Fly Over Leftover Country
Somber and bomber are separated by one letter; the real difference is whether the B is silent or pronounced.
In 2024 I published 63 posts. For even my most generous sponsors, that is less than $2 per post. For most of you, my posts were priceless. Sarah Kendzior states she would never paywall in times of peril, and I heartily agree. The view from the cheap seats is very good.
My sister Barb prides herself on being the Queen of the Leftovers, and she truly is. In writing, there are always leftovers. Words that did not make the cut. Although I spoke about the horrors in Gaza many times, I cut more words about Gaza than any other subject. Was it cowardice or prudent editing? Sometimes you can have too much of a bad thing, just as you can have too much of a good thing.
Here is a post that wasn’t published:
IF I MUST DIE”
BY REFAAT ALAREER
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
Although “official” death counts still hover around the magical thinking number of 40,000, most journalists and medical aide workers feel the real number is closer to 300,000. But hey, it’s not a contest- it’s a genocide. US statute defines a mass shooting as 3 or more killings in a single incident. Wikipedia says 4 or more killings. In 2024, 711 people died in US mass shootings, with 2363 wounded.
This is not a Red state /Blue state dichotomy. Clearly you can see that some states are not keeping up with the Joneses. Hello Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota. These 5 states had no mass shootings in 2024.
Does that make them the safest?
For those who are curious, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico shared the mass shooting gene with the other 43 active shooting states.
Another post that wasn’t posted, was on Girls in music:
GIRLS WANT TO BE WITH THE GIRLS
And the boys say, "What do you mean?"
And the boys say, "What do you mean?"
Well there is just no love,
When there's boys and girls.
And the girls want to be with the girls,
And the girls want to be with the girls
David Byrne- Talking Heads
In the category of “let’s get upset over something we can’t remember”, some friends posted links to a new study showing how few women are represented on the radio. Well, I‘m not one to pull the threads on this study, but the study may be missing the point. The authors also might be missing out on lots of super great music.
Do young women listen to radio? Apparently 55% of radio listeners are women. But for Gen Z, radio only accounts for 20% of their listening.
Jump in the streaming pool! The water is warm. Warm Women comprise 60% of streaming musical acts in the US. Hello,Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Selina Gomez, and Sabrina Carpenter.
50% of the Top Ten Most Liked Artists on Instagram are women, with 8 out of ten from Korea! Perhaps that stat tells more about how many people in Korea use Instagram.
What about TikTok? 70% of the “50 Artists with Most Tik Tok” followers are women. Women seems to like using TikTok. That’s why Tik Tok must be blocked. Or so they keep telling us. I camt see that their privacy issuesare any worse than all the usual suspect algorithms.
Avril Lavigne is pegged at #1 Most Popular Punk artist! Imagine that. Punks pegged by Avril! It’s complicated.
Most Popular Alternative Rock had only one woman- Mitski, who came in at number 10 in the top ten. She is categorized as being from Japan, even though she is an American artist. What is Alternative anyway? Alternative to what? Or is that white?
Twelve out of the top 21 artists on bandcamp could be women, although some do not identify as any particular gender. Once again, it’s complicated.
All these numbers! So many lists and numbers.
The real question is “Are women musicians getting through to other women who want to hear them?”
Frankly, yes and no. More people are listening and have the opportunity to listen to women artists. But keep in mind that the telephone can be used to call out and also to call in.
Go Ahead Caller. Our whole world is in the palm of your hand, so finding women artists has never been easier. If we judge the progress by what is fed to us, then yes, the water is warm, but gruel is still gruel. It’s still a beautiful and cruel world.
Make America Gruel Again!
And nothing is rhyming, oh Mandy!
If music is a takeout window, then the menu keeps changing.
According to the Atlantic from 2022, almost 70% of songs we listened to are “Old Music”,as opposed to new music. If your source of listening to music is only the radio, then it is time to pull your head out of your yacht, and get a better view mate. Beyond New Wave, lies a new shore and of course the eponymous Deserted Island.
I have always been very curious about music, wanting to learn more, hear more, and generally, to seek out the new and strange. That said, I have been known to listen to nothing but Bob Dylan for months on end. I am consistently inconsistent.
Here is my mansplaining list of woman artists that I like:
Chappel Roan, Katy Kirby, Katie Pruitt, Cassandra Jenkins, Dua Lipa- If you haven’t seen her Day Drinking with Seth Myers, then do so. And be prepared to fall in love. Shelby Lynne- Shelby is not new, but her latest Consequences of the Crown, is way beyond genre or gender. It is beautiful, scarred, and sensual. Over and Over, Butterfly, I ain’t.
How about St. Vincent, Peaches, Lil Simz, Ladytron, Kim Gordon?
Or you can go way back. Nina Simone, Anita O’Day, Fanny, Phoebe Snow…..
Also Big Maybelle. Azalia Banks, Doechii, Nulifer Yanya, PJ Harvey, Julien Baker, boygenius, LolaYoung, Charli xcx, Caroline Polachek, Lana del Ray, Miley, don’t forget all the Brandi’s/ Brandy’s.
Enough. Who cares what I think? Who needs me to mansplain?
No wonder I didn’t print this one.
I Wanna Go Back—Way Back!
We’re Going to Go Back-Way Back. To the time of Cave Men. Cave Women.
“I helped get Chic on that label. That's a long story. When I saw Bernard and Nile in the street one day, and I was getting ready to park my quote-unquote Mercedes - because at that time that's who I was, I was Jimmy Castor, and I always had a great car because I never starved, I was always smart. And they were on the subway, they came up to me and gave me a copy of a record on their own label and they said, 'We know who you are, we're not getting any promotion, blah blah blah'. And I looked at it and it said, ‘Dance Dance Dance’, ‘Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah’. And I said, 'I don't like Yowsah Yowsah', because I thought it was a racial epithet. But it wasn't, it was 'Yow-Sah! Yow-Sah!', Al Joleson, that type o' thing. But I took it to my business manager, he took it to the guy in the next office, and before you knew it I had introduced my business manager and attorney to Jerry Greenberg, who was the president of Atlantic, Jerry loved it and bought the master, and Helicopter Records, and the rest is history. I never even got a bottle of wine for that and everybody made 40 million.” So said the great Jimmy Castor interviewed by The Quietus and writer Agnus Batey.
“You need a groove. Listen to Madonna's new record, it's just a groove. That's the secret of a hit record - you've gotta have a groove. That's why they only wanna hear the 70s music, why it's being sampled so much, because there was a groove. All the grooves were in the 70s and the 60s. In the 60s the Temptations had a groove; in the 70s Al Green had a groove, Earth Wind & Fire had a tremendous groove, Kool & The Gang had an unbelievable groove. The Jimmy Castor Bunch grooved. George Clinton had a groove. But there's no grooves today.”
“I can ride motorcycles all day and ignore it, but I come home and the inbox is full, 'Where are you, what are you doing?' People in places like Malaysia writing to me to say, 'Jimmy, I got married, and me and my wife loved this song you did called ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New’. Where can I buy it?' 'It's no longer in print but I can send it to you'. They don't believe that I would do that, but I do because I'm from them, and they made me.”
Full interview at paywalled site Rocks back pages https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/remembering-the-everything-man-a-jimmy-castor-interview
My Summer Listening
Highlights
☕ I read the most in the morning
💌 I subscribed to 6 new Substacks - I’m now subscribed to about 98!
🎧 I listened to 34 minutes of podcasts
📽️ I watched 34 minutes of video
❤️ I liked 4 posts
💬 I left 13 comments on posts
📜 I scrolled 49 meters in Notes
🕵️ I discovered 13 new posts via Notes