DNC & Musical Hindsight

Here in the land of No Broadcast Television, I caught what bits of the Democratic National Convention I caught either via bloggers and their links, or via NPR. My impression is necessarily fragmentary. I tend to agree with Avedon that having many of my favorite bloggers at the convention wasn't an optimum use of the power of blogging. Bloggers are good at links and commentary. Primary reporting isn't a skill most of them have developed. On the other hand, it was amusing to find, now that Atrios has outed himself as Economist Duncan Black, that we worked less than 100 yards apart, back in 1998 or so. (We were both at UCI at the time, and the Economics Department is a stone's throw from the Graduate School of Management.) I liked what I heard of the speeches. Snippets I heard and read of Barack Obama's keynote rocked my socks. I really liked the portions of Kerry's acceptance speech I heard as well (though I'm apparently glad I didn't see it, given what I hear about Kerry having elected to add some new moves to his gestural vocuabulary without getting checked out by pretty much anyone with a sense of rhythm and timing first). I did get just enough of both the blogger convention coverage and commentary to find Michael Bérubé's take on the Kerry speech and the purpose of the convention pretty funny though. Funny literary academics, who'd 'a thunk it?

Back at work yesterday, after some time home sick and waiting for a service call from the apartment management, I got to chatting about the convention with a cow-orker. She said they should have had Mahalia Jackson singing "Hope is on the way." Is that a song? I would have asked, but my packrat brain immediately cued up a snippet of Londonbeat's "Build it With Love," and I was distracted by regret. Because that song, which libertango has long thought of using as a political campaign song, would have been perfect as a cap to the DNC celebration. And I bet they didn't use it. But it's anthemic, it's got soul, it's got brass, it rocks, and you can dance to it. It's pure up-beat, without being the same old cornball stuff, and the lyrics are far more unambiguously political and aposite to what this Democratic party, and this particular national election, need to be about, than dear old "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," much as one may love Fleetwood Mac.
( Check it out: )

Or, if you happen to have the soundtrack to Virtuosity lying around the house go refresh your memory by listening to cut #10. That way you can hear it in its full and proper glory.

I'm tellin ya, the Democrats should be playing this whenever two or more of them gather, from now to November.

Build it With Hope

For anyone curious to hear the Virtuosity remix of "Build it With Love," libertango informs me that we can arrange to e-mail an mp3 file to anyone who has gmail or some other account that won't choke on large files.

And having read (via whumpdotcom) that John Perry Barlow is trying to organize smart crowds of roving stealth dancers on the sidewalks of New York in order to pull that cool Captain Kirk does-not-compute-logic-disruptor-trick on the joyless RNC goers in September, and having, as I do, this strangely persistent flea-cum-earworm, I sent Mr. Barlow a brief e-mail commending the Virtuosity remix to him also. I am, as you see, a girl with a mission.