Hank Kalet

Random musical thoughts on some new albums, old music and all things in between:

I was driving hom the other night, listening to Y-Rock on XPN the other night when this amazing three-minute explosion of rock ‘n’ roll blew from my speakers. The song was called “All Better Now” by a relatively obscure New York band called Earl Greyhound. Blew me away.

I’ve been emmersed in the new Johnny Cash disc — the posthumously released fifth edition of his classic “American Records” series. The disc, “American V: A Hundred Highways,” is the weakest of the five, but still a compelling disc. Cash’s late ragged voice, colored by age and illness, lends weight to a surprising version of “If You Could Read My Mind” and uncovers the tender side of Bruce Springsteen’s “Further on Up the Road” — which makes this disc worth every penny. It is a reminder of how much Cash is missed.

Guy Clark is a country-music legend, or at least he should be. One of the genre’s best songwriters — and I would argue, one of the best songwriters, period — he writes from the outlaw tradition, a folky approach to country music that has fallen out of favor these days. His latest, “Workbench Songs,” nothing but good work, from the opening paean to the politically committed (“Walkin’ Man”) to the tender “Out in the Parking Lot” to the closing duet with Verlon Thompson, “Diamond Joe” — not a bad song in the bunch.

Brett Dennen, Clark’s Dualtone labelmate, also has a solid folk album out, called “So Much More” that is understated and compelling.

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New Jersey relies to too great a degree on property taxes to fund its various layers of government. In particular, the use of property taxes to fund schools contributes to a series of ills — educational inequality (visit the Cranbury School and then take a drive to a Trenton middle school and tell me students have the same opportunities) and tax inequality (property taxes can be regressive, especially for seniors, and put pressure on towns like Jamesburg, which lack industrial ratables).

Fixing this mess will take a streamlining of government and change in the way we raise taxes, meaning a greater reliance on income taxes.

The proposals on the table to create a county super-superintendent, however, seem counterproductive. Rather than focusing on the merging of smaller school districts into larger ones, the state is looking at creating a new kind of superbureaucrat that would leave locals out of the loop on educational decisions — especially the selection of local superintendents and creating a local school budget. It has school districts, like Monroe’s, rightly concerned:

Monroe school board President Kathy Kolupanowich said choosing a superintendent should remain a local decision.

“Everybody has different needs,” she said. “I think the school district knows best what qualities they should be looking for, and to have somebody who doesn’t know the district well enough make the decision — you know, you’re looking for a good superintendent-school board relationship and that could be taken away.”

Monroe school board member Joe Homoki agreed.

“I really think that should be a board function,” he said. “We are elected members and we are responsible to the voters. We should be able to hire and let go people who are not up to our standards.”

Mr. Homoki, who chairs the board’s Committee on Finance, also said other duties of the executive county superintendent, like approval of the budget, unjustly take power away from the school district.

“I believe that the budget should be under local control,” he said. “As it happens in Monroe, we have to submit the budget to the public for approval and I
think that’s an indicator of how the superintendent is doing on a local
level.”

The approach, in general, is flawed, as Jamesburg Superintendent Shirley Bzdewka points out:

“The problem we’re always running up against is that the state guidelines always come down to dollars and cents, streamlining and making the system more efficient,” she said. “But you’re not dealing with a business. You’re dealing with human beings, with children. Yes, we run a business, but there’s a human interest that’s being dismissed right now.”

I’d suggest that the state Legislature start over on this. (Here is South Brunswick’s position on this.)

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are, to my way of thinking, are

Keith Olbermann calls out the president. Take a look here.

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The New York Times calls the president out for bad policies and divisive behavior.

It’s not the least bit surprising or objectionable that Mr. Bush would hit the trail hard at this point, trying to salvage his party’s control of Congress and, by extension, his last two years in office. And we’re not naïve enough to believe that either party has been running a positive campaign that focuses on the issues.

But when candidates for lower office make their opponents out to be friends of Osama bin Laden, or try to turn a minor gaffe into a near felony, that’s just depressing. When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don’t, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

But then, his actions, especially around election time, always leave me asking whether he is really all that concerned about leading or whether his primary goal is the utter destruction of his opponents and the permanent imposition of one-party rule in Washington.

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I fell asleep before the end of the game last night, a game improbably won by the Knicks after blowing a 19-point, fourth-quarter lead. Ugh.

I was at work pretty late and tuned the radio to the game when I got in the car to head home. It was on ESPN radio, 1050 AM, which doesn’t come in very well around hererned the game on the radio. I thought I heard that the team was up pretty big, which was a shock given that Memphis is a borderline playoff team and the game was in Tennessee.

I tried listening, but the static was too bad. I tuned into Y-Rock on WXPN instead and heard this edgy, straight-up rock song called “All Better Now” from a band called Earl Greyhound and didn’t know until I got inside and turned on the tube that the Knocks (a deliberate misspelling) had dithered away 11 points.

From that point, it got truly ugly with both sides finding it difficult to drop the ball in the bucket and the Knocks somehow finding just enough inside to outlast the Grizzlies.

That fortitude, if you will, allows me to look on the game with some optimism, though this remains a badluy constructed team. Expect too many nights like this as the season wears on.

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