After the Insurrection: Keeping Up With Conspiracies, GOP Extremism Before the January 6th Trump Insurrection, I wrote this informal guide to following the extremism developing due to conspiracy thinking and demagogic falsehoods from the GOP. Much of it still holds up, and I’ve added several more useful resources. We were…

Dylan’s JFK “Murder Most Foul”: Great Art, Wrong on Conspiracy. Dylan’s new song is a masterpiece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18&ab_channel=BobDylanVEVO. My friend Tom D’Antoni calls it the saddest song ever written. Biographer and critic Shawn Levy may have gotten its meaning right: @shawnlevy The Dylan is stunning. Homer declaring the end of times…

The motto coined years ago by the Art Ensemble of Chicago was “Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future.” If a comparable vision and range applies to anyone in the blues field, it’s doubtless Chris Thomas King, the restlessly inventive and eclectic bluesman who is coming this week, starting Thursday…

Oswalt, Kondabolu, Gethard headline cutting-edge festival — A comic’s dilemma: “What can you add satirically that tops what Trump just said?” With every day’s headlines bringing a fresh nightmare of what’s widely seen as Trumpian treason, lies and racism, it’s an especially welcome shelter from the storm that Hari Kondabolu is offering at this week’s three-day Kennedy…

Kasey Chambers, a top-selling singer-songwriter in her native Australia and perhaps Australia’s best-known country-based artist in her native land after Keith Urban, is finishing her US tour with sold-out club shows supporting her most ambitious, genre-crossing album yet, the double-CD Dragonfly. (You can buy it at Amazon and her website…

This hasn’t appeared online yet, only in his emails blasts. After it’s posted online in his newsletter or twitter, you should read it there. Check out his newsletter, and subscribe, here: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ It’s a mainstream show in a niche world, no wonder everybody is unhappy. It’s no longer 1985, MTV…

There’s no proof that chairs were thrown in Nevada, as expertly analyzed by NPR’s ombudsman, but the violent atmosphere during the Nevada delegate selection is turning progressive media outlets against the see-no-evil, hard-line stance emerging from the Bernie Sanders campaign. Take a look at this excerpt from The Hill round-up…

Excerpt: Hitler Biographer Ian Kershaw’s new book on Donald Trump Triumph of the Will: The Rise of Donald Trump Historians, journalists and critics, including Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine — “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny” — are asking if there are parallels to the rise of…

If you love Americana and gospel-rooted R&B music, you’ve doubtless heard Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and Aretha Franklin, among many others, but where can you search out other greats, especially in genres you might like — but don’t know well? Here are starting points on often lesser-known treasures. One source…