Thoughts on culture, politics, music and stuff by Eric Olsen, Marty Thau and Mike Crooker, who are among other things, producers.

 
Dogs and Cats Sleeping Together
You know that the ice caps are about to melt on your ass when Andrew Sullivan - who excoriated NY Times economic columnist Paul Krugman for his lucrative consulting “work” for Enron, rhetorically stomping him into the ground, then urinating into the resultant hole - commends Krugman in print: praising not only Krugman's contempt for Bush’s new steel tariffs, but also agreeing with Krugman’s praise of BILL CLINTON’S “free trade legacy.” Perhaps Armageddon IS upon us.
posted by Anonymous at 3:36 PM

 
Not Phat, Fat
What is with all of the fat athletes? Who is more dependent upon his temple, his body, than a professional athlete? Who has more to lose if that temple falls into disrepair? In football, every interior lineman is an immense doughboy. There are even fat basketball players. How in God’s name can you play basketball, running back and forth all the livelong day, and still be fat? And in baseball, blubber abounds, especially among pitchers, the very players for whom conditioning is most important.

My Indians have two of the pitchers whom you would least like to take ice fishing: C.C. Sabathia (300 lbs) and Bartolo Colon (around 250). They are also the Tribe’s two most important pitchers - the two they can least afford to have dragged down by excess weight. These two are exceptional young (though Colon isn’t as young as we were led to believe) talents, with almost no limit as to what they can accomplish in their careers and for their team as long as their self-indulgence can be tamed. Toward that end, perhaps their coaches should try a few choice insults, of which a few of my favorites are:
“When you’re pitching, we can’t see the game.”
“What size batter’s box do you wear?”
“Do you swell up like that every spring?”
posted by Anonymous at 2:37 PM

 
Cool Tunes

A written bio/review relating to Cool Tunes now appears every Friday/Saturday here on Tres Producers. Norah Jones (see below) is this week's feature. Don’t forget our co-promotion with Cleveland.com: in conjunction with the Rock Hall Inductions of March 18, we are conducting a reader's poll as to who deserves to get into the Rock Hall. We will play the results next week on Cool Tunes, March 16. Who do you think should get in? Vote here.

On this week's show: emo, roots rock and blues, swingin' jazz, concert previews, and focus on Norah Jones, Eels, and Buddy Guy. The spring concert season is heating up. We previewed concerts by Girls Against Boys, Cracker, Buddy Guy, Ryan Adams/Leona Naess, Prince, Charlie Hunter, Elliptical, OS 101/Fabulous Disaster.

Cool Tunes is a radio show in a magazine format Saturday nights from 10pm (Eastern) to midnight on WAPS, "The Summit," in Akron, Ohio. I play new music, reissues, and preview shows coming to town each week. Musically it is among the widest-ranging 2 hours in the country: modern rock, punk, electronica, jazz, reggae and ska, roots rock, Americana, blues, world, funk, hip hop, avant garde, etc. - if it's cool I play it. Cool Tunes has been proudly serving humanity since 1990. Our audio streaming is better than ever on the Summit web site. The playlist is posted here.

Knockout Neophyte Norah

You would never guess Norah Jones’ age from her voice: a melodious alto blend of Billie Holiday compression (she fills the notes like ideal air pressure in a tire), Diana Krall easy self-possession, and a hint of smoky Dusty-in-Memphis grit.

I first heard the voice last year on the brilliant 8-string guitarist Charlie Hunter's Songs From the Analog Playground, on which she appeared twice: a dazzling, bluesy rendition of Nick Drake’s “Day Is Done”; and most remarkably, a jazzy bossa nova version of Roxy Music’s ode to ennui, “More Than This,” on which she brought to mind an idealized Phoebe Snow.

Then her CD, Come Away With Me, came out last week and I knew they had put the wrong person on the cover: big trouble in the art department. For staring out from the jewel case is a vaguely exotic, raven-haired, sensuous-lipped, college girl. There is no way that this voice of sly experience came out of that face. But it did, and does.

Though released by the historic, jazz-oriented Blue Note label, Come Away, produced by the legendary Arif Mardin is an unlikely but cohesive admixture of easy jazz, sophisto-pop, smooth soul, and countryish L.A. singer-songwriter stylings. No ragas, though (more on that later), and not one moment of diva-like histrionics, not a whiff of Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera begging you to hear ME ME ME above and beyond the SONG SONG SONG, which for them is just a vehicle for the real star of the show.

Norah is in control of her jazzy soul and devotes all of her prodigious talent to respecting the song: inhabiting it like a house, which she strolls about as a gracious host, pointing out its charming features. This artistic generosity and respect for the house displays maturity that most performers never achieve, let alone at 22. Who is this person? Where did she come from?

Jones was born in Brooklyn and grew up singing and playing piano in Dallas with her Oklahoma-born mother, who played Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Joni Mitchell records for her. She attended the same high school for the arts in Dallas as Erykah Badu, where she dove into jazz, absorbing the piano subtleties of Bill Evans and the classic musicianly vocals of Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Nina Simone. She went to the University of North Texas as a piano major for two years before dropping out to seek her musical fortune in New York.

Oh, by the way, her father is Ravi Shankar, with whom she appears to have a quite distant relationship. His name isn’t mentioned anywhere in her official bio, and is only mentioned in two articles I could find: a brief but deeply appreciative bio/interview in the NY Times Magazine, and an album review in the Washington Post. Once you know it you can see the resemblance - “vaguely exotic” look explained - but Shankar would appear to have about zero musical influence upon her: Jones’s beguiling potpourri features nary a vedantic ping, not a raga in sight.

Come Away With Me just flows out of the speakers, an early-summer float down a fragrant winding stream with outstanding Nashville-jazz originals from her guitarist Jesse Harris (“Don’t Know Why,” “Shoot the Moon,” “I’ve Got to See You Again”), L.A.-meets-Western Swing originals from her bassist Lee Alexander (“Seven Years,” “Feelin’ the Same Way,” “Lone Star”), her own intensely intimate, beautiful title track; and covers of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You,” and a striking acoustic bass-driven version of Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart.” She is something. Catch “More Than This” and “Cold Cold Heart” on tonight’s Cool Tunes.
posted by Anonymous at 11:33 AM

 
Emptying Out The Bookmarks #12

"What's Wrong With This Picture?"

You'll have to look closely for a little while to see this one...

(requires Shockwave)
posted by tofu at 4:46 PM

 
Jerry Flips, Picks Everything
Our friend Jerry selects the most important journalistic pieces of the day, often involving geopolitics or something.

"Equality at the Airport: Are Shorter Lines For Special Fliers Fair?” by Michael Kinsley, Slate

In the War on Terror, waiting on long lines for security checks at airports is the major war effort imposed on civilians. Though it beats trying to pry martyrdom-crazed al-Qaida fanatics out of caves, trying to get yourself and your luggage from an airport entrance into an actual airplane can be a pretty hellish experience these days. What the demands of security have done since Sept. 11 to make you miserable while heading to the plane nicely complements what the airlines have done in recent years to make you miserable when you're on board....

"Prisoner of War" by Yossi Klein Halevi, Jerusalem Dispatch

This should have been Ariel Sharon's moment. The man who built his career on the argument that terrorism must be fought without compromise now heads a nation that experiences terror attacks seemingly by the hour. Sharon's decades-long attempt to forestall a PLO state has been vindicated: The Oslo process has transformed Palestinian terrorism from sporadic attacks by underground bands into a sustained campaign directed by the administration and police of the emerging state next door. Sharon's war of excess in Beirut has become a defensive war for Tel Aviv....

"Defeating Al Qaeda Takes Ingenuity" by Ranan R. Lurie, L.A. Times

Some of our best young men - Special Forces, Rangers, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne - are risking their lives this very moment in the mountains of Afghanistan, and several of them already have paid the highest price possible. The problem is with the price - the casualties....

"Getting Back to Normal: From Terror to Tranquility in 6 Months,” by Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune

I had time last Sunday to do all sorts of things. I read the newspapers, finished painting a bedroom, went for a run, got some photos developed, talked to my parents on the phone, and drove various offspring of mine to places they needed to go. But in that entire 24-hour period, I didn't spend a single second thinking about terrorism....

"Palestinian Violence Has Forced Israel, U.S. to Face Tough Choice,” by Karby Leggett and David S. Cloud, Wall Street Journal

JERUSALEM -- Amid the worst spasm of violence in the Middle East in decades, Palestinians suddenly appear to have gained a critical advantage in their grim battle with Israel....

"Managing America's Superiority" by Jim Hoagland, Washington Post

Americans went to war after the attacks of Sept. 11. But they did something else just as important and far more characteristic: They went to work. A dawning U.S. economic recovery testifies to that reflex, which will give new pause to this nation's friends, its foes and everyone in between....

"Where Is the White House Peace Plan?" by Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Toward the end of the month, the Arab nations will meet in Beirut to discuss, among other things, the Saudi peace plan. Everyone who is anyone in the Arab world will be there with one possible exception - Yasser Arafat. He may still be under house arrest in Ramallah....

"The Longest War" by Victor Davis Hanson, American Heritage

About as many Americans were killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11 as at Lexington and Concord, at the Alamo, at Fort Sumter, on the Lusitania, and at Pearl Harbor combined, all of which precipitated Americans' entry into major wars. Where else can we turn but to history to make sense of such carnage? Yet many facile comparisons that are being made with the past are fraught with error. They tell more of our own popular perceptions of culture than of the real lessons of history, and they misinform us about every element of the situation, from its underlying politics to the nature of the terrorism involved, the proper role of the military in our nation's survival, the broader cultural context, and the true philosophy of war itself....

"In Praise of Vulgarity: How Commercial Culture Liberates Islam - and the West,” by Charles Paul Freund, Reason

Who will ever forget the strangeness of the first images out of post-Taliban Afghanistan, when the streets ran with beards? As one city after another was abandoned by Taliban soldiers, crowds of happy men lined up to get their first legal shave in years, and barbers enjoyed the busiest days of their lives....

"Slaughter In the Name of God" by Salman Rushdie, Washington Post

The defining image of the week, for me, is of a small child's burned and blackened arm, its tiny fingers curled into a fist, protruding from the remains of a human bonfire in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, in India. The murder of children is something of an Indian specialty. The routine daily killings of unwanted girl babies . . . the massacre of innocents in Nellie, Assam, in the 1980s when village turned against neighboring village . . . the massacre of Sikh children in Delhi during the horrifying reprisal murders that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination: They bear witness to our particular gift, always most dazzlingly in evidence at times of religious unrest, for dousing our children in kerosene and setting them alight, or cutting their throats, or smothering them or just clubbing them to death with a good strong length of wood.

posted by Anonymous at 12:30 PM

 
Emptying Out The Bookmarks #11

Michael Kelly's Page of Misery: War News

French Intellectuals to be Deployed in Afghanistan To Convince Taleban of Non-Existence of God

The ground war in Afghanistan hotted up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of Taleban zealots by proving the non-existence of God.

Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or 'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of pavement cafes at strategic points near the front lines. There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said, "The Taleban are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the Frenchmens' endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.

Speculation was mounting last night that Britain may also contribute to the effort by dropping Professor Stephen Hawking into Afghanistan to propagate his non-deistic theory of the creation of the universe.

Other tactics to demonstrate the non-existence of God will include the dropping of leaflets pointing out the fact that Michael Jackson has a new album out and Oprah Winfrey has not died yet.

This is only one of several Psy-Ops operations mounted by the Allies to undermine the unswerving religious fanaticism that fuels the Taleban's fighting spirit.

Pentagon sources have recently confirmed rumours that America has already sent in a 200-foot-tall robot Jesus, which roams the Taleban front lines glowing eerily and shooting flames out of its fingers while saying, 'I am the way, the truth and the life, follow me or die.' However, plans to have the giant Christ kick the crap out of a slightly effeminate 80-foot Mohammed in central Kabul were discarded as insensitive to Muslim allies.

posted by tofu at 12:10 AM

 
Joey and the Ramones
I first heard about the Ramones in 1975 from Johnny Thunders, who told me a new scene was developing at a little Village bar called Mothers and a hot new band called the "Ramones" was causing all the excitement.

"You should check them out," he said, "cause they're gonna stir some waves." When I saw them I thought, "Here's a band I'd like to produce.” They had stripped out the usual rock 'n' roll formulas, were original and mainstream at the same time, and were a sight to behold in their ripped jeans, shades, and black leather jackets. Talk about high concept. These guys had all the bases covered.

I wasn't recognized as a producer yet, but having spent so much time in recording studios I figured I was up to the task. I was still managing the high-maintenance New York Dolls, who were in the early stages of their implosion, but I knew it was just a matter of time before they'd break up. I couldn't picture myself managing anymore. I wanted to produce records - Ramones records.

The Ramones were searching for a manager and were considering me. I made it clear I wasn't interested in managing anymore, but would like an opportunity to produce some demos with them to see what they could do in the studio. A week later we were off to 914 Studios - a funky little studio north of the city in Blauvelt, New York where Bruce Springsteen and Janis Ian had recorded early in their
careers - to record "Judy is a Punk" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," two of their most popular tunes and representative of their philosophy and mindset.

The Ramones were four NYC kids who had grown up listening to the hits of the '50s and '60s in the heyday of Top 40 radio. They knew exactly what they were looking for in the studio: a duplication of their live sound with no added frills, overdubs, or gimmicks. They were adamant about simplicity. At first I wondered if they couldn't play more complex parts, but quickly realized their aesthetic was “less is more” to keep it honest, pure and never lose sight of the beat.

Their high energy minimalism had developed as a reaction to the excessively glossy production values that had crept into rock 'n' roll in the late '60s. They wanted the rocking teen sounds of the early Beatles, not Sgt. Pepper: songs you could dance to, sing along with, and feel way down in your gut. No extended guitar solos or pretentious drum flourishes. I thought they were the most refreshing band I had seen in ages.

The sessions began. Tommy, the band's original drummer, was somewhat familiar with the recording process and helped direct his bandmates through the recordings. Johnny and Dee Dee were tight-lipped; Joey was the butt of the other's constant teasing. A quiet and somewhat nervous type, Joey said little, delivered a near-perfect performance each take, and then quietly retreated into a corner as we listened back to the tape. I didn't know exactly what to make of him and concluded he must be extremely shy.

We completed the recordings in less than 4 hours - they were never mixed - and a few days later the rough cassette was sent to Craig Leon, a young A&R man at Sire Records, who played them for his boss Seymour Stein.

Craig was a close friend - we'd hung out together at CBGBs almost every night to see the new bands. We knew all along we were witnessing history in the making and were humbled by it. Where else could you see Patti Smith, Television, Mink deVille, the Heartbreakers, the Dead Boys, Richard Hell, the Cramps, Talking Heads, Blondie, Suicide, Alex Chilton, and on and on within a week or two? Nowhere else in the world!

Weeks later, Sire signed the Ramones. My demos weren't the only reason they were signed, but they did play a role and proved without doubt the Ramones could make credible records. The doors to seventies punk had been kicked open.

Many of the so called "knowledgeable" A&R men of the day enjoyed attending Ramones shows but weren't certain they were recordable. None of the New York punk scene acts had been signed to a label, and everyone was watching and waiting to see if the new movement had legs. One major A&R chieftain said "if this punk garbage ever hits, I will leave the business." The music business really missed the boat on the Ramones - people who should have known better ended up looking rather pathetic.

The same treatment was afforded Blondie shortly thereafter: "She looks great but the band sucks and can't play to save themselves." Blondie played well enough to eventually sell over 50 million records. The Ramones were called one dimensional by some and stupid by others. Surprise! They were smart enough to record 14 albums, last 20+ years, and get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Craig was assigned the task of producing the Ramones first album and did an excellent job, which resulted a classic. I was naturally disappointed that I didn't get the production assignment but was glad the Ramones were in Craig's hands because I knew he loved the band and would know what to do with them in the studio.

But that's not where my involvement with Joey ended. As the next few years unfolded and the Ramones toured the world, recorded more LPs and became international favorites, I became friends with the now more sophisticated and confident Joey. We'd meet from time to time over a few drinks to discuss fame, fortune and rock 'n' roll. It was always fun hanging out with him and usually ended with the two of us stumbling out of the bar into the dark East Village streets at 4 AM, laughing and heading home. I found Joey to be a very
perceptive and sensitive individual, a rare departure from typical music types.

When the Ramones split up, it was Joey who lent his name to the downtown music scene and assisted many young and aspiring musicians in their pursuit of a contract. When he died, I cried. The Ramones will go down in history for having reintroduced blazing energy and humor into rock 'n' roll - they inspire to this day.

I recently heard that a noted rock writer said the band didn't belong in the Hall of Fame, but were inducted because Seymour Stein pulled strings to get them in. Rubbish. Not worth commenting on.

I just learned that New York City is considering re-naming 2nd Street in the Bowery, the block where the early Ramones shared a loft, "Joey Ramone Place." I hope it happens. His family can be very proud of Joey for the person he was. Everyone misses him.
Marty Thau
posted by Anonymous at 9:24 PM

 
CUBICLES ARE THE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE MODERN
WORKPLACE
Work cubicles bring people together. When I was a young professional just starting out in the workplace, I dreamed of having a big office - something about privacy and personal space. Now that I am older and wiser I have come to realize that the opportunity to share every inch of your space with fellow workers is a gift to be cherished.

If I had my own office, I would miss so much. Who knew my work mates were such a fount of knowledge on current events and such arcane topics as porn, ‘80s arena rock, oral hygiene, serial killers, porn, bowel movements, skin disorders, alternative lifestyles, porn, and much, much more. In fact, the parenting tips alone have made the togetherness worthwhile, and fortunately my health care benefits cover counseling.

Cubicles help create a marketplace of ideas at work: everyone brings a little something to trade. Here are a few things I have learned:

* personal hygiene is also a personal preference;
* alcohol in combination with certain spices, when secreted through the sweat glands, can cause the eyes to water;
* flatulence is fun and should be shared;
* there is no such thing as too much information regarding the intimate details of one's sex life;
* personal problems can and should interrupt your work output;
* the bodily fluids of the infirm and contagious can help build your immune system;
* sharing previous work disciplinary actions and indictments is a great way to open up to your co-workers;
* inflammatory and/or slanderous remarks regarding executives should be stated loudly and often;
* it is appropriate for male employees to stand close enough to female employees to share their underwear whenever possible;
* it is appropriate for a male employee to rub his genitals on the back of a female employee's chair while standing behind her and looking down her blouse: this fosters trust and closeness.

The more I think about how my life has been enriched by the cubicle community, the less resentful I become about being overlooked year after year for that big promotion and office.
Dawn Olsen
posted by Anonymous at 8:26 PM

 
Jerry’s Picks
New Feature! Our semi-famous friend Jerry selects the most important pieces of the day, often involving geopolitics or something. Now you too can join Jerry’s list.

"Saudi Peace Sham" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

In 35 years of studying the Middle East, I have rarely seen anything to rival the Saudi "peace plan" for cynicism (of those pushing the plan) and gullibility (of those buying it). If it were not so tragic it would be comic. Israeli civilians are being blown up almost daily in restaurants, at bus stops, at prayer. Retaliatory attacks are launched by the hour. A new "peace plan" is then floated whose essence is this: When peace is achieved between the two parties killing each other on the ground, the Saudis will give it their blessing and make peace too.....

"With Friends Like the Saudis..." by Mark Steyn, National Post

Joanne Jacobs, formerly a columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, spotted a dandy headline in her old paper last week. A Muslim mob, you'll recall, had attacked a train full of Hindus, an unfortunate development which the Mercury News reported to its readers thus: "Religious Tensions Kill 57 In India.".....

“We Can Use a Laugh”
These are purportedly questions posed by George Carlin.

1. Why does the sun lighten our hair, but darken our skin?
2. Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?
3. Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
4. Why don't you ever see the headline Psychic Wins Lottery?
5. Why is abbreviated such a long word?
6. Why is a boxing ring square?
7. Why is it considered necessary to nail down the lid of a coffin?
8. Why is it that doctors call what they do practice?
9. Why is it that rain drops but snow falls?
10. Why is it that to stop Windows 98, you have to click on Start?
11. Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
12. Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
13. Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
14. Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?
15. Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
16. Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
17. Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
18. If you throw a cat out of the car window, does it become kitty litter?
19. If you take an Asian person and spin him around several times does he become disoriented?
20. Is it OK to use the AM radio after noon?
21. What do people in China call their good plates?
22. What do you call a male ladybug?
23. What hair color do they put on the driver's license of a bald man?
24. Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?
25. Why do they call it a pair of pants, but only 1 bra?
26. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
27. Why do you need a driver's license to buy liquor when you can't drink and drive?
28. Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
29. Why are there Interstates in Hawaii?
30. Why are there flotation devices in the seats of planes instead of parachutes?
31. Why are cigarettes sold at gas stations, where smoking is prohibited?
32. Have you ever imagined a world without hypothetical situations?
33. How does the guy who drives the snowplow get to work?
34. If the 7-Eleven is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why does it have locks on the door?
35. You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?
36. If a firefighter fights fire and a crime fighter fights crime, what does a freedom fighter fight?
37. If they squeeze olives to get olive oil, how do they get baby oil?
38. If a cow laughs, does milk come out of her nose?
39. If you are driving at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, what happens?
40. Why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of a drive-up ATM?
41. Why is it that when you transport something by car it is called shipment, but when you transport something by ship it's called cargo?
42. Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
43. Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
44. If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
45. If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

posted by Anonymous at 8:58 PM

 

Don Fleming and James Carter Photo by Chris Grier

The James Carter Experience

I stumbled across the James Carter story in the NY Times a couple of days ago and blogged it because I thought it showed a different, favorable, side of the music industry, which is often, and not incorrectly, portrayed as rapacious, insensitive, and venal. In a nutshell, O Brother Where Art Thou? producer T-Bone Burnett, Lomax archivist Don Fleming, and reporter Chris Grier tracked down ex-convict singer James Carter (who was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959) in Chicago to present him with the fruit of forgotten labor, 43 years down life’s highway.

Well, the story continues. It turns out “Don Fleming” is the Don Fleming, the cool-guy record producer/musician I interviewed for The Encyclopedia of Record Producers a few years back. Here is his profile from the book:

Don Fleming
A singer/songwriter/guitarist and leader of noise-pop bands Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L. and Gumball, as well as a member of the BackBeat soundtrack band (with Greg Dulli, Dave Grohl, Mike Mills, Thurston Moore and Dave Pirner), Don Fleming was also one of the top American alterna-rock producers of the ‘90s, scoring successes with tuneful guitar workouts including Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque, The Posies’ Frosting On the Beater, Screaming Trees’ Sweet Oblivion and Hole’s primal Pretty On the Inside.

Self-proclaimed “Air Force brat” Fleming was born September 25, 1957 in South Georgia, but spent his childhood hopping from Oklahoma to Florida to France. “Two years here, two years there - on the road already,” he sighs. A “total record collecting freak” and desultory guitar player, the young Fleming chose the path less taken - eschewing the obvious Beatles and Stones fixations for Herman’s Hermits - before succumbing to the inexorable pull of the Fab Four in the time of Sgt. Pepper.

Through the Beatles’ Apple label connection, Fleming was drawn to Badfinger’s Straight Up, and the album’s producer Todd Rundgren. Fleming was attracted to the producer/musician stance of Rundgren’s Something/Anything? “and all of that great analog sound.”

In the mid-’70s Fleming threw himself into the punk revolution (Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, Adverts), and recorded with the punkish Stroke Band out of Valdosta, GA for the local Abacus label in 1979. Even then Fleming displayed studio awareness, keeping a keen eye on the mixing process.

He next moved to Washington DC and fronted the Velvet Monkeys, a prolific if ragged singles band. Fleming recorded the Monkey’s records “out of economic necessity and interest,” and then began assisting friends’ bands with their recordings for similar reasons.

Fleming gained engineering experience working at a DC studio that specialized in transferring old acetate discs to tape for the Smithsonian, Library of Congress and other government agencies. There he learned to respect the sanctity of an original source - “You don’t clean it up, you don’t EQ it; maintain the integrity of the original.”

Fleming moved to New York in the late-’80s and joined B.A.L.L. with musician/producer Kramer. Fleming maintained his low budget production schedule as well; producing friends, and friends of friends for a six-pack and a smile.

Teenage Fanclub was his big breakthrough in 1991. He had produced the band’s God Knows it’s True EP in 1990, and then took the young Scots to Liverpool to record for their major label debut. The result is a holy fusion of Big Star pop rock sensibility, Rust Never Sleeps-period Neil Young guitar, and Dream Academy-creamy vocals on chunky, mid-tempo rockers like “The Concept,” “Pet Rock” and “Star Sign”; and on dreamy numbers like “Guiding Star.” Fleming’s next major projects were with two atypical Seattle bands: Screaming Trees and the Posies.

The Trees, led by beefy singer Mark Lanegan and the Connor brothers, Gary Lee and Van, packed the punch of the grunge bands but with much greater finesse and attention to songs. Sweet Oblivion features the insinuating radio hit “Nearly Lost You” with great wah-wah lead guitar from Gary Lee, the emotive acoustic number “Dollar Bill,” and groovy rocker “Butterfly.” Lanegan’s husky vocals and Gary Lee’s guitar shine throughout.

The Posies’ Frosting On the Beater carries pop rock to its heaviest conclusion; with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow’s ringing British Invasion harmonies chased by their own slashing guitars down a path both sweet and pungent on the sensational “Dream All Day,” and the Badfinger-esque “Solar Sister” and “Flavor of the Month.”

The latter two, as well as many other Fleming productions, were at least partially recorded at Fleming’s favorite studio, the “analog heaven” of New York’s Sear Sound. Sear and Fleming neatly coincide: the best of the musical past filtered through a modern mentality, delicately balancing power and grace.

Fleming’s best work as a musician is to be found on Gumball’s Revolution On Ice (co-produced by John Agnello); Fleming’s reedy vocal and guitar power the excellent title track and “Freegrazin.’” A nice organ intro from Malcolm Riviera provides variety on “With a Little Rain.” Fleming’s tunes are memorable and his production, built from the drums up, never gets in the way - an apt summation of his fine career.

It turns out that just over a year ago, in keeping with his Smithsonian and Library of Congress past, Fleming hooked up with the Lomax Archives - which provided the Carter recording for the O Brother soundtrack - where he is now wallowing in music history heaven.

Yesterday, within the same hour, I got very nice emails from both Don Fleming and Chris Grier, who had independently found my Carter blog via web searches. Small world. Fleming and Grier both got to go to Carter’s house a couple of weeks ago, presented him with a check and a platinum record, and Fleming got to accompany Carter, his wife, and three daughters to L.A. for the Grammys.

In an email Grier told me, “I dug Mr. Carter much. Nice ol' fella, very bright and witty. It'll be a long time before I forget the hour I spent on his living room couch, listening to him spiel about the old Mississippi prison camp days.” Grier is writing a book about Alan Lomax, and James Carter will fill a very interesting chapter.

As a reporter, Grier has mainly done investigations and now he is the “computer-assisted reporting specialist” for the Sarasota-Herald Tribune in Florida. With visions of Hal 9000 strong-arming a reluctant interviewee in my head, I asked Grier what his title means, exactly.

“Well, I mainly acquire government databases and dump them into my computer, where I use them to show how poisoned the air and water are, how dangerous the roads are, how many bus drivers and gym teachers have felony records that they didn't disclose, that sort of thing. Basically, it means I see daylight a whole lot less. It also lets me do stuff like find James Carter, though, so it's kinda cool.”

Very cool, I’d say. The James Carter story has taken on a life of its own; as I was talking to Don Fleming on the phone a few minutes ago, he had to go. CNN wanted to talk to him about James Carter.
posted by Anonymous at 3:20 PM

 
On the End of a Shovel
Sorry to reassert the "ant analogy," but it appears to be more apt than ever. We had an ant problem when I lived in Southern California in the ‘80s. We’d keep putting out traps (couldn’t spray because we had young children) but they would keep coming back.

One night, I was taking the garbage out to the dumpster after dinner; right as I went out the door the baby hit himself in the head with a hammer or something, so I put down the garbage bag, went back in, and forgot all about it. The next morning, I literally couldn’t see the bag for the crawling black horde swarming all over it. At first grossed out, I then chuckled cruelly, sprayed an entire can of ant killer in, on, and around the bag, then carried the remnants out to the dumpster on the end of a shovel. We never had an ant problem again.

Apparently, “Taliban and al Qaeda forces holed up in eastern mountains [have] been joined by hundreds of fighters after local leaders called for a holy war against the United States.” Ah, another holy war. The last one went so well for them.

So now, instead of fighting the 150-200 die-hards they thought were up there, the U.S. and coalition partners are now fighting more like 600-700 jihadis who have been drawn to the scene like ants to my garbage bag. Although the fighting is murderous and seven Americans have been tragically lost forever, hundreds of the enemy have been killed and the rest will surrender or die to no higher purpose than the ants.

Any more jihadis out there? Your brothers need you east of Gardez.
posted by Anonymous at 12:09 PM

 
I WISH I WERE CLOSER TO MY NEIGHBORS
I've been thinking lately that I should be more neighborly. Instead of glaring at my new neighbors every time they fire up one of their various unmuffled vehicles, I should wave and engage them in breezy banter. I am sure they are very hospitable. What with all the visitors they have, they must be.

It's undoubtedly my fault that we aren't closer. I haven't given them a proper chance. I clearly overreacted after one of their many motorcycles backfired causing my two-year-old daughter to evacuate her bowels. I definitely feel bad for wishing them a fiery death in a head-on collision with a brick wall. That was downright unneighborly of me. Maybe some cookies or an apple pie would help break the ice.

Their two REALLY loud, large dogs also seem sociable when they aren’t writhing and foaming. In fact, every time my small defenseless daughter plays in her sandbox, they bark playfully at her through the shivering, groaning fence. I should encourage more of this, she wants so much to "pet the nice puppies."

Now that I think about it, my new neighbors possess many admirable qualities. For example, a rakish sense of design. They painstakingly re-landscaped their front yard, practicing doughnuts and peel-outs on the stubbornly plush grass until it resembled a gravel pit accented with uneven mounds of dirt like one of those feng shui rock gardens, but bigger, and dirtier.

Another thing they have done is liven up the old place. I was sadly unaware that there are so many young people in the area who share a boisterous enthusiasm for illegal motorsports. I should thank my new neighbors for bringing them all together, from miles around, constantly, in an environment of roaring convivial merriment. What a communal feel we have now! What was once a quiet -
certainly too quiet - but proud, semi-rural lower middle-class neighborhood, now has a certain Puerto Rican urban spice to it: like West Side Story but with less dancing and more street racing.

They have also brought increased safety awareness to the neighborhood. Before the new neighbors moved in, people would just let their children play in the street without a care in the world. Now, everyone is very aware of how dangerous that can be, especially our dearly departed cat.

The new neighbors are also very conscientious about sharing. Often, especially at night, they play their music loudly enough that my husband and I can enjoy it from within our own house, in the winter, right through the walls. We long for the spring when we can just fling open the windows and doors and let the enticing brew of death metal and country into our lives unhindered. With the windows open we will also be able to see their new 10’x15’ Confederate flag flapping proudly in the dusty breeze, proclaiming their respect for state’s rights.

Yet another underappreciated attribute of my new neighbors is their colorful body art: a veritable riot of self-expression. The barbed wire tattoos on their necks, “white power” insignias on their chests, and multiple face piercings are distinctive indeed. I should tell them so. Where have I been? I wasn’t even aware you could tattoo an eyelid or pierce an ear - through to the other ear. Although my husband tried to run them over with the mini-van, I bet we could still be really close.
Dawn Olsen
posted by Anonymous at 10:52 AM

 
Twisted Red
The sub-B movie horror story that is taking place in rural LaFayette, Georgia is beyond my comprehension. The ghoulish script twisted to a deeper level of hell today with the juxtaposition of decomposing bodies and pornography, the revelation that the cremation equipment actually works, and the discovery that none of the 339 bodies date back past 1998, putting all of the blame for this nightmare on the shoulders of Ray Brent Marsh.

Though the motive for this retarded crime spree (174 counts of “theft by deception” so far) is as obscure as ever, at least it does one thing: it shoots to hell the simplistic conservative "red state, blue state" theory that the “solid center” Bush states are somehow morally superior to the coastal and northern states that went for Gore. The solidly Republican state of Georgia, Newt Gingrich’s stomping grounds, as "red" as it gets, has some seriously weird shit going down.
posted by Anonymous at 8:50 PM

 
Rockin’ With CCS
I don’t get out much lately; that’s just the way it is for now, but my brother’s friend Sean is the principal flutist with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony so I headed downtown on the coldest night of the year for an 8pm performance entitled Time Windows.

The CCS specializes in “music that dares to explore.” In fact, if they do say so themselves, “Over the past twenty-two years under the visionary leadership of founder and artistic director, Dr. Edwin London, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony has steadily climbed to the summit of new music’s Mount Olympus.”

In other words they specialize in challenging contemporary classical music, with an emphasis on brand new music. Over the years the “distinguished new music ensemble in residence at Cleveland State University” has performed over 160 world premieres. Last night’s performance featured not one, but two virgin pieces out of the four performed in a sprightly hour-and-thirty-minute show.

In the broadest sense I am oriented toward popular rather than “classical” music, but I love the astringent ardor of artiness, novelty in general, and can always appreciate extraordinary musicianship of any flavor. Besides, in the best public arts tradition, CCS’s shows are free and held in the charming Drinko recital hall, so I had little to lose.

In celebration of the composer’s 90th birthday, the show opened with Arthur Berger's “Chamber Music for 13 Players,” an angular “neo-classic twelve-tone” piece from 1956 with lot’s of flute squiggles from Sean (who is damn good, by the way). At only nine minutes long, the interesting-if-random-seeming burps, fulminations, squiggles, and noodling shot by quickly.

The second item was the world premiere of an exceptionally lovely and evocative piece created for CCS by young (b. 1959) L.A.-based composer Eric Muhl, entitled “Consolation.” Dreamy, slow, ambient, the contemplative composition “scored for chamber ensemble with solo violin and piano” was influenced, according to the composer, by the events of September 11.

As the final preternaturally quiet note trailed off into hushed infinitude, the nearly-full house of musicians, composers, students, and passers-by who had stumbled in out of the cold, sat for a frozen moment, visibly moved. The model-thin blonde composer bounded down the steps to the performance space below; the audience burst into cathartic applause, overcome by what had just befallen them. The musicians seemed astonished as well and applauded with equal enthusiasm.

The remaining two pieces were interesting but inevitably anticlimactic after the Muhl triumph. David Taddie's “5 Haiku,” another world premiere, was written for soprano Christine Schadeberg, who performed it capably and pleasingly, though it too seemed a bit random in a contemporary, Asia-influenced way. The show wrapped with Howie Smith's “Time/Windows,” featuring smoking trumpet soloist Ray Sasaki, whose lyrical, buttery tone at times evoked New Orleans, at others, somewhere much farther away. The next CCS show is March 25; I’ll be there.
posted by Anonymous at 4:42 PM

 
Take Us to Your Leader
Philip Smucker’s fascinating, frustrating story in today’s CS Monitor on Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora yanks bin Laden back to the realm of physical reality after he has floated in limbo for the last few months, like some freakish perversion of Schrodinger's cat. Below is a little snippet of bin Laden bio from the forthcoming America.com: On September 11:

Osama bin Laden (a.k.a. Usama bin Laden, Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin, Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, the Director) is the central player in this epochal drama. Bin Laden appears a bearded Janus of mythic evil to the West and heroic defender of the faith to many in the Islamic world.

Cloaked in cavernous gloom, perched atop an Aladdin’s treasure, an elusive alien issuing threatening, arabesque pronouncements from the distant planet of Afghanistan, bin Laden railed rather ineffectually into the gale of Western culture prior to September 11, although he and his al Qaeda network had been implicated in a long line of attacks against the West: the World Trade Center bombing, and the killing of 18 American soldiers in Somalia, both in 1993; bombing of the U.S. military complex at Khobar in Saudi Arabia killing 19 soldiers in 1996; near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 250 in 1998; bombing of the USS Cole docked off Yemen in 2000 killing 17 (bin Laden is also implicated in thwarted attempts on the lives of President Clinton, the pope, and a series of millennium bombings).

Yet by striking so audaciously and murderously at the very heart of Western civilization, on 9/11/01 billions of lips the world over uttered his name with either horrified contempt or reverential awe. One can picture the vulturine figure rubbing his gaunt talons in diabolical satisfaction, chuckling super-villain-style, “The infidels hear me now: the Great Satan’s altars have been brought low, their cries of fear and lamentation rise like music to Allah’s ears.” Henceforth the embodiment of worldwide terror, from under what rock did this scourge/savior emerge?

Mohamed bin Laden

Mohamed bin Laden, an illiterate, powerfully built, one-eyed dock worker, left the southern province of Hadramut in his native Yemen for the promised land of the newly created Saudi Arabia in 1930, where he found work as a bricklayer for Aramco, an Arabian-American oil company. A classic rags to fabulous riches story, the ambitious bin Laden undercut the competition and was building palaces for the ruling House of Saud by the ‘50s and the Medina-Jidda (a port city on the Red Sea) highway by the early ‘60s; he eventually amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune as builder to the royal family, including the spiritually and financially satisfying expansion of the three holy mosques at Mecca, Medina, and Al-Aqsa (on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). During the contentious transition from King Saud to King Faisal in the early-’60s, Bin Laden was so close to the royal family that he paid the wages of government employees until the crisis was over. Today the company, the Bin Laden Group, has 35,000 employees worldwide and is worth an estimated $5 billion.

A Sunni Muslim of the (conveniently) dominant Saudi Wahhabi stripe, bin Laden was strict and conservative, very generous toward the poor, and proud of his humble beginnings. He also had four wives - at a time: three “more or less permanent” Saudi Wahhabis, and a fourth position that “was changed on a regular basis,” according a remarkable bin Laden profile by Jason Burke in The Observer. This fourth-wife position was rotated amongst particularly young and beautiful women from all over the Middle East, the last of whom was a gorgeous, educated, worldly 22-year-old Syrian woman named Hamida who was still married to the elder bin Laden when he died in a helicopter accident in 1968 (there were about a dozen wives all told).

Hamida was the mother of Osama, Mohamed’s seventh son, seventeenth child, born in 1957 in the capital city of Riyadh. The entire family, eventually including 54 offspring (the last of whom was born in ‘67), lived together with gold statues, ancient tapestries and a small army of servants, aids and handlers in opulent compounds in Jidda, Riyadh and elsewhere. While strict, Mohamed was also expansive and took the family on vacations to desert and seaside resorts; he also encouraged his sons to demonstrate responsibility in the family business and was reportedly evenhanded in his treatment of them.

posted by Anonymous at 2:37 PM

 
Advise and Dissent
Notwithstanding the vicious, clarifying fight going on right now in Afghanistan that has already cost more American lives from hostile fire than the rest of the campaign combined, the last few weeks have seen a wandering of American focus, chinks in our bulwark of resolve, and a continuation in the bombardment of criticism unleashed against the administration by its allies since the president’s “axis of evil” statement in his State of the Union Address on January 29.

Last week saw a public split in bipartisan unity for the first time since Sept. 11 regarding the administration’s conduct of the war against terror as Democratic Senators Byrd and Daschle warned

“Defense Department officials not to expect additional money for the war without a clear explanation of the administration's goals. At the time, those remarks drew a sharp rebuke from Senator Trent Lott, who said, ‘How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism?’”

Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Senate majority and minority leaders, Daschle and Lott, duked it out again.

"’I think the time has come for us to be asking a lot more questions,’" said Mr. Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota. ‘That is the role of Congress. We're a co-equal branch of government, and I don't think we ought to rubber stamp any president as we get into these very difficult decisions’...Lott...pointedly questioned the ‘timing and tone’ of Mr. Daschle's complaints, and said the president needed lawmakers' support.

‘He needs us to work with him and help him,’ Mr. Lott said, ‘and any sign that we are losing that unity or crack in that support will be, I think, used against us overseas.’”

Daschle has concerns over the next phase of the war, with troops already committed to the Philippines, plans to send troops to Yemen to help train its military, and the administration considering sending troops to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. He considers the job not finished in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and other key al Qaeda leaders still at large and fighting ongoing.

On the cultural front, matters are becoming more unsettled as well. Some are wearying of the many 9/11 tributes. Some people are starting to look askance at criticisms by victim’s families of proposed rules for a federal victims' compensation fund, even calling them greedy in many of 8,000 comments posted on the web site of the Department of Justice.

"What a bunch of crybabies."
"The U.S. government should never have agreed to compensation for them."
"The U.S. taxpayers don't owe the victims' families anything."
"We did not kill their loved ones. . . They should have had insurance."

Questions of tact aside, there is room for genuine debate on the matter of compensation, especially when the debate is about “how much?” not “if.” Of course there are even those who have never warmed to displays of sentiment and patriot fervor:

“Does an event as catastrophic as this one require the rhetoric of kitsch to make it less horrendous? Do we need the overkill of ribbons and commemorative quilts, haloed seraphim perched on top of the burning towers and teddy bears in firefighter helmets waving flags...?”

Much of it is rather gross, in the original sense of the word, but at such times aren’t aesthetics a secondary consideration? Isn’t that what the powerful swell that has run through the country since 9/11 is about? That there are more important, fundamental things than cultural criticism? That sometimes the actual course of human events to which culture then reacts is of more importance than the reaction? Daniel Harris’ screed against tastelessness in Salon misses this point entirely, as if offended sensibilities somehow equate to the very concrete damage done on 9/11.

Not only is Harris offended by symbols of grief and patriotism, he is also discomfited by public displays of emotion - as though every tear that has fallen was staged, every gesture premeditated. Sometimes people just feel so strongly that those feelings become visible, and sometimes the shared expression of strong feeling can act as a balm: “at least I’m not alone in feeling this way.” What kind of constricted, Victorian prude calls any and all such expressions “emotional exhibitionism, emotional pornography, a need to play to the galleries and ham up our shock and horror as histrionic spectacles that we relish in and of themselves”?

Equally as bad, what kind of self-appointed aesthete cannot distinguish between the garden variety exhibitionism of Jerry Springer or Oprah, and people emotionally overcome by the sudden, purposeful annihilation of over 3,000 of their fellow citizens? Harris seems genuinely more offended by the nation’s reaction to 9/11 than the event itself, more upset about the feelings of national unity felt in the immediate aftermath of the horror, than the blind nihilistic hatred against which that unity was a reaction. This is a very troubled man.

As to the nation, sure March 5 doesn’t feel like September 12 - how could it? There have been no more successful attacks since the anthrax letters, the Afghan campaign has gone more smoothly than anyone could have expected, and rather than the lubricious wallow in collective self-pity that Harris sees, the most fundamental reaction to 9/11 has been a long-overdue reexamination and reaffirmation of values. The unseemly satisfaction Harris finds in our culture is in fact a deep sense of relief that even in our fragmented, disjointed, postmodern lives, we do share more than a common currency, we do care about more than our selfish selves. Harris may find this notion nauseatingly sentimental, its symbols and expression nothing but mawkish kitsch, but our mutual regard is
very real and something we can count upon, vulgar though it may be.

Regarding Democratic disloyalty to the crown, Daschle and company are doing nothing more than voicing their concerns as to the coming direction of the war: not its past conduct, not its current conduct in Afghanistan, and certainly not its basic advisability. There are doubtless political elements to the statements. This is, still, the real world. Yet, Congress has every right to voice concerns about the details of policy, to insist that it be kept in the loop, to provide a check upon the concentration of power in the Executive branch inherent in time of crisis. This is not disloyalty, it is sacred duty in a democracy. The president and his allies should address the questions, not just slam the questioner.

America has thus far acquitted itself extremely well in time of unprecedented crisis. With time comes distance from the catalyst that threw us together, dissent is natural, healthy, and to be expected in a nation of free minds, as is its vigorous refutation. Let the many voices sing for over the last six months America has proved itself to be a chorus at heart, not just an endless series of soloists.

posted by Anonymous at 11:17 AM

 
8 Tracks

One of my many eBay addictions is looking for additions to my collection of Punk/New Wave 8 Track tapes. While I have inadvertently picked up some Zamfir and Englebert Humperdinck tapes along the way (via bulk wins or "well meaning" or secretly vindictive friends and relatives), I do have some interesting tapes that you wouldn't expect to find on 8 track.

Part of the reason for the rarity of these tapes lies in the timing -- in 1976, 8 tracks were still in full force, (albeit mainstream recordings) but by 1981, they were almost extinct, to be replaced by cassette tapes. And while there are enough Journey and Boston tapes floating around to fill a really big hole in the ground (which come to think about it, would be a good idea), there were fewer punk/new wave 8 track's produced that ultimately survived...



Even our own Marty Thau had one out, most notably Marty Thau Presents 2x5 (1980, Red Star RED-8-100) w/ Fleshtones, Student Teachers, Bloodless Pharoahs, Comateens, Revelons. (BTW, I also just scored a VG+ NYDolls tape this week too -- woohoo)...

The prize of the collection though, is of course, the Sex Pistols "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols" still sealed in the shrink wrap. notable others: Pretenders (I and II), Talking Heads '77, BeBop Deluxe, Blondie (Pararell Lines, Eat To The Beat), Cars (first three), Elvis Costello (Armed Forces, My Aim Is True), Patti Smith (Easter), Vapours (New Clear Days).

To play the tapes (which I rarely do, due to their fragility) I also scored an 8 track recorder/player that gives off that nostalgic smell. When playing the tapes, it always takes a minute or two to adjust to the "sound", as the fidelity of some of the 20-year-old tapes don't stack up to CD's (for better or worse). But once the ears adjust, it's amazing how natural it all sounds... well, except for the ka-thunnnk! of the tape changing tracks...



posted by tofu at 10:33 AM

 
Emptying Out The Bookmarks #10

Fat Chuck's

Have you ever gone to the store, purchased a CD, brought it home and tried to play it on your CD-ROM only to have your computer choke on it? You may have a copy-protected CD.

Fat Chuck's is a clearinghouse for information and a list of known and suspected copy-protected CD's. And if Hilary Rosen has anything to say about it we'll be seeing more of these...
posted by tofu at 11:27 PM

 
Pixels Don’t Rustle
Whether it’s the Big Easy manner and drawl or the somewhat vacant look, singer/composer/musician/arranger/actor Harry Connick Jr. doesn’t ever seem to be trying that hard. The wheels are clearly turning though, for in addition to the impressive array of artistic success Connick has enjoyed, he is now an inventor.

Connick conceived of a computer “system and method for coordinating music display among players in an orchestra," eliminating the need for paper sheet music. The system can also be used for doing musical arrangements. Of course you have to be able to afford a computer for each musician in the ensemble, but once in place the system is silent, immune to all but gale force winds, and absolutely flexible.
posted by Anonymous at 12:07 PM

 
The Anteater and the Anaconda
If this is true, then we couldn’t have asked more from al Qaeda than this. If indeed “the shock of 9/11” has begun to “wear off”; and if, as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has fretted, "Sometimes people act as if it's all gone away. I do fear the country has not absorbed that the conflict is far from over," then the remnants of al Qaeda drawing together like pieces of the evil droid in Terminator 2 is the best thing that could have happened to refocus the American public’s attention and to give the American-led forces a target to attack.

The most intense ground fighting of the war thus far is going on right now near the eastern Afghanistan town of Zormat, with 1,500 troops comprised of Americans and Afghanis, as well as contingents from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and Norway (not to mention an experimental new American weapon: a “thermobaric” bomb, which “releases energy longer than standard explosives,” so “when detonated in confined spaces, like tunnels in a cave, they create a deadly wave of high pressure”; see graphic here), faced off against an unknown number of al Qaeda and Taliban forces holed up and dug in the mountainous region. At least eight American and five allied Afghan lives have been lost thus far in the assault.

Though they are presenting very stiff opposition, we can thank our enemies in Afghanistan for choosing to ignore the dictates of their own infamous training manual (discovered by the Manchester, England police on the computer of an al Qaeda member: “The organization should be composed of many cells whose members do not know one another, so that if a cell member is caught the other cells would not be affected, and work would proceed normally.") by gathering together in a single bloc, detached from the general population, and presenting themselves for one last apocalyptic confrontation with the “Great Satan” from the West and his friends.

Whether pride, fear, or suicidal tendencies have been at work, according to today’s NY Times:

”Residents of Zormat said today that as many as 1,000 fighters belonging to the Taliban and Al Qaeda took refuge in the town for about a month in late November and early December. Then, under pleas from the local population, who feared American bombing, the fugitives packed up and moved with their families into the mountains about 15 miles south of the town, the residents said.

‘We don't have a good answer as to whether this was some prearranged congregation point before the war even started, or if they've been able to somehow communicate and gather together there,’ said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, chief spokesman for the United States Central Command.”

Regardless, they are there, they are fighting, and they will be destroyed in an open, “public” (as opposed to secret and unpublicized) conflict with a beginning and an end providing at least a bit of finality just when it is needed most. To use an admittedly cruel analogy, it is much easier and more satisfying to blow up an anthill than to stomp on 1,000 individual ants.

The American-allied attack seems to have been in the planning stages since January, and is being carried out differently than the December assault upon Tora Bora, which allowed hundreds of al Qaeda - possibly including Osama bin Laden - to escape. American strategy at Tora Bora relied upon the combination of its Afghan allies and small teams of Special Operations forces to carry out the
fight and contain the enemy, this time "hundreds of regular Army troops have also been sent into the fray,” and are being used to prevent escape.

”The offensive is called Anaconda after the snake that wraps around its prey and crushes it. Using the new strategy, senior American military officials say that hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters have been surrounded and cut off.”

In the grasp of the anaconda, maybe the enemy will surrender. If not, time to blow up the anthill.
posted by Anonymous at 11:15 AM

 
They Should Make a Movie About the Guy Who Made the Song From the Movie
With all the bitching and moaning going on by and about the recording industry - including by us - this story comes as a tonic. James Carter recorded a version of “Po Lazarus” for rambling folklorist/producer Alan Lomax in 1959 as an inmate in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. He forgot about it. 42 years later the song appeared on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and now Carter, 76, shares a Grammy for album of the year, has a $20,000 check as a down payment for what could turn out to be hundreds of thousands in royalties (the album has sold over 5 million copies so far and was the No. 2 country album for 2001, according to Billboard), and enjoys a bizarre twist of fate late in his life.

Proving that there is no such thing as a monolithic “music industry,” just a collection of greater and lesser individuals and organizations doing their thing, the heroes of the story are album producer T-Bone Burnett; Don Fleming, director of licensing for the Lomax archives; and Chris Grier, a reporter for The Sarasota Herald-Tribune; all of whom went out of their way to track down Carter, who lives in Chicago and had never heard of the movie or the soundtrack.
posted by Anonymous at 3:05 PM

 
Tour O the Blogs
The Drudge Report isn’t really a blog but it serves some of the same functions. The web home of the notorious Matt Drudge, his simple, three-verticle-column, not-close-to-elegant site is basically a set of links to various breaking stories, as well as his own occasional sparse entries, and permanent links to several dozen news outlets, columnists, etc. The only break from the stark, headline text are two picture spots: a large one at the head of the site, and smaller one near the head of the middle column.

I am not the Drudge fan that many are, but there is a legitimate reason why he gets between 3 and 4 MILLION visits per day: he is virtually always first with the news, rumor, innuendo, allegation, gossip, etc., whether it ultimately proves to be true or not. This approach has obvious up and down sides. The biggest upside is that it takes advantage of the inmmediacy and real time nature of the web so people feel they are on the very cutting edge of information, and by extension, perhaps of reality. Drudge is a portal to the world of the moment, a moment whose reality is a bit hazy - a matter of probability not certainty - because it is happening as we pursue it.

What distinguishes this kind of online journalism from breaking TV news, for example, is that TV only covers breaking news that has a visual element, like O.J. plodding down the freeway or the World Trade Center falling down, whereas Drudge covers breaking conceptual news: for example rumors about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, news involving speculation that may or may not turn out to be true (that one was true, by the way).

Drudge, who at 34 has already run the site for 7 years, was born in the D.C. area, moved to L.A. in the early ’90s. He was managing the CBS studio gift shop and overheard a fair amount of gossip; he thought it would be amusing to use the still-young Internet to relay the gossip he overheard. Hence the Drudge Report - he added hard news and political gossip to the mix and a phenomenon was born. Drudge plays up the underdog with a nose for the news angle with vintage “ink-stained wretch” reporter garb: pork pie hat, askew tie, permanent smirk, and now has a weekly radio show syndicated nationally, Sunday nights from 10-midnight (Eastern). Says he,"Wherever the stink is, we'll try to zero in on it."

At the moment, Drudge Report headlines center on a forthcoming story in Time involving allegations of a missing nuclear bomb, New York City, and terrorists. This bears looking into. Go here for a Drudge bio and links.
posted by Anonymous at 1:51 PM

 
Poor Sport
It’s all over but the mythologizing (check out this comparison between funding for U.S. Olympic training and funding for education), the media appearances (Jonny Moseley hosted Saturday Night Live last night despite finishing fourth in the Freestyle Moguls competition), the cash-in tours, etc., but I couldn’t let the Olympics go without addressing this column by Bud Shaw from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Here is the essence of his dismissive, sarcastic piece:

Bud Selig's strategies are well-devised and necessary. Not for baseball, but for the Olympic Games. Contraction and realignment are just what the world's most bloated sporting event needs most. Curling, biathlon, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, modern pentathlon, archery and shooting? Think, "Montreal Expos." It's difficult to defend their existence.

Sprawl is an Olympic issue as it is with any large bureaucracy. The 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid featured approximately 1,100 athletes from 37 countries competing in 38 events. Salt Lake City had 2,500 from 77 countries competing in 77 events. 11,000 athletes from almost 200 countries competed in the 2000 Sydney Summer Games.

But so what? The wild variety of sports and countries of origin are exactly what is best about the Olympics. Obscure sports like biathlon, skeleton, modern pentathlon, and archery that get very little attention except from enthusiasts for all but two weeks out of every four years, are suddenly, briefly on equal footing with basketball, hockey, baseball, figure skating, and alpine skiing. Because they are in the Olympics. People pay attention - medals count the same in the final tally regardless of the popularity of their sport - precisely because a sport is featured in the Games.

The spotlight of the Games is a validation for the athletes, most of whom toil in obscurity 99% of the time, and also an opportunity for the expression of national and regional enthusiasms on an international stage. Just because curling, rhythmic gymnastics, team handball, and field hockey for men aren’t big is the U.S. doesn’t mean they aren’t passionately followed elsewhere. The greatness and appeal of the Olympics is that it affords a setting for the very best athletes from all over the world to compete in an international setting that (largely) transcends geopolitics, under the gaze of the entire planet, and with the drama that attends to such pressure and attention. WHAT exactly the athletes are doing is secondary to the theater created by the amazing skill with which they perform, the pomp and ritual of the setting, and the psychological intensity of the competition. These athletes, their games, and fans deserve respect, not condescention.
posted by Anonymous at 12:42 PM