Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Monday. How are you? It's Tax Day, people. I wish complaining about taxes was tax-deductible. Just a reminder that you still have plenty of time to do your taxes at the last minute.
Just in case your nerd brain was overwhelmed by having to be refreshed on "Game of Thrones" before last night's premiere, Disney and Lucasfilm to remind us about the upcoming release of a little movie in a franchise called Star Wars. Oh, and we learned what that little movie is going to be called. As Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, Star Wars surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. Star Wars is with us, always... until this December, when Episode IX completes the sequel trilogy. Rey's backflip! Kylo's helmet repair! PALPATINE'S LAUGH??? The teaser for the final installment in the Skywalker saga is such as big deal that it seriously broke Twitter for a full minute. For a few fleeting seconds, the portal to hell temporarily closed and Twitter crashed. Once Twitter was back up and running, all of the trending topics were related to the galaxy far, far away...
In a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar discussed the Islamophobia Muslims received after 9/11, as many hateful racists associated every Muslim with the attack. On Thursday, The New York Post decided to prove her point with a horrific cover associating her with the attack. Here's Omar's full quote, "[The Council on American-Islamic Relations] was founded after 9/11 because they recognised that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." And here's what The Post ran with...
Right-wing media, and its members of Congress, decided to pluck out Omar's "some people who did something" clause and pretend it was an attempt to downplay the biggest terrorist attack on American soil in history, rather than its intended use of explaining that innocent Muslims are innocent. Without quoting The Post or fellow congressperson Dan Crenshaw, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (ever heard of her?) pointed out the hypocrisy behind the anti-Omar crusade. According to a firefighter who survived 9/11, Crenshaw is "too busy" tweeting about Omar to discuss victim benefits. Crenshaw has yet to support renewing the Victim Compensation Fund, a fund which compensates victims, but I'm sure 9/11 survivors appreciate all he is doing to whip up hate. Just last week, the FBI arrested a man for allegedly threatening to murder Omar, and since then, the rhetoric has only gotten worse. Omar responded to the attacks, calling the dangerous incitement "dangerous incitement." She also pointed out that President George W. Bush used the same language as her, referring to Al Qaeda as "people," What kind of person would look at a terrorist attack and think, "very fine people on both sides"? Not Rep. Omar.
On Thursday Chrissy Teigen and John Legend attended the Democrats' Issues Conference in Leesburg, Virginia, where they discussed their opinions on some of the post pressing current issues. When Teigen was asked about her thoughts on the Trump administration's policy that separates immigrant children from their parents, she did not hold back from noting the cruelty of the policy, and calling out Ivanka Trump's hypocrisy. "It’s a painful thing to see that, and it’s a painful thing to see such a complete lack of empathy when it comes from people, like Ivanka, I will say, that can post all day, pictures of her children that are just in her home and ‘oh my daughter is having trouble in her crib’ or ‘my daughter is doing this’ and ‘my daughter is doing this." Teigen decried how Ivanka could support such an inhumane policy and then turn around to post joyful pictures of her own children on social media. She then went on to critique Trump for the othering rhetoric that fuels the flames of this xenophobic policy. "There are children out there that don’t have that opportunity. Honestly, I cannot fathom for a second how scared our children would be if they were without us." “These aren’t demons, these aren’t people that are monsters. Donald Trump treats everything like it’s an episode [of the movie] The Village, where there is this wall and these monsters to keep outside." On Wednesday, Trump revealed he might send more military to the Mexico border. "I'm going to have to call up more military," he told reporters during a trip to Texas.
Sometimes even if you have the best interests in mind, your ideas can really backfire. The most recent company face-palm is the "consent condom." Without even seeing it, you can probably determine that it's a nightmare of a product. Do sexual assaulters and rapists love condoms? That's information that is news to me. The condom, created by ad agency BBDO Argentina for Tulipán, requires four hands to open which is a fun way to make the process of having safe sex even more frustrating. Nothing ruins a mood like trying to release a condom from an escape room. Also, how easy is to quite literally force someone's hand? This reminds me of the law they had in Italy in where it was deemed impossible for a woman to be raped if she was wearing tight jeans, because they can't come off "without her help." Someone could attempt to argue that it's impossible to rape someone with a consent condom, because the victim used his or her hands to help open the box. This of course, would be a major backfire. Naturally, it didn't take long before people questioned this entire idea. How about instead of venus fly trap condoms we just ask our partners for enthusiastic consent? Cool!
Bigotry is often fueled by gross misinformation and a predilection for cherry picking facts. In many cases the hypocrisy is so deep, and the cognitive dissonance is so strong, engaging in a genuine conversation about racism, xenophobia, or any form of oppression with a bigot requires serious legwork. Because engaging racist people on how to be a decent person can be exhausting, and sadly, many times ends up fruitless and draining, sometimes shutting them down with a perfectly worded clap-back is the best route to go. So, when the retired professor of Healthcare Management and emphatic Trump lover Daniel Baranowski tweeted a loaded hypothetical about asylum seekers, he was immediately confronted with his selective view of history. His tweet was comparing immigrants, and particularly non-English speaking asylum seekers, to thieves. There is plenty to unpack in this small tweet, but most of it was succinctly summed up in this response calling out American settler-colonialism and genocide.
She was far from the only one to call Baranowski out, the thread quickly filled with people laying out the inconsistencies in his argument and the ways xenophobia slows progress. People used a wide range of examples that disprove Baranowski's vision of immigrants as lazy thieves, coming here to take our resources. The thread truly came to a head when people dug up the ultimate disconnect in Baranowski's argument: the fact that his own grandfather emigrated from Poland without speaking English. While it's always refreshing to see people pull up receipts on someone's racism, palpable proof that the bigotry is founded purely on fear and hypocrisy, it seems that Baranowski is pretty far down the rabbithole despite the facts.
I was thinking, instead of doing this blog thing maybe I should be laying in bed listening to this album...
Maybe not. If I had a TARDIS I would go to Detroit during the Prohibition, but knowing my luck I'll see this...
No, this isn’t a waterfall, but a beer-fall. During Prohibition, gallons of beer poured out of the windows of a covert boolegging operation down in Detroit. You’d think that people would be outside with buckets of every size to capture the sweet, illegal, nectar, but it looks like it’s just going to waste. What a shame. I don't drink beer anymore so I wouldn't try to get some. If you're thinking of cheating on your loved one you might want to think twice after seeing this...
Bros looking out for each other. I was thinking of getting a new tattoo but someone had the same idea as me...
A few weeks ago Trump whipped out maps showing that ISIS has been defeated. That was not the only thing he whipped and and showed off...
That's weird. Okay, Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones III is back at the border in the war zone...
He looks comfortable. Ever see those panhandlers in your area? Some are more creative than others...
Do you kids like Hot Pockets? There is a brand new kind that just came out...
I don't get it. Wanna laugh?
A minister, a priest and a rabbi went for a hike one day. It was very hot. They were sweating and exhausted when they came upon a small lake. Since it was fairly secluded, they took off all their clothes and jumped in the water. Feeling refreshed, the trio decided to pick a few berries while enjoying their "freedom." As they were crossing an open area, who should come along but a group of ladies from town. Unable to get to their clothes in time, the minister and the priest covered their privates and the rabbi covered his face while they ran for cover. After the ladies had left and the men got their clothes back on, the minister and the priest asked the rabbi why he covered his face rather than his privates. The rabbi replied, "I don't know about you, but in MY congregation, it's my face they would recognize."
If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. So, recently I introduced you to a new character named Pork Chop Eddie who liked to get into fights. Well, the pic I used was of a real life wrestler named Brooklyn Brawler. So, that isn't Pork Chop Eddie, he's an imposter. So, please welcome to the Phile... the "real" Pork Chop Eddie!
Pork Chop Eddie: Hey, how dare that wrestler wanna be take my name! Brooklyn Brawler my ass!
Me: Hello, Pork Chop, I should have done my research. How are you anyway?
Pork Chop Eddie: Great, I got into a fight yesterday.
Me: Really? What happened?
Pork Chop Eddie: I turned around to see some guys, all wearing matching scarves, shoving a friend. Felt like someone needed to point out the scarves, so, thinking quickly, I yelled, “Why doncha go back to scarf town!”
Me: Ummm... then did you fight them?
Pork Chop: Of course I did.
Me: Guess the scarf store called. Pork Chop Eddie, kids.
Even though Bert initially was way too tired for sex, Ernie managed to make him horny as fuck with a classic earlobe massage.
I wonder if the population would be larger of smaller if alcohol were to never have existed. Thinking about mortality and conception numbers here.
Yes, nerds, I know that this is a pic from The Dark Knight and not The Dark Knight Rises but it's too good not to use. The president's tweet, indistinguishable from a Reddit bro's, said "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" followed by the sizzle reel. According to BuzzFeed, the video itself was, of course, lifted from Reddit. The now-unavailable video said, "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they call you a racist. Donald J. Trump. Your vote. Proved them all wrong. Trump: The Great Victory. 2020." It also featured images of the president's enemies: President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Amy Schumer (?) and Rosie O'Donnell (???), a truly inspiring campaign video for our tumultuous times. If you're aching for Trump-Dark Knight Rises content, the bane of our existence lives on in this mashup of his inaugural address. The Dark Knight rises is the hero we deserve, and the one we need right now.
The 96th book to be phetured in the Phile's Book Club is...
Brian will be the guest on the Phile tomorrow. Now for some taxes...
Phact 1. Just to show that they are one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, ExxonMobil adds the taxes you pay at the gas pump and its employee payroll taxes to the amount they actually pay in taxes to the government.
Phact 2. In 1987, about 7 million American children vanished. The only cause was that IRS started requiring taxpayers to list the Social Security Numbers of their children on tax forms
Phact 3. The U.S. is the world’s only industrialized nation that taxes citizens who live overseas, even if their income is generated in a foreign country and they never intend to return to America.
Phact 4. In 1935 when Roosevelt raised the top tax rate to 79% for those making over $5 million, it only applied to one person in the United States, John D. Rockefeller.
Phact 5. In 1864, a cult leader once deeded 600 acres of land to “God,” but the State of Pennsylvania took possession and sold it because the Almighty didn’t pay His taxes.
Today's guest is an English musician, best known as the guitarist and founding member of the Pretty Things. Their music could be heard on Spotify, Amazon and iTunes. Please welcome to the Phile... Dick Taylor.
Me: Hello, sir, welcome to the Phile. How are you?
Dick: Thank you. I'm in an appending doom.
Me: That's not good. So, the Pretty Things stopped doing electric shows? Does that mean you're going to be doing acoustic shows in the future?
Dick: Yes. Phil and myself will be doing some. That about sums it up at the moment.
Me: So, why the change?
Dick: We've been enjoying the electric stuff so much and it's really a question of Phil's health, that's what it boils down to. It's nothing else but he finds intensive touring very difficult.
Me: So, do you see you doing a one of electric show here and there?
Dick: Our manager will go mad when I say this but of course I see us doing one off electric shows. I certainly hope so and I certainly will be doing as much as I can in whatever capacity I find myself in. Let us see what the world brings us is more like it.
Me: For the acoustic shows is it just you and Phil or do you have a band also?
Dick: Well, we're thinking of a couple of options. We did some shows with myself, Phil and some guy called Sam Brothers, not Sam's brother as people think. Hehe. We've done a couple of gigs with him which worked out pretty well. We did used to do shows with myself, Phil and Frank. I don't think Frank has too much of an appetite of doing to many of them these days. There's a couple of other options we might do, we'll see. Everything is really in the melting pot but it is definitely our intention to stop touring and such.
Me: Are you gonna do some shows in the U.S.?
Dick: There would be if someone asked us to do it. I know there's been a couple of inquiries. It's just putting enough things together to make any sense. Mich like Japan, we did some gigs in Japan but it's so difficult to do anything significant. Basically the economics of going to Japan is quite difficult and to a certain extent America as well. If there were a few shows projected I'm sure we could do it.
Me: Cool. Okay, so, how did you start to play guitar back when you started?
Dick: I came from a family where everybody played a musical instrument. My grandfather was very good on mandolin and guitar and banjo and piano. He had a kit of drums which was the only thing I inherited from him unfortunately. I was always like I wish I could do this and thought I had very little musical talent. Rock and roll came along and skiffle and actually at that time when I was quite young got an interest in jazz but skiffle and rock and roll gave me the realisation that I could put really good music together without being super trained. A friend of mine brought a plastic ukulele and I learned a few chords on that. I messed about with my grandfathers mandolin and finished up getting a guitar for my birthday. My sister was interested in folk music and blues and I heard Big Bill Broonzy's acoustic records and was hooked then trying to play blues guitar. That continued. That's about it really. When me and my friends listened to rock and roll we learned easily it was based on a lot of black music that was sort of urban blues and rhythm and blues and we started listening to those records. Then from then on that's how things developed.
Me: You were friends with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards back then, am I right?
Dick: Initially Mick. I was at school with Mick from the age of eleven until I was sixteen. We were always in the same class. We realised we had the same taste in music and we and another friend would get together and start playing music. Then went on even after I left the grammar school where I was Mick continued at that school. Then I went to art school and in art school I met up with Keith. I think Keith was year behind me I'm not sure, but anyway I got to know Keith.
Me: What was it like hanging and playing music with Keith?
Dick: There were a lot of people in the art school playing folky music and Keith was trying to play Scotty Moore style. We'd play in the cloak room and he had a sort of battered art stock guitar and everybody else had folky round hole fat guitars. I've been given a nice guitar which unfortunately went missing years ago which was almost like a parkour guitar and that was. So Keith and I would sit there and play music, bluesy stuff together.
Me: So, how did you three start to play together?
Dick: Eventually Keith bumped into Mick and he'd known him when he was a really small kid and of course one of them was carrying the Chuck Berry record or whatever. We thought let's get him to rehearsals which happened mostly in the back room of my parents' house.
Me: Okay, so, I feel weird asking this and I'll explain why... my mother went to school with Mick and probably you... but she dated Brian Jones later on. When and where did you meet Brian?
Dick: We heard a club was opening in a place called Ealing, in East London where Alexis Korner was playing rhythm and blues. So we went along and had a listen. We were suitably impressed and that's where we met Brian Jones. Brian would play with Alexis and we were particularly impressed with Brian's slide playing. He asked Mick to sing in his band, Mick took Keith along, half of Brian's band walked out and he asked me if I'd like to play bass so I did. Then the balance of the band which I think at that point was called Brian Jones Band or something.
Me: You were an original member of the Rolling Stones. Were you there when they came up with the name?
Dick: I remember being up in the pub in Soho where we rehearsed and we were just thinking of a name and we just played "Rollin' Stones Blues," hence that's where the name came from.
Me: Was it hard to learn the bass?
Dick: No, it kind of worked out where the bass it's like a guitar with two strings cut off it in a way. Of course a lot of bass players will throw their arms up at that and say no, it's a total art of itself. I actually like playing bass now.
Me: So, about six years after this you left the band to go back to art school? That's crazy.
Dick: Well, I never left art school. What I did was Keith, Phil May and I were in a school called the Sidcup Art College and we were being trained to be commercial artists and doing lettering and all this stuff that you now can sit at a computer and do. Of course there was no Photoshop and someone invented a thing called electrojet where we'd stamp little letters on the mock up of our ads in various type faces. I was trying to go into the Royal College of Art which is one of the top art colleges in London. Basically if you go there you are guaranteed if you don't complexity screw up you'd do okay. As a matter of fact I never did go there, I went to the Central School of Art and when I was studying trying to get to go to the Royal College of Art I had to make up my mind how much I want to concentrate on music, how much I'm going to concentrate on getting into the Royal College. And I thought also do I really want to play bass. It wasn't such a big thing leaving a band because everything was much more fluid. If you think how many drummers the Rolling Stones had four in their first year in existence, there was quite a few, wasn't there? The idea of fame and fortune was not the top of our list which what we thought was going to happen. We played music like anybody because we enjoyed it. I think that's still what we do, certainly I do. I think Keith and Mick could certainly stop right now and I think they continue because that's what they do.
Me: So, when did you and Phil start playing together?
Dick: I decided to stop playing with the Stones and I was at school with Phil May and before I went off to Central Phil said we ought to start a band so we did in what must of been the summer of '63 that we started to rehearse. I went to Centrals school and met who would be the Pretty Things first manager. We hired the Rolling Stones to play at a dance at the Sidcup school and they got paid twenty-five quid and I thought my god, we could be doing this. The Pretty Things started and the Rolling Stones obviously were taking off and we started doing the rounds of the art schools all around London and we were spotted by someone who said we could get a recording contract.
Me: The Pretty Things music is, I don't know the word, pretty raw maybe. A lot different than the Stones was back then. Was that in purpose?
Dick: I think we didn't want to be a smooth imitation of American R&B. I think there was a desire to be quite raw and get people dancing and what have you. It was kind of like a combination of what we knew we could and to draw a line between ourselves and particularly the Stones. We didn't want to be thought of as a pale imitation of the Stones and what have you.
Me: So, legend has it that when you played New Zealand parliament there considered banning all rock groups from going there. What he hell did you do?
Dick: We didn't do much. Most of the stuff there was to do with Vic Prince, our drummer who is still alive and still not the most sober of people. Viv at that time was a really wild character. The thing that really sparked the most controversy was we already had advanced publicity which kind of spoke of us as being wild and wholly and then Viv was doing stuff like sitting out in the street holding court and saying he was king of the world which was very odd. Viv did drink an enormous amount and we were at a gig and there was a reporter there and Viv was drinking from a large bottle of water. The reporter asked what was Viv drinking and he said meth, like methylated spirits obviously. The next day in the paper it said, "The Pretty Things drink methylates before they go on stage." There was a lot of horsing about not just with us but with all the bands on the tour, particularly the Australian band that was backing Sandie Shaw and Eden Kane who were on tour with us. It was an odd line up to say the least. In the end we got banned from going back to New Zealand again which was pretty funny because about five years ago we did EXACTLY that. We weren't thrown out on our ears, they did let us in, we played again in Aukland.
Me: You guys moved from a rhythm and blues style to more psychedelic music. Was that a natural change or planned out?
Dick: It was a natural progression. As a matter of fact in our case what actually happened is our recording contract finished with Fontana Records and we weren't totally happy there by the end. We were produced by a guy named Steve Rowland who desperately wanted us to make a commercial pop record. We kind of resisted that to an extent. All the while during our live shows there was a lot of improvisation, a lot of musical lunacy on stage. Viv would get off the drums and drum on this that or the other. We just did numbers for a long time that went off in quite odd places at times. When our contract finished with Fontana we went into the studio and did exactly what we wanted. At that time our line up had changed as well. We made these demos that were very psychedelic and that actually reflected far more what we were doing at the time on stage than the stuff we've been recording with Fontana. We were then looking around for a record contract and it turned out in the end we went with EMI, and Norman Smith who worked on the Beatles albums and Pink Floyd became our producer. He really liked what he heard and we did one song which was "Defecting Grey." That's how the change happened. It wasn't us acting to any outside pressure.
Me: In 1968, the year I was born, you guys went to Abbey Road Studios the record "S.F. Sorrow." At the same time the Beatles were recording there. What was that like?
Dick: Most of the conversations we had with them was around the tea machine and things like that. It was great, we would obviously bump into the Beatles and we knew Pink Floyd who were also there pretty well anyway. It was natural in those days to go to a club and see Hendrix and in London giving Hendrix a lift and it didn't seem out of the ordinary to see these people that would be rock luminaries around on the London scene. It was great working at Abbey Road, not because it was a wonderful studio. And EMI which seemed to be this old fashioned stuffy company in lots of ways gave us so much artistic freedom. Also with the Beatles they realised their bread was definitely buttered with allowing people freedom to do what they wanted. We had budget constraints definitely which we broke continuously but having said that we did manage to produce an album I'm still proud of.
Me: Did the album take a long time to make?
Dick: It took a long while and Norman got us in the studio whenever he could get us.
Me: You left the Pretty Things right around that time. What did you do then?
Dick: First of all I was doing record producing. I think the first people I worked with was Hawkwind on their first album. Eventually I started working with a jeans company believe it or not. I did that for ages and I wasn't playing very much.
Me: So, what made you get back with the Pretty Things?
Dick: I started living in Wimbledon and got friendly with people who were musicians and got persuaded to start playing again. The Pretty Things had their stint with Swan Song with everything and Peter Grant and kind of came to a bit of a hiatus. This guy contacted me from Holland and said would I reform the Pretty Things and can I contact the other guys from the Pretty Things and it'll be in Holland. I contacted Phil who said why don't we and it finished up with myself and Pete Tolson who had been the guitarist for a lot of the time in the Swan Song years and Skip playing drums and I think Wally playing bass. We did this gig and basically I did every gig since then.
Me: A lot of your albums are on iTunes but the album "Cross Talk." What's the deal with that album?
Dick: "Cross Talk" maybe would have done better had it not been released exactly on the same time Warner Bros. got in a lot of trouble bribing record shops to get things high up the charts and generally being very, very naughty with their marketing techniques. Also when the album was released we read a review of it and it said "The Pretty Things must of loved the first side of this album because when I turned it over it was the same on the other side." They pressed a whole big batch of albums which were the same on both sides. As apology, unbelievably they sent Phil a very large cheese. It is actually a very good album it just didn't sell millions that it deserved to.
Me: Are you guys working on a new album?
Dick: Yeah, we got quite a bit of it done in a short space of time. We had a hiatus for a various reasons but will be completing it quite soon I hope.
Me: Is it going to be an acoustic album?
Dick: No, definitely not. This is not going to be an acoustic album. We may do one, we may well do an acoustic album. We've talked about it. It might actually be a blues orientated album. The new album hopefully will be a continuation with the last album we did.
Me: Dick, sir, thanks so much for being on the Phile. I' sure you knew my parents and knew my mum when she dated Brian.
Dick: Thank you. I'm hope I didn't waffle on too much. Thank you, Jason.
That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Dick Taylor for a great interview. The Phile will be back tomorrow with Brian Nash, who used to be in Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
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