Today's Stories

August 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Really Running Iraq?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is the King of Pork Dead?

James Abourezk
Lies the Oil Companies Peddle

Andy Worthington
The CIA's Secret Prison on Diego Garcia

Brian Cloughley
Baleful Imperial Power

Robert Fantina
Redefining Progress in Iraq

Benjamin Dangl
Total Recall in Bolivia

Marlene Martin
Living in Hell for Life

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Qualifies "Them" for the Death Sentence?

David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis

Harvey Wasserman
Meet the Real Terrorists of the 1960s

Jason Hribal
Moja Has Mojo: How a Few Elephants Turned the Zoo Industry Upside Down

Laray Polk
Tongues of Fire, Plains of Grace: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ron Jacobs
Jerry Garcia Meets Barack Obama

David Macaray
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

David Rosen
Teen Prostitution in America

Dan Bacher
Schwarzengger's Water Empire

Joe Allen
Batman's War of Terror

Poets' Basement
Graham, Stevens, Cory and Fleming

Website of the Weekend
Get Your War On: the Watch List

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

Rannie Amiri
Islamobamaphobia: a New Word Enters the Lexicon

Peter Morici
U.S. Economy Loses Another 51,000 Jobs

Christopher Brauchli
South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Coup in the Great Caspian Play

Patrick Cockburn
Turkish Court Says Ruling Islamic Party Can't be Shut Down

James J. Brittain
The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

Dan Bacher
Warren Buffett, Salmon Killer

Website of the Day
Shark Genocide: 100 Million Deaths a Year

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

July 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How Bush is Wiping Out McCain

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Alaskan Oil Spills

James G. Abourezk
The Surge Has Worked?

Joseph Nevins
Death as a Way of Life on the Borderlands

Uri Avnery
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks

Linn Washington, Jr.
Politics and Injustice in Philadelphia

David Yearsley
Sodomy, Snuff Scenes and the Berlin Opera

Binoy Kampmark
Socializing Losses: Bailing Out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Saul Landau
Truth in Comedy: Stop Whining It's All in Your Head!

Joshua Frank
Big Sky Rebels

Brendan Cooney
Europe's Hypocrisy

Jonathan Cook
Settlers Eye Historic Jerusalem Neighborhood

Robert Fantina
McCain, Iraq and the Campaign

Lee Sustar
Will the US Get Its Way with Iran?

Michael Winship
The Company We Keep

David Macaray
Organized Labor Makes a Convenient Target

Missy Beattie
Pelosi's Panhandling

Robert Weissman
The Scourge of the IMF

Kim Nicolini
Batman and the Old Order

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Ford and McEnteer

Website of the Weekend
Bad Hoosiers

July 25, 2008

Harvey Wasserman
NRC: New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Facts About Israel?

Alan Farago
Where's the Outrage?

Paul D'Amato
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

Gary Leupp
War With Iran? State Dept. Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Eyes Wide Shut in India

Mike Whitney
Obama Dazzles Old Europe, While McCain Cries, "No Mas!"

Paul Krassner
Inside Camp Mogul

Mike Roselle
All Hail Nero!

Website of the Day
Pressing Starbucks

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

Andy Worthington
Folly and Injustice: Salim Hamdan's Guantanamo Trial

James Bovard
Daniel Ellsberg's Lessons for Our Time

Joe Bageant
Life in the Post-Political Age

George Wuerthner
Boondoggle in the Fields

DC Larson
Shutting Out Ralph Nader

William Willers
The Forest Products Industry in Public Education

David Macaray
On the Prospects for a SAG Strike

Website of the Day
Pacifica Radio Archive of 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

Susie Day
Senator Sicko: Jesse Helms and the Theatre of the Depraved

Website of the Day
"A Kinder and Gentler Machine-Gun Hand..."

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

Andy Worthington
Dictatorial Powers Upheld: the Meaning of the Al-Marri Decision

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

Weekend Edition
August 2 / 3, 2008

The Musical Patriot

The Sound and the Fury of Wet Balloons
Rubbed with a Big Sponge. Yes, Bill O’Reilly, This is Your Kind of Music

By DAVID YEARSLEY

In music, as in life, one can never be sure how an invention will be transformed by those who will subsequently use and abuse it.  Could Adolphe Sax have had any idea when he conceived his saxophone in the 1840s that his mellifluous horn would find its true voice a century later at the hands and in the lips of black American jazz musicians, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon and so many others? How would Sax have reacted to the terrifying shrieks that John Coltrane would later extort from both the tenor and soprano models so carefully designed and fabricated by the inventor to be conduits of soothing, soft-edged comfort?

The violin has a much longer history, and therefore one richer in misdeeds against its original purpose.  Those first violin makers of 16th-century Lombardy and the players who used their still-prized products had no inkling that unborn Paganinis and other virtuoso devils would get up to all kinds of outlandish tricks: playing insanely high up on the fingerboard at lightning speed, careening through octaves, plucking with the left-hand while bowing with the right.  Later innovator-desecrators would go still further: turning the bow upside down, banging on the body of the fiddle, and enacting all kinds of unimaginable outrages against the Cremona masters’ resonant box with strings.

Are such expansions and explorations a sign of generous respect or selfish disrespect? Either way human beings will inevitably want to push any idea or construction for beyond its initial boundaries — to both glorious and ignominious ends. Only the Antonin Scalias of the artistic world remain immobilized in the suffocating mire of original intent. One should be as lucky as Sax and Andrea Amati and have his or her legacy so richly abused.

Then there are those objects which are drafted into musical service from realms seemingly far beyond the far-flung borders of the Empire of Tones.  The musical saw comes to mind. It begins to sing its otherworldly song when placed between the knees of the player and torqued with one hand while the other plies it with one of those violin bows of Cremonese ancestry. Virtuosos have developed astounding skill on the saw, an instrument whose cultivation seems at the very least counterintuitive.  If you need a lift in your day, check out the “saw-lady,” Natalia Paruz on Youtube, playing Bach’s plaintive organ chorale “I cry to Thee, Jesus Christ” in the New York City subway. This Heifetz of the jagged blade made her Carnegie Hall debut last year.       

If the saw can bring forth such celestial melody, what other instruments, percussive and tuneful, await human manipulation for purposes of musical entertainment and uplift?

This past Tuesday evening I strolled down a verdant East Hill in Ithaca, New York, past some of the decrepit mansions of the movie moguls who made the Perils of Pauline in the region’s gorges during the first decades of cinema, to a small music shop and tattoo parlor called No Radio Records to hear the greatest virtuoso of dime store balloons, Ricardo Arias, on tour from his native Colombia. In his explorations of the squeaks, creaks, shutters, stutters, yelps, and moans of these brightly colored, and surprisingly durable orbs, he was joined by his equal in inventive transgression, Andrew Drury, at a floor-tom drum and a host of accessories. The most intriguing of the dozens of items pulled from Drury’s kit bag before the performance was a metal dustpan and a gaggle of violin and double bass bows, whose shaggy and frayed horsehairs indicated that these dignified swords of the orchestral aristocracy had already survived some mortal hand-to-hand combat in the trenches of electro-acoustical percussion improvisation. More would shortly ensue.

The third member of this exploratory trio was Bryan Eubanks on open circuits and portable electronics, which included a laptop holding a massive catalog of sampled sounds highly tweakable in real time. In contrast to the athletic exertions of the acoustic duo upfront, Eubanks sat impassively at his table, hunched over his controls, fiddling with the knobs of his small mixing board, and occasionally poking at his laptop to provide a backdrop of found and invented sounds, sometimes distant and gray like far-off clouds, at other times glowing red and threatening over the spirited colloquy of Aria’s balloons and Drury’s diverse machinations. Theirs is an improvised art bordering on glorious madness.

The evening began with a rather more contemplative solo offered up by Tim Feeney, head of the percussion program at Cornell University and a classically trained musician who pursues what he calls a “double life” as an experimental improviser.  His set-up and the sound it produced were considerably sparser than that of Drury, though both used the single floor-tom as their foundation.  Feeney had placed a small cymbal on the drumhead next to a space-age coil, which he later informed me was a Pier 1 Imports CD holder that his ex-girlfriend had given him as a hint to get his sprawling record collection in order.  The CD holder could only accommodate an inconsequential half-dozen discs.  The pair split a few days later.

The visual centerpiece of Feeney’s kit, the crappy CD holder, in this unexpected context achieved an austere visual and aural dignity that the clowns at Pier 1 who sold it and the wage-slaves who made it back in China could never have anticipated.

Feeney began by investigating the permeable border between ambient noise and constructed soundscapes. He fiddled with painstaking finesse at his mixing board for the first several minutes. John Cage’s 4’33” asked us to listen to what was around us, and in so doing rejecting a division I for one hold to be dear: that between art and nature. Feeney takes a more technological approach to such ironic philosophical musings. Nodding crisply to Cage, as it were, Feeney gradually directed our listening to the things in and outside the room, eventually honing in on the feedback off his still unstruck and seemingly silent drum, finding through the hypersensitive microphone perched above the drum head, some astoundingly complex and protean self-generated rhythms. Another of the truths that this investigation quickly reveals is that silence is a myth. The universe appears to be a drummer.

After this rather contemplative prelude of several minutes conjured by thumb and forefinger, Feeney swiveled to his drum and pulled out a violin bow and drew it along the cymbal, which he held down with his other hand on the drum head.  Having created this ethereal complaint, he then returned his attention to the mixer and had us meditate on the contours of decay, the sound waves colliding against each other as the microphone listened to itself and we to it.
 
Later, Feeney balanced the tip a thin rod on top of the Pier One CD holder and drew his thumbs and forefingers in circular motions that set up another wave rich in complex overtones.  Pushing against the threshold of human hearing, these gestures had a few members of the audience plugging their ears.  In his capacity as soloist Feeney is less a percussionist than frictionist. The soundscape he elicits from his minimal set-up is like a vast, largely barren canvas scratched by a few small marks. Slowly, inexorably we zoom in on one mark, then another, and see they are almost frantically alive — an anthill swarming with unified but busily complex sound. Yet both the close-up and the long-shot are strangely, paradoxically poised. As the last bit of feedback recedes, we realize that in the seemingly depopulated expanse of sound Feeney explores there is much more to hear than we had suspected, and that the flotsam of rampant consumerism—like a Pier One CD gizmo—can yield up mysterious, mesmerizing chords and rhythms.

The evening proceeded from the sparse to the exuberant, not to say baroque. Arias took his position in front of his balloon-kit.  The larger of the two balloons, about a yard across was wedged down into the tubular, folding frame of chair, whose canvas seat had been removed.  Strapped on top of this with big rubber bands was a smaller balloon less than a foot across.  With the four legs of the chair, a big body, and smaller head, the set-up looked like some kind of rotund and garish quadruped.

Arias proceeded to rub a large sponge on the surface of the larger balloon while continually squirting water from a small bottle to increase friction and therefore sound.  Drury joined in with feathery fingers across the drumhead, while Eubanks lurked in the sonic shadows.  The evolving sonorities gathered themselves into a long, fitful crescendo, the building momentum allowing intermittent retreats to subsidiary moments of reconsideration, even repose.  The accumulating energy of the first fifteen minutes, during which Arias brought various sponges and pieces of Styrofoam into play and Drury went from bowing his cymbal to searching out the crystalline qualities of a range of brass bells on the drumhead, gave way to investigations of the resonances of the various acoustic instruments. At one point, Drury scanned his arsenal, but no object caught his fancy. He promptly picked up his drum and began to blow on it mightily on it, as Arias deployed another smaller balloon and tickled it with his fingers, evoking a range of affects from the nervous to the demure.

After a dustpan interlude of renewed intensity in dialogue with more sponge work on the balloon and gurgling water samples from the laptop, a kind of slow movement emerged.  Here a lyrical passage of high, almost sweet complaints from the balloons comingled with jangling chains dragged and bounced across the drum. Like Feeney before him, Drury then placed a thin rod on the head, and, caressing it with his hands, brought forth mournful drones.

The drums must be the oldest musical instrument of human kind, and no one has ever confronted it with a more unbounded, yet skilled, creativity than has Drury.

The final climax of the trio’s improvisation came with Drury slamming at a piece of metal on top of the drum, while Arias snapped wildly at the balloons with those rubber bands.  The result sounded like high voltage sparks, and would have probably been as painful had they broken in Arias’ face. (Warning, KounterPunch Kids: DO NOT try this at home without the supervision of either an adult or an Obama poll watcher). Arias continued his artistic assault as Drury pushed his kit along the floor, the rubber pads on the feet of the floor-tom making the drum jump and stutter and the bits and bells on top of it shake, rattle, and ding. Above a tectonic Ur-noise from Eubanks, the percussionists careened towards a wild epiphany before a long diminuendo eventually dissolved into the ambient sound Feeney had earlier dissected.

Out on Seneca Street the traffic had diminished to intermittent whoosh not unlike Drury’s blowings.  A distant siren pursued its distant goal, like a screaming balloon rising towards the apparent silence of the night sky.  Inside No Radio Records, the applause from the audience found its own spontaneous rhythmic logic in an enthusiastic and apposite coda to the evening’s insights and exuberances.

The sheer nerve of it all made me think that perhaps the root of all art lies in mischief.

David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu 

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