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In Afghanistan, a “chain of catastrophes”over the last two weeks is “raising significant questions about the viability of the Obama-McChrystal plan for the country,” JUAN COLE says – he teaches history at the U. of Michigan and writes the indispensable blog “Informed Comment.” WATCH Afghan video from Al Jazeera/English HERE.
Plus: It’s Elvis’s 75th birthday on Friday! PETER GURALNICK will take up the question of Elvis and cultural theft: did the king rip off black people’s music? Peter wrote the definitive 2-volume biography, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. (originally broadcast 8/15/07)
PLAYLIST: Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, “That’s All Right, Mama” (1946); Elvis, “That’s All Right” (1954); Little Junior Parker, “Mystery Train” (1953); Elvis, “Mystery Train” (1955).
Also: GREIL MARCUS’s “secret history of the twentieth century”: it starts with the Sex Pistols and goes back to Dada and the Situationists. The 20th anniversary edition of his Lipstick Traces is out now. “Today those old voices sound as touching and scary as they ever did, ” Greil writes — “partly because there is an irreducible quality in their demands–and partly because they are suspended in time.”
PLAYLIST: Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the UK” (1976); Elvis Costello, “Radio Radio” (1978).
