Shut Up! I'm Talking: Give Me a Hero

CNN has a new segment on their website devoted to everyday heroes, ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds. This is not to be derided as feel-good filler. Considering Wolf Blitzer’s penchant for low-brow discussions of Hilary Clinton’s low-cut outfit and the great mysteries surrounding Anna Nicole’s baby, CNN could be doing a lot worse – like FOX News’ foray into the Bunny Ranch brothel in Reno, Nevada (rated on foxnews.com as today’s “Top Video”).

At CNN’s website you can nominate a hero or read the stories of those people already established as heroes, like Margery Kabuya, who devotes her time to educating young women in Kenya, a practice with implications far greater than the website lets on. But Savannah Walters, 14, is a hero because she goes around properly inflating tires as a way for drivers to use fuel more efficiently. Again, this is not to be criticized. Though it might seem offensive to some to consider Ms. Walter’s actions on the same level as Ms. Kabuya’s, they should nonetheless be celebrated. But at issue here is a larger dilemma.

America needs heroes right now, to be sure. Unfortunately, in this age of wars abroad, threats at home, dirty politicians, dangerous fad diets, celebrity-of-the-moment obsessions, and blurred lines between news and entertainment, a hero can cut through the news cycle like a double-edged sword. We have great heroes in the armed forces, in firehouses across the nation, and some of us are lucky enough to grow up with heroes right in our own homes. But the shelf-life of heroes is diminishing by the news hour. As much as we love hearing the stories of a hero’s ascent, some enjoy watching or facilitating their demise even more. And sure enough, there is often a collective head-scratching as we all sit down and watch the television or read our magazines: “How could we have ever have been so stupid to idolize her?” we think to ourselves. How could I have pretended to be Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa when I was playing baseball in grade school? We are so eager to have heroes that the vetting process is administered in all the wrong ways. Nobody’s perfect, and a hero should be thought of no differently. We tend to celebrate the person more than the action, which rarely works in anyone's favor. Henry Rollins touched on this topic a few weeks ago on his show, saying, “So when the hero falls, I don’t say, ‘I told you so,’ I say, ‘Human.’” I couldn’t agree more.

Late Review: Neil Young Live

By Nicholas Schreiber
Album Review: Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall 1971

Any Neil Young fan lucky enough to come across Live at Vicar St. ( a CD / DVD set capturing a solo acoustic interpretation of his 2003 concept album Greendale ) knows that Young, when armed only with an acoustic guitar or piano, has the ability to strip down his songs to skeletal and nearly unrecognizable lengths, turning ominous tones into vulnerable whispers. On Vicar St., Young connects each song by chatting to the crowd and elaborating on the characters and situations that inhabit the world within Greendale in a way that is both entertaining and comforting, like a grandparent reading to you before tucking you in.

On Live at Massey Hall 1971, the third concert release in his Archives Performance Series, Young is anything but a tender old man sharing tall tales with his audience. At 25 years old, Young was only three years removed from his stint in Buffalo Springfield, and was still more than a year away from releasing his fourth solo record. Indeed, most of the material on Live at Massey Hall reflects his growing relationship with Crazy Horse, and there is almost no indication of his former association with Jack Nitzsche.

Most of the tracks on Live at Massey Hall are culled from Young’s second and third solo records, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and After the Goldrush, along with his upcoming Harvest. Few would disagree that these are among the most important releases in Young’s stellar and prolific career, but what looks good on paper does not exactly translate into live gold. While Young had already begun to lay the groundwork for his spot atop the Grunge Family Tree with Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, the setlist on Live at Massey Hall offers few tracks that mirror this professional transition.
It is both surprising and disappointing how similar these live versions sound when compared to their studio counterparts.

Since many of these songs had yet to receive the studio treatment, and since much of his most ambitious work was to arrive in the coming decades, we can forgive Young for the lack of experimentation. And, of course, these tunes remain a testament to Neil Young’s legacy as one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters. But aside from the starkly potent and personal “A Man Needs A Maid / Heart of Gold Suite,” and the John Denver-esque hoedown, “Dance Dance Dance,” there is little for casual fans to gain from this recording.

Surprise! CIA Head Told Bush Mess in Iraq ‘Irreversible’

In a marathon article out today in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward says CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told the Iraq Study Group on November 13, 2006 that due to severe mistakes in post-war planning and an underestimation of the rift between competing Sunni and Shia identities, “The inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern is irreversible.”

Not surprisingly, this assertion came on the heels of President George W. Bush’s confident assessment of attainable victory, which took place around the same conference table only hours before. Despite President Bush's optimism, Hayden made a much less hopeful appraisal: "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."

The article also reveals comments made by national security advisor, Stephen J. Hadley, in a memo sent to Bush on November 8, in which he expressed doubts regarding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ability to rein in violence within his own country. More telling, however, was Hayden’s comparison of the conflict in Iraq to the seemingly endless wars fought in the Balkans during the 1990s. “In Bosnia, the parties fought themselves to exhaustion. They might just have to fight this out to exhaustion.”

This story will most likely get swept under the rug of news reports regarding a House study’s finding that the Iraqi government has made modest and “satisfactory” progress in 8 of the 18 political and security goals laid out as part of the recent surge of American troops in Iraq, and how this report will affect the potential disengagement of those troops in the coming months.

When asked today about any short-term troop withdrawals from Iraq, President Bush told reporters, “This is not the real debate. The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost, or not worth the cost, and those who believe the fight can be won.” Agreed, Mr. President. But it takes two to tango, and as Mr. Hayden can tell you, it’s hard to engage in a sensible debate when one side of the argument is completely ignored.

Let Me Introduce You to the White Stripes

Album Review: The White Stripes' Icky Thump
By Nicholas Schreiber

Enough with the Led Zeppelin comparisons. By resorting to the lazy likening of Jack and Meg White’s rugged, post-classic rock blues group, the White Stripes, to the heavy and distorted delta sound of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, critics have done both bands (and rock ‘n’ roll fans everywhere) a disservice. Nowhere is this disconnect between fact and fiction more apparent than on the White Stripes sixth proper studio release, Icky Thump.

If 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan could be both hailed as representing a new direction for the White Stripes while simultaneously being criticized for simply falling back on the same old formula, only with a bag of new instruments in tow, Icky Thump brazenly ignites this debate once more. The lyrical themes of the record struggle with concepts like role reversal and shifting identities, and on many tracks, the group sounds stuck between reinvention and reminiscing.

Dripping in Hammond organ and stuttering guitar, “I’m Slowly Turning into You” sounds suspiciously like the Stripes’ own “There’s No Home For You Here,” and the rockabilly pop of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” calls to mind a slowed-down version of “The Air Near My Fingers.” But what separates these two cuts from their ancestors is Jack White’s new-and-improved vocal prowess and Meg’s growing ability to punctuate her own rapid-fire rhythm with restraint.

The sparse and industrial blues of “Rag and Bone” and the album’s frantic title track will keep purists at bay, while the bagpipe-infused “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” and its companion, “St. Andrew (The Battle Is in the Air),” may cause those fans to cringe in dismay. The same can be said of the abrasive mariachi horns in “Conquest,” a cover of Patti Page’s 1950s take on the female response to machismo.

Despite these inconsistencies, what’s important about Icky Thump is that if the 14 songs included on the album can be traced to a predecessor, most of the time that predecessor is the White Stripes. Six albums and ten years into an already wildly successful and creative career, Jack and Meg White have earned the right to steal from themselves. “If you’re headed to the grave / You don’t blame the hearse,” Jack White sings on “Effect and Cause.” He’s right. Everything the White Stripes have done up until now makes this album both unsurprising and, yet, still freshly prepared. On Icky Thump, the White Stripes are content to sit back and enjoy the ride. Can we really blame them?