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Today's
Stories
Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?
Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame
Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama:
Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda
Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop
Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers
Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture
Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?
Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers
Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan
Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit
Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes
Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster
Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate
Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else
John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused
Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards
Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities
Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker
Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir
David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!
Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs
Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire
February 26, 2009
Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress
Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles
Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?
Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put
Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"
Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism
Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line
Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission
Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell
David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally
James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy
Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino
February 25, 2009
Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central
M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion
Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan
Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind
Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method
Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle
Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over
Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz
Dennis Loo
The Water Line
Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd
February 24, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost
Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory
Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?
Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History
Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)
Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?
Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality
Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government
Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench
Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?
Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done
James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial
Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor
February 23, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting
Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia
Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq
Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator
Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North
Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash
Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?
Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan
Dennis Loo
The Water Line
Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk
Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong
Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com
February 20 / 22, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale
Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem
Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats
Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire
Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon
Saul Landau
On the Road Again
Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)
Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford
Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers
David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings
David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act
James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha
Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama
Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss
Richard Rhames
Got Farms?
Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending
Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor
Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?
Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti
Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove
Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)
Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?
February 19, 2009
Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza
Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust
Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie
Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road:
From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan
Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight
Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem
Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading
Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?
Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!
Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?
Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU
February 18, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests
Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury
M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls
Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last
Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory
Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?
Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt
Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks
Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament
Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid
Website of the Day
Red Gold
February 17, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan
Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch
Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress
Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies
John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations
Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck
Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?
David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions
Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?
Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul
Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access
February 16, 2009
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor
Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?
Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options
P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?
Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression
Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts
Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits
Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?
Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call
Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?
Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa
February 13 - 15, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks
Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal
Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party
George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT
Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum
Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink
Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance
Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys
Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation
Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?
Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200
Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon
Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution
Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts
Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas
Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush
Saul Landau
Bowled Over
Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia
Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power
David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union
Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes
Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind
David Yearsley
On the Road Again
Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes
Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French
Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation
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Weekend Edition
February 27 - March 1, 2009
Keep Your Eye on the Guitar Player's Girlfriend....
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star
By LORENZO WOLFF
It’s amazing how quickly we belittle the things that were enjoyable for us as teenagers. Look through any thrift store and you’ll find the evidence of this. Baseball cards, parachute pants, homemade VHS tapes of old “Yo! MTV Raps” episodes, and without fail, a big white cardboard box of dog-eared, greasy, comic books that still smell like the Yoo-hoo that got spilled on them many years ago.
This week I found a comic like this in my local thrift store, obviously refuse from some library, with the “Young Adult” label still stuck to the spine. The comic was called “Garage Band”, written by a semi-famous Italian artist named Gipi. It’s about a bunch of kids who start a band and how their back-stories and personalities shape the music and the band dynamics. It’s an amazingly true depiction of what it feels like to be a teenage garage rocker.
Anyone who has lived through their adolescence can relate to the emotions behind the fights with parents, or stealing to replace broken old amps, or the constant struggle to find a place to practice.
The nice thing about this comic is that it doesn’t feel like music is a backdrop. It’s not a gimmick to look cool, and it’s certainly not a joke. In fact each chapter ends with a visual depiction of one of the band’s songs and Gipi makes it feel surprisingly musical. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t drawing on some kind of personal experience.
Anyone can relate to the story. You find yourself worrying about where these kids will find a replacement bass amp, or if the guitar player’s girlfriend will cause trouble. But it’s not because of extensive character development or a thrilling plotline, it’s because everyone was that teenager at some point and felt the emotions that Gipi is communicating.
It’s easy to write off the emotions of adolescence as the side effects of puberty, or misguided angst, but looking at something like “Garage Band” makes it clear that there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that. Maybe it takes something like a comic, a symbol of adolescence, to remind us that we haven’t really changed all that much.
Lorenzo Wolff is a musician living in New York. He can be reached at: lorenzowolff@gmail.com |
