That’s just the way it is

March 30, 2026March 30, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The title track from Bruce Hornsby’s new album.

Bruce Hornsby is having a moment, and good for him.

Once you start looking beyond his only No. 1 hit, “The Way It Is,” you realize the guy has been playing in your background for years. Decades.

Hornsby has worked with almost everybody worth listening to. Leon Russell. Clannad. Bonnie Raitt. Bob Dylan. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The Grateful Dead.

He co-wrote “The End of the Innocence” with Don Henley and played on the track with Henley and Wayne Shorter.

That’s a tune with legs, and you can still hear them kicking ass 37 years later:

O beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They’re beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

Some of Hornsby’s playmates appear on the new album, “Indigo Park,” due out April 3. Raitt, who sings on “Ecstatic,” told The New York Times that she treats herself to a live recording of her friend performing “Dreamland” before taking the stage each night.

“The guy is just still diving deep and improving and playing hours a day and stretching,” she said. “He’s the one musician I would have if I could only have one on a desert island.”

The new album came, as new ideas often do, when Hornsby had been hoping to take a break. Nope. The title song arrived first and dragged the others along to keep it company.

Hornsby told The Times that “Indigo Park” is something of a glance at the rear-view mirror.

“This is the first record where I’ve really dealt with looking back,” he said. “On a lyrical level, I’ve always been kind of pushing forward. But this time I thought, ‘OK, you’re 70, [expletive]’.’”

Sounds like he’s still moving forward to me. Don’t give up the driver’s license yet, Bruce. Try to make the ecstatic last.

Serfs on safari

March 29, 2026March 29, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

What organizers estimate to be our biggest No Kings crowd yet in Montgomery Park on Saturday.

Bigger and better? Yes and no.

Albuquerque’s third No Kings rally topped its predecessors in terms of turnout; organizers say we had 50,000 attendees here, with more than 8 million nationwide.

And the crowd, while still heavy on gray hair (and no hair), seemed to have more young people than did the previous editions.

A couple of smiling young folks from the Party for Socialism and Liberation buttonholed us, passing along a flyer for a May Day rally and general strike. The Democratic Socialists of America said they’d be around, but once again, no confirmed sightings.

But emcee Robert Luke seemed to have some trouble generating a solid call-and-response from the throng, which really didn’t get fired up until special guest speaker Stacey Abrams brung the heat. (Respect to the band ShyGuy, which tore up a stout cover of Green Day’s “American Idiot.”)

It was the march that put a smile on my face. The 3-mile route from the park wound north on San Mateo, east on Montgomery, south on Louisiana, and back to the park via Comanche, and we flat filled our half of the road, singing, chanting, and waving at passersby.

One group of youngsters could really sing, at one point tackling Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” with enthusiasm if not 100 percent accuracy. Lots of horn honking, most of the single-digit salutes involving an upraised thumb, and only one small, semiorganized group of dissenters at the far side of Comanche and Louisiana, with a sign that said something like “No Commies or Socialists In Our Neighborhood.”

I sang, “I am a commie, and so is your mommy” at them. Not as melodious as the kids, but what the hell, I ain’t Bruce Springsteen. Anyway, you know the rule: While smashing the State, kids, keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.

**50,000 people? That’s what they say. …**

El Paddy-o

March 28, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

The backyard maple looks like it’s yearning for that *canale* to deliver a little water. Nope.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. Off we go for another hot lap around Old Sol.

For a present the Universe gave me a rotten night’s pre-birthday sleep, then followed up with gale-force winds, airborne allergens, dust, and other particulates, and a head full of boogers, so there was no 72-mile bike ride. Not even a 72-minute ride. In point of fact, there was no ride at all.

Except the one in Herself’s Honda to El Patio on Rio Grande for a largish platter of sinus-flushing green chile chicken enchiladas with papas, beans, and sopaipilla, which as always was excellent. We had to eat indoors, though. It’s a rare day indeed when we shun El Patio’s patio.

Today dawned coolish and should remain so for our No Kings rally down at Montgomery Park. I’d like to shoehorn a ride into the day’s activities at some point, but smashing the State takes priority.

If the State tries to deploy chemical weapons, well, I’ll be armed with a little gas of my own. Turnabout is fair play.

27?

March 27, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 37 Comments

After a largely sleepless night that may or may not have been age-related I awakened to the idea of flipping the script on this whole birthday deal.

“Instead of 72 I will be 27,” I decided.

But after further illumination via coffee I concluded that it would be a losing proposition in the long term.

Sure, I’d be 27 this year, 37, the next, then 47 … you get the picture.

But by 2031 I’d be tied with myself at 77 and after that the numbers go sideways at high speed.

So I guess it makes sense to be 72 today.

Beats being a freshly hatched egghead like the one pictured above, in Harundale, Md., circa 1954. What might he turn out to be if he’d gotten his start on March 27, 2026?

No, don’t ask A.I. I don’t want to think about it.

No kings (just one royal pain)

March 26, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment

Let’s give the TV-addled stumblebum a show worth watching on Saturday.

Yes, kids, it’s almost that time again — time to hit the streets and make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lard.

More than 3,000 No Kings events had been scheduled as of a couple weeks ago, with organizers and supporters alike hoping for a mammoth turnout:

Last June, more than five million people took to the streets across more than 2,100 events during the coalition’s first day of action. Then, more than seven million people protested across more than 2,700 events last October. The March 28 mobilization is the next step in this growing movement, with organizers anticipating it will be one of the largest single-day nonviolent nationwide protests in U.S. history.

It’s not a riot going on, or at least it shouldn’t be. And with any luck at all we won’t all wind up on Cellblock No. 9, wearing bruises and zip-ties. Here in The Duck! City we’re gonna be in a park, with shade trees and music, even a march! (Cue the revolution scene from “Reds,” but without all that winter garb.)

Rallies and marches can feel a tad performative, mostly because they are. But they help you remember that you’re not alone, it’s not just you or the Voices in your head, there really is something of a problem here, and if we’re lucky, and there are enough of us intent on doing something about it, we can use ballots instead of bullets because the last game in town that needs a shot in the arm these days is the funeral racket.

A mass thumbing of the national noses may also give an atomic wedgie to a certain diapered dictator at some point during his 24 hours per diem of TV-watching, assuming the legacy media actually turns on and tunes in.

Which is always something of an assumption. So, before you head out the door to your local No Kings gathering, call a couple TV stations and invite them to join the party.

No, not that party. Whaddaya think this is, a Warren Beatty movie?