KAKI KING, THE STATE ROOM, Friday, Oct. 26, 9 p.m., $17
Kaki King is one of the more remarkable instrumentalists you can find, a woman capable of totally flooring a room full of fans with just an acoustic guitar, or a lap-steel. She’s never met a genre she didn’t like, and her albums and live shows jump from jazz to classical to rock with ease, thanks to her dextrous playing and inventive composing skills. When Rolling Stone magazine put together a list of the “new guitar gods” a few years back, King was both the only woman on the list, and the youngest player overall–not too shabby. She also does film and TV scoring, most notably alongside Eddie Vedder on the Into the Wild soundtrack. Her newest album, Glow, is a stellar set, and you can expect to hear a heavy dose of it Friday night at The State Room. Lady Lamb the Beekeeper opens the show.
If you are among the Utahns who thought Rep. Jim Matheson is a Republican, you would be wrong.
If you’re among the Republicans who always thought Jim is masquerading as a conservative Democrat, but is really the tool of Satan—or at least Nancy Pelosi—you are mostly wrong—probably.
At least that’s what a study done by a Brigham Young University egghead has found. Adam Brown, a research fellow with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, threw some science at the usual political yammering about Matheson—who is under threat of being deposed by Republican Mia Love. No data on Love, who remains a cypher herself, a Haitian-American anchor baby who is running to the far, far right.
Says Brown:
“It is readily apparent that Matheson is among the most conservative Democrats in the US House. Of 194 Democrats presently serving, only 4 have a score more conservative than Matheson’s. Whether that makes him a ‘conservative’ in absolute terms rather than relative terms is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.”
The highly exciting and sexy graph above tells the story: Matheson is just barely on Democratic turf.
You can get more explanation and graphs here.
To call the Mormon missionary program “God’s Army” is no understatement. More than 58,000 missionaries are on patrol worldwide.
It appears these phalanxes of the faithful will be knocking on even more doors in the future now that the church has lowered the age that young folk can enlist—boys at 18, down from 19, and girls at 19, down from 21.
The new policy, announced two weeks ago, has resulted in a 471 percent jump in enlistments.
Here’s the really interesting part—slightly more than half of the new applicants are women. Women used to make up about a fifth of missionaries.
The leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is all twitchy about how many more converts this flood of missionaries will bring in. But they seem to have overlooked the impact a flood of young, zealous women could have on the Mormon Church’s doctrines that make the priesthood an ol’ boys club. In a church where every man is a priest, the spiritual authority and leadership role is denied to women.
With half your missionary applicants being women willing to put a significant chunk of their youth on the line for their church, these troops might expect equality on the homefront. Rosie the Riveter meet Molly the Missionary.
Unlikely? Consider the abrupt 1978 upgrade of the rights of black men in the Mormon church.
Women’s rights in the LDS culture, of course, is also another awkward question for Mitt and his better half, Ann Romney, to dodge.
FREELANCE WHALES, KILBY COURT, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 7 p.m., $18
Freelance Whales are another in the long line of indie-folk bands to come along in recent years. These guys hail from Queens, New York–not necessarily a place you’d consider a folkie haven–and are led by frontman Judah Dadone, whose vocals are reminiscent to those of Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service singer Ben Gibbard. In Freelance Whales’ case, Dadone’s songs are backed with instruments like banjos, glockenspiels, mandolines and harmoniums, in addition to the more traditional rock instrumentation. The band’s 201o debut Weathervanes was a fine collection, and the follow-up, Diluvia, was released just this month.
Even the hippest stand-up comedians don’t get Utah.
I caught Greg Fitzsimmons, a regular on David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel, at Wise Guys comedy club recently. He’s a guy who pushes humor to the edge—riffing on the aesthetic difference between man and woman masturbation, for instance—but he was taken aback to learn that Salt Lake City is not overwhelmingly Mitt Romney turf.
While grasping for local political material, Fitzsimmons, who lives in Los Angeles, asked the audience at Trolley Square, “You guys probably don’t like jokes about Mitt Romney.”
When the booing and cat calls died down—an obviously perplexed Fitzsimmons called for a hand count of Romney supporters.
None.
“But this is Salt Lake City,” he marveled.
Then someone in the back yelled, “We’re drinkers!”
“Oh, yeah…,” Fitzsimmons said as the light bulb went on.
Now there’s a fine howdy-do. The most powerful* paper in Utah gives our hometown hero Mitt Romney a bitch slap across the ol’ kisser.
Even though The Salt Lake Tribune endorsed Obama four years ago, it still surprised a lot of people—even inside the Democratic citadel of Salt Lake, that Utah’s Blue-Haired Lady passed over hometown hero Mitt Romney.
Especially when you consider Mitt saved the most glorious Olympics that The Trib shamelessly carried water for the decade leading up to 2002. (BTW, am I the only person sick to death of seeing those shabby, faded memorials to past Olympic glory all over town?)
But before anyone confuses The Trib with Workers World, consider its other endorsements—including Tea Party suck up Jason Chaffetz and blowin’-in-the-far-right-wind Gary Herbert.
The Trib endorsement is simple when you think about it. Foundering newspapers are desperately cutting costs and staff. Contributing to employee healthcare, even The Trib‘s stripped-to-the-cartilage program, is a significant expense.
Despite Romney’s blather about Obama’s policies hurting small businesses, owners of businesses of all sizes realize that Obamacare can make the difference between their existence five years from now.
As well written as the endorsement was—The Trib has an excellent squad of editorial scribes—it, of course, means practically nothing. Trib political reporter Robert Gehrke beat me to it on Twitter: @RobertGehrke: I think the @SLTrib endorsement is just what Barack Obama needs to push him over 27 percent in Utah.
*I can see an undecided Buckeye saying: “Martha! Did you see The Salt Lake Tribune, Siren of the Intermountain West, endorsed Obama? This is a game changer!“
Daniel Nailen 