Rick Raw: Ken Will Morton Live at Euro Street – A Rare Quality Songwriter Emerges from The Throng

By Rick Grant Music Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

A couple of years ago, I covered Ken Will Morton at the European St. On Beach Blvd., since then, Ken has been busy touring and recording for Sojourn Records. Slowly but surely, Ken has been making his bones as a quality songwriter, rising above the tangled jungle of wannabes.

So, I was curious about Ken’s new music and album "True Grit" and decided to crawl out of my self imposed exile from live music to catch his set at the European Street last Saturday night. I previewed "True Grit" on Rhapsody before covering Ken live.

The album was slickly produced and has a quasi-Buffalo Springfield vibe. The sound quality and mix are flawless. Overall, the work represents Ken as a top rated songwriter and singer, whose gritty voice is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen.

Ken is a great believer in just let it happen. To overcome any diversity he jokes with the crowd.
In a bizarre pre-show incident, Ken was accidently locked in his friend’s car. He was writing a set list and she took the keys and locked the doors. Ken was trapped like a car thief. The car wouldn’t let him out until someone rescued him.

As a seasoned road dog, Ken took it in stride and joked about it to the audience. In any live gig, Murphy’s Law is in play. The show was booked as a songwriters circle with veteran songsmith Bill Sheffield. It was news to Ken, who went with the flow.

Ken’s solo set was a compilation of his songs from previous albums plus new material from "True Grit." Remarkably, Ken’s songwriting passes my test: "Would I listen to this album multiple times? The answer is yes!"

The title song, "True Grit" is a folk anthem lauding the salt of the earth people who struggle every day to make it to the next day. Ken performed many other songs that his fans associate with him, such as his "Deadliest Catch" song he wrote for the Discovery reality show, "Oh My Goodness."

The song will be heard in the background on this Tuesday night, June 22, at 9:00 pm on the new episode in which Captain Phil has a stroke and is carried off the ship. He later died in the hospital at only 53. Connect with Ken at www.myspcae.com/kenwillmorton

Halfway through his solo set, Ken brought up Bill Sheffield to jam with him. The format allowed Ken to play a song and Bill to play one of his original tunes. Both experienced guitarists played backup to each other despite not knowing each other’s songs. It worked out great. As Ken said, "Bill has scary skills."

Bill Sheffield has toured for years and released five albums of his blues styled folk music. Like Ken said, he bought a new energy to the room with is clever songs like the witty "I Don’t Hate Nobody."

Bill’s body of work is impressive. His songs have contemporary lyrics with his finger-picking blues style of playing and his excellent slide work. His new album, "In Other Words" joins my car collection of select music. You can find out more about Bill at www.myspace.com/billsheffield or at www.billsheffield.com

Incredibly, over the years, since Bob Dylan, and Neil Young set the standards for folk rock, roots music has burgeoned into a very crowded field. Over my 28 year career I’ve heard legions of would be songwriters who were mediocre at best. Now, it’s every mothers son and daughter’s ambition. "Mom, I want a $3,000 Martin for Christmas."

In contrast, Ken Will Morton has quickly risen above the cacophony of other folk artists who produce poorly written songs and go nowhere. Ken is finally breaking big and will be again playing the Athfest in Athens, Georgia June 25, 2010.

Rick Raw: Madoff’s South Florida Twin Scott Rothstein Ran $1.2 Billion Ponzi Scheme–Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

Big time politically connected lawyer, Scott Rothstein followed Bernie Madoff to the slammer for running his Ponzi scheme and bilking clients out of $1.2 billion in fraudulent investments. Rothstein was just sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for his fraud. At 47, Rothstein’s prison term is a life sentence.

There is no parole in federal prison. Rothstein will be dead or 97 years old when he gets out. The sentence sends a message to people who would consider perpetrating this level of fraud to think twice. Madoff is serving two life sentences as his retirement. .

U.S. District Court Judge James I. Cohn gave Rothstein more prison time than federal prosecutors requested. He threw the book at Rothstein’s ass.

"Today’s sentence punishes the defendant for his thievery and hopefully brings some sense of justice to the victims of this massive fraud," said U.S. Attorney Wilfred A. Ferrer in Miama, Florida.

Rothstein was dubbed "the Bernie Madoff of South Florida". He used his Fort Lauderdale law firm to con wealthy investors into buying shares in large settlements from nonexistent court cases. He paid his investors a form of "interest" from the money he received from new investors.

Inevitably, the Ponzi scheme eventually collapsed when Rothstein’s investors dried up.
Investors believed they would get their money back, plus "interest." Hedge fund managers, trust directors, and friends all invested with Rothstein.

Here is how he paid his clients interest: He told investors that he had clients who didn’t want to wait to collect their settlements, He told investors the clients would take a sharp discount if the money came sooner in a lump sum. The difference was the "interest" he paid the investors. Of course, the principle went into Rothstein’s bank account.

The scheme collapsed in October when Rothstein ran out of money to pay investors. To get out rich, Rothstein wired $16 million to an offshore account and fled to Morocco in a private jet.

Like Madoff, he left a trail of angry investors some of whom lost millions on the scheme. And like Madoff, staying alive in prison is Rothstein’s new worry. It doesn’t take much money to contract a hit inside prison.

Rothstein loved to flaunt his wealth with all the accouterments of the super-rich. He loved expensive cars, clothes, mansions, yachts, jets, and $35,000 watches. Easy come easy go was his motto.

Greed like power is as addictive as heroin. Rothstein knew that eventually he’d run out of money, but by then he thought he could escape justice on some far away island.

A contrite Rothstein returned from Morocco to the States two weeks later, explaining to CNN that "I went away to make sure I had my head on straight, I had been through all the emotional things and went through the hysterics–all the things you go through when you’ve done things you shouldn’t do."

How pathetic was that statement? Rothstein was trying to lessen the magnitude of his crime. "Oh, my head must have been twisted," he could have said.

Yeah, Rothstein had perpetrated a $1.2 billion fraud. He was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Poster. A criminal of his stature would be tracked down anywhere in the world by every law enforcement agency on the planet, and he knew it. When you defraud influential VIPs of over a billion dollars, there is no place to hide.

From wearing $6,000 suits to an orange jumpsuit is a long fall from grace. Pissed off investors will never let Rothstein have a minute of peace in jail. It’s just a matter of time before some inmate gladly shoves a shank in his heart for $200. In that respect, Madoff’s days are also numbered.

Even if Madoff and Rothstein are killed in prison, their deaths will not erase the damage they did. Nothing will make the investors whole again. The money has evaporated in the shock wave of their explosive frauds. Poof, there goes $1.2 billion.

Rick Raw: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Passed House–Repeal Faces Gaggle of Republican Bigots in Senate

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

The convoluted journey to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) law finally passed the House by 234 to 194 votes. Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against it. They used the lame excuse that "some military leaders need more time to study how a change in the law could affect the lives and readiness of service members."

This delaying tactic is particularly absurd since gays already represent at least 10% of active duty service members in all ranks right up to generals. We know this because many of these low and high ranking servicemen and women have left military service rather than live their gay lifestyles closeted under DADT.

Indeed, these skilled leaders, combat veterans, and technical experts served proudly and never flaunted their sexual preference. Until they came out as gay, their commanders and ranking officers had no idea they were gay.

When these gay servicemen and women left because of DADT, the military lost their valuable service. Over 13,500 service personnel chose to come out as gay rather than serve under DADT. 1,000 of those people were in critical career fields.

Now the DADT repeal bill hits the floor of the Senate like a smart bomb, with ranking Republican bigots lining up to filibuster the bill, led by Senator John McCain. President Obama and leading

Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. had supported the repeal.

The United States military is the only armed services in the world that had such a shameful law as DADT. Even the famous French Foreign Legion takes gay soldiers into their ranks.

The DADT repeal still faces a major hurtle. The amendment was written so that the repeal would not go into effect until after the pentagon publishes the results of a survey on how service members and their families view the change, and until the President, the Defense Secretary, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that the repeal will not affect the military’s ability to fight. Of course, the President and Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense have already backed the repeal.

Funny, the Joint Chiefs of Staff that have been fighting the repeal since it was announced. These old bigots don’t get it. There are so many misconceptions about gay military personnel, it borders on Machiavellian prejudice. Again, they serve now and no one has complained which makes this concern a devious strategy to derail the repeal.

President Truman didn’t ask for all these conditions when he wrote a presidential order to integrate the services in 1948. It wasn’t a cake walk. The various service commanders tried to circumvent the order by using loopholes, but by 1965, the services were fully integrated by African-Americans with every branch of the military recruiting black servicemen and women.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa, who served in the Iraq war, is the chief sponsor of the DADT repeal amendment. He said that when he was in Baghdad, "my teams did not care whether a fellow solider was straight or gay if they could fire their assault rifle or run a convoy down ambush alley and do their job so everyone would come home safely."

My guess is that the amendment will pass the Senate, despite the fierce opposition. But it will be dragged out months by this so called "survey," which could scuttle the amendment. President Obama should have written a presidential order and not given the Joint Chiefs of Staff any leeway to squash the amendment.

The slow moving repeal of DADT is another example of Obama’s lack of leadership.

Rick Raw: Memories of Gulf Fishing Shattered by Gulf Oil Spill–Oil Continues to Gush Out of Uncapped Pipe now at 40 Million Gallons

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

The apocalyptic Deepwater Horizon oil spill triggered childhood memories of traveling to Cedar Key on Florida’s Gulf Coast to go fishing with friends of the family. Like Mayport, Florida, Cedar Key is an unspoiled fishing village.

I’d accompany a jolly married couple on their 20 foot fishing boat for all-day fishing excursions. I have a vivid memory of the crystal clear waters of the Gulf. It was so clear, I could see the bottom and fish swimming around. It was amazing.

That pleasant image was shattered by the on-going month-long oil gushing from the BP’s broken oil well pipe, that has gushed out an estimated at 40 million gallons and counting.

Imagining the thick toxic oil mucking up the pristine Gulf water makes me sick. The oil has now reached the bayous and wetlands in Louisiana, destroying the ecosystem for many years to come. The disaster is now eclipsing all other oil spills and become a calamity of enormous destruction.

More significantly, another disaster is playing out in the black depths between the gusher and the coast. These petroleum toxins are killing sperm whales, large jellyfish, and even plankton, which is an important food source for the whale shark and other underwater creatures.

The oil contamination of the Gulf is spreading exponentially every day that gusher is not capped. In the long run, the oil spill could mean the entire Gulf of Mexico will become a dead sea with no wild life. The Big Oil executives could care less as long as they can continue pumping oil to satisfy the rising demand liquid gold.

Yes, it’s ironic that the skyrocketing demand for oil comes at a time when more and more influential people, like Ted Turner, are demanding that we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels in favor of wind, natural gas, solar, and nuclear power. But no, it’s falling on deaf ears.

Like supply and demand fuels the avalanche of drugs flowing into the United States from Mexico and Columbia, we demand our petrol to feed our precious internal combustion engines and shun electric, hybrid, or fuel cell power for our automobiles. The big V8 is still king despite the fact that the internal combustion engine is a primitive technology.

Every time some VIP lobbies to ban the internal combustion engine to reduce emissions, the Big Oil lobby starts lining palms in Washington. Many senators and congressmen were elected with Big Oil money.

Ultimately, it’s greed that holds back progress. And, that’s why we have 4,000 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, all with potential of being another Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Indeed, the politics of Big Oil hold back progress to eliminate the internal combustion engine.

The millions of cars running on gasoline are Big Oil’s ticket to ride with multi-billion dollar profits. They’ll fight to the death to prevent alternative energy sources from pushing Big Oil into the dark ages of declining profits.

When I sit and reminisce about those relaxing days fishing in the Gulf in that clear water, the memory quickly goes away by the dark thoughts of massive Gulf oil contamination and whole species of animals dying a horrible death.

Perhaps some good will come out of this catastrophe and wake up people to start demanding electric or fuel cell powered cars. We have long had the technology to replace the internal combustion engine with alternative power plants. So, let’s get off our asses and lobby to send Big Oil packing. We don’t need them anymore.