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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    It wasn't me was it Aragorn?
    No, it wasn't you.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Question

    How deep the web ...

    University
    Research
    Center
    Concealed Its
    Relationship
    with Jeffrey
    Epstein ...




    New documents show that the M.I.T.
    Media Lab was aware of
    Epstein’s status
    as a convicted sex offender, and that
    Epstein directed contributions to the lab
    far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has ...


    The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university. Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”

    The financial entanglement revealed in the documents goes well beyond what has been described in public statements by M.I.T. and by Ito. The University has said that it received eight hundred thousand dollars from Epstein’s foundations, in the course of twenty years, and has apologized for accepting that amount. In a statement last month, M.I.T.’s president, L. Rafael Reif, wrote, “with hindsight, we recognize with shame and distress that we allowed MIT to contribute to the elevation of his reputation, which in turn served to distract from his horrifying acts. No apology can undo that.” Reif pledged to donate the funds to a charity to help victims of sexual abuse. On Wednesday, Ito disclosed that he had separately received $1.2 million from Epstein for investment funds under his control, in addition to five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that he acknowledged Epstein had donated to the lab. A spokesperson for M.I.T. said that the university “is looking at the facts surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s gifts to the institute.”

    The documents and sources suggest that there was more to the story. They show that the lab was aware of Epstein’s history—in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution—and of his disqualified status as a donor. They also show that Ito and other lab employees took numerous steps to keep Epstein’s name from being associated with the donations he made or solicited. On Ito’s calendar, which typically listed the full names of participants in meetings, Epstein was identified only by his initials. Epstein’s direct contributions to the lab were recorded as anonymous. In September, 2014, Ito wrote to Epstein soliciting a cash infusion to fund a certain researcher, asking, “Could you re-up/top-off with another $100K so we can extend his contract another year?” Epstein replied, “yes.” Forwarding the response to a member of his staff, Ito wrote, “Make sure this gets accounted for as anonymous.” Peter Cohen, the M.I.T. Media Lab’s Director of Development and Strategy at the time, reiterated, “Jeffrey money, needs to be anonymous. Thanks.”



    Epstein’s apparent role in directing outside contributions was also elided. In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.” Cohen replied, “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.” A mandatory record of the gift filed within the university stated only that “Gates is making this gift at the recommendation of a friend of his who wishes to remain anonymous.” Knowledge of Epstein’s alleged role was usually kept within a tight circle. In response to the university filing, Cohen wrote to colleagues, “I did not realize that this would be sent to dozens of people,” adding that Epstein “is not named but questions could be asked” and that “I feel uncomfortable that this was distributed so widely.” He wrote that future filings related to Epstein should be submitted only “if there is a way to do it quietly.” An agent for Gates wrote to the leadership of the Media Lab, stating that Gates also wished to keep his name out of any public discussion of the donation.



    A spokesperson for Gates said that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.” A source close to Gates said that the entrepreneur has a long-standing relationship with the lab, and that anonymous donations from him or his foundation are not atypical. Gates has previously denied receiving financial advisory services from Epstein; in August, CNBC reported that he met with Epstein in New York in 2013, to discuss “ways to increase philanthropic spending.”

    Joi Ito and Peter Cohen did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Ito, in his public statements, has downplayed his closeness with Epstein, stating that “Regrettably, over the years, the Lab has received money through some of the foundations that he controlled,” and acknowledging only that he “knew about” gifts and personally gave permission. But the e-mails show that Ito consulted closely with Epstein and actively sought the various donations. At one point, Cohen reached out to Ito for advice about a donor, writing, “you or Jeffrey would know best.”

    Epstein, who socialized with a range of high-profile and influential people, had for years been followed by claims that he sexually abused underage girls. Police investigated the reports several times. In 2008, after a Florida grand jury charged Epstein with soliciting prostitution, he received a controversial plea deal, which shielded him from federal prosecution and allowed him to serve less than thirteen months, and much of it on a “work release,” permitting him to spend much of his time out of jail. Alexander Acosta, the prosecutor responsible for that plea deal, went on to become President Trump’s Secretary of Labor, but resigned from that post in July, amid widespread criticism related to the Epstein case. That same month, Esptein was arrested in New York, on federal sex-trafficking charges. He died from suicide, in a jail cell in Manhattan, last month.

    Current and former faculty and staff of the media lab described a pattern of concealing Epstein’s involvement with the institution. Signe Swenson, a former development associate and alumni coordinator at the lab, told me that she resigned in 2016 in part because of her discomfort about the lab’s work with Epstein. She said that the lab’s leadership made it explicit, even in her earliest conversations with them, that Epstein’s donations had to be kept secret. In early 2014, while Swenson was working in M.I.T.’s central fund-raising office, as a development associate, she had breakfast with Cohen, the Director of Development and Strategy. They discussed her application for a fund-raising role at the Media Lab. According to Swenson, Cohen explained to her that the lab was currently working with Epstein and that it was seeking to do more with the financier. “He said Joi has been working with Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein’s connecting us to other people,” Swenson recalled. She assumed that Cohen raised the matter “to test whether I would be confidential and sort of feel out whether I would be O.K. with the situation.”

    Swenson had seen that Epstein was listed in the university’s central donor database as disqualified. “I knew he was a pedophile and pointed that out,” she said. She recalled telling Cohen that working with Epstein “doesn’t seem like a great idea.” But she respected the lab’s work and ultimately accepted a job with them.

    That spring, during her first week in her new role, the issue arose again. Swenson recalled having a conversation with Cohen and Ito about how to take money from Epstein without reporting it within the university. Cohen asked, “How do we do this?” Swenson replied that, due to the university’s internal-reporting requirements, there was no way to keep the donations under the radar. Ito, as Swenson recalled, replied, “we can take small gifts anonymously.”

    In the course of 2014 and 2015, according to the e-mails and sources, Ito and Epstein also developed an ambitious plan to secure a large new influx of contributions from Epstein’s contacts, including Gates, without disclosing the full extent of the financier’s involvement to M.I.T.’s central fund-raising office. The e-mails show that Epstein was the point person for communication with the donors, including Gates and Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms. In one message to Ito, Epstein wrote, “Gates would like a write up on our one science program for tues next week.” In an e-mail from Cohen to Ito, asking whether Black wished his contributions to remain anonymous, Cohen wrote, “Can you ask Jeffrey to ask Leon that?” He added, “We can make it anonymous easily, unless Leon would like the credit. If Jeffrey tells you that Leon would like a little love from MIT, we can arrange that too. . . .”



    Black declined to comment. A source close to him said that he did not intend for the donation to be anonymous. Black has downplayed his relationship with Epstein in recent months, describing it as limited and focussed on tax strategy, estate planning, and philanthropic advice. He has declined to answer questions about business dealings with Epstein that suggest a closer relationship. Several years after Epstein’s conviction, Black and his children and Epstein jointly invested in a company that makes emission-control products.

    Although the lab ultimately secured the $7.5 million from Gates and Black, Epstein and Ito’s fund-raising plan failed to reach the still larger scale that they had initially hoped. Epstein had suggested that he could insure that any donations he solicited, including those from Gates and Black, would be matched by the John Templeton Foundation, which funds projects at the intersection of faith and science. Ultimately, the Foundation did not provide funding and a spokesperson said that the organization has no records related to any such plan.

    In the summer of 2015, as the Media Lab determined how to spend the funds it had received with Epstein’s help, Cohen informed lab staff that Epstein would be coming for a visit. The financier would meet with faculty members, apparently to allow him to give input on projects and to entice him to contribute further. Swenson, the former development associate and alumni coördinator, recalled saying, referring to Epstein, “I don’t think he should be on campus.” She told me, “At that point it hit me: this pedophile is going to be in our office.” According to Swenson, Cohen agreed that Epstein was “unsavory” but said “we’re planning to do it anyway—this was Joi’s project.” Staffers entered the meeting into Ito’s calendar without including Epstein’s name. They also tried to keep his name out of e-mail communication. “There was definitely an explicit conversation about keeping it off the books, because Joi’s calendar is visible to everyone,” Swenson said. “It was just marked as a V.I.P. visit.”

    By then, several faculty and staff members had objected to the university’s relationship with Epstein. Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor, had voiced concerns about the relationship with Epstein for years. In 2013, Zuckerman said, he pulled Ito aside after a faculty meeting to express concern about meetings on Ito’s calendar marked “J.E.” Zuckerman recalled saying, “I heard you’re meeting with Epstein. I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and Ito responding, “You know, he’s really fascinating. Would you like to meet him?” Zuckerman declined and said that he believed the relationship could have negative consequences for the lab.

    In 2015, as Epstein’s visit drew near, Cohen instructed his staff to insure that Zuckerman, if he unexpectedly arrived while Epstein was present, be kept away from the glass-walled office in which Epstein would be conducting meetings. According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room.

    On the day of the visit, Swenson’s distress deepened at the sight of the young women. “They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” she told me. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they’re not there by choice, we could maybe help them.”

    Swenson and several other former and current M.I.T. Media Lab employees expressed discomfort over the lab’s recent statements about its relationship with Epstein. In August, two researchers, including Zuckerman, resigned in protest over the matter. In a Medium post announcing the decision, Zuckerman wrote that M.I.T. had “violated its own values so clearly in working with Epstein and in disguising that relationship.” Zuckerman began providing counsel to other colleagues who also objected. He directed Swenson to seek representation from the legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, and she began the process of going public. “Jeffrey Epstein shows that—with enough money—a convicted sex offender can open doors at the highest level of philanthropy,” John Tye, Swenson’s attorney at Whistleblower Aid, told me. “Joi Ito and his development chief went out of their way to keep Epstein’s role under wraps. When institutions try to hide the truth, it often takes a brave whistle-blower to step forward. But it can be dangerous, and whistle-blowers need support.”

    Questions about when to accept money from wealthy figures accused of misconduct have always been fraught. Before his conviction, Epstein donated to numerous philanthropic, academic, and political institutions, which responded in a variety of ways to the claims of abuse. When news of the allegations first broke, in 2006, a Harvard spokesperson said that the university, which had received a 6.5-million-dollar donation from him three years earlier, would not be returning the money. Following Epstein’s second arrest, in 2019, the university reiterated its stance. Many institutions attempted to distance themselves from Epstein after 2006, but others, including the M.I.T. Media Lab, continued to accept his money. When such donations come to light, institutions face difficult decisions about how to respond. The funds have often already been spent, and the tax deductions already taken by donors. But the revelations about Epstein’s widespread sexual misconduct, most notably reported by Julie K. Brown in the Miami Herald, have made clear that Epstein used the status and prestige afforded him by his relationships with élite institutions to shield himself from accountability and continue his alleged predation.

    Swenson said that, even though she resigned over the lab’s relationship with Epstein, her participation in what she took to be a coverup of his contributions has weighed heavily on her since. Her feelings of guilt were revived when she learned of recent statements from Ito and M.I.T. leadership that she believed to be lies. “I was a participant in covering up for Epstein in 2014,” she told me. “Listening to what comments are coming out of the lab or M.I.T. about the relationship—I just see exactly the same thing happening again.”


    Ronan Farrow is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and the author of the forthcoming book “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.” His reporting for The New Yorker won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
    Source: newyorker.com

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    money money money.

    We need to learn to put people first.

    Our economy won't fall apart if we decide to care for people first, rather than the dollar.


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    Will share this here ...

    James Corden Responds to Bill Maher's Fat Shaming Take

    "After seeing a segment on "Real Time with Bill Maher" addressing obesity rates in the United States, in which Bill's thesis is that fat shaming needs to make a comeback, James Corden felt compelled to respond with a different perspective. Simply put, fat shaming hasn't gone anywhere and is perhaps the worst approach to a complex issue for people across the globe."

    Published on Sep 12, 2019

    7:52 minutes



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    Question

    A most pressing issue ...

    To Make a Deal on Brexit, Boris
    Johnson Eyes an ‘All-Ireland’ Zone


    The Peace Bridge, which crosses the River Foyle in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
    The bridge was opened in 2011 with funding from the European Union.


    By Mark Landler

    Sept. 12, 2019


    DUBLIN — There is a lurking suspicion among the Irish that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is the latest in a long line of British leaders who haven’t cared much about them.

    He took nearly a week to return a congratulatory phone call from Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and he has brushed aside the challenge of enforcing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the south, once saying it would be no different than collecting traffic fees from motorists driving across London.

    So, when Mr. Johnson made his first visit to Dublin as prime minister earlier this week, he went out of his way to show he was sensitive to the threat that Britain’s departure from the European Union poses to its smaller next-door neighbor. Brexit, he said, was a “conundrum that Ireland never asked for.”

    As Mr. Johnson seeks to hammer out a new deal with Europe on Britain’s departure, he is weighing a proposal that would put parts of the Northern Ireland economy into an “all-Ireland” zone, presumably subjecting them to European Union rules and standards and in that way preserving the north’s open border with the south.

    For the record, Mr. Johnson continues to rule out keeping all of Northern Ireland in the European Union’s economic orbit — a step that is fiercely opposed by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, Mr. Johnson’s coalition partner, because it views that as an unconstitutional severing of the north from Britain.

    But people who have spoken to British officials say the concept is still alive, if in piecemeal form, with the government focused on food and agriculture; the cross-border trade in beef, milk, and other products is especially susceptible to disruption.



    Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the Irish leader Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Monday.


    Mr. Johnson may have few other options: Parliament has forbidden him to leave Europe without a deal, and it rebuffed his call for an election before the Brexit deadline of Oct. 31. How he handles the bedeviling issue of the border could determine whether he achieves his goal of a swift exit from Europe — or even survives in office.

    “All routes now lead to Ireland,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government in London, who recently traveled through Northern Ireland. “It is the issue the world is interested in, precisely because so many countries poured their energies into getting peace in Ireland.”

    In Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that Democrats in Congress would hold up any trade deal Britain signs with President Trump if Brexit jeopardizes the Good Friday Agreement. The 1998 pact, which created a power-sharing arrangement between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland, is a cherished legacy of President Bill Clinton, whose envoy, George J. Mitchell, helped broker it.

    Mr. Johnson has promoted a trade deal with Washington as one of the incentives of leaving Europe; getting tied up in Congress over Ireland would be an embarrassing setback. There are signs that people on all sides of the debate are starting to recognize the trans-Atlantic repercussions of the issue.

    With the Irish government lobbying energetically on Capitol Hill, members of the Democratic Unionist Party met on Wednesday with the American ambassador to London, Robert Wood Johnson IV. They wanted reassurances that the White House will keep backing the British government’s campaign for a rapid Brexit, even if it meant leaving without an agreement on borders.

    A spokesman for the United States Embassy declined to comment on the meeting. In a visit to London last week, Vice President Mike Pence called on both sides to negotiate an exit agreement in “good faith.”

    For Britain, a new deal on Northern Ireland could be a remedy that would satisfy Ireland, the European Union and most of the British public. Analysts said Mr. Johnson could risk cutting loose the Democratic Unionists. Having already lost his Parliamentary majority and called for an election, he does not face the same danger of a no-confidence vote that haunted his predecessor, Theresa May.


    Half the workers at this Northern Ireland sporting goods manufacturer
    commute from the other side of the border.


    “It’s the only game in town,” said Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “It may not happen, but it offers an off-ramp, and it’s basically the only off-ramp being offered.”

    The idea of leaving Northern Ireland in the European customs union and mostly in the single market after Brexit has been kicked around for several years. Known as the “backstop,” the concept is that Northern Ireland could continue trading with Ireland, a member of the European Union, without tariffs, border checks or other impediments to the seamless flow of goods between them.

    Mrs. May, in deference to her coalition partners and fearful that a border in the Irish Sea would be a first step to breaking up the United Kingdom, expanded the backstop to put all of Britain into the bloc’s customs union. The European Union, in its hunger to strike a deal with Britain, went along with that demand.

    But the backstop was anathema to the hard-line Brexiteers like Mr. Johnson. They said it might delay Britain’s exit indefinitely and threatened to leave Europe without any deal if Brussels did not abandon it.

    A no-deal Brexit would badly damage the Irish economy. By the British government’s own reckoning, a hard border could mean lost jobs, a flourishing black market, roadblocks and civil unrest as people dealt with sudden dislocations. Some predict a revival of the violence once known as the Troubles.

    “We were meant to have solved all our problems,” said Monica McWilliams, an academic and former politician in Belfast who was involved in the Good Friday negotiations. “Then, bang, along comes Brexit, and the whole Northern Ireland issue is back on the table.”

    Ireland understandably opposes any deal that does not include a backstop, and Europeans are signaling their solidarity. Phil Hogan, the former European agriculture commissioner who was recently appointed Europe’s top trade official, said he saw glimpses of flexibility in Mr. Johnson’s visit to Dublin.


    An unmarked border point in County Donegal, separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland.

    Before his meeting with Mr. Varadkar, Mr. Johnson spoke of the possibility of an “all-Ireland food zone,” in which agricultural products could be traded seamlessly between Northern Ireland and the republic. The European Union would probably balk at such a partial arrangement, but as Mr. Hogan put it in an interview with The Irish Times, “the penny is finally dropping.”

    As Mr. Varadkar welcomed Mr. Johnson beneath a fluttering Union Jack in Dublin, he gave his guest the same message he got from the opposition and members of his own party during his stormy debut in Parliament the week before: Leaving Europe without a deal is a non-starter.

    “There’s no such thing as a clean break, or just getting it done,” Mr. Varadkar said to Mr. Johnson, throwing his own words back at him.

    For his part, Mr. Johnson struck a conciliatory tone, avoiding the fiery language he used in Parliament about the need to get out of Europe, come what may. “I want to find a deal,” he said. “I have looked carefully at no-deal. Yes, we could do it. The U.K. could certainly get through it. But be in no doubt, that outcome would be a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible.”

    After meeting over breakfast, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Varadkar said they had found common ground, though there were still “significant gaps.” The two agreed to meet again soon, which was by itself something of a symbol, given the lingering Irish sensitivities over Mr. Johnson’s casual treatment of Mr. Varadkar.

    Britain’s inattention to Ireland predates Mr. Johnson, of course, and is not limited to him. It has been a hallmark of the debate over Brexit, according to diplomats, one that persists even today, after years of debate over the backstop and reports about the economic fallout in Ireland.

    “There’s not the slightest doubt that Britain didn’t take proper account — and isn’t taking proper account — of the situation on the island of Ireland,” said Bobby McDonagh, a longtime Irish diplomat who served as ambassador to Britain. “They now again find that the most intractable question is how to reconcile the balances of the Good Friday Agreement with Brexit.”


    Source: nytimes.com

    To read comments click source scroll to bottom of story column.

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    Speaking of give and take ...


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    Thinking

    #TooExtreme ...
    Lobbying 101 = Probably not the best action/idea for the cause ...




    Anti-vaxxer hurls what appears to be her own blood at California lawmakers

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    Question

    Rubber Tires - A dirty business | DW Documentary

    The booming global tire market is worth billions - but this comes at a high price, both to humans and the environment. Over 50 million car tires are sold each year in Germany alone. But where does the natural rubber for them come from?

    The biggest producer of natural rubber for tires is Thailand. More than four million tonnes of rubber are harvested annually in plantations there. And demand is ever growing - because ever more tires are needed. But the labor conditions in Southeast Asia are harsh - with working days of up to 12 hours and very low wages. In addition, toxic herbicides banned in Europe are used to fight weeds on the plantations. After the harvest, the ‘white gold’ is sold to brokers, who, in turn, sell it on. German tire manufacturers, like Continental, for example, are keen to stress that they use "natural commodities conscientiously.” But many car drivers don’t give a second thought about where the rubber in their tires comes from - and why we don’t recycle used tires more effectively.

    Published on Sep 17, 2019

    28:25 minutes


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    We're losing rubber trees. We're going to need to engineer a replacement. Rubber is very difficult to recreate/imitate.

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    They're music is still being discovered ...

    The Doors’ Robby Krieger on ‘Touch Me’ and the Lyric Jim Morrison Refused to Sing

    A new, stripped-down version of the song appears on the 50th-anniversary reissue
    of the band’s 1969 LP, ‘The Soft Parade’ ...




    When the Doors’ producer, Paul A. Rothchild, suggested adding orchestral strings and horns to guitarist Robby Krieger’s song “Touch Me,” Krieger was not happy. It was two years after Sgt. Pepper, and he says he was wary of the band being seen as copycats. “I said, ‘Oh, God. Now we’re copying the Beatles,’ and the Stones had just done their version of the orchestra thing,” he recalls. “So it was like we were keeping up with the Joneses or something.” Also, he worried the move might alienate the band’s fan base. “We were a four-piece band,” he says.

    “Touch Me” was one of several songs Rothchild wanted to orchestrate, and it wasn’t until Krieger heard what arranger Paul Harris, who had worked with B.B. King, had come up with that he was on board. These days Krieger thinks “Touch Me” is “one of [his] better songs.”

    But now, half a century later since he made peace with the orchestrations, the Doors are releasing a version of the song without the strings that will appear on a new box-set reissue of the band’s 1969 LP, The Soft Parade. A couple of months back, Krieger recorded a new guitar solo for the track that he based on Curtis Amy’s saxophone solo and added some of his own ideas to it. “It sounded empty without it,” he says. Krieger now hears the song a little differently: John Densmore’s drumming and Ray Manzarek’s keyboard playing stand out more to his ears since they were previously covered with strings and horns.

    “It was cool to strip that stuff down,” Krieger says. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, this is what it would have been like if we didn’t do the horns and strings, because I think we would have approached it differently, but you have an idea of what it sounded like. I think it’s kind of cool.”

    Although he’s proud of the song, he remembers the time surrounding the recording of The Soft Parade as unpleasant. The group had more resources than ever before, and it meant they spent much more time in the studio working, especially with the orchestrations. Meanwhile, the musicians were growing apart from their singer. Once upon a time, he and Jim Morrison, who was similar in age to him, were very close and would take acid and smoke pot. But now Morrison was more interested in drinking.

    “Jim was starting to drink too much,” Krieger says. “John and I were pretty close, I think we were living together, but Ray and [his wife] Dorothy were always off by themselves. The only time we came together was to work on the record. So we would spend all day on the drums in the studio, and Jim would get bored and go get drunk. If you needed him for a vocal, he was useless. But considering all that, I think it came out great.”

    Even though Morrison was erratic and undependable, he embraced Krieger’s “Touch Me” — at least, once they agreed on the title. “Originally it was called, ‘Hit Me,’ about the idea of playing blackjack,” Krieger says. “Jim said, ‘I’m not saying that. People might take me literally.’ I said, ‘How about, “Touch Me”?’ ‘All right, “Touch Me.”‘ so then I wrote the words to fit ‘Touch Me.'” Krieger says it was one of the few times Morrison — “the expert at poetic writing,” as Krieger calls him — objected to one of the guitarist’s lyrics.

    Krieger simply felt out the rest of the song’s words. He especially laughs at the line, “Can’t you see that I am not afraid?” “Afraid of what?” he says. “I don’t even know what that means.” He says he took the line “Now I’m going to love you ’til the heavens stop the rain” from a Joan Baez tune whose title he can’t remembers. (Internet searches don’t turn up a Baez song with similar lyrics.) Krieger says he once asked Baez if she was mad about him stealing a lyric but that she “didn’t seem to care one way or the other,” since she recorded mostly traditional songs.

    Did Joan Baez like “Touch Me”? “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if she even ever heard it,” he says. “She probably hated the Doors.” He laughs and takes it back, adding that hers was the only autograph he ever asked for. “I had her sign my hand,” he says. Did he take a picture of it? “I wish,” he says. “That was stupid.”

    Despite the tensions around making the album, Krieger still has a few happy memories surrounding The Soft Parade. Once, while Morrison was out drinking, the band jammed on Morrison’s “Roadhouse Blues,” and Manzarek sang on it. A recording of that jam, with a new bass line by Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert DeLeo, appears on the box set with vocals credited to Screamin’ Ray Daniels. “Ray was definitely a singer,” Krieger says. “Even before Rick and the Ravens, which was the precursor to the Doors, he was billed as Screamin’ Ray Daniels from Chicago. He was trying to be like Muddy Waters. He’s pretty good.”

    And on another occasion, they all jammed together with Morrison for an hour on a tune they called “Rock Is Dead” that they never officially released. “After a big dinner with a lot of drinking, we all came back in and were just messing around,” Krieger recalls. “I think it’s been out on the internet but this is a better mix. Jim was pretty prophetic saying, ‘Rock is dead.’ I think he was right. In the next couple of years, disco came in and punk and all that stuff, so rock as we knew it was going to be dead.”

    By the time they made their next album, Morrison Hotel, the band was having fun in the studio again. Although touring became a slog, due to Morrison’s drinking and the general pallor that fell upon them after he was charged with public indecency for allegedly exposing himself at a 1969 Miami concert, the studio was the place they could connect. “It’s kind of weird,” Krieger says. “But when we eventually did L.A. Woman, it was really good for all of us to be able to produce it ourselves and just have fun. That was probably the most fun we had, except for the first one.”

    Source


    The Doors - Touch Me

    (Doors Only Mix) (Official Audio)


    The Doors
    Published on Sep 19, 2019

    3:12 minutes



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    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Unhappy

    According to Trump everything is just dandy ...
    So much so he wants to spend even less ...




    Starving Seniors: How America Fails To Feed Its Aging
    Last edited by Gio, 21st September 2019 at 07:51.

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    Quote Originally posted by giovonni View Post
    They're music is still being discovered ...
    I had a grammar school friend whose mother bought sex education books and let him buy albums like these. To me it was scandalous. The Doors was the 1st music that I ever heard that was risque. I fell in love with them and was thereafter possessed by demons.

    Speaking of demons...Trump indeed has a reservation for a warm seat in the afterlife.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    And speaking of everything just being dandy ...


    American "economic refugees" are increasingly retiring abroad

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    Captured this weekend in a park near my home ...

    'This year many South Hill neighborhoods have been blessed
    with so much wildlife, large and small' ...


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