Just found this...

...a nice little tidbit on our 12 Miles West appearance. With a nifty picture and all (L-R: Damon Zick, Shaunte Palmer, and Kris Tiner (I don't know who the little girl is)).

Cool.

Go directly to jail. Do not collect $200.

Gotta love Photoshop. (Though honestly, this is a bit of a hack job.)

Our puny human brains

Watch this. Count the number of times the basketballs are passed.

Then watch it again.

Miss anything the first time?

For the Locals

(Copied and pasted from our local mailing list)

[Industrial Jazz] We're back!

That’s right, we survived our east coast tour… despite technical mishaps, eleventh hour gig cancellations, triple digit heat, and even being shot at.

I’ll be writing up a reflective piece on the sordid details of the experience, which I’ll post to the blog sometime in the next week or two… but in the meantime I wanted to alert you to the fact that, like a bad fad, we’re actually not done! That’s right, we have one more performance before we all retire to our Martha’s Vineyard mansions for the summer. (Yeah, there’s a little community of wealthy jazz musicians up there. Wait—why are you laughing?!)

Anyway, here are the details: we’ll be appearing at Club Tropical next Thursday, June 30, at 8 pm. Club Tropical is located at 8641 W. Washington Blvd. in Culver City—just blocks from the Jazz Bakery (probably the closest we’ll ever get to playing in that particular establishment). Admission is $10, and we’ll be doing two sets. (More info: www.cryptonight.com; big thanks to them for having us back.)

The freakin’ incredible Salvadoran food they make at Club Tropical will surely distract you from the crushing boredom of our show. But if the food doesn’t do the trick, check out the disco ball (sorry if I’ve mentioned that before, I just think it’s really cool). If the ball doesn’t do the trick, check out our special guest: vocalist / old friend Jill Knapp, flying in from the east coast for this gig. With the addition of Jill, we’ll finally have the air of respectability we so desperately crave, so let me take this opportunity to personally *thank her*.

The rest of the group:

Saxes: Kelly Corbin, Dan Boissy, Matt Otto, Ron Dzuibla
Brass: Phil Rodriguez, Dan Rosenboom, Shaunte Palmer
Rhythm: Dan Schnelle, Aaron Kohen, Robert Jacobson, Andrew Durkin

Oh, yeah, and for some reason I don’t quite understand, the LA Weekly decided to designate this performance as their “Jazz Pick of the Week” this week. You can read about it here:

www.laweekly.com/calendar/picks/index.php#jazz

Let me know if you can make any sense out of *that*.

Anyway, hope to see you all soon. Thanks as always for your support.

cheers
Andrew

PS. Special thanks department: once again, our undying gratitude goes out to the people and organizations--specifically the members of this list and the American Composers Forum of LA--for supporting our tour. Thank You!

For what it's worth...

Posted in response to a dilemma faced by a fellow traveler:

Okay, hopefully it won’t be too forward of me to add to this discussion. I think (nay, I know) I’ve been where you’re at, Joe, so maybe I can help.

Egomaniac that I am, I’m going to start by talking about myself, but bear with me, as there’s a larger point I’m trying to make. Check it out: if you had told me, six years ago or so, that I would be doing what I am doing now (i.e., leading the IJG), I would never have believed you. I would probably have thought you were nuts. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved “jazz,” and instrumental music, but from the start I had always been convinced that “my thing” was writing songs and working primarily with vocalists, period. That had been the focus of my creative output for my entire musical career up until 1999.

What changed? Simply put, in that same year (99) I found myself more frustrated artistically than I had ever been. For one thing, I was writing a lot of songs that had no real outlet. Jill had by then moved far away (or else she was in the process of doing same, I don't remember the exact sequence of events), and all the LA singers I got to know were difficult to work with for various reasons. More importantly, I was not feeling particularly excited about the stuff I was writing. I felt like I had exhausted all of my possibilities as a musician (perhaps unfairly to myself, I didn’t see the point in continuing to churn out more of the kinds of songs I already knew I could write--how many Job Songs does the world really need, for fuck's sake?). The fact that LA is overflowing with mediocre songwriters just made the situation worse. I found I had very little tolerance for the stuff I heard from my peers, but I was even more afraid of my own potential for mediocrity.

And then I read this book called Dianetics. (Kidding!--I hate that crap.) No, what happened I think was that I got to this very Zen place where, for whatever reason, I stopped trying so hard and opened myself up to whatever possibilities happened to come my way. I joined bands for the hell of it, just to see what happened. I met a lot of musicians. I put myself into aesthetically uncomfortable situations. I played a lot of bad music (much of it mine), and some good music too. I did a lot of listening, a lot of transcribing, a lot of reading, a lot of learning. I followed my gut, but I also ignored my gut because I wanted to find out for sure what kind of things it could reliably help me with. And somehow out of that messy period the IJG emerged.

I use the word “emerged” very deliberately, because in retrospect I realize that the IJG is basically an accident that I allowed to happen. I didn’t go into it intentionally. I never sat down and said: “Hmmm, you know what? I should really create a jazz group.” I just sort of fell in with a certain community of musicians, started writing music for them, almost as a joke, not having any expectations whatsoever, and before I knew it the project had taken on a life of its own. And, just as with the Evelyn Situation all those years ago, I felt an unidentifiable “something” click somewhere, and I knew I was in the right place at that moment. I sat up and basically said, “Wow. So I guess I’m going to be a jazz composer for a little while. Who knew?”

Out of more than twenty years as an aspiring professional composer, Evelyn and the IJG are the only two bands of mine that I’ve been deeply proud of--that’s a total of, maybe, seven years of “getting it right” (aesthetically, if not commercially) and thirteen years of drifting. (Other projects, like Jay’s Booming Hat, have been fun, but never really clicked in the same way.) In other words, I was in the ballpark less than half of the time. I have no idea how long the IJG will last, and if it does last, how long it will resemble the band it is now (which is markedly different from the band it was even two years ago). All I know--and I know this better now than ever before--is that I will always want to write music that challenges me, makes me laugh, makes me happy to be alive. And it's actually easier for me to write now that I’ve realized that the specifics of how the music will get made (i.e., what band will play it) don’t matter too much, because I know I’ll figure them out when I get there.

I’m not trying to make the process of getting out of an artistic funk sound easy, because it’s not. My point is that it’s a question of mindset as much as anything else. As far as I can tell, you don’t have to worry about the talent part of the equation--of course, I don’t know you or your music too well, but Jill has all kinds of great things to say about both, and I have a lot of respect for her judgment. In my opinion, it’s not really a matter of what music you do or don’t like, or what you call yourself (rocker? jazzer? singer-songwriter?), because those things are so temporal, and will probably change and grow over time, and anyway are partly determined by forces beyond your control: the moment you’re living in, the world around you, the people you’re with, the language you speak, your background, and so on.

The key to finding your musical identity, I think, is to be and remain open. You may already be aware of this, and in fact you may already be doing it, at least to some extent. But let me stress the point. Be open to changing your mind--or to not changing your mind. Be open to failure as much as you're open to success. Be open to boredom (ironically, that can be one of the greatest motivators toward excellence). Recognize that sometimes your inner ear just needs to coast for a while--it’s a way of clearing aside the detritus and nonsense that dances on the surface of your consciousness (we're all affected by this--the Zen monks call it “roof chatter”) and getting to what really matters for you as a musician. As with love, you’ll just know when something clicks. There’s no point in rushing it before it happens, or analyzing it after. Just let it be.

Good Advice

Whatever you think of Steve Jobs, he had some interesting things to say in a recent commencement address.

And we're back...

Whew.

Made it back from the tour in one piece. I'm still processing the experience, and writing up my reflections for posting here. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, get a load of this site. It's hilarious. (Be sure to order your "What Would Jesus Do?" thong while supplies last.)

More soon...

As Slimy as They Wanna Be

Another radio story: this one about Clear Channel's attempt to masquerade as a pirate radio station.

I wonder what it takes to get people to think in these terms? Is it a brazen realization? ("Hmmm. At long last, I guess I really don't have any sense of decency!") Or is it total and complete denial?

Anyway, I copy the article here because of the New York Times' registration policy:

Clear Channel in a Stealth Promotional Campaign
By ROBERT LEVINE

Published: May 30, 2005

To the average listener, Radio Free Ohio has all the earmarks of pirate radio. For weeks, it sounded as if amateurs had been bleeding their voices into the broadcasts of stations in Akron, Ohio, owned by Clear Channel, the corporate radio giant. At the Web site www.radiofreeohio.com, there was a manifesto about "corporate-controlled music playlists" that took potshots at several local Clear Channel stations. But there was no information about who had posted the screed, or what exactly Radio Free Ohio was.

But last week it came out that Radio Free Ohio was not a prank on Clear Channel but in fact a prank by Clear Channel. Tomorrow, an AM station the company owns in Akron will switch formats from sports talk to progressive talk, and Clear Channel would very much like anyone suspicious of corporate media to tune in.

"Once we determined we were going to change the format, we tried to get into the mindset of people who would listen to this new station," said Dan Lankford, vice president and market manager for Clear Channel in Akron. That mindset may involve a suspicion of Clear Channel itself, which has used loosened rules on media ownership to build a radio empire.

That Clear Channel owned the www.radiofreeohioorg Web site was revealed on www.stayfreemagazine.org, a magazine and blog about advertising and popular culture. Stay Free's editor, Carrie McLaren, said that she had learned the information from someone who had seen it on an Akron Web site. "In a way it's the heart of the problem with Clear Channel," Ms. McLaren said of the manifesto. " 'We're this huge corporation and we do everything to fake being local.' "

Naturally, Clear Channel disagrees. "Clear Channel, as I see it, is dedicated to entertaining radio and to getting results for our advertisers," Mr. Lankford said, noting that the company owns both conservative and progressive talk radio stations. "There's a hole in the market here and we're going to fill it."

Diversions

For fans of weather, check out the weather pixie.

(I once wrote a cheesy jazz "number" called "Waltz for Wanda," which was deemed worthy for the Weather Channel by all who heard it, and especially by my friend Jill, who retitled it "Waltz for Weather." Strangely, that piece will be resuscitated as a little comic interlude for the last two nights on our upcoming tour.)

And then there's this stupid Snoop Dogg thing. Honestly, I don't get the appeal of this guy (alright, already, add "izzle" to everything, I get it), but I know there are lots of people do, so here you go.

Don't fall for it

Someone recently sent me the below report. It's an interesting read, though funny in places, and depressing in others. (It is a real reminder of the music industry's power to establish rhetorical norms that a word like "eclectic" can be defined in such narrow terms.) A few thoughts:

1. Jazz recordings are noticeably absent from this discussion. Surprise!

2. This is an absurd statement: "Bob Perry, a veteran radio programmer, started the variety format on the Internet radio station JACK.FM in 2000." Eclectic programming has been around since the beginning of radio itself.

3. This is an absurd mantra for the stations described below: "We play anything." I propose revising as follows: "We play anything commercial (even if it's old)" or "We play commercial songs (i.e., music with words)."

Of course, some variety is better than none, so this may be a move in the right direction. Read on and decide for yourself.

* * * * *

And The Revolution Begins: Variety Format Takes Off At Radio Stations & Noon Play list On Chicago's Nine FM
Posted: Tue., May. 24, 2005 09:22:45 PM MST

CHICAGO (AP) -- The posters hanging on the walls of the broadcasting booth at Nine FM are as eclectic as the music the radio station plays -- Pink Floyd and Aerosmith sharing space with the Marx Brothers, the Rat Pack and the Beatles.

"We play anything" is the station's mantra, and to prove it, program director and afternoon personality Matt DuBiel's afternoon mix moves from Boz Scaggs to Prince to Cheap Trick.

With names like Jack and Bob (or Fickle and Nine), radio stations promising an anything-goes mix of pop and rock hits are springing up across the country. The variety format is seen, in part, as a way to appeal to listeners used to loading their own iPods with music from different genres -- or to keep those thinking about switching to satellite.

But more than that, it's a mea culpa to music lovers who started tuning out as their favorite stations shrunk their playlists in the 1990s, leaving the same old songs to play hour after hour.

The stations tell listeners "we play what we want" or "we play anything." But they're really carefully crafted to keep advertisers happy, observers say. Song choices target a lucrative but musically hard-to-define demographic, 25- to 54-year-olds, who want to hear new music but not rap and bubblegum pop, and who declare themselves too young to listen to
the oldies.

"This is oldies wrapped up in new wrapping paper and a new bow," said Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio, a trade publication owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc.

The variety format began in Canada three years ago and migrated into U.S. markets a little over a year ago. While the original Canadian formats, called Jack and Bob, differ somewhat -- Bob introduces more new music and Jack sticks to older hits -- they and other U.S. variety stations share some basic themes.

They're heavy on the '80s and '90s. They play mainly hits, but hits that haven't been heard on the radio for a while. They aren't afraid of "train wreck" segues, running, for example, a classic rock hit into an '80s pop confection.

For Harvey Wells, vice president and group station manager for Newsweb Radio Group, Nine FM's owner, inspiration struck sitting at a college bar with his 21-year-old daughter. After hearing hard-rock AC/DC followed by pop from Huey Lewis and the News, then followed by country singer Kenny Chesney, he asked her if she thought the mix was strange.

"And she said, 'Why strange?'" Wells said. "'It's just good music.'"

People always liked a variety of music, but as radio stations consolidated under corporate owners, playlists got shorter, said Bob Sinclair, president of Sinclair Communications, which launched the first U.S. Bob station in Norfolk, Va., 14 months ago.

"The big suits worried about their Wall Street stock price ... and there were these so-called experts telling station owners (that) to be successful you have to narrow your focus to a particular segment of music," he said.

Listeners tuned out. Americans 12 and older now spend about 19.5 hours a week listening to the radio, down from 21.5 hours a week in 1998, according to Arbitron's annual American Radio Listening Trends report. Radio advertising, which boomed in the 1990s, grew only 2 percent last year, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau.

Bob Perry, a veteran radio programmer, started the variety format on the Internet radio station JACK.FM in 2000 and later licensed the name for terrestrial stations in Canada and the U.S.

One of the converted is 32-year-old Stacy Jill Jacobs, who recently started listening to Jack FM in Los Angeles. Jacobs has an iPod loaded with her favorites, but likes the station's eclectic nature and element of surprise.

"It's completely random, and the choices that they make are hilarious," Jacobs said.

Not everyone is a believer, though. Michael Saffran, who worked for years as a DJ, has listened to Fickle in Rochester, N.Y., and doesn't expect it to stick around for long. The scan button on his radio dial does the same job, he said.

"If you're going to listen to some wide range of music, it might as well be the stuff you pick yourself," Saffran said.

The Canadian Bobs and Jacks have had staying power, giving variety radio backers a weapon against naysayers who call the format another fad akin to all-'80s or jammin' oldies, both of which came and went quickly.

Sinclair's variety stations have done well in the Arbitron ratings, and only one -- in Honolulu -- has fizzled. Bob Sinclair notes Bob FM in Austin, Texas, has rated No. 1 in its market's 25-54 demographic.

Variety stations are rarely the leaders in any particular market, but they have proven a reliable way for station owners to boost their market shares, said Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, a consulting firm.

In Chicago, Nine FM, playing on three frequencies, hasn't made a dent in the ratings yet. But since its entry into the market, the city's alternative station has expanded its playlist and declared itself "on shuffle," and a hot adult contemporary station now says it plays "today's new music ... and whatever we want."

The stations will have to figure out a way to keep listeners once the novelty wears off, said Ross. That may include introducing new music into the mix, or finding interesting personalities -- many now eschew DJs or give them little air time.

"The big mantra for Jack and Bob and all these formats is that they're a mile wide and an inch deep, and that will have to give eventually," Ross said. "That said, I'm not one of those people who believe this is a fad format."

Noon Play list On Chicago's Nine FM

The following is the May 13 playlist for the noon hour on Chicago's Nine FM, one of the country's new "we play anything" variety format radio stations:

Donnie Iris, "Ah! Leah!"

The Doors, "Love Me Two Times"

Switchfoot, "Dare You to Move"

Sonny and Cher, "I Got You Babe"

a-ha, "Take On Me"

Toad the Wet Sprocket, "All I Want"

Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded by the Light"

Del Amitri, "Roll to Me"

Tom Petty, "I Won't Back Down"

Five for Fighting, "Superman (It's Not Easy)"

The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"

Cracker, "Low"

Boz Scaggs, "Lowdown"

Prince, "1999"

Cheap Trick, "Don't Be Cruel"

Read it and weep...

Oscar Brown, Jr. is gone.

Though I'm an agnostic, I feel compelled to cite one of the refrains from Ellington's autobiography, Music is My Mistress: "God Bless Oscar Brown, Jr."

Almost forgot...

I recently wrote a concert review of Gutbucket's LA debut.

Another cultural institution in trouble...

This time it's LACMA.

What isn't mentioned in this article is the fact that the venerable Monday evening music series that has been going on at the museum since the 40s will be no more come 2006.

Oscar Brown Down...

...but not out. Send him your good thoughts.

Some details, from a publicist:

"Legendary Singer, Songwriter, Playwright, Oscar Brown, Jr. Hospitalized

Industry attorney Jon Waxman reports to us that Chicago native, legendary singer/songwriter, playwright, and true American musical treasure, Oscar Brown, Jr., is in intensive care at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago.  The 78-year-old veteran entertainer was recently admitted to the medical facility in severe pain and reportedly has suffered paralysis to both of his legs.  Brown underwent successful 14-hour emergency surgery on Monday, May 16th to stop the spread of an infection in his lower spine.  He is presently listed in stable condition recovering from the surgery, however, his prognosis remains uncertain as of this time.

Oscar Brown, Jr. is hailed as a cultural icon and Civil Rights activist, noted for his classic compositions including, The Snake, Signifyin' Monkey and his lyrics for Miles Davis' All Blues, Bobby Timmons' 'Dat 'Dere, and Nat Adderley's, Work Song. Early in Brown's career, he hosted Steve Allen's Jazz Scene USA and the PBS series From Jump Street/The History of Black Music.  Brown has mentored several aspiring young performers and in 1968 hosted a Gary, Indiana talent show that led to his discovery of The Jackson Five and singer/actor Avery Brooks.  In 1969, Brown is credited for rewriting the comedy production Big Time Buck White, and his musical version of the show was presented on Broadway, featuring former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in the lead role.

The Brown family requests "Prayers" from his Global family at this time and will provide a formal statement following his recovery period.  For information about Mr. Brown and to send to him any personal messages you may have, please visit his web site at http://www.oscarbrownjr.com, which will also accept messages for Oscar.  Good wishes from all of you will go a long way to help aid in his recovery."

Googlin' Fool

Wow... I just learned that Google maps is providing satellite photos as part of its content. Can you see me in this photo?

Then there's this take-off on Google: Toogle. Check out the most popular searches. (The basic premise: create an image of the thing you searched for, made entirely out of copies of the word itself.)

The fun never ends.

Couch potatoes on the run

Come on. Admit it. You know this is the funniest freakin' thing ever.

Blogs in Books

The first in a series, apparently: a printed collection of some of the best (i.e., most critical) blog-born assessments of that callous nitwit they call Donald Rumsfeld. Will be interesting to see how the genre translates to paper.

Deflating the "Digital Revolution"

In a recent BBC poll, the bicycle was chosen as the "most significant innovation since 1800." It got a whopping 59% of the vote. The next closest gadget was the transistor, which only got 8% of the vote. The computer came in fourth, with just 6%, while the much-touted Internet ran a downright embarrassing race, limping across the finish line in seventh place with a unbelievably wimpy 4%.

I feel so insignificant, given that I spend most of my waking hours somewhere near a computer. I haven't ridden a bike in years.

Jerry Springer, the opera

Hmmm. I can't think of a post that can compete with that subject line. So here's the link.

It's Worth a Try

Find out more about the campaign to save CBGB. Hopefully we won't be one of the last bands to play at this historic venue...

Attention, People of the Future!

The Time Traveler Convention should not be missed!

As for everyone else, hopefully we'll all get to attend this event some day in the future, when we can travel back to the past, which right now is still the future. (Er, I guess it doesn't make sense to say "right now" when I really mean "the future." Sorry.)

Anyway, see you there!

"Winning Uglier"

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: this war with Iraq should really be looked at in the context of our misguided "police action" in Vietnam.

I give you Exhibit A, by Paul Rogers. The following paragraph, for instance, is loaded with a gloomy deja vu for anyone who has some knowledge of the US's recent history in southeast Asia:

"It is obvious that the United States occupation forces – despite the overwhelming superiority in conventional military firepower available to them – are unable to control the insurgency. The undertrained and overstretched Iraqi security forces offer little help. It is becoming clear that the insurgency is too deep-rooted and pervasive to be defeated by the usual American counter-insurgency tactics, and the repeated use of heavy firepower in urban areas, including yet more air-strikes in recent days, is doing little more than deepening hostility to occupation as the 'collateral' casualties increase."

And then there's Exhibit B. Here Todd Gitlin actually makes some key distinctions between Iraq and Vietnam. In the last paragraph, he's certainly right (as are the pro-war folks) that Saddam Hussein is no Ho Chi Minh. That doesn't make this war any less painful, of course, and it doesn't guarantee a happy resolution. Perhaps we should really be focusing on Gitlin's next observation: that Americans will not launch any meaningful anti-war protest until the US casualties start to become more obscene in scope.

Just what that would mean is difficult to say. Do we need to have soldiers killed 100s at a time instead of "merely" a death here and there every day or two? Either rate can ultimately produce the same number of bodybags--it's just that the latter is stealthier, and easier to miss.

Is it...

...somebody's crass get-rich-quick scheme, or a valuable service for people in mourning? You decide.

You can scream if you want to...

Ah, Men Without Hats. When will we see their like again?

Anyway, here's a program to make your desktop cower in fear every time you feel like screaming at it (or at something else).

Unfortunately they don't have a version for Mac yet, but you can watch the movies at the bottom of this page to get a vicarious thrill.

Percy Heath (1923-2005)

The last surviving member of the Modern Jazz Quartet died this week. RIP, Percy.

Maybe I have a special affinity for the MJQ, because they used to get some of the same critical flak that we get (too "intellectual" and "restrained," whatever that means). Ellington too had to deal with that sort of criticism regarding his extended works.

I learned today that PH carried a fishing pole around with him all the time, and once said, "I made a living to go fishing." Right on.

Are they called "T-Shirts" because they're shaped like "T"s? And if so, aren't all shirts T-Shirts?

Daphne just showed me this, and I couldn't resist blogging it.

And because I'm a fan of irony, there's also this. (Zoom in on the image. It's worth it.)

Just for the hell of it, here's another T-Shirt company. Some of these are laugh-out-loud funny ("What Would Jesus Do For a Klondike Bar?"), and some of them offend even me (and I'm virtually impossible to offend). Then again, there's gotta be a place for obscenity in a culture...

Someone once mentioned that I should get T-Shirts made with the titles of IJG songs on them. "Pasty Mofo," I was told, would be a big hit. Maybe I'll try to get that together for this tour.

Fight the Power

Carnegie Mellon is where I started my convoluted journey through the land of higher education. So, aside from my general interest in the RIAA's egregious misinterpretation of copyright law, I plan on following this story very closely. Good luck, kids.

There's a potential angle here that I don't think has been tried yet: equal protection under the law. What the RIAA is doing amounts to selective prosecution (i.e., only suing certain people, hoping to make an example of them). This is inherently unconstitutional.

Then again, who pays attention to the Constitution these days?

Poetry isn't dead, it's just put together funny

The old European avant gardists would have loved the web.

By the way, I've been insisting that my daughter call me "Dada."

How to Help The Music Industry Become More Boring Than It Already Is

Or, How To Help The Music Industry Take You Seriously. Take your pick.

Nothing against this guy, he's got a job to do, and I'm sure quality packaging makes his life easier, blah blah blah. And I am certainly anal when it comes to IJG promo packages. So I'm sort of critiquing and yet participating in this madness at the same time.

But, come on! For one thing, packaging has nothing to do with "seriousness." Are there mega-talented, committed-to-music people who don't give a fuck about packaging? You bet! Are there shallow, only-in-it-for-the-money, barely musical nincompoops who have the packaging thing down pat? Oy vey, are there ever! (And I daresay this MusicDish article has just created a few more!)

What exactly does it mean to be "serious," anyway? And why is that a good thing? I turn my ears every which way and for the most part what I hear are people are so serious (and who take themselves so seriously) that it hurts. This, as I see it, is the primary difference between a weepy, lameass radio station like KCRW, and a smart one like WFMU.

So I disagree, Mr. Standring. The "amount of times" you "have to use a frickin' chainsaw to open a package"--that is even funny! Handwritten notes that say "Hook me up, dude"? Funny! Polaroids, unmarked CDs, lack of contact info? Funny, funny, funny!

What the music industry really needs is a sense of humor. See American Idol for what it is: a comedy show!

Baby Steps

My daughter is walking. Hoo-boy, look out!

Anyway, how about that Trent Reznor? He recently made a single Nine Inch Nails track available for remixing / mashups. More info at MakeZine.com.

I love mashups. The old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial had the right idea: some things just taste better when combined. My favorite recording of 2004 was probably "Night at the Hip Hopera" by the Kleptones. So... Reznor should indeed be praised for being brave enough to make this one track available--but why not put the whole catalog out there?

Give War a Chance?

So I haven't written about politics much lately, not because I haven't been interested, but because about 150% of my time is going into promoting our upcoming east coast tour. (Add that to the 150% being devoted to my beautiful little family, and the 100% being devoted to a full-time job, and you've got an interesting physics problem.)

Still, let me see if I can catch up. Bill Maher, whose last season of Real Time (HBO) was downright inspiring (maybe because it came on right after that other tiny morsel of relatively progressive TV programming, Bill Moyer's NOW on PBS) got off to a rather wimpy start this time around. For me, that was mostly because of Mr. M's seeming reversal on the Iraq question. You know the shtick (since he's been repeating it week after week now), but in case you don't, it goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing): "I'm willing to admit I may have been wrong about Iraq, even though I still think the administration got us in there illegally, and conducted the war ineptly. Maybe they were right about transforming that part of the world into a democracy. I mean, look at the way things are going!" The spin here is always on ack-centuating the positive--but no matter how carefully phrased, the verbiage inevitably comes off as a justification of US policy.

Now, far be it from me to say there's anything wrong with admitting when you're wrong. We should all probably do that kind of thing a lot more. But my huge caveat for Maher is this: how do we know who exactly is wrong yet? Isn't the whole point of history that you have to let it happen before you really know what it means? I for one will not be ready to give the Shrub props on this one until we've had a few decades of blissful coexistence with the Middle East. (And maybe not even then.)

I'll go even further: the burden is really on the administration to prove that the war was "successful." The critics, sadly, have historical precedent on their side. For one thing, there has never been a democracy created by the military actions of a foreign nation (much less a foreign nation with as nasty a reputation as ours). Also, as far as I can tell, it's basically impossible to "win" a war against a group of people who are committed to dying for their cause--particularly when those people have a large recruiting pool. How the hell are you going to up that ante?

Anyway. What brought me to finally make this post was this piece by Python's Terry Jones: "Let Them Eat Bombs."

Ken (Still) Burns Jazz

Just found this gem on the inimitable Gerry Hemingway's website. Did he write it? I dunno. Is it hilarious? Oh, yeah.

The series continues to smart after all these years.

Go east, young jazzers.

(Copied and pasted from a recent IJG newsletter.)

Okay, so that might not be exactly what Horace Greely said (in fact it might not even be close), but we’ve been considering it as good advice for some time now. And lo and behold, events have finally conspired to make it possible. To wit: in June of this year, the Industrial Jazz Group will be traveling across this here zany United States in order to make our east coast debut. (And in case you didn’t already think we were nuts--well, surely now you must see that we’re certifiable.)

Here are the specifics of the tour as they exist now:

June 15: CBGB’s, New York City (yes, that CBGB’s--assuming their landlord doesn’t boot them out beforehand)

June 16: TBA (a lot of possibilities in the works here)

June 17: 12 Miles West Center for the Arts, Bloomfield, New Jersey (www.12mileswest.org)

June 18: Knappuccino’s, Wilmington, DE (www.knappuccinos.com)--the final night for our tourand this funky venue both!

This is a very large step for us, and promises to be a very exciting trip: it gives us an opportunity to radically expand our fan base, to make our debut in the city that most people (rightly or wrongly) consider “the” jazz city (New York), and to perform with a number of special guests, including Jill Knapp (of the Evelyn Situation) on vocals and Marcus Milius (of Marcus Milius) on harmonica.

Of course, I realize that I am sending this email to our international mailing list, and that those of you not on the east coast (those of you in Iceland, say) might not immediately see that it contains anything other than a semi-interesting (and perhaps even downright tedious) diversion from the millions of other emails you’re receiving today. Not so! The deeper purpose of this missive is to explain that we need your help in two very important ways.

First: In addition to the usual media stuff, we are trying to execute a grass roots promotional effort for this tour—particularly for the New Jersey and Delaware dates. We know there is an audience for what we do, and we need your help getting the word out, if you are qualified and inclined to do so! In other words: even if you do live in Iceland, if you also know people in New Jersey or Delaware (or NYC) who might be hip to our jive, then please, by all means, let them know—or even better, let us know, and we’ll approach them (humbly and respectfully, without any sort of hard sell) about the gigs, and even provide them with a gratis IJG sampler to (hopefully) whet their appetite.

Second: Ah, yes, money. How I hate it. We were expecting to be on the top of the pops by this point in the group’s history (five years and running), but alas, them there teenyboppers is a fickle lot. No matter, we’ll keep pushing for the goal of critical *and* material success, despite our small, independent budget (i.e., Andrew’s paycheck). For the time being, though, we have to resort to other measures. So… much as we hesitate to go down this road again (again, money: hate it), we need to raise some bread for our trip. Our basic headache of course is going to be paying for airfare, but we’ll also have to deal with ground transportation and any lodging we might need. To these ends, we will happily and most gratefully
accept any manner of donation.

Our overall goal is to raise $2500. As with our Star Chamber fundraiser, we again have several “perks” for those of you brave enough to contribute:

Anyone able to contribute between $5 and $99 will receive a CD-R of our performance at 12 Miles West, beautifully recorded by Mr. Leo McClusky. (Hopefully this show will be beautifully performed as well.)

Anyone able to contribute between $100 and $199 will receive that compilation, plus a copy of our new record, Industrial Jazz-a-Go-Go, when it comes out this fall. Go-Go, which is about 75% recorded at this point, will feature all of the material you west coast folks have been hearing live lately; i.e., our newfound wacky hybrid of classic jazz, doo wop, blues, r&b, rock ‘n roll, salsa, mariachi, reggae, and Zulu jive. (Note: we are going to shop this record around to various labels, but we will not be releasing it with Innova. So we don’t expect the same set of delays and screwups that characterized the release of The Star Chamber.)

Anyone able to contribute $200 or more will receive two copies of each of the above items, and (if you wish) a grateful mention in the program for the 12 Miles West concert (which we will also send you a copy of).

Donations can be made by contacting me directly via email (type this address in email language: industrialjazzgroup at yahoo dot com).

(And as was the case last time: please understand that we only want you to contribute if you are *completely comfortable* with the idea of doing so!)

So there you go! Many thanks for reading all the way to the end. As always, we appreciate your support (financial and otherwise) more than you know!

cheers
Andrew

A review and some poo

Hey! A nice review of the Star Chamber just materialized here. Many thanks to Joe Taylor, a longtime supporter, for that one.

By the way, if you're tired of thinking for yourself, there's always this.

Rumors of my demise...

...have been greatly exaggerated. It has just been a month of [insert all the usual excuses here].

The quintet played a few gigs in March, including a delightful two-night engagement up in Truckee, CA. For those of you who have never been there, Truckee is up in the mountains a few hours east of the Bay area, up near Reno and Tahoe. There was a winter storm warning hovering over us the whole time we were there, and sure enough, the snow started coming down the day after we arrived. It accumulated to the point where we had to buy chains in order to make the trip home safely. Shit! I lived in the cold, cold northeast for the first 26 years of my life, and yet this was the first time I had ever had to drive with chains.

Driving home was fun, though. As we came down the mountain the snow turned into hail, then sleet, then rain, and of course by the time we got to central CA it was sunny and hot. I think we experienced almost every kind of weather that day. Never a dull meteorological moment in California.

The other time-sucker these days is all the advance work (promotional and musical) I'm doing on the group's east coast tour, which is coming up in June. I'm being a little obsessive-compulsive about it, I know. But I'm super-psyched about this tour and I want everything to go perfectly!

My latest scribbling for AAJ:

An extended piece on Grachan Moncur's latest work, and a review of Kaki King's 2004 album, Legs to Make Us Longer.

More than I'll ever make

From the Financial Times Online (via Tom Lefsetz)

Warner Music executives net $21m
By Tim Burt in London
Published: February 20 2005

Warner Music, the former subsidiary of Time Warner, paid its top five executives more than $21m in salary and bonuses following last year's $2.6bn acquisition of the US music group by a private equity consortium.

The pay-outs include further guaranteed bonuses or change of control payments at the world's fourth-largest music groupboasting 38,000 artists including Green Day, Linkin Park and Madonna.

According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, last year's total executive remuneration was more than three times higher than Warner Music's $7m operating income for the 10 months to September 30.

In that period, the company reversed previous operating losses of $197m as sales increased from $2.49bn to $2.55bn.

The management payments reflect Warner's success in cutting costs following last year's completion of the Time Warner disposal. The company expects to deliver $250m of annualised savings by May this year, achieved mainly through 1,600 job losses.

Of the top management, Edgar Bronfman Jr, the chairman who led last year's buy-out, received a $1m salary and $5.25m bonus. Paul Rene Albertini, head of Warner's international operations, was paid $1.25m in salary and a $3.15m bonus.

Lyor Cohen, head of the US recorded music business, received $1m and $5.24m respectively. Les Bider, the veteran chairman of the Warner Chappell music publishing business, received a $2.44m total payment.

The SEC document, filed as part of a $565m bond exchange offer by Warner Music, also reveals misgivings by outside auditors over internal accounting skills and royalty payment systems.

In its "S4" filing, Warner insists it has addressed problem areas such as appointing a permanent chief financial officer and establishing an audit committee.

But the company admits "additional measures will be necessary and these measures along with other measures we expect to take to improve our internal controls may not be sufficient to address the issues identified by our outside auditors".

Warner Music explained that these further measures would involve setting up financial controls and management systems that were previously handled by Time Warner, its former parent company, but were absent in the demerged company.

The weaknesses were identified as Warner Music is considering a potential initial public offering in the first half of this year, expected to place a $5bn enterprise value on the company.

The audit concerns do not relate to executive remuneration.

LEMUR heads west

This looks like fun:

The Beall Center for Art and Technology
presents

*JazzBot *

A performance of jazz piano and robotic musical instruments
Featuring Kei Akagi, piano

Wednesday March 9, 6:00 PM - FREE

Beall Center for Art and Technology
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
University of California, Irvine

Jazz pianist Kei Akagi of the UCI Music Department will give a brief performance in live interaction with a collection of robotic musical instruments. The robotic instruments, designed by LEMUR (the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), are currently installed as an exhibition in the Beall Center for Art and Technology. Mr. Akagi will provide a demonstration of realtime musical interaction between man and machines, using music composed by, and musically intelligent robotic behavior programmed by, UCI professor Christopher Dobrian.

The 20-minute performance will be followed by a question-and-answer session with professors Akagi and Dobrian and LEMUR founder Eric Singer.

Seating is limited; for reservations phone (949) 824-4339.

Kei Akagi is professor of Jazz Composition and Performance in the UCI Music Department. Christopher Dobrian is professor of Composition and Technology, and director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio and the Realtime Audio Research Laboratory. The LEMUR exhibition is ongoing at the Beall Center through March 19, 2005.

Mr. Akagi will perform on a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano, with generous support from the Yamaha Corporation of America, the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio of UCI, and the Beall Center for Art and Technology.

My shortest post ever.

Play asteroids.

...and more words

The latest Star Chamber review is here. Not bad, though I have no idea who "Evan Fronos" or "Gorrell Smith" are.

Words...

My latest review: Guy Kulcevsek's Well Tampered Accordion.

Help this kid spit on himself (or avoid same)

I can't describe it any better than that.

The curmudgeon gets his comeuppance

Quick! If you hurry you can contribute to what promises to be a gargantuan bonfire of Pierre Boulez's works! And rest assured, it's all being done in accordance with the master's aesthetic precepts.

What am I talking about? It's the Pierre Boulez Project, of course.

Jazz: The Music of a Good Night's Rest?

Somehow I think that this article is actually talking about the most banal of smooth jazz. (From the headline: "Forget counting sheep, next time you are having trouble dropping off to sleep try putting on a jazz CD.")

A little overdue, methinks...

Sorry about the silence, things have been "hella-busy" (as they say in the backwoods of northern CA). (Not that that's where I am right now.) (Not that there would be anything wrong with that.) (I think I need one more parenthetical phrase here, but I'm all out at the moment.)

Anyway, here's some good news: the case of that idealistic biker guy was just dismissed! A little bit o' justice in a cruel cruel world.

The new IJG album is proceeding nicely... more news on this soon.

The devil's music

This is a funny read, though I completely disagree with the tired, tired implication:

MUSIC CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO MOUSE HEALTH

My mom gave us a "Baby Mozart" video for our daughter this Christmas, and there too, I resist the assumption that "classical" music (and Mozart somehow more than any other composer) promotes intelligence or makes a kid a genius or whatever. (What video did Mozart watch as a baby, I wonder?) For one thing, it's not "really" Mozart's music that is featured in the video, but a very watered-down version of same.

But how much more adventurous and interesting is the Boobah series. In one episode ("Record Player"), three sets of characters find three different records that play three different songs. Each song is played separately. Then, the characters find yet another record that plays all three pieces simultaneously, creating a glorious cacophony! Sort of "Baby Charles Ives."

It's art if you say it is, part 2

Marta de Menezes does interesting things at the intersection of biology and art. Check out the surgically altered live butterfly wings, fr'instance.

More words

My latest contribution to the All About Jazz smorgasbord: a review of Jean-Michel Pilc's disc, Follow Me.

The story of my life

If you've ever wondered what it takes to be a musician, Erik Satie lays it all out for you here.

Orwell, Kafka, and Bush

My neighbor's wife, who is in the military (as a reservist, I think), was recently sent to Guantanamo Bay. That's relative "good news" for her--at least "Gitmo" is not the horror of Iraq. Or maybe, as Richard Cohen suggested in the Washington Post yesterday, it's just Iraq without the carbombs.

Two great tastes...

CSPAN Karaoke! Why didn't anyone think of this combination before?

(Nota bene: when you get to the above page, you've got to click on "Idiomorphic software" to get to the feature.)

A little bit of code

From Ed Felten:

"TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless."

Find it here.

Return of the Son of Space Invaders

Be on the lookout.

(If you find that site a little cryptic, here's a nice explanation.)

It's art if you say it is.

Or, how to make a living with roadkill.

Hey, Conservative Christians!

Interested in really living up to the tenets of your namesake?

1. Forget all that crap about whether or not political correctness has made us afraid to say the word "Christmas." (Though truthfully, the holiday committee has gotten Mr. Jesus's birthday all wrong. And by the way, is it just me, or does this sound like the most disgusting birthday cake ever?)

2. Stop buying all that creepy Veggie Tales propaganda for your kids. (Vegetables: good for eating, but do we really want to emulate them?)

3. Hell, skip a week or two of church this December.

Why? Because you can redirect all that energy into something useful: like doing for the U.S. Military what the U.S. Military should be doing for its own. That's right--send clothing to the wounded troops! Try to imagine what it must be like to spend Christmas sans clean underwear in a hospital ward in Germany, thousands of miles from your family and friends.

I got a rock

Give the RIAA and the MPAA coal for the holidays. They're dinosaurs, so what better gift than fossil fuel?

Shameless self promotion

From the most recent Downtown Music Gallery newsletter:

"INDUSTRIAL JAZZ GROUP - the Star Chamber (Innova 615) This is the fourth release (2nd for Innova) from this incredibly cool progressive/chamber/jazz unit from California, I believe. On 'the Star Chamber' they are a nonet led by pianist Andrew Durkin and feature Evan Francis, Cory Wright & Beth Schenck reeds, Kris Tiner & Phil Rodriguez on trumpets, Garrett Smith on trombone, Aaron Kohen on bass and Aaron McLendon on drums. All horns and rhythm team with no guitar! Andrew runs a tight ship and writes layers of intricate lines for his impressive six person horn team, giving each player a chance to solo over the intricate, interlocking parts. In some ways this is similar to Zappa's 'Grand Wazoo', but without the guitar or quick-changing complexities, yet still retaining with that wacky humor which is never forced. The strong point here is Andrew's rich writing for those layers of contrapuntal horns, at times it is only flute, sax and clarinet that we hear, used just right with equally strong harmonies for the trumpets and trombone. What is interesting is that this music is really in between categories, although it does use elements of modern jazz, chamber music and other quirky elements too difficult to pigeonhole. The group name is somewhat misleading, as there is nothing industrial about this and jazz is just one part of what this draws from. Leader Andrew Durkin concentrates more on writing, arranging and conducting and keeping his piano playing down to a minimum, hence it is crafty composing that makes this so special. I hear occasional snippets from different ethnic areas, which are just used as some minimal exotic spice to flavor things for subtle but satisfying taste."

Another item brought to my attention by KT.

A mighty wind

We're currently without cable, and so I've been temporarily disconnected from my beloved C-SPAN. As part of my withdrawal process, I've been turning to the local news. Last night I sampled the fare on our local channel 9 (KCAL).

The lead story? Wind.

I shit you not. Apparently, the fact that it's going to be a little breezy over the next few days is more important than anything else happening on the world stage at the moment.

Huh? What about that TV news adage, "If it bleeds, it leads"? Iraq is certainly bleeding at the moment, and it took the good people at KCAL half an hour get to that.

The first story on Bush (fifteen minutes or so into the program) was some human interest thing about his freakin' dog.

Alexandria, part 2

So you probably know about Project Gutenberg. Tonight I discovered this interesting sub-project, which has the goal of digitizing public domain scores.

Sweet!

Reviewing the reviewers

So the great Kris Tiner, a key player in the IJG (but more importantly a real gnarly and righteous musician / composer / artist / educator / fellow), passed along the following in response to our recent AAJ review (the latter has apparently pissed some folks off):

What Price Criticism? Bill Dixon at Victoriaville

A sampling:

"The collected press attempted a parley, 'You seem to be saying that we have to like your work, no matter what,' exclaimed one of the sages present. Bill roared back, 'No, I am saying that you should understand what my work is about before you decide whether you like it, and your liking it has nothing to do with it, your public wants to know THAT I have done it. I do not know anyone who does a work that they want someone to like overtly, that’s not why I do what I do. Why do I do music, that’s what they want to know about. It isn’t that you should endorse what I do, but you should try to inform your readership what it is that I do.'"

Get in it to win it back... or for real... or whatever

Remember the protests that accompanied Bush's first inauguration?

(Maybe not, as they weren't well-covered by the mainstream media.)

Well, there will be more.

Nancarrow would be proud

Just found the most amazing set of robot-performer-instruments here.

Check out the items on the audio and video page to get the full effect. Especially Josh Fried's piece for the GuitarBot, and the videos of Mari Kimura and the ModBots. The latter takes place in a church, and the visual effect is stunning.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Here's a story I never thought I'd see: egomaniacal porn star Jeff Stryker giving crap to the gentle folkie performance space Kulak's Woodshed.

Hey, we played at Kulak's back in 2001. That just goes to show you how nice a guy Paul Kulak, the proprietor, is. (What he should have said: "Industrial Jazz, huh? Do we look like we cater to Industrial Jazz? Do we look like we cater to jazz at all? This is a singer-songwriter venue, moron! It's not my problem if you can't play anywhere else in this fucking city!!" What he actually said: "Sure! Why not?")

The hearing is tonight if you can make it: 11724 Addison in Valley Village, 7 pm sharp. Urinating on cars strictly prohibited.

Have you seen my soul?

Because I need to "reach" it. At least according to Chris May at All About Jazz.

Ah well, it's not our first bad (misinformed?) review. Certainly won't be our last.

I won't go so far in my rebuttal as Leo Feigin recently did after The Wire trashed Anthony Braxton's latest recording (released on Leo Records). Feigin writes:

"Although this review is very bad, I am convinced such reviews are absolutely necessary, for they are a true indication that the album under review is really special. Mediocre or ordinary recordings never create controversy. Where would Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, Art Ensemble of Chicago or Ganelin Trio be without the controversy they created with their music? When an artist comes up with something really new or radical there are always conventionally minded reviewers who don't understand the new aesthetic. Paul Bley said in one of his interviews, how do you know that something new has arrived? You know because you don't like it."

No, I won't go that far...

Alexandria, here we come!

Well, maybe. Some libraries are going online, but this process is long overdue, and likely to be stymied at some point by the copyright cops. (After all, it's not always possible to know what exactly is in the public domain.)

Why I love the web...

It's little things like this documentation of a set of experiments with Twinkies that justify all those otherwise wasted hours surfing the web, as far as I'm concerned.

I especially dig the haikus.

We lived in Houston very briefly, and can testify that Rice University has a totally bitchen radio station.

Everything old is new again, and again

For those who have tried to argue that this war is somehow unlike Vietnam (or who just don't see the recurrent pattern of American hubris and its deleterious effects), there's this.

So add rank-and-file-soldiering to the list of professions that are grossly underpaid and disrespected. (Also on that list: teachers.)

...and we're back

Been doing a lot of traveling, performing, and recording of late so not much time to post. I do have a few items waiting in the wings, just waiting to be bloggified... perhaps tonight I'll get to them.

In the meantime I feel compelled to share this review of The Star Chamber by Brian Morton; it appeared in the November 2004 issue of The Wire. I'm a little surprised that they bothered to review us, actually; I didn't think we'd be their cup of tea (so to speak). Here's the text in toto (I don't think you can find it anywhere else on the web):

"The group name is only misleading if it leaves you expecting full-on metallurgical ugliness instead of machine-tooled modern jazz compositions of exquisite precision and strong aesthetic appeal. IJG have previously been heard on Hardcore and City of Angles, on which composer/pianist Andrew Durkin, publishing as Ugly Jazz, unveiled his slightly too selfconscious hybrids of classical and kitsch (though the Laurel & Hardy theme apparently counts as classical too with some senior Wire folks). This time out, he settles for what's effectively a live document of the IJG 2003 vintage, and a set of themes and solos that will recall the Either/Orchestra or one of the jazzier downtown ensembles of the late 80s. It's a comparison that in no way belittles Durkin's team, which numbers a couple of outstanding soloists--saxophonist Beth Schenck and trumpeter Phil Rodriguez--and a crisp, punchy ensemble sound anchored on bassist Aaron Kohen and drummer Aaron McLendon."

Oh, and there was this little note in the LA Weekly last week, regarding last night's show at Club Tropical:

"Jazz on a Monday Vibe presents The Industrial Jazz Group, whose leader Andrew Durkin's arrangements are weirdo cool, like hanging out stoned at Sam Rivers' loft arguing about Mingus vs. Threadgill, Duke vs. Raymond Scott..."

Thanks, Brick Wahl (if that really is your name).

Oh, and speaking of last night's show, we were honored to have in our audience (once again) Jacki Apple and Bruce Fowler. I guess they're fans! My friend Paul recently lent me some bootleg Zappa videos--concerts, interviews, and such--and Bruce is featured in a few of them. What a great musician, and what a sweet guy.

We will not have an all-volunteer army!

I'm paraphrasing, but remember when Bush made that slip-o-the-tongue statement back on the campaign trail? And then immediately flip-flopped--"Er, we WILL have an all-volunteer army!"--once someone cued him in on the blunder? (Via remote control, perhaps?)

Anyway, now there's this.

Purge it, baby

These three sentences by Bob Dreyfuss (posted under a blog entry about Colin Powell's resignation) really capture (well, in my humble opinion) what is happening at the highest levels of government (notice all those suddenly empty offices?). Which is just to say that the Bush administration is going all bulemic on our collective asses, barfing up everyone who might prevent it from getting its way in foreign policy matters. (Hmmm... bit of an awkward metaphor, perhaps, but you get the drift.) Anyway, Dreyfuss writes:

"It’s clear to me that the invasion of Fallujah was just a diversionary action. It was meant to distract attention from the real offensive: the blitzkrieg against the CIA and the State Department. Those two agencies were the locus of opposition to Bush’s reckless foreign policy, and they are no more."

Check out the whole damned blog here.

Oh yeah, is there any other "Colin" in the world who pronounces their name "Colon"?!

If you're at all interested in the future of creativity...

...you should tell your Senator to oppose the omnibus copyright bill currently emerging in Congress. Here's why this proposed smorgasbord of laws is so heinous.

If you're at all interested in the future of jazz...

...you should probably check out the recent (2003) NEA-funded report on the worklife of jazz musicians. You can get it here. Scroll down and download the PDF of the Executive Summary.

Right there, in the introduction, I finally saw in writing exactly the thing I've been struggling with over the last four years with the IJG. I quote:

"As A.B. Spellman indicated in his introduction to the NEA publication American Jazz Masters Fellowships 1982-2002, jazz was 'built on the discipline of collective improvisation ... which allowed for maximum expression of the individual within the context of the group.' The group, however, is often an ever-changing one. Unlike classical music, with orchestral members staying together for decades, or even rock, where more often than not musicians make their music as a group, jazz musicians often look for jams or gigs as individuals rather than in groups."

And later:

"Playing with multiple groups can be problematic. Musicians may not stay in a group long enough for it to grow into a solid band, and moving from group to group and gig can make linear career development difficult."

Yes... for both musicians and bandleaders. What you end up with are fewer cohesive, innovative groups, and more pickup groups that get together ephemerally to play--what else?--standards. Think about it: how can you pull off something Mingusian, something Ellingtonian, in a session, in a weekend, even in a tour? Those guys had more or less regular working bands which, though never entirely consistent in terms of personnel, were together long enough to push each other in some concerted but fascinating new directions.

Anyway... everything else you might have assumed about the extra-musical aspects of jazz is borne out by this study: in particular, most of its musicians are highly educated, pathetically underpaid, and lacking in health and retirement benefits. All this in the face of jazz being identified as a "national treasure" by the US Congress. Dontcha love the irony?

(Thanks to Robert Jacobson for forwarding this to me.)

Let the healing begin!

(But first there's this...)

Tomorrow is "Impeach Bush Day." (Probably the first of many.)

National Impeach Bush Day
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Contact your representatives in Congress and ask them to initiate the impeachment process. (Faxes are particularly effective.) Tell your friends. Make an "Impeach Bush" sign for your window. Restore law and order to the White House! Refer them to this website for more information.

And now for something completely different...

My first two reviews for All About Jazz were just published:

Here's one about the Yohimbe Brothers's Tao of Yo.

And here's one about David Sanchez's Coral.

Funny, I liked the Sanchez album more, though I think the review of the Yohimbe Brothers is better written and more interesting. Both reviews were edited very slightly, I'm not sure to what effect.

More on civil war... within the Republican Party

George Paine picked up this item from America Blog:

Religious right BLASTS Mary Cheney's "flaunting" of her homosexuality.

Red Dawn, sort of

Okay, I was hesitating to blog this, because it at first seemed so, well, incredible (in the literal sense of the term). A few (very few) places on the web are addressing a story about tanks on the streets of LA, apparently used to intimidate an anti-war protest. I'm still skeptical (I'm skeptical about everything these days), but I just got off the phone with a friend who has a friend who was there. So I wish some qualified investigative journalist would get on this story and clarify it for the rest of us. (Particularly those of us who actually have to live and work in LA!)

United States of Canada

Remember when Dave Foley (of the Kids in the Hall) referred to Canada as "America without the guns"?

America the Beautiful

You need to read this, though be sure to have a barf bag nearby.

How can you have an intelligent discussion with someone who rejects the notion of compromise out of hand?

Moral values, eh?

Someone sent me this. There was a story on Salon too, but I won't send you there because you have to be a member or watch an annoying History Channel ad. The original video was released by Texans for Truth sometime at the end of October (as far as I can tell). Why did Kerry not just put this in a campaign ad and saturate the swing states with it?

And then there's this...

Whaddya know? There were problems with electronic voting in Ohio.

More about the kids...

Students at a Colorada high school protest Bush.

Insult to injury

Elizabeth Edwards has breast cancer. We all hope she will have a speedy recovery.

I saw a C-SPAN broadcast of a town-hall meeting she participated in a few weeks ago. She's an amazing, articulate, super-smart woman.

Speaking of C-SPAN, I saw the rebroadcast of Kerry's concession speech last night. I had already read the transcript, but watching the video, I realized that there was something about his expression that seemed to convey what those of us who had supported him were feeling: a sense of exhaustion, incredulity, and grief. It was as if someone we loved had unexpectedly died.

In the words of Hunter S. Thompson...

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it -- that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

Things to do today

1. Pick jaw up off floor. (You mean the combined forces of Bruce Springsteen, Howard Stern, and Eminem couldn't sway this election?!)

2. Bitch and moan for 24 hours or so (hey, I think we're all entitled).

3. Get over it.

4. Note to self: Nixon was re-elected too. (Indeed, as Eleanor Holmes Norton put it today, Kerry nearly did the impossible by almost unseating an incumbent war president. These guys (i.e., incumbent war presidents) tend to get re-elected without much trouble.)

(By the way, all you working class folks who voted for Bush... I don't know why you're rejoicing. It's primarily your kids who are going to be killed in this war. It's primarily your jobs that are going to be outsourced.)

5. Consider that Bush is now emboldened. He thinks he has a mandate. That means that at some point very soon, he will probably get so extreme that the more center-leaning of his supporters will make attempts to rein him in. There may already be signs of this, in fact. As Bruce Bartlett told Ron Suskind in a recent New York Times piece, "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3." Let's hope.

6. Sit my lovely wife down and make a plan to have more kids. Why? I realized during one of my many half-awake / half asleep moments last night that the reason the evangelicals tipped this election (assuming they actually did) is that they procreate like rabbits. Hey, that's what happens when you're opposed to both abortion and birth control. And I'll bet there's a study somewhere that says that progressives are less likely to raise big families. C'mon people, let's get on this! It will have the added benefit of relieving some of the tension of the last few months.

7. Brainstorm about ways to develop out progressive religious movements (like liberation theology, for instance). Now, I'm the least qualified to speak on this topic, as I waver between being a lapsed Catholic, an agnostic, and an out-and-out atheist. But someone on the left needs to pick up and run with this thread or we're never going to win those damned "red" states. Sean Carroll has a similar idea.

(By the way, what's up with that color scheme business? Didn't it used to be a bad thing to be "red"?)

8. Beer. Lots of beer. And music. Lots of music.

9. Hug my wife and daughter and make sure they know I love them.

One more before voting...

Hey, get a load of this.

For whatever convoluted reason, it reminds me of the RIAA's amnesty program.

Extremities

This election sure is bringing out the worst (or at least the most extreme) in people. Look no further than my last post, for instance--clearly over-the-top for someone who prides himself on rational, even-handed thinking.

It's a broad phenomenon. On Friday conservative psycho-bitch Ann Coulter (ah, shit, I did it again!) roused the antipathy of Bill Mahr's audience, and particularly that of Mahr's other guest, Richard Belzer. Belzer reached a boiling point ("She's repugnant!" he exclaimed--she, earlier, had referred to him as "Osama bin Laden") and a usually in-control Mahr actually seemed, for a few wincing moments, well... hapless in the face of this confrontation between his two friends.

On Saturday I saw a CBC program on the election (broadcast courtesy of C-SPAN, one of my favorite channels). Some anchor was moderating a kind of town-hall meeting of American voters; the discussion was interspersed with comments by concerned Canadians. One of the latter was actually a soft-spoken middle-aged American woman who had renounced her US citizenship as a last-resort protest against Bush's policies. It wasn't a violent protest in any sense; at one point she actually started weeping, apparently while considering the ramifications of her decision. It was horrible, pathetic, moving. One might argue it was patriotism at its most poignant, and at its most extreme.

I have always tried to resist the tendency, whether on the right or on the left, to see the world in Manichaean terms. Much as I admire Michael Moore, for instance, part of me is slightly embarrassed by his penchant for broad strokes; he's like the Oliver Stone of documentarians. You would think that the bald truth about the administration's actions would be horrifying enough to serve as the kind of searing indictment Moore is ultimately after; the creative edits and ironic soundtrack moments are fun, sure, but not necessarily convincing to those who aren't already anti-Bush (as the recent spate of anti-Michael Moore books and films has demonstrated).

On the other hand, reason doesn't seem to do the trick either, because there are plenty of more measured critics of the administration whose message is nevertheless not getting through (again, quoting Belzer: "Americans are stupid!"). So maybe we need Moore, however much we might not agree with his tactics (Todd Gitlin aptly called him the "anti-Bush"). And maybe we're just living in an era of extremes. Time and again I re-consider the evidence, trying to find some weakness in the argument against Bush. Time and again I come to the same dreary conclusion: that the administration is absolutely, insanely wrong. That conclusion terrifies me--it's a Manichaean conclusion, after all--but I can't escape it.

I hope we all escape it tomorrow.

Idiots of this election

Look, couldn't we just have Bush and bin Laden settle their feud with a Roman gladiator-style battle to the death? The money raised from ticket sales, international pay-per-view sales, T-shirts, and so on, could be paid directly to the poorest people on both sides. Whoever survived the match could be fed to the lions.

Fuck them both.

Idiosyncracies of this election

When people talk about this election many years hence, I hope they don't forget small, seemingly inconsequential but nevertheless interesting developments like this:

Bush relatives for Kerry.

And this:

Billionaires for Bush or Kerry. Not sure if they're affiliated with the satirical group "Billionaires for Bush," which seems to be lacking a web presence at the moment. In any case, the latter was funnier, though there were people on both sides who didn't get the satire.

Woolsey's wool / our eyes

Did anyone else find it strange that former CIA director James Woolsey used the word "totalitarians" to describe al Qaeda on last Friday's installment of Real Time with Bill Maher?

Don't you need some sort of massive state apparatus behind you to qualify as a "totalitarian"? Wouldn't a "totalitarian" organization or government be relatively easy to locate? (It would presumably have to be fairly massive and immobile to enforce its ideology.)

The assumption that al Qaeda was and is such an entity is, as George Paine argues today at Warblogging.com, one of the major miscalculations of the Bush administration. Al Qaeda is not a totalitarian organization, it is a "non state actor." That is, the goal is the same (followers of Hitler and followers of bin Laden both want the same thing: "to take over the world," as cartoon villains put it), but the means for accomplishing that goal are very, very different. Mistaking "non state actors" for "totalitarians," we've gotten bogged down in precisely the war that al Qaeda wanted us to fight; it's one that will misuse and sap our resources, inflame and motivate our enemies, and finally threaten to exhaust us as a nation.

As Paine puts it at the end of his piece:

"These are gigantic miscalculations in the War on Terror. They are the greatest mistakes that could have been made. They are fundamental misunderstandings of the problem America faces. The actions and assumptions taken by the Bush Administration were exactly wrong. [...] The Bush Administration shows no sign of learning. We have six days until we learn whether the American people have learned. Think before you vote."

"Free" / dumb

Found this amazing paragraph at the American Library Association website a few minutes ago. It's a German professor's description of the coming of fascism in the early part of the twentieth century, as excerpted in Milton Mayer's book They Thought They Were Free:

“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. [...] The crises and reforms (real reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. [...] To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted.’ [...] Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. [...] Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) . . . You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”

Hack-tivism

George Orwell would probably be astonished at the accuracy of his predictions.

The linguistic looseness of this presidential campaign (Bush, Inc.: "X." America: "Why did you say 'X'?" Bush, Inc.: "I never said 'X.'"), for instance, has really put the screws to any semblance of critical discourse in this country. Power accrues not to those who use language for the purpose of reasoning, but to those who use it as an instrument of forceful definition. George Lakoff has some interesting things to say about this process (and how to counter it) in his latest book.

But it's not just presidential politics. I find it amazing, for instance, that the RIAA has managed to turn "sharing" into a dirty word.

The point of this post, however, is to reference this site, the purpose of which is to "reclaim the term 'hacking' for the good guys--innovators who explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on their own."

Lots of neat publications there.

Chop up a film, put it back together

Check out this cool contest, courtesy the good folks at free culture.

If I get my shit together, I may make an IJG entry for this. I've been meaning to make videos for some of our stuff anyway...

How to prevent the kids who are not alright from stealing the candy of the kids who are...

Man, I love Halloween.

My favorite one of these is the clown in the van.

The kids may be alright, but they're oversexed

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can't think of any context less erotic than the aftermath of an election that revolves around two wrinkled rich white geezers:

www.votergasm.org

I can only hope that there is some truth to the stereotype that Republicans are frigid and repressed (and thus unlikely to participate in this, er, drive).

The Kids Are Alright

This supports my contention that kids have more common sense than most adults.

Now if only they could really vote.

How 'bout that spittle?

Anybody notice the buildup of froth at the corner of the president's mouth tonight as he regurgitated the ready-made phrases that had been prepared for him by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney?

A perfect metaphor for how the Bush campaign is (fingers crossed here) starting to come apart at the seams.

And Larry King--of all people!--actually had a poignant question for Rudy Guiliani: if Kerry really represents a position so far outside of the mainstream in America, how is it that he can be doing so well in the polls?

One other thing: a sign seen in the background during MSNBC's coverage of the debate. It read: "Screw Iraq, I Need a Job!"

And so say we all.

An oldie but goodie...

I just came across an interesting and underemphasized point on the RIAA lawsuits: “What would be obscene (and immoral on good Kantian principles) would be for the government to prosecute a few 'copyright violators' selectively, as an example to others. If they are going to actually enforce the NET Act, they ought to go after all ten or twenty million of us-an attempt to do which would, of course, bring the entire justice and prison systems to a state of complete paralysis. Selective enforcement of a law is unconstitutional (since it violates equal protection) and unjust; a law that can only be enforced selectively is itself unjust.” Though Steven Shaviro made this point almost two years ago, I haven't seen or heard it anywhere else. In other words, it hasn't really entered the debate.

Here's the link: http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/archives/000029.html.

WMD update no. 785,999,831

More evidence for the possibility that Donald Rumsfeld is on crack.

A little ditty 'bout the INDUCE Act

Talk about murky legal ground: how do you legislate intentions?

Radio Free California

Free Radio Santa Cruz RAIDED by the FCC and US Marshals.

Check out in particular "the issue from one geek's perspective."