Positivity

The Grand Reopening of Texas Toli remix of Positivity by Prince and The Governors...

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?

Item:

And we had the best Covid results we've ever had all through May and the beginning of June, I mean positivity was low, the cases were low.

— Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida May 26 2020

Dig:

On this day of The Grand Reopening of Texas, it gives me no joy to note that, of the four countries my life's journey has taken in, Ghana is probably managing this covidious challenge the best even with the greatest constraints (closely followed by France - the less said about the UK and US responses, the better).

— The Grand Reopening of Texas, Chief Toli Monger May 4 2020

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)

Item:

"Fewer Texans test positive for COVID-19 than residents of any large state in the United States. — Greg Abbott (June 19 2020)"...

We rate this claim False.

— Fact-checking Gov. Greg Abbott on coronavirus in Texas The Statesman June 19 2020

Prince:

Do we mark you present, or do we mark you late?

Dig:

Texas didn’t meet the guidelines laid out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May before moving to a phased reopening.

— Austin has nation’s highest 7-day metro positivity rate of coronavirus tests June 27 2020

Prince:

Is that a good man?
Walking down that street with that money in his hand
Is that a good man?

[Chorus]
Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?
Positivity (Yes)
Do we mark you present, or do we mark you late?

Item:

Gov. Greg Abbott continued to tout Texas's hospital capacity as plentiful Tuesday as hospitalizations due to the new coronavirus hit new highs and the state presses forward with business reopenings.

Abbott, speaking during a news conference in Austin, called the state’s capacity “abundant” and said officials are “laser-focused” on maintaining that level.

— Gov. Greg Abbott points to “abundant” hospital capacity as Texas continues with business reopenings June 16 2020

Prince:

Is that all your gold?
Where did it come from?
What did you have to do?
(did you have to do?)

Can you sleep nights?
Do you dream straight up?

Item:

Just nine days ago, Abbott touted the state's "abundant" hospital capacity as the numbers of cases in the state were rising quickly.

— Texas Governor Hits 'Pause' On Further Reopening Amid COVID-19 Surge June 25 2020

Prince:

Or do you dream in W's?

Item:

"Hospitals have a lot of capacity...

So we are very well positioned to be able to handle what comes down the pike

— Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: "We're not going back, closing things" press conference Anderson Cooper 360 June 30 2020

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?

Item:

Randy Kaye (CNN): You heard there him say that the positivity rate in Florda is 10 to 15 percent. Anderson, that is just not true. In Lee County where Fort Myers is, they've seen a positivity rate of 20 percent, that's up from 13 percent. And in Miami-Dade county, the positivity rate for the last two weeks has averaged more than 17 percent. The county itself says it would like to be around 10 percent. And just finally, the hospitals, he says, he said today that the hospitals have plenty of capacity. Again Anderson, not true. The mayor of Miami, on CNN just last night, saying that some hospitals in Miami are either at or close to capacity, Anderson.

Anderson Cooper: Hmm.

— Anderson Cooper 360 June 30 2020

Prince:

Shall the court sing together?
"In every man's life there will be a hang-up
A whirlwind designed to slow you down
It cuts like a knife, it tries to get in you
This Spooky Electric sound
Give up if you want to and all is lost
Spooky Electric will be your boss"

Item:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick faced a backlash Tuesday for suggesting that fellow seniors should risk their health for the sake of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

— Sacrifice the old to help the economy? Texas official’s remark prompts backlash March 24 2020

Prince:

Call People magazine, Rolling Stone
Call your next of kin, cause your ass is gone
He's got a 57 mag with the price tag still on the side
Cussing when Spooky say dead, you better say died

Dig:

Every life is valuable, but 500 people out of 29 million and we’re locked down, and we’re crushing the average worker. We’re crushing small business. We’re crushing the markets. We’re crushing this country. There are more important things than living

— Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick: ‘There are more important things than living’ during pandemic April 22 2020

Prince:

Don't kiss the beast

Dig:

“And I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die, but man, we got to take some risks and get back in the game, and get this country back up and running."

— Texas' Dan Patrick: 'There are more important things than living' April 22 2020

Prince:

We need love and honesty
Peace and harmony
Positivity

Item:

The bloc will allow visitors from 15 countries, but the United States, Brazil and Russia were among the notable absences from the safe list.

E.U. Formalizes Reopening, Barring Travelers From U.S. June 30 2020

Prince:

Love and honesty
Peace and harmony

Dig:

“In my view, the worst thing we can do is to lock down Texas again. That’s not what Gov. Abbott wants. That’s not what I want,” he said. “But we need help from the young people out there to help bring these number of cases down and free up hospital beds.”

— Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says Dr. Anthony Fauci “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” July 1 2020

Prince:

I said, hold on to your soul

Item:

Texas reported its latest record-breaking daily increase in cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, with 6,975 new infections identified. The number surpassed Italy's highest single-day jump in virus cases to date

— Texas Daily COVID-19 Cases Top Italy's Record When It Was Global Epicenter June 30 2020

Prince:

You got a long way to go

Dig:

"Italy saw its highest single-day increase in cases of the novel virus on March 21, with 6,557 new diagnoses. Texas and Italy reported similar weekly average increases in cases surrounding their respective peaks, with both identifying at least 3,500 new infections per day. Italy's record increase came roughly two weeks into the country's national lockdown, which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte originally implemented March 9. The country continued to diagnose several thousand new cases daily until early May

— Texas Daily COVID-19 Cases Top Italy's Record When It Was Global Epicenter June 30 2020

Prince:

Hold on to your soul

Item:

Abbott's order marks a major reversal. For over two months, he ignored calls by the Democratic leaders of Texas' metropolitan areas to mandate mask wearing.

He refused to allow leaders in Houston to enforce their own face-covering mandate with penalties, undercutting their ability to slow the spread of the virus. Hospital officials in Houston have said intensive care beds there are now in short supply.

Prince:

We got a long way to go

— American Exceptionalism on the Virus June 29 2020

Prince:

Hold on to your soul

Fade out with increasingly stark Linn drum breakbeat...

II. Positivity Reprise (Some Covidious Poetry)

Positivity (Yes)

Amateur epidemiology (Yes)
Profit mythology (Yes)
Faulty biology (Yes)
B-movie theory (Yes)
Capital monopoly (Yes)
Black Gold ideology (Yes)
Wicked wizardry (Yes)
"We are crushing the economy." (Yes)
"Hospitals have a lot of capacity." (Yes)
"I don't take responsibility" (Yes)
"Reopen the economy" (Yes)
Let's ignore Doctor Fauci (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

Cowboy tomfoolery (Yes)
Shameless mimicry (Yes)
Constitutional lootery (Yes)
Delay-Deny policy (Yes)
Dereliction of duty (Yes)
Entitled supremacy (Yes)
Sense of superiority (Yes)
Assumed invincibility (Yes)
Disgraceful poverty (Yes)
Unvarnished sociopathy (Yes)
Unbridled pathology (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

Buyer's remorse suddenly (Yes)
Selective amnesia mentality (Yes)
In search of herd immunity (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

The phantom thread of greed lies at the heart of the matter
Their liability certificates are being served on a platter
Calls for sacrifice while seeking to avoid blame
America's real herd immunity is to shame

Positivity (Yes)

See also:

• Herd Immuity
• Shell Games (Part I. Shame Cultures)

Soundtrack for this note

Hearing the afrofuturist demo of Positivity has made my day, month and year. Youtube is the gift that keeps on giving and this time we have 5 different versions of the track. The album version gets the glossy sheen of the Lovesexy production to distinguish it from the Black album era, the others are minimalist funk masterpieces. There's also a live version with Patti Labelle and Mavis Staples's cover from The Voice.

Positivity, A Playlist

I did a quick juxtaposition of photos from the last time we saw Prince live, three weeks before our first child was born. The Welcome 2 America tour was a return to form, Larry Graham, Santana and Sheila E were in the house. He even did a cover of Amel Larrieux's No one Else. What more could one want. We'll see if the Prince estate allows this adaptation to live on, I suspect the Spooky Electric covidious implication might be a bridge too far. Hold on to your soul, we've got a long way to go.

[Update] January 2021 - my video remix was removed by the copyright police although, interestingly, 5 other uploads are still available on Youtube. Oh well...

Previously in the same vein

• Off the Hook
• Bullet from a Gun
• Angola

File under: remix, adaptation, coronavirus, pandemic, disaster, rogues, culture, hubris, huhudious, USA, politics, hatchet job, Prince, humour, satire, observation, perception, neocons, poetry, toli

Off the Hook

Apropos this afternoon's news of Porter Goss's "unexpected" resignation as Director of the CIA, still unexplained by him or his boss, the 43rd President of the United States, and the "swirling rumours" (as John Roberts of CNN put it) of hookers, suborned Republican Congressmen, dirty defence contractors, the Executive Director of the CIA, a certain Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, plucked out of obscurity into his position by the now departing director, "relaxation" and "poker parties" at the Watergate and other Washington DC hotels, I have to admit that I was momentarily at a loss for words. As I watched the news, and tried to get on with work on this bad-and-buried-news Friday, I wondered whether truth in these times was always stranger than fiction. Thankfully a Kennedy car crash, and recividist rehab, kept things fair and balanced. It is interesting to note the different ways different media outlets report, as well as the order they choose for their coverage. In any case, I'm sure we'll get all the facts in due course; there is no cause for alarm. As is my custom in times of confusion, I turned to music to make sense of things, and was inspired to dig into the crates in search of a theme song for these huhudious happenings. Consider this a musical response to the news...

The song is Off the Hook by R.J.'s Latest Arrival, from their 1988 album, Truly Yours. It's available on vinyl in the UK and CD copies show up every now and then, as nostalgia ebbs and flows.

To put it in context, it's a duet between producer R.J. "The Wiz" Rice and his lead singer, whose name escapes me but whose soulful voice kept English boarding school boys entranced on our dorm room and study dancefloors. For the purposes of transcription, I'll give her the admittedly arbitrary intitials, CIA. The song is basically about The Wiz getting caught out in infidelity and his attempt to stay connected to his current squeeze. His problem is that CIA wants him to stay off the hook and she has disconnected her phone. The Wiz's voice is suitably greasy, sounding like a cross between Roger Troutman's electronic vocoder and Keith Sweat at his whiniest. If the song were written today, she'll probably erase him from the speed-dial or remove him from the buddy list. I suppose one could remix the word hook with hookers but that would be too blatant. I prefer instead the delicious connection of hook to a curious person in this tangled web

A CIA agent nicknamed "Nine fingers" so named because he lost one of his digits while on assignment.

The song is out on the file sharing networks but for the musically curious who need instant gratification, it is now available on Youtube.

Off the Hook by R.J.'s Latest Arrival

The Wiz: Had a masterplan and I did not leave a trace. Never really thought it would backfire in my face. Little did I know it was easier said than done. All I tried to do was have a little fun.

CIA: Off the hook (with your love), I'm over you.

The Wiz: Stay with me. Don't leave.

CIA: Off the hook (with your love), I'm over you.

The Wiz: Don't let it end this way, baby.

CIA: I'm over you. I'm trying to get myself together.

The Wiz: Once in a lifetime baby.

CIA: I'm over you.

The Wiz: Why can't you forgive me?

CIA: I just can't forgive you.

The Wiz: You know I tried to be true.

CIA: You lied to me.

The Wiz: Hanging with the guys... Influence on my thoughts. Won't you understand that I only did it once?

CIA: One time was all it took... Can't run no game on me.

The Wiz: I'm not running a game, baby.

CIA: Won't need no second chance.

The Wiz: I don't need no second chance.

CIA: My life has just begun.

The Wiz: It was a once in a lifetime thing.

CIA: Off the hook (with your love). I'm over you.

The Wiz: Stay with me. Don't Leave. Please.

RJ's final pitch: I don't know what you gonna do. But I know what you really need. I'm a man that made just one mistake And I don't want you to leave. I'm not a tramp with the brain insane, the ego-trippin off my name. You ain't off the hook, take a second look.

[phone hangs up]

CIA: No. No. I... I don't need you no more Cause you lied to me.

The Wiz: Stay with me.

CIA: Your masterplan backfired on you.

The Wiz: Please stay.

CIA: You know I'm... I'm over you.

The Wiz: I never meant to hurt you.

CIA: I'm off the hook.

The Wiz: Stay with me.

CIA: I'm off the hook (with your love).
I'm off the hook (with your love).
I'm off the hook (with your love)

The Wiz: I don't really want it to end this way.

CIA: You mean that's it? Well...

Liner Notes

I'll note in passing that R.J's Latest Arrival's most successful album was their 1995 effort entitled Everybody Here Must Party. I don't know if they meant poker parties or simply spending more time with their families.

It featured their earlier 1984 hit single, Shackles, which is one of the best break dance and electric boogie songs. Shackles was their most famous song and was typical of the early hip-hop grooves of the early 80s. Its lyrics harken to clubgoers trying to avoid perp walks:

Shackles on my feet Our primary objective is keep to the groove.

Musically, Off the Hook is in the same vein as Jerome Prister's Say You'll Be, that is, classic and soulful dance music. The ingredients are drum machines, synthesizers and a woman wailing away to punctuate the points. The song is very danceable and you can imagine the kind of fun workouts one could have in nightclubs or hotel rooms. I also remember it in conjunction with Full Circle's contemporaneous song, Working up a Sweat which I've mentioned before in connection to erustication, which is quite appropriate since we're dealing with CIA connections in this instance.

Porter Goss, I'm off the hook with your love, I'm over you. I suspect you're working up a sweat.

File under: music, soul, politics, adaptation, satire, humour, observation, CIA, Porter Goss, rogues, neocons, R.J.'s Latest Arrival, USA, toli