I first saw the Salty Caramels seven or eight years ago when the Columbus music scene was locked in the death grip of the Americana movement. There were three ladies in matching dresses, and (if memory serves) they sang a song about ice cream. In addition to playing the acoustic miscellany of the day, one of them had a saw with a violin bow which sounded like an intoxicated ghost with self-esteem issues. It was saccharin to the point of nausea.

Subsequently, I learned that they had undergone a lineup change, adding a drummer and electric guitar. Even so, I was a little apprehensive when I popped in their new disc, Baby Blue, the title of which I suspected was not a Dylan reference. Sure enough, the opening track began with a sort of kitschy drum and vocal intro about a Baby Blue. About six seconds in I was actually reaching for the eject button.

Which would have been a serious mistake. Because this album is a collection of gloriously wonderful pop music that is light years away from what I expected.

Just prior to Hitler-inspired neo-Nazis and their white supremacist allies descending on Charlottesville, Virginia in August, the FBI began characterizing the Black Lives Matter movement as “Black-identity extremists.” As best the Freep can tell, the FBI made up this term to apply to anyone who advocates equal rights, racial justice and an end to police brutality against minorities.

The Black Alliance for Peace put it this way: “The state is growing more desperate and dangerous. It faces a crisis, one where its own legitimacy is being questioned. In a re-play of the repression faced by Black liberation forces in the 1960s and ‘70s, news broke that the Black resistance movement is in the cross hairs of the state. So-called ‘Black-identity extremists’ are now the new FBI targets, a category that can include anyone who believes Black people have the right to resist and deserve self-determination.”

A balcony collapses in a synagogue and sparks a women’s uprising in the first offering of the 2017 Columbus Jewish Film Festival. Despite venturing into the hazardous intersection of religion and gender politics, The Women’s Balcony has been described as a “feel-good comedy” that you don’t have to be Jewish to love.

Then again, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the majority of films in this year’s lineup, said festival co-chair Sandy Meizlish. Though some deal with the aftermath of the Holocaust and likely have the most resonance for Jewish audiences, he said, others have more universal appeal.

Meizlish cited Mr. Gaga, a documentary about Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, who pioneered a groundbreaking dance style called Gaga. The screening will be presented in conjunction with BalletMet, which recently performed one of Naharin’s works. “It was a compelling performance,” Meizlish said.

For the last several decades, since we got enough distance between us and World War II for them to be a hypothetical threat rather than an active one, Nazis have been stock villains. And so normally no one would think it controversial to use them as cannon fodder in a video game. That was certainly not the controversial thing about any of the previous games in the Wolfenstein series – they were part of the whole fuss over video game violence, but no one singled out the Nazis as unfair targets.

But we don’t live in sensible times anymore. No, this is 2017, and Bethesda’s decision to go all-in on the Nazi-killing aspect of the new Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has brought all the worst people out of the woodwork to complain.
 

Where's the soundtrack? You can't have a revolution without the right music.

In high school I wanted to join the S.D.S. So bad and I loved Abbie Hoffman and here's a few of my hate-my-father's-Republican-guts revolutionary playlist:

The MC5's "Kick Out The Jams," though I never knew the words was by its very explosive punk-soul jail-guitar-doors was Detroit proletariat punk rock revolutionary. Now the Left hate's the working class--go figure.

The Jefferson Airplane's 'Volunteers' and 'We Can Be Together' were totally right on musical manifestos for life in Year One of the New Order – co-ops, weekly love-ins, pig-free zones encompassing entire states, no hassles, organic everything and weed, weed, weed. Free of course.