War framed the title phrase as a lament. Trump and his crew view it as an objective.

I have no idea why this band, despite several nominations, is not in the Hall of Fame. As a single this title track of the band’s fifth album went to No. 7 on the Hot 100, one of their dozen Top 40 hits; seven reached the top 10, though none made it to the top spot. The LP, released in late 1972, was the peak of the band’s career. It not only reached No. 1, Billboard named it the top-selling album of 1973 and it’s on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums list. The single was truncated from this 10-minute album version to 3:59.

The song got a jazz cover by saxophonist Sonny Stitt on his commercially aimed “Mr. Bojangles” album, released in 1973. He plays alto, his primary instrument, on this track; prolific studio percussionist Phil Kraus is the vibes man.

To the extent Damon Albarn is known in the United States, it’s for his work with his side project, the virtual band Gorillaz. His real band, Blur, never cracked the Top 40 in the U.S. despite enormous success in Britain. During the heyday of Britpop in the ’90s, Blur vied with Oasis as the genre’s pre-eminent band, scoring more than a dozen Top 10 singles and seven No. 1 LPs.

Their popularity hasn’t faded, either, at least on the album level. “The Ballad of Darren,” released in 2023, continued their string of No. 1 albums, though none of its singles was a hit. “Barbaric,” the third, didn’t chart. It’s about a broken relationship, but the lyrics of the chorus feel like they have a broader meaning.

We have lost the feeling that we thought we’d never lose
Now where are we going?
We have lost the feeling that we thought we’d never lose
And it is barbaric

Comic actor George Wendt, most famous for his role as “Cheers” barfly Norm Peterson, died at age 76 yesterday, the 32nd anniversary of the show’s last episode. He appeared on dozens of TV shows before and after the 11 years he spent on the sitcom, but was indelibly identified with the character he once said was “me with better writing.”

The writing was razor-sharp, and Wendt got a lot of the best lines. He was one of only three cast members to appear in all 275 episodes, and in each one he entered to a chorus of “Norm!” and a gave a snappy answer to an anodyne question. My favorite, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear” – was just one of many memorable comebacks. Norm was the last customer to leave the bar in the series finale, viewed by 40% of the national audience.

“Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” was voted the best TV theme of all time by both Rolling Stone readers in 2011 and TV Guide editors in 2013. Songwriter Gary Portnoy got the assignment after producers couldn’t get rights to their first choice, a tune he had written for a failed musical, “Preppies.” Two efforts were rejected before he came up with a demo of the one people know.

Producers couldn’t find a singer they liked better than Portnoy himself, and there are no backup singers – he provided all six voices on the chorus. Once the show took off, Portnoy recorded a longer version that was released in 1984 and made the charts at No. 58.

Big news for fans of the Doors: The bust that decorated Jim Morrison’s tomb, stolen 37 years ago and presumed lost forever, was found in Paris by police investigating unrelated financial crimes.

Morrison died in a Paris bathtub in 1971 and was interred in the city’s historic Père-Lachaise Cemetery, where his tomb, like Oscar Wilde’s further up the hill, quickly became a pilgrimage site for fans. Wilde’s gravesite is adorned with lipstick smudges; Morrison’s quickly attracted graffiti. On the 10th anniversary of Morrison’s death a bust of by a Croatian sculptor was added. It, too, was damaged and defaced before it was stolen.

I would have thought the band’s fans were growing scarce, but last time I was in Père-Lachaise I met several Americans who were there specifically to see his modest grave, which is wedged awkwardly into a corner and usually strewn with flowers. There’s no word on whether the bust will be returned to its original spot atop his tombstone.

Jim Morrison was an early member of the “27 club” of musicians who died at that age, but unlike Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, his repute has dimmed over the decades, in large part because of the way his sloppy descent into alcoholism destroyed the Doors. His appeal was linked to his charisma, which is hard to preserve. This performance on the Smothers Brothers show captured him at his most subdued. The band is backed by the Nelson Riddle Orchestra and, like the recorded version, features a sax solo by Curtis Amy.

“Touch Me” reached No. 1 in Cashbox in early 1969, making it the band’s third and last chart-topping single.

Most of Donald Trump’s brain might be mush, but he’ll always retain a few things, like his fear of sharks and his childish habit of insulting people in terms that would sound weak coming from a sixth-grader. So when Bruce Springsteen called out the whiny bitch who likes to pretend he’s a strongman, the strongman came back at him by calling him a “dried-out prune.”

That comment makes me suspect he might have mistaken a photo of RFK Jr. for one of Springsteen, and it also makes me hope a reporter will ask him for details of his own skin-care regime – nothing makes a strongman sound stronger than talking about his soft skin. Or maybe his scrambled brain was thinking back to the ’60s, when popular music introduced the world to the Electric Prunes.

The band started as a surf-rock combo in mid-’60s Southern California called the Sanctions. The guy who signed them to a contract suggested a name change, and they kicked around various possibilities. “Electric Prunes” started as a joke, but lead singer and bandleader James Lowe concluded, “It’s the one thing everyone will remember. It’s not attractive, and there’s nothing sexy about it, but people won’t forget it.”

Eight songs on their first album, including their only two hits, were composed by songwriter Annette Tucker, but three more LPs without chart success led to personnel changes and weird musical directions – a combination of Gregorian chant and psychedelic rock, “Mass in F Minor,” with all the vocals in Greek and Latin, seems like an obvious misstep in retrospect – and the group disbanded in 1969. Around the turn of the century Lowe later put together another lineup using the name, and they’re still performing.

This single kept the Electric Prunes from being a one-hit wonder when it reached No. 27 in 1967, following up the No. 11 hit “I Had Too Much to Dream.”

Donald Trump is a big-hearted guy. He doesn’t require people bribing him to go to a lot of trouble. No need to wrap it up, he’ll just take it.

Sam and Dave poured their usual double dose of soul into the David Porter/Isaac Hayes composition that ended up on the B-side of “I Thank You,” a No. 9 hit in 1968.

The song is better known to the MTV generation by the 1986 cover by Kim Wilson’s Texas blues band the Fabulous Thunderbirds. It only made it to No. 50 on the Hot 100, but music television gave the video a good bit of exposure.

Earlier in the ’80s the tune was a popular cover for new wave bands. Romeo Void modified it so heavily it was almost unrecognizable, and Eurythmics included a synthed-up version on their breakthrough 1983 LP “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

Bruce Springsteen was once hailed as a new Dylan. The comparison never fit – the young Dylan came to fame by writing the best songs to come out of the Great Folk Music Scare, while young Bruce mostly sang about getting out of New Jersey. But once Springsteen started writing about issues of social justice, he stuck to it, and he’s gotten more vocal as time has gone on.

Last night the E Street Band opened a European tour in music-mad Manchester, England, and throughout the concert Springsteen gave the crowd an earful of anti-MAGA sentiment. About halfway through the show, before the band took up “My City of Ruins,” he had this to say:

There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.

They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.

The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.

To drive home his point, he closed his six-song encore set by covering a protest song he hasn’t played in concert since 1988. Dylan himself last played it live in 2012.

UPDATE: The first video was pulled, here’s a different view.

The original appeared on “Another Side of Bob Dylan” in 1964, and was one of the four Dylan compositions on the debut album by the Byrds to get their trademark jangly, harmony-rich treatment. It was never released as a single but became a concert staple. It was a highlight of the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967.

Of all the people in Trump’s As-Seen-On-TV cabinet, the downright weirdest might be RFK Jr. While just as deluded and fear-aggressive as any MAGAt, he’s at war with an entirely different set of threats and menaces. Human biology appears to be at the top of the list.

Washington, like Wilmington, has a combined sewer system, so when it rains the overflow dumps raw sewage into Rock Creek. Urban runoff, pet waste and aging sewer lines add to the pollution, which is why Rock Creek Park in Northwest Washington prohibits swimming. Despite posted warnings, RFK not only took jumped in, he took his young kids with him. And posted photographs. It would be like taking a dip in the Christina.

Unlike RFK, Tom Waits was being metaphorical. This was among the tunes he recorded in 1971, after signing a contract with manager Herb Cohen, who also handled Frank Zappa and Linda Ronstadt. Waits split with Cohen by the end of the ’70s, but the impresario cashed in those early tapes in 1991 with what was called “The Early Years: Volume One.”

As far as Donald Trump is concerned, the best part of being president is that people give you stuff for free – catnip to the kind of grasping poseur Trump has always been. So naturally he’s not just ready to take a jumbo-jet sized bribe from the Qataris, he’s bragging about it. I’m only surprised they didn’t paint it gold for him.

You might recognize this song from one of the many soundtracks it’s appeared on. Angus and Julia Stone are an Australian brother and sister who’ve never made a mark in the U.S., but they’ve been popular for 20 years down under, where this single was Song of the Year in 2010.

Frank Zappa’s record label wouldn’t let him call his band the Mothers, so he added “of Invention” to pacify them. But nobody called them that. They were the Mothers, though not the sort Hallmark meant to honor.

Zappa churned through sidemen, so there were many Mothers. He eventually grew frustrated with trying to herd the members of a rock group – he typically toured with a seven-piece band – so the name was dropped in 1975. When he was inducted posthumously into the Hall of Fame in 1995 none of the Mothers were included.

His solo career was longer, and it included his only Top 40 hit, “Valley Girl,” but his commercial peak came with the Mothers in 1973-74 with the gold albums “Overnite Sensation” and “Apostrophe’.” “Camarillo Brillo” was the lead track on “Overnite Sensation” and was produced like a mainstream single – despite the sardonic lyrics about a sketchy assignation, Zappa restrained his penchant for silly sound effects. Unfortunately the lyrics made AM radio airplay impossible.

The song became a concert staple, but Zappa soon got bored with the original arrangement, so he played around with the tempo, starting out at a breakneck pace before cutting it in half. That’s the version on “Cheaper Than Cheep,” the just-released TV special made in 1974 but never released because of synching issues.

The Who has announced another farewell tour. Yeah, sure, you might scoff – wasn’t their first farewell tour back in 1982?

Yes it was, and it took seven whole years for them to decide that maybe they had been hasty. They regrouped for their 25th anniversary and have toured fairly regularly since. This time they hedged their bets – this is their final North American tour (they’ll play Philly’s Wells Fargo Center Aug. 21). Given that Pete Townshend is 79 and Roger Daltrey 81, they won’t have much chance to go back on the decision this time.

They’re calling it The Song Is Over Tour, which is appropriate – the tune closed Side 1 of the band’s best LP, “Who’s Next.” Like most of the songs on that 1971 album it was written for Townshend’s aborted “Lifehouse” multimedia project, and would have played over the final credits of the intended film. Townshend and Daltrey share lead vocals, backed by Nicky Hopkins on piano.

A demo version of the song was released on Townshend’s 2000 “Lifehouse Chronicles.”

It doesn’t get any easier no matter how old you get. Mine was a corgi named Mackie – formally, Honeyfox Four on the Floor – and after 14 1/2 years I have to say goodbye to him today. He was a very good boy.