These Days: Wednesday, March 15th, 2017
Concerts: The picture above is of the Velvet Underground playing the Andy Warhol club “the Dom” on April 7th, 1966 (50 years ago!), as NYT notes “Not even two weeks later, the Velvet Underground — featuring Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, with additional vocals from the German singer Nico — would enter Scepter Studios in New York to record its first professional demos of songs like “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Heroin.” The most astonishing thing is how timeless the pictures of the band are, the audience look as though they’ve been bussed in from the 1950s and the band could have been at Bowery Ballroom last night (if we were very, very lucky).
Concerts 2: If you wanna see Tomas Doncker And The True Groove Allstars at SXSW, see if this works for ya.
Concerts 3: Green Day today, Philip Glass tomorrow and looking forward to next week: Eric Clapton on Monday, The Zombies a week on Saturday
#Fakenews1: About Trump’s 1040. 1 -if he paid paid $38 million in taxes on more than $150 million in income un 2005, what’s the big deal? Why so secretive? We all know that a great tax lawyer will save you a bundle and it all looks entirely legal. Trump said in a statement: “Before being elected president, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world, with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required.”
#Fakenews2: Congrats to Rachel Meadows, who scooped the world on this story yesterday, with the White House rushing to release it before her. According to AOL News: “”You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the White House said in a statement released shortly before the report.”It is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns,” the White House statement continued. “The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans.” “For the record, the First Amendment gives us the right to publish this return,” Maddow said in response to that statement. The moral for the White House is that they really have nothing left to throw at the media. Once you’ve called em traitors, what else can you say?
#Fakenews3: In all the hoopla, I guess this story got lost: “On Tuesday, AmericaBlog pointed out that both Newsmax and The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2016 that then-candidate Trump met with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. We don’t know what they talked about or even how long they spent together. But The Wall Street Journal said Trump “warmly greeted” Kislyak. Trump and Kislyak reportedly met during a VIP reception in April for an event Trump gave a speech at. The Wall Street Journal reported three other foreign ambassadors attended the reception.
New Music: Not much right? The new Charli XCX doesn’t improve on “3AM Pull Up,” Conor on “Napalm,” Eric Bellinger on “Naked In The Whitehouse,” The Shins on “Heartworm,” and Laura Marling on “Wild Fire”. It is hard to justify the albums they came from as nothing much more than alright nothing special with the occasional shining beacon to remind you why you’re here.
Old Music: One part Green Day, one part Zombies, Zombies is better than I thought it’d be (or do I mean REMEMBERED??).
The Weather: Well, another lamer than lame Nor’easter closes the city for no good reason. Congrats to all, now back to work.
