Just a quick goodbye and thank you to Levi Stubbs. The incomparable voice belonging to the lead singer of the Four Tops passed away Oct 17 and was put to rest Monday.
My earliest memories seem to often relate to music – and apart from the ashes of the Beatles (who split when I was 3) and my mum playing the Carpenters – my fondest recollections musically as a toddler relate to Motown and most specifically the Four Tops. Though the authors of many motown hits were shared it was Levi’s voice that elevated the Four Tops to perfect pop. As timeless and vital as anything from that era – although I grew up over 4,000 miles from Detroit I’ve kept the spirit of Motown music with me ever since – and the barriers broken down by Berry Gordy’s stable of talent remain the turning point for American “pop” such as it was. As the last living Four Top said at the service Monday ‘Levi and these men left us, and are leaving us, an inheritance. It’s up to us to decide what we are going to do with it”
Saying thanks seems insufficient – but it’s what I need to say. As ever the Four Tops said it better :
Precious memories keep a lingering on
Everytime I hear our favorite song
Now you’re gone
Left this emptiness
I only reminisce
The happiness we spent
We used to dance on the music
Make romance through the music
Is it just me or are the media more dumbed down than ever before? The campaign has been frankly spin and dodge for the last six weeks, the G7 are in a tailspin and we are obsessed with redistribution of wealth all of a sudden?
The free market system is underpinned on redistribution of wealth. You pay for schools you may never use, roads you might not drive on and certainly on wars you may not support. It’s all complicit with being part of a modern Western ‘democracy’. Based on the nonsensical views being vented by the GOP at present you’d imagine that before this election we voted where every dollar was spent and that a flat tax rate existed.
Socialism – hardly – but government supported Airlines, Railroads, Schools and Prisons already exist. Yet for some reason socialized medicine is still taboo. (too much profit for the middle man?)
Socialism is so much more than a throwaway sentence – I wish the media would stop pretending this election is the far left against the far right – as the debates proved beyond doubt, you still couldn’t park a hybrid sub-compact between the two parties. We have moderate and mildly right wing.
Socialism is still a generation away – I hope when it is for sale it will be identified correctly.
Please vote next week – for congress and the senate – that’s where change will happen.
