Founder and re-founder

So he can't call it the Newport Folk Festival, but a rose by any other name... George Wein started the Newport Folk Festival 50 years ago, and when new owners couldn't turn it into the Bonnaroo of the Northeast, he reclaimed it just in time to celebrate a half century of amazing music.

He, and longtime musical cohort, Pete Seeger, spoke to Vanity Fair.

Folk Festival 50 in Newport, takes place this weekend. Here's the lineup.

Newport 1963

Four years after its founding.

'Dam you Bill O'Reilly

Talk about your "wonderfully naive" ideas. O'Reilly and his panel of fake experts don't seem to have a clue, as usual.

Godverdomme, you moederneuker.

Why Jim Vicevich is a racist

Now that I can get instant traffic reports on my iPhone, I much prefer John Dankosky's Where We Live in the morning to wading throught the pitiful, non-tempered "libertarian" (read: conservative lunatic fringe) musings of hatemonger Jim Vicevich, and his herd of birther and flat-earther caller/listeners on WTIC-AM while waiting for a traffic report.

Vicevich, who makes a great, florid show of outrage if anyone accuses him of racism, demonstrated Tuesday that he is, in fact, a racist.

On a late morning drive, I listened in long enough to hear Vicevich condemn Barack Obama for chastizing the Cambridge Police Department's Sargeant James Crowley as "acting stupidly" for arresting Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct when the cops tried to arrest Gates for breaking into his own house.

Sounds pretty damned stupid to me (and racist - a good essay on the topic here). What's stupider is that Obama apologized. Stupider still is Vicevich's implication that Obama himself is somehow racist for calling stupid, "stupid".

Meanwhile, acting the peacemaker, Obama has invited Gates and Crowley to the White House to hash out the problem over a few beers.

One of Vicevich's callers, a self-proclaimed "Irishman" was appalled that Obama would offer beers to a cop of obvious Irish descent, claiming that such an invitation was insulting and somehow anti-Celtic. Vicevich hooted, and agreed heartily with the caller.

The caller went on to say that if the invitation went the other way, Obama should be offered "fried chicken and watermelon."

Oh. Doesn't take a genius to sniff a bigot at work.

Vicevich just laughed. No scold. No disclaimer. No rebuke. No condemnation. No indication that the caller had just crossed a line into old-fashioned, xenophobic, tiny-minded racism.Vicevich just laughed.

Which, in my book, makes Vicevich a racist. A radio host who encourages outright bigotry is, undeniably, himself, a bigot.

But that's no surprise from a man who regularly calls Barack Obama "the young president." Someone should remind Jim that constantly and consistently reminding his listeners that the president is "youthful" and "inexperienced" is tantamount to calling him "boy." And, Vicevich probably doesn't have to be reminded that calling a person of color "boy" has been a time-honored method of diminishing the worth of a person because of their race. If Vicevich doesn't intend the insult, he should refrain from using the "young president" tag, but my guess is that, in this case, he means what he says.

Resolution - The Torture Song

David Ippolito, who has made a singing career out of relatively impromptu weekend concerts in New York City's Central Park has written a great song of accusation on the topic of torture. Susan Forbes Hansen placed it in my hands last Wednesday, and I've been playing it in my car ever since.

Sandy Paton, RIP

Sandy Paton, a well-regarded traditional folk musician, and founder of Folk Legacy Records of Sharon CT, died yesterday after years of suffering with emphysema.

I didn't know Sandy well, though I met him several times. I knew his music, and the music he played and produced with his family, and of course I knew the many classic traditional and contemporary recordings he produced with Gordon Bok, Bill Staines, Cindy Kallet and the trad folk supergroup, Bok, Muir and Trickett.

I came to know Sandy's music, and Sandy's label through Bill Domler who recruited me as a folk DJ at WWUH. Bill loved the Patons, and their music, and was so inspired by their album of singalong traditional folk, The Golden Ring, that he started a coffeehouse, The Sounding Board, which still runs strongly, three decades later. The Patons played the Sounding Board annually.

The music Sandy and Caroline played and recorded was real, honest-to-god folk and traditional music. Music that had been passed down through generations, hand to hand, until all the burrs had been worn off. Sandy played and preserved the music with a nerdy passion, that we promoters and seekers of edgy, electrified and singer-songwriter type folk music would sometimes scoff at. I confess to a bit of scoffing myself, but I've grown (or grown up) to believe and understand, that without "nerds" like Sandy, we wouldn't have the rich reserve of folk songs and tunes that each successive generation seeks out to learn, love and perform.

Sandy's Folk Legacy label, like folk music itself, has survived the fashionable ups and downs of pop music and sustained an evergreen catalogue of folk songs. What Sandy, and Caroline, have done, and have left us, is important, though not necessarily sexy enough to command headlines.

Sandy left this old world a better place than he found it, and not much higher praise could be given to anyone who has finished trodding its dusty paths.

Interity? What integrity?

As Chris Dodd complains about having his integrity assaulted, and he campaigns under the banner of the Senator who turns his back on lobbyists, the truth is that he's courting the same lobbyists, succcessfully, for his campaign war chest. Then he's spending the money on commercials to say the opposite. And what's most sickening, is the "press is out to get Chris" line he's peddling through his colleagues and his spouse. The press may be out to get Chris, but the press is only interested because he's a Senator who apparently can't walk the talk, like too many in that august body.

How much wasted, how much lost?

In reading this story about the triumph of law enforcement over marijuana smugglers, two questions occur to me. How much money was spent on breaking this ring which was smuggling a drug used by a huge, non-addicted, swath of the population? And how much was lost in not being able to tax a billion dollars in pot sales?

Levi Stubbs' Tears Again

Spent the day in Detroit on Friday.

The Low Anthem