Cowboy Confessional

I could get used to this real quick.

There is a holy place in the unholy town of Berkeley, California. Smelted in the 1960’s along with several thousand other coffee shops (the American variety, not the Amsterdam kind, though in the 60’s the differences were minor) was The Freight. Its proper name is The Freight and Salvage Coffee Shop. The Freight came by their name dishonestly. When founded they took over a building that had been a freight and salvage warehouse and decided to keep the signage. The name stuck.

Unlike the several thousand other coffee shops in hippie-era Berkeley (or as we locals like to call it, Bizerkely) The Freight survived, and did so primarily because the music played there. Lord knows their coffee is not top-shelf and the price they take for a tiny cup would cause the typical gray-haired Berkley hippie to charge them with making obscene profits.

The Freight caters to folk music, be it Americana, Celtic, African or Martian. Anything that is native and unamplified. For 40 years, unknown and world renowned performers played tasty tunes on The Freight’s microscopic stage … after exiting a green room the size of a prison cell and with the same ambiance. History walked on The Freight’s stage.

Whenever I went to The Freight, I always stopped for a moment in the lobby. On the walls were calendars going back to their beginnings. One playbill showed the night Bukka White played. For those uneducated in the history of blues, Bukka was BB “Blues Boy” King’s older cousin who got BB into the music biz. Bukka did old school delta blues more authentic than anything else recorded with the exception of Robert Johnson.

Hopefully Bukka didn’t make any crossroad deals.

I loved playing on the tiny Freight and Salvage stage. I never gigged there as I don’t gig at all. But The Freight was the monthly meeting place for a songwriters’ competition. The room itself is completely improbable for good acoustics. It is a small rectangle of cinderblocks, custom made for harsh standing waves. But over the years sound buffers were erected here and there, a solid sound system was assembled, and dedicated mix masters manned the console.

The Freight made even me sound good.

And now it is gone … kinda. The old venue is closed. I’ll never have the chance to stand on that stage again, and this is a sad thing. Closed to the public are the quaint black walls, the mismatched and completely third hand chairs, and restrooms designed by some who took a lot of acid in the 1960’s. RIP Freight and Salvage.

Welcome the new joint.

After a couple of years and a lot of donated money (The Freight is a non-profit venture), they have opened a new venue that I visited today and in which I might want to be buried. Using salvaged wood from the old place, the walls are wonderfully absorbent, allowing undistorted sounds to come from the house speakers to your ears. The stage is wide and with enough back ported monitors to ensure tat every performer will know how they are doing. They have a new mixing board seeming designed by NASA (control knobs are embedded in touch screen panels, the all digital systems stores and recalls specific mixes, and the faders and motorized and move when a mix is restored). Audience seats are new, recline slightly, and match.

The coffee is still marginal.

And there is the rug. On the old stage there was a Persian carpet so think you would trip on the rise the first time you headed for a microphone. It was there to absorb the boot stomping of us excitable performers. And unless I am mistaken, that little slice of history – the same threads upon which many masters of music trod – was brought to its new home.

I sure hope it is the same one. I’m looking forward to standing on it again.

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The passing of Ted Kennedy has tormented me all this long day. It started with drinking whiskey for breakfast.

Teddy’s politics and positions have largely been an affront to those who lust for liberty. The media made great hay today of his support for 1960’s era civil rights legislation, though any decent human being would have as well. No, all Ted’s other legislation was designed to rob the average American of his wealth (Teddy’s money is sheltered in offshore trusts) restrict rights (Teddy was a slave to the gun control industry) and limit free choice in many fields (like where to purchase one’s health insurance).

For years I swore that if I awoke one morning to news of his death, I would crack open a fresh bottle of Jack Daniel’s and hoist a good riddance toast.

Time has a way of taking the edge off a man. Drinking breakfast may have been fine for Teddy (he was seen drunk on the Senate floor often enough), but that right of passage long ago lost any charm for me. I am also saddled with a growing desire to let the dead rest. A little respect for the newly croaked doesn’t hurt. No doubt there are more than a few people – mainly ex wives – who long to desecrate my corpse.

So the swig I took from the bottle of Jack this morning was not as rewarding as I had long anticipated.

Let Teddy not be remembered as a great man, for he wasn’t. Laud him not for being bipartisan, for he did so only to incrementally advance his autocratic nightmares. And let him not bask in the glow of his older brothers who had some notion of right, whereas Teddy knew only expediency.

We should remember Ted Kennedy for those elements of his character that defined him best. For accusing a Supreme Court nominee of degrading women, segregating the races and enforcing ignorance (how ignorant of you Teddy). For hijacking the American dream. For jacking taxes so high the average American household can barely get by (though his oil wealth is sheltered in off shore trusts, safe from annual income taxes and estate taxes). For leaving a girl to drown in his car while he sobered-up and his family fixed the investigation (he was only charged with leaving the scene of an accident).

On second thought, let’s forget Teddy altogether.

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Having written songs and performed solo for way too long, it is odd being in a band. (We’ll call it a band. More like four guys who wanted to jam and needed a good reason to drink week nights). Individually we are all quite good. Collectively we are sloppy with occasional outbursts of brilliance.

Working with TBD (the name for this mob, though the drummer is pushing to rename us the Poontang Clan) came with a few surprises. Interestingly the only western song I’ve ever written was the one onto which the band latched like malnourished remoras. I found this odd as note a single band member was hooked on westerns in real life. The drummer leans toward Dave Alvin and James McMurtry. The lead guitarist knows sleazy Stones and classic Beatles. The bass player covers anything including upholstery, but coughs up Jackson Brown and Phish numbers.

And they all went western. I can’t figure this one out. Perhaps they smoked a little/lotta something before rehearsal or my channeling Johnny Cash swayed them.

The biggest surprise was how I had to let go of my own song. I’m overly found of funky breaks, dramatic pauses, and changing tempos. These work when you are alone on stage, but drive most band members to drink. Sorry, to excessive drink. Wait, they already take booze intravenously. Let’s just say trying to follow me and my flourishes is as aggravating as the rap music I’m listening to at the very moment … coming from a Buick eight blocks away.

I had to release control of my own song. It is like offering up your first born male child to Michael Jackson (too soon?). The lead player wanted to pad the post-chorus turn-around with an extra bar. The bass player wanted double down on a fill chord. Everyone wanted a different ending. There were enough changes that I had trouble following my own tune.

But the changes were good. As a unit, the combo produced something live audiences would enjoy more and that we were less likely to botch on stage. I love the original song most, but I love this bastard step child just the same.

We often read about bands breaking apart due to creative differences. Understandable. All creative people have a vision, and those dropping LSD by the fist full have many visions. All artists want to see their visions fulfilled. There comes a point when individuals need to create a body of work uniquely their own. But before that, there is a long period of collaboration, of give-and-take. It has to happen because four soloists on stage sounds like Hell with hemorrhoids, which sounds like the rap music I’m listening to at the very moment … coming from a Chevy nine blocks away.

I’m unsure where the boundary lay. My band mates have not required anything of me I was unwilling to do (reluctant, yes – unwilling, no). But I’m willing – perhaps even anxious – for them to keep pushing. Their creativity counts.

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Obama and company overlooked two important realities in their attempt to rectally insert health insurance intervention into America’s posterior.

Obama’s major political malpractice was attempting a third bum’s rush. Haste in flushing money through bowls of the financial system might have been necessary given alleged urgencies from the sub-prime mortgage implosion. Sensing opportunity, Obama did as Bush had – he generated a sense of emergency through false diagnosis in order to garner public support for a massive spending bill. As American’s were collectively suffering from economic fallout, any proffered scheme to stimulate the economy sounded like good medicine. In both instances, rhetoric matched the situation – both were matters of economics and both were about as pleasant as a prison cell prostate exam.

But like a child who snacks until doubled over with a stomach ache, Obama dipped his hand into the cookie jar once too often. Obama tried to create a sense of urgency over health insurance in order to pass market intervening legislation. With over 85% of the nation insured, and most of the rest being uninsured by choice, no authentic urgency existed. Obama’s misguided proposals could be studied at relative leisure, perhaps while sitting in your doctor’s waiting room for the requisite four hours.

Yet Barack insisted that thousands of pages of unread legislation be passed within a month. Doctor Obama was rushing an otherwise healthy patient into the operating room to remove its brain.

Obama cried wolf when no wolf was present. Bush cried wolf when an economic wolf was at the door. Obama cried wolf days after entering the White House, though the proximity of the wolf was in question and Obama aimed his popgun into the air. With health insurance there was no wolf. Perhaps some varmints were in the yard, but a few plinks with a .30 caliber will chase away all those pesky trail lawyers (shame John Edwards was politically neutered by his own hand).

Inciting panic over non-problems that lacked authentic urgency caused swing voters to pause. The messenger was no longer believable and thus the message itself became suspect. Obama accelerated his stultification by altering his faux fear focus, switching from evil insurance companies to evil Republicans to evil economics to evil Congress (at least he got that last one right). Voters will listen to arguments about real problems, but they see scams when the nature of the problem is changed more frequently than grandma’s colostomy bag.

What did not change were American attitudes toward their own insurance.

Recent polls show that over 80% of Americans are satisfied with their health care. They may not be ecstatic with their providers, but are served well enough that omnipotent intervention is unwelcome. When 85% of Americans are insured and 80% are content, change is a tough sell. Obama’s attempt to spook contented voters generated suspicion more substantial than America’s rapidly expanding waistline.

Maybe obese American’s instinctively distrust skinny politicians. Obama can fix that by kicking his cigarette habit. He’ll put on 100 pounds before the next election, increasing his curb weight to 198.

When working moms arrive at town hall meetings with 1,000 pages of legislation under their arms – indexed and highlighted – you know that deep suspicions are pustulating. Learning that she has read the bill and her attending representative has not causes suspicion to become contagious. When representatives quarantine themselves by cancelling town hall meetings, an epidemic of dissatisfaction is ready to erupt.

Mockery is a good gauge of public sentiment. When emails like the one below begin circulating, then the battle has been decided.

Obama’s health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is nearly broke and whose bureaucracy has never brought anything in under budget.

What possibly could go wrong?

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Hysteria can be very entertaining.

Take the current and rancorous debate concerning health care insurance (do note that proposals polluting Congress have noting to do with health care but everything to do with economics). We have in recent days seen episodes of fear induced hysteria that turned alleged adults into mindless, defensive, stuttering buffoons, barely able to articulate their dread much less anything resembling coherent policy opinion.

I am, of course, referring to the Obama administration.

(An aside, applying the word hysteria to the current and temporary administration seems appropriate. The word devolves from the Greek, hysterikós, which means “suffering in the womb.” The ancient Greeks believed that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances in the uterus. Then again old Greeks had a lot of odd notions about women, deities and sex with young boys, so we can only accept their literary input. Since Obamacare appears to be stillborn, the visual of Barack’s legislation “suffering in the womb” seems amusingly apropos).

Within one House and four Senate bills, we see that health care is not the issue. Health care is provided by doctors, nurses and hospitals, supplied with gear and goo invented, manufactured and sold by industry. Government can not provide health care.

But they can screw up its availability as they have done many times.

Insurance is a legislatively rigged game. There has not been an open market for health insurance in my life time and even a few years before I was seeded. Every legislative intervention the government made in insurance markets raised premiums. Now Obama’s cabal proposes intervening again, and every line of every bill seems designed to make private health insurance even more costly.

This is why the large insurance companies back Barack’s plans as they did previous plots. Why work to make money when purchased politicians can craft laws that boost income while crippling your competitors. Two past legislative transgressions are good examples of how government is looking out for someone other than you.

Federal law prevents companies not located in your state from selling you insurance. Stated differently, you – an allegedly free American – are prohibited from buying insurance from who you want. Californians should have the ability to buy coverage from Alaska, or Alabama, or Azerbaijan if it so suits them. Preventing such free trade benefits large insurance companies that can afford establishing offices in every state while blocking smaller competitors. In the Internet age, software savvy insurers surely exist who could bring health insurance costs low through technology (yield maximization modeling software, consumer self-service, etc.) providing they were free to do so. With less competition, major insurance companies can keep rates high and raise them in lock-step. This particularly putrid enactment serves customers quite well … the customers being large insurance company lobbyist and the product being Congress.

Barack doesn’t want you to be free, to buy insurance from wherever you please. He said so in the presidential debate when McCain offered legislation to reverse this disruption in the market. Of course Obama is also on record – many times – stating he prefers a “single payer” (i.e., monopoly) insurance agency, namely Uncle Sugar Insurance, Inc.

State governments, being equally psychotic as the Federal variety, have their own means for reducing insurance company competition and raising your rates. The gimmicks are called “mandates.” As the name reveals, these are decrees from politicians who see themselves as elected monarchs (interesting: ‘monopoly’, ‘monarchs’. I sense a theme among the soon to cede ruling class).

Mandates force insurance companies to provide you with certain services, even those you do not use. Mandates are manic. Situations arise that would be outrageous if they were not so comical. Take my buddy Dave, who claims to be the gayest man in San Francisco (watching him work a bar one night, I fear he might be right). The State of California (a.k.a. The State of Disaster) requires Dave’s insurance company to provide him with contraceptives and in vitro fertilization services.

Needless to say, gay Dave doesn’t need either.

But Dave has to pay for them. His insurance company lacks legal options for not providing those services. Frankly, his insurance company doesn’t want Dave to opt out. Having Dave pay for services he will never use is free money for the insurer, which explains why insurance company lobbyists stuffed legislator pockets to pass mandates, and to grow the list of required coverage over time.

None of this has been lost on the public. One reason for Obama’s rapidly growing hysteria is that the hoi polloi understand the abuses they already suffer under our government-rigged insurance system, but they have also studied newly proposed legislation. When Obama sees housewives walking into town hall meetings with 1,000 pages of legislation under their arm, with select passages highlighted and pages indexed with PostIt stickers, Barack knows that his new health insurance schemes will not receive bums-rush passage as did his massive spending and political payback bill.

Barack Obama resembles Mel Brooks in History of the World. Playing the King of France, Brooks had an aide run to his side and proclaim “Your highness, the peasants are revolting!” to which Obama … err … Brooks replies “You said it. They stink on ice!”

Doctors are familiar with the dictum primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm.” The government has done massive harm to the people in deference to their masters on K Street. Before any new health insurance legislation passes, the harm done must be healed. Health insurance competition must be restored and liberalized. Any real inequities afterwards can then be rationally addressed.

Then again, this is politics and rationality has little to do with it. Just ask our hysterical president.

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