A Thank-You Note to Pete Seeger

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 1996, in my then-job of assistant editor at a weekly newspaper, I awarded myself the title of music reviewer for a single issue and attended a concert given at a local high school by Pete Seeger, who died two years ago today at age 94. (Our newspaper’s actual music reviewer was only interested in attending and writing about rock concerts. That was a stroke of luck for me.) I wrote a review, knowing full well that a review is not what one writes regarding a Pete Seeger concert. An appreciation. A thank-you note. But not a mere review judging aesthetic merits.

It was a great concert, by the way.
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Raif Badawi’s Hunger Strike

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

UPDATE, January 28, 2016: Two statements have been published on Raif Badawi’s official Twitter account in the last two hours. (There are embedded below the fold).

One reads, “#RaifBadawi is attempting a strike again for not letting him and 120 other prisoners to use the phone to contact their families.” And the follow-up states, “A call out for the Head of KSA Prisons General: Ibrahim Hamzai to stop the negligence in Dhahban Penitentiary.”

Today is Raif Badawi’s 1344th day in prison for writing. Even in prison, officially silenced, he is not silent. I will update when I receive a second source. The Tweets:
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When Nomi Met Bowie

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

December 15, 1979. For Klaus Nomi, his performance as a singer/dancer/weird presence for one single show behind David Bowie that night on Saturday Night Live seemed to be an indication that he was on the right path and he was headed to glory; instead, it was the high-water mark of his brief career.

When Bowie died in January 2016, SNL broadcast one of the songs from that appearance, a performance of “The Man Who Sold the World,” in which Bowie sings in a plastic tuxedo so rigid that Nomi and his co-backup, Joey Arias, were tasked with carrying Bowie to and from his place at the mic. (It was a gift from SNL because no complete, legal, clip of any of the three songs has been available online, as NBC is as legally rigid as Bowie’s tuxedo’s fabric was.) Nomi was so enamored with the plastic suit that he wore a similar one as his costume for the remainder of his career, but his tux was one Nomi could walk in but not sit in or bow to an audience while wearing, which made his own appearances in it similarly awkward.

Here is “The Man Who Sold the World” from that 1979 appearance (SNL/NBC already deleted the official clip; here is one I found):
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