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(Quiero Club - the 3,277th most popular band on the Internet - and don't you forget it)

Something pop,alternative, indie, synth, club, Tropical and Experiemental tonight. Quiero Club is from Monterrey Mexico and have a pretty good word of mouth going in the Latin club and festival scene. They had a sizable hit in 2005, toured quite a bit and now have a new album out, which was picked up by an indie label in the states - Nueva America was issued in Mexico in 2008 and in the U.S. in 2009. This track La Muerte de Ziggy is off the album. So if this appeals, check out the rest of the album and expand your world music horizon.

It's healthy and it gives you the cultural edge.

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(UN Peacekeepers in Bosnia - in February 1941 it was about The Balkans - in February 1994 it was about The Balkans. Strange?)

February 9, 1994 this time. And this time again it's about the Balkans. Bosnia and U.S. intervention and demands Bosnian Serb guns move back from Sarajevo before air strikes take place. Another unstable region in the world at the time, taking years to put the pieces back.

Tom Fenton (CBS News): “The main proposal on the table gives the Serbs seven to ten days to pull their big guns back from Sarajevo or face air strikes. France and the United States are the leading proponents of action, but other nations are reluctantly coming around to their point of view. What needs to be decided now are the details, exactly when and how the air strikes would be ordered and what the targets would be. It’s a momentous decision for the alliance. If NATO does decide to act, this could be the first time the forty-four year old alliance has fired a shot in anger.”

And on February 9th the Moonie Washington Times reported "unnamed sources" close to the Rose Law firm in Little Rock, Arkansas where Hilary Rodham Clinton was a partner, shredded documents related to the Whitewater Development Corporation and that the shredded documents implicated the Clintons and James and Susan McDougall in the venture. No named witnesses, hearsay and Sun Myung Moon. Sounds really credible, right?

And so went February 9th.

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(February 1941 - Marching to Bulgaria)

February 9, 1941 fell on a Sunday. Not very much happening on Capitol Hill but a lot going on in the European War. We were quietly watching the goings on, offering support to Great Britain via the Lend-Lease Bill and taking stabs at various peace proposals - none of which amounted to anything. The German Army was heading East, slowly taking over Bulgaria and Romania. The Italian Army was knee-deep in the Mediterranean and not doing particularly well in Albania or Greece. Reports coming in via Shortwave were distant and muddled, as evidenced by this report from Martin Agronsky reporting from Ankara, Turkey:

Martin Agronsky (NBC News): “Once more the nerve war, the war of rumor and counter-rumor is in full swing in the Balkans. This time it’s Bulgaria. Reports are pouring into Istanbul that the Germans are moving troops openly into Bulgaria. And though there has been no information here in the Turkish capitol that this is correct, there is completely authentic confirmation of the news that Germans soldiers in civilian clothes, the famous Nazi Tourists are increasing their number in Bulgaria every day. Two weeks ago I reported to you the Nazi Tourists in Bulgaria already numbered 6,000 men. Today their number is estimated at over 10,000.”

All of that and it seemed particularly far away. As if on another planet. For a time, anyway.

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(The Morning After Girls - the hotbed of talent is coming from the Pacific Rim . . who knew?)

I am amazed The Morning After Girls haven't gotten picked up by at least one major label since their inception in 2003. Every one of the many songs on their MySpace embed player is well written, well executed and well produced. They meet every single criteria of a potentially major act in the music world. But maybe because of that they are going it alone and doing it themselves and achieving better results than they would if they were signed to a major label and offered up like so much sausage casing. Maybe that's it. Going it alone and doing it yourself and insuring your direction and believing that what you do, you do well may be the magic ingredient for a successful band these days.

What ever the reason, The Morning After Girls are a band from Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. From what I've been able to gather from their website, two of the principle members have relocated to New York and the rest of the band have followed, so they are all now on the East Coast. They have toured almost constantly, even appearing on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic in 2009 with a live set. They have three eps and three albums available via just about every download service as well as cd's for sale.

This track Part Of Your Nature is off one of their eps and it would probably do your peace of mind and eardrums wonders to check out the rest of their material and pick up some of their wares (even t-shirts!). They can always use the support.

I am a big fan of this group, not only for what they are doing but how they are going about doing it.

The future, as they say, can be rather cool indeed.

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(James Roosevelt - selling dad's plan in 1937)

When FDR suggested changes be made in the Supreme Court, appointing as many as six additional justices instead of the usual nine, it was a hard sell. In fact it went down to a stinging 70-20 Senate defeat by July. But FDR did a huge sales pitch for the plan, including enlisting his son James to stump for its passage.

James Roosevelt: “ I believe you will come to the conclusion that the President’s proposal if the most effective way to make constitutional democracy work. It confers no new powers. It takes away no previously existing authority. It is unquestionably constitutional. It will enable the Chief Executive to carry out with quickness and dispatch all those measures which meet the cry for repair and restoration. To you and to me and to millions of others throughout our country, it will bring comfort in the thought that those evil years of eight, yes of even twenty years ago will not come back.”

I'm sure at the time most Republicans had coronaries over the thought of six additional judges, all appointed by FDR setting the laws of the land. No doubt the wave of fear and calls of Dictatorship ran up and down the ranks of the right wing like a flu epidemic. But I can only imagine what it would have been like, had those fifteen judges been in place around the time of Bush, or even Nixon for that matter.

The mind fairly reels.

Perhaps some things were best not to have happened after all.

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(26 days into the first term - still smiling)

Twenty-six days into his first term as President, Bill Clinton took to the airwaves and delivered a talk regarding his upcoming budget proposals (February 15, 1993). We tend to forget (or choose to just blot it out) what a mess everything was in when Clinton took office just a few weeks prior in January. The previous twelve years of Reagan era politics and voodoo economics took its toll on the country and pretending it didn't exist just wasn't going to happen.

Pres. Clinton: “The typical middle-class family is working harder for less. Despite the talk of a recovery, more than 9 million of our fellow citizens are still out of work. And as this chart indicates (pointing to chart), more than 3 million Americans would already be back at work by now. In fact, there are more jobless people now than at what the experts call ‘the bottom’ of this recession. All during this last twelve years the deficit has roared out of control. The big tax cuts for the wealthy, the growth in government spending and soaring Healthcare costs all caused the Federal deficit to explode. Our debt is now four times as big as it was in 1980.”

Of course the Republicans under the leadership of Bob Dole had a different take in their rebuttal.

Sen. Minority Leader Bob Dole: “The election year message from Republicans and Democrats and Independents and the supporters of Ross Perot is clear; no more Partisan games, no more budget charades, you want results. And so do I. Let me assure you the Republicans in Congress want to get the job done – we want to cooperate with President Clinton, to cut the cost of government and to slash the federal deficit.”

And we all know how that particular dance went . . .

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(Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) outspoken critic of an endless war)

With the sudden death today of Rep. John Murtha of complications from gall bladder surgery, I'm reminded that his was the outspoken voice in opposition to our failed policy in Iraq when many weren't. A Marine himself, he didn't take our sacrifices lightly and suffered the smears from the opposition who were never in the place Murtha knew so well. His concern was, above all for the soldier, the grunt, the enlisted man or woman who gave and were abused for a cause that was never thought out, for a strategy that was never explained and for a goal that hasn't, almost ten years later, been achieved.

There are many addresses and interviews Murtha conducted in connection to our involvement in Iraq. Here is one press conference he did on November 17, 2005.

Rep. John Murtha: “The burden of this war has not been shared equally. The families are shouldering the burden. The military has been fighting this war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing. And over 2,079 confirmed American deaths, over 15,000 have been seriously injured, half of them have been returned to duty. And its estimated over 50,000 will suffer from what I call Battle Fatigue. And there have been reports over 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.”

RIP John Murtha.

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(Vittorio Gui - pigeon holed as an Opera Conductor but so much more)

Vittorio Gui is probably best known for his classic opera recordings with, among others, Maria Callas. But Gui was infinitely more than only an opera conductor. As founder of the Florence May Festival in the late 1920s, Gui did a lot to bring about awareness of composers whose works had either fallen into neglect or were never performed and just not familiar to Italian audiences. And it was him, along with his fellow countryman Arturo Toscanini who brought an awareness of Brahms and certainly Richard Strauss to the concert halls of Rome and Milan and Florence.

So this recording of Richard Strauss' Tone Poem Til Eulensgpiegel's Lustige Strieche, gives a good idea of what Gui was exposing Italian audiences to. It was made just after the War, around 1946-1947 (I don't have the exact session dates - if someone does please let me know) and recorded for the Parlophone Company and eventually issued on the small Tempo Records label as an early lp around 1951. It features the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence May Festival) Orchestra led by their music director and founder, Vittorio Gui.

In the event you've been glued to the TV, watching the Superbowl and are taking a break, hit the play button and spend 14 minutes decompressing.

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(Pink Floyd 1970 - A period of transition)

A few years before Dark Side Of The Moon became the classic it has, Pink Floyd were in the process of drifting. Syd Barrett, the guiding light and voice of the band had been out of the picture for two years and the remaining members were in search of their own. They were trying various things out, but to not much success. At the time of this live performance at the BBC's Paris Theatre in London, they had released Atom Heart Mother to decidedly tepid reviews. Their previous album Ummagumma was something of a failure and even the band on occasion have disowned it. But throughout all that, Pink Floyd had a large and loyal following and no one, least of all their fans, were ready to write them off. And it's good they didn't, because Dark Side Of The Moon was just around the corner.

This set consists of two tracks from Atom Heart Mother, Fat Old Sun and If as well as One Of These Days.

Pink Floyd at the crossroads.

Baby needs shoes!

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(Getting the stories straight - what they didn't know and when they didn't know it)

The echo from Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address had hardly decayed when word starting leaking around about covert activities and the CIA's renewed "fooling around" with foreign governments as a result of the Reagan Administrations stepped up efforts to destabilize (the nice word for overthrowing) various governments deemed unfriendly towards the U.S.

And Central America along with our clandestine interests came up for particular scrutiny in early 1982 when this Nightline broadcast first aired (February 18). Ted Koppel hosted a panel which consisted of Ray Cline, E. Howard Hunt, Senator Joe Biden and former Senator Frank Church. The subject was just how involved in all this were we?

From the White House Press Conference earlier that day:

Question (Press conference): “Have you approved of covert activities to de-stabilize the present government of Nicaragua?”

Pres. Reagan: “Here again, this is something upon which . ..national security interests I just . . I will not comment.

Question: “Do you approve the (muffled) policy is, as far as having American covert operations to de-stabilize any existing government without specific reference to Nicaragua?”

Reagan: “There again I’m going to say this is like discussing the options. And – no comment.”

Funny how it eventually went from "no comment" to "I don't recall". It begs the question of just how aware (or unaware) Reagan was with the goings on in his own White House. If he was truly aware, he would probably top Nixon in the honors of deceit. If he was truly unaware, that would give credence to the notion that Reagan was, indeed our first figurehead President.

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(Poster for a Tom Northcott gig in Vancouver, 1968)

Heading back into oldies territory tonight. Tom Northcott is better known in his native Canada than here in the States, even though he had a couple of hits on U.S. airwaves in the late 1960's. This track, the Harry Nillson song 1941 did rather well on the charts here. It's produced by Leon Russell (before his solo career and around the time he was tinkering with the concept group Asylum Choir with Marc Benno) and Northcott almost gets drowned out by the musical pyrotechnics, but it's still a well produced track.

Northcott won a Best New Artist Juno award in 1971, but never really became a household name down here. He later co-founded Mushroom Studios in Vancouver and put performing on ice for a while.

One of a long list of overlooked artists of the 1960s.

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(Leitmotiv - Shoegaze Italiano)

When you get away from mainstream music, there's a whole universe out there going on while you aren't looking. And it's happening all over the world, in every country on the planet, in seemingly every town.

Leitmotiv is an Italian band going under the alternative/psych/shoegaze/experimental category. They've been around for a few years and their first album came out in 2008. They're from the southeastern part of Italy with one member from France tossed in for good measure. This track, Balocchi is the first cut off the album. It's atmospheric and densely layered, and the spoken lyric adds a touch of moody cinema to the whole thing.

Check out their page if you get the chance - and give this one a listen while you're at it.

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(Warren G. Harding - only President for 2 years. Yes, THAT Warren G. Harding)

Keeping with the spirit of "Presidents you've probably never actually heard before", I thought I would add Warren G. Harding to the mix.

Harding was President from 1921 to 1923, dying in office from a fatal heart attack. Not a lot of time to do much, he nonetheless tried to establish a system of arms control, brought about at a time when the world was still getting over the nightmare of the Great War in which he coined the phrase "return to normalcy". At his death he was succeeded by his vice-President Calvin Coolidge.

Here is a recording made at the opening of the International Conference For Limitation Of Arms on November 23, 1921.

Warren G. Harding: “We wish to sit with you at the table of understanding and goodwill. In good conscience we are eager to meet you frankly. And invite and offer cooperation. The world demands a sober contemplation of the existing order and the realization that there can be no cure without sacrifice. Not by one of us, but by all of us.”

Ironically, it was also the same day he signed into law the Wills-Campell Act which banned beer or any alcohol for medicinal use. It was a loophole in the Prohibition Law and no doubt I'm sure there was a connection there somewhere.

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(Nixon in 1970 - Just Say No. . and no. . .and no)

It was such a big deal, Nixon took Primetime television to talk about it. His veto of the Education and Health bills passed by the House on January 26, 1970. Despite his protests, it was largely viewed as a political move and a somewhat disingenuous display over the rising budget and our about-to-become involvement in Cambodia a few weeks later.

Nonetheless, with bravura and flourish, President Nixon proclaimed his concern and welfare for the American people and cut spending in an area that was desperately needed.

Nixon: “No matter how popular a spending program is, if I determine that it’s enactment will have the effect of raising your prices or raising your taxes, I will not approve that program. Now for these reasons, for the first time tonight instead of signing a bill which has been sent to me by the Congress, I am signing this veto message.”

Right after the non-signing, NET (pre-PBS) hosted a discussion of the bill, its veto and the implications hosted by Mitchell Krause. It was generally conceded that Nixon, as usual was not in touch with millions of Americans hanging by a thread and that social programs were not his strong suit.

Seems to be a recurring theme.

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(U.S. Troops in Haiti in 2004 - ten years after we put the guy we're getting rid of in power . . confused?)

After invading Haiti in 1994 to unseat Military dictator Raoul Cedras, and reinstate Jean Bertrand Aristide as President of the country, ten years later we're getting rid of Aristide in favor of someone else.

Now you know why the Haitians are a bit nervous around U.S. Marines? Wouldn't you?

The 2004 coup was murky at best. Generally acknowledged to have been aided and abetted by the U.S. government, the Bush Administration put U.S. troops ashore to "establish order and set up a democratic government" - or words to that effect.

One of the key players in the overthrow was a right wing think tank known as Haiti Democracy Project, their spokesman Lawrence Pezullo was interviewed by the BBC on February 26:

Lawrence Pezullo (Haiti Democracy Project): “I think the Haitian people have had enough experience with something short of democracy, and have had a lot of experience looking at the means to put governments together that might offer participation by the citizens. And I think the leadership level, certainly that you see today is mature enough to at least put the form together whether or not they have the means to educate the people and contain it remains to be seen.”

The 2004 coup and our involvement was only the latest in a long line of "excursions" into the business of our Caribbean neighbors going back to the beginning of the last century. It further establishes a certain skittishness where the subject of American aid is concerned, even in humanitarian terms. The concept of "once bitten, twice shy" seems more than appropriate here.

Above is a capsule rundown of events on March 2, 2004 as reported by the BBC.

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And for our French friends, or readers who are fluent, I am adding a bonus broadcast from Radio France International concerning the situation in Haiti and the ouster of Aristide. A special program from RFI Soir on February 26, 2004 with interviews and actualities of the situation on the ground.

Two points of view. One big mess.