Gimme that Rock 'N Roll Music

Battle of the Bands, 1967.  Lightfoot on the Right

What has happened to rock 'n roll music these days? I'm talking about music that rocks.  Apart from the un-listenable drivel that passes for rap and hip-hop, there simply isn't any new, innovative rock music being brought out.  Is it the result of the doom, gloom and malaise that permeates the current culture that prohibits the recording of feel good rock 'n roll?  I think so, too.  When we have to resort to such unimaginably inappropriate combinations as Bob Dylan covering Frank Sinatra's hits, we are admitting that there's a serious dearth of any decent new rock music.  No wonder aging rockers such as the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Led Zepplin are still doing tours.  They're filling venues even with astronomical ticket prices because people want to hear rock music, and there's none being made.  I can applaud Sir Chritopher Lee's new Christmas album, however.  He's 92 years old, and can actually rock.

Even Nashville's thrown in the towel and produces very little real country anymore; it's all just homogenized popular music with a little twang, a fiddle and a slide guitar.  Some exceptions exist, of course, but mostly the current crop is pablum.  Outlaw country retired when Waylon, Willie, Merle, Bocephus, Johnny and others quit recording. I know this is just my opinion, but God, I sure miss 'em.

Election Nullification

You gotta be kidding me.  Yesterday, at a little after 2000 hours, (that's 8 PM for you civilians) John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, presented a omnibus spending bill that is 1,603 pages long. That means it will be impossible for any member of Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it this week. This bill - you have to pass the bill before you can know what's in the bill - essentially is a $1.1 trillion open checkbook to fund not only amnesty, but a host of other very unpopular spending allocations.  This is obviously an attempt to "conduct business as usual" in Washington before - according to Mitch McConnell - and even after the GOP gains a majority in both houses.

If this bill passes, and is evidence of the truth of the matter, I fear that conservatives, Tea Party supporters and others will feel as though the midterm elections have been nullified.  And rightly so.  If the entrenched political class feel as though they can make and enact law irrespective of the voters' wishes, then we have truly lost our republican system of government.  And when that happens, an environment exists for pure tyranny.  When tyranny exists, resistance follows.  And that may not be pretty.