Music: Compare and Contrast: Portishead vs. SCTV

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mojo-photo-mojo.jpgOkay, I know I’ve been talking a lot about the Portishead album, which I love more and more with each passing second. But while my adoration for Third is nearly boundless, I’m not blind to its more, shall we say, “mockable” aspects. Case in point: listening to track two, “Hunter,” today, I was suddenly reminded of another piece of music that it resembles. A long-buried German cabaret number? An obscure album track from the soundtrack to an early Bond film? Norwegian funeral dirges? No, no, no: “Hunter” seems to have borrowed its dramatic piano melody and swerving chord changes from the theme to SCTV’s brilliant soap opera parody, “The Days of the Week.” After the jump, compare and contrast for yourselves. Hmm, maybe we should also be looking for hidden references to “The Great White North,” or perhaps the organ sounds came from Tex and Edna Boil’s Organ Emporium?

Portishead – “Hunter”

SCTV’s “Days of the Week” (starts about 30 seconds in)

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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