This is the first good news for the new year I've heard - thanks to you both for the flambé of your restless minds, and taking the slouching beast by the horns. Slay by podcast, I say.
"The birth of some extraordinary new future" OMG! I love this! I, and I'm certain everyone, needs this! Thank you both for taking on this commitment! Onward!
Hah! Can't wait. We definitely need more hi-octane V-fuel for reinstilling hope and imagining a better future. It's high time for us free falcons to kick the wannabe falconers to the curb.
I was at a couple of jams this weekend. One at the jazz club Smalls in the west village and another at Music Makers studio in midtown. Both went pretty well. Here’s a reflection …
Should we hang up our hangups and let art work its magic?
Last weekend at a basement studio in midtown Manhattan there was a musicians’ jam session. Genres were rock and roll and pop. In our studio, there was a curated group of 3 guitars, bass, keys, singer. At the end of the 3 hours, we had nearly exhausted our collective catalog and someone called for a classic, “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones.
This is 2025, so at the request might have been tongue-in-cheek. But that song is catnip for musicians. Undeniably a great jam song and understandably problematic. After 50 years, the Stones, in the Black Lives Matter era, pulled it from their setlist.
The song is about the horrors and depredations of slavery and was designed to shock not to mock. It’s as deep as one can go into cultural appropriation relying on basically 3 chords, 101 words and a whole lot of attitude. It is also transparently honest and self-aware. Nevertheless, the song is questionable as a vehicle for continued financial exploitation, hence the redacted setlist. At some point, great art ought to step down from the auction block and into in a museum with heavy interpretive context. Doing so, it becomes an earthbound, pinioned facsimile of lived experience.
At the jam, there was a brief uncomfortable discussion. At the center of the conversation , resistant and sullen, lurked a devilish bargain. The price we pay for making racial slurs taboo is that confrontation of America’s history of racial slavery and the lasting impacts thereof, also taboo. Whom among us can hear the difference between complicit silence and silent reflection? I played along loudly and deep in the groove. Neither silent nor complicit, but unsettled, and mindful of the lyrics and their history.
The living song survives as a boomer musicians guilty pleasure. Slavery may be immoral and illegal, but does it matter what kind of “legitimate” powerful position, due to age, gender, race, fame, or supernumerary wealth, becomes a platform for misogyny and assault? Shouldn’t we give some thought to that every time we old dudes emulate a rock god in an hourly pay-for-play padded basement room? Like a lot of good art, the song elicits uncomfortable emotions. As with any piece of great art, we seek to return to it and them, recognizing that we have something to learn or unlearn. To get there, we have to navigate the scylla of catchy riffs and mindless recanted choruses and the charybdis of prurient curiosity. It is an ambivalently satisfying tussle to unzip the layered, shrink-wrapped, pasteboard masks and reach the black hearts within.
The discussion begged a question: how much is our reticence related to protecting the sensibilities of marginalized communities versus protecting members of an influential minority from feelings of guilt by association?
Great art is never safe. At its best, art also defies categories and becomes liminal. As Ralph Ellison wrote about Louis Armstrong's music, it is "... never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That’s what you hear vaguely in Louis’ music.” The ambiguity between ostensibly lackadaisical appearances and calculated precision is absolutely 100% American and maybe the Stones are best understood as an American band rather than a British invader.
Some of the best responses to this song are musical ones. Not all beefs are aimed direct or petty. A relatively recent favorite is Solange Knowle’s “Almeda”.
"Black skin, black braids
Black waves, black days
Black baes, black things
These are black-owned things (Hol' up)"
Claudia Lennear, aged 79, is an accomplished musician, singer and muse. She was no stranger to prurient curiosity or catchy riffs. She is said to have inspired musical poetry in Mick Jagger. About the lyrics, and perhaps her relationships to musicians, she was most succinct, “I’m sensitive, but when it comes to poetic license, I let go …”
This is the best news in a while. A feeling of actual legitimate reaction. I'm on board for the duration
This is the first good news for the new year I've heard - thanks to you both for the flambé of your restless minds, and taking the slouching beast by the horns. Slay by podcast, I say.
"The birth of some extraordinary new future" OMG! I love this! I, and I'm certain everyone, needs this! Thank you both for taking on this commitment! Onward!
Excited to hear it, Virginia!
Hah! Can't wait. We definitely need more hi-octane V-fuel for reinstilling hope and imagining a better future. It's high time for us free falcons to kick the wannabe falconers to the curb.
Ingenius. Free falcons, toujours. Thank you! Hope to see you on the road…
Inspired by your writing !
I was at a couple of jams this weekend. One at the jazz club Smalls in the west village and another at Music Makers studio in midtown. Both went pretty well. Here’s a reflection …
Should we hang up our hangups and let art work its magic?
Last weekend at a basement studio in midtown Manhattan there was a musicians’ jam session. Genres were rock and roll and pop. In our studio, there was a curated group of 3 guitars, bass, keys, singer. At the end of the 3 hours, we had nearly exhausted our collective catalog and someone called for a classic, “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones.
This is 2025, so at the request might have been tongue-in-cheek. But that song is catnip for musicians. Undeniably a great jam song and understandably problematic. After 50 years, the Stones, in the Black Lives Matter era, pulled it from their setlist.
The song is about the horrors and depredations of slavery and was designed to shock not to mock. It’s as deep as one can go into cultural appropriation relying on basically 3 chords, 101 words and a whole lot of attitude. It is also transparently honest and self-aware. Nevertheless, the song is questionable as a vehicle for continued financial exploitation, hence the redacted setlist. At some point, great art ought to step down from the auction block and into in a museum with heavy interpretive context. Doing so, it becomes an earthbound, pinioned facsimile of lived experience.
At the jam, there was a brief uncomfortable discussion. At the center of the conversation , resistant and sullen, lurked a devilish bargain. The price we pay for making racial slurs taboo is that confrontation of America’s history of racial slavery and the lasting impacts thereof, also taboo. Whom among us can hear the difference between complicit silence and silent reflection? I played along loudly and deep in the groove. Neither silent nor complicit, but unsettled, and mindful of the lyrics and their history.
The living song survives as a boomer musicians guilty pleasure. Slavery may be immoral and illegal, but does it matter what kind of “legitimate” powerful position, due to age, gender, race, fame, or supernumerary wealth, becomes a platform for misogyny and assault? Shouldn’t we give some thought to that every time we old dudes emulate a rock god in an hourly pay-for-play padded basement room? Like a lot of good art, the song elicits uncomfortable emotions. As with any piece of great art, we seek to return to it and them, recognizing that we have something to learn or unlearn. To get there, we have to navigate the scylla of catchy riffs and mindless recanted choruses and the charybdis of prurient curiosity. It is an ambivalently satisfying tussle to unzip the layered, shrink-wrapped, pasteboard masks and reach the black hearts within.
The discussion begged a question: how much is our reticence related to protecting the sensibilities of marginalized communities versus protecting members of an influential minority from feelings of guilt by association?
Great art is never safe. At its best, art also defies categories and becomes liminal. As Ralph Ellison wrote about Louis Armstrong's music, it is "... never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That’s what you hear vaguely in Louis’ music.” The ambiguity between ostensibly lackadaisical appearances and calculated precision is absolutely 100% American and maybe the Stones are best understood as an American band rather than a British invader.
Some of the best responses to this song are musical ones. Not all beefs are aimed direct or petty. A relatively recent favorite is Solange Knowle’s “Almeda”.
"Black skin, black braids
Black waves, black days
Black baes, black things
These are black-owned things (Hol' up)"
Claudia Lennear, aged 79, is an accomplished musician, singer and muse. She was no stranger to prurient curiosity or catchy riffs. She is said to have inspired musical poetry in Mick Jagger. About the lyrics, and perhaps her relationships to musicians, she was most succinct, “I’m sensitive, but when it comes to poetic license, I let go …”
Brown Sugar https://g.co/kgs/5WZNDP6