WFMU’s youngest DJ was introduced to PJ Harvey, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers–in the womb. Says the sixteen-year-old (source NY Mag):

I’ve loved music since I was in my mom’s tummy, dancing to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, and PJ Harvey. As a kid, I had such a tight obsession with certain songs my dad made a two-song tape: “Ain’t Nuthin’ But a She Thing,” by Salt-N-Pepa, and “Baby It’s You,” by the Shirelles. I would sit there and be like, “Again! Again!”

My friends growing up were doing stuff in this new DIY all-ages scene. I e-mailed WFMU off-the-cuff with an idea for a show about that, and after a listener hour and two auditions, they gave me a Sunday-Monday overnight slot.

I would spend the whole weekend preparing—asking bands to send their music, making the playlist, preparing everything I wanted to say. Then I would go to sleep at 6 p.m. and wake up at 1, so I wouldn’t be a zombie. The show would end at 6 a.m., and I’d go straight to school.

Now I’m on Sunday mornings, three to six. There’s something so awesome about being up that late. It’s morning in Europe, and my biggest audience is there. Once during a listener fund-raising marathon I got a $3,000 pledge over the Internet from this guy Frederic from France. He said, “One night I asked you how you came to be who you are and you said, ‘I was raised by atheist punks.’ That comment made me love you. I set my alarm to listen to your show, and I haven’t set my alarm since before you were born.” How awesome is that!

Meanwhile, in Denmark, prosecutions are humming right along, with two successful prosecutions of suspected suicide bombers.

Ditto, in Britain, where “Britain has prosecuted suspects in all the major terrorist attacks in the country since 2005 [and] has achieved a 90 percent conviction rate.”

So what explains this difference? According to one high-ranking former British intelligence agent:

The response to 9/11 was “a huge overreaction”, she says. “You know, it was another terrorist incident. It was huge, and horrible, and seemed worse because we all watched it unfold on television. So yes, 9/11 was bigger, but not … not …” Not qualitatively different? “No. That’s not how it struck me. I suppose I’d lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life, and this was, as far as I was concerned, another one.”

Rimington hopes President Bush’s successor will stop using the phrase “war on terror”. “It got us off on the wrong foot, because it made people think terrorism was something you could deal with by force of arms primarily. And from that flowed Guantánamo, and extraordinary rendition, and …” And Iraq, I suggest. “Well yes,” she says drily. “Iraq.”

Next up on the America First chronicles: “US infant mortality rate now worse than 28 other countries ”

What I noticed caught me a bit off-guard. There was a story on the threat of terrorism, which started off with a historical gloss of Al Qaeda activity from the 1990′s to the present. While there were the obligatory-and-expected digs at Clinton’s supposed passivity, these digs were evenly spread when it came to GW’s first nine months in office. And still more surprising to me was the prominence that Fox not only gave to Obama’s prescient speech in 2002 about not getting bogged down in a dumb war, but also the readiness to take on McCain/Palin’s attacks on Obama’s wanting to read Miranda rights to terror suspects–in a truly fair-and-balanced approach, Fox showed that Obama’s views were otherwise.

All the while, the scroll bars (there are literally 4 different scroll bars now) were scrolling things like, Hillary seeking to mobilize women voters, Karl Rove saying that McCain’s ads are going too far (when the pot calls you black, you must’ve really gone far), and Greenspan criticizing McCain’s purported middle-class tax relief. In short, Fox was showing info-bites that one might find on the Huffington Post.

Now it’s old news that Rupert has been trying to cozy up to Obama, but was I witnessing something larger trickling down here? Surely just a few minutes is not scientific, but more evidence is surfacing that my experience was not a mere aberration.

Maybe I’m clueless and don’t recognize that there was simply enough red meat thrown by showing the word “Hillary” or by showing that Obama opposed the Iraq invasion like all the other anti-Americans, but if I am right that Fox is leaning more in his direction, what does this mean? Do the powerful simply recognize that an Obama presidency is inevitable? Or perhaps are they truly frightened that McCain might die, leaving my wacky Aunt Sarah in charge?

Or maybe more cynically they realize that with two unwinnable wars and a shit-tanking economy that there are no easy answers to fixing the Bush legacy, that the next president is doomed to a one-term clusterfuck of catastrophes, and they’re taking the bearish approach that the clusterfuck could have long-term residual impact on that president’s political party?

I stood by him in the nomination process as my fringier friends argued that the Democrats should use the Katrina leverage to force Bush’s hand to the left. Roberts, I argued, may be alligned with the right, but he is no hack.

I may have to retract that statement after reading his dissent in yesterday’s opinion upholding the virtues of habeas corpus (NOTE: they are not saying that the terrorists can run free–they are saying that people detained for more than six years can insist that the government show there is a reason for their detention).

Justice Roberts non-sequitur:

So who has won? Not the detainees. . . . And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.

Compare this to, say, the 2004 Republic Party Platform:

In the federal courts, scores of judges with activist backgrounds in the hard-left now have lifetime tenure. Recent events have made it clear that these judges threaten America’s dearest institutions and our very way of life. . . . We believe that the self-proclaimed supremacy of these judicial activists is antithetical to the democratic ideals on which our nation was founded.

“Kim Deal Completed“

“As I have met the heroes, hugged the families, and looked into the tired faces of rescuers, I have stood in awe of the American people.”

Meet Jeremy Hernandez, new reluctant media darling who apparently has a scholarship offer after helping pull the campers out of the bus in the MSP bridge disaster:

Mr. Hernandez was not available to comment on the offer; Ms. Schwartz said he left town for northern Minnesota late on Friday, overwhelmed by the attention and concerned that his co-workers were being overlooked. He spent the weekend fishing. When President Bush’s staff contacted him to request a photo opportunity, “He was just, like, ‘Nope,’ ” she said.

God bless you Mr. Hernandez.

Pre-listen thoughts:
You are here LIVE as I sit down to knee-jerk¹ Simon Joyner’s latest, Skeleton Blues, This record cover has a still life painting of a flower pot featuring yellow, blue and mostly green hues. A quick glance of the track listing shows 3 of 7 songs incorporate “blues” in the title. Coincidence? Perhaps.

About a year ago, during one of my pilgrimages to The Antiquarium that accompany my visits to The Big O, I stumbled upon an attic show featuring Joyner & Alex McManus. I think it was $10 for me and my brother. Despite my relative ignorance of both, it remains one of my favorite shows — set in the cozy upstairs gallery it felt like we may have been in somebody’s basement. And the music was outstanding.

So here I sit ready to knee jerk my way through Skeleton Blues….

1. Open Window Blues

Start off with some slow tempo piano & fuzzy guitar-tronics. Not a stripped down folk record, I suppose. Vocals kick in sounding a lot more like than Lou Reed than I was expecting – which is to say I wasn’t expecting it at all. He has a cadence that at times make me think Dylan {demerit to me for dropping Dylan reference. Sorry but it’s true. At times.} The music here matches the lyrics perfectly. I still have to see how the rest of the record goes, but this may be the perfect mood setter for the rest. But if the rest goes a completely different way, this song still is strong enough to stand on its own. It jams on a bit toward the end.

“The light we cannot touch, we choose to feel” (??)

Initial Star Rating: 3.5

2. You Don’t Know Me
A clean guitar opening that sounds like a less-dreamy version of Luna, which has me wondering how much this will sound like a Velvet Undergound distant-cousin.

far from the corn and wheat
far from the swaying trees
i know the wind must have its way
anything that thinks its free

Initial Star Rating: 4

3. Answer Night
While I can’t put my finger on, there is somethign about this song I like. How’s that for analysis. You get what you pay for, internet.

Initial Star Rating: 3

4. Medicine Blues
Sing-talking over the simplest of guitar/drum boom baps.

“my echo said stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”
This song continues on with lyrics that walk on the right side of the fine line between witticisms and triticisms(?).
Towards the end the music has built up to a more urgent tempo/volume – quick without rushing to steal a phrase from John Wooden.
The coda brings us back to more sedate mood as Joyner sings “where’s my medicine? my sweet, sweet medicine”.

The fine folks at jagjaguwar have made this song available in the controversial MP3 format. Lunatics.

Initial Star Rating: 4

5. The Only Living Boy In Omaha
Organ and drums!

If you don’t like this line my guess is you won’t like this album. Let’s call it a a barometer:

You pray in the storm
I’ll sing to static on the radio

I like it.

Better yet, who doesn’t love ambigous pronouns?:

Jimmy says there’s no God in the sky holding him for ransom
he’s doing alright keeping himself hostage down here

6 Minutes left on this track. Here come the violins. nice interlude.

At 3:40 we get the drums I was hoping for a minute ago. Ah, that Joyner is a tease.
This is a really-really good song — and not one bleating of “somewhere in middle america”.

Initial Star Rating: 4

6. Epilogue in D

Epilogue here meaning “second-to-last”. I don’t have a good ear, so I can only trust that the opening guitar is in D. A good song for a rainy day cafe. Today is not that day for moi.

Initial Star Rating: 2.5

7. My Side of the Blues

Back from a quick bathroom break, I am ready to finish strong. I see this song clocks in at 10:03 – a bargain for iTunes shoppers at under 10¢/minute. Ok, now this is more of what I was expecting album wide. Accoustic guitar folk-o-matic.

“i’ll let you stand a while on my side
stand a while on my side
stand a while on my side
of the blues”

A fair enough slow, folksy song though I must admit my attentions wandered. For the first time through I like the shorter songs with more instrumentation. Let’s see how long that lasts.

Initial Star Rating: 2

Th-th-th-that’s all folks.

n.b. – After a jumjp over to the label site, I see they, too, are citing Velvet Underground and Dylan. So on the one hand I don’t feel like a total ass, but on the other hand, maybe I am just a drone tool of the marketing man.

Oh yeah – here’s what the metacritics think.

¹I cannot overstate how poor I am at sizing up records up the first time through. Looking back, I think was overly harsh on Boys and Girls in America and wasn’t prepared for HOW MUCH To The Races would grow on me, especially Man O War. Thought, Happy Hollow still disappoints – despite a few tracks that now really stand out. Consider this another chapter in my perpetual chronicle of my lack of taste.