Gonna be a busy day. Delaware’s primary elections wind up today – polls close at 8 p.m. – and the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump begins at 9 p.m., about the time primary results should be coming in. We’ll have an open thread for debate watchers and another for primary watchers.

House Republicans are yet again threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue shut down the government unless they get what they want. This time it’s a bill that would force people to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. It stands no chance in the Senate, of course, not least because shutting down the government just before a big election probably isn’t going to win their party any votes.

Ron DeSantis had his hopes for national office smashed, but that hasn’t stopped him from running Florida as a literal police state. He deployed state police to the homes of people who signed a ballot petition that will let voters add abortion rights to the state constitution. Critics say it’s purely for voter intimidation purposes, as the deadline for challenging signatures has passed.

Ever wonder why all those Republicans who initially scorn Donald Trump come crawling back in supplication? Mark Leibovich has the answer, and it’s something Trump told him early in the 2016 primary campaign that he eventually won.

I was struck by one theme that Trump kept pounding on over and over: that he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers,” by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings.

“I will roll over them,” he boasted, referring to the flaccid field of Republican challengers he was about to debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that September. They were “puppets,” “not strong people.” He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating.

“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”

As for the people who vote for Trump, his strongest supporters aren’t who you think. Yes, they live in rural areas and earn less than urban elites, but they’re not the poor people, they’re the local gentry – in the words of author Arlie Russell Hochschild, people who are doing well within a region that was not – resentful that they’re culturally marginalized. I guess that’s why you see boat parades for Trump, which always made me wonder, “What the fuck are you whining about? You can afford a fucking boat!”

The floor’s yours.

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on here. Yes, of course it’s a parody of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” but what seem to be surreal mid-’60s Dylan lyrics all have something in common. The title itself is a clue, but I didn’t catch on until he got to “Madam I’m Adam.”

The song appeared on Yankovic’s 2003 album “Poodle Hat,” but he wrote it in 2002, a numerical palindrome. He explained, “Well, I thought, ‘I wonder if I could write a song completely out of palindromes?’ … So I started putting the rhymes together and putting the verses together and basically making a poem out of these palindromes. And I looked at them and I thought, ‘Well, this … this is really just a random jumble, but it looks like it should mean something.'” That’s when he realized it sounded like an outtake from “Highway 61 Revisited.”

The Mercury Prize, awarded for the best album by a British or Irish act, had an upset winner last week. English Teacher, a fledgling post-punk band from Leeds, took home the £25,000 first prize for their debut album, “This Could Be Texas,” beating out the heavily favored Charli xcx’s “Brat.” Even the band seem surprised; lead singer Lily Fontaine said, “We just thought we’d make a band. What do we do now?” Not visit America, apparently. Earlier in the week the band announced they were cancelling a planned U.S. tour.

“This Could Be Texas” earned high marks from many critics, but it hasn’t paid off yet. English Teacher was featured in a Guardian article back in April about touring being a money-losing proposition for most bands and musicians living hand-to-mouth. Fontaine and guitarist Lewis Whiting said they were reduced to sofa surfing while they were recording the album.

“The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” is the second track on the LP, and was the tune they played live when they appeared on Jules Holland’s live music showcase.

If you want to encounter soul music you’ve never heard before, the seven-CD set “Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos,” released last summer, represents a treasure trove. Archivist and producer Cheryl Pawelski spent 17 years combing through unlabeled demo tapes to unearth songs that had been recorded by the Memphis label’s songwriters and musicians before its demise in the mid-’70s.

It took her years just to listen to 2,000 hours of tapes between her other Grammy-winning work producing vintage reissues and restoring film soundtrack albums. She eventually found 600 viable songs, but some couldn’t be rescued even with modern studio tools. After lots of remastering Pawelski winnowed the material down to 146 tunes worth releasing. More than half were demos of songs eventually recorded by various artists, but 66 of them had never been heard before.

The poor quality and vast quantity of the old tapes was only half the challenge. To figure out who was singing each song Pawelski had to enlist the help of some of the label’s surviving musicians and songwriters. On most of the tunes they were able to recognize who was singing, but one song, apparently titled “Walk on Back,” stumped them. They theorized that the recording was made by an amateur group that won studio time in a radio station contest. Its gospel-flavored doo-wop is catchier than a lot of the professional efforts in the box set.

One reason rock is fading away: Gen X bands just don’t have the staying power of, say, the Rolling Stones. For example Ween, the oddball alternative duo from New Hope, Pa., just disappointed its small but dedicated fan base by cancelling a short tour, including a sold-out show at the Mann Music Center, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 1994 “Chocolate and Cheese” album. The official cause: Dean Ween’s mental health wasn’t up to the rigors of the road.

Ween officially started in the early ’80s, but Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, who dubbed themselves Gene and Dean Ween, had been partners in hijinks since meeting in a junior high typing class. Their long friendship and liberal drug consumption led to a lot of absurd humor that reminded some critics of Frank Zappa. A more accurate doppelganger might be They Might Be Giants, another duo that injected offbeat humor into a vast array of musical styles and had a brief burst of popularity in the ’90s before settling into cult-band status.

For the first decade of their existence Ween was just Freeman, Melchiondo and pre-recorded rhythm tracks, even in concert, but they fleshed out their sound when they landed a major label contract in the ’90s. They even had a couple of singles that made the Alternative Rock chart, but probably reached their widest audience with the 2004 “SpongeBob Squarepants Movie.” SpongeBob’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said the duo’s 1994 LP “The Mollusk” was one of the show’s main inspirations. He even chose this tune to play over the closing credits, which explains why it has 22 million hits on YouTube.

To people of a certain age – say, 80 – James Darren, who died yesterday at age 88, will always be Moondoggie, the handsome male lead in “Gidget.” That now-ignored 1959 film made Sandra Dee a star, introduced the country to the surfing scene that would sweep teen culture, and made Darren a dual-threat teen idol.

The film’s producers were going to have Darren lip-sync the vocals, but he convinced them he could sing well enough. He was right. His performance kicked off a singing career that included a couple of Top 10 hits and a dozen LPs before he turned to acting and directing in the late ’70s.

As a singer Darren was no Elvis, but he was a better actor. If you’re younger you might remember him as the co-star of the mid-’60s TV series “The Time Tunnel” or from the cast of “T.J. Hooker.” And if you’re a Star Trek fan of any age, you might know him best as Vic Fontaine, the holographic lounge singer who appeared in several episodes of “Deep Space Nine,” including a couple with meaty acting scenes. Here he performs a Sinatra classic with the late, great Rene Auberjonois as Odo on – or rather, at – the piano, from the 1998 episode “His Way.”

Is Adele pulling a Greta Garbo? The British pop icon announced during her concert in Munich the other night that once her Las Vegas residency ends in November, “I will not see you for an incredibly long time. … I’ve spent the last seven years building a new life for myself, and I want to live it now.”

She didn’t say she was retiring, but Greta Garbo didn’t, either. Like Adele, Garbo had been the top star of her day – playing the tragic lover was her specialty, just like Adele – and was still popular when, at 36, she stepped away from her career. She never returned.

Adele Adkins is also 36. It might sound young, but she’s already spent half her life as a recording artist. She titled her debut LP “19” because that was her age when she wrote and recorded it. “Chasing Pavements” was her first single to make the Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 21 in 2008.

The video, recorded before she started glamming herself up, is a reminder of how young she was. Two years later “Rolling in the Deep” hit No. 1, the first of her five chart-topping singles from her three chart-topping albums (“19” only made it to No. 4). Her last LP, “30,” was released in 2021, and she said she currently has no plans for any more.

As El Som noted in today’s Open Thread, Jack White has joined the veritable seven-nation army of musicians who’ve demanded Trump’s campaign stop using their music for rallies and online videos. The songs and artists who don’t want to be associated with Trump would make a long and varied playlist. Some of the artists have voiced distaste for him personally, though few as bluntly as White. Others seem more intent on protecting their rights to the songs.

I considered making a playlist of all the tunes Trump has been told to stop using, but it would be a weird one – Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” next to the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” next to the Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” and so on.

At some point, though, isn’t it just easier to ask people for permission? Why can’t they just stick to the Trumper musical brigade – Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Jason Aldean? And why aren’t they playing Kanye and the clutch of B-list hip-hoppers who’ve endorsed Trump at his rallies in Arizona and Montana? Heh. I crack myself up sometimes.

The latest protest was lodged by Abba, or more properly their record company, over the use of three songs. “Dancing Queen” seems an odd choice, but “Money, Money, Money” speaks directly to a guy like Trump, even if it sounds like it’s coming from the mouth of Melania.

The song was released as the follow-up single to “Dancing Queen,” an international No. 1 in 1976. While it nearly duplicated that success in the UK, where it reached No. 3, but stalled at No. 56 on the Hot 100.