Funky Drummer

How to do the Purdie Shuffle:



Purdie Shuffle in Mashup:

End Banker's Holiday: Part Five

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.

The End, By Michael Lewis


The Reckoning, By Peter S. Goodman


The Quiet Coup, By Simon Johnson

Final Four

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

Zombie Media at Obama Press Conference

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 Nation.)

Big Dogs and Underdogs in the Sweet Sixteen

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

Let the Show Begin: Bracketology for Dummies

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!

Ending Banker's Holiday: Part Four (It's Satan!)

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....

1491: A Walk In The Park

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.

Iraqi Hero Goes To Jail

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi throws a shoe at President George W. Bush during a new conference in Iraq last December.

(Los Angeles Times)

It's Not Me, It's You!

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.

The Birth of the Cool

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

Ending Banker's Holiday: Part Three (A Rant!)

This morning on This Week this guy, George Stephanopoulos, asked those sitting ar a table, George Will, Paul Krugman, and economist Nouriel Roubini (aka Dr Doom b/c he prophesied the housing crisis 15 minutes b/f it happened)(and some lady from Business Week I don’t know), if there ought to be established something like the 9/11 Commission to learn from the current economic crisis. Everybody was non-committal to dismissive, Krugman saying sufficient discussions were already taking place. His slightly bashful dismissive was hard to read. Was he smirking about the wasteful, ineffectuality of the 9/11 Commission? Or does he really think there is nothing policy-wise to be learned from the current mess?

Soon enough the conversation veered towards a table response to this very desire to blame someone or something for our current problems. (Who needs a Commission?!) A consensus ar the table quickly emerged to make the point that 300 million people in America (and another 300 million in Europe, Krugman added) were all responsible for going on a “25 year credit spending spree,” saving little and spending beyond our means. Really? That’s the ultimate cause of the biggest global economic crash since the 1930s? We were all just maxing out our credit cards too much?

Now it’s not that I don’t think there shouldn’t be consequences for not paying your debts but didn’t congress already establish what many consider quite harsh, unforgiving bankruptcy laws in 2005? B/f the crash? And I’m not suggesting that people who took on mortgage debts they couldn’t pay shouldn’t be held responsible. But isn’t there a sense of proportion here we’re missing when pointing fingers at millions of working people for receiving 70 billion in subsidies while four or five banks will be lavished w/ up to 2.5 trillion? So why have people gone on a 25 year credit spending spree, anyway? Might it have anything to do w/ the fact that real working class wages have not risen since the 1970s?! (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Wouldn’t it be far more accurate to say that this crisis is the result of 25 years of supply side economics that were supposed to trickle down to the rest of us but never did; that this crisis is the result of 25 years of “free market” deregulation and predatory casino capitalism fed consumer pipe dreams and Scroogy anti-labor demagoguery; that this crisis is the result of a 25 year surge in income inequality of staggering numbers not seen since the Gilded Age? (The Height of Inequality)

And wouldn’t it be important that this be said so that we might not repeat this catastrophe again? So that we might not have the same self-serving assholes that led us into this mess continue in their machinations from positions of power? The length and depth of capitalist cyclical downslides were significantly longer and deeper (during the Gilded Age) before the Depression precisely because of the sweeping government interventions and social safety net measures established by the FDR’s New Deal. It wasn’t just a bunch of government bailouts of failed industries. Now in the biggest free-fall since the Great Depression are we going to forget that?!

I’ve read it suggested that this cover-up recovery is b/c the Wall Streeters gave more money to Obama’s campaign, reportedly 10 million plus (CounterPunch), than any other constituency. But Obama amassed the biggest campaign funding war chest in history. Over 700 million or something like that. Why would 10 measly million buy so much influence? Please let this be the media chatter drama of the moment, the left’s unreconstructed doomy fatalism, the last bleats of the Right’s dying free market fundamentalist ideology, and Obama’s careful, patient, measured steps to right the ship of state. B/c this growth model, Wall Streeters hustle a bubble like mad, then go on bonus junkets to the Caribbean, while Main Streeters take it on the chin, chewing on their own pride in austerity and sacrifice, can’t last. Eventually some angry, smart young people will rally a mob to tear the whole thing apart. And it’ll be fun while it lasted for those who hit the jackpot. But there will be hell to pay for the rest of us.

Ending the Banker's Holiday: Part Two

“Politics are hard to predict,” Lawrence Summers
(aka “The Professor,” Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor)

So the first attempt by the Obama team to address the banking crisis last Tuesday was a bust. It didn’t even please Wall Street, who at this point would seem to be the only constituency being given any serious consideration. I was hoping for better but, knowing what they had to offer, Summers and Geithner could not anticipate this political reaction?! The closest to an actual “plan” was barely distinguishable from ideas floated by Henry Paulson and the Bush team last fall. And still hung-up on the same question: what price should the public pay for the “bad” assets amassed by the banks?

“Markets are a great way to organize economic activity,
but they need adult supervision.” –Wall Street Journal

Most distressing is the contrast between the Obama team’s dithering and what is emerging from smart Economists as a few obvious needed steps to be taken:

1) Quit the charade to—what?— fit some myth of private ownership that has always been a gross distortion of American history anyway. Nationalize the banks, even if only for a temporary period. It is an insult to taxpayers to pour hundreds of billions of public money into the private banks black hole, from 450 billion (Krugman) to 2.5 trillion (Reich), without any means to exercise control over how the banks spend that money. On the one hand, 18 billion paid in bonuses to bank managers since the meltdown is small potatoes; on the other, it is indicative of the fact that these people do not operate in the world where the rest of us live, where people actually have to work for a living, and is a flagrant slap in the face to the public bailout. These are NOT people we can trust to make Wall Street work for Main Street, duh.

2) Many agree that a crucial tipping point in our current predicament was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. This Depression Era legislation set rules about the appropriate business of banks and established boundaries to avoid conflicts of interest in the financial sector. Its repeal— ratified by the Clinton-Rubin team, lest you’d like to blame all this on the Bushies—unleashed unsavory links between investment banks and junk money managers and fraudulent real estate mortgage companies. Prior to the repeal subprime mortgages constituted 5% of the real estate market; by 2006 the number had reached 30% (Wikipedia). Capitalism is by definition cyclical, alternating between bull runs and bear markets, but it’s the repeal of Glass-Steagall that has blown this most recent bubble to such gigantic, at this point still seemingly bottomless, toxic, world-wide proportions. (CounterPunch.)

3) The crux of this bubble trouble was the simple fact that Wall Streeters and their minions were making beaucoup dollars selling and reselling debt assets without any personal financial risk, without having to maintain any minimum of capital to debt ratio, let alone any responsibility for reporting these tenuous financial arrangements. The credit rating agencies whom should have cried foul failed miserably. Even though as early as ’03 Warren Buffett and a few other prominent members of the business community were calling unregulated derivatives markets “timebombs,” the Securities and Exchange Commission, our government watchdogs, did nothing. Perhaps the poor reception on Wall Street to the Obama team’s vague, tepid plan indicates that at this point even a majority of Wall Street has had enough of this insider’s game. How could we expect the Wall Street elite— including Geithner and Summers— to reform themselves? It’s time to clean house, closing the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, establishing new independent government oversight that will reestablish rules that reward hard work and honesty. Isn’t this what Obama promised he’d do anyway? (Baseline Scenario.)

Steps 1 and 2 seem inevitable if it wasn’t for the dithering. But can they be carried out substantively without step 3? None of this should be surprising after watching Obama select as his economic advisors, one after another, from the Clinton team. A group as responsible as anybody for setting the stage for the current debacle. And, still, I want to hang on to something in Obama’s rhetoric. The stuff necessary to finally ending this second Gilded Age out of the simple, sober recognition— breaking with the supply-side, trickle-down delusions of the Reagan Revolution— that a healthy middle class is the most important investment for long-term economic growth.

Quotable:

“Apparently, the president has a half-brother named George Obama, who lives in Kenya, and George Obama was arrested on Saturday for possession of marijuana. He was walking around the village telling people his brother was the president, so they assumed he was high and arrested him.” -Jimmy Kimmel

cloying sounds that make my teeth hurt

It’s probably Feist’s fault. Her silly enthusiasm is sexy. I liked “Mushaboom” as much as the next pop fan. But “1234” was the tipping point. Mentioned frequently in writing last year near the word “magical,” it triggers in me a mad impulse to destroy. And now it has incited a rash of cloying singer-songwriter tunes that make my teeth hurt.

It’s not the metrosexual hybrid mixes of acoustica and skipping electro-lite beats and moody synthesizer melodies. The only Death Cab For Cutie I can stand came in the Postal Service. It was that sublime 2003 record that alerted me to the uptapped alternative pop possibilities of mashing the sensitive side of indieland with some electronica. French popsters AIR (or Serge Gainsbourg?) pioneered this particular genre vibe mixing sweetly sardonic hooks and soundtrack drama and digital tempos in the late-90s.

Some of the recent problem appears to be a drift into organic singer-songwriter Puritanism combined with a kiddie pop fixation. Recent hits “New Soul,” by Yaim Nael and “Bruises,” by Chairlift, sport a naifness that is unbelievably grating. What makes Goldfrapp’s “Fly Me Away,” a tune certainly not lacking in silly love song sentiment, great is the glammy disco ball that spins overhead. Kick off those Birkenstocks, girls.

Better is Lily Allen’s balance of acid lyrics with the sweet melodies and smooth tempos. Or the dark qualms in Lykke Li’s shuffling ditties that echos outward like a splash on a still pond. The Bird and The Bee go for similar contrasts but only have artless slogans to offer for words. Kate Nash has wit but no swing. And, still, the doomy lush tendencies of Allen and Li can be tiring.

Madonna’s “Miles Away,” from an otherwise dreary album, is a worthy model. Too bad more young singers aren’t trying to copy Robyn. Making it something you can move to is always a good thing. Not that I don’t think there’s room for more roots or rock music flourishes in the indie electronica mashup but the recent run of nursery-rhyme cutesiness has gotta go.

To my sweetheart on Valentine’s Day—

Please stop dancing in my head
I have cried till I'm half dead
Please stop dancing in my head

Please stop dancing in my mind
I have cried till I'm half blind
Please stop dancing in my mind

Please stop dancing in my heart
I can't seem to make it art
Please stop dancing in my heart

Please stop dancing in my soul
I can't make it rock and roll
Please stop dancing in my soul

Please stop dancing in my sleep
I can't make it twang and beep
Please stop dancing in my sleep

Please stop dancing in my eyes
I can't make it pretty lies
Please stop dancing in my eyes

Please stop dancing in my blood,
ill wind blowing no one good
Please stop dancing in my blood

Please stop dancing in my life
I will never be your wife
Please stop dancing in my life.

By Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields

Blossom Dearie was a Songbird

Blossom Dearie, who died on February 7 aged 82, was one of the great interpreters of American song in the post-war era. She did not like to be described as a jazz singer (although she grew up in a jazz milieu), nor as a supper-club singer (although she often entertained in supper clubs); a mixture of the two, she preferred to call herself "a songwriters' singer".

- Telegraph U.K.

(See NY Times Obit.)

dope, money, & baseball

Gawd, at least A-Rod has confessed. It's the lying, denials, the prevaricating that drives me most mad. The ass covering of the league through this whole debacle stinks, of course. And the mock outrage of the media— A-Fraud’s a cheater, No!!!— is just grating. Why can’t we all just agree that between ’94 and ’04 a lot a lot of players were juicing? Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, Giambi, Clemens, Boone, Brady ‘fucking’ Anderson, et cetera. (The Onion.) One hundred and four players tested positive in ’03. If they tested the whole league that means about 14% were found juicing. Let’s just add an asterisk to those years and offer everybody amnesty. Form some sort of independent truth commission to clear the deck: you can come forward w/ the truth and you’re forgiven; you don’t and evidence is found that you were using and you’re Pete Rosed. For me, it’s the dribs and drabs, the mini media event dramas that are killing the sport, turning it into something more like wrestling: will Clemens’ ‘roid rage get the best of him? will A-Rod ever make it to the Hall of Fame now?! It’s almost as if Selig thought this were a way to make baseball fans out of folks who watch Bad Girls and Court TV.

Mr. President: End Banker's Holiday

Okay, it looks like some kind of stimulus bill spending near a trillion dollars is going to be passed soon. This is necessary. Consumers have stopped consuming. (Or reduced consumption significantly.) Demand is down, so production slows, and jobs disappear. Government spending (as opposed tax cuts, BTW) is the surest way to stimulate demand and create jobs and so increase consumer spending and consumption.

But don't we need to consume less? Aside from the lost jobs, might not that be a good thing for environmental reasons? In the long run, yes; it's necessary. But better we make the adjustments to a more sustainable economy gradually or at least consciously, in big reform responses to shocks to the system like the current one. The miseries in terms of job loss and poverty visited upon the vulnerable by doing nothing ab the current crisis are not something I want to see. The press mentions the possibility of 10% unemployment w/ a shudder. I don't know how dire that'd be; I lived through 11% in the early '80s and I don't remember much looting and killing. But what would 20% (it was supposed to have reached 27% at the depth of the Depression, and unemployment statistics are notoriously known to be lowball)look like? Protests in the streets, to be sure. More crime and violence, undoubtably. Child hunger? Impoverished seniors? Increased homelessness. Etc.

We want to rebuild now, get people back to work and spending, w/ programs/projects that move us towards a sustainable, green economy. And government spending is the best way to get the job started. Right now, the only way.

What I don't get is how come in the partisan stimulus debate there has been virtually no discernable talk ab what's going to be done ab fixing the financial markets that started the collapse?

Last night all the talking heads, from both sides, were going on ab how "ordinary Americans" feel ab the stimulus package, desires for jobs and tax cuts, fears of big government and deficits, etc. Right, people want jobs and job security, they want to know that what they have is still going to be worth something tomorrow. But what's hanging over the stimulus debate is the fact that Wall Street, the very people who started this titanic mess, have already been given hundreds of billions of dollars w/out any accountability; w/out any indication that the bailout fixed anything; without any sense that the bankers get that their wreckless gambling w/ "other people's money" is "shameful," unacceptable.(See link.)People want to know that this is not the foxes guarding the hen house.

The right has for the moment gained traction w/ their own standby, accusing Obama's plan of fatcat Liberal spending. Under the circumstances the argument is beyond stupid, it's dangerous. But they've been able to do this largely, I think, b/c ordinary Americans don't get why banks are getting hundreds of billions of dollars w/ no strings attached while working people continue to lose their jobs and homes. Limiting CEO salaries seems like the right thing to do, apoligizing for nominating a guy who has been in bed w/ the industry he's supposed to bring under control, okay, but this is little more than defensive PR window dressing.

The first thing Franklin Roosevelt did during the Great Depression was shut down the banks and have them audited. Then he started the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which, basically, required banks to hold at all times some percentage of their deposits. This is widely understood as returning stability and trust in the banking system. Not coincientally the crux of the present catastrophe has a similar ring: "loan originators retain no residual risk for the loans they make, but collect substantial fees on loan issuance, which causes unchecked degradation of underwriting standards." (Wiki) Let people play w/ other people's money and they will eventually gamble it away. Obviously, we need some new rules, and credible, transparent, independent enforcement of those rules. But nothing substantial is being done.

Ordinary Americans may not understand tranches and CDO swaps but they know that the build up to the current economic catastrophe has been an insider's game. Obama's economic team is all insiders but he got elected, at least in part, b/c he promised to change the way the government does business in Washington, to uncouple the unhealthy relationship betw big business and politics. He has believers in ordinary Americans but he needs to convince Wall Street before he loses Main Street. Do so and old arguments ab liberal spending versus tax cuts, supposedly hanging up the stimulus bill will stop getting in the way.

R.I.P. Lux Interior

Lux Interior, of punkabilly originals The Cramps, passed away this morning due to an existing heart condition. Following is one of my favorite punk songs by The Cramps, "Human Fly." Feel free to stomp around while singing along. Lux would like that.



Well I'm a human fly
It's spelt F-L-Y
I say buzz ,buzz, buzz, and it's just because..
I'm a human fly and I don't know why
I got ninety six tears in my ninety six eyes.

I got a garbage brain, it's drivin' me insane
And I don't like your ride, so push that pesticide
And baby I won't care, 'cause baby I don't scare
'Cause I'm a reborn maggot using germ warfare. Rockin'
Zzzzz...

I'm a human fly
It's spelt F-L-Y
I say buzz, buzz, buzz, and it's just because..
I'm a unzipped fly, and I don't know why
And I don't know, but I say

Buzz...ride tonight
And I say buzz...rocket ride
And I say buzz...I don't know why
I don't know I just, don't know why.