Musicians Rally (Again) To Help One of Their Own


Hi ... this is John McEuen... from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

do you know of George Grantham?
drummer/singer for the early country rock band POCO... they splintered in to many groups including Eagles.. Loggins & Messina... Buffalo Springfield

I am helping his wonderful daughter Gracie raise money for her stroke victim father with her EBay auction.. is there anywhere You can send this information to, to get this word out, to help her raise money ? she is doing it 'on her own', and needs any help she can come by.. he is a wonderful guy, but can no longer pursue a music career due to his stroke.. he worked hard at his love of Poco music for 35 years, was (and is) always 'a nice guy'.. and has many people who admire him.. it is simple.. she needs to get the news out.. she needs help.. it can work..
and if you want to send any of your 'junk' others may find valuable, it will get taken care of.

here's the news I am asking you to send:

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"From the hits Crazy Love to Heart of the Night and much more, POCO's George Grantham, the great drummer of seminal country rock from the West Coast, set the rhythm for the group that influenced many. The band is still performing those hits today, but a stroke of 3 years ago took George off the road as the band plays on; keeping tabs on him for all his fans can be done at their website : poconut.com.

George's daughter, Gracie, has pitched in to help defray medical costs by asking George's many cohorts and admirers on the performing side of music to send her some of their valuable 'music business paraphernalia', which is going up for sale on EBAY to the highest bidder. As John McEuen (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) says: "In this day of higher and higher value for things of sho biz history, this is a good chance to latch on to something cool, at a good price, for a great cause, and help someone who brought great music to so many. POCO opened for us.. their first L.A. gig, at the Troubadour.. and blew us away. A year later we went looking for a singing drummer like George, who was always thought of as the Ringo of country-rock."

Spread the word.. check out the stuff, all good. All proceeds go to defraying medical costs for George and his family. The name of the auction at ebay is:
puttingheadstogether

It is running starting Oct. 2 thru Oct. 9

and is easily found on google and the net.
and other info at: www.poconut.com
lower right corner

previous and ongoing donors include:

Timothy Schmit Kentucky Head hunters Scotty Moore
Steve Wariner DJ Fontona Don Henley
Richie Furay Chris Hillman
Graham Nash the Orleans Band
John McEuen (of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) Jim Messina
Kenny Loggins Charlie Daniels R.E.M.

If you have something to add to the available swag, contact Gracie at: Paradddle@aol.com


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The donation link is at the top of the page:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1


and if you are sending things:
Gracie Grantham
910 8th ave apt 1515
Seattle WA 98104

other info at:
Gracie
myspace.com/graciesday

For more information on the Putting Heads Together eBay auction for the
Benefit of George Grantham visit the Back Bone List at : http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/BackBoneOfOurGroup/

direct donations not involved with the auction, to send cards, letters, and to get things signed by George, go to:
George Grantham Benefit fund
George Grantham
PO Box 128523
Nashville TN, 37209

thanks for reading this far!!

All the Young Dudes

I went to a show Saturday night with my wife and daughter, my daughter's bands. I hadn't been to an all ages show in a very long time, and the energy level in the place was remarkable, as was the interaction between the bands and the audience. It was certainly a more visceral and exciting experience than I typically experience at any of the hip midtown Kansas City clubs.

At the same time, much of it was a mystery to me. It's a little overwhelming to me how many young bands there are right now who have devoted young audiences networked through MySpace, mix CDs and word of mouth. Aiden was the only one of these four bands I was even a little aware of, and yet each one was greeted by the crowd like a headliner--fans singing along and moshing through frequent climaxes of emotion.

The show opened with a set by a band called 1997, with 6 members, including one harmonica and one tambourine, who bounced and charged across the stage with a relentless mix of hippie freedom and postpunk exuberance. They were followed by a band called Still Remains that came on like some kind of mix of Genesis and Roxy Music but managed to ignite and fuel the most intense mosh pit of the evening. They were followed by an amiable trainwreck of Korn-like dirges from the band Drop Dead Gorgeous, that managed to surprise with unusually melodic and displaced sounding vocal refrains and keyboard work.

Though they were the biggest band with the bestselling album, the crowd seemed to have thinned a little by the time headliner Aiden hit the stage. Still, the audience that was left were clearly devoted fans and thronged the stage with enough energy to fuel an ecstatic rock show.
The band's instrumentalists played with a speed metal precision and energy that was very engaging, and the singer, wiL Francis, added a disarming 80s blitz band melodicism to the mix. All of the bands were very engaged with working the crowd, but Francis took it the farthest (probably too far) talking about the community formed by the band and the audience and how much they needed each other in both inspiring and, sometimes, overly romantic ways.

And that's the thing that's got me writing. There's definitely a romanticism to these young bands that is necessary and real, a need to assert their own story and their fans' stories centerstage despite living in a culture that continuously tells them everything's played out. True, they are drawing on an old playbook, sometimes fighting windmills that their elders have grown beyond or may not understand themselves.

But they are also charting brand new territory, and that's what interests me. For one thing, every one of these bands, as with most of the bands my daughter plays for me, seem actively to be exploring hybrids of emo, death metal and more mainstream styles of rock. It might even be argued that they take a tip from hip hop in the way they weave their songs out of collage like mixes of stylistic fragments.

What I have found myself wondering about, and what inspired me to even write about this is the question of how they see their story in this fragmented universe of narrow formats and half a century of rock and roll history. While my generation was more or less the second or third rock generation, we were the ones--with punk and hip hop in particular--to see ourselves as being part of a rebirth after the original storyline had begun to play itself out. Today, the story is much more complicated, and I'm not sure there is any way for the kids to see themselves as a part of the great story arch we could grasp.

And yet, they are the revolutionary generation. This world is changing on their watch in a way we could only dream about before. Because of this, it seems the responsibility of those of us who have a sense of our role in a great story arch of cultural revolution to try to meet this younger generation in the middle somewhere and begin to construct a story that incorporates both of our stories. I think the key is that thing that's always hardest to do but absolutely necessary for any conversation--we must listen. We must listen harder and more openly than ever before.

Dylan got it right long ago--

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin

Hey Ho Rock and Roll, Deliver Me From Nowhere

Yesterday, I was going to be spending 7 hours on the road, so I pre-ordered Springsteen’s Magic album from I-Tunes to get a copy of “Radio Nowhere” for my library. Two slightly different versions of the single downloaded, so I slapped them on the beginning and end of a Springsteen mix I made a while back for my friend Kristie Stremel. She hasn’t ever listened to him much, but no two artists talk to each other more in my head than those two, so I really want them to know each other. Of course, I picked a batch of songs I could imagine her doing or that seemed to me to respond in some way to things she has done. This was the resulting playlist--

Radio Nowhere
Open All Night
Prove It All Night
She’s the One
Backstreets
Restless Nights
Something in the Night
Loose Ends
Darkness on the Edge of Town
You’re Missing
Countin’ On a Miracle
All That Heaven Will Allow
Badlands
Radio Nowhere (abbreviated version)

It told a story, and I wrote a "Single-Minded" for http://www.livinginstereo.com/. Hopefully, you'll see it there soon.

Meanwhile, here's something I wrote recently for KC Star Music Editor Tim Finn's "Back to Rockville" page. Just more empirical evidence of what so few want to acknowledge is important about today's music--http://backtorockville.typepad.com/back_to_rockville/2007/08/review-screamfe.html#more

From LB/RRC—

Magic Johnson, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy, Hilary Clinton, and socialized medicine

This morning I started my day, as I often do, by listening to "One World," a beautiful CD single featuring my friend Ernie Perez of the Boxing Gandhis on vocals. It was produced by Michael Hakes, who also played all the instruments. Michael died of leukemia two years ago. Well, actually he died because as a touring musician (Gladys Knight among many others) he had no health insurance.

Then I went to the computer and checked my email. There were two messages of special interest. The first was an invitation to attend a fundraiser for Hilary Clinton at Magic Johnson's house in Los Angeles on September 14th. Among other luminaries, Quincy Jones and Berry Gordy will be there.

Well, I'm a huge basketball fan. I first saw Magic play when he was a junior in high school. Loved it when he schooled Larry Bird for the NCAA title and when he put the NBA on the map worldwide. It would be cool to meet him and I'm sure he has a spectacular house that would be fun to see. Quincy Jones is a musical titan whose impact goes back forever, as you can see in the Ray Charles biopic Ray. I saw Quincy recently on Chuck D's cable show and was very moved by his insistence on the fundamental unity of all forms of music and of all humanity. His handshake would mean a lot to me. Ditto for Berry Gordy of Motown fame.

But...the first problem is that the cheapest ticket to the fundraiser is $1,000. Now, maybe I could scrape that up from all the money I save by downloading music for free. But do I want to contribute to the campaign of a woman who advocates sending 80,000 more troops to Iraq and who began her climb as a member of the board of Wal-Mart? Above all, do I want to contribute to the Presidential candidate who has received the most money from the health insurance industry, thereby guaranteeing that, if elected, she will do nothing to resolve the health care crisis in America?

I think I will have to decline the invitation and continue to admire Magic Johnson, Quincy Jones, and Berry Gordy from afar.

The second interesting email I got this morning came from my old friend Leonard Grbinick of Youngstown, Ohio. Leonard is a steelworker and one of the leaders of the SPAN campaign, which is gaining momentum in its efforts to bring single payer (no insurance companies!) health care to Ohio. He sent me the following article by Jim Wallis, one of America's more prominent social and religious thinkers. It's about universal health care in action. Check it out below....

LB
RRC


My Encounter with [Insert Scary Music] ... Socialized Medicine!

by Jim Wallis

My foot had been sore for a couple of weeks and it wasn’t getting better. I usually would ignore that, but we were about to leave on a two-week vacation with my wife Joy’s parents to celebrate both of our big anniversaries (their 50th and our 10th). Then I have to fly to Singapore for the World Vision triennial conference. So I wouldn’t be back home for many weeks and my Washington, D.C., health care provider (over the phone) strongly urged me to see a doctor in London before we left.


I realized then that I was about to have my first encounter with SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! Now it’s one thing to advocate health care reform in America and even to be politically sympathetic to the idea of a single-payer government-supported system like they have in most of the world’s developed and civilized countries (such as Canada, Germany, and Great Britain). But it was another thing to actually go to the emergency room (or ER, but in the U.K. they call it Accident and Emergency) of a hospital in the British National Health Service. After all, I had heard the horror stories—long waits in incompetent, dirty, and substandard medical facilities; bad doctors and faulty diagnoses; and, of course, incredible bureaucracies like everything in "socialist systems." Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative pundit have warned us all in America about the horrific practices of British socialized medicine.

So I prepared myself. I brought a big novel to read, along with my eyeglasses, a bottle of water (no telling what they would not have in socialized medicine), and emotionally steeled myself for the ordeal. Ann Stevens, the Anglican vicar with whom we stay in London (she’s my son Luke’s godmother and Joy’s old pal) took me to St. George’s hospital, dropped me off at "A and E," and wished me luck at 9 a.m. Hoping I would be home that night for dinner, I took a deep breath, walked across the street, and made my way into socialized medicine.

The waiting room was actually quite peaceful and not crowded, I noticed, as I walked up to reception. The woman at the reception desk smiled. I didn’t expect that. "Can I help you?" "Yes," I replied, "you see, I am an American—I guess you can tell—and I’m visiting family here—my wife is British—and we’re staying with our friend the vicar, and I have a sore foot, which I normally wouldn’t worry about but we’re going away for several weeks on vacation, and I called my health care provider in the U.S., and they told me to come in here and thought I should get an X-ray or something." (I wondered for a moment if it would help to tell them that I was a friend of the prime minister, but decided not.) "What do you need from me?" I asked hesitantly. "Just your name and address," she replied with another smile. "Oh ... Okay." She told me it would be about 10 minutes to see the nurse. "Yeah right," I thought to myself.

I settled into the waiting room chair, looked around at all the people who didn’t seem to be in any distress, and opened my book for a good long read. It was five minutes before the nurse called me in to a little office adjacent to the waiting area, which seemed to be an intake room. She was pleasant and professional as she asked me what was wrong, and how long I had felt the soreness. She gently examined my foot and then told me I would be called in to see a doctor in about 10 minutes. "Sure thing," I thought. So I went back out to the waiting room and settled in again to read my novel.

It was five minutes before a young woman appeared and called my name, "Mr. Wallis?" She was a young Asian doctor named Dr. Gillian Kyei. She was also very pleasant and professional, taking time to ask me lots of questions about how I might have hurt my foot, etc. She examined the injured foot carefully, told me that it didn’t necessarily look broken, but that we should get an X-ray to make sure. I waited in her examining room for a couple of minutes while she called down to the X-ray department to say that I was on the way. Then she came back and escorted me herself.

When I got to X-ray, I checked in by just saying my name and took a seat in the waiting area. Finally, I was going to get to read my book! But five minutes later, the technician came out to bring me in. She took her time with me, taking several different angles of my foot. When I was done, she sent me back to my young doctor, with another smile.

This time the wait was a full 10 minutes because, I later learned, Dr. Kyei was reading the results of my X-ray, which had already been sent to her computer. She showed me what looked to her like a fracture of my fourth metatarsal bone, but said she wanted to consult with the orthopedic specialist. I waited about 10 minutes more while she did that and so got a few more pages read.

Dr. Kyei then came back with the definitive diagnosis—my fourth metatarsal bone was indeed fractured. She went over their preferred treatments and my options with me. Normally, if this injury had just happened, they would put me in a cast to hold the broken bone in place and give me crutches. They were still happy to do that now. But since I had been already walking on it for over a week and the bone was still in the right place, I could also have the option to just using a therapeutic soft boot to keep the weight on my heel and off my fourth and fifth metatarsals. While the fracture was at the base of the fourth metatarsal, as she carefully explained and showed me on the X-ray, the pain was being felt lower down—across both my fourth and fifth metatarsal area. If I chose the boot, I could still swim with my kids and get around a little easier, but I would have to really try to keep my weight off the injured area. I chose the boot and she told me she would be back in a minute.

It was actually about two minutes before she got back, and I was getting nowhere with this novel. She handed me a very stylish black boot (so much better than other colors for fashion coordination), and gave me my final instructions—be very cautious about the foot, try to stay off it as much as possible but keep it mobile and flex it so the blood circulates, get another X-ray as soon as I get home and, of course, then consult with my home physician. Then she wrote me a nice long letter for my home doctor, describing their diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Gillian Kyei then wished me the best of luck, hoped I would have a great vacation despite my foot, smiled, and sent me back to the front desk.

"How can I call a cab?" I asked. "Oh, I’ll do that for you," she said. "Just take a seat over their and the cab will be here in about 10 minutes." As I sat there, I realized something. Nobody had ever asked me to pay. Everything was FREE, including my nice new boot. How about that? They think health care is a right for all citizens, and even foreign visitors like me. Amazing.

The cab came in five minutes. I thought I would tell him some horror stories about my experiences in the American health care system, but decided not to. I was back at Ann’s in just over an hour from when I left—with my letter, my boot, and my tale of smiling, pleasant, and efficient health care workers. And somehow I began to believe that back in America we weren’t being given the whole truth. And guess what? Ann tells me that David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, the biggest British soccer (football) stars, have had metatarsal bone fractures, just like mine. In about six weeks, I too will be back on the field, thanks to socialized medicine! And in the meantime, I will keep my foot up ... and maybe get that novel read.

www.rockrap.com

Please check out the links below--watch Kristin's 2 videos, take a look through the resources RRC has compiled and read over the vision worked out by the Just Health Care Campaign. We can heal the soul of America by making sure we work to take care of one another. I don't want to just talk at people who read this blog; I want to talk with you about what we need and how we can build. DA


http://www.myspace.com/thekristenanncarrfund



http://www.rockrap.com/healthcare/index.html



http://www.justhealthcare.org/