I had the pleasure of writing with the Brooklyn teen band Care Bears On Fire.  These girls are all between 14 and 16 and they ROCK.

We wrote a great song called "Superteen" which comes out on their album "Get Over It" on July 14th.  Check them out: Myspace.com/CareBearsOnFire

I was so impressed with them (and their parents are cool, too)!!!

Jill

My favorite news hostess, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, played Luscious Jackson on her show last week.   Rachel, let us know if you want some new music for your show!

Congratulations to my friend Janet Billig who is one of the producers of Rock of Ages, the musical on Broadway featuring the songs of 80's hair bands and their mainstream rock brethren.  Constantine Maroulis got nominated as Best Male Lead and the show got Best Musical.

I saw the show and it is great. Even if you hated Journey, Poison etc, the show stands on its own celebrating the Sunset Strip. Go see it!

Shawn was a photographer of music, art, politics. He passed away this week. He was an artist taking pictures of artists. He documented the 90's LA and NY art, fashion and music scene in all its beauty, glory, excess, positivity and negativity.  He also traveled the world and documented poverty and struggle.

Memory: he was the only person on the set of the Luscious Jackson video "Here" who got me laughing (all laughs on camera are his doing-he was the still photographer right on the other side of the film camera). That was a tough video to shoot involving roller derby. He stood there and made really silly faces and it cracked me up.

Following is an obituary of sorts written by Shawn himself last year.

http://drewtewksbury.com/2009/04/17/the-final-draft-of-shawn-mortensen/

Luscious Jackson recorded a version of the song "Let It Snow" for a Gap commercial in the late 1990's. We ended up making a video for the song. Enjoy...

What am I doing these days? I am busy writing music with Jenan, a sixteen year old soul singer from Brooklyn. We are working with Singh Birdsong, who is co-producing with me.  Singh has played guitar live with me since the Luscious Jackson days.  We are blown away by Jenan, who I don't want to hype too much cause she is the real thing.

I will be posting music and video here for Jenan in the coming weeks and months as she moves ahead into performing live around NYC.  She just did a concert at my house which was beautiful. 

Other news includes Gabby Glaser of Luscious Jackson having a baby a couple weeks back. Mom, son and dad are all happy and healthy.  The other Luscious Jackson ladies have small children as well so that is why we have not performed together for a reunion, though the intent is there. You never know!  It would be sweet and fun to get back together for some shows at some point.

Brooklyn continues to be a great place to raise kids, our public school is great (except for the No Child Left Behind stuff which involves masses of data collection and testing, but all US public schools have to deal with that).  Our teachers do an amazing job of keeping the kids interested and having fun despite the paperwork they as teachers are stuck with.

Quick rant: I hope the new US government puts someone in charge of education who is a true educator, not a corporate bureaucrat. We don't need to waste millions of dollars as we do in NYC paying for data crunching. That money should be in the classroom where teachers need supplies and children need enrichments.  Let's remember to foster creativity in our children, not just test them for literacy and math skills.  Creativity will be valuable in the coming decades!

Celebrate ideas and art,

Jill

Hey Party People, Rainbow Posse, Disco Daddies and Move-a-liscious Mamas,

I've just put up a free download (a dance mix of the song The Last Summer). It's on my website, JillCunniff.com. I love this version, which is called the Sparkle Mix in honor of my friends Gabriel and Jeffrey at Sparkle Beauty Studio in New York City. Gabriel made a special request for this one, so here it is!

The Last Summer: written by Jill Cunniff, Sam Hollander and David Schommer. Produced by Duke Mushroom, S*A*M and Jill Cunniff.

Keep on dancin',

Jill

Gee, I haven't written my mamalog for as long as my daughter has avoided writing in her homework journal. Like mother like daughter.

Ok-on the C Train. Someone is ranting about Corinthians. Redemption. Do we see the crime rate as it was in the days of Noah. You can't trust anything around here. Everything is gonna fail. Revelation. The bible says an earthquake etc etc.

a young woman next to me seems to be having a revelation as she follows the speaker up and down the car with her eyes. The train noise is drowning the speaker out. Some young men are making loud sounds over her words. I think they were a crew trying to do a performance on the car. Someone asks her to speak a little lower. His ipod is not covering it. A young angry guy next to me starts yelling at the ipod guy about civil liberties saying the woman has the right to speak in public, says go to the Ukraine if you want to see your civil liberties erased. Ipod guy says she does not have the liberty to scream in my ear. Young 'n angry says that law was written by a whiteman.  Ipod guy says she's just too loud and furthermore she is spouting nonsense from the nineteenth century. I am chuckling at the display of it all.

I guess this is seen as fun by people like me and my father. Ya gotta love it not to leave it.

Jill

Hey What's Up- back to songwriting. Inspired by politics, X-Ray Spex, Love (as in Arthur Lee), Erykah Badu's new record, making good music, my friend Michael Patrick MacDonald's book "Easter Rising" out now in soft cover, and searching for moments of true expression. I was just listening to these old recordings by the 1960's and 70's folk/psychedelic/blues group Love. The singing is sometimes out of tune, but real. Guitars are often out of time, but not time corrected and pitch corrected on the computer. We need to bring back imperfection. Then we hear someone in their true state. I feel like I am experiencing Arthur Lee when he is singing. He might be rough, but it's packed with feeling. Love was an early "blender" of musical traditions and one of the early integrated bands. Also revisiting late 70's teenage punk with X-Ray Spex, whose singer Poly Styrene sang about consumerism and disaffection with such poetry I wanted to be lost in the underground. Erykah Badu just released her political, funkadelic inspired "New Amerykah" a an opportune time.

Last time I put my contact info in-got some letters but nothing about being maxed out which was the subject. No sweat. Write whatever. JillCunniff@JillCunniff.com

My husband Scott just sent me his writing on the state of the country. Here it is:
"Clinton Sold the House., Bush Spent the Money"
During Clinton's White House, America signed agreements with Mexico, Canada and China. These deals came with profound short term benefits for our capital markets and domestic economy (these don't necessarily go hand in hand). 

The long term benefits of these gains didn't even last out the Clinton administration. During that time, the economy was showing signs of inflation and the "Tech Bubble" had already burst. However, the country was still fat with borrowed cash, most of it sitting on the sidelines in the form of potential credit. 

Eight years later, six of those war years, and Bush has spent all that money and maxed out our credit. 

Thanks to Scott Gregoire for that take on our maxed out, mixed up mess of an economy. 

How maxed out are you and in which way? 

You can write back to jillcunniff@jillcunniff.com and tell me.

I'll put the best responses in the mamalog.

Ahoy Matey, you can still jump ship on that crap mortgage-look up a company called You Walk Away that I just read about last week in the New York Times.  Especially helpful if you didn't put your life savings into the down payment.  I knew the mortgage industry was devious when they were trying to sell me a refinance loan with crazy adjustible rates and they RUSHED through the sales pitch like they were on speed.

Let the buyer beware. Be very, very wary.

Jill

My father's memorial was sweet, inspiring and well attended, with one to one hundred fifty there.  Speakers were as follows: Malachy McCourt(author and actor), Barbara Feldon (actor and poet), Thomas Meehan (writer and colleague), Leslie Fuller (writer and musician), Dick Cavett(writer and television host),  Lee Stern (high school buddy and member of Chicago Board of Trade), cousin David Fitzgerald  and my brother Stephen. With so many writers in attendance, the eulogies were beautiful.  Everyone emphasized my father's wit, erudition and sunny personality.  We also showed a video of my father's career highlights including Sesame Street and the Dick Cavett Show. This was courtesy of Joshua White (of the Joshua Light Show). Robert left behind  a lot of admirers and we all miss him dearly. 

Robert Cunniff memorial website with room for guestbook entries:
http://www.legacy.com/NYTimes/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=102483606

We had the service at All Souls Unitarian Church.  Unitarians are about uniting all faiths. Minister David Robb fit himself into the agnostic program with humor and ease.  He decided to forgo the prayer after hearing the speakers talk about Bob's rejection of all things religious.

We met two more Cunniffs in their twenties, both named Kyle, who live within a couple of miles of us in Brooklyn.  Hey Cunniffs! I hope to meet more of you in the future.  With hundreds to choose from, it's hard to know where to start.  Some of the little ones I met in Chicago while touring with Luscious Jackson are now in their teens and twenties.  We have three of them in NY right now.  This is what happens when there are nine kids in a family and a bunch of them have six to nind kids each!  Exponential Cunniffs. My father gave so many tours of Greenwich Village to relatives and many of them have been contacting us.  Steve and I better start those tours up where he left off!

While you are at it, check out Jean Fitzgerald's art website Jeancfitzgerald.com. She is a Cunniff who does gorgeous murals in peoples' homes and sells art through her website.  

Jill