Would you vote for one of these blokes?

I thought I'd continue the musical theme by noting the upset victory of John Hall, a former member of the supremely cheesey soft rock outfit Orleans, in the US midterm elections. (He's the tall one in the middle, if you have to know.) Hall, who turned many of his election rallies into concerts, made the war in Iraq the focus of his campaign to take upstate New York's seat in congress from Bush groupie Sue Kelly.

This isn't the first time Hall has been involved in politics. In the aftermath of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979, he organised a series of benefits concerts for the anti-nukes movement under the banner Musicians for the Use of Safe Energy (MUSE). If you're a music channels addict you're probably familiar with a clip from one of the MUSE concerts showing Bruce Springsteen giving a spine-tingling performance of 'The River', his lament for the working class American victims of what is nowadays known as globalisation. Check it out in the next post (I mean the one before this one...)