Linda Rondstadt is pretty much right

Linda Rondstadt grew up in Tucson, Arizona. But she doesn't feel at home there any more:

"There wasn't a fence running through the Sonoran Desert when I was growing up. In fact, when I moved back to Tucson, there wasn't even a fence running through it.

"While I was there, it was building; we just turned around and all of a sudden it was there, this horrible thing that destroyed economies on both sides of the line. I know my own father's business was very dependent on the goodwill and business and trade from people in northern Mexico. We knew their families and went to their weddings and baptisms and balls and picnics, and we had a great time with them. Because my dad had a huge hardware store, and they came up to Tucson (to) do their shopping.

"We regularly shopped in Nogales. It was a wonderful place then, and had beautiful things in the stores and had wonderful food. And when they put that fence up, they cut all that commerce off and that's what creates understanding and awareness of each other and good trade relations."

The thing that will really sting is when she says she likes going to Mexico because, these days, it's more like Tucson than Tucson is.

She also calls out those hollowed-out asshats who gathered to scream abuse at children who had crossed the border:

"We allow Cubans to come in and say that they're refugees. Well, in Cuba — I've been there, you know — people are fed, people are housed, people are clothed. There isn't violence in the streets. Here, people are coming from places where there's just terrible violence. Parts of Mexico that are incredibly violent, and Honduras, which is just unspeakably violent right now.

"These children are just fleeing for their lives, their parents are just sending them out because it's the only way that they have of living — into a terrible, dangerous journey and an uncertain future in the United States that is populated with people that seem to hate them — that's how desperate they are."

Linda Rondstadt: she was right when she suggested Mr Plow might be both a loser and a boozer; she's even more right now.

Linda Rondstadt won't be singing any more

Linda Rondstadt has said she won't be singing again, as she's got Parkinson's Disease:

Ronstadt says she began to show symptoms as long as eight years ago, but attributed her inability to sing then to a tick disease. When her hands began to tremble, Ronstadt said she thought the shaking was the result of a shoulder operation.

She said she was “completely shocked” when she finally saw a neurologist and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “I wouldn’t have suspected that in a million, billion years.

“No one can sing with Parkinson’s disease,” Ronstadt told AARP music writer Alanna Nash. “No matter how hard you try.”

It's a sad end to a career with a lot of high points, but few higher than this:

(Please, let's not ask what on earth would persuade someone to make a thirteen minute loop of the Plow King advert. Let's just not ask.)

Songwriterobit: Clint Ballard Jr

Clint Ballard Junior - whose name would have delighted Adam Trimingham and his Department of Appropriate Names - has died.

Born in Texas in 1931, Ballard spent time in the army before entering the music business as manager of the Kalin Twins, but it was as a songwriter that he really found success. He wrote Linda Rondstadt's hit You're No Good, and also created The Game Of Love for Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders.



Since the 80s, Ballard had been making a living in the property business.