Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

Just as I’m writing this Wednesday afternoon, the city has released a trove of documents in the Laquan McDonald murder case showing in part that Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke lied to and disobeyed orders from his supervisors.


I’ll need time to read the reports myself and absorb the coverage, so more on that tomorrow.
–
Brown Out/In
“Lake County Recorder Michael Brown, who has been called on the carpet for his absenteeism, didn’t come into work Tuesday but will receive a raise in fiscal year 2020,” the Tribune-owned Post-Tribune reports.
“Brown didn’t report to work for 18 months.”
Nice work if you can’t get it.
*
You’d think with that kind of track record he’d have been promoted to Cook County by now.
–
Rush Job
“Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said Tuesday it is ‘egotistical’ and ‘self-centered’ for Bernie Sanders to push ahead with his presidential campaign if the heart attack he suffered last week compromised his health,” the Sun-Times reports for some reason.
Rush (D-AT&T) hasn’t exactly been in great health himself the past few years. Then again, it’s been hard to notice given that he does nothing but talk smack on the taxpayer’s dime. Anyway . . .
“Rush, 72, who chairs the Illinois Kamala Harris campaign . . . commented during a discussion about the Democratic primary battle at a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board.”
Why am I even reading this? The things I do for you people.
*
“My candidate, she’s not out of the race, but she’s got to be more energetic, more engaging, alright?” Rush said.
Isn’t that the closest thing to real news here? State chair calls on his presidential candidate to step it up.
Meanwhile, not a word on what he told the editorial board regarding his plans should he win another term (or an accounting of the wasted terms he’s been piling up for years now), the ostensible reason he was there in the first place.
–
Aurora Bore All Of Us
Now accepting poems about Aurora!
Use the Tip Line at the bottom of this column.
–
Everyone Made Money Off My NCAA Career Except Me

–
Ginger Baker In The Beachwood
“Ginger Baker, who died Sunday at the age of 80, was an architect of rock drumming, spilling across tom-toms with both power and nuance,” the New York Times notes.

His work in the 1960s with the bands Cream and Blind Faith made him a defining figure of many basic rock band concepts: the “power trio,” the “supergroup,” the “drum solo,” “jamming,” “double-kick drumming” and – much to his trademark chagrin – an early thruway for “heavy metal.”
Baker was influenced by combustible, hyperkinetic jazz drummers like Art Blakey, Max Roach and Elvin Jones, along with the complex polyrhythms of Central Africa, shown to him by the British jazz drummer Phil Seamen. His playing was, in turn, heavy yet subtle, and Baker was quick to point out the differences between his work and the similarly influential bash of the Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham.
Over a career that lasted more than 50 years, Baker found his pummeling sound leading or accompanying various strains of hard rock, jazz and Afrobeat. Here are 15 songs that show his influence and range.

You’ll have to click through to get to those 15 songs.
Meanwhile, here are three times Ginger Baker appeared on this site:
* Here Lies Rock ‘N’ Roll, May 2007

Higgins says one of the film’s highlights is a “candid” interview with Cream drummer Ginger Baker, who speaks casually of the drug-filled circumstances surrounding Hendrix’s death from a sleeping pill overdose as well as his own simultaneous close call with the Reaper:
“One story he told was of the night Hendrix died. Ginger had come into possession of a bottle of pure cocaine hydrochloride from a friend who worked at Charing Cross hospital. Keen to share his windfall, Ginger called Hendrix but could not get hold of him. Ginger proceeded to get stuck in, OD’d and came round to a doctor telling him that Hendrix was dead. ‘The extraordinary thing is,’ said Ginger, very matter of factly, ‘if he’d had the coke he wouldn’t have died because he wouldn’t have gone to sleep.’
“He finished with a darkly comic round up: ‘I seem to manage to stay alive by some miracle because I was supposed to have died you see. I was in the Playboy Dead Band in 1972 along with Jimi and Janis Joplin and Greg Allman. I was the drummer in the Dead Band.'”

* Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion at City Winery in The Week In Chicago Rock, June 2014.
* Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion at Thalia Hall in The Week In Chicago Rock, June 2015.
–
New on the Beachwood today . . .
U.S. Killing Children In Afghanistan Quagmire
At least 14 more in May, new UN report shows.
*
The Real Climate Crisis Hypocrites
“Shouting ‘I hate you’ is what teenagers do,” the inimitable Jonathan Pie says. “At least Greta Thurnberg hates us because we’ve fucked an entire planet up the ass and not because we’ve told her to turn that fucking racket down.”
*
Illinois Dairy Recap
‘A dairy tour takes place every other year and gives foreign buyers a chance to purchase embryos, semen, cattle and other Illinois dairy products.’
–
ChicagoReddit

TIL Lincoln Park used to be the official city cemetery before it was a park, and the ground there is still filled with old, unmarked graves. from r/chicago


–
ChicagoGram


–
ChicagoTube
Art Therapy at the School of the Art Institute.

–
BeachBook
Samuel Little Is The Most Prolific Serial Killer In U.S. History. Most of His Victims Were Black Women.

*
For The First Time In History, U.S. Billionaires Paid A Lower Tax Rate Than The Working Class Last Year.

And most of the victims are black women.
*
The Art Institute Of Chicago Is Doing Something Remarkable With Women Artists.

*
Congo, The Late Chimpanzee Painter Whose Works Have Sold For Thousands, Will Have A Solo Show At A Respected London Gallery.

–
TweetWood
A sampling of the delight and disgust you can find @BeachwoodReport.


*


*


*


*


*
Thread.


*


–
The Beachwood Tipster Line: Hipster tips.

Permalink

Posted on October 9, 2019