Plan B

Yet another world meeting without action on climate change.

Our leaders aren't doing their job. We look to them for action, not talk.

Maybe our leaders are working for someone else?

There are some things money can't buy. Money can't buy a new climate. It can't buy an extinct species. Or a polar ice cap. Or the water in the sea. Or the temperature of the air.

The old models won't get us out of this fix.

Consensus-driven policy has achieved nothing.

Bringing your own shopping bag to the grocery store has achieved nothing.

Denying climate change exists has achieved nothing.

What's next? Unplugging

The Power of an Audience

Lots of hype this weekend about the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. You know the line: three days of peace and music, the highwater mark of 60's counterculture, etc, etc. It was all distilled into nostalgia a long time ago and is now a boomer cliche. That said, I've always been fascinated with the event, the idea of thousands of people coming together in a field in the country, taking hallucinogens, dancing to loud music, and losing themselves in the moment. The raves of the nineties had this too. Every culture has some form of it. There's a primal need for it.

The second Woodstock concert, in 1999, went down in a spree of violence, looting, and rape. Old timers shook their heads, disappointed by the nihilistic attitude of the younger generation. But you could bring your cooler full of food and beer to Woodstock in 1969. If you brought your cooler to Woodstock 1999, it was confiscated at the gate so they could sell you $12 slices of pizza and $4 bottles of water.

The difference between 1999 (or 2009) and 1969 is the role given to the audience. In 1969 it was still possible to think of the performers, organizers, and audience as one. Everyone participating together to make it happen. By 1999, the role of the audience had evolved from participant to consumer. A participant gives their own energy to the collective experience. A consumer simply consumes. Locked together in a corporate CAFO, the alienated audience of 1999 chose nihilism. Is there any other choice?

With live music, there is an emotional loop that runs from the musicians to the audience back to the musicians. Neither the musicians nor the audience are in control. Each depends on the other. This strong connection is also very tenuous. When the audience is relegated to the role of passive consumer, the musician is relegated to the role of vendor, and the concert becomes a transaction.

It's hard to lose yourself in a moment that's sponsored by Visa.

Happy Halloween!

(Photo by dronepop)

R.I.P. Stylus magazine.

Scene's from this year's Dupont Circle drag race.

My goodbye post to the library profession.

Clusterfuck Nation (via The Dust Congress)
"One of the stupidest assumptions made by the educated salient of adults these days is that we are guaranteed a smooth transition between the cancerous hypertrophy of our current economic environment and the harsher conditions that we are barreling toward. The university profs and the tech sector worker bees are still absolutely confident that some hypothetical 'they' will 'come up with'” magical rescue remedies for running the Happy Motoring system without gasoline. My main message to lecture audiences these days is '…quit putting all your mental energy into propping up car dependency and turn your attention to other tasks such as walkable communities and reviving passenger rail….' Inevitably, someone will then get up and propose that the transition to all-electric cars is nearly upon us, and we should stop worrying. As I said, these are the educated denizens of the colleges. Imagine what the nascar morons believe – that the ghost of Davey Crockett will leave a jug of liquefied 'dark matter' under everyone’s Christmas tree this year or next, guaranteed to keep the engines ringing until Elvis ushers in the Rapture."

The Experience Hendrix Show Sucked

I'm an optimist. And I'm also a completist. So when the Experience Hendrix show was advertised awhile back, I bought tickets. The lineup looked promising: Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell, these guys backed up Jimi in his heyday- Rainbow Bridge, Isle of Man- they were there, man! And Buddy Guy playing guitar. This was the man whose guitar playing Jimi copied! Like I say, I'm an optimist. Then Robby Krieger, guitarist for the Doors. What was he doing there? Well, good chance to see someone who stood in Jim Morrison's vomit. He was there, man! And Mick Taylor, who backed up Mick and Keef back in the day: Exile on Main Street, Sticky Fingers- he was there, man!

.....I spent last weekend cleaning out my stuff from my parent's attic. Old school papers, drawings, toys- all this stuff that I'd left behind, thinking, at the time, that it was valuable. And at the time, that A+ on my first grade math homework was important. But that was a long time ago. As I hauled boxes of stuff out to the trash I realized that you can't hold onto past, because the past keeps growing until it makes all those thoughts and artifacts meaningless....

...and that's what's happened to those guys. To be fair, they were fighting an uphill battle. They were playing D.A.R. Constitution Hall, a space whose musical mojo has been bad since they banned Marian Anderson . And the sound was a mess. The drums were drowned in the mix. Vocal mics didn't work. The stage monitors weren't mixed right. Between songs musicians were yelling at the sound man to turn up the drums, fix the mix in the monitors. It was clear they couldn't hear each other...

But these guys are pros, right? Hey, Mick Taylor kept it going at Altamont fer chrissakes. First of the legends to appear was Robby Krieger, still totin' the Gibson SG. Problem was, he still can't play in tune. There were other guitar players, guys who played like the guys you hear at Guitar Center. Then there was poor old Mitch Mitchell. He can't really do those rolls anymore. He really needed those drum mics turned up to help him along. Robert Randolph never made it to the stage. They announced him but then a stagehand came up and said something to Billy Cox (whose look said "uh-oh!") while he and Mick Taylor and Mitch Mitchell limped along through a 12-bar blues something (yeah but Hendrix played that song, right?).

...by this time the crowd was barely clapping. Hecklers shouted at the sound man. I got up and made my way out of the place. Out in the lobby, guys in baseball caps were standing around drinking beer and looking at each other under the bright chandeliers. I headed for the door. A block away, a homeless man sat on a steam grate. I gave him my ticket. Maybe that guy went in and had a blast.

Tortoise

Caught a great Tortoise show at the Black Cat this past Saturday night. I heard echoes of 70's-era Miles and Faust in their jams. Two drummers are always a good thing.

After the show I tried to go backstage to say hello but Black Cat security wouldn't let me and wouldn't send word back to Dan either. I wasn't the only one; not even Ian Svenonius could get back there. I know bitching about the BC staff's bummer attitude is old news but I have to point it out because it does nothing for the scene. If dealing with drunken twentysomethings is making you miserable then maybe it's time to go back to school and get that degree.

Irish Poets Selling Cars

Made the mistake of watching a few minutes of network television this evening. Made an even worse mistake not muting the commercials. So I got to hear The Pogues "Sunny Side of the Street" playing over an ad for a Cadillac SUV. Now I know that song's far from their best, and I know selling songs for ads is old news, but it still sucks. It sucks because Cadillac sucks and SUVs suck and the whole finely-tuned consumer culture corporate juggernaut sucks.

The last line in the song goes: As my mother wept it was then I swore / To take my life as I would a whore.

Guess old Shane is just living up to his word.

Thoughts on How the Music Business Sucks

The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about a PlayStation game called Guitar Hero. The game is sort of a karaoke approach to guitar playing where the player presses buttons on a little guitar to hit the notes of a song. The WSJ piece talks about how musicians such as Korn, My Chemical Romance, Incubus and other crappy bands play the game so much that they miss recording sessions and sound checks. If these guys were really into music, if they were really musicians and not manufactured celebrities, they'd spend their time furthering their craft, not playing a PlayStation game.

Also speaking of the music business, The Register ran an interesting interview with Peter Jenner, former manager of the Clash and Pink Floyd, where he talks about the stupidity of the current major labels and his ideas for new ways to make money making music in the new era.

And in this interview Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Evens) share some interesting thoughts on the business of establishing ticket prices for shows and why playing shows in bars (or seeing shows in bars) is such a drag.

Un-Plugging

Earlier this month I spent over a week off the grid. No email, no web browsing. Didn't use a cell phone, didn't read a newspaper. Didn't even wear a watch. I hadn't really planned to unplug, it just felt like the right thing to do. For part of this time I was in the woods of Vermont, so a lot of my technology gear wasn't available. But for part of the time I was back home, in a place where I normally plug in and join the online world.

Having that time away made me realize how much time I devote to web things, and what rewards I get from them. I found that I was happier in my own head, or talking with Stereogab, than when I'm typing at the terminal. Because with the terminal, while there's always the possibility of connecting with other people, it often feels like I'm typing and posting in a vacuum.

Over the years I've posted MP3s of my music to various places. It's not satisfying; there's no sense of an audience. Music is the most immediate of the arts and isolating it on a web server (or, for that matter, on a CD even) devalues the experience.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the web, for all its community aspect (blogs, forums, etc), actually enforces our isolation. When was the last time you surfed the web with a friend sitting next to you?