Larry Womack: Scenes From a Class Struggle Starring Marianne Faithfull

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I love Marianne Faithfull with a truly irrational passion, but had decided to skip this show. It is southwest of San Jose, in a suburb of a suburb known as Saratoga. In the past, I have flirted with ideas of attending Lucinda Williams and Leonard Cohen shows in the same town, but each time concluded that the journey was just too long. Faithfull plays San Francisco or Oakland most every year. Is one more show really worth the bother?

Then a friend alerted me to the availability of comp tickets. Ticket cost hadn't even been a factor in my decision not to go, but (as anyone who has ever worked in media can tell you,) the psychology of the free ticket is strange, nuanced, mysterious and powerful. Suddenly, I'm in.

The drive to the venue is a peculiar and almost singular experience. We pass through a residential neighborhood that screams of conspicuous -- but for the most part tasteful -- consumption. Mansions are packed together, as if trying to elbow one another out. It crosses my mind that some parts of Saratoga (current median sale price $1,586,750) make Brentwood ($1,677,500) and the Beverly Hills ($1,355,000) look like dumps. Still, most of the people in these houses probably wish they lived in Los Altos, where people no doubt dream of living in Atherton or Ross. There are signs indicating that a free shuttle stops at the end of a couple of the drives to deliver occupants to the venue. This makes me assume that parking at said venue is more limited than I will later discover. There is no parking near these stops for out-of-towners. We park at the local community college, where a shuttle is waiting to deliver us to the show, which is taking place on a hill far overlooking these mansions, mini-mansions and other forms of domestic immodesty.

Unaware of the shuttle situation until it is too late, we arrive after the show has started. She has just finished a performance of Cohen's Tower of Song. I kick myself for having missed it. If only I had been aware of this shuttle situation a few hours earlier...

The venue is gorgeous, but only filled to around 40 percent capacity. This is very different from The Fillmore or Yoshi's, where she sells out and often does multiple nights. But, then, you can only fit so many homes of a certain size directly under any venue. From the seats, it doesn't take long to gather what Faithfull, from the stage, cannot: that the crowd is composed almost entirely of season ticket holders. A Faithfull audience is usually significantly more mixed: young, old, goth, bougie, punk and chic. This crowd is much more homogenous. It is a bit like a very high-end concert in the park. Only, instead of a local Journey cover band, we have Edina Monsoon's God. Most live within earshot of the venue and just popped out for a few drinks and a little music in the evening sun. They are Berkeley hippies turned San Jose networking gurus, with their second wives and teen children in tow. Many come in not-quite Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts and Sephora sunscreen. A few have beach towels that suggest not that they intended to picnic but that they just emerged from the pool. Some of the more adventurous attendees are probably thinking about smoking a little pot when they get home, but would never dream of doing it here.

Faithfull finishes the lead single from her most recent album and proceeds to address the audience. If you've ever seen her live, you know that the opening numbers are not her friend. She seems nervous and a bit stiff through the first two or three songs of a show. At that point, you can almost see her think, Yeah, I can do this, as she eases into a more confident groove. She has now calmed, but rather than reassured, she seems... baffled. Who are these people and what are they doing at my show?

She cracks jokes and smokes a cigarette. For obvious reasons, I am reminded of Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette, by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg. I am also reminded of a tale someone once told me about a shopboy who unwisely confronted her for lighting up near the Gucci. I can't figure out if tonight she is the shopboy or the Gucci. I suppose she's really herself. The crowd is responding well to her casual banter, and she knows it. There will be more--much more--of it to come. She announces that she isn't promoting an album so she can do, "whatever the fuck," she wants. She intends to do a lot of covers and a few obscure tracks.

She cradles us into She, a song she wrote with Angelo Badalamenti. It's lovely. It suits the venue perfectly. Her performance is flawless. The audience borders on intrigued.

Then, she tells them all about her post-pop-starlet days living as a junkie on the remaining half of a bombed-out wall in London, "shooting smack." A wave of Is she serious? washes over the crowd. Yes. Yes she is.

During that post-Stones, pre-Broken English time, Faithfull recorded an album that she's never been particularly fond of, given its associations. She intends to perform a song from it. I hope for Lady Madelaine or Dreaming My Dreams. No. She sings Rich Kid Blues. Rich Kid Blues.

Well. That was awkward. A woman sitting near me -- and there aren't many of those -- looks personally offended.

Sister Morphine, a song she wrote with Mick Jagger, somehow comes up. They know it, as any audience of a certain age would, from the Rolling Stones version (which was released after her version was pulled, because only boys were allowed to sing about drugs). She does not intend to perform it. In fact, "I spit at the very mention," she says--and does.

She then explains, with a heavy seasoning of black comedy, that the next song is about the victims of Sweden's forced sterilization program, which continued 30 years after the Nazis taught us that such aspirations were perhaps not particularly noble. In the '90s she read a piece about them in the New York Herald Tribune. The list of target "undesirables" included addicts, the promiscuous and those who displayed "vagabond ways." I can't help but get the impression that the woman slightly to my right in the row in front of me thinks this isn't such a bad idea. Faithfull's irreverent set-up might excuse some uncomfortable giggles when the song opens with, "Oh, doctor please / Oh, doctor please / I drink and I take drugs / I love sex and I move around a lot." Which is, by the way, the greatest album opening since, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine."

Luckily, the pianist screws up. Badly. She excoriates, he sweats bullets, and they start again from the top of the second verse. The fog lifts, a bit. The audience knows that it's okay to laugh when something like this happens, so they do.

Her next song is the reason they're here, though they don't know it until it begins. As Tears Go By, perhaps the first Jagger-Richards composition, was written for her in 1964. (Its status as their very first seems to be disputed by the Wiki Gods, but is by now pop canon.)

Aha! Now, they know her.

She name-drops Nick Cave, who co-wrote the next song. They do not know him. I am filled with righteous indignation.

She momentarily forgets the name of the album the forthcoming song is from. It is 2004's Before the Poison, undoubtedly my favorite Faithfull disc. For some reason, I am reminded of how much I love its cover art, which calls to mind the fantastic tracks "No Child of Mine" and "Last Song."

She might have done better to explain that this song, Crazy Love was inspired by Les enfants du paradis. Probably not, though. I remind myself that I must upgrade my copy to Blu Ray. The crowd doesn't give the song the reception it deserves, but seems to like it well enough.

A lightheartedly bitter John Prine song gets the audience once again on her side. Of course, this cannot last.

She announces that she will be performing a Randy Newman song (Newman will be performing at the same venue in a few weeks). Political Science probably would have gone over like free weed, but she's going with In Germany Before the War. The song presents the crimes of Peter Kürten, Vampire of Düsseldorf (or, rather, his fictionalized portrayal in Fritz Lang's M, which I also remind myself to upgrade,) as a prologue to the rise of the Nazis. "I'm looking at the river," it explains, "but I'm thinking of the sea." It is a beautiful, chilling and brilliant song. It often crosses my mind when I read the news.

You can probably guess how that goes over. People are wandering out. The man in front of me is checking his email.

Things are about to get a whole lot more surreal. Her cover of John Lennon's Working Class Hero, ironically enough, gets the evening's best response. Everybody in this crowd knows it, of course. The major theme of the song has always struck me as being the trauma the artist endures throughout life, but it is rather difficult to shake the class themes in this situation. You would think a bit like, "You think you're so clever and classless and free / But we're all fucking peasants as far as I can see," might hit a little too close to home, but they cheer it. The crowd rocks (relatively) out as she continues, "There is room at the top they are telling you still / But first you must learn how to smile as you kill / If you want to live like the folks on the hill." We are literally sitting on a hill above that hill, with the folks who live on it.

She jokes before the next song that she has forgotten where she lives. "Oh, that's right," she quips, "I live in Paris." I wonder if this means she's figured the crowd out when it is revealed to be The Ballad of Lucy Jordan. It opens, "In white suburban bedroom, in a white suburban town," where a woman is going mad because, "At the age of 37 / She realized she'd never ride / Through Paris in a sports car / With the warm wind in her hair."

Only then do I realize how very, very few non-white people are in the audience, and that they all appear to be in the few, scattered groups of young people from out of town.

She closes the set with "Strange Weather", a song about the awkward distance between humans that may well describe the evening. She leaves the stage to applause that is enthusiastic, in a what-the-hell sorta way.

There is an encore. "Well, that was odd," she laughs as she re-emerges. "But I enjoyed it. I really did." Having not ridden up with the crowd, she still can't figure out what these people are doing here. "Oh, I know," she speculates. "I did that festival." She is referring to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, where a few years prior she dropped the astonishingly NSFW Why'd Ya Do It on a completely unsuspecting audience, savoring each profanity as she did. It was amazing. I wish she'd do that again, right now.

Instead, she closes with Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It's lovely. The remaining audience seems to enjoy it, but has mostly checked out.

The shuttle that takes us back to the parking lot is one of those limo hybrids, with a curvy couch for seating, napkins tucked in wine glasses and champagne flutes for more than it could possibly seat, and bottles of water sporting the company's logo suspended in deep wells of fresh ice. It's tacky, in that it has an uncomfortably Vegas feel, but I cannot deny that it's also exceedingly comfortable and infinitely better than the itself rather nice mini-bus that took us up. Facing the long ride home, I find myself wishing it stopped at the end of my drive.

Someone on the shuttle wonders aloud what Faithfull's net worth is. A satirical article is pulled up that reports Faithfull has Madonna-like "endorsement deals with CoverGirl cosmetics... the 'Fat Faithfull Burger' chain... a Football Team... her own brand of Vodka (Pure Wonderfaithfull - UK), and is tackling the juniors market with a top-selling perfume (With Love from Marianne) and a fashion line called 'Marianne Faithfull Seduction'." Everyone agrees it isn't true, but in this setting, no one gets the joke.

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Larry Summers, se enfrentaron con los eruditos afroamericanos en Harvard

Cornel West left Harvard University after an altercation with then-President Larry Summers. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - as a contender to become the next President of the Federal Reserve, Economist Larry Summers has re-emerged to scrutiny during his time as President of Harvard University. In particular, critics have pointed out that his controversial remarks about women and their ability - or lack of it, to succeed in math and science. A couple of months later, Harvard faculty gave a resounding vote of no confidence.

But even before those instances, Summers had clashed with another group of Harvard: professors in the Department of African and African-American studies, which was revitalized under the former President of the University and eventually lost two of its biggest stars, including Cornel West, during the term of Summers from 2001 until 2006.

"To put it bluntly, Summers has always seemed like a legendary gangster with a high IQ, in service of the well-to-do." That was my experience the first time seen in his Office, "said West The Huffington Post. "The interesting thing is I have noticed in a number of newspaper pieces, make more than his comments about women who make their relationship to Blacks at Harvard." As you know, really began with the blacks."

The problems began for summers early in his tenure at Harvard. The Boston Globe reported in 2001, critics believed that it had "acted abrasion to many members of the Faculty" and were disappointed "when" he refused to make a strong statement in support of affirmative action at a meeting with members of the Department of African American studies this summer.

"After the start of the semester, other black teachers began to complain that the new President had acted as 'a bull in a china shop' and he spoke disparagingly of some teachers, calling his ideas 'fool'," reported the world.

But perhaps the highest profile incident took place in 2001 during a meeting private with the West, which was then a Harvard "Professor" - a top honor given that only 14 of its 2,200 faculty members. It meant that West reported directly to summers.

According to the world, Summers ' offenses West for recording a rap album, for leading a political Committee for the presidential campaign of the Rev. Al Sharpton and to write books more likely to be reviewed in the New York Times that in academic journals. " "Also reportedly criticized West for allowing that inflation in his introductory black studies course degree."

"The meeting between Cornel and Larry was, to put it mildly, a disaster," said Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr, who was the head of the Department of African and African American studies.

Summers's Office refused to comment. At the time, Summers said, "it is an unfortunate misunderstanding if my views have been perceived in other ways."

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah and West eventually left Harvard for Princeton University.

Gates said he understood why West felt aggrieved. But Gates remained at Harvard to rebuild the Department and try to do better in the country. And despite the fact that the rough, Gates said that now considers Summers a friend and believes that it would be an excellent choice to head the Fed.

"There is no doubt that at that time, [summers] was skeptical about the legitimacy of the intellectual and academic legitimacy of African American studies..." But I've gotten to know Larry, and I know that their attitudes about the field of African-American studies have changed dramatically since then, "Gates told HuffPost.

"Larry Summers is a brilliant man, is not that. I have no doubt that it would be a brilliant Chair of the Fed. "He lives and breathes the economy, he added.

"Given their differences in personality, and given the depth of his intellect, a conflict was inevitable," he said of the West and summers. "I only regret that they have not helped to prevent the boiling conflict and could not find any way to heal the fracture."And I think it was a great loss for Harvard to Cornel West to leave."

Summers has also been pursued by a 1991 memo signed - although it was written by someone else, while the World Bank's Chief Economist. The document suggests poured toxic benefits in "populated below African countries" for economic benefits. It was widely criticized, and eventually Summers said that it had to be sarcastic.

'' He told me it was a joke, it was sarcasm, no one wanted to take it seriously... We will give you the benefit of the doubt. That is why even not to emphasize too much, "said West of the memo."But it is not yet very funny, do you know? "Sometimes even the very jokes that people say that it can be revealing about what is happening within them".

West also sharply criticized Summers for President Barack Obama when he made part of his economic team. In the same way does not mince words when referring to reports last week that Obama came out in defense of Summers at a meeting with Congressional Democrats.

"This reminds me of the strong defense to arrive to Tim Geithner when we learned that Tim Geithner had not paid their taxes."Barack Obama sure is selective in its wrath, said West. "He was almost more worried about Summers being attacked, Trayvon [Martin] was about to be killed." He was very balanced. There was a lot of anger and indignation when he talked about Trayvon. It was more reflective and quiet."

Comments like these from the West are indicative of how divisive would be a nomination of Summers to underrepresented communities.

Last week, 38 of the 62 democratic women in the House signed a letter of support Fed Vice President Janet Yellen. The White House recently announced that Obama does not choose a Fed Chairman until the autumn.

Long before serving as principal economic adviser to Obama, summers worked in the Clinton administration as a Secretary of the Treasury Bob Rubin protégé, helping to lead the effort to deregulate Wall Street. Many supporters of Yellen are concerned that Summers could follow in the footsteps of his mentor and again mark the Fed's efforts to reduce unemployment in order to appease the bond market.

But Summers ' defenders argue that much of his record is being taken out of context or misinterpreted.

"He gave a speech in which it apologized for but many people took great offense," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said The Huffington Post in a recent interview, referring to the infamous remark Summers that women are less capable of handling advanced science and engineering work. "It was not its policy. It was a speech that gave and was really well the rest of the speech. Much of that speech said things that... all of us really agree with, that is very difficult for women in the field of conciliation to the day. "

In the end, West admits that Summers is a very intelligent person, but, said, is not sufficient for the next Fed Chairman.

"People are fetishizing brilliance Summers," West said, "and still not want to accent that he has not used in the service of working people or poor.

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