David Hughes

2022-03-142022-03-25 by David Hughes

Nursing Holes

Colorado Public Radio (CPR) reported ten days ago that the U.S. Department of Justice “has complained that Colorado violates federal law by not providing adequate services to transition people with physical disabilities out of nursing homes and back into the community.” It was the following statistic, however, that startled me: “From 2013 to 2019, only 269 Coloradans with physical disabilities transitioned from nursing facilities to the community, according to a multi-year review by the Justice Department.” That’s less than forty people a year and a little more than one per the 231 facilities in the state over those seven years.¹ The implication is that nursing homes are warehousing people.

I know from personal experience that this is a reasonable conclusion, but the problem is more complicated than it sounds. Nursing homes are one part of a system full of holes.

2021-12-302021-12-30 by David Hughes

What’s This Feeling?

Portrait of E. M. Forster by Paul Cadmus

Now we shan’t never be parted.
It’s finished.

— Alec Scudder, from the film

Rob Berg and I released a thirty-year-old song by our band Bachelors Anonymous last week on the the occasion of the Winter Solstice; it also happened to be the birthday of Michael Tilson Thomas, whose work we knew as guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the early 1980s.

“What’s This Feeling?” asks a question that Rob posed to himself, and his affecting account is in the latest post from our BachelorBlog.

2021-10-142022-07-03 by David Hughes

My Old Kentucky Home: Edgar, Willis and Green

Years ago I was told by my parents that I had a Wobbly in my lineage on my father’s side. I asked them to write down what they remembered about him but never followed up. Until recently.

2021-09-152022-01-20 by David Hughes

Attica @ 50

I wrote my first original post here three years ago this month after talking with a comrade at a prison strike support event. In part, that event commemorated the killing of George Jackson and the Attica uprising. During the event my memory went back to composers Steve Reich and Frederic Rzewski and their musical statements of solidarity with the Attica inmates and the defendants from the earlier Harlem “fruit stand” riot of 1964. In the course of conversation I realized I’d outlined the post. See Attica: Coming Together.

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of Jackson’s murder and the Attica revolt that followed.

2021-09-122022-01-20 by David Hughes

False Flags

On August 30, 2006, I received a “don’t break the chain” email from a relative, apparently by mistake. Appropriately it had no subject line because it had no substance. Nevertheless its sentimentalism compelled my response. I offer this as a snapshot in time with which to compare the present discourse.

2021-08-302021-09-09 by David Hughes

Idol not Idle

Billy Idol has a new music video. And four dates in Vegas.

At the Chelsea. In October.

I remember first hearing Idol’s band Generation X on Rodney Bingenheimer’s show on KROQ. I thought the song was titled “Wild Dove.” Rather, it was the dub side to their second single, “Wild Youth.” It sounded so mysterious, this up-paced power-pop tune pulled apart.

2021-08-152022-01-20 by David Hughes

Delightfully Brutal

Saturday night, the Fall of Kabul, the Choppers of Cong, the mendacity of “Why didn’t we see this coming?” All I can think about is a poem I heard by chance on KPFK seventeen or eighteen years ago. Haunted then as I am now, remembering little, I wrote to the writer, Los Angeles poet Jan Wesley, asking for a copy.

2021-08-062022-01-20 by David Hughes

Friendship Band

Last time, I said I planned to toot the horn of a new songwriter (relatively speaking), but I will toot my own—and that of my wife Andrea Carney—along the way.

2021-07-292021-07-29 by David Hughes

Bachelors In the Land of Nod

Before I start tooting the horn of current songwriters—and shortly I will profile the thoughtful Dan Wriggins of Friendship—let me toot my own. Over the last six months my musical partner Rob Berg and I have released eighteen songs, ten of which never were issued before (unless you received a few as a homemade Christmas gift in 1987).

2021-05-312022-07-28 by David Hughes

Portrait of Rudy Perez 5: Anatomy of a Performance 2

This fifth in a series of portraits of Rudy Perez is akin to the third: an anatomy of a performance. For background on the dancer-choreographer Ruth St. Denis and her consort Ted Shawn, see Egyptian Deities and Jacob’s Pillow from Portrait of Rudy Perez 4. Continue reading “Portrait of Rudy Perez 5: Anatomy of a Performance 2”

Now we shan’t never be parted. It’s finished.

Now we shan’t never be parted.
It’s finished.