Posts from 2019-06-12

Dave Richards for June 12th..........

Dave Richards for June 12th…………

 

--I just finished recording the radio announcements promoting this Friday night’s Levitt AMP Free Concert in River Island Art Park and I am all charged up.  Part of making these recordings is to play snippets of the recordings of the performer who will appear on stage and I am just so impressed with the caliber of performer we will have on our stage I am at a loss for words. 

  The problem with being a radio and TV guy is that even when you are at a loss for words, your natural tendency is to keep talking anyway.  It’s what we do.

  The opening act of the night, and of the series, is a guy who goes by the name of P. Lowe.  He plays a contemporary style which is a blend of Portuguese, Latin, and African music called “Kizomba”.  But if you ask me it sounds like contemporary love songs.  It sounds great on the recording and I can’t wait to see him in person this Friday night.

  The featured act this week is a Rhode Island native called Chachi Carvalho.  He calls his music East Coast Hip Hop, but it’s not like any kind of hip hop I’ve ever heard before.  It’s great dancing music, very smooth. 

  Yes, it’s a shame I can’t play samples here in the newspaper as I can on the radio.  The sound is so professional.  I mean that, you know I grew up in the 1960s and 70s and there were a lot of local bands around then.  Heck, I was in one of them.   We were local and we sounded like a local band.  Not bad, but not national quality, if you know what I mean.  But these bands are world quality music, from the performance to the production, it’s all top quality.  And it’s FREE.  Just show up at River Island Art Park in back of the Museum of Work and Culture.  Bring a chair.  There will be food for sale, but you can bring your own if you want to.  You’ll have a great time.  But if you can’t come, we’ll have it on the radio live and streaming around the world on Internet TV so everyone can share in Woonsocket’s celebration!

 

--I am reminded of how the years seem to soften memories and attitudes.  It seems to me that every person who has been President of the United States has had a rough time of it while they were in office. 

  I remember hearing a report that on the morning of the day he was shot and killed, President John F. Kennedy was in Forth Worth, Texas reading the Dallas newspaper.  He noticed an ad someone had placed in that paper which addressed him and was quite impolite in listing the reasons he had a low opinion of Kennedy.  The report said that Mr. Kennedy looked up from the paper and commented to his wife Jackie, “We’re going into crazy country.”  When Jackie asked why he said that the president simply said, “There are some people there who don’t like what we’re doing.”

  You’ll find very few people today who will criticize Mr. Kennedy’s work the way they did back then. 

  So it makes me wonder about Mr. Trump.  If ever a president was criticized and ridiculed by the press, the public, and well, it seems sometimes like everybody……..it’s Mr. Trump.  But what do you think they’ll say about him 20 years from now?

  Will they say, “he kept us out of war by using the financial power of trade agreements.”  Or will they say something else?

  I’m not a fan of using tariffs as tools of international policy.  I know that the real losers when tariffs are raised on imported goods are the buyers of imported goods.  Namely, us.  But the way it has worked out with Mexico makes me wonder if this method of encouraging other countries to do what we want them to do has merit.  At least this time it seems to have.

  Time will tell.

 

--That's what I think. What do you think? Comments to: dave@onworldwide.com or postal mail to Dave Richards, WOON Radio, 985 Park Avenue, Woonsocket, RI 02895-6332.

Thanks for reading.

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