Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

I have only recently come to appreciate what a great song this Jackson Browne number from 1976 is. After the ‘sixties faded, I gave myself an education in classical and jazz and lost touch with the rock scene. The video presents the thoughtful lyrics.   The Gary U. S. Bonds cover from 1981 is also unbelievably good.

The Weight. Robertson sat down one day to write a song and peering into his Martin guitar read, “Martin Guitars, Nazareth, Pennslylvania.” This inspired the line, “I pulled into Nazareth, feelin’ about half-past dead.”

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Nothing hippy-trippy or psychedelic about these ’60s musicians. Pure Americana served up by Canadians. Rooted, autochthonic.

I Shall Be Released. Their synergy benefited both the Bard and the Band. They helped him move farther from the mind and closer to the earth.

I post what I like, and I like what I post. It’s a nostalgia trip, and a generational thing. There’s no point in disputing taste or sensibility, or much of anything else. It’s Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, stop thinking, and FEEL!

Traveling Wilburys, End of Line, Extended Version

Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again. Lyrics!

Gary U. S. Bonds, From a Buick Six. Sorry, Bob, but not even you can touch this version.

Bob Dylan, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes  a Train to Cry.  Cutting Edge Bootleg version.

Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman.  This Cutting Edge take may be the best version, even with the mistakes.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. The Bard never loses his touch. May he die with his boots on.

Bob Dylan, Corrina, Corrina. And you say he can’t sing in a conventional way?

Bob Seger, Old-Time Rock and Roll

But does it really “soothe the soul”? Is it supposed to?  For soul-soothing, I recommend the Adagio movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Adagio molto e cantabile.

The Flying Burrito Brothers, To Ramona.  A beautiful cover of a song from Dylan’s fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan.

YouTuber comment: “I’d hate to think where we would be without Mr. Zimmerman’s songwriting. So many covers done by so many great artists.” And I say that if it weren’t for Zimmi, the Great American Boomer Soundtrack would have a huge, gaping hole in it.

John Fogerty and the Blue Ridge Rangers, You’re the Reason

An able cover of the Bobby Edwards cross-over hit from 1961.

The Springfields, Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Dusty Springfield before she was Dusty Springfield.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Roving Gambler.  “Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz” lacking the requisite resonance for a follower of Woody Guthrie, this Jewish son of a New York M.D. wisely changed his name.

Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails

The best rendition of the Utah Philips song..

On the banks of the river where the willows hang down
And the wild birds all warble with a low moaning sound
Down in the hollow where the waters run cold
It was there I first listened to the lies that you told

Now I lie on my bed and I see your sweet face
The past I remember time cannot erase
The letter you wrote me it was written in shame
And I know that your conscience still echos my name

Now the nights are so long, Lord sorrow runs deep
And nothing is worse than a night without sleep
I’ll walk out alone and look at the sky
Too empty to sing, too lonesome to cry

If the ladies was blackbirds and the ladies was thrushes
I’d lie there for hours in the chilly cold marshes
If the ladies was squirrel’s with high bushy tails
I’d fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails

Patsy Cline, She’s Got You

Marianne Faithfull,  Ruby Tuesday.  Moodier than the Stones’ original.  She does a great version of Dylan’s Visions of Johanna. But nothing touches the original. It moves me as much as it did back in ’66.  YouTuber comment: “An early morning cup of coffee, smoking a fattie, listening to this insane genius . . . does it get any better? And if so, how?”

Tom Waits, The Ghosts of Saturday Night.  One of the best by this latter-day quasi-Kerouac.

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. ‘Fesche’ means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab’ ein Pianola zu Haus’ in mein’ Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when ‘tranny’ meant transmission.

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, September Song

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Alabama Song

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

In the Interests of Prandial Harmony

Some of you will be at table with relatives today. Experientia docet: Occasions of putative conviviality can easily degenerate into nastiness. A prophylactic to consider is the avoidance of all talk of politics and religion. But to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, What else is there to talk about? An exaggeration, no doubt, but God and Man in relation to the State does cover a lot of ground.

And so I cannot recommend that you bring up the recent behavior of Arizona senator Mark Kelly unless you and your relatives and friends are all of the same mind.

UAP, NHIs, NHEs, AI, and Demons

Too many word slingers these days use abbreviations without explanation. Not me. UAP: unidentified aerial phenomena; NHIs: non-human intelligences; NHEs: non-human extraterrestrials; AI: artificial intelligence.  As for angels and demons, should there be any, they would fall under NHIs.

You already know what UFO stands for. Many of you, however, fail to understand that UFO  does not have the same extension as NHE.  A UFO may or may not be a NHE

On 27 July 2025 I wrote:

You may remember our ‘demonic’ discussion from last summer. [The summer of ’24]  See  Reading Now: Demonic Foes. The comment thread runs to 61 entries, some of them excellent.

Bro Joe now wants us to read: Satanic AI: ChatGPT gives instructions.

Another topic we ought to explore is the possibility of demonic possession of AI systems. 

According to Richard Gallagher, M.D., “The essence of a possession is the actual control of the body (never the ‘soul’ or will’) of a person by one or more evil spirits.” (Demonic Foes, p. 80). Now AI systems do not have souls or wills of their own (or so I argue), but they do have bodies, albeit inorganic.  Might they then host demons?

Gallagher’s book is outstanding. So if you think demonology is buncombe, you should study his book and disembarrass yourself of your illusions. 

I now draw your attention to Dreher who in a characteristically prolix recent entry refers us to a film on UAP:

The film’s focus is on science and national security. The only time religion and spirituality come up is briefly, early in the film, when several interviewees say there is a group of “fundamentalists” within the Deep State who try to discourage investigation into the UAP/NHI story, because they believe it’s all demonic, and we shouldn’t be messing with it. The movie gives you the sense that these crazy Christians are trying to inhibit progress.

They’re talking about the Collins Elite, about whom I wrote last year. I read a book about them last December, and wrote about it. From that newsletter:

After reading yesterday’s post here, a friend texted to suggest that the Collins Elite might be opposed to US Government engagement with these demonic entities not so much because they are afraid of the demons (though they are), but because they are more afraid of what we humans will do with the information we learn from them. This insight seems to be vindicated by what Redfern reports. Here Redfern quotes someone with experience of the Collins Elite:

“They came to believe that the NHEs were not extraterrestrial at all; they believed they were some sort of demonic entities. And that regardless of how benevolent or beneficial any of the contact they had with these entities seemed to be, it always ended up being tainted, for lack of a better term, with something that ultimately turned out to be bad. There was ultimately nothing positive from the interaction with the NHE entities. They felt it really fell more under the category of some vast spiritual deception instead of UFOs and aliens. In the course of the whole discussion, it was clear that they really viewed this as having a demonic origin that was there to simply try and confuse the issue in terms of who they were, what they wanted, and what the source of the ultimate truth is. If you extrapolate from their take that these are demons in the biblical sense of the word, then what they would be doing here is trying to create a spiritual deception to fool as many people as possible.”

More:

They were concerned that they had undertaken this initially with the best of intentions, but then as things developed they saw a very negative side to it that wasn’t apparent earlier. So, that’s what leads me to think they had a relatively lengthy involvement.” The story became even more complex when the reasoning behind, and the goals of, the project were revealed to Boeche:

“Most of it was related to psychotronic weaponry and remote viewing, and even deaths by what were supposed to be psychic methods.” Certainly, the NHEs, it was deduced by those attached to the DoD project, possessed extraordinary, and lethal, mental powers. And, as a result, deeper plans were initiated, using nothing less than ancient rites and black rituals, to actually try and contact the NHEs with two specific—some might say utterly crackpot—goals in mind: (1) controlling them and (2) exploiting their extraordinary mental powers in the form of devastating weaponry.”

“Boeche” is Ray Boeche, an Episcopal priest and theologian who had established himself as an investigator in the religious implications of UFOs. Two members of the Collins Elite — Defense Department physicists — approached him and shared with him their concerns:

The conversations [with Boeche] always followed broadly similar ground: namely, that the Human Race was being deceived into believing that it was receiving visitations from aliens, when in reality demonic forces were secretly squaring up for Armageddon and the final countdown. And, the DoD’s overwhelmingly reckless dabbling into occult-driven areas to try and make a bizarre-but-futile pact of some sort with these same forces was inevitably, and only, destined to make things much, much worse for each and every one of us.

One more:

With respect to his own views, as well as those of the two DoD physicists, Boeche added: “As a pastor and someone who’s trained as a theologian, I can’t come to any other conclusion than there is some sort of spiritual deception going on here. In so many of these kinds of alien contacts, the entities involved make a denial of Christianity; anytime the spiritual issues are addressed, there is always some sort of denial of the validity of Christianity and the validity of the Bible. And I find it interesting that these percipients are told that Jesus was a great guy, but you just misunderstood him. They say: he wasn’t really God’s son. You just don’t quite get it. But you never hear them say that about Buddha, or Krishna, or Mohammed. It always seems to come down to some sort of denial of Christianity. The percipients, whether you consider them contactees or abductees are engaged by the NHEs in spiritual discussions—but it’s always one-sided. “I would have a lot less suspicion of the potential of the demonic nature of these things if they were to say: ‘You guys are all screwed up; all of your spiritual leaders had some good ideas, but none of them really got it. It’s a big mess.’ But it seems to be so specifically pointed at the Judeo-Christian tradition. It certainly seems to me like it’s the two genuine forces squaring up against each other.”

Back to Dreher:

See, this is what I believe is probably the case. Someone who doesn’t turn up in the film is Jacques Vallée, who is the grey eminence of UAP studies. Vallée is in his eighties now, and is not a Christian, but has come to believe that whatever this phenomenon is, it is ultimately spiritual/non-material, and that these entities do not mean humanity well. Vallée has written a number of books; one of the most important is Passport To Magonia (1969); here is a link to read the entire text for free online. The book’s basic claim is that UAPs are not extraterrestrial visitors, but are probably interdimensional entities that have always been present among humans, but have manifested themselves in different ways, depending on the age and the culture.

For example, in a scientific-technological culture, these entities appear as creatures from space, because they can be understood within that paradigm. Vallée posits that these are the same entities that have in ages and cultures past have presented themselves as fairies, elves, and other paranormal or supernatural beings. He points out that many of the phenomena associated with so-called alien encounters and alien abductions, like time distortion, have also been reported in folklore across many cultures.

This seems entirely plausible to me. I know, call me crazy, but I think this is probably true. You new readers won’t know this, but I thought the whole UAP/UFO thing was … well, if not exactly nonsense, at least nothing I cared about. This was the case until around 2023, when a journalist friend in Rome, a Catholic, told me that he knows I think all this is fairly silly, but that I should give it a second look, because there’s a lot coming out about it — and there’s very much a religious and spiritual angle to it. I found out that this is actually true.

Family Medicine circa 1692

Medicinal Experiments

Maynard Mack (1909-2001), Alexander Pope: A Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), pp. 15-16:

But even such prescriptions pale beside many of those receiving sanction from the distinguished chemist Robert Boyle in his Medicinal Experiments of 1692, one of the most popular family handbooks of the period. Among other recipes more palatable, one for sore throat, as common an ailment among children then as now, proposes “a drachm of white dog’s turd” worked up with honey of roses into “a linctus, to be very slowly let down the throat.” Another—”For Convulsions, especially in Children”—requires ground dried earthworms fortified with “a pretty number of grains of ambergrease” to moderate the stench. A third—”For the Cholic and diverse other Distempers”—features an infusion made of “four or five balls of fresh stone-horse dung” steeped in a pint of white wine, to be drunk “from a quarter to half a pint” at a dose. Easily the Mount Everest and Mona Lisa among these unappealing remedies is the following, used “To clear the Eyes, even of films”: Take human fecal matter “of good Colour and consistence,” dry it slowly “till it be pulverable,” then reduce it “into an impalpable powder, which is to be blown once, twice, or thrice a day … into the patient’s Eyes.”

Hypatia and Her Lover

An excerpt from the journal of Basile Yanovsky, M.D. reprinted in Michael Rubin, Men Without Masks: Writings from the Journals of Modern Men (Addison-Wesley, 1980), p. 206:

A woman philosopher and religious teacher of the fourth century, Hypatia of Alexandria, had a striking discussion with her lover. To discourage his earthly temptations, she addressed him, at the most passionate moment of their relations, in the following manner: “See what it is you adore, Archytas, this foul matter, this corruption, with its secretions, its excrements and its infections. . . .”

But the tenacious and passionate Archytas gave her this answer: “It is not matter I love, but form.”

How many times, discouraged and depressed in the V. D. clinic, have I repeated these saintly words of Archytas. . . .

In the New York Review of Books, in Veni, Vici, V. D., W. H. Auden reviews Dr. Yanovsky’s The Dark Fields of Venus: From a Doctor’s Logbook.

Identify the Quotation!

Who said it? A post-liberal, an anti-liberal, Carl Schmitt?

Blood rises up against formal understanding, race against the rational pursuit of ends, honor against profit, bonds against the caprice that is called 'freedom,' organic totality against individualistic dissolution, valor against bourgeois security, politics against the primacy of the economy, state against society, folk against the individual and the mass.

 

Travel and the Indifference of Places

Malcolm Pollack writing from Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, Vietnam:

. . . mainly I’m writing just now to note how little enthusiasm I have for travel these days. I’ve been all over the place in my lengthening life (I’ll be 69 in April), and more and more it seems to me that every place is, well, just some other place, and that gallivanting around is increasingly just exhausting and distracting. The world outside seems increasingly finite in comparison to what can (and should) be explored within — and once you’ve scratched the youthful itch of restlessness the trick, I think, is just to find someplace you like well enough, and to make yourself at home.

I could not agree more.  

You may enjoy Three Reasons to Stay Home.

Of travel I've had my share, man. I've been everywhere.

Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm

Languishing in the archives of one of the early versions of this weblog is a post bearing the above title. I shall have to resurrect, refurbish, and re-post it.  An excellent recent example of misplaced moral enthusiasm is well-described in Spring the Felon, Kill the Squirrel.

This short article may help you leftists understand why you lost big yesterday.  Some forms of leftism are border-line respectable, but the wokeassery of Kamalism is not one of them.

RelatedFrom Gunman to Squirrel Man: Bernie Goetz Thirty Years Later

You do remember Bernie Goetz, don't you?

William James had a squirrel problem. You are aware of it, are you not?

If you like to think, you'll like my blog. If you don't like to think, you need my blog.

The Ever-Increasing Frenzy, Tension, and Explosiveness of this Country

Try to guess when the following was written, and by whom.  Answer below the fold:

Ever increasing frenzy, tension, explosiveness of this country. You feel it in the monastery with people like Raymond. In the priesthood with so many upset, one way or another, and so many leaving.  So many just cracking up, falling apart. People in Detroit buying guns. Groups of vigilantes being formed to shoot Negroes. Louisville is a violent place, too. Letters in U. S. Catholic about the war article. — some of the shrillest came from Louisville. This is a really mad country, and an explosion of the madness is inevitable. The only question — can it somehow be less bad than one anticipates?  Total chaos is quite possible, though I don't anticipate that. But the fears, frustrations, hatreds, irrationalities, hysterias, are all there and all powerful enough to blow everything wide open. One feels that they want violence.  It is preferable to the uncertainty of 'waiting.' 

 

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