4537 Knee Deep in the Big Sandy

Tehran at night. No sign of sand here, but you don’t have to travel far to find it.

LBJ brought marathon escalation to modern warfare. Now trump is carrying on a great American tradition.

Johnson didn’t start the war in Vietnam.  But he didn’t finish it, either. Ho Chi Minh did that. We lost.  Folksinger Pete Seeger had a small label mini hit record with “Knee Deep in the Big Muddy (And the big fool says to push on.”)

Now, we have the Big Sandy. It’s more complicated than ‘nam.

Ho was a national hero. He had the support of his own puppet regime and the secret allegiance of millions of South Vietnamese who didn’t see him as a commie, but as a great wall against China.

LBJ had some saving graces, even so, the war did him in.  The present occupant of the White House doesn’t have any graces or savings.  But he will not fall victim to the kind of public outcry and uproar that ended the Johnson presidency. And that says more about us than it does about him.

Does the coming war with Iran have any big-time US supporters?  Um… it doesn’t look that way. The chorus of democrats seems pretty united about the idea of not having another shooting war. But if you are a person of draft age, it’s time to have those bone spurs or flat feet certified by a friendly physician.

And some notes to the Pentagon:

1.    Agent Orange doesn’t work in places where the average annual temperature is in three-digit numbers.

2.    It’s way harder to dig secret hiding places and tunnels in sand than it is in the rich, rice-growing soil of ‘nam.

3.    Attention Department of Defense: It’s tougher to work up a supply line from anywhere in the middle east to Tehran than it was from South Vietnam to Hanoi.  So build some roads.

4.    Kissinger is the Ikea of peace talks. He has diagrams for big tables. Learn from his experience. The Iranians are better at complicating things than North Vietnam was.

So, seriously… do we need another shooting war to lose? Do we need another perpetual war?  Do we need another draft? All of these “winning” strategies loom large in the future.

There’s another little problem in fighting with Iran. As far as we know, North Vietnam did not have an atomic weapons arsenal. We can’t be sure that Iran doesn’t or won’t. And we can’t count on anyone else joining us in a new war.  Our alleged president has alienated all of our would-be allies.  There will be no coalition, not even the kind the Bushs faked in Iraq.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2020

mini 012 Remembering Ed Koch on his birthday

Mayor Koch would be 95 today, Thursday 12/12/19. Boy oh boy would it be fun to have him around these days!  Always audacious, he had the audacity to die back in 2013 at a mere 88.

As former Mayor Mike Bloomberg said at Ed’s funeral, here was the typical New Yorker: A Jewish guy buried in a Protestant cemetery in a Dominican neighborhood. No, Mike, not typical. Archtypical.

My own first look at his audacity came around 1958. It turned into a friendship of more than 50 years. What was audacious about him back then? Try this:

That was the 1950s. Washington Square Park. Sunday sing-ins. Audacious? Hell, yeah. The only thing worse he did back then than play the guitar was to sing.

But he already was a lawyer and he was the lawyer that fought City Hall for the rest of us and won over the Parks Department which wanted us to clear out of the park and stop the Sunday sing-ins.

Ed destroyed the DiSapio-Tammany Hall wing of the Democratic Party, which badly needed destruction.  He rose from City Councilman to Congressman to Mayor to Elder  Scold in quick time. But he never changed much.

When he was first elected, New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy and there was no help coming from Washington.  So he figured out how to do it on his own.  And then, he did it.

He supported W. Bush’s run for president. (We fought. We ate.) He was friends with Republican Senator Al D’Amato (all three of us fought, we all ate.)

He ran his segment on my radio show overtime. When I asked him what to take out to make it fit into the Bloomberg Radio computerized weekend program he said “I don’t care. Take out anything you want.” So, I did. He was harder to edit than he was to interview. And it cut into my breakfast hour. 

I loved the guy. Still, I do.

But Ed, if you can hear me, I know they never gave you a harp up there… so put down the cheap guitar, stop “singing” some Pete Seeger song and get your butt back down here.  New York and all of America needs fixing. And I know you’re the guy who could do it.

Wes Richards 12/12/19

1525 Banjo Rant

1525 Banjo Rant

The five string banjo made a comeback during the folk music fad.  The fad has faded but the instrument lingers on and that pleases those of us who play.

But in recent years, the banjo has fallen victim to a dismal affliction that affects many aspects of our lives.  We confuse musical virtuosity with complexity and speed.

With each new player we get less of the first and more of the rest.

The early icons were Earl Scruggs and Pete Seeger. Scruggs was fast. Ho-boy was he fast.  But he was also musical.  If you listen to his recordings, even those he made at the beginning and end of his career, you hear actual music.  Yes, it’s complicated, yes it’s “folk music in overdrive,” as someone put it. (The someone is unknown, but the phrase is generally attributed to song “collector” Alan Lomax.)

Seeger wasn’t a soloist like Scruggs.  But he was an innovator none the less. (You want to know what he innovated, drop me a line.)

In recent years, we’ve welcomed a new generation of players.  Maybe welcomed isn’t the right word.  But each has tried to expand the reach of banjo music and most have failed.

Bela Fleck was the first of them. A breathtaking technician.  He makes sounds no one previously imagined coming from a simple instrument assembled mostly using parts you can buy in a hardware store.

Breathtaking, yes.  Musical?  Not so much.

Latecomers like Tony Trischka and Jens Kruger have traveled the same path.  Expand the repertoire. They dazzle.  And they have good acts.

Tony looks like your favorite uncle. His stage show is filled with self effacing talk.  He’s the genuine article. But his playing, brilliant as it may be, is often tiring.

Jens is a jolly Swiss with a loveable lopsided European command of English that makes him attractive.  But the same about his playing.

This is not a recommendation to return to roots.  There were problems in the good old days, too. Bad playing. Lyrics that used what has become an outdated vernacular even in the mountains of North Carolina and the flatlands of Kentucky. Monotony.

If you want to hear a good compromise artist slightly below the earning level of what passes for banjo superstardom, try “Mean Mary” James.  She’s modern, makes good music, makes good videos.

Guys, it doesn’t have to be jet-fast, jazz- complex and Flamenco percussive.  It just has to be nice to listen too.

Shrapnel:

--Guy in Alaska puts on a bear costume, head and all, goes into the woods and annoys real bears.  Chased by wildlife cops, he then started to annoy people who came to watch the bears.  Cops say he wouldn’t identify himself and they still don’t know who he is or why he did what he did.

--Sesame Street moving to HBO and PBS only gets first runs second?  After 45 years?  And now you have to pay to watch it?

--The Sesame Street move would be bad enough on its own, but with the breakup of Miss Piggy and Kermit, it seems like the end of the world.  Piggy told us she was ready to hit the social scene. Kermit has not returned repeated phone calls or emails.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© 2015 WJR