell was asked about his support of Barack Obama and if he regretted it. He also had some strong words for the fringes. I happen to think that in the U.S., we’re far more right-leaning fringe in terms of voice power; Fox News, expanded mainstream media coverage of right wing nutjobs v. left wing nutjobs and talk radio all spew nonsense every day. Not one whiff of common sense coming from conservatives and Powell calls them out on this, however gently:

The Price of Politics:

CBS News story here.

One thing Powell did not mention is that under Obama, we’ve captured far more Taliban than we did when Bush was in the White House.

I have to ask, why run for office, even as a minority party member of Congress, if you aren’t going to govern? o

I’ve posted a bunch to Vimeo. Here’s one that talks about linking your dooce community account with your facebook account:

View full-screen for better detail (you might have to go directly to vimeo to do this)

I hope these help. You can see the rest in my Vimeo channel:

http://vimeo.com/blurb/videos

o

I have long criticized the GOP for being hypocritical in just about every PR move, every political stance and in allowing intellect to be devalued so that morons can run (and ruin) the party. Here’s some evidence supporting my claims

First, this scathing bit of documentation:

Stimulating Hypocrisy: 111 Lawmakers Block Recovery While Taking Credit For Its Success

Of note:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) Said Stimulus Funds Would Create “Much Needed Jobs.” Minority Leader Boehner: “The stated intent of the so-called stimulus package was to create jobs, and certainly a $57 million slush-fund studying projects did nothing to achieve that goal. With Ohio’s unemployment rate the highest it’s been in 25 years, I’m pleased that federal officials stepped in to order Ohio to use all of its construction dollars for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.” [Boehner Statement, 6/15/09]

-Congressman Boehner Voted Against The Recovery Package Twice [Roll Call Vote #46; Roll Call Vote #70]

-Congressman Boehner Regularly Blasts The Stimulus And Instructed His Caucus To Oppose It. [Huffington Post, 1/27/09]

The list is sooooooo long. Where is the “liberal media” on this story? Ha. Where is the mainstream media? Thumbs firmly up its own bloated, lazy ass. This alone is a scathing indictment of deep GOP bullshit.

GOP loves the rich:

(From thinkprogress.org)

New IRS statistics show that President Bush’s 2007 tax cuts disproportionately benefited the very wealthy. “The average income reported by the 400 highest-earning U.S. households grew to almost $345 million in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier.” Each of these top 400 households “paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992.”

And from the source Business Week story:

The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show.

Tea Partiers and conservatives can prattle on about taxes and big government, but the rich need to pay their fair share. PERIOD. P.S., Obama is still CUTTING TAXES.

So what about the stimulus? What are GOP leaders saying today? What about the right-wing noise machine?

Conservatives can’t argue reality, so they create a distracting narrative. Like the language here (arguing that being hypocritical ISN’T the story) and the typical ignorant bluster seen here. Of note:

I don’t know the facts of the case, but the logic of the Democratic position baffles me.

The New York Post ran a Brian M. Riedl op ed that contains false claims:

Last year, White House economists claimed that the $862 billion stimulus would create 3.3 million jobs. Since then, the nation has lost more than 3 million jobs.

That’s a 6.3 million jobs gap. By the White House’s own standards, the stimulus failed.

So President Obama has shifted his argument. Sure, the economy lost jobs, he concedes — but without the stimulus, it would’ve lost nearly 2 million more jobs.

Read a solid rebuttal here. Also, from my memory, the language the administration used, and make no doubt, it’s ass cover language, was “created or saved.”

Seems like things aren’t going quite the way Mr. Riedl wants, so he makes his baseless attacks, founded on lies. Par!

Here’s a graph that’s been making the rounds, and I haven’t seen it correctly sourced. I found it on the Speaker of the House blog in this post:

Source for these numbers? Department of Labor’s January Jobs report.

Here are some facts for you:

Further reporting from Think Progress, REPORT: After Voting To Kill Recovery, 110 GOP Lawmakers Tout Its Success, Ask For More Money

Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success

Moody’s testimony to Congress (PDF)

And finally, Recovery.gov

“But where is the money going, Jon?” you ask. We can see, right here and by state here.

GOP, time to shut up and govern. o