A lot of great and hilarious music came out of Atomic Age paranoia (click here for some great examples, and if anyone is looking for a holiday gift for me…), and as today’s song shows, the Cold War gets even colder when it reaches the North Pole. After all, Santa’s transnational flight plan has him flying through plenty of enemy airspace, and as was common knowledge back in the day, the Russians don’t believe in Christmas.  Luckily, since 1955, NORAD has been tracking Santa’s annual rounds, and even providing fighter pilots as escort to protect him from enemy fire. Their totally deadpan website should be required holiday viewing. (”Amazingly, Rudolph’s bright red nose gives off an infrared signature which allows our satellites to detect Santa.”) As Christmas lagniappe, today’s post includes an excerpt from a NORAD broadcast during which regional air defense commanders followed Santa’s flight on Christmas Eve 1961. 

 

 Reece Shipley - "Can Santa Miss Those Missiles": Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 NORAD tracks Santa (1961 broadcast excerpt): Play Now | Play in Popup

…or so says this Shreveport blogger.

While much has been made of the (allegedly) corrupter-than-thou governor of Illinois and how his (alleged) malfeasance, if proven, would make our Louisiana politicians look like pikers, little has been written about another, more personal matter in which Rod Blagojevich bests another of our hometown boys:

Holy Rug Doctor. No one from Chicago can ever laugh at Vince Marinello’s topper.

Get a jump on your holiday shopping (and eating) at…well, just read the poster:

Sat. Dec. 13, 9:30AM to 6PM

The Jazz & Heritage Center (formerly the Tharp-Sontheimer-Laudumiey Funeral Home)

1225 N. Rampart St.

The first annual Tremé Creole Gumbo Festival celebrates the history of Faubourg Tremé as a hotbed of New Orleans musical and culinary culture. Admission is free.

This unique event features outstanding musical performers, including:

9:45 am The Heritage School of Music Allstars

11 am Davis Rogan

12:30 pm The Tremé Brass Band

2 pm Shannon Powell Quartet

3:30 pm Shamarr Allen

5 pm John Boutte, Leroy Jones, Paul Sanchez and Todd Duke

In addition, two famous Creole chefs will demonstrate the secrets to making the perfect gumbo:

11:45 am Chef Alfred Singleton (Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse)

1:15 pm Chef Leah Chase (Dooky Chase Restaurant)

Several outstanding New Orleans Creole restaurants will be on hand selling their own takes on gumbo and other local delicacies. Participating restaurants include: Dooky Chase, Dunbar’s Creole Cooking, Li’l Dizzy’s and Olivier’s Creole Restaurant. Locally made wearable art, jewelry and fine crafts for the home will be featured in the festival’s Arts & Crafts Market. The festival also includes the third annual Jazz & Heritage Holiday Bazaar - a special sale of official Jazz Fest t-shirts, posters and other collectibles.

My secret to making the perfect gumbo? Going to Dooky Chase to get it. But if Carl Arredondo is right — we’ll all be wanting a big bowl of gumbo by this weekend.

I was going to write a review of Kanye West’s 808’s and Heartbreak. But I don’t want to listen to it. Simply because of that damn Auto-Tune. No more Auto-Tune. No more.

I totally appreciate that Kanye wanted to do something different by making a cold and lonely electro album. I admire him for that. I pretty much grew sick of mainstream hip-hop because no one tries to be different anymore. The blatant monkey-see-monkey-do attitude of ClearChannel radio makes me sad, sometimes disgusted. So I admire Kanye’s concept on 808. Then he goes and uses the Auto-Tune on every single song? Of his “different” album? When every song on rap radio today also uses Auto-Tune?

For those who don’t know, the Auto-Tune is…it’s that damned effect you hear on the vocals of every single rap song on ClearChannel radio! You don’t need me to explain. Every single song, man.

OK, I’ll explain. You’re not supposed to hear the effect. It’s a piece of studio gear meant to smooth the rough edges off of Britney Spear’s vocals, and trick you into thinking she’s better than she is. But Lil Wayne and T. Pain and the rest turn the Auto-Tune all the way up so it highlights every mistake in their voice by correcting it. Weee, I sound like a robot alien! Yeah, well, by now, so does he. And him too. And him. And her. In 2008, the Auto-Tune is the last thing you’d turn to, hoping to achieve individuality.

Why couldn’t simply putting effects on your voice become a hip-hop trend? I would love to hear echoing raps, phased out vocals, distorted vocals – any of the millions and millions of effects one could use. That trend would really liven up hip-hop’s sonic pallet. But they all use the Auto-Tune? Even Kanye.

I ask you Kanye, WHY? Why, when trying to make an “outside the box” musical statement, use the newest and already most played-out gimmick in mainstream rap? Why go and pee on the only interesting mainstream record made this year, drench it in an effect that even the bandwagon had used up last year!? It’s the same as if, in the early 90’s, Motley Crue had tried to make a drum-n-bass album.

So, I heard the singles from 808s and Heartbreak and those were enough for me. The lyrics were terrible too (rhyming dictionary style: cry, fly, by, try, sky, blech). Again, I haven’t heard the album, but in doing something different (different relative to his own particular world, I suppose; I’d heard plenty of electro before this year) Kanye seems to have taken a big step backwards, creativity-wise.

Will you burn me a copy so I can make sure? Maybe I can put it in my computer and strip the Auto-Tune off the vocals…

My shorter review of this album appears in this week’s Gambit. But trying to say all there is to say about Chinese Democarcy in 300 words is fairly impossible. So here’s the rest. 

Chinese Democracy: The Good, the Bad, and the Dated

By Michael Patrick Welch

Whew, the new Guns-n-Roses album is officially not bad! Axl could have so easily tarnished the name. But even Slash is now left mumbling vague compliments about Chinese Democracy, which is ambitious, interesting and unique, if not always good.

As feared, this now mythical album is one-third nu metal. Meaning: unabashedly inorganic, monochromatic, Korn-influenced guitar riffs. Luckily, thousands of truly twisted guitar solos decorate said riffs, attacking from all angles, as Chinese Democracy’s songs twist, break down, and morph. A woman sings over what could be a Garbage outtake that suddenly becomes a heavy blues ballad. Symphonic trip-hop with funky nylon string guitar leads Axl’s layered voices into a capella metal do-wop. Pro-Tools makes sure that even the album’s bad parts boast at least something interesting.

But Pro-Tools also drowns the gentle guitar of “Sorry” in gross digital gravy, and helps “FBI” sound like Sarah McLachlan. In the time this album took to make, the studio trick where a song (in this case “Prostitute”) dramatically shrinks for a moment, into a tin can, before suddenly expanding back to its regular size, became tired. The new G-n-R sometimes reeks of the 90’s, when reactionary producers started thinking even heavy metal needed little dance beats in it.

Axl’s voice heroically saves much of his material. Some of the terrible ballads (where he feigns trying not to cry during lyrics like, “I don’t know why / she didn’t say goodbye / I saw it in her eyes,”) should compel Rose’s piano to seek a restraining order. But for the most part, his dynamic, layered, downright killer singing/shrieking is not only metal real and true, but proves Axl’s a singer’s singer. Especially with Pro-Tools on his side. Too bad the music he’s singing over isn’t nearly as melodic as what he can do with his voice.

As far as this sounding like Guns-N-Roses? No way. But that’s probably the biggest reason the album doesn’t suck; thank god Axl got as far away as possible from the old G-n-R sound. Axl blatantly choose aural perfection over inspired performance so that even Lose Your Illusion sounds more “live” than Chinese Democracy. The songs on Appetite for Destruction were mostly recorded live and then tweaked, whereas these new songs are all tweakage. Many of the guitar solos come in the same interesting spots where Slash would have put them, weaving perfectly between Axl’s phrases. Still, Chinese Democracy definitely should have been Axl Rose’s solo album.

Essentially, this ambitious, interesting album is far better than the sad, crappy one many expected. But were it not Guns-n-Roses, many of us wouldn’t give it two listens. Axl mostly just one-upped Korn, augmenting heavy guitars with computer trickery that sometimes makes Chinese Democracy feel as dated as Axl’s neat red goatee. Not saying it looks bad on him per se…

Walter Block, Loyola economics chair and former adviser to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, is no stranger to incendiary opinions. I interviewed him for my Gambit article “Safe or Sorry?”, about a proposed piece of legislation that would allow guns on college campuses, because of his widely-known, staunchly libertarian views. In discussing the role of firearms on campuses he also brought up, interestingly enough, feminism:

“Where the hell are the feminists (regarding this issue)?” he asks. “They’re always taking about, you know, women are exploited and they aren’t equal and this and that and the other. Well, the gun’s a great equalizer. Men are taller than women, men weigh more than women, men have more testosterone than women, men are more likely to fight and rape than women. That’s what [feminists] would affirm, that women are powerless — they need to seize power. Well how better to seize power than to seize a gun? That’s a very powerful implement.”

(Later in the article appears a quote from Loyola sociology professor Marcus Kondkar — who conducted a campus-wide study last year on rape and sexual coercion — refuting this claim, saying that the majority of sexual assault instances occur among acquaintances and dating partners.)

Now Block is under fire for his views, which also involve women — and also, African Americans. 

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