Recorded: The week belongs to Rudimental, sadly enough since I spent so much time dismissing them until John Newman’s lead on “Feel The Love” caught my ear and slowly the rest of the album sunk in I am still listening to it today. Rudimental are opening for Emile at Summerstage on August 28th so get their early. The other biggie is Elvis At Stax, 40 years on right? While DJ Kool Herc was scratching his James Brown collection, Presley was enjoying one final recording session.
Live: A whale of a 24 hours, I saw: Amanda Palmer, Trixie Whitley, Marley Marl, James Burton and Sleepy LaBeef, Jason Isbel and Nick Lowe!!! I ended up so exhausted I blew off Shuggie Otis!Best of em all: Isbell made many friends, and so did Trixie where you couldn’t get to the Merch table after her set! Bill de Blassio introduced the Americana evening show.
Local News: Speaking of which, all my leftie buddies are dumping Chris Quinn for Bill while Weiner is fading fast and Spitzer is coming on strong. Meanwhile, what happened to all that talk about how great the public (and Charter) school system has become: 28% success rate on standardized tests. I looked at the questions of both English and math and I would have gotten 100% and I am pretty lousy at both of them (well, definitely one of them).
National News: I told Putin he shouldn’t have embarrassed the President by given an irrelevance like Snowden sanctuary. They should have shipped him back to the US, in a body bag if necessary. Putin forced Obama to admit that the reset button on US-Russia relationships was a disaster for the US and forced him to admit it in public. With zero options, Obama cancelled the US-Russia summit and Putin caused a whole new cooling off chapter where Obama can’t really give anything else at all. Well done, Putin, you humiliated the States and made Russia look like Town bullies at the same time.
Sports: In the first pre-season games (blacked out by CBS) Jets lost and Giants won so nothing much to see here. Meanwhile, the Mets are setting themselves up for a breakthrough 2013. And Mariano Rivera has blown three save situations in a row.