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On a mild Thursday afternoon this past February, Mitt Romney and his entourage arrived at a big house in a small town called Clarkston, about forty miles north of Detroit. The Michigan Republican primary was a few days away, and Romney was visiting an influential local citizen named Robert James Ritchie, who still answers to the hip-hop nickname he gave himself a quarter century ago, when he was a teen-ager: Kid Rock. Until recently, Ritchie's life was unencumbered by overtures from Presidential candidates, and it seemed likely to remain that way. He rose to fame as a rapping rock star, and, along the way, he discovered that success and excess formed a virtuous circle—people loved the idea that he really was having as much fun as his music implied. His priorities, as set down in one lyric, were firm: "I rock for the cash and the topless dancers."
Ritchie is still Kid Rock, but he's not the same Kid Rock. He sings more than he raps, and a number of his recent songs have taken up residence on country-radio playlists. He is also known now as a military booster, and a cheerleader for the city of Detroit. There were some complaints when he was invited to play at an inauguration party for President George W. Bush in 2005 (one pro-family activist called him a "sex-crazed animal"), but the reaction was more muted four years later, when he played at a similar party for President Obama. Now Romney, a fellow-Michigander, wanted Ritchie's help; apparently some staffers at the Governor's office had explained that Ritchie is one of the most beloved public figures in the state.
Romney and Ritchie spent about an hour together sitting in Ritchie's living room, beneath a mounted bison head and framed photographs of Run-DMC and Johnny Cash. Romney promised to help Ritchie help revive Detroit, and to work to meet the needs of veterans. When Romney left, he asked for a case of Badass American Lager, Ritchie's local-brewed beer, which he wanted to distribute to members of his security detail. The next day, Ritchie e-mailed Romney to offer his support, and the following Monday, the day before the primary, the two appeared together at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, just outside Detroit. Romney called Ritchie "a son of Detroit, a friend, a guy who makes great music." And then Ritchie sang a truncated version of "Born Free," the title track from the last Kid Rock album, which had become the Romney campaign's theme song. When the song was over, Ritchie shook hands with Romney, but he declined to offer any political commentary. Apparently, the campaign had asked Ritchie to speak, and, as he tells it, his response was succinct: "I said, 'If I say a few words, you'll shit your pants.' "
In Michigan, Romney beat Rick Santorum by about three percentage points, and Ritchie's efforts "may very well have carried the day"—at least, this was Romney's analysis, as set down in a handwritten note that Ritchie keeps on the wall of his office. The victory helped send Romney to Tampa, in August, to accept the Republican nomination. Ritchie went, too, although he stayed away from the Convention itself. Instead, he was the main attraction at the week's most eagerly anticipated concert, a benefit for veterans, held in a white tent just outside the Convention's security perimeter. (In 2000, after the U.S.S. Cole was bombed, some crew members annoyed their superiors by blasting "American Badass," a Kid Rock song; ever since, Ritchie has been a hot-blooded supporter of troops and veterans.) Ritchie flew into town a few hours before showtime, but he was delayed on his way to the concert site, when his van found itself blocked by an anti-Romney demonstration. As conventioneers filed in, Eric (Shakes) Grzybowski, Ritchie's longtime production manager, seemed anxious. "He's stuck in that protest," he said. "He's not happy."
When the van finally arrived, though, Ritchie seemed perfectly happy. He made his way to a backstage holding area, where he lit an Arturo Fuente cigar (he is rarely without a cigar), opened a Coors Light, and awaited the arrival of fifty fans, each of whom would spend a few seconds posing for a photograph with him. Because Ritchie is such a cheerful presence, he can sometimes seem laid-back, although he is usually the least laid-back person in the room. He inherited a salesman's vigilance and compulsive sociability from his father, Bill, who founded a pair of successful Lincoln-Mercury dealerships. Ritchie's old friend and protégé Matthew Shafer, who records as Uncle Kracker, says, "He's the host of the party—always. He'll be sweeping around you while you're dancing." Ritchie was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of Made in Detroit, a clothing-and-accessories company he owns, along with faded jeans and a pair of Gucci sneakers. As the fans filed in, Ritchie gave each one a grip and a grin. Kevin McCarthy, the House Majority Whip, from California, had made his way backstage, with his wife and one of his daughters. At the Convention, McCarthy was a rising star, but here he was just one more eager picture-seeker. Soon it was time for the show to start: Ritchie exchanged his tortoiseshell glasses for a pair of aviators with reflective gold lenses, led his band members in a pre-show prayer, and then got ready to join them onstage.
This was not a typical Kid Rock crowd—in fact, he said later that it was the most sedate crowd he'd seen all year. But then Ritchie enjoys being somewhat out of place, which helps explain why, as a white teen-ager, he was drawn to the rough-and-tumble hip-hop scene in Detroit. He bounded onstage to the beat of "Devil Without a Cause," the track for which his 1998 breakthrough album was named. "I'm going platinum," he snarled, delivering an old boast that is now an understatement. The album has since been certified eleven times platinum, making it one of the most popular hip-hop albums ever—if, that is, you consider it a hip-hop album at all. The sensibility is rock and roll, and the songs emphasize noise over thump: crunchy electric guitars, shouted rhymes, and the record-scratching sounds that most rappers had by then long abandoned. In Tampa, "Devil Without a Cause" was followed by "Rock Bottom Blues," a raucous but firmly traditional rock song that pays tribute, in equal measure, to the Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters and the Southern California porn star Riley Steele.
To his credit, Ritchie has never quite shaken his lifelong allergy to good taste, and, partly as a consequence, he is regularly derided as a hack. USA Today named "Cocky," his 2001 album, one of the year's worst, calling him "a white-trash redneck greenhorn with no gray matter." And yet, in an age of self-conscious songwriters, genre specialists, and dancing pop idols, Ritchie now finds himself plying an old-fashioned trade: he is a mainstream rock star, one of the few non-oldies acts worthy of the title. His live show is a wide-ranging musical revue, designed to whip fanatics and skeptics alike into a beery frenzy. There were snippets of "Take Me to the River," by Al Green, and "Tom Sawyer," by Rush, alongside Ritchie's own hits; he sang everything with the same enthusiasm, like the leader of an unusually popular bar band. To freshen up "Cowboy," one of his signature songs, he spliced in a Southern-rock chorus from another song of his, "Lay It On Me." After "Picture," the ballad he recorded with Sheryl Crow, he scratched records behind his back while downing a shot of Jim Beam, which is one of his sponsors.
Although Ritchie mainly avoided politics, he did make a few concessions to the partisans in the crowd, many of whom still had Convention passes hanging around their necks. He updated an old verse with a new couplet: "A lot of people say that Obama's just lyin' / That's why I'm voting for Romney and Ryan!" The lanyarded masses shouted their appreciation. As he got to the end of the set, he turned serious, asking, "Do you still believe that you live in the greatest country in the world?" And then he sang "Born Free," a graceful and resonant ode to America (it sounds a bit like John Mellencamp, only less mumbly) that had been, for a week, the most inescapable song in Tampa. Campaign songs tend to be clunky (if they're too on-message) or vaguely inappropriate (Bill Clinton used "Don't Stop," by Fleetwood Mac, which hints at the dissolution of a marriage), but "Born Free" is perfect: with its chiming, upbeat guitar, it underscored Romney's vigor and confidence without ever, during a long campaign, tempting him to dance.
When Ritchie began "Born Free," he was sitting at a piano, and by the end of the first verse he was standing on it, leading the crowd in an arm-waving sing-along. As his band hit the final chord, Ritchie rushed out of a side door and into his van, which was waiting to take him across the bay to the St. Petersburg airport, where his jet was preparing for departure. As the van moved through the barricaded streets of Tampa, Ritchie considered the pitfalls of working with politicians. "You don't listen to any of those guys and go, 'God, that guy is so honest and true,' " he said, and then he reconsidered. "Actually, Romney strikes me as super fuckin' honest."
Ritchie had taken his shirt off, and now he lit a cigar. "He's a complete nerd, though," he said. "That's kind of what I want going on in there." Ritchie thought for a while. "I've been looking at it for four years," he said. "I'm like, all right, I've worked my ass off and made some coin. Who do I want looking out for that? Obama or Romney? Oh, give it all to Romney."
Ritchie knows that his recalcitrant streak is essential to his appeal, especially in light of his recent lurch toward respectability. And so, even while endorsing Romney, he was careful to remind his fans not to take him too seriously. In the final weeks of the general election, he released an absurd public-service announcement co-starring his friend Sean Penn, an outspoken liberal. In the clip, which is shot like a romantic comedy, the two mock each other's political beliefs (Penn calls him a "false patriot"; he calls Penn a "whiny-ass granolacrat"), reaffirm their mutual affection, and ask viewers not to let political disputes get in the way of friendship or fun. In his music, too, he is increasingly trying to strike a balance between the unimpeachable and the indefensible: he wants to be seen as both a revered elder statesman and an unpretentious roisterer, and if this combination creates cognitive dissonance, his career so far has taught him that fans won't mind. For the "Born Free" album, Ritchie enlisted the esteemed producer Rick Rubin, who urged him to avoid novelty songs—Rubin says he wanted to help Ritchie create a "timeless album, a classic country-tinged rock album." Ritchie's new record, "Rebel Soul," is more confounding: it includes some of the subtlest singing Ritchie has ever recorded, alongside a song, which Rubin had rejected, called "Cucci Galore." Its subject is the Playboy Mansion, and it addresses an existential question that has plagued Ritchie in recent years: what is the point of becoming one of the last true rock stars if you can't write a song about the Playboy Mansion?
Ritchie has a house in Malibu, which is where he got to know Penn. He spends time in Nashville, which has become his second musical home. He has a house on the east coast of Florida, near where his parents spend the winter, and he recently invested in a luxury trailer in southern Alabama. Even so, Ritchie returns as often as possible to Michigan, where he owns, in addition to his sprawling property in Clarkston, a Colonial house on the Detroit River, near downtown. He is not quite a Detroit native: he grew up in Romeo, a farm town nearly an hour away. His father's main car dealership was in Sterling Heights, a Detroit suburb, and Ford encouraged local dealers to live in the county where they worked; Romeo, near the northern border of Macomb County, was about as far away from the city as the family could get. But Ritchie has been drawn to Detroit ever since he was old enough to sneak into rap concerts; he is a Detroiter by choice, and his civic pride has been fortified by the treatment he receives. Travelling through Detroit with him is slightly disorienting. Friends, acquaintances, and strangers hail him with the same easy familiarity; he is Kid Rock, or Rock, or Bob, or Bobby. "It's like going to fuckin' Disneyland with Mickey Mouse," he says. His favorite local restaurant pays tribute to him with a large Badass Beer mural behind the bar, and the owners printed up glossy business cards that they sometimes distribute to overly enthusiastic patrons. The front says, "Let the man eat his chicken." The back says, "Let's put it this way: if Kid Rock was bothering you while you were eating, we'd tell him to stop too."
One bright autumn Sunday, Ritchie was riding shotgun in a conspicuous car: a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows and a "RUN DMC" vanity plate. Tony Hazard, a good-natured Army reservist who is part of Ritchie's security detail, was driving, heading downtown to Ford Field, where the Detroit Lions were playing the St. Louis Rams. At the stadium, a Lions employee greeted Ritchie and pointed him toward an elevator, which was staffed by two young African-American women who hugged him like an old friend. Upstairs, he headed for a luxury box belonging to Peter Karmanos, Jr., another successful local—he is a founder of Compuware, and though he owns the Carolina Hurricanes, he is a fixture at Lions games. Ritchie is the godfather of Karmanos's baby, which explains why he watched most of the third quarter with an infant sleeping on his shoulder. During one time-out, Ritchie's face appeared on the stadium video screen, shouting, "Hey, Detroit, it's time to get on your feet and make some noise!" He looked at himself on the screen, gestured at the baby, and smiled. "I hope they don't get a shot of me now," he said.
As time wound down, Ritchie grew increasingly concerned: the score was close, and he was planning to host a small post-game barbecue; the result on the field would probably affect the mood in his house. Then, with less than two minutes remaining, the Lions pushed eighty yards down the field to score a decisive touchdown. Ritchie allowed himself a few minutes of exultation before heading back out to the Escalade, to beat traffic. As he walked out of the stadium, trailing well-wishers, he looked around. "Who the fuck would ever move to L.A.?" he said.
As Hazard drove back to the riverfront house, Ritchie plugged in his iPod. "Now we're going to put on our celebratory song," he said, and he cranked up "Celebrate," from the new album. It's a hard-charging track that gestures back to the time when rock and roll and R. & B. were fraternal twins. It could pass for an old Bob Seger B-side, and no doubt Ritchie would take that comparison as a compliment. Seger, another of Detroit's favorite sons, is a hero of Ritchie's, and the two are good friends: they share a rehearsal space, and for almost a decade they shared a manager, too. " 'Celebrate,' that's a monumental track," Seger says. "Oh, my God!" Seger, like Ritchie, was a big deal in Detroit long before the rest of the country took notice, and he still lives in the area. One day, when Eminem was visiting Ritchie, Seger came over; in the kitchen at Ritchie's house is a framed photograph of the three of them sitting on his lawn—a family portrait, of a sort.
The barbecue started off quietly. When Ritchie got back from the game, a chef was already turning some ribs on a grill, and a bar had been set up, generously stocked with Coors Light, Jim Beam, and almost nothing else. The house had vintage Detroit streetcar signs on the walls, and a trophy case held the Motor City Music Award Ritchie won in 1994, when he was named "outstanding local rap individual, duo, or group." One of the first guests to arrive was Jim Schwartz, the Lions' head coach, wearing a black Detroit Muscle T-shirt tucked into bluejeans. A couple of the players showed up, too, with their families: Dominic Raiola, the starting center, brought his son, whose conversation with Ritchie devolved into a fart-noise competition. More friends arrived, including James (Bossy) Murphy, a local rapper turned security guard, and an Army veteran named Davin Dumar. Dumar lost a leg and parts of his hands in Afghanistan; Ritchie worked with a charity called Operation Finally Home to surprise him with a new house.
The Lions and their coach were gone before the last rib had disappeared, but Ritchie evidently wanted to celebrate their achievements some more. He will be forty-two in January, and, while he says he leads a calmer life than he used to, he has successfully resisted the lure of sobriety, which has claimed so many of his peers. "I hate pot—I'm an up-tempo guy," he says. He once tried to convince his record company to release an advertisement showing a woman snorting lines of cocaine off the cover of a Kid Rock album, above the words "You can't do this with an mp3."
As the night progressed, Ritchie was surrounded by a dwindling but increasingly convivial group of celebrants, and the mood grew noticeably more up-tempo. In the kitchen, Ritchie plugged a speaker into his laptop, so that he could blast a rough mix of his new album. He had to shout to be heard over the music, but he might have been shouting anyway. "No one has more fun than Kid Rock," he said. "No one!"
Some of his guests were trying, though. One reveller took off her shirt; another, even more enthusiastic, stumbled out of the kitchen and onto Ritchie's front lawn, where she might have spent the night if Hazard hadn't carried her inside and deposited her on a living-room sofa. (He put a small trash can next to her head, but apparently she didn't see it.) Remarkably, Ritchie seemed entirely unfazed the next morning, when he materialized in the kitchen at around nine. "I got drunk last night," he said. "That was a fun day. I just hope the Lions keep winning." Then he packed a few bags into the Escalade and headed north: he had only two weeks left to fiddle with "Rebel Soul," and his recording engineers were waiting for him at his home studio, in Clarkston.
Ritchie's property in Clarkston occupies about fifty acres, with a Civil War cannon in the driveway, and pathways so long that he navigates them in a golf cart painted like the General Lee, from "The Dukes of Hazzard." (Its former owner was Waylon Jennings; Hank Williams, Jr., arranged for Ritchie to get it after Jennings died.) Part of the property used to be a ranch, and the design scheme is distinctly country. The screening room, above a former barn, features a mounted boar, which Ritchie shot in Alabama; in the main house, the bathroom magazine rack contains Bowhunter, Bow & Arrow Hunting, North American Whitetail, and Turkey. In his rap-rock prime, Ritchie was sometimes mocked for appropriating urban African-American culture; nowadays, he is more likely to be mocked for appropriating Southern white culture. But, throughout his various phases, he has always been quick to mock himself. In "Cowboy," one of his signature songs, he deflated his own hip-hop pretensions:
I ain't no G., I'm just a regular failure
I ain't "straight outta Compton"—I'm straight out the trailer
Of course, he wasn't really "straight out the trailer," either. His parents chose Romeo partly to keep their children away from drugs ("We were naïve," his father says) and partly because land was cheap. Ritchie had two sisters and an older brother, and, as they grew up, the family prospered. His mother, Susan, raised the children full time, and, together with Bill, she turned the Ritchie residence into a sprawling entertainment complex. There was a swimming pool, a tennis court, and an apple orchard; on Friday and Saturday nights, family and friends would gather in the barn, which is where, as a boy, Ritchie gave his first concerts, wearing cowboy boots and singing Jim Croce songs. There was also, standing watch by the front gate, a statue of a black jockey. Ritchie never noticed it until a friend of his, the rapper Proof, saw it and said, "What's up with that jockey?" Ritchie didn't have a good answer for him. Bill Ritchie was a stern father, eager to equip his children for success in the ruthless business of selling cars. "Bob was a little softer than my other kids," he says. "I could bark at his older brother, and in five minutes it was forgotten. I could bark at Bob, and I didn't realize—sometimes he carried it for a while. I'd have to give him a hug and tell him, 'You know your dad loves ya.' "
By the time Ritchie was in high school, his main obsession was hip-hop—it was ruder than rock, and less antisocial than punk. He hoarded records, and travelled downtown for hip-hop concerts, even though he learned not to expect a warm welcome. "Only white kid there, every time," he says, adding that if he arrived wearing anything flashy he often left without it. "Guys would be like, 'Check that chain in, motherfucker—take it off right now!' And the couple times I didn't? Bam! Like, God damn, I'm fuckin' on the ground." Among some of his white peers in Romeo, his hip-hop obsession seemed like a form of tribal disloyalty. "They didn't call me 'wigger,' " he said—the term hadn't been coined yet. "They called me 'nigger.' " While he was still in high school, he taught himself how to break-dance, how to rap, and how to d.j., which is how he got his nickname: he was the white kid who could rock the turntables. Ritchie was both impressed and peeved when he saw the Beastie Boys for the first time, at Joe Louis Arena, downtown—he had convinced himself that he was the only white person who knew how to rap.
One of his first demos was recorded at the studio of Juan Atkins, the Detroit producer who did as much as anyone to create the genre of techno. (Atkins remembers him as "just a regular-looking suburban white guy.") He also recorded a brief verse for Jeff Mills, another techno pioneer; he would stay up all night, listening to Mills's futuristic radio show, hoping to hear himself. Ritchie rapped in a brassy, heavily end-rhymed style that was already beginning to sound quaint by the end of the nineteen-eighties. But he was fun to listen to, and even more fun to watch: onstage, with his long hair sprayed up into a white boy's version of a high-top fade, he seemed both reckless and eager to please; if his smutty lyrics didn't convert the audience, his turntable tricks (not so different from the ones he still performs) usually did. He impressed D-Nice, from the influential New York hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions, who steered him toward a deal with Jive Records.
The début Kid Rock album, "Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast," arrived in 1990, and quickly disappeared—doomed, perhaps, by its first single, an absurd song about cunnilingus called "Yo-da-lin in the Valley." Jive released him, and he spent much of the rest of the decade winning fans in and around Detroit. (Eminem would sometimes show up at record stores where Ritchie appeared, hoping in vain to lure him into a rap battle.) His second album, "The Polyfuze Method," was fuzzier, druggier, bluesier, and better. At times, it sounded like a sleazy Midwestern retort to "Paul's Boutique," the Beastie Boys' adventurous second album. Nearly every song had howling guitars, and a few of them had moody choruses that showed off, for the first time, Ritchie's coarse-grained singing voice—he rapped like a teen-ager and sang like an old man. He sold CDs and cassettes on consignment, and he recruited musicians for a live show; local promoters had grown leery of violence at hip-hop concerts, and Ritchie found it easier to book engagements if he presented himself as the lead singer of a band. Music executives noticed how many tickets and T-shirts he was selling, and a much circulated article in Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys' magazine, declared, "No one waves the flag of Midwestern cultural unawareness as high as Kid Rock." Soon he had earned his second major-label deal, this time with Atlantic Records. He got a small advance, most of which went toward the purchase of a hot tub, which he bought secondhand and installed in the Detroit studio where he recorded. Years of d.j.'ing and recording had turned him into a meticulous producer, capable of using his favorite drum machine, the Akai MPC60, to splice together deceptively expensive-sounding hip-hop beats and rock songs.
By the time Ritchie started work on the songs that became "Devil Without a Cause," he had a son, Robert, Jr., who had just turned four. Junior's mother was Ritchie's high-school girlfriend, and although their relationship was deteriorating, he was also looking after Junior's two half siblings. While he worked, the kids were often sitting in the lobby, playing Nintendo, waiting for him to take them home. Ritchie says, though, that the situation wasn't quite as bleak as it sounds—he never doubted that his second chance would go better than his first one. It was 1997, and rock radio stations were starting to embrace a hybrid genre known as rap-rock, which was pretty much what Ritchie had been doing. "When I saw Limp Bizkit and Korn doing that stuff, I was like, Oh, my God, I can do this in my fuckin' sleep," he says. "It's like you've been playing fuckin' table tennis your whole life, and all of a sudden it's the biggest sport in the world."
The song that made "Devil" a success, and Kid Rock a star, is called "Bawitdaba," which is an abbreviated version of its refrain:
Bawitdaba, da bang a dang diggy diggy
Diggy said the boogy, said up jump the boogy
This is a nonsense phrase, but one with an illustrious history: Ritchie adapted it from Busy Bee Starski, an early rapper from the Bronx, who adapted it from his neighborhood rival Lovebug Starski, who may have been inspired by the Marcels' famous introduction to their doo-wop version of "Blue Moon." (Along the way, "bomp ba-ba bomp" gradually became "bawitdaba.") Listeners who knew none of this could still enjoy the concussive guitar riff and the best rap verse of Ritchie's career, in which he identified his target demographic: "All the crackheads, the critics, the cynics / And all my heroes in the methadone clinic." In the video, which dominated MTV for months, he wears a pair of shiny green plastic pants, with three Adidas stripes running up the leg, which his mother had designed and sewed for him; for his triumphant performance at Woodstock '99, during which he squatted and stomped across the huge stage, she sewed him a red pair, to match his red Detroit Tigers jersey and his red fedora.
"Bawitdaba" made Kid Rock famous, and if it also made him something of a cartoon, that was fine—he'd been cartoonish since long before he was famous. He dated a number of actresses, including some (Jaime King, Jaime Pressly) who can often be seen on network television and others (Midori, Jesse Jane) who can't. And he had an eventful relationship with Pamela Anderson, culminating, in 2006, in a four-month marriage. (The woman he is currently dating isn't famous, and he is eager to keep it that way.) In September, 2007, at the MTV Video Music Awards, he got into a fight with another of Anderson's ex-husbands, Tommy Lee. The next month, he was arrested after a confrontation with a man he didn't know, during a late-night visit to a Waffle House in Atlanta. The story didn't harm—or, for that matter, alter—Ritchie's reputation. "Don't think I didn't get the joke before everyone else," he says. "The headline on TV: 'KID ROCK FIGHTING AT THE WAFFLE HOUSE'—what a fucking redneck! Thank God I didn't get in a fight at Ruth's Chris, or something. Can you imagine how bad that would have looked?"
The rap-rock boom didn't last, and some stars, like Fred Durst, of Limp Bizkit, never quite recovered from the notoriety they acquired on MTV. For a moment, it seemed as if Ritchie, too, might find himself yoked to a movement that no longer moved, especially because "Cocky," his 2001 album, sold slowly, compared with "Devil." Then, more than a year after "Cocky" appeared, the record company released its fourth and final single, a lovesick duet called "Picture," which Ritchie had written and recorded with Sheryl Crow. It was a Kid Rock song for people who didn't like Kid Rock, or didn't know they did. Country-music radio stations adopted it, and, over the years, country fans came to view Ritchie as their kind of guy.
"Picture" helped point Ritchie away from rapping and toward singing, which he found harder and, as he got older, more rewarding. "You can stay up till fuckin' 9 A.M. and go do a show rhyming—high," he says. "You can't do that with singing. You can't party and fuckin' sing." He got better by doing it every night, first as a break from all the rapping, and then, eventually, as the main attraction. A few years ago, he had another crossover hit, called "All Summer Long," which had lyrics about listening to "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd, set to the tune of "Werewolves of London," by Warren Zevon. (The two—and, therefore, three—songs share the same chord progression.) Some listeners considered this a neat trick, while others considered it cheating. But then, from an uncharitable perspective, Ritchie's whole career can seem like cheating: he has succeeded in an improbably wide range of genres, largely by convincing fans that liking him is more fun than hating him. This, more than anything, explains how he has outlasted and outshone so many peers who seemed better equipped for musical success.
One afternoon, as he considered his unlikely career, he seemed almost apologetic. "I just feel like people are settling, sometimes," he said. "They're so hungry for something real. Sometimes I feel like they're settling for me. I'm like, 'They really like this?' I ain't even that great a singer."
This was an unusually modest verdict, and after a beat he added a caveat: "But I'm the greatest entertainer!"
The story of a white boy entranced by the music of black Detroit is not a new one—it was Bob Seger's story, too, a generation earlier. "The white kids, like Mitch Ryder and me, we were trying to be as black as we could," Seger remembers. His rise coincided with the rise of Motown Records, and with the emergence of Aretha Franklin; around the country, those African-American stars defined the sound of the city. But with the arrival of hip-hop this story took an odd turn. Detroit has now produced three of the most prominent white rap acts of all time: Kid Rock, Eminem, and Insane Clown Posse, the cult-favorite duo. But, despite the fact that Detroit is now more than eighty per cent black, the area has never produced a major African-American hip-hop star.
When Ritchie was growing up, he scarcely realized that the local African-American hip-hop acts he loved, like Felix & Jarvis, weren't bound for national success. He used to sell LSD and marijuana with a punk-rock friend in high school, and he remembers the friend quizzing him on his musical taste—and, by extension, his identity. "He'd be like, 'You like niggers?' And I'd be like, 'I don't know—I just like the fuckin' music.' " Then, reconsidering, he said he might actually have offered an equivocal answer: "Maybe." Like lots of white kids who were obsessed with hip-hop, he wanted to believe that race didn't really matter, even though he probably suspected, too, that race was impossible to disentangle from the music's appeal. Because hip-hop had such a strong black identity, it forced him to consider what it meant to be white. "I'm thinking to myself when I'm twelve, thirteen years old, How am I going to be a fuckin' rapper when I have braces and I'm from Romeo?" In a fit of professional anxiety, he tried to pull his braces off with pliers; he succeeded mainly in mangling his teeth. Years later, he figured out the truth. "You could be a rapper with braces—if you were good," he says. "I think that's one thing hanging out in the 'hood taught me, more than anything. Because they'd accept me, and like me more, when I was just myself. When I was wearing my Vans skateboard shoes, looking like a little dirty white boy."
For Ritchie, being himself sometimes meant exaggerating himself—he became, in his rhymes, the ultimate dirty white boy, proud of his "Carhartt flannel and dusty jeans." His sensibility was working class, even though his background wasn't. This strategy may have been designed with black crowds in mind, but it worked just as well, if not better, in front of white crowds. "Not wacked / I don't try to act black," he rapped, and the implication was that he wasn't ashamed to act white, whatever that meant. "He knew who was buying his records," says Shafer, the artist currently known as Uncle Kracker. "Young white kids."
Over the years, this "dirty white boy" identity started to seem less ridiculous and more fundamental to Ritchie's music. In 1993, he released his first country song, a fairly straightforward version of "A Country Boy Can Survive," the defiant cultural-pride song by Hank Williams, Jr. As a boy, Ritchie had gone with his father to see Williams sing, and as he got older he became increasingly fascinated with Williams, a rowdy provocateur who made hits without quite making peace with the Nashville establishment he was born into. Hank Williams, Sr., who died when his son was three, remains the most revered figure in country-music history; his songs, plaintive but sly, are often described as "white man's blues." The brash, revved-up music of Hank Williams, Jr., by contrast, struck Ritchie as something more like white man's hip-hop; Williams impressed him as "the blackest white guy I've ever seen." Shafer, his childhood friend, remembers listening to the lyrics and being struck by the similarities: "He's talking about whiskey and pickup trucks, and we're talking about forties and low-riders."
In late 1999, as Ritchie's star was rising, he got in touch with Williams's manager, Merle Kilgore, to see if he might be able to meet his idol. Kilgore took a look at the Billboard charts, which showed "Devil Without a Cause" near the top, and said, "Hank, Jr., loves Kid Rock—we'd love to get him down here for a video shoot." The song was called "Naked Women and Beer," and Ritchie would be playing a rock star—a role he'd been rehearsing for years. When he turned up for the video shoot in Nashville, held in one of the city's less pretentious strip clubs, he was wearing a gold "K.R." ring. Williams walked up to him, looked at the ring, and said, "You like that nigger flash?" (This is Ritchie's version. Williams thinks he might have used the term "bling," instead.)
Ritchie was crestfallen. He remembers thinking, "My fuckin' hero's a racist!" He worked up the courage to look Williams in the eye, and said, "Yeah, motherfucker, I do."
Williams disappeared into his bus and returned wearing a similarly ostentatious "H.W." ring. "Me, too," he said, and the two men were friends by the end of the day. Williams gave Ritchie guitar lessons, and they often appeared together at awards shows and concerts, where Williams took to introducing Ritchie as "my rebel son." No doubt the friendship earned Williams some young new fans, but it was even more valuable for Ritchie: his "white boy" persona, combined with an endorsement from the countriest man alive, eased his passage into the clubby country-music industry, and he found himself spending so much time in Nashville that he bought a condominium there. "That gave me a lot of credibility," Ritchie says, about his friendship with Williams. "It's like if you're a rapper coming up, and Jay-Z's your boy." The overlapping worlds of country and classic rock came to feel like home to Ritchie, which made it easier for him to admit that the hip-hop scene never quite did. This is the melancholy undercurrent to Ritchie's otherwise triumphant career. "I realized that years ago—I couldn't, basically, be black," he says. "As much as I want to, I can't be a black rapper. I was like, I just fuckin' have to be myself."
This didn't mean that he had to abandon black music. His live band includes a saxophonist and a pair of back-up singers, who underscore the historical link between rock and R. & B. And a few years ago Ritchie recorded a song called "Care," which marked the first (and, no doubt, last) collaboration between the country balladeer Martina McBride and the Atlanta rapper T.I.; his record company tried in vain to convince BET to play the video. Despite his hip-hop roots, his music is never heard on urban radio stations. Considering the size of his social circle, and the direction of his career, it seems possible that he now has more African-American friends than fans. He is also a member of a mixed-race family: his son's mother is African-American, which means that his light-skinned son, raised by a white father, could—according to logic that Ritchie finds mystifying—be considered African-American, too. (In the Sean Penn video, Ritchie responds to an accusation of racism with mock outrage. He says, "My son's half black!") He used this stormy relationship as the basis for a long, bleak song called "Black Chick, White Guy," which appeared on "Devil Without a Cause." It's the only song on any Kid Rock album in which he utters hip-hop's most common racial epithet, in reference to a rival suitor: "Pretty girl in the ghetto—go figure / Yeah, she got macked by some dope-dealin' nigga."
Occasionally, the contradictory strands of Ritchie's life have threatened to trip him up. As he got deeper into country music and Southern rock, he sometimes displayed the Confederate flag, instead of the American flag, when he performed. (He said it was a salute to bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, not a political statement.) And so, last year, when the Detroit chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. honored him for his philanthropic work, there was a small protest, led by activists who thought the organization should have taken a stronger stand against the flag. Standing onstage beside his son, who is now a sophomore at Belmont University, in Nashville, Ritchie called the distinction "the coolest award I have ever received in my lifetime," and pledged a hundred thousand dollars to local charities. He said, "I love black people!" In his view, there's no reason that a self-proclaimed redneck who waves the Confederate flag shouldn't embrace his local N.A.A.C.P. branch—depending on your priorities, and your taste for political irony, this notion might seem refreshing, or nonsensical, or worse. For Ritchie, crossing racial lines had the effect of underscoring the racial identity he started with; loving hip-hop helped him find a white identity he could believe in. And his late-career evolution only reinforces this bittersweet story: it suggests that members of different tribes mingle and collaborate when they're young, and then, as they get older, return to the tribes that raised them.
Ritchie has never portrayed himself as a liberal. In one old track, he raps, "God saved my soul—you save the fuckin' rain forest." But in recent years he has increasingly allied himself with the symbols of cultural conservatism: guns, flags, motorcycles, domestic beer, Nascar. Still, he was reluctant to become a celebrity endorser. In 2008, he called Obama's election "a great thing for black people," without quite saying he supported it. His decision to get more involved this year had a lot to do with Romney's willingness to sit down with him. He says he would have been happy to sit down with Obama, too, even though it's hard to imagine Ritchie endorsing him—he grew up Republican, and he remains skeptical about the size and efficacy of the welfare state. "I don't give a fuck if gay people get married," he says. (Although he also says, not entirely in jest, "I don't love anybody who acts like a fuckin' faggot.") "And I think they go too far with some of that pro-life stuff. I just want some nerds watching my money." Perhaps more important, he says that Paul Ryan agreed that if the Romney-Ryan ticket won they would convert the White House's basement bowling alley into a bow-and-arrow range.
Ritchie has a phrase he uses to describe the way he deals with the demands of the music industry. "I'll tickle your balls," he says. "I ain't sucking your fuckin' dick." He doesn't mind signing endorsement deals and corporate partnerships, especially if they help liberate him from the tyranny of radio program directors—the goal, for him, is to be, like Bob Seger, the kind of rock star whose career can sustain itself even without a constant stream of hits. He can't help but think of Radiohead: he thinks the band's music is "fuckin' garbage," but he marvels at the loyalty and tolerance of the band's fan base.
Ritchie already has plenty of diehard fans. He presides over an annual three-day Caribbean cruise called Chillin' the Most, which always sells out. And although he is outdrawn by hipper acts on the East and West Coasts, there are few rock singers of his generation who do better in the middle of the country. In Detroit, his ticket sales are stratospheric: to celebrate his fortieth birthday, last year, he performed in front of sixty thousand people at Ford Field. But when he recruited Rick Rubin to produce "Born Free" the idea was to make the kind of restrained, cohesive album that might keep finding new listeners for years, regardless of whether it was on the radio. Rubin asked Ritchie to record the album in Malibu, and he assembled a band of revered session players, including David Hidalgo, from Los Lobos, and Benmont Tench, from Tom Petty's band. The youngest musician in the room was Blake Mills, a virtuosic blues guitarist and an emerging indie-rock star, who is known for playing with ruminative acts like Fiona Apple and Band of Horses. He didn't know what to expect on the first day of recording, although he wasn't expecting much. "I went into it with my head down, going, 'I've just got to get through this,' " he says. "By the end of that day, I was going, Oh, my God! I can call up five friends and tell them, 'You're not going to believe it, but you're going to like the next Kid Rock record.' "
The album takes its inspiration from Seger's quieter, twangier songs, and Rubin pushed Ritchie's voice into its upper register, sacrificing some swagger for sweetness. It's a classic-rock album, in sound if not status—Ritchie doesn't rap at all, although his salesman's energy prevents the old-fashioned songs from sounding too polite. Mills was proud of the guitar riff he contributed to the title track, although, as a committed liberal, he was significantly less proud to hear it deployed by the Romney campaign. And "For the First Time (In a Long Time)," the album's finale, is a Kid Rock song for people who don't even like "Picture": he sings the whole thing in a quiet falsetto, and it ends with a willowy guitar solo by Mills, which ripples and wobbles for nearly three minutes. Ritchie now calls "Born Free," with a smirk, his "poignant" record.
"Born Free" was driven by Rubin's conviction that Ritchie might be a moodier, more compelling singer when he wasn't playing party host. Even now, Mills can't help but imagine that one day Ritchie could make an even sparer, darker album, full of all the fears and doubts that he usually avoids putting into his music. This, of course, is a cliché, too: the confessional singer-songwriter is no less a stock character than the extroverted rock star. In fact, Ritchie isn't a terribly ambitious rock or country songwriter: his lyrics are often sketchy or gestural, full of lists ("Monday's just a bitch / Tuesday's such a bother / Wednesday's like watching dead flowers grow") and references to other singers and songs. His real talent is delivering those lyrics in a way that makes the sound sturdy, instead of simple. He aims for resonance, rather than an illusion of honesty or originality: his best songs sound as if they can stand the test of time, probably because bits and pieces of them already have.
"Rebel Soul" is louder and goofier than Ritchie's previous album. Rubin says, "It reflects the kind of music he enjoys making, left to his own devices." But there is no rapping, and you can hear a trace of "Born Free" in Blake Mills's tangled blues riffs. In his home studio, in Clarkston, Ritchie sat at a mixing board with Mike E. Clark, one of his main engineers. As they listened to mixes, Ritchie tried to decide whether a backing vocal track needed more reverb, or whether a drumbeat was arriving a fraction of a second early. "Born Free" sold well, even without a radio hit, but he realizes that he is probably closer to the end of the Kid Rock phenomenon than to the beginning. "I wish I would have saw Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen in their heydays, and I never did," he says. "If you want to see Kid Rock in his heyday, this is probably going to be the end of it, the next few years." He laughed. " 'Bawitdaba'-ing every night has taken a toll on the old knees."
The new album is, by design, a fractured collection, ranging from a pro-military anthem to a gospel valediction. "Happy New Year," a revised version of a song by the singer-songwriter John Eddie, seems likely to become a perennial hit—when Ritchie first heard it, he couldn't believe that such a song didn't already exist. It's a celebratory song with a wistful melody (not wholly unlike "Auld Lang Syne"), and although the lyrics weren't written with Ritchie in mind, they evoke both the life he hasn't quite grown into and the one he hasn't quite left behind:
I'll quit cursin', I'll quit drinkin'
I'll be a better person, but tonight I'm thinkin'
Let's get shitfaced, let's get shitfaced
Let's get into trouble, let's get outta this place
There is also, of course, "Cucci Galore," absurd and exuberant. It is easy to hear why Rubin scrapped it and why Ritchie brought it back. Part of the secret of Ritchie's enduring success is that it's hard to hate a man who's willing to make an ass of himself for your entertainment. And it matters, too, that he never perceives himself to be slumming, even when singing a song called "Redneck Paradise." It was recorded to sound like a late-night bar sing-along, but Ritchie's vision of redneck paradise is typically inclusive. He pointed out the "Hey!" chant that's hidden after the first chorus—a veiled salute to "Hip Hop Hooray," the old Naughty by Nature hit. The thought of Rubin's disapproving face made him even happier. "Being Kid Rock is so much more fuckin' fun," he said. "As much as I love Seger and Petty and Springsteen, I'm not one of those guys. And I like the fact that I can grab a turntable and scratch—and Springsteen can't." ♦


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Romney to Obama: More jobs, less Big Bird
Mitt Romney took President Obama to task about focusing on Big Bird, as he spoke to Iowans on Tuesday about jobs and the economy.
"These are tough times with real serious issues," Romney said at an event in Van Meter, Iowa. "So you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird. I actually think we need to have a president who talks about saving the American people and saving good jobs and saving our future and also saving the family farm."
The folks at Sesame Street are miffed by an Obama campaign ad featuring the 8-foot-2-inch star of the children's TV show. The ad mocks Romney's debate pledge to cut funding for PBS as a way to cut the deficit. Sesame Workshop has asked the Obama campaign to pull the ad, reports USA TODAY's David Jackson.
Romney was greeted Tuesday by protesters dressed up like Big Bird, Elmo and other Sesame Street characters, The Des Moines Registerreports. The Elmo protester shouted, "Trickle down economics does not tickle me."
And the gang, identified by the newspaper as supporters of the liberal Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, sang a ditty about the economy and Wall Street to the tune of the Sesame Street theme song. It began: "Stormy days ... taking our jobs away."


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Cyrus F. Jenkins Civil War Diary, 1861-1862
- Coverage Dates: 1861-1862
- Update Frequency: in process
- Audience: General, research, student
The Cyrus F. Jenkins Civil War Diary, 1861 - 1862, held at the Troup County Archives, chronicles Cyrus Franklin Jenkins' experiences as an enlisted man in the Meriwether Volunteers, Company B, 13th Georgia Infantry Regiment, during the first year of the war, June 1861 to March 1862. Jenkins vividly describes the early euphoria of the war and the regiment's campaigns in western Virginia (now West Virginia) as part of Floyd's Brigade and in Savannah in Lawton's Brigade. The regiment took part in skirmishes at Sewell Mountain, Laurel Hill, and Whitemarsh Island. While traveling, Jenkins also remarks on the changing scenery he encounters. Additionally, his account of camp life highlights the medical care available to Confederate soldiers at this stage in the war. Jenkins was killed at Spotsylvania, Virginia, on May 12, 1864.
- Database Provider: Digital Library of Georgia.
Express Link (bookmark): http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=jenk


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MIKE SMITH, GAME ON DUDE, WINNER: "I knew he was going to run today. I knew it from the post parade when we turned around to go to the gate. He was on his toes today, he was on fire. He's like that when he runs well. He ran big; I just had that feeling that he was going to. Down the backside he was happy, he was cruisin', he was well within himself. He was throwing numbers, I knew we were going fast; I actually went even faster this time than I did last time (San Antonio Feb. 8). I got yelled at for going fast last time and that was forty-six; we went forty-five today and that's at a mile and a quarter!
"Bob told me to trust him, that I would have a different horse this time. He didn't think he had him exactly where he wanted him for the San Antonio. Bob told me not to be down, that he didn't have him ready. He had him 110 percent today and when it comes to Bob, that's who you want to be riding for on big days.
"I knew he was going to have to run today because they came at me. But when they came at me he dropped to the ground. When he needs to, he fires.
"I knew they would have to be better than him today to beat him. Like I've said before, when he shows up he can run with anybody in the world. We may throw in a dud every now and then but he makes up for it!"
LUIS SAEZ, WILL TAKE CHARGE, SECOND: "He ran so hard. He's very good and was in good position all the way. At the half-mile pole, I saw Game On Dude going so comfortably. My horse still ran good. It's OK. I wanted to be following Mucho Macho Man, (because I thought that was the horse with the best chance to win)."
AARON GRYDER, BLINGO, THIRD: "He ran great. We knew we were up against some very good horses and he had to step up and I do believe he did. He ran a very good race. His first time going a mile and a quarter and he cut it real nice. He gave a good account of himself. It was his first time going the distance and he was still running down the lane. He had to run to pass Mucho Macho Man and I was very pleased with his effort. He runs hard. He's improving."
GARY STEVENS, MUCHO MACHO MAN, FOURTH: "He broke real well for me, and I was actually in a pretty good spot, and then Rafael (Bejarano, on Rousing Sermon) came up on me and made him move right along. I slipped to the outside, where I wanted to be, going into the back stretch. (Luis Saez) came with Will Take Charge and attacked me about the half-mile pole. That probably was a winning move had Game On Dude not been on his game today. I was fourth-best, and the champ arrived again today at Santa Anita, and Will Take Charge was second-best."
(Did your horse do anything differently today?)
"He was a complete professional – he warmed up good, ran good. I was very happy. The race really started at the half-mile pole when Luis engaged me and I couldn't go with him. I was basically empty at the 3/8 pole. That's a bad feeling in a race like this and on a horse like that when you know at the 3/8 pole that you don't have a chance to win."
BOB BAFFERT, GAME ON DUDE, WINNER: "They went fast but he was rockin', he was rollin'. The Dude showed up. Last time (the San Antonio), he wasn't ready . . . He had to do it today. I just told Mike Smith, 'When they expect you to be on the lead, you have to be on the lead. Just let him rip, do his thing and if it happens, it happens.'"
Asked about Game On Dude becoming the first-time three-time winner of the Big 'Cap: "Bernie (Schiappa) is the only guy (owner) here today. To me, it's an emotional win for the horse. It kills me when they knock on him, but we came in here quiet and that's the way I like to come in. We came in under the radar and we were ready for them."
KATHY RITVO, MUCHO MACHO MAN, FOURTH: "It's going to take us some time to figure it out (what happened). I'm going to watch it again."
Question: Mentioned that it didn't seem to be his day? "That happens."
NOTES: Game On Dude is the first horse to win the Santa Anita Handicap three times, in this, its 77th running. The winning owners are Joe Torre of Harrison, NY (Diamond Pride LLC); Lanni Family Trust of Pasadena; Ernest Moody of Las Vegas (Mercedes Stable, LLC); and Bernie Schiappa of Las Vegas. Today's on-track attendance was 27,121.


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For today's trivial item, we'll be looking at the 2013 hit 'Captain Phillips'.
Welcome to the Holiday Showdown! These expert wrappers had to wrap up bowling balls in the most discreet way possible
This modern, lightweight hairdryer from Dyson will totally transform your hair routine!
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Five years ago, they would have called it Dawsons Creek Music. Now however, the catch-all term for indie with a big gay heart is OC Music - funny how the barometer of taste changes, yet the songs they use do not.
Theoretically, Tegan & Sara** are no real different to say, Sixpence None The Richer - sweet, sweet female-vocal indie with a soft center and the potential to sell a billion records. Theoretically though, Seth OC is a potential indie studmuffin. The same applies - I just don't make the connection. Then again, Tegan & Sara are a little bit different to most...
Hailing from Calgary, Canada, the sisters who are known as much for their onstage banter as their bittersweet burbling indie-tronica have made this, their fourth album. The key to 'So Jealous_' is that it's a mall-prancing hit jukebox but with, y'know proper non-bubblegum pop sensibilities.
It's a classic mish mash of sweet and sour, such as the unrequited sunshine of 'Take Me Anywhere', or 'I Know I Know I Know_' - one of those classic balladic efforts with plaintive bass and tired vocals that should be really hackneyed and cliched yet seems to emote more than it possible should with sweet, burbling keys on top.
'Walking With A Ghost' is equally engrossing, combining yelping vocals with murmuring pop guitars. Yet it's 'Fix Up Up' which is the OC killer - as the duo croon "im not feeling it enough". See it brandished all over your heartbreak airwaves next season. Maybe.
It would be a crime if it didn't...
8Gareth Dobson's Score


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January 1997 - Newsletter 54
So this is 1997. Not too bad, so far from my point of view, but then I did manage to nip off for a few days while England was suffering the worst of the cold spell. Lucky dog.
This year is the 30th anniversary of our turning, what we laughingly call, professional. There we were (just out of school??) with offers to sing in folk clubs in such wonderful exotic places like Wolverhampton. Well, what other option did we have but to chuck in our 'proper' jobs and start hurtling up and down the country in search of fame and fortune. It's questionable whether we have achieved either of these goals but we have met and worked with some remarkable people and been to places even travel agents have neyer heard of. Nepal (natural home for us), Sarawak, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Ethiopia, Sudan, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Greece, Germany, Norway, Denmark and Spain. Not bad for lads from the village for whom a trip to Yeovil or Sherborne was a real event when we were nippers.
This seems to have hit the spot. I have had orders from Dorset ex-pats from all over the place aided somewhat by a couple of mentions in the Weekend Telegraph by our good friend Willie Poole. At one time Phil and Jenny at Classic Video couldn't keep up with sales and their machinery was running white hot. Phil was telling me lust yesterday that one of his machines cooked itself. Sorry mate.
Quite a few people have also purchased the 'Eastleigh 828' steam video as we have travelled round with the supermarket. If you are into steam then Classic have quite a good catalogue of videos you might like to purchase. Give Jenny a ring on 01963 363203 and I'm sure she will be very happy to send you a list.
The two concerts and the New Year Ceilidh all went with a swing. There is no doubt that singing in your own back yard is more nerve racking than anywhere else. The day after you can meet your audience shopping in Sherborne and they will quickly let you know if something was amiss. Happily, so far, I have only met with compliments and smiling faces.
Many thanks to those who make things run smoothly. John & Jean on the door; Ray, who not only looks after the hall but cooks delicious pasties etc. for the New Year; the staff at The Abbey Pharmacy who sell tickets and Phil and Val of The Sweeterie who act as our Yeovil Agents.
A very special mention too for those people who sneak in extra raffle prizes. Don't think we haven't noticed. We start off with about a dozen prizes and finish up with about 20. Very little is said most of them lust appear by magic. It's very generous of you and much appreciated. It all helps the evening along.
We have two lined up for this year. The first is for Grasmere Music in April and this will be all traditional songs and Morris Dance music. Release day is not known but I should imagine sometime in the autumn. The second is for the Dorset County Archives. They are trying to raise money to keep the many documents which are in need of restoration in readable condition so we are creating an appropriate mix of traditional Dorset songs, readings and poems to help boost their finances. This will be launched on 4th October in Dorchester at The Corn Exchange where we shall be performing much of the material in concert.
SHERBORNE 15th FEBRUARY
Sherborne Arts Association is organising a day of music and dance workshops topped off with a Family Ceilidh in the evening at The Digby Hall. Guests include Tim Van Eyken (a young man who we have watched develop into a wizard musician, particularly on melodeon); Colin Thompson (fiddle) who has played with various bands and has helped us in the past with our 'Cider & Song' radio series; Knobs & Knockers dance team and a Bhangra Dance Team who perform traditional dances from Asia.
The workshops run from 10 am until 5pm and the Ceilidh starts at 7.30 pm. For more details ring the Arts centre on 01935 813433.
Even if you do not play an instrument the evening should be well worth the effort. The variety of talent lined up is tremendous. Make a day of it, you can always wander round our lovely town. It does take some beating.
Oh, and by the way, we will be involved as well.


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|State Vigilance means business, Khoda heralds accountability in Social Welfare, Rural Development & Education Department
Jehlum Post News/Jammu/Apr 22, 2015/In a major drive to implement institutional reforms to prevent corrupt practices in various departments, the State Vigilance Commission Wednesday held meeting with the department of Public Health Engineering/Irrigation & Flood Control Department, Public Works Department (Roads & Buildings) and Health & Medical Education Department. Among major decisions taken to check malpractices, it was directed to all these departments to strictly follow e-tendering, e-processing and e-payment of all works indented and executed. The departments shall upload all the tendered works on website. The works under implementation along with cost involved shall also be uploaded without delay to ensure that vigil from the general public acts as a deterrent against any corrupt practices. The complaints originating from public regarding any deviation on ground from the description given on website will be freely entertained by the Commission and Vigilance Organization. Mechanism
to introduce transparency was also discussed at length and directions issued to ensure deduction of TDS and recording of PAN details in payments made to contractors. Withdrawal of money through self cheques and later its disbursement to beneficiaries should be stopped and the Administrative Secretaries shall ensure that all payments of this nature are
made by way of transfer direct in to bank accounts of the concerned. The officers were directed to ensure execution of quality works. It was also impressed upon the officers not to resort to bifurcation of works to avoid permissions of higher authorities. Health Department will be taking suitable measures to check spurious medicines and simultaneously Vigilance Organization will take necessary measures to check unholy collusion between Govt. officials and those selling spurious medicines or sub-standard medicines. Suitable teams will be constituted by Director Vigilance for this purpose. The officers were directed to make maximum use of technology to minimize public interface to check corruption at source.The Chief Vigilance Officers and other Departmental Vigilance Officers were directed to speed up the disposal of complaints pending with them which have been referred from time to time by Vigilance Organization. They were directed to initiate suo-motto action on complaints and in irregularities coming to their notice which is provided under law.
At present number of pending complaints of corruption with Public Health Engineering/Irrigation & Flood Control Department, Public Work's Department and Health Department are 547, 394 and 386 respectively. The Chief Vigilance Officers and Departmental Vigilance Officers have been tasked to ensure completion of these enquiries within three months. Meanwhile Social Welfare Department whose review was taken by Vigilance Commission on 4th of March, 2015, has initiated implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer scheme and the payments to beneficiaries under various schemes directly into bank accounts are progressing. For better efficiency in transmission of benefits these schemes are being linked to Adhar Cards which will ensure 100% hassle free implementation of DBT scheme.
The Social Welfare Department has started holding of special camps for preparation of Adhar Cards of beneficiaries. Post matric scholarships are also now being paid by way of direct transfer into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. Details of bank accounts of beneficiaries are being collected for direct remittance of pre-matric scholarships also. In furtherance of instructions given to Education department in a similar meeting, the Complaints Monitoring Cell has been constituted to speed up progress of all enquiries and complaints. The Rural Development Department in furtherance of the instructions given by Commission has prepared a paper identifying loopholes existing in different schemes along with the mechanism for checks and balances which will be implemented in consultation with the Commission to check leakage of funds.The officers were directed to develop strong internal Vigilance mechanism and work in tandom with Commission to eradicate corruption at different levels. Today's meeting was Chaired by Sh. Kuldeep Khoda, Chief Vigilance Commissioner, and attended by Sh. R. K. Jerath, Vigilance Commissioner, Mrs. Gous-ul-Nisa Jeelani, Vigilance Commissioner, Sh. Rohit Kansal, Commissioner/Secretary, PWD(R&B) Department, Sh. Parvaiz Malik, Commissioner/Secretary, PHE/I&FC, Sh. Jatinder Singh, Secretary, SVC Sh. Alok Puri, IGP Vigilance Organization, Additional Secretaries, Chief Vigilance Officers/Departmental Vigilance Officers of various departments, Administrative Officer, Associated Hospitals, Govt. Medical College, Jammu and other senior officers of the Commission& Vigilance Organization and respective departments.
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The controversy around Nestle's Maggi noodles has caused panic throughout the nation and it doesn't look like it will die down any time soon.
After the initial test results by Uttar Pradesh Department of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed harmful levels of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lead in Maggi, various states across India and even Bangladesh conducted tests on Maggi to find out whether the food product is safe or not.
The controversy around Maggi has led to tests being conducted across the country.
The entire controversy began when the UP FDA last month asked Nestle India to withdraw a batch of Maggi noodles "which were manufactured in February 2014" after it found high levels of added MSG, a taste enhancer, in the noodles and lead beyond permissible limits.
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Fun to Drink Cup Deep Sea 270ml - Drinking Cup
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Oakland School for the Arts Students Create with Meaning
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) in California. OSA was founded in 2002 and is a public charter school with just over 600 students in grades 6 through 12. In addition to rigorous academics, each student specializes in one of the following disciplines: circus arts, dance, digital media, instrumental music, figure skating, literary arts, production design, theatre, visual arts, or vocal music. It was wonderful to walk the hallways of OSA and pass dance studios, music studios, art studios, biology and Spanish classrooms. I saw students wearing leotards, toting instrument cases (sometimes larger than the students themselves), sketching in notebooks, getting feedback on the latest apparel they designed, taking photos, and singing. The halls were buzzing with much more than just talent– there was so much student creativity, energy, and passion!
The day I visited coincided with the Digital Media class' Framing Day. Framing Day is the day when students frame and hang their recently completed work. In this case, students were hanging their posters celebrating each of the 30 articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The posters were created in AdobePhotoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign because Heidi Cregge, chair and instructor of Digital Media, uses this assignment to teach students about how these three programs work together and can be used in an integrated way.
Students' posters were very impressive! Each one intrigued, provoked, and drew in the audience. As always, young people never fail to amaze me with their creativity and passion for making our world a better place. Check-out some of their work below and on their slideshow.
Izzy and Domenico with their posters
Robin and Ryan with their posters
Emilio with his poster (co-created with Ciaran) & Izzy and Takai after hanging posters.


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Interactive Lab
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Evolution of Large Scale Structure in the Universe
Note: Units 10 and 11 make use of this interactive lab to demonstrate concepts relevant to physics on a cosmic scale.
When astronomers were first able to make detailed three-dimensional maps of distant galaxies, they were surprised to find that the galaxies in our universe are not distributed randomly, but instead gather into sheets and filaments. Cosmologists think that this large-scale structure arises from the growth of density variations, seeded by quantum mechanical fluctuations in the earliest moments of the birth of the universe. To test theories about the formation of large-scale structure, they run simulations of the evolution of our universe from the Big Bang to the present, using massive supercomputers. In this interactive lab, you can vary two of the most important cosmological parameters ( "Omega_M," the average matter density, and "sigma_8," the amplitude of density fluctuations) and then run the simulation to try to find which settings most closely match the observed matter distribution of the universe we inhabit.
These simulations were provided by Dr. Raul Angulo, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany.


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Boxer Dog Painting Customized Print of Original boxer dog painting Blue Background Personalized dog gift idea
Hand signed dog art print by Oscar Jetson. Choose a size from above the 'add to cart' button. My prints are reproduced on 260gsm Matte paper using a professional giclee printer and closely resemble the original artwork. I ship worldwide. Please note you will be charged in £GBP at checkout, this is a live conversion so the price you see is the price you pay. I can create custom drawings and paintings from your photos, contact me to discuss.
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