"A wise Latina woman...."

The United States of America, 2009

"A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up." - Maureen Dowd

Perhaps the most cringe-inducing moment of the first day of hearings in the confirmation process of Sonia Sotomayor was when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked the judge to recite her now famous words, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life."

Forget for a moment that this is thirty-three words in a lifetime of rulings and written comments that Republicans are clinging to with the tenacity that a flood victim brings to a tree branch. Let's get back to the question that caused Newt Gingrich to label Sotomayor a "racist", i.e., would the same phrase be racist if spoken by a white male judge?

Here's the answer, you might want to write it down: It's all about the context.

Imagine if you can, a white male judge invited to speak to a room full of white male lawyers and law school students.

Imagine that the event that draws them all together is a celebration.

Imagine that the reason for celebration is that, after a couple hundred years of systematic oppression that denied white men the right to even apply to law schools or gain admission to good universities; decades after decades during which white men were blocked from the practice of law at every turn and the very notion of a white male judge would seem so utterly absurd that it would cause most people to laugh out loud... after all of that, strides had been made, progress, though slow, had been steady, obstacles removed, attitudes changed and today we're here to celebrate the fact that white men have made significant inroads into the legal profession in the United States.

Imagine that a few white men have even been appointed to the bench.

If the white male judge, to a room full of white male lawyers, in that context had given a speech and in that speech had said "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a black or Hispanic male who has not lived that life," and said it to encourage and empower his audience, then no; I don't believe it would be a racist remark.

People, white people in particular, have tried to take the word "racism" and change its meaning so that it is reduced to nothing more than a synonym for "prejudice" and "bigotry." This does the word serious injury.

Put simply, "bigotry" and "prejudice" are individual characteristics, where "racism" describes a struggle among groups on the greater terrains of culture and society. By altering the definition we, in effect, remove the word from its political context and neuter the power of the word.

Sonia Sotomayor brings a depth of experience and a powerful intellect to the court and is a perfect first pick for President Obama. I hope he gets an opportunity to select two or three more.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie....

"Okemah was one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns." - Woody Guthrie

Today is Woody's 97th birthday and time to take a moment and remember that we are standing today on the very first rung of a ladder that leads to the America that Woody imagined it might be possible to have. Say it with me, say it out loud and look at the words as they hang suspended in the air; say it every morning like a mantra.... This land in our land.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma. He was the second-born son of Charles and Nora Belle Guthrie. His father – a cowboy, land speculator, and local politician – taught Woody Western songs, Indian songs, and Scottish folk tunes. His Kansas-born mother, also musically inclined, had an equally profound effect on Woody.

Of all the artists that Woody Guthrie influenced, none is more important than Bob Dylan. Like Ramblin' Jack Elliot before him, a young Robert Zimmerman read Guthrie's Bound For Glory and set out on the road, reinventing himself with every step he took. His steps led him to Brooklyn State Hospital where Guthrie was dying from Huntington's Disease. By the time of Dylan's first album in 1962 he'd written "Song To Woody" which described the debt he owed.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seein' your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.

Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I'm a-sayin' an' a-many times more.
I'm a-singin' you the song, but I can't sing enough,
'Cause there's not many men that done the things that you've done.

Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today,
Somewhere down the road someday.
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too.

On a regular basis I seem to get into arguments with Bob Dylan fans about whether Dylan is a "poet" or not. What I hear in their arguments is an attempt to, in effect, promote Dylan from mere "songwriter" to "poet" and award him status that reflects the age-old "high culture" versus "low culture" (or elite vs pop) dichotomy, the very dichotomy that artists like Dylan upended and overturned a good forty years ago or more.

Their arguments are what arguing that Arthur Miller was such a good playwright that we ought to call him a "novelist" would be like, if anyone ever argued such a thing.

But Dylan has, on occasion, written poetry; and I believe that any serious anthology of the best 20th Century American poetry would do well to include his poem "Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie." The video has the audio recording of Dylan's reading of the poem at a Town Hall concert in April of 1963 (recorded for a planned live LP that was never released). It is Bob, not as Rimbaud or Verlaine, but as Whitman.



Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup
If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"
And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin' around a pinball machine
And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming
And you know that it's something special you're needin'
And you know that there's no drug that'll do for the healin'
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding
And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin' train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That's been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over
You need a Greyhound bus that don't bar no race
That won't laugh at yer looks
Your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin' long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve

But that's what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
"Cause you look an' you start getting the chills

"Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny
No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse
And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'
Sayin' ain't I pretty and ain't I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache¥
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN'T REAL"

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown

- Bob Dylan

As an added bonus for those of you unfamiliar with a series of songs Guthrie was commissioned by the US Department of Health to write about the dangers of venereal disease (which, upon hearing, were pretty much never heard from again) you can go here and find the lyrics and mp3s of Bob Dylan playing all four songs: "VD Blues", "VD Gunner's Blues" (aka "Landlady"), "VD Seaman's Last Letter", and "VD Waltz." Here's a brief sample:

"Because that's where the money is."

"Only Americans can hurt America." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

When Eisenhower took office it was not possible to drive from the east coast to the west coast in the US because at some point you would find there just wasn't a road you could take. It was during Ike's administration that the country's infrastructure was built and the post war economy was set into motion. Take a guess at what the tax rate was back then? 5%? 10%?

During Eisenhower's administration income over $400,000 was taxed at a 92% rate.

You want to build (or rebuild) a country, sacrifices are required.

People with only one home and modest means have been sacrificing like crazy during the past 8 years. They've seen their wages stagnate, their health care cover less, their savings disappear, their mortgages and credit card rates increase; more than a few have sacrificed their children to wars fought in deserts. We have been squeezed dry.

During the 2008 election, conservative commentator and occasional actor, Ben Stein, wrote a piece for the NY Times that was in the form of an open letter to GOP candidate John McCain. You should click on the link above and read it. He explains why tax cuts never work, and advises McCain that raising taxes is an essential part of our way out of the economic problems we currently face. Stein wrote:

But whom to tax? The poor are, well, poor. The middle class is struggling to pay for its middle-class life. That leaves the rich. It would be lovely if we did not have to tax them. Many have worked hard for their money. Many have created useful businesses. Many of them are fine people.

But as Willie Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.” By definition, the truly rich have a lot more money than they need. If they don’t, then they are not rich by my standards. The first step toward putting our house in order, once we are past the seemingly looming recession, is much higher taxes on the truly rich and serious enforcement to prevent offshore tax evasion.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, than the history of the Republicans' reliance on tax cuts to raise income ought to be grounds for committal. Consider this:

Between 1917 and 1924 the top tax rate in the US varied between 76% and 56%. During the administrations of Coolidge and Hoover these rates were lowered to 24%-25% and the country was plunged into the Great Depression. From 1932 until 1987, the top tax rate never dropped below 50% (indeed, between 1936-1981 it never dropped below 70%).

The notion that a high tax rate on great wealth is somehow a foreign and new idea is simply not true. The progress that the US saw in the 20th Century was possible because our leaders were smart enough to see where all the damn money was.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we've been told the lie that taxing the wealth of the richest Americans is somehow unpatriotic. Like my Uncle Butch used to say, "What a crock."

"See what your greed for money has done?" More thoughts on Woody Guthrie

The closing line of Woody's song "1913 Massacre" seems a perfect response to this story by Susan Saulny from the July 10 NY Times:

A Day of Searching, Anger and Renewed Grief in a Desecrated Illinois Cemetery
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: July 10, 2009

ALSIP, Ill. — They arrived in tears, showing outrage and confusion, generations of a family together, or lonely, widowed spouses and old friends wandering by themselves.

Hundreds of people combed the rows of an old, historically black cemetery in this town south of Chicago on Friday, hoping that their loved ones were not among those corpses — at least 300 discovered so far, county officials say — that had been dug up and tossed into a heap at the far end of the grounds. The authorities are describing the mass disinterment as a ghoulish moneymaking scheme to resell plots.

On Wednesday, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County said detectives had discovered exposed human remains in a remote, fenced-off part of Burr Oak Cemetery, which was still holding funerals on Friday in an atmosphere that grew more morbid and chaotic as the day went on.

Late Friday, Sheriff Dart announced that investigators had found exposed human remains in another area of Burr Oak. The entire cemetery was closed and declared a crime scene.

County prosecutors have charged four current and former cemetery workers, including the cemetery manager, with dismemberment of human bodies, felony charges that carry 6 to 30 years in prison on conviction.

Mr. Dart said investigators had been tipped off to the scheme by the cemetery’s owner, Perpetua Inc., which is based in Tucson and is cooperating with the investigation.

At a news conference at the cemetery, the sheriff said he suspected that irregularities with burials went back at least four years but could stretch back much further and involve many more bodies than have been currently counted.

“This is going to be a very long process,” he said of the forensic work that is beginning to identify the discarded remains.

Many notable African Americans are among the thousands of people buried at Burr Oak, including Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose torture and lynching in 1955 in Mississippi helped spark the civil rights movement. While Emmett Till’s remains were undisturbed, members of his family struggled for strength Friday after learning that his original coffin, the one in which his mutilated body had been exposed for viewing and photographs, photographs that became part of the pictorial record of the civil rights movement, had been left to rot in a garbage-strewn shed and house rats and raccoons.

“He’s been victimized again,” said Simeon Wright, 66, a cousin. “Greed will take you to the lowest of the low.”

Emmett Till’s body was exhumed in 2005 and reburied in a different coffin after a reinvestigation of his murder. Members of the family said the original coffin had been entrusted for preservation to the cemetery because it agreed to build an Emmett Till memorial. Burr Oak was also responsible for collecting donations for the memorial, but the family said the money had never been accounted for.

“While Emmett Till may be one of the most well-known persons laid to rest at Burr Oak,” another cousin, Ollie Gordon, said on Friday, “the family recognizes the pain that all families are experiencing at this time.”

County officials estimated that since Wednesday night, almost 2,000 people had streamed through the cemetery’s gates looking for answers. The sheriff’s office set up an impromptu center for the families and has investigators in a mobile command unit inside the cemetery gathering information from people as they discover what has happened at their particular plots.

Shanelle Woods, 25, discovered a hole in the ground at her mother-in-law’s grave where the headstone used to be.

“Mother’s gone!” Ms. Woods sobbed. “It’s all dug up.”

While Ms. Woods’s sister-in-law spoke with investigators, she added, “It’s just not fair to us or anyone else. You can look down and see a hole. It doesn’t make any sense. It feels like we’re having a whole other funeral today.”

Harrison Mack, 55, arrived at Burr Oak with a map in hand and with four family members to start canvassing the grave sites of aunts and uncles, a grandmother and a grandfather.

“I am highly upset because our dead are not resting in peace,” Mr. Mack said. “The hurting part is that there’s no closure. And how long will this go on, this investigation? In the meantime we have to do our best to maintain our composure.”

Willidean Wayne, 68, was looking for the grave of her grandmother Dorothy Millerton.

Ms. Wayne and family members split up for the task, trudging through muddy, untidy rows of graves, their eyes cast down, frantically reading names.

Ms. Millerton was buried in 1977, and Ms. Wayne could not find her headstone in the area where she had been laid to rest.

“Nothing to do but keep looking and hope she’s resting in peace,” she said.

*****

Here's an early (1961) recording of Bob Dylan singing "1913 Massacre."

The 38th Annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Party....

In the Summer of 1971 I left Philadelphia to go to college in Clarion, Pennsylvania. Clarion would become my other hometown. That Summer I met my friend Tom DiStefano who was, like most of the friends I made in Clarion, not a college student at the time, but a local guy. His parents ran the Vowinkel Hotel in Vowinkel, PA, and we would spend the better part of the next four decades fighting over whose mom's spaghetti sauce was better.

One day that first summer I found him clutching a newspaper and sputtering in anger. He'd just read that Woody Guthrie's hometown had refused to celebrate Woody's birthday because they thought he was "un-American."

Tom was perhaps the first true believer I ever met; he believed in that "other" America, the one that wasn't going to re-elect Richard Nixon, the one that wasn't spending thousands of lives in Southeast Asia, the one that had a national health care system. To him, Woody was a patriot on par with Jefferson and Pane; fellow Thomases.

"This shall not stand."

He most likely didn't actually say that. But he did proclaim that afternoon that, if Woody's hometown wasn't up to the task, we were. Thus began preparations for the First Annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Party. It wasn't until three or four years later that we'd find out that it shouldn't be "first annual" but we did not care; it sounded good.

For a small town in rural Western Pennsylvania, Clarion had a thriving population of local musicians. Bands were quickly arranged for; the headliner would be the band with what is still to this day one of my favorite "sixties" band names: One Hundred and Ninety Eight Hubby Subby Indians. "One Ninety Eight" as they were called if time was short, was led by Scott Garvey, who played a solid body Fender electric 12 string guitar that he ran through a fuzz-wah-wah pedal that gave it him genuinely unique sound, and Terry Rhodes, the local guitar hero of the time who played a black Les Paul. Ken Ponchell, a local poet, wrote their lyrics but didn't actually perform with the band.

It's funny the stuff that I still remember (even though I may be remembering most of it wrong).

The Ross Memorial Library was set back off the town's Main Street, just behind the post office. At the back was a small auditorium that was used for local dances and events. Even though I had just started in school, I played my part by getting one of my professors to agree to sign off on the form requesting permission to use the facility and to attend as "chaperon."

As the day approached, it suddenly dawned on the organizers that neither they, nor any of the assembled musicians, actually knew an actual Woody Guthrie song.

Our young charge, Dick Eustice, an enthusiastic 15 year-old folk singer at the time, was dispatched to learn one.

The event was a success. Woody's patriotism proclaimed and celebrated. The close-mindedness of his home town, cursed and condemned.

This coming July 14th marks Woody's 97th birthday and the 38th anniversary of ours. What better way to celebrate it than this.

Signs and Signifiers....

The universal symbol for "NO" is not enough, someone felt the need to specify temporal parameters as well. "NO... NEVER." Someone else has modified the sign to better reflect the hidden meaning of the double negative. "NO" becomes "LOVE" and "NEVER" is rewritten as "forever and always." This is the only photograph here that is my own. I stumbled upon this representation of the ultimate struggle on a small side street in Wells, England.


It is the signs of age on this sign that may signify more than the letters themselves. The scrapes and dings in the metal suggest that this sign has been here (wherever "here" is) for quite some time. The color red signifies an urgency, as does the ALL CAPS. It is IMPORTANT that we be aware of invisibility, and has been for quite some time.


One day, about five or six years ago, a local anti abortion group organized about 100 people with signs along both sides of Meridian Street in downtown Indianapolis. Meridian Street is the street that runs north and south and divides the city in half; it runs through the monument circle which is the exact geographic center of the city. The signs were the usual, "abortion is murder" "abortion stops a beating heart" and the like. As I drove down Meridian Street that afternoon I thought about finding a shop that sold poster-board and magic markers and fashioning a large "SHOW US YOUR TITS" sign and sneaking my way toward the front of a group on a crowded corner. In Indianapolis this would have the further connotation of someone who got the dates for the Indy 500 weekend wrong.



This is wonderful. The first time I saw it I was struck by how it manages to, in a single word, express the same meaning as Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet, "Ozymandias."


This recalls something that Captain Kirk might have used to defeat the logical killer robot. How can something be here, and, at the same time, north of here? Perhaps it is a more proletariat rendering of Magritte's "The Treachery of Images."

Elton John: The Nick Drake Demos 7/70

My affection for Elton John is specific to two albums, his first two releases for the UNI label. The self-titled debut from April 1970, and Tumbleweed Connection, released in October of the same year. Both albums feature some great songwriting, and Tumbleweed Connection has that unique quality that British musicians achieve when they attempt to make US country music (also see The Kinks' Muswell Hillbillies and Mighty Baby's A Jug Of Love) .

Let me also add Elton's live-in-a-radio-studio LP, 11-17-70, which is a pretty phenomenal re-imagining of the "power trio" with an acoustic piano replacing the electric guitar and Marshall stack.

My affection for Nick Drake dates back to discovering him through a track on an Island Records sampler LP which led me to the three equally brilliant LPs, Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970) and Pink Moon (1972) he released in his all-too-short life.

The great blog, Aquarium Drunkard, posted back in June a collection of unreleased studio recordings of Elton John playing covers of Nick Drake. If you're familiar with both artists there is a 77% probability that milk just shot out your nose. Here's how they're described:

The past couple of weeks have found me spinning a disc comprised of the following Elton John session (from July 1970) in which the artist lays out, among other tracks, a selection of Nick Drake covers. Yes, you read that correctly. Let’s first address the 800 lb gorilla in the room: on paper the often gregarious bombast of Elton John coupled with the work of the introspective Drake looks rough. But it actually works. As a fan of both artists, the session provides a not only interesting but equally entertaining look at the Drake material. This was just prior to John’s mega-stardom, and prior to his parading around on stage dressed as Donald Duck. Below are some notes a friend gave me along with the tracks (note: they may have been culled from elsewhere).

“Apparently Joe Boyd arranged a recording date to showcase some new songs, including some other material from Mike Heron and John Martyn (among others). The future Linda Thompson,then known as Linda Peters, handled backing vox and then sang lead on a few more songs. Possibly some people from Fairport Convention and/or Traffic were in the band.”

Personnel: Elton John– Piano/vocals, Linda Peters– vocals, Jim Capaldi or Gerry Conway - Drums, Pat Donaldson- Bass, Simon Nicol or Caleb Quaye - Guitar

There are eleven tracks set up to simply click and play (very nice) and you can do that by clicking on this link.

You should visit Aquarium Drunkard every week to see what new treasures have been put up for your enjoyment.