Adam Crocker

Have you listened to Song 179 yet? Where’ve you been?

Andrew looks at the song “Kick Out the Jams” by the MC5 and the brief career of the most revolutionary guitar band of the sixties.

Available to listen on Spotify, Apple Music and via the 500 songs website:
500songs.com/podcast/song...

I'm not a parent, but imagine that would be about tops.

Minnesota teen says server forced her to prove her gender in restaurant bathroom The 18-year-old high school student alleged the server would not let her exit the Buffalo Wild Wings restroom until she unzipped her hoodie and showed she had breasts.

Minnesota teen says server forced her to prove her gender in restaurant bathroom

The 18-year-old high school student alleged the server would not let her exit the Buffalo Wild Wings restroom until she unzipped her hoodie and showed she had breasts.

For @nbcnews.com:
www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...

Historians, help me out: Were the Nazis also enormous dorks?

my hot take is that stealing someone's art and making loads of money from it is evil however much it's a striking document of urban estrangement or whatever

This is maybe the worst part about being an educator in the AI era.

AI companies are *stealing your time* by making you work around it/find it/adjudicate it. Time that, 4 years ago, you would have used to improve your materials, or stay up-to-date on some area of research.

"...wean Britain off of its addiction to foreign workers..."

By what? Vat cloning new British workers to make up the labour shortfall? Crashing the economy so badly that there aren't any jobs to fill with workers from overseas?

Whether or not a person can sing a Tom Lehrer song from memory is a pretty good indicator of whether they'll be fun to spend time with.

Are my ducks in a row?

Let me sing you my theme song.

It is to the tune of "My Humps"

My ducks
My ducks
My horrid feral ducks
(Cut it out)

ALL ABOUT THE JOBS: Keir Starmer will today attempt to convince voters he has a plan to wean Britain off its addiction to overseas workers as the party seeks to stem the flow of blue-collar voters moving across to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. That message could well be overshadowed if the inauspicious milestone of 50,000 small boat migrant arrivals since Labour took office is officially reached today, as expected.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY: Police are investigating online abuse faced by a group of Scouts after some Welsh villagers mistook their summer camping trip as an influx of illegal immigrants, the Telegraph reports. The incident comes just days after former Reform MP Rupert Lowe alerted the coastguard to potential Channel-crossing migrants … who turned out to be a charity rowing crew.

A hell of a 'shot, chaser' in today's Playbook:

This is why education systems shouldn't chase "jobs of the future"....

Buy this book. Seriously, if you have any interest at all in Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter or in the way racial injustice manifested not only in the music industry but in "progressive" folk music and academia, you need to get it.

🫠

Four gray 3D-printed bomb-shaped objects with metal springs protruding from the tops are arranged in descending height from left to right. Each has a horizontal colored stripe near the top and a label in black text: the tallest is labeled “WIRED” with a yellow stripe, the second tallest “The Atlantic” with a lime green stripe, the third “Guardian US” with a yellow stripe, and the shortest “NYT” without a stripe. To the right of the objects is a tilted face emoji with one eye closed, the other open, and its tongue sticking out.

Trump admin coverage

A small brown bunny sits on a cushioned stool beneath a desk. A person uses a keyboard above.

A small harvest of a Snackabelle pepper and a Green Zebra and Cream Sausage tomatoes with a bunch of Sungold, Black Cherry, Husky Cherry, Matt’s Wild Cherry and Yellow Pear tomatoes

The full post summarises my feelings on the matter. Repulbicans don't even nominally believe in small government anymore.

Even in Reagan's time, Republican commitment to small government had always been equivocal. But now it's just an utter farce.

A disarrayed Shinhan swatch. This is a South Korean brand and punches way above its extremely-reasonable-for-pro-grade price.

Good greens and the pastels are particularly good, not chalky at all, lay down like butter

Between Disney Adults becoming the key market for theme parks, the desire for a darky, adult-ier Harry Potter, the maturation of Lego for a consumer's market and everything else...I am uncomfortable generally with people embracing a long, unending adoselcence

Uh oh! We have a “do you need to consume the classics/oldies” discourse brewing!

For the record, my stance is always:

It’s entertainment, you do you.

HOWEVER

If you want to comment on the history of an entertainment form as a critic, you’ll sound awfully ignorant without ground floor knowledge.

Whereas, I’m sorry, literally everything about the Harry Potter show is funny. It starts with the CEO going “genre makes money - why not a TV show?”, wooing the author into saying yes, recruiting a bunch of people with near zero experience of working with child actors or on children’s entertainment.

So: I think if “The Hunt for a Gollum” was because the people in charge of Lord of the Rings at Warner Brothers were just bizarrely obsessed with Gollum, it would slip around to being funny to me.
But that it just visibly “a project built on barrel-scraping” makes it depressing.

None of it’s a distraction, they just have a big to-do list

The thing about modern pop-leftism is that it uses the aesthetics and rhetoric of 19th century labor radicalism to advocate for what is essentially a consumer and homeowner-focused agenda.

Which isn't inherently bad, in of itself, but does make a lot of the arguments utterly incoherent.

I am a bit pissed off. But not *more* pissed off than I am about them scraping everything all of us have put onto the internet for free and going "oh you left this here and now it belong to us". They took a massive global volunteer project and put an enclosures fence around it.

In addition to his work as a sideman, Whitlock released more than a dozen solo albums, beginning with a self-titled 1972 effort on which Clapton and Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett returned the favor with musical contributions. In addition to providing keyboards and background on the album, Whitlock also contributed acoustic guitar to the track “Thorn Tree in the Garden,” which he wrote. Whitlock also co-composed six tracks with Clapton: “I Looked Away,” “Bell Bottom Blues,” “Keep on Growing,” “Tell the Truth,” “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?” and “Anyday.” (Words by Jeff Tamarkin)

Born March 18, 1948, in Memphis, Tennessee, Whitlock learned to play the Hammond organ as a teen and landed work at the Stax Records label contributing to recordings by Sam and Dave, Albert King, the Staple Singers and others. In 1969, Whitlock contributed to two albums by the Bramletts, 'Home' and 'Accept No Substitutes,' as well as the following year’s live album, 'On Tour With Eric Clapton' and subsequent studio recordings. Over the next few years, in addition to making his own solo debut, Whitlock was hired to contribute to albums by Dr. John, Doris Troy and Stephen Stills’ band Manassas, among others. (Words by Jeff Tamarkin)

Derek and the Dominos arose out of the 'All Things Must Pass' sessions, which also included bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. The quartet of Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon toured during 1970 but before the end of 1971 the band had split. The “Layla” title track, written by Clapton and Gordon, inspired by George Harrison’s then-wife Pattie Boyd (who later married Clapton), was released in 1971 as a single to little fanfare but upon its re-release the following year it landed in the Billboard Top 10. For his solo debut, Whitlock called upon Clapton, Gordon and Radle for accompaniment, as well as Harrison, Klaus Voormann, Traffic’s Chris Wood and others. The album, released on the ABC-Dunhill label in the U.S., peaked at #140. Its followup, 1972’s 'Raw Velvet,' made it only to #190 and was the last of Whitlock’s solo works to chart. In the mid-’70s, he withdrew from the music business, and he lived on a farm in Mississippi during the next two decades, doing occasional session work. He returned to active music-making in 1999 with the solo album 'It’s About Time.' Other Whitlock albums, some made with his wife CoCo Carmel, featured special guests including Willie Nelson, Steve Cropper. In the 2000s, Whitlock relocated to Austin, Texas. In 2010, Whitlock published A Rock ’n’ Roll Autobiography, his memoir, which included a foreword from Clapton. (Words by Jeff Tamarkin) (Words by Jeff Tamarkin)

Bobby Whitlock, the pianist, guitarist and songwriter who played on three of rock’s most legendary albums — 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,' 'All Things Must Pass' and 'Exile on Main Street' — has died. He was 77. A statement provided to ABC Audio by his manager Carole Kaye reads, “With profound sadness, the family of Bobby Whitlock announces his passing at 1:20am on Aug. 10 after a brief illness. He passed in his home in Texas, surrounded by family.” Born and raised in Memphis, Whitlock played on recordings by Sam & Dave and Booker T. & the M.G.’s as a teen and was the first white artist signed to Stax Records. In 1969, he played on the album 'Accept No Substitute' by Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and joined their touring band, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Eric Clapton and George Harrison subsequently joined the band as guest “Friends,” which led to Whitlock and Clapton backing Harrison on the former Beatle‘s landmark 1970 album 'All Things Must Pass.' While working on Harrison’s album, Whitlock and Clapton formed Derek and the Dominos with fellow Friends Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Whitlock wrote or co-wrote seven of the fourteen songs on their now-iconic album 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,' including “Tell the Truth” and “Bell Bottom Blues.” After Derek and the Dominos split in 1971, Whitlock released two solo albums and played uncredited on The Rolling Stones’ 1972 album 'Exile on Main Street.' He also played on albums by Dr. John and Manassas. Whitlock, who was inducted into Memphis’ Beale Street Walk of Fame in 2024, continued to record and release albums throughout his career, later accompanied by his wife and musical partner CoCo Carmel Whitlock. He is survived by Carmel Whitlock, sister Debbie Wade and children Ashley Brown, Beau Whitlock and Tim Whitlock Kelly. (Words by ABC Radio) (photo by CoCo Whitlock)

R.I.P. Bobby Whitlock, the pianist, guitarist and songwriter who played on three of rock’s most legendary albums — 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,' 'All Things Must Pass' and 'Exile on Main Street' — died at his home in Texas earlier today, August 10, 2025, age 77.

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The first rule of Paradox Club is you have to go back in time to create Paradox Club.

Seeing this argument a lot less but I like the topic, so I'll mosey on in...

"Superhero movies are today's westerns."

No.

1. Westerns were never tied to a small handful of copyrighted and trademarked properties

2. Westerns are wildly versatile and can be made for a fortune or a shoestring

The thing about Led Zeppelin is that even though they're the definition of Real Rock Music for a certain kind of tedious person, they're also an example of exactly the kind of "inauthentic" act they rail against, starting out as somewhere between a manufactured pop group and a tribute act.