Friday Music

Here we go….

I’ve been watching Euro 2008 since last weekend — and it runs through June, giving me the proverbial “Feast of Football.” For all my fellow fanatics, here’s the music from that fabulous Guy-Ritchie-directed Nike soccer ad (I’ve posted the video before): Eagles of Death Metal – “Don’t Speak (Came to Make a BANG).”

I’ve talked about this before — I love U2, but really only during their post-punk/new-wave period. I’m not as much a fan of the giant-stadium gods-of-music stuff, although a lot of it is still great. But here’s a track from their first album, Boy (1980), which is a good example of the sound I prefer: U2 – “The Electric Co.”

Some mid-90s industrial rock that I was a big fan of at the time, but seemed to forget about as soon as the decade ended: Stabbing Westward – “Shame.”

Jackson Browne’s output in the 80s was certainly cheesier than his classic 70s material, but it was my introduction to him, and so I still have a soft spot for radio singles like this one from 1983: Jackson Browne – “For a Rocker.”

Words cannot describe how the sounds on this record make me feel. Easily the best doo-wop track ever recorded, in the history of ever. The Flamingos – “I Only Have Eyes For You.” Shoo-bop-sh-bop…

I posted this years ago, but it’s worth posting again. Some of you probably remember this from the soundtrack of Goodfellas — during the “cocaine paranoia” sequence. One of my favorite songs from the early 70s, and one that you almost never hear in any retrospective radio shows. Harry Nilsson – “Jump Into The Fire.”

There ya go. Enjoy!

The Beginning of the End…..

The Supreme Court has just ruled that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to pursue habeus challenges to their detention….in Civillian Courts.

They ruled that Congress had not validly suspended habeus corpus, because the Constitution only allows for that in instances of rebellion or invasion.

The 5-4 decision (this time with the fascist assholes like Alito and Scalia in the minority, for a change) stated that:

“To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on and off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.” Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers.”

Slowly, we start to crawl back from the edge of the abyss.

Expect a lot of 5-4 decisions in the next months, with Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas on the losing end. It will be a process by which the country will scour itself clean of the stain upon it created by this criminal administration.