Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post, July 13, 2010

On Saturday night I attended A Beatles Celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, and while this isn’t a review of the performance but rather of the attendees, I would be remiss not to say a word or two about the show itself.

Todd Rundgren was the big name associated with these three nights at the Bowl, but by far the night belonged to Betty LaVette and Rob Laufer. Not to belittle he who was once referred to as “Todd is God,” but even God would have to rehearse a significant amount were he to spend three nights at the Bowl with the LA Philharmonic for close to 70,000 people. Todd was very enthusiastic and when he sang softly that sweet old voice was still there, but overall his performance was sloppy. He can shred on the guitar with the best of them, and he did, I just wish he’d taken more time to work out some licks.

On the other extreme, Rob Laufer’s vocals and masterful guitar work was the first time in the show that the Beatles’ presence was truly felt on stage. In his loving performances of “Something” and “Across the Universe,” it was as if he were channeling all four lads at the same time. Todd brought Rob back during his set and the two guitar virtuosos laid “Let it Be” out for the brilliance that it is. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house.

The amazing blues singer Betty LaVette gave us awe-inspiring interpretations of “Blackbird” and “Here, There, & Everywhere” to the point where, except for the lyrics, the songs were literally unrecognizable as Beatles tunes. LaVette was the only performer without a strong Beatles influence in her life and career (in her intro to “Here, There, & Everywhere” she said the first time she’d heard the song, Frank Sinatra was singing it!) Even so, on her lips “Come Together” should become a blues standard. There’s no doubt that her astonishingly visceral rendition of that enigmatic song could have brought John and Paul to tears.

The entire show was backed wonderfully by the LA Phil and conductor Thomas Wilkins who was also an appropriate emcee. So it would have been a perfect evening of music and memories had it not been for the unbelievably rude and unconscious people in my immediate area.

I’ve attended over one hundred concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in all musical genres, and I’ve come to understand that there are generally three types of shows and three types of audiences at this one-of-a kind Los Angeles landmark.

The first concert/audience type is the classical. The music is Mozart, Vivaldi, Chopin, etc. and the patrons bring their wine and bread and cheese and sip and munch before the concert starts. Once the conductor strides out onto the stage, they put their picnics at their feet and, if they continue to partake, they do so quietly out of respect for both the music and their fellow concert-goers. I love these people.

Second are the rock/pop shows. Just like any concert at any venue, this audience drinks too much, makes incessant noise, sings with all the songs, and generally are out to have a good time. The music is usually very loud so you barely notice them. Everyone behaves as they’re expected to. I love the freedom of these shows so unless someone is literally throwing up in the row behind me, it’s anything goes.

Third are the in-betweens. “In-between” both in the nature of the concert and the people who attend them. The concerts are always “special” shows like A Beatles Celebration, where you get quiet ballads and heartfelt jazz in addition to loud rock, while in the audience you get the classical and the rock/pop audiences who know how to behave based on the particular song being performed. But there’s a third element. This third element is the people who probably have never been to the Bowl before and, maybe because of the bench seats or the beer, behave as if they’re at Dodger Stadium.

So during the first half of the show Saturday night, which was mostly quiet jazz and heartfelt ballads by Patti Austin, Rob Laufer, and Brian Stokes Mitchell, I had the couple to my immediate left across the aisle who just had to finish off an entire large bag of Tostitos before intermission and did so during every song, crunching and rustling the bag with every note.

Then I had the two young women behind me who couldn’t shut themselves up long enough to listen to one song all the way through. I always wonder about these sorts. What they could possibly have to say to each other that’s so important that they miss the reason they’re there in the first place?

But those who took the cake that night were the drunken family who not only talked and took pictures of each other during every song, but insisted on loudly mis-singing the lyrics completely off-key when no one else was. They were across the aisle and two rows up from me, and that’s what really got me about this particular group. They were surrounded by people who weren’t with them and as far as I could tell, not one person in close proximity to these idiots told them to STFU, behave themselves, and watch the show. An usher spoke to the group at one point, but it did no good. As soon as she went back to her post they started up again. What’s necessary in these situations is for the people sitting with the disturbers to teach them how to behave. But that never seems to happen. Not in LA, anyway.

The Hollywood Bowl is a fantastic venue. I have wonderfully fond memories there and will treasure them forever, but from now on it’s loud rock or strictly classical. No more in-betweens for me.

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Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post on December 9, 2009.

One of my closest friends, a brilliant, gifted, dedicated teacher at California State University, Los Angeles, was recently informed that because of budget cuts she is to be laid-off. In my conversations with her over the past few months (she knew this might be coming) something became very clear to me.  It would appear that “we the people” of California would rather take money out of the pockets of the most important and egregiously underpaid professionals in our society than pay a little more in taxes.

Teachers in California are being forced either off the payroll entirely or are being given so few classes to teach that they will need to find other work to supplement their already abysmal salaries. With unemployment in the Los Angeles area topping 10%, this is a sorry prospect for them indeed.

So rather than hit up the wealthiest Californians and most successful California businesses (like the oil companies) for a little extra dough they’d never miss, our representatives in Sacramento along with the Govenator are hacking furiously away at the public school system and other vital social services as if every well-off Californian has made it clear that they are unwilling to have their taxes increase by even the smallest amount.

I‘ve lived in California my entire life. I do well and don’t pay much state income tax (never have), yet I watch year-after-year as a supposedly liberal state congress led by a usually centrist governor fight and wrangle as they allow education and social services to suffer at the effect of budgetary deficiencies. Does anyone making more that a teacher’s salary in this state really think it’s fair for those worse-off than they are to carry the burden of our current economic downturn?  Obviously our lawmakers do, but they’re not representing me in this, that’s for certain.

This isn’t just about dollars and cents or teachers’ salaries, either. Along with cuts to education come  higher fees and fewer classes offered to students who can barely afford their current curriculum. It will cost them far more now and take a great deal more time to graduate. These people are the future wage-earners of the state. It doesn’t take an economist to tell you that the higher one’s level of education, the higher one’s earnings tend to be. It’s a no-brainer. People who earn more pay more in taxes and spend more in the economy. This is good for Caaleefoarneea, Arnold!

But for those who are in charge, raising taxes on the oil companies or the wealthiest businesses and  individuals in the state (and there are a great many of them) is entirely out of the question. Even though young teachers who have recently entered the teaching profession are losing their jobs. Even though Education graduates have no prospects whatsoever as they exit even the best universities with high honors. Even though everyone is in agreement that a well-educated populace has a positive effect on absolutely every aspect of the quality of life of a community.

Every state in the country is suffering along these lines. Many are much worse-off than California because they don’t have a ridiculously wealthy mother-lode of residents and companies to even consider tapping.   Schwarzenegger has the magic wand in his thick fingers that could readily alleviate all the financial woes the state currently faces.

The California Legislature needs to stop catering to the greedy, ivory tower residents that would put the likes of Meg Whitman in the governor’s mansion. They need to stop punishing the people at the bottom and in the middle with regressive tax schemes and unconscionable budget cuts by representing everyone in this state, not just their peers.

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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 by admin.

Cenk Uyger makes a great case for the latter here:

The Irrefutable Stupidity of Sarah Palin 

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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’ve long been a current-events junkie. This is an addiction that for many years was very easily and efficiently maintained by staying up on the news through a couple of reliable sources, such as  through the  online versions of The LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal as well as National Public Radio. My main areas of interest are world events, entertainment, business, and Washington politics, pretty much in that order.  I don’t watch cable news or local news, but, oddly enough, I know a great deal about what’s being reported on television, primarily because of online sites such as Media Matters, Think Progess, and The Huffington Post to name a few.

While this has given me a great deal more insight and understanding as to why so many people are ill-informed and/or misinformed, it has given me a rash as well.

In the old days I was blissfully unaware of the positions held by pseudo-journalistic personalities such as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, and Scarborough, and I was also largely oblivious of those I might tend more to agree with like Olbermann, Maddow, Cooper, or Brown.  For me, getting my news fix had nothing to do with the people presenting the news except in terms of a particular reporter’s expertise (such as NPR’s Cokie Roberts reporting on the Supreme Court).

There was a time when if someone told me something crazy like they “don’t trust the United States Census”  I would have fallen slack-jawed and silent with no ability to comprehend how anyone could have come up with the strange idea that the US Census could be something to be feared. In this case in particular, the person’s census statistics haven’t changed in any significant way since the last census 10 years ago, so their answers on the current census would be largely the same. Even so, the Census had somehow become something to be feared. Now that my awareness has been expanded to include television news, I no longer wonder how a person gets such a harebrained idea, because after being indoctrinated in the ways of disinformational media the answer is obvious. “You read Drudge or watch Fox News on a regular basis, don’t you?”

So while I appreciate that I no longer wonder about such things, I find myself in a constant state of perturbation over the unbelievable level of intentionally misleading “news” with which people of limited intelligence are bombarded every day. So do I thank the aggregators and online watchdogs for keeping me informed about what the dark side is up to (known thine enemy and all that) or blame them for my inability to resist watching Glenn Beck’s “education” rally or Ann Coulter’s latest hate-strewn interview? Seriously, those  two make me want to hurl my PC through the window, but I can’t stop myself from watching them, and just as I start to calm down, them what would keep me informed heat up another spoon of the stuff for me to mainline.

I know I’m not alone in this. I can tell from the comment sections of those same infuriating posts that this is wearing many of us down. The irony is that even as  I complain about people like Beck and Coulter getting far too much airtime, positing that if they weren’t given so much attention they wouldn’t be able to sway the sheep so easily, online news outlets are giving them more attention, and I, in turn, am giving them MY attention. And it doesn’t stop there. I occasionally am so outraged that I forward the link to my friends and colleagues, giving those same people who should be ignored even more attention!

I understand that we must remain vigilant against intolerance, fear, hate, and prejudice. I am thankful that I know what the real “evildoers” look like and that I know what they have to say, however, I have long been aware of the Ku Klux Klan and I don’t need to see interminable video of their cross-burning  events to maintain that awareness. I further understand that it’s my responsibility to filter what I allow in to my perception on a daily basis, but when The Huffington Post chooses to put headlines like: “Commandant Beck Not Joking Anymore”  on the front page, I find it easier to  look away from a bad car crash on the highway.

I know there’s a great deal of interest in this sort of thing just judging from the sheer number of comments such a post will garner, but it bothers me that news sources I’m addicted to which I expect to maintain their poise and position above the fray, sometimes fall victim to sensationalizing a story with its headlines, or worse, running a piece merely because of its outrageousness (such as anything Rush Limbaugh has to say).

I’m not in any way suggesting content be eliminated, but just as in the old days of newsprint journalism, certain stories deserve Page 1 status and others belong just before the Sports Section. For legitimate news, this continues to be a better rule of thumb than the TV news mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

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