Campaign finance bullshit

May 2, 2013 Leave a comment

I am so fucking sick of half assed campaign finance reform proposals. Here’s a chain link to these some of these pathetic half assed proposed that have been floating around, and another.

Even the goddamned advocacy groups are urge nothing short of unmitigated restraint and compromise!

Ever heard of a PAC? Political Action Committees; it’s what corporations did to get around earlier more substantial campaign finance restrictions (before two wealthy bastards, the Koch brothers, engineered the overwhelming game rig of bringing Citizens United to the Supreme Court — the case which basically threw out all campaign laws ever infinitum before the most overwhelmingly Conservative pro-corporate bench ever). You can look it up elsewhere for more detailed info (I know, enough with the hyperlinks already everyone knows what google is), but essentially corporations and unions weren’t supposed to give money to candidates and ostensibly shouldn’t have been able to influence elections. So they got around it by ‘asking’ employees or union members to contribute to a given candidate, and ‘bundled’ these donations as a PAC. Sound complicated? Given the intricacies of campaign finance, state and federal regulations, and corporate/union laws, it’s about as simple as it gets.

Point is, if you write a campaign finance law with a pinhole in it, American special interests will find a way to fire a single laser through it and blow up the death star. And all the proposals I’ve seen, even those backed by advocacy groups, are so full of holes as to, at best, turn the clock back to 2009. And we all know that back in 2009 corporate interests didn’t run our government, right?

It’s all fucking bullshit. The only solution is publicly financed campaigns. No private money whatsoever. I’ve written before about the costs, as have so many ignored others, and how if set up efficiently it might very well cost far less than the government currently spends for public finance. How much is a website that everyone with an internet connection can access outlining all your policy goals in one place? $5 a month? How much would a state or federal repository for everyone seeking public election cost? A couple thousand?

But that’s all a red herring. Whatever the cost, it doesn’t matter. It’s the only actual path to Democracy. How much are you willing to give for Democracy? How much did so many before you give?

And we can’t urge congress to write a law. Not a Congress that was elected by the very process we seek to abolish. That’s like discriminating against white people in an effort to abolish racism.

Bottom line; we need a Constitutional Amendment. I’m no legal scholar (nor a scholar of anything else for that matter), but it seems pretty simple and straightforward to me.

“Congress shall pass no law that allows for the bribery of any public official, nor of any person running for public office.’

That’s it. Campaign finance is bribery. Plain and simple. Equivocate on the wording, talk about the reasons it’s good for democracy in strange ways, quibble over costs and benefits, you’re full of shit. If we want democracy, we simply cannot tolerate anyone using or receiving any money whatsoever from any interested party PERIOD.

Filed under Albany, Communications, Government, Law, Media

Andrew Cuomo; the perfect vessel?

April 17, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s difficult to determine whether Andrew Cuomo has any actual ideals or ideas of his own.  The one thing that is for certain, as has been noted time and again by this pseudo author and laid bare majestically by someone with at least higher education in English in a recent New York magazine article, is his unbridled ambition.  The interesting thing about this unbridled ambition is that, in line therewith, he blows with the wind.  He watches the polls.  So if 60 some odd percent or more New Yorkers support a specific policy, that’s his policy.  Especially if it feeds his political ambitions, not only for higher office, but simply for popularity.  It’s also obvious that once he sets his sights on getting a policy passed, or at least the impression that he’s gotten a policy passed (e.g. the 2% property tax cap that was so full of holes as to be voluntary), he gets it done.  And he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in order to do it.  Well, dirty in all the the ways the laws stretch to be considered technically clean, that is. 

The question this brings to my mind is; should the ideal politician have their own ideas, or should they simply be a vessel for the ideas of the populace they represent coupled with the ability to put them in place?  A politician, in the current lexicon, means, quite simply, a representative. As many people unfortunately aren’t aware, there’s a difference between the ideal Democracy with a big fat ‘D’ and representative democracy.  It should be obvious to any American (the whole idea of public education in this country was ostensibly founded on the idea of creating a populace educated enough to make informed political decisions, which it clearly fails at — personally I was never compulsed to go through a day of ‘civics’ yet have many years of education beyond highschool) that representative democracy is at least one step removed from actual rule by the people.  It is rule by proxy. 

So in an ideal representative democracy, what does the ideal representative look like?  Many if not most citizens would speak to the idea of moral fiber and character.  Integrity, trustworthiness, and moral steadfastness — these are qualities people ideally claim they’d like to see in a politician they represent.  But why on earth would they want those things?  Well, for one reason they want to believe the representative they choose will actually represent them.  But if one is to truly represent the populace at large, mustn’t they be willing to bend?  Aren’t integrity and steadfastness the least desirable qualities in this regard? 

While it’s obvious that political ambition for higher office is no incentive to serve the populace that elected you, it’s quite obvious that ambition for popularity amongst those you serve is.  Though Cuomo obviously wants to be feared by his political enemies, deep down it’s obvious he’s more interested in seeking the approval and love of the populace he serves.  New York’s tough, and New York loves a tough guy.  Maybe Andy doesn’t want to be tough.  Maybe he just knows you gotta be tough to be loved in New York. 

Perhaps we should note here, for Andy’s benefit (I know you’re reading this buddy), this is not always the case when it comes to America at large.  Look at the past 5 or 6 President’s we’ve had; ever since Nixon, Americans have distrusted the straight ‘tough guy’ (though they certainly should have long before considering that Kennedy was the President that came nearest to destroying the entire world to be a tough guy).  That’s why after Jerry Ford we had Jimmy Carter, then Ronald Reagan (who may have been tough on welfare mothers and the USSR, but he was all ice cream and cake when it came to political arm twisting and speaking with the public).  George Bush Sr. was kind of an enigmatic anomaly.  Bill Clinton ‘felt our pain’.  George W. Bush talked like a tough guy, but honestly, what a pussy.  Without Cheney, he probably would’ve actually paid attention to polls and done what the public wanted.  And now we’ve got smiling Obama.  Sometimes he approaches talking big when he speaks of Republicans standing in his way.  But he’s into his second term now, they haven’t budged, and I fail to see any strong armed tactics whatsoever on his part…

Point is… wait, what was my point?  Kind of lost my train of thought here. 

Oh yes, the point is, while Andrew Cuomo may not be much of an upstanding, morally righteous person, nor one with much integrity, he may just be a great politician.  The more interesting issue is that the latter may be a result of the former.  Forgive the tired old cliche, but it’s still unfortunately and all too evidently entirely apt; politics is nothing but a chess game.  And you don’t win a chess game by being a player with integrity, nor following a pre-designed strategy, nor sticking to a plan.  You attack the other player.  You use every tool available at your disposal.  You react to the moves played against you.  You change up strategy and plan like an algorithm.  There are moves that work against some moves that will completely fail against others, or completely succeed given the opposing player.  And there are always the 3 or 4 kinds of unknowns (yeah that was a Rumsfeld misquote, either laugh or get over yourself and the fact that you recognized it)

To be a master politician and get things done you need to be a master chess player.  Integrity, morality, stick-to-itiveness, none of these character traits will help you out.  In fact, they’re character flaws. 

Point is, I personally don’t like Andrew Cuomo.  I think he’s an amoral, politically fickle, nakedly ambitious con-man.  But if we’re to continue down the path of representative democracy, he may just be the greatest hope we have for a politician that will and absolutely can serve the populace.  He’s entirely corruptible, but so far towards our ideals or at worst his greater ambitions.  He’s a tough guy, but above all else he wants to be loved by those he serves, so that he may continue to serve them.  Don’t, however, read any altruistic motives in here.  He only wants to serve us because he wants to rule us.   

Perhaps it’s time to stop examining Cuomo and why he’s so adept at representative politics.  Perhaps it’s time to stop comparing him to endlessly studied, endlessly re-evaluated, loved and hated figures like LBJ, Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert Moses.  Perhaps it’d be more useful to examine the nature of representative democracy itself, and why it seems to consistently foster the growth and success of amoral, if not immoral, people. 

Filed under Albany, Communications, Government, Law

Should the Clash be forgiven?

March 17, 2013 Leave a comment

To the general populace, the Clash represents a couple things.  An old band they’ve never heard of, or the guys that sing London Calling and Should I Stay or Should I go?  Were they punk rock?  Yeah, I think so.

When one asks oneself about the Clash’s culpability, one is of course begging the question, for what?  Were they the first of the  inevitably widespread phenomenon of punk rock selling out?  Did they turn in their punk snarl for pop songs and stadium tours?  Did they preach left wing politics and get rich off of it?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions could quite possibly drive a person to madness, especially given the history of the clash.  Honestly, the Clash were always kind of a sellout.  They, like punk rock, put on the snarl, if not to sell things, then at least to be provocative enough to start a movement.  Sellouts or oppurtunists, call them what you will, their motives were anything but pure.

They came from a couple of pub rock or classic rock cover bands that were quite obviously not working.  They, like the Sex Pistols, saw the Ramones and decided there was something new they could be doing that wasn’t too difficult but looked quite tough.  They pretended to be more working class and even younger than they were, started wearing clothing that said stupid shit like ‘hate and war’, and took photos of themselves and posted flyers for shows to make a name before they even had a drummer.

They hooked up with a sleazebag named Bernie Rhodes, who promised to be the equivalent of the Sex Pistols’ Malcolm Mclaren.

They were a concoction.  A boy band.  A fictional marketing tool.  Let’s not kid ourselves.

So, is there anything to forgive?

Yes.  Know why?  Because they were great.

Despite the aforementioned and overly 4 year old writing about war to write about war man ‘hate and war’, their first album was phenomenal.  It was innovative yet entirely familiar.  The posturing was naive enough to feel authentic.  The songs were grand.  Mic it turns out was a great song writer, and Joe had just the right snarl for the ‘new thing’.  They liked reggae and were fascinated by race relations, and they make their innocence abundantly clear right out of the gate (see ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’).

And they were great again.  While Give Em Enough Rope has its detractors, perhaps due to its crisp production and more earnest and striving criticism of late 1970s English society and policy, it’s a fabulous punk rock record.  And it proved that you didn’t have to be a complete nihilist to make punk rock.  You could be angry for all the right reasons, and even reasonable.  Again, perhaps this album was less critically acclaimed due to its earnestness and ambition.  The tongues aren’t in their cheeks, even though in many cases they should’ve been (i.e. ‘guns on the roof’, inspired by the fact that they got in trouble for shooting pigeons with pellet guns or some such nonsense).

The album that initiates their guilt (or a question of whether they had a lack of) is London Calling.  It was wildly ambitious.  Critics love it.  It’s got punk rock, reggae, pop, and the emerging new English ska hybrid.  And it’s got tunes catchy as all fuck.  Which, fortunately or not, got them noticed on the world stage.

So in a sense, Sandinista could be seen as their sophomore slump.  Universally panned by most critics, this overly ambitious album is the result of a band being on the brink of something too big for any human being to handle, and, honestly, just being punk kids at heart.  They smoked a lot of weed, probably drank a lot, and wrote a stupid song to simplisticly honor group of leftist rebels that went against the US and won.  They experimented with dub.  They were breaking apart psychologically and as a band.  The double record sucked, everyone agreed.  But sell out?  Not really.

Similarly, Combat Rock was mostly crap.  There were definitely some good tracks, but they were all singles.  And pretty pop, perhaps sell out, to boot.  On the rest of the album they were experimenting too much.  They were a punk rock band, not the Who.  That is, perhaps they could’ve been if they’d taken it slow as the Who did and evolved gradually.  Instead, everything like that in rock music had been done before, so they had to move into uncharted territory.  Hence garbage like the almost race baiting ‘Straight to Hell’ about a Chinese kid that likes America and the 13 year old imitation of a Doors inspired jungle fightin ‘Sean Flynn’.

And then of course there’s Cut the Crap.  I’m pretty sure even they’d like to delete this record from their catalogue.  Predictably, they went back to their ‘roots’.  Even more predictably given the departure of their most gifted songwriter.  They didn’t know what the fuck they were doing, so they and the sleazey Rhodes tried to exploit the ’3rd wave punk’ that took off where they left punk, going even rawer and more thicker at the lack of selling out and desperately clinging to by now outdated, recycled and cartoonishly exaggerated fashion in both style of clothing and singing.  Predictably, it was a disaster.

So.

If there’s anything the Clash actually needs to be forgiven for, it’s sucking after the first few records.  And no artist, anywhere, needs to be forgiven for losing it.  They need your understanding.  Inspiration is a treacherous whore.  She’ll give you it for free for years and than demand everything including the shirt off your back not to ruin you, then call the cops anyway.

They never really sold out, they just made it big because they were a great band.  And while they did incredibly stupid things (see their changing fashions, many of their songs, stadium tours), they were just twenty something in a new world that, honestly, they were to naive to be prepared for despite their ostensible prescience in the field of rock music and its exploitation (which could probably be said of any earnest punk rock without the tongues in the cheeks or the brash nihilism and blatant oppurtunism).  Yeah, they made money.  Yeah, they didn’t donate it all to leftist rebels.  But they kept talking about them, they rocked against racism, and they wore their naive but well intentioned politics on their sleeves to the bitter end.

And today, their first two records are still fucking great.  And perhaps the third.

Let us all forgive the Clash, once and for all, for what they have become to the public at large, for what they are to hipster contrarians (you know, the ones that hate even the Beatles and the Pixies because they’re just too accessible), and for what they are to punk rock purists, all of whom have a whole host of valid reasons to be angry with them.  The invalid reasons are that they were, in an incostestable sense, sellouts, insincere, or a terrible band.  I like the Clash and I’m not afraid to admit it.  Especially their warts.  Keeps em real.

Filed under Media, Music

Jokes about Power.

March 14, 2013 Leave a comment

One powerful man sees another.  He says: “Fuck you?”  The other man responds: “Fuck you.”  They shake hands.  Like recognizes like.

There’s a growing consensus that powerful people are evil.  Whereas previously there was a wide debate over whether power corrupted good people or only evil people sought power, it has come to light in the past twelve years that the latter is true.  There’s simply too much information in this age to suggest that anyone who has the ability to attain power is unaware of its corrupting influence, nor of the compromises one must inevitably make on one’s own morals and integrity to attain power.  It is unknown whether this is a recent phenomenon, or whether people of power were always simply selfish, ambitious people without any end other than ambition itself.

Certainly previous media portrayals conveyed the former assumption referred to in the former paragraph, that power itself is a corrupting force.  Under this worldview, people seek power to do good, but power becomes an end in itself (i.e. “I would use this ring out of a desire to do good, but through me it would do evil”).  Therefore, someone like FDR was a person who genuinely wanted to save the world economy, institute protections for the underclass (of which neither he nor anyone in his family was ever a member of), and ensure that capitalist society would forever more be more responsible to those left behind on its whims and fancies.  It was after he gained so much power that he was the head of the world’s emerging superpower that he, say, signed an order to inter Japanese Americans in the United States or abandoned the rescue efforts of the millions of civilians slaughtered in the holocaust.

Does this worldview seem entirely naive to you?  Obviously given the language above, it does to the author.

In any case, its continued portrayal made its way to the mainstream American media as recently as the 1990s, with the popularity of the program ‘the West Wing’.  This program pitted a quite obviously morally upstanding President and his entirely morally upstanding staff against the forces of evil not only in the opposition but in the nature of power itself.  The moral?  Mr. Bartlett can still go to Washington.  (Lest we forget, this was during the era when Bill Clinton was viewed as such a figure.  And despite his many personal flaws, he is still viewed by many, along with Jimmy Carter as such a character.  A person who sought the most powerful position in the world from a desire to do good, and was later corrupted by it to such a degree that his major policy goals as originally vocalized (e.g. universal healthcare) were complete failures and the Reaganesque policies that favored large corporations, free trade, and the wealthy that he ostensibly disavowed continued and were encouraged tenfold by the end of his administration.  But hey, the ‘Democrat’ balanced the budget, right?  What a guy.)

A newer, far darker portrayal evokes the opposite emerging consensus in the new media, in the form of a program called ‘House of Cards’.  This series is nearly unabashed in its portrayal of an inherently evil figure doing inherently evil things, all in the unfettered striving for naked power.  It is perhaps a testament to the new media that such a portrayal of a straight Machiavellian politician has rarely, if ever, made it to a television series.  It is encouraging to see it, alongside similar programs which came before in the ‘old media’ such as VP or Britain’s In the Thick of It.  It should perhaps here be noted (though you may notice this isn’t being written in any particularly logical nor narrative order) that these latter two programs are more successful in the portrayal of every politician in power as being either comically evil and self interested, or incompetent fools in power as a result of forces beyond their control such as nepotism.  House of Cards, on the other hand, leaves room for the interpretation of several characters (though not many) as having been corrupted by power rather than always having been in its naked pursuit without scruples.

The consensus that has emerged is that powerful people are not people like you and I (if you’re reading this there’s no chance that you’re a powerful person).  If they were, they long ago would have realized that in order to attain power, you must do evil and become evil (“battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster”).  As such, they would have discontinued or at the very least tempered their pursuit of power, in which case their power would be limited to say the least so as to make them unwarranting of further study.  If they are like you and I, then they’re simply too simple to appreciate the nature of power, and chances are they won’t hold on to it very long, or they’ll simply be used as the tools of the actually powerful (think W. and the Cheney).

It must be admitted here that my current opinions have perhaps crept into this otherwise entirely scientific discussion.  Having been influenced by Zeitgeist the movie, I’ve come to believe that my opinions on the nature of power are shared by a large contingent of the public.  The unfortunate part of this is, as Zeitgeist the movie makes so abundantly clear, it’s not only the intelligent nor the scientific thinking amongst us who are coming to hold these views.  Therefore, you get the idiocy of the Truthers, the Occupiers, and yes even the Tea Partiers taking the world stage, purporting an otherwise sound ideology.  And let’s not get bogged down in the present era.  It’s quite clear that long before these idiotic  movements there was, of course, anarchism to begin with.  The problem with anarchism, like so many other ideologies, it its premise is entirely accurate (as proven by scientific consensus such as the one outlined in this scholarly article — i.e. authority itself is the tool of evil men), but the conclusions drawn from the premise are entirely inaccurate and comparable to such scientific enterprises as soothsaying and astrology.

The same could certainly be said of Marxism.  And I will say it, if for no other reason than that I will be offending a greater number of incredibly intelligent academics spanning scores of years.  The premise is accurate — Capitalism sucks.  It’s unfair.  It makes certain people poor at the expense of the wealthy.  It undervalues and exploits labor at the expense of capital and marketing skills.  It’s everything else after the premise that’s wrong with it.  Once you start making predictions of the idealistic state, you’re simply a self proclaimed prophet.  And prophecies always come true, right?

The point is, a scientific study has been done.  Powerful people are bad people.  And it’s about time that society reads the study and does something about it.

Filed under Uncategorized

The Legend of Sharon Van Etten

September 5, 2012 1 Comment

Note: All the information below, other than that culled from random articles on the internet the author has read is entirely fictitious. The author is either unaware of or unamused by reality.

Sharon Van Etten was just your average suburban Jersey girl that wanted to be a famous singer songwriter. When she was a teenager, she got a hand me down acoustic guitar from a parent and learned some chords. She listened to the radio, she dreamed big dreams that she never thought would come true, and she graduated high school. If only she’d gone to Rutgers (the equivalent in New Jersey of our SUNYs) like most of her fellow suburban NYC singer songwriters, the story would very likely have ended there — or, better yet, in an office somewhere like the one I write this in, surrounded by an unbroken sea of dreams denied and a chorus of viciously repressed creativity.

Luckily for us, for some reason Ms. Van Etten chose instead to go to a State college in the middle of Tennessee. After about a year she dropped out and got a job at a coffee shop/performance space called the Red Rose. Far from the main strips of Nashville, but close enough to that melting pot of Americana to absorb the folk, country, and indie of a thousand different stripes that she learned to blend into something innovative yet recognizable and entirely palatable, it was here that she began to become.

It was here that she suffered terrible heartache, here that she wandered alone through the desert for nearly a decade, here that she gained some of her first scars that any great songwriter needs (but too much of which destroy too many too early).

And it was here one night at the Red Rose, they say, that she made a fateful performance at an open mic night. The songs were rough and still more Joan Baez than Patsy Cline, but someone in the audience heard that incomparable voice, expressive of such longing and sorrow, who saw the path she could take and made up his mind to lead her down it. He’d heard that kind of voice before. And he knew that all she needed was an extra push to get her to the magic he’d witnessed in another before her.

So after she finished her set, this beer-stained, wraith- like figure emerged from the crowd and swept her aside. In a deep, gravelly baritone, he asked her if she was ready to move into the mystic. She didn’t understand what he meant (half of her thought it was just a terrible pick up line), but she recognized his voice and character from somewhere. Was he that skeevey womanizer and petty criminal from a b-movie, or just an actor that portrayed him? It was both comforting and frightening, but more importantly, intriguing, and she knew in her heart she had to follow him.

He led her out the door and off the main road, down back alleys, and finally into a dark basement. Down in the basement she saw what appeared to be a boney old woman wreathed in rags, sitting amidst piles of old records and pill bottles. In her hands were a mortar and pestle, and she ground away. And suddenly Sharon realized she was living out a dream that she remembered having many times as a teenager, dreaming of singer songwriter stardom in Jersey.

“This is where I leave you, as I once left her.” Suddenly where previously the wraith had stood, there was nothing but a cloud of smoke that reeked of volatile organic compounds.

“So you wanna be a rock and roll star, eh girl?” asked the old woman. Sharon thought she recognized the voice; it was just like the broken, guttural moanings of Chan Marshall, a hero of hers. She felt so awkward and nervous in this woman’s presence that she just stared, frozen, dumbfounded. The old woman sighed; “You know, I was once like you…”

The rag-clad woman poured a thick fluid into the ground up mixture at the bottom of the mortar and combined them: “Drink this, girl.”

Eager to please a woman she thinks may be her hero, Sharon drank willingly and heartily. She felt ill, then woozey, and then, somehow, powerful. And hungry. Desperately hungry.

“And now your journey begins” Chan says. “And mine slowly ends” she utters as she pours more of the mixture into a stoppered bottle and thrusts it into Sharon’s outstretched palms. “The only way to help me is to carry on my legacy. William will see to me. He knows why I am the way I am, because it’s taken an even greater toll on him. Don’t take too much of this, or you will become like us. You don’t know it yet girl, but you’re much stronger than I… Now go! To New York City! Take my place!” she shrieks as she begins shrinking into herself, and finally disappears into the shadows and piles of rags in the basement.

Terrified and intrigued, Sharon did as she was told. First she ran from that cursed place. She ran all the way home to Jersey and she picked up her old guitar. And the songs flowed from her hands like that sickly liquid that poured from the cup.

Which is not to say it was easy. She needed the diligence and persistence to mold those songs into the brilliant, heartbreaking gems of innocence and experience that they became. And she did. Day and night she worked those songs to death. Until they were polished beyond perfection. And more and more came to her.

And now, years later, the skinny, pale girl in tomboy guise from Jersey has flowered, much as the old woman in the rags in the basement once did before her.

When I saw her take the stage recently, she was an olive skinned beauty that oozed an unmistakeable mixture of femininity, grace, and that thinly veiled awkwardness that makes us indie rockers melt like putty. Not to mention that, unlike her predecessor, she failed to hit a single note that wasn’t laced in a sea of unfiltered honey.

And when she bantered with the audience, you could still see her roots shine through. She’s a normal kid from the suburbs like you, but something changed her. Much of it was obviously hard work, self discovery, and finding out where her talents lay and how to finely hone them. But it seemed as though there was something else; hence, I believe in the legend. And now she’s unapproachable, mystical, a force in songwriting and performance to be reckoned with. She is Sharon Van Etten. And most likely, she will only grow larger and become further.

And in a week or so she’s coming here to Albany. She’ll be joined by Mount Eerie from, I dunno, let’s say, Portland (you know, wherever the Microphones were from), and about two dozen mediocre local indie bands. Don’t miss it.

Pre-note for the comments that may arise: I only added that second to last sentence to generate controversy and hence lead the ten or so people that otherwise would not have read this blog here. Not because I’m jealous that my mediocre local indie band wasn’t asked to play and hence not given what will most likely be our only potential opportunity to share a stage with the lovely Ms. Van Etten.

Filed under Music

The Legend of Lowery v. White et al (or how I learned to end the discourse by asserting that the re-commodification of music is a moral imperative)

July 20, 2012 2 Comments

A recent series of blogs have virally called our attention to the nature of music, artist’s compensation, theft, and morality in the information age.

The first, Emily White (PBS employee) blog post was a candid, homely little ditty that would’ve garnered no attention whatsoever had it not been posted on a famous lefty (though ostensibly public) media site that’s constantly, greedily monitored by academics and pseudo intellectuals bent on finding and exposing the slightest errors to prove how smart they are (kind of like savants of the past that watched for errors on Jeopardy so they could write unpublishable letters to the editor of their local dishrags). Unfortunately, though, it was.

Therefore it drew the ire of a pretentious lefty blowhard who exploited and seized upon it for all it was worth, blogging out his bottled up vitriol all over the internet that previously was only spewed upon his unfortunate students. This washed up college and alternative rocker goes by the moniker of David Lowery, of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker. And the rant was even longer and more pretentious than this one.

The third most famous shot over the bow thus far that I know of was Travis Morrison of the indie/math rock band Dismemberment Plan’s cheeky response in which he tellingly referred to David Lowery as ‘dude from Cracker’. His screed was in defense of Emily White and kids who love an endless amount of music endlessly but don’t have an endless supply of cash to be able to purchase it all. It also contained good insights into the history of music ‘theft’ before the internet, and, more importantly insight into a deeper understanding of the generational divide that Lowery seems have entirely glossed over (ironically, considering how much he ‘hates his generation’) in his diatribe.

Unfortunately (for you that have the displeasure of reading my rant), Morrison failed to address another deep issue that Lowery (who made a killing in the most lucrative musical commodification ever, the 1990s cd explosion, due solely to market forces of the time) brought up in his rant; morality.

Side note: Lowery unfortunately consistently refers to morality as ‘ethics’; as a college professor I’d hope that distinction would be more than just academic to him. What’s ethics? Well I ain’t no college professor, but in general from what I know it’s a set of rules meant to govern the behavior of a certain sect, usually used specifically to refer to a group of professionals. It has no inherent value such as that derived from say a divine source such as the Bible.
So when you talk about ethics, you probably shouldn’t use it to refer to consumers, because there is no governing set of rules for consumers. They’re far too diverse of a group (being, well, everyone), and their desires, be they moral or immoral, are provided by the marketplace (whether through a black market or a legal one). The marketplace is what writes the rules here and decides what’s ethical. Therefore, if the vast majority of people are stealing music, it is in fact ethical to do so.

It may or may not be moral.

Morality and art don’t really mix or diverge as clearly for me as for David Lowery. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have the ability to oversimplify the concept of morality like Lowery seems to be able to do without any awareness whatsoever of the irony. Perhaps it’s because I recognize that my morality isn’t necessarily everyone else’s. Or perhaps it’s just because I never made a million bucks off my art, and therefore have no interest in calling people immoral for not giving me a million more.

Ok perhaps that last one was just mean. Then again, I found Lowery’s condescension towards White to be pretty damn mean. Especially all of the patronizing apologies attempting to reassure White that he thought she was a
good person, just misguided. Good thing I ain’t White. I don’t take kindly to being patronized by people who think just cause they’re older, they’re wiser and better (morally) than me. And history is full of younger, stronger people
overthrowing the old and the weak. Especially the pretentious ones.

Ok; now in line with the blog discourse I’m about to send yet another drop into the sea of, my confession.

I’m between the 3 generational decades mentioned in the blogging bow shots above; the ‘naive’ twenties of White, the wizened old crank fifties of Lowery, and the reasonable forties of Travis Morrison. I’m in my thirties.

And I have in the past owned thousands of cd’s. Most of them I didn’t buy. Half of them were given to me by touring bands, friends’ bands, etc., often in exchange for cd’s by my band or myself. The other half I stole. That’s right. I piled cd’s from my local corporate mega mart into my backpack and walked right out the door, time and time again. That’s right; I’m way worse than Morrison ever was. But I ain’t gonna say sorry.

Does this make me immoral? Personally, I think that stealing from giant corporations that exploit the voracious appetites of consumers such as myself that they themselves procure is a moral gray area at best. Especially when they pay their employees minimum wage and make millions for themselves and their industry cronies. I have no idea how much the ‘artists’ made off these cd’s, but from what I’ve heard they’re the lowest paid on the totem pole. And half the ‘artists’ I ‘stole’ from are dead anyway.

So when illegal downloading came along I didn’t experience a new moral conundrum. Now I have thousands of albums in my personal ‘cloud’ (and btw the ‘cloud’ doesn’t mean anything other than that the data is housed in servers not in your house). Most of which, as Morrison was getting at, I never would have otherwise heard. And as a creator of music, I can say wholeheartedly that I’d much rather have 100 people hear and enjoy my music than have one person give me $100 for it.

When I really want to own something I buy it on used vinyl from a local shop. How much money do artists make on that? Especially the dead ones?

And to be honest, I don’t feel all that bad about artists not being ‘compensated’ for their art. Especially considering that I’ve been an ‘artist’ for over twenty years now, have myself made or significantly contributed to scores of albums, have toured and played clubs, and have yet to make enough money to pay for even a damned meal. And my impression is that the vast majority of artists throughout all time are more like me than David Lowery. We work day jobs. We struggle. It doesn’t matter if other artists are making money; most of us don’t. Which means we don’t do it for the money. We do it for the art. And David Lowery and his rich buddies can go to hell when they demand more money and call us immoral for not giving it to them.

In the nineties I saw crap like Cracker, Alanis Morissette, and the Stone Temple Pilots on mtv all day long. And of course this followed the eighties, when absolute venal garbage like Motley Crue and Poison were the rock bands that ruled the airwaves –’alternative rock’ was an ostensible alternative to that venality. ‘Hey yay now we won’t be scarred like that.’ The hell it was. These alternative posers (backed by some idiotic ‘cred’ like hey my new band may make corporate rock but my previous band made college rock) made millions of dollars, and I didn’t (and still don’t) think their ‘art’ should even be called ‘art’. It’s commercial product. And as an ostensible artist, I don’t give a damn about fair compensation for commercial products.

Sure it’d be great to be compensated for doing what I do anyway. But personally I think it would pervert rather than make the art better. I’m a big fan of self indulgent art. Cause it’s pure self expression. It’s not something that’s meant to be sold, and therefore, to me, it’s better. Was Van Gogh a great artist? Was he ever compensated? Do you think if he had been his art would have been better or worse? Art is best when it’s made by the hungry, the disenchanted, the angst ridden. In addition, that’s when it’s most effective as a tool for encouraging
social change. Not when it’s made by rich guys in big mansions on expensive drugs. That’s just commercial products to feed the many heads of the beast.

So you can go on trying to make me feel guilty and calling me immoral cause I won’t give you and your dinosaur buddies an extra couple dollars to add to their hundreds of thousands. It ain’t gonna work. Right now we both live in the jungle. But don’t you fret Davey boy, you and your venal art will be back on top in no time.

As an academic, I’d hope you’d have a good enough sense of media history to recognize that it takes at least decades for a new pervasive mass medium to monetize and properly develop distribution channels for products it disseminates. But apparently you don’t.

So a short lesson in theft; it took Hoover and his clever misappropriation of the ‘public’ airwaves to make radio, and hence music, profitable. Before then radio was ruled by pirates who said and played whatever they wanted. It was a
jungle. And after the government forcefully overthrew the pirates and made their acts illegal, ostensibly under the guise of national security, it handed out no bid licenses directly to its corporate buddies (tell me when this starts
to sound familiar). And henceforth radio shows and music became profitable. And thence followed album distribution profitability, and later television, and so on. The internet’s just the new game in town. And right now it’s free. Something will most likely come along and forcefully bulldoze the jungle in the form of government intervention in the near future, but right now government (as always) is simply examining and monitoring this jungle before the market figures a way to tame it. Only then will government, in collusion with whatever corporate giants have enslaved the jungle, rip the rest down.

Will that make you happy, dude from Cracker?

Filed under Art, Business, Government, Law, Media, Music, Philosophy, Writing

Fish

June 28, 2012 10 Comments

In an age before Pitchfork Media, even before the internet, as Spin magazine cut its baby teeth in the background, two large men entered the ring somewhere in the black hills of South Dakota. It is rumored that this most anticipated bout between white American men of the late eighties was instigated by a mishearing of the contender’s statement, said to involve Madonna Ciccone’s panties, which the champ for some reason took as a personal affront.

The contender, a lanky yet muscular nerd called ‘Albini’, sneered and pawed at the ground in his black as the night trunks. Incumbent ‘Watt’, an aging, somewhat forlorn warrior sporting a nascent beer gut and a blue collar, immediately went into a pre-bout ‘spiel’ about ‘mersh’ instead of striking a fighting pose. After beginning to understand the mad ravings of this ostensible god of the thunderbroom, it is said that the wiley punk in the black trunks didn’t much feel like fighting anymore.

No one other than the wrinkled old dustbags that scower used record stores for discontinued seven inches of the SST and Touch and Go catalogs knows what occurred after that point. The important result that should be known by laymen in the present age is that no actual fisticuffs occurred and the two obscure phantoms went back to their dusty, cobweb covered respective corners of the indie rock world (which was called ‘punk rock’ at the time for some reason that none of us today fully understand).

And so it was that the names ‘Watt’ and ‘Albini’, and their historic aborted battle became a thing of legend known only to masters of the old ways. At the time they seemed to be the names to know; but nowadays normal folk only recognize names like ‘Black Flag’, ‘Sonic Youth’, and possibly ‘Minor Threat’ or ‘Straight Edge’. Sure, Watt and Albini showed up a couple times in the context of popular bands like Pearl Jam or Nirvana, but their names are now veiled in the obscurity of dusty tomes that only total indie geeks pore over.

And so ages later, one such archetypal indie geek schooled in the ways of the old masters refuses to embrace the ‘new ways’ of finding info on indie rock in the digital age. He doesn’t read Pitchfork. He doesn’t live in Brooklyn, and claims irritation at the very prospect of having to be present in Williamsburg. He doesn’t look forward to SXSW, or All Tomorrow’s Parties or whatever other festival all the up and coming indies will be playing at this year.

Wye Oak, “Civilian”

And so he came upon Wye Oak randomly by way of the similar artists link on the Sharon Van Etten allmusic page. And so he heard the standout track ‘Fish’ from their new album and was entranced.

And so I have no idea how popular Wye Oak is, how many records they sell, nor whether they make any waves in the indie rock world (nor even whether they’re considered an ‘indie rock band’). Bold note to anyone that might comment on this post with details in response — YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT. Because I really don’t care. I like to ‘ignore the white culture’ where possible (and if you get that reference without googling it congratulations you’re the biggest geek reading this).

What I do care about is tracks like ‘Fish’. It was a powerful, provocatively good gateway track that led me to illegally download the album Civilian. And it’s a good album. However, it’s rather indistinct and relatively unoriginal though recognizable sound led me down the path of this diatribe. Like their Baltimore contemporaries Lower Dens, Wye Oak seems lost in the sea of a new indie rock sound that, while ostensibly rooted in ‘freak folk’ or ‘new Americana’, bears more resemblance to The National, Beach House (also from Baltimore), and now nearly forgotten progenitors like Low and Cat Power. The importance of what this heralds to me is that there does indeed seem to be an emerging and distinct new sound in indie rock, one which is far more radio friendly than other varietals and may very well breakthrough the mainstream ceiling.

It appears that our (if I can call it our anymore) indie rock world is becoming dominated in at least a prominent corner by low key, well produced bands with ambient overtones and post rock sensibilities. When they do rock, it’s usually for a brief or tongue in cheek period. The guitars are sparse and often effects laden, mostly to provide a soundscape or flourishes for the songwriting and vocal prowess of the lead. The sound and the milieu is rooted in trends that first appeared in the early nineties, yet it’s making its way back in a new way. And it’s been a long, arduous journey here.

Ever since Slint’s Spiderland came out, everyone (that was alive and cognizant) knew a revolution in indie rock in one step had occurred. No one understood how long it would take it to gain its rightful prominence. Through post rock and math rock and slo-core did the indie age draw on. While retro punk bands graced the radio and became ‘alternative’ thanks in large part to the stage set by Nirvana, these indie trends remained underground. And then formerly alternative band Radiohead gave a glimpse of what was to come as it moved mainstream indie into uncharted territory. And as the last vestiges of the poorly thought out retro rock indie alternative fizzled out of The Strokes’ and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Brooklyn, the National took center stage and had a couple of hits on the radio. That’s right, the radio I said! Or at least I’m told. You know me. I don’t listen to the radio (wink wink).

And now bands like the National, schooled by Radiohead, GY!BE, Low, or any of the other sea of somber post-rock acts (whether they know it or not, by way of who knows who by now), seem to take center band written and performed songs stage.

What’s the appeal? Why has this trend emerged prominently after the electro-clash and retro rock dance crazed that took the indie world and even the radio by storm in the post 9/11 world? Is the indie rock community beginning to finally come to terms with its powerlessness? To evade its desires to rock out and its final realization that all of us middle class white kids that are smart enough to be nerdy but cool enough to be really into art are destined for crappy dead end jobs and suburban lifestyles as we enter and exceed our thirties?

Yeah, maybe. But I’m probably reading too much of my own personality into emerging indie rock trends here. The indie scene is decidedly and always will be, as its name portends, ‘fractured like chandeliers’. And if you get that reference you’re a loser baby. Trends come and go, emerge and submerge, go underground and see the light of day, if only for an instant. And I’m entirely unqualified to make a determination, being out of the loop as I am, as to how those trends will emerge, dissipate, or go underground in the future. I know what I hear, what it sounds like to me, and I congeal it with the scant info I’ve mustered in the hidden cave of my decades of solitude. And to me it sounds like there’s a sound. It sounds like a wave.

And I hear it coming most strongly and conspicuously from a long forgotten city: Baltimore. Beach House, Lower Dens, and Wye Oak all are from or make their home there. Though of course per the above I’m roping Brooklyn (by way of Ohio)’s The National and Sharon Van Etten in here, and Atlanta’s Deerhunter, and even recent works of Radiohead. And a whole other bands I’ve never heard of or am forgetting (suggestions anyone — and remember, the rules are low key, somber, solid songwriting, emphasis on vocals and melody, emphasis on low pomp, low on outright rock though obviously rooted in rock, bands that play their own guitars keyboards and drums, and highly talented vocalists)? The perspicacious amongst you will no doubt say ‘Hey Stephen, those are just a bunch of your favorite bands of the last few years, and you’re just trying to put them together.’ And you’re probably right. But how else are genres, waves, movements, etc., reified and begun? By a couple of loser critics, dj’s, or, far worse, industry exec jerk-offs that wish to interweave disparate elements. So if I’m right, I’ll leave it to them to come up with a term for this ‘new wave’ in indie rock. Because they’ll see it too eventually, if it actually exists and isn’t just a twisted aspect of my idiosyncratic mind to see a pattern where none exists. And then all the bands that are labelled as such can begin recusing themselves and denying the genre and hating the very terminology foisted upon them.

Nah what the hell I’ll name it, since the name will never be apt anyway… let’s call it ‘Fish’.

Filed under Media, Music

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