Sade – my first CD

I was out taking a 3.5 mile run yesterday with my dog. As usual, I had my MP3 player on, shuffling a base of well over 1000 tracks. One of the tracks that came up was “Smooth Operator” by Sade, and it knocked my socks off. It is one of the tracks on “Diamond Life,” Sade’s debut album. Though the album was released in 1984, it’s totally fresh today.

But there is more to this story. “Diamond Life” was the first CD that I ever bought. I had just purchased one of those new-fangled CD players and the knowledgeable guy at the audio store said that there weren’t that many CD’s to choose from at that time, but that the Sade album was the one to buy to show off the new “CD sound.” He wasn’t lying. The sound was, and still is, immaculate, and the musicians are so tight and balanced it’s a pleasure to hear them even now. And of course, Sade is so laconically sexy! Every track on that album is terrific, but my favorite is “Hang On To Your Love.” Check it out if you have not heard it for a while. You can get the original remastered version (I guess it has gotten even better) on Amazon for a mere $7.98.

By the way, her new album “Soldier of Love” (released almost 10 years since her last album) is excellent. The lady just keeps bringin’ it.

A question: Do you remember the first CD you bought?

A picture is worth the 1,000 proverbial words…

Well, this cartoon says it all.

~ Tom

Kevin Costner is cool…

Spin baby spin.

Spreading the word …

I was just reading a nice post on Lally’s Alley regarding these lines from the poet Geoff Young:

"Only when

things fall apart

can you see

what they're

made of."

That prompted me to leave the following comment in “The Alley:”

Lal: The ending five lines are genius. Very reminiscent of the following stanza from the great Leonard Cohen song, "Anthem:"

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

And here's Leonard's take on it from an interview:

In another song you also say "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in". It is not a very happy thought to believe that something will always have to break, to open a crack, in order to the light gets in...

It is a happy thought if we enjoy the truth. There is always something that will have to break. Usually it is our personal pride. A Buddhist thinker said that disappointment is a great way to illumination. Other masters said: "from the broken debris of my heart I will erect an altar to the Lord".
The idea that there is a staircase of gold and marble, which leads to knowledge is seductive, but seems to me that the idea of something needing to get broken before we can learn anything is a more true idea. It is my experience, maybe you can escape it, but I doubt it. Unless the heart breaks, we will never know anything about love. As long as our objective universe doesn't collapse, we'll never know anything about the world.
We think that we know the mechanism, but only when it fails we understand how intricate and mysterious is the operation. So, it is true, "there's a crack in everything", all human activity is imperfect and unfinished. Only that way we can have the notion that there's something inside us that can only be located through disillusion, bad luck and defeat. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case.

Miles

Here is a picture of Miles that I don’t recall seeing before.  Sweet!

Beatles on the brain!

A few days ago I realized that I had not heard any Beatles tracks for a long time.  So, I hauled out my copy of “The Beatles 1” and popped on the CD player.  Since then I simply cannot keep various Beatles tunes from playing in my head all the time.  I forgot what great song-writers those guys were and I am amazed at  how well their songs hold up today.  Well, they are part of the lore of our times, aren’t they.  The “One” album is great because you get 27 singles on one CD.  Here is the playlist, which should make a few of the tunes start playing in your head without even hearing them. 

1. Love Me Do

2. From Me to You

3. She Loves You

4. I Want to Hold Your Hand

5. Can't Buy Me Love

6. A Hard Day's Night

7. I Feel Fine

8. Eight Days a Week

9. Ticket to Ride

10. Help!

11. Yesterday

12. Day Tripper

13. We Can Work It Out

14. Paperback Writer

15. Yellow Submarine

16. Eleanor Rigby

17. Penny Lane

18. All You Need Is Love

19. Hello Goodbye

20. Lady Madonna

21. Hey Jude

22. Get Back

23. The Ballad of John & Yoko

24. Something

25. Come Together

26. Let It Be

27. The Long and Winding Road

Kagan: The right choice

Midst all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by both the right and the left over the President’s nomination of Elena Kagan, a few of us are sitting down and calmly assessing the choice.  I have been an attorney, working in the law for 40 years now and have appeared before hundreds of judges in scores of courts.  Here is my take on this nomination:

A.  When it comes to monumental, historic cases, the Supreme Court is presently a four-to-four affair, with an arguably malleable fifth vote from Kennedy. 

B.  The seat that is open is one of the four liberal seats.  Thus, the best any appointment can provide is to maintain the four-to-four present make up of the Court.

C.  Therefore, putting an aggressive, outspoken liberal on the Court (assuming he/she could even get through the Senate) gains absolutely nothing as far as the vote count goes.  So what could be gained by a given appointment if any appointment only brings the liberal count to four? 

D.  The answer is an appointment of someone who is a reliable left-leaning jurist, and is more likely than other candidates to sway the fifth vote to the righteous path.  This is essential.  The appointment of a fiery liberal doesn’t improve the count, and well might push vote five the wrong way.  Kagan is renowned as a person who can broker commendable resolution of difficult disputes. 

E.  As an ancillary matter, ginning up a big ugly fight over a controversial appointee will be politically bad for the Dems in the upcoming elections.  Kagan is predicted to sail through with little controversy in her wake.

Just sayin”

What if …. the Tea Baggers were black (gasp)

This is weird. I was going to compose a post for this blog pointing out how different things would be if all the stuff the Tea Baggers, and gun totters are doing these days was being done by black people.  Before I got around to writing it I came across this article on that very subject.  How true it is.