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(From the Secret World Live disc.) In the '80s and '90s I did a fair amount of music writing as a freelancer, and in that time I saw probably over a hundred concerts, including a lot of great grunge shows in the '90s. Still, seeing Peter Gabriel on the '93 Secret World Tour -- he played locally at the Tacoma Dome, but the show looked identical to the one captured here, in Italy -- remains probably my favorite. Gabriel's songs mean a lot to me personally ("In Your Eyes" was "our song" when my wife and I were dating), but the show was just riveting, and the talent (Youssou N'dor, Paula Cole, Tony Levin) was awesome. I also have a cool big-disc 45 of this song, which included an extended version that included the line poem at the end ("Accepting all I've done and said ..."), which does not appear on the album version, but is included here. Of course, on this song, even in the live performance, you can't help being reminded of Lloyd Dobler standing outside Diane Court's window with his music blaster.

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(Logo - Unsigned for absolutely no good reason - well, there is that language problem)

Back over to MySpace discoveries tonight. Logo is a band from Italy who've been kicking around for a while and are still without a label. In this day and age that's not entirely a bad thing, since iTunes and some entrepreneurial spirit are spotted working wonders with bands lately.

They've been gigging around Italy quite a bit and did a brief appearance in Memphis in connection with a Jack Daniels promotion a couple years ago. They were seen just recently playing the famous San Remo Festival - so things are looking up.

This track, which is no longer on their MySpace page is one of the first songs they posted when they signed on to MySpace in 2006. Mio Paroles is a great track with good production. Okay, it's in Italian - but that shouldn't stop you. Check them out and visit their site if you can - they can use the support and you'll be discovering a great band in the process.

Good music knows no language boundaries. Honest.

That heavyweight intellectual, Jonah Goldberg, loves to tell his audiences that no one on the left took his masterpiece, Liberal Fascism, seriously -- they just made fun of it!

So this is how Goldberg responds to an actually serious critique.

Evidently, Goldberg thinks that ignoring a sound argument lets you declare victory over it.

Now, just to be clear: Goldberg has never responded to the core of my critique. He's tossed off side issues, but what I have said about Liberal Fascism from the get-go is that its central thesis -- that "properly understood, fascism is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left" -- simply does not have any grounding in, and is indeed refuted by, the actual historical facts about the "political space" which fascism historically occupied.

I laid it all out again not too long ago:

This is, in fact, the argument that Goldberg attempts to make in his book as well: That the fascists occupied the "political space" on the Left, and thus were simply out to compete against their fellow leftists. But this is where Goldberg most deeply portrays a lack of respect for the historical material available to him, because any careful study of the actual details of how the fascists came to power in both Italy and Germany makes abundantly clear that they were occupying the available political space on the right -- and had charged hard in that direction from early on in their drive to power.

I discussed this in some detail, citing particularly Robert O. Paxton's work in The Anatomy of Fascism. Paxton, for instance, debunks the fascists' ostensible "anticapitalism":

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(Le Orme` - roughly translated "The Footprints"- makes perfect sense)

The main reason most bands from the Prog-Rock era didn't become household names was the language barrier. There were a lot of bands doing really incredible things from Italy, France, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Japan - literally all over the world. The trouble was, most all of them sang in their own languages and that was a tough sell to the majority of English speaking record companies and impossible to get airplay on just about every American radio station (unless you were either a college station or a public station with a very progressive Music Director). So hearing about what new bands were happening in Italy was pretty much either by word of mouth, or by one of the two import companies supplying very limited quantities of albums from overseas to the U.S. market - Jem Records or Peters International. Outside of that, you were on your own.

Probably of all the countries most heavily involved in the Prog scene, the Italians were far and away the busiest. From the late 1960's to the mid-1970's there seemed like an avalanche of new and interesting bands popping up.

One of those, and certainly one of the main groups to gain worldwide recognition was Le Orme` (pronounced Lay Ormay). Literally translated as "The Footprints". They were a three piece band; keyboards, bass and drums and, together with bands like PFM and Banco did more to further the cause of Progressive Rock to the rest of the world than anyone outside the UK.

Le Orme have had a long career, one that's still going strong, although personnel and direction changes over the years have altered their sound, they are still extremely popular throughout Europe.

They did have one foray into the English language market. During a brief stint with Charisma (through the recommendations of Genesis and Peter Hamill of Van der Graaf who often toured with them in Italy), they re-recorded vocals for an English version of their 1973 album "Felona e Sorona". It wasn't terribly successful and didn't stay in print for very long,and was certainly never issued in the States. But the original Italian version was a great success and has been reissued numerous times and has been considered some of their best work.

So . . .with best feet forward, if you aren't familiar with them - here is the first track off the original Italian version of Felona, "Sospesi nell'Incredibile".

In the words of Adlai Stevenson: "don't wait for the translation - yes or no."

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August 26, 2009 BBC America

My husband and I are big travel junkies and I love watching Rick Steves' various travelogues on PBS. But we had no idea of Steves' influence until a few years ago. While in Sorrento, Italy, we were looking for a place to feed our fussy toddler. It wasn't the dinner hour and most places were setting up for dinner. But at this one restaurant, the maitre d' outside offered to make our kid a little plate of food to satisfy her. So we went in and sat down to a pretty authentic meal. But we noticed that as we were eating, the whole restaurant filled up--quickly. There had to be 50 tables turned in the 90 minutes we were in the restaurant. And each one of those tables had one thing in common: someone had a copy of Rick Steves' book in their hand. All of them.

But it looks like Rick Steves may be delving into other interests:

Everybody knows that Democratic U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) has long had his eye on the governor’s mansion, and is widely expected to give up his House seat to run for our state’s top office in 2012. But who of note has his eye on Rep. Inslee’s coveted House seat, once it becomes vacant?

Word is that noted travel writer and TV and radio personality Rick Steves is seriously considering giving up his globetrotting ways for an extended stay in the other Washington, and is already working the local Democratic circuit in preparation for a potential run. The latest evidence? Steves jumped at the offer to be the keynote speaker at the Snohomish County Dems’ Annual Gala fundraiser on Sept. 12.

Yes, I know, 2012 is quite a ways off, but it wasn’t so long ago that Inslee was a top candidate for the number one or two position in President Obama’s Department of Energy, giving Steves a more immediate opportunity to explore his own political ambitions. And it was during this time, with a potential special election looming, that Steves reportedly firmed up his intention to run.

Steves could be an incredible asset to the progressive community, as this profile in Salon shows. Recently, Steves branched out from his European travel to travel to Iran, which displayed an all-too-rare side of the depth of Iranian culture and humanity. His travelogues urge Americans to approach new cultures with appreciation and an open mind, and that's certainly an attitude we could use in DC. And based on his humongous fan base (and experience on those PBS pledge breaks), he should have no problem fund-raising.

America Honors Leaders -- Not Politicians:

In this picture provided by the environmental group Greenpeace, Greenpeace climbers rappel down the face of Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D. on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 to unfurl a banner that challenges President Obama to show leadership on global warming. Obama is at the G8 meeting in Italy to discuss the global warming crisis with other world leaders. A federal prosecutor says a dozen people were taken into custody on Wednesday after the incident.

Open thread below...

The rescue efforts are being hampered by strong aftershocks:

L’AQUILA, Italy — More than 90 people died and tens of thousands were left homeless when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 shook central Italy early Monday morning, seriously damaging buildings in the mountainous Abruzzo Region east of Rome, officials said.

The Italian news agency, ANSA, quoted rescue workers in mid-afternoon as saying the death toll had reached 92. A spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said on national television that an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people had been left homeless.

The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where most of the deaths occurred, officials said. Aftershocks shuddered through the area, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed through the debris by hand, frantically seeking survivors.

“Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said in Rome before the chamber observed a moment of silence.

And here's a perfect example of why you should question authority:

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100 km east of Rome.

Vans with loudspeakers had driven around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger.

Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.

Italy's Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L'Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.

"The tremors being felt by the population are part of a typical sequence ... (which is) absolutely normal in a seismic area like the one around L'Aquila," the civil protection agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.

"It is useful to underline that it is not in any way possible to predict an earthquake," it said, adding that the agency saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless effecting "continuous monitoring and attention".

As the media asked questions about the authorities' alleged failure to safeguard the population ahead of the quake, the head of the National Geophysics Institute dismissed Giuliani's predictions.