Thanks for posting about this strike. It is the most important strike that I have seen in my 35 years working in the motion picture industry. We are literally fighting for our future here and I, for one, am grateful for the support that FDL is giving this struggle.

I would add I’m voting for a president who knows how to show some respect for people from different backgrounds (that’s some change for ya). I’m an Edwards supporter, but I see this as a “Kennedy moment” opportunity for Obama.

And yeah, that smear email is just sick.

Hey I thought that was the Stone Ponies (ronstadt’s back up). No one has even mentioned Jackson Browne’s songwriting for the eagles. man, he wrote the song y’all were quoting. what’s up with that? ;)

The Stone Poney’s were Linda Ronstadt’s TOURING Band. The studios wanted to change her sound and sacked the Poney’s. And you know how it is for musicians…you sell your songs to others to cover, and hop that they get a hit and you get some residuals.

The Monkee guys eventually learned how to play instruments (essential as the demand for live performances occurred when the show became a hit) and it turned out that one, Michael Nesmith, actually had some formidable talent. They increasingly wanted to perform their own compositions, and asked for more $$$, which eventually led to the shut down of the program. The same producers then decided to create a Cartoon show to avoid using real persons. The studio musicians who did many of the compositions eventually went out and created their own live group.

I believe that the “Partridge Family” were based upon the Cowsills.

Bands head to Hollywood and the record producers take ‘em apart. I knew one group that went down and the producers took two of them aside and said…”You guys have the looks and licks, but those other two have to go.” Then they split up those two by the same method…and tried to put them into other groups that they had done the same thing to.

Joni Mitchell refers to it as the “star-making machinery”. It treats performers as interchangeable parts in the effort to create a commercial “sound” imagined by the producers. Neil Young became known as an a**hole because he essentially refused to play this game. Geffen pressured him to produce an album a year…so some were done mainly to fulfill contractual obligations. Others he presented under protest, refusing to change them to the demands of David Geffen that they weren’t commercially acceptable (e.g. TRON…which is now considered something of a classic). He didn’t like to tour after he got married (having a handicapped kid restricted this) and he actually preferred playing in smaller local clubs with his own band.

OT-The email smearing Obama has now reached my family. My brother-in-law just called me about it. Vicious stuff. Here’s Obama’s first challenge. How will he handle it? Especially since the email says not to believe him, “he will lie.”

I think this is timed for the South Carolina primary. It’s very similar to the “McCain has an out-of-wedlock child of mixed race” stuff that happened four years back. Some people very afraid of Obama, methinks. But he needs to push back carefully, and not disparage Muslims. I think if he gets overly religious it will actually backfire. Here’s his opportunity to make the “John F. Kennedy” speech that Mitt Romney could have made. He can do this by actually stating that a Muslim, Hindu, or nonbeliever should be considered for public office just as much as a Baptist or Lutheran or Methodist.

He should simply state that he is a member of the United Church of Christ, and that what religion he belongs to shouldn’t make a difference to seeking public office in the United States. It shouldn’t matter if he were a Catholic (as was John F. Kennedy), a Jew (as was Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter), or a Mormon, or Buddhist, or Hindu or Moslem. What really should matter is the ideas and policies that will make us a better and more noble nation. He should point out that the founders actually enshrined these ideals 250 years ago in the Constitution. Some people still seem to fall short of those ideals and try to use our baser emotions to divide us, rather than unify us.

And what would really kick butt would be to have well-known members of each of these groups standing on stage with him when he makes this speech.