Number 518

Ray Charles

"Hit The Road jack"

(1960)

23.09.30 to 10.06.04
Born, l i f e & Death. The first and last words are the easiest part of actual existence which in a way seems ironic as it is usually the most painful. Ray Charles epitomises the middle part. Life. Ray Charles had been blind since 7 years old & never once did he let blindness stop his potential for greatness.
Personally, i don't know if he had a great life but he did create enduring music that will last for centuries and who knows, maybe even longer. Ray is Number 10 in Rolling Stone Magazine 100 Immortal Artists of all time as voted by their peers (i call them understudies). Whatever the case that is a pretty high honour considering ranked above Ray is the likes of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Little Richard & Aretha Franklin.

Ray Charles was the musician most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging '50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues, and (in the '60s) country. Then there was his singing; his style was among the most emotional and easily identifiable of any 20th century performer, up there with the likes of Elvis and Billie Holiday. He was also a superb keyboard player, arranger, and bandleader. The brilliance of his 1950s and '60s work, however, can't obscure the fact that he made few classic tracks after the mid-'60s, though he recorded often and performed until the year before his death.
art by idprime
Blind since the age of six (from glaucoma), Charles studied composition and learned many instruments at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind. His parents had died by his early teens, and he worked as a musician in Florida for a while before using his savings to move to Seattle in 1947. By the late '40s, he was recording in a smooth pop/R&B style derivative of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown. He got his first Top Ten R&B hit with "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" in 1951. Charles' first recordings came in for their fair share of criticism, as they were much milder and less original than the classics that would follow, although they're actually fairly enjoyable, showing strong hints of the skills that were to flower in a few years.

Throughout the '50s, Charles ran off a series of R&B hits that, although they weren't called "soul" at the time, did a lot to pave the way for soul by presenting a form of R&B that was sophisticated without sacrificing any emotional grit. "This Little Girl of Mine," "Drown in My Own Tears," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," "Lonely Avenue," and "The Right Time" were all big hits. But Charles didn't really capture the pop audience until "What'd I Say," which caught the fervor of the church with its pleading vocals, as well as the spirit of rock & roll with its classic electric piano line. It was his first Top Ten pop hit, and one of his final Atlantic singles, as he left the label at the end of the '50s for ABC.

art by dreamrender
One of the chief attractions of the ABC deal for Charles was a much greater degree of artistic control of his recordings. He put it to good use on early-'60s hits like "Unchain My Heart" and "Hit the Road Jack," which solidified his pop stardom with only a modicum of polish attached to the R&B he had perfected at Atlantic. In 1962, he surprised the pop world by turning his attention to country & western music, topping the charts with the "I Can't Stop Loving You" single, and making a hugely popular album (in an era in which R&B/soul LPs rarely scored high on the charts) with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Perhaps it shouldn't have been so surprising; Charles had always been eclectic, recording quite a bit of straight jazz at Atlantic, with noted jazz musicians like David "Fathead" Newman and Milt Jackson.

Charles remained extremely popular through the mid-'60s, scoring big hits like "Busted," "You Are My Sunshine," "Take These Chains From My Heart," and "Crying Time," although his momentum was slowed by a 1965 bust for heroin. This led to a year-long absence from performing, but he picked up where he left off with "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966. Yet by this time Charles was focusing increasingly less on rock and soul, in favor of pop tunes, often with string arrangements, that seemed aimed more at the easy listening audience than anyone else. Charles' influence on the rock mainstream was as apparent as ever; Joe Cocker and Steve Winwood in particular owe a great deal of their style to him, and echoes of his phrasing can be heard more subtly in the work of greats like Van Morrison.
applause please
One approaches sweeping criticism of Charles with hesitation; he was an American institution, after all, and his vocal powers barely diminished over his half-century career. The fact remains, though, that his work after the late '60s on record was very disappointing. Millions of listeners yearned for a return to the all-out soul of his 1955-1965 classics, but Charles had actually never been committed to soul above all else. Like Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, his focus was more upon all-around pop than many realize; his love of jazz, country, and pop standards was evident, even if his more earthy offerings were the ones that truly broke ground and will stand the test of time. He dented the charts (sometimes the country ones) occasionally, and commanded devoted international concert audiences whenever he felt like it. For good or ill, he ensured his imprint upon the American mass consciousness in the 1990s by singing several ads for Diet Pepsi. He also recorded three albums during the '90s for Warner Bros., but remained most popular as a concert draw. In 2002, he released Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again on his own Crossover imprint, and the following year began recording an album of duets featuring B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Michael McDonald, and James Taylor. After hip replacement surgery in 2003, he scheduled a tour for the following summer, but was forced to cancel an appearance in March 2004. Three months later, on June 10, 2004, Ray Charles succumbed to liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, CA. ~ [Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide]
Roll call .....
For the Beatles see Number 947, 894 & 587
For Bob Dylan see Number 929 & Number 841
For Elvis Presley see Number 840
For Rolling Stones see Number 767 & Number 689
For Chuck Berry see Number 783
For James Brown see Number 741
For Aretha Franklin see Number 563
For Joe Cocker see Number 633
For Steve Winwood see Number 622
For Willie Nelson see Number 664
For Michael McDonald see Number 868
For James Taylor see Number 820
What does Rolling Stone think about Ray Charles?
The title "genius" was formally bestowed on Ray Charles with the release of his 1959 album The Genius of Ray Charles. Though he was not yet thirty at that point, Charles had already helped invent what would become known as soul -- shattering the boundaries between sacred and secular music in the process -- and invigorated an entire generation of jazz players. He also, somewhat reluctantly, had proved a major force in the early days of rock & roll -- and all this after a childhood as a blind, impoverished African-American in the brutally segregated South.
Throughout his career, Charles was active in a range of political and humanitarian causes. He provided financial support for the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement; he was also a staunch supporter of Israel. In 1984 he performed his version of “America the Beautiful” at the Republican National Convention. Three years later, he formed the (Ray Charles) Robinson Foundation for Hearing Disorders, with a $1 million personal endowment. On June 10th, 2004 Ray Charles passed away from liver disease two months before the release of his final album Genuis Loves Company. ~ [from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)]

Ray is an Academy Award-winning 2004 biopic focusing on thirty years of the life of legendary rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles. The independently-produced film was directed by Taylor Hackford and starred Jamie Foxx in the title role; Foxx received an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. Charles was set to attend an opening of the completed film, but he died before it came out, only adding to his legacy. Charles was given a braille copy of the film's original script; he objected only to a scene showing him taking up piano grudgingly, and a scene implying that Charles had shown mistress and lead "Raelette" Margie Hendricks how to shoot heroin. The film received mostly positive reviews. Most of the praise went to Jamie Foxx's tour-de-force performance which made him a favorite for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film however did receive some bad reviews, with critics complaining that the powerful performances were met with a mediocre screenplay. Currently Ray has a certified freshness rating of 81% at rottentomatoes.com ~ [Sorce:Wikipedia]

Lyrics to the song

 This song has a crowbarred rating of 74.6 out of 108

Previous Song 517 ..... Next Song 519

Tags:Ray Charles, 1960, R&B, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Elvis, James Taylor, YouTube, Music Video, Rolling Stone Magazine, Crowbarred, New Zealand, Crowbarred Unleashed, The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time, Mellow Mix Volume 1, Mellow Mix Volume 2, Mellow Mix Volume 3, Mellow Mix Volume 4, Mellow Mix Volume 5, Mellow Mix Volume 6, Mellow Mix Volume 7, Mellow Mix Volume 9, Mellow Mix Volume 10, Mellow Mix Volume 11, Mellow Mix Volume 12

So here's to common ground even in the face of uncommon bullshit. Some CEOs, and their countercultural counterparts.

To begin, publishing mogul and occasional presidential candidate Steve Forbes and persnickety stoner Tommy Chong.

First thing's first: Pot should be legal. Second: Steve Forbes blows. He spent years fighting for a flat tax that would save him a fortune, and actually won two states in the '96 Republican primary -- not to mention signing the last great piece of 2nd-Reich ephemera. And Tommy Chong? He went to jail for selling bongs over the internet. Justice is blind, and those glasses are confusing as hell.

Billionaire fink Bill Gates and outré designer, and proliferator of the Beat aesthetic, Yves Saint Laurent. Bill's the PC, obviously.

It's harder to complain about Bill, but not that much harder. Steve Forbes has been our most active advocate for systemically punishing the poor, and all Bill Gates did was play Halo. But he also made, uh, 60 billion dollars. And if he'd given that money to people who needed it he wouldn't have had to share Time's person of the year with Melinda and Bono.

As for Yves, just check out what xenophobic, market-driven militarism (and, in this case, Wikipedia) is good for:

"Saint Laurent lasted twenty days in the military before the stress of hazing by fellow soldiers led him to be sent to a military hospital, where he received the news that he had been fired by Dior. This merely added fuel to the fire, and he ended up in Val-de-Grâce, a sadistic French mental hospital, where he was given large doses of sedatives and other psychoactive drugs and subjected to electroshock therapy. Saint Laurent himself traced the history of both his mental problems and his drug addictions to this time in hospital."

Le yikes.

And, finally, a couple of brothas whose ghoulish similarities are truly unnerving:

Treasury Secretary, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson and polarizing academic bottom feeder, and -- if you insist -- ignoble savage, Ward Churchill.

Fine. Their glasses aren't identical (don't they really look like twins, though?!), but those squatty, wiry specs signify the same thing: these guys are old. They aren't fashionable, and they aren't as charming as some of the other Joe Sixpacks on our list, but you better believe they see exactly what they want.

One was a smooth-as-ice CEO, unaware of the little guy and lighting his stogies with, like, billion dollar bills. The other was a total bad ass, decrying manifest destiny and, maybe, plagiarizing his dissertation. One struck gold, working for the Vietnam-era Pentagon and heading a corporate giant -- members of whose staff were convicted for insider trading while he was CEO -- where he spent his tenure lobbying for less government regulation. He got to be secretary of the treasury. The other quoted Malcolm X and ate a little Peyote, and has been getting death threats ever since. Radical.

They both took the low road to banality, with astoundingly unpopular last stands. Paulson gave up on capitalism (and the world breathed a great sigh of relief), but not on greed. And Churchill was all like, "what goes around comes around, fuckkkkkkassss!" (and the world breathed a great sigh of relief), but forgot to include himself in that little equation. His political theatrics came around, and people got pissed.

Still, between an old burnout who looks like Susan Sontag and the treasury secretary with $700 billion, one seems to have come out on top... BUT: if you asked which of them was more destructive, which negatively affected your life and, conversely, which was basically harmless, you might be surprised. And if you asked yourself which will be played by Jeffrey Tambor in the movie of this blog, you're going to just die!!

So there you have it (cheers, too, to Paul Krugman for winning the Nobel Prize), three stone cold emissaries of corporate greed and three old dudes who just gotta ask about three old things: What IS so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Hvad skal vi med hiphop, dance og alt det andet skrammel, når vi har country?

Well a man come on the 6 o'clock news
said somebody's been shot
somebody's been abused
somebody blew up a building
somebody stole a car
somebody got away
somebody didn't get to far yeah
they didn't get to far

Grand pappy told my pappy back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street
For all the people to see

That
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon
And we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing
whiskey for my man, beer for my horses

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
too much corruption and crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em down
You can bet he'll set 'em down

Cause
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon
And we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing
whiskey for my man, beer for my horses
whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

He knew
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys,
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon
And we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singin' whiskey for my man, beer for my horses
Singing whiskey for my man, beer for my horses

For one of the non-festival days we rented a car...well, it was actually a pick-up truck (we wanted to fit in)...and it was probably my favorite day of the whole trip. We took a long drive out to the Texas countryside. Honestly, it was so awesome to see wide open space for the first time in a few years. Just dirt and grass, trees, maybe a couple cacti and a bale of hay here and there. There were acres and acres of ranches covering miles of Texas Hill Country, each of which were marked on the main road by a gate. Some of them were simple and others elaborate - perhaps a sign of status and a good indicator of how many cows, chickens and things could be found behind them.

Our first stop outside Austin was the small city of Fredericksburg. I could have spent days in this town with all of the unique shops and restaurants. They had some of the coolest furniture! We may not have purchased a couch or a kitchen table, but we did pick up a Christmas ornament - a wagon wheel with Christmas lights wrapped around the spokes. At the time of purchase, I didn't notice that it was actually Made in China. How authentic.

So, after grabbing lunch at the local brewery, we headed out to the Enchanted Rock National Park. The park has tons of trails, but we focused on taking a quick trip up to the top of the HUGE chunk of granite rock. There were some awesome views. We didn't stay too long because, as we were applying sunscreen in the parking lot, the song "Luckenbach Texas" by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson came on the radio. Luckenbach, made famous by Willie and Waylon's song, was the next and final stop on our trip outside of Austin. We took the song playing on the radio as a sign - there were great things waiting for us in Luckenbach. We hurried through the hike, hopped in the car and were on our way.

Visiting this tiny Texas town was an experience we'll never forget. With a downtown that consists of a post office from the 1800's (now converted into a gift shop and a small bar), a bathroom shack, dance hall, outdoor stage and a storage building, I think there were a higher population of chickens and roosters in this town than actual people.

Both the people and the chickens were great company.

Initially, we planned on being there for an hour or so, but ended up staying for 3 or 4, sitting around a wooden wheel chatting with some locals and Lukenbach bar regulars, listening to some guitar strumming, and, of course, to throw back a few beers.

It was pretty much pitch black once we got back on the road and, surprisingly, we found our way back to Austin after an hour and a half of driving through unlit roads in the middle of Texas. Good times. Good times.

No matter what you think about radio talk show host Don Imus (I happen to like him and listen to him daily) there is one thing you can't deny...the guy does alot for kids with cancer and their families. He and his wife, Deidre, run the Imus Ranch in New Mexico, a working cattle ranch where kids with cancer can work with animals and get away from their illness for a little while. He has raised millions of dollars for the ranch in a number of different ways throughout the years and his latest fund-raising effort is the Imus Ranch Record.

Imus is a huge country music fan, but this collection features a wide variety of tunes from artists, old and new. Lucinda Williams lends her unique perspective to "Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," Randy Travis belts out "I Don't See Me," the great Willie Nelson's voice and his acoustic guitar solo are both cool on "What a Difference a Day Makes," Dwight Yoakum brings new country flavor to "Give Me Back the Key to My Heart," the always colorful Little Richard brings his usual flare to "I Ain't Never," the underrated Delbert McClinton brings the swamp to Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally," Big & Rich bring country fun to the Beastie Boys "Fight for Your Right to Party," and Patty Loveless performs a stunning version of Stevie Nicks' "Silver Springs." It also features Levon Helm and Vince Gill.

Imus can be a crotchety old guy, but his choice of these artists and these songs is very fresh. Even if you don't like Imus, you will like this collection, and you'll be helping out a bunch of kids with cancer who just want to be kids.

MP3: Fight for Your Right to Party - Big & Rich

MP3: Silver Springs - Patty Loveless

Imus Ranch (story about the ranch)

E ALGUMAS DAS FINALISTAS QUE SAÍRAM DERROTADAS DA COMPETIÇÃO:

[Fonte: ASME]

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.

Willie Nelson 

Mellencamp's songs often speak of life in middle America as well as commenting on the state of our nation - good and bad. He hasn't been afraid to speak against government and stand up for the farmers. He, along with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, organized the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 to raise awareness about the loss of family farms and to raise money to keep farm families on their lands. John Mellencamp is a prolific songwriter with a vast catalog of great music to his credit. Let's celebrate a great musician, who in my opinion, is highly underrated. Cheers, John! Thanks for stickin' up for the little guys.

Below, some of my favorite John Mellencamp songs:

Jack and Diane

Pink Houses

Hurts So Good

Small Town

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

Walk Tall

I'm Not Running Anymore

Your Life is Now

Peaceful World

The advantage of listening to music is that it can be done while hanging out with the children. Or, as Raging Mom likes to say, it can be done while ignoring the children. Pshaw. I have most of my music in my iTunes Library and stream it wirelessly to my stereo, pretty much from the moment I get home from work to the time the kids go to bed. I'm the kind of person who picks up a new album and listens to it constantly for a few weeks until I know the record in and out.

The kids, who are now used to having music playing all the time when Raging Dad is home, either don't care or actually get into the music. Raging Mom thinks that I use it to drown out the noise of the kids, but I don't think that is true (though it does help). The music helps me to focus. By the time I get home from work, the kids are usually tired and Raging Cranky. I hate having the television on unless we are specifically watching a program. Listening to the music demands attention, but it neither needs constant nor undivided attention, which it will never get as long as the Raging Kids are awake.

When Connie was born I was intensely into The Mountain Goats, constantly listening to their many albums and an insane number of live recordings, studying the nuances of each performance and searching for the most obscure setlists. I cannot more strongly recommend a band than I do The Mountain Goats, and have been delighted to find that other daddy and mommy bloggers out there are listening to the eccentric and hyper-literate ramblings of John Darnielle's brilliant mind.

I also began to dig deeper into jazz and old school blues than I had listened to in the past, and came to be a huge fan of late-1950s and early 1960s jazz (Coltrane, Miles Davis), Robert Johnson, Billy Holiday and even 1930s-40s vocal groups like The Ink Spots and The Mills Brothers. There is so much great American music out there to discover!

Previously, I had considered myself a fan of everything but country and rap. However, I was just listening to the wrong country and rap. I began to discover Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Sr., Johnny Cash and old school Emmy Lou Harris. Perhaps my greatest discovery was my love for Willie Nelson, particularly everything released between about 1972 and 1979. Amazing stuff, like Shotgun Willie, Phases and Stages, The Redheaded Stranger, Stardust and To Lefty From Willie. Go pick these records up if you haven't listened to them. Unlike records from today, these albums were amazing and they were brief; you'll find no fat on any of them. Rather than going on for 60-plus minutes with no focus, artists like Willie Nelson used to know how to put together a 30-40 minute record that was consistent and well-paced. Of course, the LP format prevented them from going much longer than this, and the CD format is conducive to mission creep. But still, it is in many ways a lost art.

When it comes to rap, there are some amazing artists out there who were and are making some very political and powerful statements with rap and hip hop. Public Enemy, De La Soul, Run-DMC are examples of early rap that I recommend. More recent hip hop that is brilliant includes Talib Kweli, Mos Def (and their project together, Black Star--part of the socially conscious Native Tongues movement) and The Roots; these are all essential artists to check out if you are going to explore hip hop for the first time.

Why do I find music so important? I grew up around it, with a singer/songwriter for a father, and Raging Mom and I were both singers during high school and college. I find myself drawn to music that has a lot of emotion and passion in it. Take The Mountain Goats for example: A lot of their stuff is about simple people who are living tragic lives. His songs are the musical equivalent of the characters in Hal Hartley films, and their appeal to me is similar. It is not as though my life is about to fall apart in the ways that Darnielle's characters are in his dramatic tales. But there is something so powerful, so desperate going on in his songs that I cannot help but become consumed by the stories. Listening to one of their records is like watching a film that draws you into the story and leaves you exhausted and devastated like no other recording I have come across.

For me, there is magic in using music to escape from reality. It reminds me that there are beautiful things going on in the world, outside of my insulated life (padded cell?). Music recharges my batteries, and has become my all-purpose, all-the-time drug of choice.

Song of the day: "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" by The Mountain Goats.

The original is of course Me and Paul from 1971 about Willie and his drummer Paul English. The story manages in just a few verses to give a very good picture of their wild life on the road. The way of talking about travelling by mentioning cities (Nashville, Laredo, Buffalo, Milwaukee) and the namedropping (Kitty Wells, Charley Pride) gives a good idea of their situation. And of course there´s the advice of not leaving anything in your clothes in a Laredo motel if you don´t want to get busted. It´s really one of the wildest stories ever told in a country song and one of my favourite Willie songs.

The other song is Me and the Drummer from 2000. Almost 30 years later Willie is singing about a drummer again and the story is partly the same, but mostly a different one. First of all, it seems it´s actually not about a drummer, the drummer is more of a symbol for what keeps him going, the power inside him that keeps him moving. The heart of course, but also the rhythm of the music and the restlessness of his soul. It´s also different in it´s portrait of loneliness, the friend that was there in Me and Paul is not there, the parties are not there. The wild side is there though, the travelling and moving, but the drummer who is his travelling companion is a force that keeps him leaving everyone and everything behind. He is older and has made a lot of mistakes that he regrets but at the same time he knows that that´s who he is and accepts his destiny and keeps travelling on along with the drummer inside him.

What I find fascinating when looking at these two songs beside each other is that, even though Willie only wrote one of them, they are like companion pieces. Me and the Drummer could be a perfect follow up story to Me and Paul and to me it is.

R.E.M. - Imitation Of Live (MTV Unplugged). War nie wirklich Fan von R.E.M., irgendwie gut finde ich sie trotzdem. Und "Imitation Of Live" ist ein super Song - allerdings gefällt mir die Albumversion dann doch besser als diese etwas behäbig-routinierte Unplugged-Fassung.

G. Love & Special Sauce - Back Of The Bus (A Year & A Night live). G. Love ist super: vielleicht nicht der versierteste Songwriter der Welt, aber ein Performer vor dem Herrn. Ich mag diese Mischung aus Pop, Rap, Blues und Rumgejamme sehr und finde diese Version von "Back Of The Bus" sehr, sehr schick.

Joan Osborne - I'll Be Around. Joan interpretiert auf "How Sweet It Is" (von der dieser Song stammt) Soulstandards - und das äußerst gekonnt: mir gefällt, wie sie sich voller Respekt die Stücke zu eigen macht, und sie dennoch ins Hier und Jetzt übersetzt und nicht in den Siebzigern (oder so) kleben bleibt. Ja, Joan ist eine begnadete Interpretin.

Willie Nelson & Sinéad O'Connor - Don't Give Up. Genau, das "Don't Give Up" von Peter Gabriel, das mit Kate Bush. Die Version von Willie und Sinéad (7 Minuten!) gehört zum besten, was ich jemals in meinem Leben gehört habe: dieser knarzige Country-Barde trifft auf die (stimmlich) gerade-noch-so jugendliche Sinéad, eine gewagte Kombination, die auf ganzer Linie gewinnt. Gott, ist das kitschig. Gott, ist das gut.

Jamie Laboz - The Darkness. Mr. Laboz hat letztes Jahr eine Art Öko-Rock-Oper geschrieben, die in voller Länge dann doch eher eine Geduldprobe ist als ein Hörgenuss. Auf meinem iPod, weil Aaron Comess von den Spin Doctors auf dieser Platte Schlagzeug spielt. Der Song selbst ist ein Blues, arrangiert irgendwo zwischen Krautrock und dem Gary Moore der frühen Neunziger - sehr speziell, aber dann doch alles andere als schlecht.

Katie Melua - Mockingbird Song. Die Melua finde ich einfach nett - und das ist absolut nett gemeint. Nette Stimme, nette Arrangements, nette Songs. Das isses dann aber auch schon.

randomi7er? randomi7er.

If I ever get old and famous, I want someone to take a picture like this of me and put me on "Ohio Monthly".

Read the entire letter here

All money raised from the fundraisers held during several events, such as the $25,000 Dallas Harvest Grand Prix and several parties, dinners and exhibition events , will directly benefit Habitat for Horses. Habitat for Horses is an equine rescue organization that goes beyond saving, rehabilitating and finding new homes for horses. Habitat for Horses has also been instrumental in the creation of equine education programs. Programs include basic horsemanship for those adopting, and equine investigation to educate uninformed horse owners how to properly take care of their animals. Habitat is also involved with Equine-Assisted Activities, part of a national program that uses horses to help troubled teens.

This non-profit equine rescue organization has attracted stars such as Willie Nelson and Toby Keith. Both Toby Keith and Willie Nelson are active members of the Habitat for Horses Executive Board. Willie Nelson has adopted 27 Habitat horses. EquestrianMag News Release

I guess Bogey was the first cool guy from a mass appeal standpoint. And there was John Wayne, the original Duke. Dale Earnhardt was cool. So was Ted Williams. Waylon Jennings. Paul Newman was too.

We should always remain cognizant of the fact we do not know the people we see on television and in the movies. We know their image though, and few have attained the level of cool in our minds that Newman did. Newman played all the roles guys see themselves in at some point and he made them all cool. A young stud in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a misunderstood loner punk in Cool Hand Luke, a mentor in The Sting and The Color of Money, an asshole runnin buddy in Sundance Kid, and a cynical former idealist in The Verdict.

In his real life, Newman seemed no less cool. He served in the Navy as a rear seat radio-man and gunner in World War II before he was an actor and at the end of his career he became a successful businessman who donated his profits to charity. The main beneficiary of that largesse is "The Hole in the Wall Gang". That's a summer camp for seriously ill children he founded. Very cool. He was married to his second wife, Joanne Woodward from 1958 until his death and of her once remarked, upon being asked about his fidelity, "why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?" He made 19th on Nixon's enemies list. He was a race car driver for christsakes. The man was cool.

I fear cool is dying with Newman's generation. Really, who compares to those guys in all around coolness? I've racked my brain for someone in sports or entertainment. There are some who come close, like Clooney, Favre, Bono, maybe some others, but they don't quite measure up, maybe because we know too much about celebrities these days.

Thank God we've still got Willie Nelson.