Three Dog Night!

 Three Dog Night was a virtual hit parade by itself back in the late 1960s and thru the mid 70's. 21 consecutive top 40 hits, millions of albums sold , millions of 45's, Jesus when you think about it you can't help but remember them all if you're of a certain age of course.

What remains of Three Dog Night came to the Holland Center last evening for a 90-minute set of hit after hit after hit. Led by 80-year-old Danny Hutton, the lone remaining original Dog , the band began with Family of Man and never let up. Helped along by fellow singer David Morgan and guitarist Paul Kingery, Hutton and his mates often sounded exactly like the old days and just as often did not. Since the death of Cory Wells in 2015 and the fact Chuck Negron refuses to participate, it is really difficult to copy the voices lost. We saw Chuck Negron on the Happy Together tour a few years back and his voice is very recognizable on the old hits. It was missed on many of the songs played.

This is not to say the band didn't kill it. They did. Since Three Dog Night was probably the most successful cover band of all time in the first place, this new version covered the old songs well and had the older crowd rockin in the aisles. Every song was an oh yeah moment. Black and White, Old Fashioned Love Song , Out in the Country, Mama Told Me, Liar, Eli's Coming and the show ender Joy to the World (which when we saw Negron sing it he introduced it with a I can't believe I'm still singing this fucking song 50 years later intro). Along the way there were stories from Hutton and Morgan about getting old, making records, making bad decisions on what singles to release and how much fun they were still having. It was a great time.

The band. Drummer Pat Bautz kept the beat going and sang lead on Mama Told Me Not To Come, arguably their strangest and perhaps best song. Lead guitarist Paul Kingery provided the third voice, often mimicking Negron's unique pipes. Bassist Tim Hutton, son of Danny, didn't do much but play and  keep the rhythm alive. But keyboard player Howard Laravea was the glue that kept this band as great as they were. He was working his ass off moving between the piano chords of some songs and the organ backing of others and at the end of the concert had the chance to shine on his own. 

The new song they played right before Joy to the World. You know the "let's go get more beer songs" other bands play. The "this is from our new album" songs. You know. Nobody wants to listen to them. But this one, "Prayers for the Children" was a song about the effects of war on innocents. Sung by the Huttons, Kingery and Morgan acapella, the song was beautiful and compelling. With only a slight organ note or two, the crowd was silent as it was sung and erupted at the end. And then came Joy to the World and the place went nuts. 

They still have it. They're older and slower but then so is the crowd. It was a great time.

Karma Is Here!

 He's fucked. He should have been fucked decades ago but all in all Donald Trump has been avoiding the hangman since the 1970s. 

Read that indictment. The guy is guilty of treason, and this is not me screeching that he's a traitor and suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Its right there and if you refuse to take it seriously you are either in a cult or you're simple not a serious person.

Jack Smith is a prosecutor of some of the worst people on earth. And with this indictment he continues that history of ridding the world of wastes of air. Bravo sir.

The Republican sycophants are currently right there sticking up for this guy who sucks the air out of the world and destroys anything he puts his tiny little fingers on. And he will destroy the suck ups eventually as he throws them into the way to save his own ass. The fear of the thuggish cult members of MAGA and what violence they are capable of drives these people. The fear of being voted out by a diminishingly loud bunch of shrieking baboons in red hats also drives them. Please dont primary me. Please dont show up at my office in masks and threaten my staff. This is what drives them now.

But eventually this is gonna fade. Politicians are spineless, gutless and willing to throw their own children into the path of political defeat if they have to. There is no honor among these thieves. But sooner rather than later the burden of defending a scumbag like Trump is going to be too great.

The Nikki Haleys, the Vivek Whatevers, the Pences, the Stefaniks, the Maces, the ones who aren't truly crazy, will dump Trump like a hot potato. Only the truly insane ones, the Greenes , the Boeberts, the Hawleys, the Tubervilles, the Blackburns will stick with him right into federal prison. The Cruz's of the world, guys truly spinless who show a great fealty to this orange orangutan will simply stop taking about him. And the lazy friendly press will not call them out.

Yeah Ron DeSantis , a far more dangerous person than Trump, is going to become the darling of the nutjobs. His fascist views are right up their alley. He's their true cult leader, they just dont know it yet because DeSantis has the personality of every bully people hated in high school not to mention the snotty teenager cheerleader girlfriend looking down her nose at them. Let's just hope the MAGA dopes stick with a cult of personality like Trump and don't move over to DeSantis. Since DeSantis has no personality, it would be a tough move over for most of MAGA.

I have no doubt that Donald Fucking Trump is finished after 76 years of cheating, lying, being disloyal and trying to be another Roy Cohn. 76 years of karma is here, motherfucker, and its name is Jack Fucking Smith.

Hairspray!

Back in 1988 John Waters, the self-proclaimed King of Schlock, made a movie about growing up in 1962 Baltimore called Hairspray and all anybody could talk about was the casting of Divine as the mother of a young chubby teenaged girl because Divine was a drag queen and shit. In 2002 the movie was made into a Broadway musical and won a bunch of Tonys.

Well the musical is in Omaha this week and yes, there's a drag queen (Nina West) playing the mother again and that's all I'm gonna say about that because it's irrelevant. 

Hairspray is a story about a young girl named Tracy Turnblad (Niki Metcalf), a teen who is overweight and has big hair and wants to audition for the local dance show, the Corny Collins Show. She is rejected because of her size and because the producer, an evil blonde woman, Velma Van Tussle (Addison Garner), is saving any accolades for her equally evil blonde daughter, Amber (Ryahn Evers); But Tracy keeps trying, meets the black kids in detention, becomes determined to integrate the show by making "Negro Day" every day, gets arrested, and eventually succeeds in integrating the show and getting the dreamy boy. Thats the story. But the music is the highlight and the singers are all more than capable of pulling it off.

From the beginning notes of Tracy in bed singing Good Morning Baltimore to Tracy and the cast ending the show with a crowd pleasing You Cant Stop the Beat this one will have you tapping your toes and clapping along and admiring the big voices.

There really isn't a dud song on this show. The sets are colorful, the clothes are timely, the humor is dead on and the talent is ready to take it on.

The relationship between Edna Turnblad and her adoring spouse, Wilbur (Ralph Prentice Daniel) is one of the perhaps overlooked things going on up on the Orpheum stage. The show stopping song and dance number after intermission featuring Edna and Wilbur, "You're Timeless to Me" was performed in front of a curtain as to not distract from its humor, love and absolute brilliance. It alone deserved a standing ovation for Andrew Levitt and Daniel.

But wait there's more. Motormouth Maybelle (Asabi Goodman), the local black record store owner, whose place serves as a hangout for the kids, has something to say when the idealistic youngsters plot to integrate the TV dance show. As an older black woman she's been there done that. kids. and it's harder than it looks. At that point Motormouth Maybelle belts out "I Know Where I've Been" and I wanted to throw my hands in the air and holler Amen! Goodman sings that song in a way that would have made Aretha proud. 

Then comes the closing number. The kids succeed, the villains are vanquished, and its Negro Day every day. "You Cant Stop The Beat" brings the show to a rousing close that the packed house was digging like a Maryland crab. The standing ovations were well deserved for everybody in the cast. I loved every second of it.

Now the bad. The sound system at the Orpheum sucks and I dont know why. The songs are easily heard but the words are often indecipherable, and it often gets to the point where it's just yeah love the beat but I have no clue what they are singing. Opening night bugs? Perhaps. Hope it gets dealt with. 

Finally, this state has just gone thru what other states also have gone thru. Homophobia, trans gender care bans, abortion bans, resegregation of schools, guns everywhere and we have a governor who thinks he's the state's Pastor and not the Governor. Though Hairspray has a drag queen star that has nothing to do with sexuality, some in this state would have voted to ban this type of play had time not run out. There were young kids in the audience and a drag queen performance ban would have kept them out or worse there would have been arrests. The kids I saw loved it. It would be a shame to proceed on this stupid course of drag queen bans.

1962 Baltimore, 2023 America. We are regressing and THAT is not funny in the least.

RFK!

55 years ago today it can be argued this country lost its optimism and became just another nation holding on for dear life.

Robert F Kennedy was murdered by a Palestinian-American kook (spare me your whackadoodle conspiracy bullshit) in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968 and the darkness of America took over again after a 9 year hiatus.

Nixon, Bush, Reagan, Bush 2, and finally Trump were the result. Carter tried but truth telling is something Americans reject. Clinton was the best Republican president of the last century and Obama, well, he overturned the rock that "real America" was living under and came slithering back out to gum up the system. I mean white people can only be pushed so far until their sense of losing the privilege kicks in and it becomes just another Klan rally under the guise of making America great again.

Bobby Kennedy may have been just as stifled as the rest of the ones who at least tried to bring us together but we shall never know. Now the wayward son, the one unfortunately with the Junior behind him, has come forward to not only plead to free his fathers murderer, but to spread anti vax bullshit and appeal to the same nutters who Trump appealed to. It's a strange legacy, a strange 180 to those of us who may have been young kids in 1968 but knew what a politician who gave us hope was like. The son, a complete opposite of his father, spreading despair and openly rooting for death from disease  and supporting Russian scumbags. It makes me angry.

I miss June 4th of 1968. Because as he won the California primary and the nomination that night it gave us hope that illegal and immoral American wars would stop, that darkness would become light, that a young 43 year old man would become the leader of the free word and that evil like Nixon and dumbness like Reagan would end. 

Instead in the wee hours of June 5, 1968, just after the victory speech, as hope was led thru the kitchen to a waiting car, a psychopathic killer changed the world for the worse. Sirhan murdered hope. And despair took the stage. And it hasn't given it up yet. 

Because "real America" won't let it.