Skinny Love 1. His love is skinny, skating on thin ice. 2. Her love is skinny, always close to giving out. 3. His beloved is skinny (and drinks too much); singularly, perhaps endearingly so.
Come on skinny love just last the year Pour a little salt we were never here My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer
(Hang in there, it’ll get better. Pour a little salt for luck, we’ll leave this dark place behind. (Or pour a little salt on the wound, as if our love never mattered.) Our protective veneer has been destroyed. I can’t stop looking at the wreckage.)
I tell my love to wreck it all Cut out all the ropes and let me fall My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my Right in the moment this order's tall
(I don’t want her pity but the thought of losing her frightens me.)
I told you to be patient I told you to be fine I told you to be balanced I told you to be kind In the morning I'll be with you But it will be a different "kind" I'll be holding all the tickets And you'll be owning all the fines
(He resorts to hectoring. Fine=okay, alright. She has trashed the relationship beyond repair. It’ll never be the same.)
Come on skinny love what happened here Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my Sullen load is full; so slow on the split
(Nourish your love on my skinny chest; or she’s taken up with a lesbian with small breasts. I still want you even if I know I should split.)
I told you to be patient I told you to be fine I told you to be balanced I told you to be kind Now all your love is wasted? Then who the hell was I? Now I'm breaking at the britches And at the end of all your lines
(Now you’re bitter. It’s not going your way. And now I'm getting fat eating my despair and cringing inside each time you speak.)
Who will love you? Who will fight? Who will fall far behind?
(What will happen to us? Who will love you, if not me? Which of us will fight for our love? Who will give up first?)
By Bon Iver 1. In French Bon=Good. 2. In Seattle Iver=Ivar’s Fish & Chips 3. So Bon Iver is a Good Fish.
The performance is singer-songwriterly minimal: a jangly old Silvertone guitar with an echoey metallic sound and Justin Vernon’s thin tenor. His tone is pleading except in the “I told you….” verses when he bites off the lines in exasperation. It’s one of those kinds of songs almost impossible not to sing along to, even when the lyrics strike you as obtuse. Like a James Taylor tune. So “Skinny Love” is Bon Iver’s “Fire and Rain.”
If you’ve been watching TV since b/f the late-90s I’m sure you’ve wondered at one time or another what unleashed all the advertising for drugs of the last decade. In 1997 lobbying by media companies (like Time-Warner) finessed some FDA rule changes by the handle of “Direct to the Consumer Advertising (DTC).” This opened TV to an avalanche of advertising dollars smothering consumers w/ medical fixes for everything from high cholesterol to depression. In the ‘90s drug companies were spending $55 million on DTC ads; by 2005 the number had skyrocketed to $7.5 billion. There is, apparently, credible evidence that as many as a third of consumers see an ad for a drug on TV and then talk to their doctor about it. Half of those end up w/ prescriptions. In short, a highly lucrative number of people who watch these ads believe them, even when the words addressing risks, read in a low-key rush, outnumber the sales pitch.
“That bad music is played, is sung more often and more passionately than good, is why it has also gradually become more infused with men’s dreams and tears. Treat it therefore with respect. Its place, insignificant in the history of art, is immense in the sentimental history of social groups.” -Marcel Proust
Don’t mean to belabor my rock and roll lecture of the other day, which as an issue at this point in music history is hopefully quaint, if not still tired. (Became quaint and no longer tired back in 1992?) But, dang, if I didn’t have another rock and roll moment the other day. Went to see Welsh seven-piece Los Campesinos at Neumos Friday. (A peculiar thing ab the live performance is that despite the fact that I can probably count on one hand the number of live recordings I treasure seeing an act live can dispel in two or three songs questions that might linger for years on record.) Los Campesinos are a pop group, not a punk group. Punk, see, is their “idea” of rock and roll, captured best in lines like “don’t tell me to do the math” and “eyes wide open” and “I’m better off with artificial intelligence.” They’re more Belle & Sebastian than X Ray Spex. Think mid-90s Chumbawamba. If you’re a record geek think the kind of UK punk pop group that K Records would celebrate in the ‘80s: Flatmates, Pastels, Shop Assistants, Vaselines. Part of the Love Rock Revolution, or something like that. Most of Los Campesinos live set, though, was a not quite tuneful, but never tuneless, din. But in one song, the din purged in a long tension building intro, the disco ball twirling, a bouncy new wave beat propelled the crowd to uncontrollable urges. The singer guy, Gareth, in his best cockney yelp carrying on ab how he “can’t dance a single step” to girls, Ellen and Aleksandra, softly taunting “ooh ooh oohs,” until (despite themselves) they (or was that the audience?) were jumping up and down, shouting, soccer chant stylee, “You! Me! Dancing!” It was sublime. Like I said, a rock and roll moment. Don’t know what better to call it. And in six minutes worth the price of admission.
You know all those ads on TV in the past few months peddling the notion that the oil companies, Shell, BP, Chevron, etc. are way committed to developing a greener, more sustainable energy future for us all? From a piece in the NY Times today called, “Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead”:
In the last 15 years, the top five oil companies have spent around $5 billion to develop sources of renewable energy, according to Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, an industry trade group. This represents only 10 percent of the roughly $50 billion funneled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during that period, he said.
Until businesses are charged (yup, that means taxed!) for the carbon dioxide emissions they generate there is little incentive for them to diversify. The “free market” is a free-for-all that leaves a mess for others to clean up. For the oil giants, it’s like they get all the door receipts for puttin’ on a big party but don’t have to pay for any of the clean up. There is still way too much profit to be made from oil to waste their time and money on anything else, whatever the consequences to the planet.
In a column last week, “Greed and Stupidity,” NY Times columnist David Brooks outlines the development of two narratives to the economic crisis. One, called the greed narrative, locates the crisis in the overreach of an investment banking Wall Street oligarchy elite, growing from 16% to 40% of corporate profits betw the ’80s and this decade, and extending its power into government. Brooks cites Simon Johnson as chief explicator of this narrative. The second, called the stupidity narrative, suggests the collapse was caused by an over-reliance on the diversifying trick of securitization (bundling and reselling loan assets) and inflexible mathematical models that ignore inevitability of historical shocks and the unexpected tendency of the internet to accentuate runs. Elaboration of this position is provided by Jerry Z. Muller from right-wing think-tank the American Enterprise Institute. The odd thing ab this supposed narrative split is that if you’re even casually familiar w/ the literature tracking the crisis you’ll note that the stupidity narrative is already part of the greed narrative. Brooks even admits that the reform measures for the financial markets proposed by both narratives are more or less the same, with one important exception. The greed narrative describes an insider, collusive, dysfunctional relationship betw Wall Street and Washington (Geintner, Summers, Bernanke, etc). To effectively recover from the current mess, Johnson argues that it is essential to sever the backroom ties betw Wall Street and Washington, nationalize and breakup and reorganize the banking system so that banks can no longer be too big to fail. Meaning, at least temporarily, a bigger government role. This is anathema to Brooks and conservatives raised on 25 years of Reagan Revolution free market BS, who, at this point, sound like flat-earthers. Even if we got into this crisis b/c of arrogant Wall Streeters who didn’t know what they were doing it’s those same people now in Washington serving up the weak sauce concerning the bonuses and sheisty accounting rules and black hole bailout plans. Brooks would have us believe that changing a few rules and recapitalizing (meaning: more taxpayer bailouts) will do the job. Even if Wall Street hubris has got us into this mess we should still fear even more Washington hubris, argues Brooks. All of which just seems like fodder to extend the dithering by the O Team and stem the tide of calls for breaking up the Wall Street lock on Washington. Meanwhile, job news is increasingly dreary; 663,000 jobs lost in March. Unemployment has reached 8.5%; the underemployed (that includes people w/ part-time jobs who’d rather be working full-time) is over 15%. News from the Washington state proposes huge cuts in public education. Everyone at work is bracing for layoff notices in May.
The other day a classroom teacher neighbor asked me what I’d been playing loudly in my room b/f our meeting. “Gawd, was that Kelly Clarkson, Jack?” she inquired incredulously. It wasn’t. “It’s this Swedish pop singer Robyn,” I said, embarrassed. My dear work mate is a indie rock queen of idolatrous proportions. She’d heard Robyn or heard of her, I didn’t catch which, she responded w/out the tone of derision directed at Clarkson. Was the new tone of respect b/c she’s European, I wondered? Some cache unavailable to an American Idol grad, from Texas, no less? It was a small exchange that was ended by the arrival of everyone else for the meeting. But, as is often the case when something hits me wrong in conversation, I replay it over and over later, pondering what I coulda woulda shoulda said. These are a few notes to that effect.
I think I understand her general antipathy. As winner of American Idol’s first season Clarkson is the epitome of crass commercialism. She’s made at least one movie I stumbled on once and watched long enough to tell you it looked like an Old Navy commercial, an AI sponsor. Her weight fluctuates wildly, perhaps from periodic coke and pop tart binges, two other major AI sponsors. She appears on Oprah. Yeah, American Idol is one big fat schmaltzville, no doubt. I can’t sit through the show. Still, mining the golden oldies songbook is not such a terrible thing per se. The Rolling Stones’ “Time Is On My Side” is kind of schmaltzy, too. Once and awhile they do a Smokey Robinson or Dolly Parton proud. (Check out David Archuleta’s “Shop Around,” for instance.) I get how being too commercial can be like wearing too much makeup: it can mask over any humanness, leaving only a glossy caricature. But, really, Clarkson has humanness in abundance. She is more than AI schmaltz. One of the interesting aspects of her career has been her struggle to find her own voice apart from producers and industry flack. Like her weight she’s a little all over the place; messy. And what ab “Since U Have Been Gone,” really? A pop song so irresistible that indie stalwart Ted Leo had to cover it.
And as it happens, I have heard Clarkson’s latest, All I Ever Wanted, a couple times now. Truth is, so far it feels like it is less than the sum of its parts. There’s some edgy riffage ala “Since U Have Been Gone.” There’s Kelly’s ain’t-no-Mtn-high-enough voice stretching beyond the horizon. There’s angsty sentiments aplenty (“I Don’t Hook-Up” will get picked up by some for the title alone). There’s some Pat Benatar-esque toughness and some Abba-esque harmonies and some Stevie Nicks-ian ethereality. But it sounds like all the parts were recorded in separate takes and don’t gel when heard as a whole, not only betw songs but w/in a given song.
That’s after a couple of listens, anyway. But one song, “I Can’t Have You,” I adore, and I’ve been playing it semi-obsessively for a week. I love this song b/c it is what I will call rock and roll. What I mean by this is several things. Let me explain.
First, that it is danceable; it has a beat you can dance to. Not like disco (this is not an update of the great Yvonne Elliman/BeeGees song by the same name) or world beat, although both have more to do w/ rock and roll than most indie rock. The beat in “If I Can’t Have You,” and rock and roll, is steady, insistent, slightly forced. Anyone can pick it up, and no one is going to lose it, just as Chuck Berry would have it. Rock and Roll rhythms are like that: more pushy than seductive; more train-kept-a-rollin’ forward motion than funky polyrhythms. I’m not saying a rock and roll beat can’t be sexy but it doesn’t beat ar the bush; it’s enthusiastically blunt, no need for foreplay. The Beastie Boys first album is rock and roll. King Sunny Ade’s Synchro System, while great, is mostly something else.
Another thing ab rock and roll is that it has to have something rough ab it: gnarly guitar riffs, stomping beats, swaggering non-singerly voices, etc. Something rough and unpolished sounding. Examples abound, from Chuck’s “Around and Around” to Blondie’s “X Offender” to Biggie’s “Mo Money Mo Problems” to LCD Soundsystem’s “Tribulations” to The Shaky Hand’s (yeah, indie rockers can rock and roll, too) “We Are Young.” The reason for this is buried deep in rock and roll myth. The roughness is the sound of the democratic spirit at the heart of rock and roll. It’s what Pete Townshend was getting at once when he said rock and roll was playing your song, dancing in the rain, w/ a broken guitar. The genius of rock and roll is the inexplicable joy, the emotional grandeur, created by such simple, crude, humble means. Its expression might possess elements of the classic tragic hero (noble everyman faces confusing, trackless world) but I don’t want to go there right now. The important point it that its virtuosity is always circumscribed by an element of roughness. It sounds hifalutin but it is at least in part a very simple, physical, tactile thing. Rock and roll has to have that rough feel.
In Clarkson’s “If I Can’t Have You” roughness is in almost every part of the song. The brrr in Clarkson’s voice feels country in a song that is frantically citified. All the electronics are turned up to “11”; they sound purposefully distorted. The buzzing guitar-like opening riff is catchy. The heartracing keyboard fills in the chorus are thrilling. The production sounds like kids plugging in their Radio Shack synth and duct-taped 808 and rocking out like fiends. The sound reminds me some of Rihanna’s “Disturbia” and recent Britney Spears and might be part of some vogue (or should be!) production sound I am not familiar w/ but it is very rock and roll. Kelly Clarkson is not just a glossy commercial pinup in this song, anyway.
Finally, another thing about rock and roll is there’s rock and roll and then there’s great rock and roll. It’s not all the Clash. And not all the Clash is “great” rock and roll. And, BTW, the Clash were a commercial stunt from the gitgo. (And I’m not ab to try to define “great” any more than I’m gonna go into the cathartic tragedy stuff of RnR at the moment.) Still, while this combination of uptempo danceability and tactile roughness that I’m calling rock and roll is by no means the only sound or kind of music I like it’s been a touchstone since I can’t remember when. Sure, sometimes it’s only rock and roll, Frat house party music, Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” or Plastic Bertand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” but I like it, indeed I do. The notion that all commercial music is a glossy inhuman shil is no more credible than my contention that too much indie rock is mopey misanthropic trustafarianism. Kelly Clarkson’s “If I Can’t Have You” rocks! You paid for your Vampire Weekend album too, no? But is “If I Can’t Have You” great rock and roll? Maybe. But whatever gets you through the night. (Or pumped up for meetings at work!)
Totally unfuckingbelievable, really. It’s coming out more every day that over the last ten years arcane financial regulations have been bent, mutilated, or abandoned for the sake of “free market” interests in the investment banking industry. (To what end, we now know!) But now, after all the revelations of the last six months?! Yesterday the Financial Accounting Standards Board— Wall Street retirees and cronies, no doubt— changed a mark-to-market rule so that banks could now determine the value of their assets on their financial statements. The mark-to-market rule required that assets be valued at the price they are worth on the open market— in other words, what people would pay for them. But banks, upset that their assets are being undervalued by the current down market, have won the right to value their own assets according to what they believe they would be worth in more “normal” market times. Gawd, banks, reportedly, already have numerous ways in which to keeps assets and debts off their balance sheets altogether (for what good reasons I do not know) but now they need more ways to make up their own numbers?! This at a time when it is generally recognized (if poorly understood) that the banks were taking wildly leveraged risks, stretching their capital to debt ratios (that’s how much real money they keep ar in case some of their investments/debts go bad) way beyond sound financial practices. And this measure, of course, will only make it more difficult to hold bank risk-taking accountable. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Mr. Banker, ‘we’re capitalized w/ all these valuable assets over here’ (read: that nobody else wants right now but, hey, if we ever really need them to cover our debts taxpayers will pay our prices for them!). See today’s report in the NY Times. Note the subdued yet strained tone, especially in the quotes. Pay attention to it: it means we’ve been screwed again, folks.
Like a wreck on the highway, I can’t look away. The budget in public education always involves minor cuts and the threats of bigger cuts but this was the most tense budget year since I started teaching. By now everyone knows someone who has been laid off or someone who had to keep working and put off retirement. Shanty towns are popping up, Seattle has their own Nicholsville, named after our reputably heartless mayor. There’s not much humor to squeeze out of this crisis. It makes me nervous, edgy. But there is a Pynchonesque novel of names like Glass Steagall and securitization and Black Scholes and credit default swaps and Brookley Born and derivatives and Ayn Rand and subprime mortgages all swirly w/ simple dreams and fathomless gall. Three early chapters follow. If you haven’t already, check them out.
I entered the weekend w/ four of the Elite Eight and somehow still managed to not get one team into the Final Four. One of my poll picks, I mean. Truth is by the Sweet Sixteen I’ve usually picked up on underdog faves from the first two rounds. Come Saturday I wanted Villanova but had already picked Pittsburgh in my brackets. Now all I care is that the championship game be any combination other than NC-UConn. I just don’t like the script. Right, those two teams are deeper in talent than the competition. So go State and/or Villanova!
All-Tournament Team for First Four Rounds Goron Suton C Michigan State Blake Griffin F Oklahoma Stanley Robinson F UConn Levance Fields G Pittsburgh AJ Price G UConn
If, like me, you found yourself shaking your head at the softball (or even downright head scratching) questions the media served up at Obama's latest press conference then check out Leslie Savan's response over at The Nation. Spot on. (Also, one of my favorites writing about pop culture.) When NBC's Chuck Todd asked what sacrifices Obama wanted the public to make to solve the economic crisis I had to scramble to find something to throw at the TV. Grrr.
The dance is on. The first weekend had its moments: 3 OTs, 12 games decided by 5 points or less. Unfortunately, in several nail biters my picks lost: UW, USC, Florida St, TEX. But, let’s face it, this Sweet Sixteen is predictable. So much so that this is the first time the top three seeds in each region have all made it to the third round. Even the lowest remaining seed, Purdue, won the Big 10 Tournament. This year’s tournament is a battle of the power conferences, the Big East leading the way w/ five teams still alive. The remaining field is studded w/ pillars of hall of fame coaches: Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Calhoun, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams, Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, John Calipari. This is all good for marquee headlines, but what is the underdog loving sports fan to do w/ this bevy of heavyweights? Pull for Villanova and/or Missouri, I say. (I wish I could say the Zags, too, who put on the floor a team as talented as any, but seem to have this unerring penchant for stupid letdowns.) Consider Villanova Wildcats’ coach, Jay Wright. He is Mr. Pennsylvania, never having played or coached outside the state, built successful programs wherever and at whatever level he’s coached, and is something of a dandy w/ his tailored suits. Now all he needs is a National Championship. The Missouri Tigers coach, Mike Anderson, has been successful wherever he’s coached too, but soldiered for years as an assistant under Nolan Richardson, and has been challenged every step of the way for the style of play he coaches. Said style, full court presses, up and down craziness, is ab as exciting to behold as it gets. The Wildcats, too, play at breakneck speed, slashing and passing, w/ big athletes flying at the rim in waves. These two coaches and programs aren’t just deserving b/c they aren’t Duke or North Carolina or UConn, they play brands of basketball as aesthetically pleasing as any left in the field. But can they win; or specifically, and respectively, can they beat Duke and Memphis (an even more talented team than the Zags w/ a penchant for the stupid) this coming Thursday? Can the Wildcats take advantage of Duke’s inside game deficiencies and defend against Duke’s crisp passing? Can the Tigers turnover the Memphis guards and show more moxie down the stretch? They’re both longshots but I’m pulling for them.
All-Tournament Team (so far) Blake Griffin F Oklahoma Terrance Williams F Louisville Cole Aldrich C Kansas Sherron Collins G Kansas AJ Price G UConn
Smart money always follows the seeding even though last year was the first year in history all the number one seeds made the Final Four. Me, I’m like a guy who goes to the race track only once a year and picks the ponies on superficial appearances or, in some cases, only reputations or even mascots. (Gotta love the Big Red!)This year everything feels up for grabs or perhaps back to usual. Frontrunners NC and UConn and Pitt all have uncertain injuries to crucial backcourt players. Okalahoma has had a question mark about them since Blake Griffin got his bell rung by Texas almost a month ago. Louisville would seem to be the only untarnished money pick, having won the Big East tournament and finished first in what is the toughest conference in the country, but they lost by thirty points in their first game this season. USC and Syracuse come barreling out of their conference tournaments but had mediocre seasons. Purdue ruled the Big Ten in a year most everyone admits was a down year for that conference. Villanova or Missouri or Gonzaga have as many athletes as anybody and could be “dark horse” picks. Arizona State has probably the most pro-ready player in the tournament in swingman James Hardin. Homies, UW have probably the worst draw in the field, facing the SEC Tourney winners, Mississippi State, in the first round, then Big Ten tourney winners, Purdue, for the Sweet Sixteen, and a dream rematch w/ the right coast Huskies of UConn, for the Elite Eight. Not likely! Then there are teams in the field led by Tom Izzo (Mich St) and Bill Self (Kan) and Mike Krzyzewski (Duke) and Rick Barnes (Tex), coaches who always seem to find a way to compete at the highest level. Which team will win? The one w/ smartest backcourt and a gang of leaping greyhounds in the frontcourt; the one w/ the most heart and guts and more then a little luck. All you have to do is win six games in a row. It’s March Madness, baby. It's one of the greatest shows on earth. At least on the weekend, turn off the news. Order a pizza. Don’t miss the overtime!
I was surprised when I looked up the definition of a “bonus” on Princeton’s wordnet: “An additional payment (or other remuneration) to employees as means of increasing output." I always thought a bonus was a reward for increased output. Carl Crawford earns a million dollar bonus if he hits 25 homeruns and knocks in 100 runs this year. The bonus comes after the fact of the increased output. It’s based on performance. But Princeton’s definition seems to suggest you could write a “bonus” into an employee’s contract as a means to inspire them, in the hopes that the bonus will increase their output, or at least keep them employed.
This is what people don't understand about the 165 million dollars in bonuses paid out with tax payer money by the failing insurance giant AIG. As we learn today from CEO Edward Liddy, turns out there are “performance” bonuses and “retention” bonuses, the latter making up the biggest share of the AIG bonus pie, according to Liddy. Only problem w/ this account is that on it heels reports came out that many of the bonuses actually went to employees no longer working for the firm. So, there must be “severance” bonuses, too.
To most people it seems unconscionable that a business on the verge of bankruptcy since last summer, kept alive so far by 170 billion dollars of tax payer money, would be paying its employees anything beyond their basic salaries at all. What sort of output could warrant a bonus when a business is busy bankrupting the world economy!? But those people, the rising bubble of “populist” anger, don't understand. (There is something about these unbelievably unscrupulous circumstances that make the use of this term “populist” terribly condescending, as if to suggest that if public anger were not mere mob sentiment people might understand the legit purpose of these bonsuses to the the world of expert finance.)You give million dollar bonuses to keep people who screwed up your business so that they might fix it? You know, who better than the crook to suss the criminal mind?! So much for the efficiencies of private enterprise.
We have millions of people losing their jobs, losing their homes, and we’re giving economy-busting gamblers bonuses? What’s next, awards to companies whom lay off the most workers? bailouts to banks whom foreclose on the most homes? (Oops, we’re already doing this!) This is another one of those occasions where Obama’s cool hand (word awhile back had it O was beyond satire but his saunter and “be cool” demeanor begs for an SNL skit in times like these) is NOT up to the task. Talking ab a culture of greed and returning balance to the distribution of our economic spoils is fine and dandy on the stump. But this is a time for kicking ass and taking names.
It’s been argued that nationalizing zombie banks deemed too large to fail is un-American but when recipients of government support aren’t pulling in the same direction(obliviously stuffing their pockets, in fact) then bailouts are stupid or all too American. All too in favor of an American oligarchy elite, that is. Such bonuses on the public purse are unacceptable and should not be tolerated, obviously. If AIG would have had to file bankruptcy last fall instead of being bailed out by taxpayers, surely, no one would be getting any “bonuses” before debts were paid. Which means NEVER getting bonuses b/c if they could pay all their debts then they wouldn’t be bankrupt.
But righteous indignation won’t fix the problem, won’t prevent a collapse of this magnitude from happening again. Nor will the Obama Team’s vague generalities, I’m afraid. It’s as if the O Team has been instructed not to utter the words “derivatives” or “credit default swaps” or “hedge funds” in public lest they be asked to commit to rules that would fix the monstrous abuses wrought by these financial products. O talks a good game. But, again, there is a condescending disconnect emerging between his condemnations of greedy gamblers on Wall Street and a strained silence about any specifics that might curtail the public consequences of their conduct. What sense does it make to stimulate new investment b/f establishing new rules for investment? I mean, we want a recovery (more jobs) but not one based on another bubble bound to eventually collapse w/ such devastatng effects, right? Obama preaches patience but patience is no substitute for a concrete regulatory reform plan. And they’ve already announced they won’t even have such a plan ready for the G-20 Global Economic Summit that convenes this Friday in England, much to the chagrin of many of the other attending nations.
So the dithering continues. It’s as if the Obama Team still hoped to paper over this problem on Wall Street, wait on a recovery, and set the stage for the next bubble. Counting on the chicken-littles in the press and public to be proven wrong again. So the upswing in the stock markets last week spurred by more conciliatory utterances from Bernanke and Geigthner (promising to allow more off balance sheet accounting, most significantly) is a step in the right direction. Once an investment and job creation upswing gets going again people (populist sentiment) will forget ab regulatory reform, one would assume this reasoning goes. Meanwhile, Nightline is taping a show in Ballard on the existence of Satan in the excesses of Wall Street. See, when the public dithers in mystifying BS explanations for what's happening it’s mounting mob anger, when our Celebrity Pres dithers it’s cool leadership. But, really, condescending or pandering to the people isn't the leadership we need. I still want to believe but....
Just finished reading 1491, Charles C. Mann’s 2005 account of the pre-Columbian Americas. Pulling together all the latest historical research, including the many disputes and controversies, Mann intends his book as a collection of revelations dispelling myths perpetrated by our school history books about the Americas before European contact. Mann’s wind up is so big, and the beginning of the book so slow going, that you might give up before getting to the good stuff. What Mann calls “Holmsberg’s Mistake,” is the notion, repeated by many European settlers and anthropologists, based on contact with small, remote tribes, that pre-Columbian Americas was a land virtually “empty of mankind and its works,” a tabula rasa. In fact, pre-Columbian numbers of people in the Americas may have exceeded 100 million. An agricultural revolution based on the domestication of corn, beans, and squash spreading out from Central Mexico reached as far north as New England. Okay, I’ve heard this before. And it wasn’t so much the steel and horses and long-distance ships, the technological advantages, that enabled Europeans to subdue Indian populations upon contact but the devastating diseases that opened the way for colonists. As much as 20% of the world’s population was lost as the result of the smallpox and measles viruses unleashed by the Columbian contact with the Americas. I’ve heard this, too. But a slightly later agricultural revolution in South America in an area of Northern Peru known Norte Chico (a forerunner to the Inca), with monumental architecture and other trappings of civilization, was not based on agricultural food surpluses at all but a complex relationship between cotton cultivation and fishing. This may not sound like such a big deal but it does upset a formula sacrosanct in textbooks: i.e., the rise of civilizations was made possible by agricultural food surpluses of wheat (Fertile Crescent), rice (China), and corn (Mesoamerica). Where the beginning of writing in Sumer is based on accounting, in Mesoamerica the impulse towards writing was timekeeping and led to the creation of a complex system of calendars. There is evidence of the use of Zero by the Olmec long before Ptolemy. Perhaps most significantly, Mann drives home the point that the early Americas were not an Edenic wilderness. That they appeared so to early colonizers, vast plains of buffalo and tangles of impenetrable forest, was largely because of the imbalance caused by the diseases that preceded the colonial settlers. It looked that way because so many of the people who had shaped the land had died off. “Holmsberg’s Mistake” is manifested today by a purist strain of environmentalism that values only untouched wilderness and opposes or is uninterested in any other kind of land stewardship. But, in fact, the shorelines, forests, rivers of pre-Columbian Americas were widely shaped by human choice and action. So much so that to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that inhabited the Amazon river basin before Columbus their homeland was not a rainforest but a patchwork of orchards.
B/f you rush out this weekend to Easy Street to buy the new Lily Allen, It's Not Me, It's You, b/c you were thinkin’ it’s ab time you check out something hep again and you learned from two big recent write-ups in The New York Times and the New Yorker that the acid tongued squirt is some dance-pop songsmith (and TV personality) from swinging London big on the sardonic (meaning she’s a sarcastic alcoholic— maybe like Ricky Gervais you hope, only sexier?!).
But what a soggy, sodden, sorry mess of a record, huh?! First, there’s no dance in this pop. (If this is the only dance-pop record you buy this year trade it in for the Robyn record now, I’m tellin’ ya!) The Caribbean lilt to her last record is gone. In its place is some goofy Brit dancehall melodrama reminiscent of Ian Dury or the Specials, a nice touch, but attached to rhythm tracks ab as exciting as the escalator at Target.
She’s good at a dis, or taking the piss, or whatever the kids call this sort of bitter satire these days. A “Fuck You” to the Bushies and to an Ex, who could be me when I’m feeling extra pitiful ab my life in relationship hell the last five years, hit the bull’s-eye. The abstinence only crowd ought use her stuff as a cautionary tale. Her first single, “The Fear,” mines the soul-depleting existential dilemma of the shopaholic celebrity. If you’re over 30 rolling your eyes and yawning is an involuntary reflex watching her sing it.
That Lilly does not give a fuck gives her wit a caustic edge but it sure doesn’t help the music. Fans won’t notice or blame it on her producer, The Bird and The Bee’s Greg Kurstin. Me, I’m ready to reconsider the Lily Allen vs. Katy Perry question.
Addendum: Revisiting this one after seeing X-gau make it his pick hit in his April Consumer Guide. I was extra hard on it b/c I expected a lot. Lily has her own thing. But lyrically and, especially, musically the record is lackluster. She's bored.
This is not what I’m supposed to be doing but alas anything to put off grading papers. A former student asks me for a mix of some “cool jazz,” so I’m rooting through my records asking myself what is “cool jazz” anyhow? Miles in the 1950s, right? West coast bebop? And what distinguishes cool from bop really, anyway? Cool is bop lite? If bop is a traffic jammed intersection, cool is a cruise down the boulevard; if bop is a hothouse of ideas, cool is a supper club martini. At its best cool jazz was swing scaled down to bop group size allowing musical ideas to breathe again. But it's more a mood than fresh set of ideas and probably, more than anything else, a precursor to drecky smooth jazz. So if I keep fussing w/ this mix much longer I’ll probably end up where I can’t stand listening to it. Besides, the student and I started talking ab music last year in the first place b/c he’s a hiphop head. He’s probably expecting some ‘60s soul-jazz, Lonnie Liston Smith and the like, the stuff more commonly sampled by Gang Starr, etc. Another day. For now, the birth of the cool sounds real good on a rainy night.
“Sometimes I’m Happy,” Lester Young “Jeru,” Miles Davis “Blues for Pablo,” Miles Davis and Gil Evans “Figure 8,” Lennie Niehaus “Crazy Rhythm,” Stan Getz “Let’s Get Lost,” Chet Baker “Foolish Things,” Lennie Tristano Quintet “All The Things That You Are,” Paul Desmond “Willow Weep For Me,” Zoot Sims “Rainy Night,” Red Mitchell “Linus and Lucy,” Vince Guaraldi Trio “Soul Sauce,” Cal Tjader “Take Five,” Dave Brubeck Quartet “Martians Go Home,” Shorty Rogers “American Haikus,” Jack Kerouac “Las Cuevas De Mario,” Art Pepper “My Foolish Heart,” Bill Evans
