Moon and Gail Zappa at Music for America's Icon Awards
Hoodoo
http://www.sfist.com/archives/2006/03/14/green_day_at_music_for_americas_icon_awards.php
Green Day at Music for America's Icon Awards
On Thursday night, political non-profit organization Music For America
presented their inaugural Icon Awards to honor influential musicians,
outstanding political achievement, and social responsibility. Honorees
included Gavin Newsom, Green Day, Death Cab For Cutie, Oakland-based
Youth Movement Records, Working Assets, and MFA Board Member Dan
Lipski. With 60,000 members, Music for America endeavors to engage
young people in politics through partnerships with musicians and music
communities.
The event was emceed by Moon Zappa, who approached the stage while
Kanye West's "Gold Digger" was playing and proceeded to get down in an
embarrassing-mom kind of way. We laughed at her rather than with her,
but her lack of pretense was endearing. (And we'll admit we read
Moon's novel several years ago and enjoyed it.) Moon kept her good
humor as she shuffled the audience through a scattered program of
video clips and award presentations. Contrary to what the photo would
have you believe, Mayor Newsom was not there when it came time to
accept his award since he'd already been there and left. Earlier in
the evening when we saw a gorgeous, statuesque brunette with cascading
curly hair in line for the buffet, we turned to our friend and
wondered "is that Gavin Newsom's girlfriend?" Judging by the venomous
look Ms. Brunette flashed back at us, we realized our whisper was way
louder than we thought and that maybe we were onto something! After
commandeering the MFA liveblogger's laptop for a quick look at
Sophia's photo, we realized it wasn't her. We so wanted to report CSI
Plumpjack sighting.
Gail Zappa, wife of Frank, gave a speech that we missed most of due to
recurring microphone problems, but we did catch the two books she
recommended: The Nothing that Is : A Natural History of Zero by Robert
and Ellen Kaplan and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John
Perkins. Death Cab For Cutie didn't show up to the event, but they had
a good excuse since they're on tour in Europe. The acceptance speech
that they videotaped backstage from Brussels was a little lackluster
both in its content (confused band members stammering a generic "thank
you" into the camera) and its length (couldn't have been longer than
20 seconds?) After an introduction by Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, we
were impressed to see that all three members of Green Day were there.
Billie Joe expressed his excitement to attend an awards show "that
actually has a #^$@ing purpose" and looked forward to when we can get
the "racist, war-hungry, corporate fascists out of the White House" in
2008. But how do you really feel, Billie Joe?
MFA will be registering voters via text messaging in key Senate race
states in 2006. For more information about volunteering, visit their
website at MusicForAmerica.org http://www.musicforamerica.org/ .
--
Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
-- Hugo Black