I dare you to argue otherwise after listening to this. That’s rock, only with harmonies that most rockers wouldn’t attempt, even though more should.

That piece is the overture from his Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (”Little Threepenny Music”), the chamber suite he wrote from his music from the Threpenny Opera he wrote with Bertolt Brecht. Hearing it made me recall this song (”Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavor” in English) from the full … Opera, which is rock, too. Listen to the way it builds from concertina to small ensemble to larger ensemble, harmonies spiralling inevitably outwards.

My friend Matthew Neill Sharp, who records as Mathgeeks and is also a member of my musical group Box Set Authentic, is so prolific a songwriter and recordist that it’s hard to keep up with his output. Which means that every now and then, a truly great song of his slips through the cracks.

The other night, while going through some new material of his, I stumbled on an older song of his that had escaped my attention.

As the blogs digest George Will’s column on the Webb-Bush exchange, a number of writers are drawing parallels to Cheney telling Pat Leahy to f*** himself on the Senate floor.

These writers ask why some D.C. pundits castigate Senator-Elect Webb for his comments even though failed to take the VP to task for his. Is this the GOP message machine in action? Is this anything like the tut-tutting of the D.C. insider class when the Clintons “trashed” Washington?

Honestly, I think it’s much simpler.

Washington works top-down. Like a clique in your average high school. You have to know your place — suck up to those with more social capital, spit on those with less. The difference between Webb’s comment and Cheney’s has nothing to do with partisanship. To the D.C. gang, Cheney as VP has the right to piss on Leahy, who’s only a senator. Webb, as a lowly senator-elect, is supposed to show deference to the “higher-ranking” Bush.

That’s the kind of bollocks that made me hate life in Washington.