Archive for March, 2010
posted by: Richard Gehr in Food and Farm Policy, Music and Activism on March 31st, 2010 | | No Comments »
Monomonikered musician Moby has co-edited a new book called Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat) with Global Animal Partnership executive director Miyun Park.
Turns out that Moby's a raving capitalist, who believes the free market should decide the price of meat; rather than giving agribusiness a big break with government subsidies. How quaint! As he told Umbra Fisk in this recent interview with Grist:
Q. What do you think the solution is for getting people to cut back on animal consumption? Is it education?
A. For me, there's one simple solution, which the likelihood of it happening is pretty slim, but still, my pie in the sky dream is to end subsidies for agribusiness and end subsidies for animal production and basically let the free market decide the cost of a pound of beef and a pound of chicken. If there were no subsidies for beef, a pound of beef would cost around $25, and if every aspect of animal production wasn't subsidized, a family of four going to McDonald's for a quick meal would spend $75. So really it's like the silver bullet that fixes the problem. And I would almost think it would make for interesting bedfellows, where you might even get some libertarian Tea Party people to talk about ending giving subsidies to animal production. But then again, not to be too inflammatory, but thus far every single person in the Tea Party is a raving lunatic, so I don't expect them to join our cause any time soon.
posted by: Richard Gehr in Gulf Coast Recovery, Trends in Music and Society on March 31st, 2010 | | No Comments »
As a huge fan of both HBO's The Wire and New Orleans the city, I await this Sunday's premiere of Treme, Wire creator David Simon's latest TV epic, with breathless, if not drooling, anticipation. But what a shock to learn that David Mills, a key writer/producer for both series, died suddenly yesterday in New Orleans from a brain aneurysm. Mills also adapted Simon's book, The Corner, for HBO. (Check out Mills's quirky blog, Undercover Black Man.)
From all reports, particularly Larry Blumenfeld's cover story in this week's Village Voice, Treme sounds close to having nailed New Orleans's rich Southern-gothic-with-a-Caribbean-tinge milieu. The show's theme is life in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina. One of its main focuses is the city's still-vibrant music scene, including real-life jazz musicians and Indian chiefs vetted by the likes of trumpeter Donald Harrison, who happens to be one himself. The show's title is a corruption of Tremé, a centuries-old black neighborhood that's been home to countless jazzbos. Writers such as Mills and Eric Overmyer, both of whom wrote for NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street, are brilliant artisans of hardboiled yet high-quality and socially conscious TV. With five seasons in the works, Treme, not unlike Katrina and its aftermath, should offer a saturating take on one of the world's great cities.
posted by: Sebastian Freed in HeadCount Community, Trends in Music and Society on March 30th, 2010 | | No Comments »
Philadelphia rock band Dr. Dog are one of HeadCount's newer partner artists. We'll be sending our teams to their shows starting mid-April through May. Sign up here to volunteer for shows
You can also check out the Dog's new album, Shame, Shame, which drops April 6 but is currently streaming at NPR. This is the first time the band decided to work with an outside producer. They went with Rob Schnapf, who's also worked with Beck and Elliot Smith. Enjoy!
posted by: Richard Gehr in Trends in Music and Society on March 30th, 2010 | | No Comments »
Mark Twain's celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County better watch their lily pads May 28-30 during the newly announced Furthur Festival @ Mountain Aire. The fest will take place on four stages over three days in California's Sierra Foothills.
Furthur will perform a Friday-night soundcheck, host a late-night jam later that evening, and headline the two following nights. Their guests include Electric Hot Tuna, Jackie Greene, Galactic, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, Mark Karan & Jemimah Puddleduck, the Mother Hips, the Waybacks, Common Rotation with Dan Bern, Carney, Maiden Lane, and Blue Light River.
The festival will serve as prelude to Furthur's summer tour and marks their first shows without RatDog drummer Jay Lane, who announced that he'll be quitting Furthur to rejoin Primus.
posted by: Richard Gehr in HeadCount Community, Interviews, Music and Activism, Trends in Music and Society on March 30th, 2010 | | 2 Comments »
"I may sound like a serious crank here, but I don't think music means as much to people as when they were listening to analog music....Your body resists digital musical."
Bob Weir – of the Grateful Dead, RatDog, and, most recently, Furthur – sits on HeadCount’s board of directors and has long been a vigorous advocate of voter registration and participatory democracy.
Last fall, during RatDog’s four-night run at Manhattan’s historic Beacon Theater, Bob sat down with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke to discuss HeadCount, politics in America, analog versus digital music, the Obama administration, the Grateful Dead, and other topics of interest.
In the second of four weekly installments (watch part one here), Weir discusses the difference between analog and digital music both in the brain and in society.
posted by: Richard Gehr in Trends in Music and Society on March 29th, 2010 | | No Comments »
Lately I've been thinking about the State of the Scene. Once upon a time, a bounty of amazing improvised rock groups – or jambands, if you will – that once trekked up and down the two coasts of this great nation, but no longer. They continue to tour, of course, but now many rely on giant festivals like Bonnaroo to introduce themselves to new audiences. You don't often find bands that specialize in live improvised music, rather than recordings, at music-industry clusterfuck conferences such as New York's CMJ or Austin's SXSW.
For better or worse, however, that's where most indie groups these days garner recognition, buzz, and, if they're really really lucky, a recording contract. SXSW and its ilk are good for a small minority of ambitious young rockers. And even if they don't get signed, they usually have a pretty good time and snag some free liquor, food, or sunglasses for their trouble.
Conversely, the people who put on these events do very well indeed. A SXSW pass costs hundreds of dollars, while the hundreds of bands who play the event are compensated either in wristbands or with $250 in gas money. Meanwhile, large soft drink, beer, chewing gum, sneakers, and other companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars in marketing their wares to conference goers, who may or may not realize they are paying for the the privilege of consuming all this advertising.
Guitarist Mike Haliechuck of the Canadian punk band Fucked Up (only in Canada, kids) analyzes all of this much better than I ever will in "SXSW Why?" Haliechuck weighs the pros and cons and comes to the conclusion that while music conferences are good for a minority, it's the conference owners and their corporate sponsors who are more likely to come out ahead. Having been to both CMJ and SXSW exactly one time each, I came away feeling like a very small cog in a big greasy machine. But I'm lucky. I live in New York, which is a 24/7/365 music conference in itself.
Haliechuck writes about how SXSW creates a critical mass of people willing to pay for the privilege of gazing at billboards sponsored by large corporate concerns, such as Mountain Dew. With the corporate end of the music industry in its own death throes, more thought is now being put into how to extract money from consumers they might used to have spent on what they now get for free.
Something that should be forefront in the minds of every band and every record label is how this is the most visual example of music money leaching away from the people most connected to music....This is the crux of the matter - there is a big pool of money out there that everyone is trying to get - the music industry is panicking because a lot of the money that used to go from music consumers right to them, is now going to companies that are posted just on the periphery of music, letting bands and labels spend money making music, and then swooping in with music related marketing strategies aimed at getting some of that relatively free money.
After three years at SXSW, Fucked Up has obviously figured out how to make the event, and the sponsorship opportunities it provides, work for them. Other bands, Haliechuck warns, will probably not be quite as savvy. Fortunately, anyone who reads his thoughtful observations on manufacturing of indie-rock sausages in the hot Texas sun will come away just a little, or perhaps a lot, smarter about the process than they were previously. And there's nothing fucked up about that.
What's important to remember is that even if you are a small band with no label, or even just a fan of music, every decision you make at the festival has a ripple effect on the music industry, which you are a part of. If you are a band, and are offered to play the Dewars Pampers Ultra Soft stage, it may be a legitimately good decision to take part in, if you can get a good slot and play for a few hundred people, and maybe even walk away from the show with a cheque. But is it worth playing in the middle of nowhere to no people if the only meaningful economic relationship created by the show is between a few companies that won't pay you, and a few hundred people that are still asleep while you are playing? If you are a label, is it worth taking a few thousand dollars from a beer company to help pay your bands that day if they are just going to turn around and use those bands in a print ad without paying you? It all comes around in the end.
posted by: Jennifer Suh in Music and Activism on March 25th, 2010 | | 1 Comment »
For many young people, the once-a-decade occasion known as the U.S. Census is a wholly new experience.
Maybe the newness of it is why young people are among the least likely to participate in the census.
In a video shot at SXSW, hip-hop artists Murs, Quincy Jones III (QD3), and Kurupt worked with the League of Young Voters Education Fund’s “Numbers Don’t Lie” campaign on 99problems.org to spread the word about the importance of the census to young people. Biko Baker, Executive Director of LYVEF commented, “I have a ton of respect for [Murs, QD3, and Kurupt]. It’s awesome that they’re willing to use their celebrity to speak up about why it’s so important for young people to fill out their census forms.”
As census forms arrive in mailboxes nationwide this month, we tend to agree with these musicians. Completing census forms is hugely important for young people. Census numbers determine how much federal funding communities will get for things young people may want to access in the near future, like schools and job-training facilities.
When you get your census form, fill it out. And, creative as you are, video it and maybe you can win an iTunes gift card from LYVEF. Details at the end of this video.
posted by: Richard Gehr in HeadCount Community, Music and Activism, Sustainability and Climate Change on March 23rd, 2010 | | 1 Comment »
It had already been quite a week for the Disco Biscuits by the time the band reached Brooklyn Bowl Sunday night for the first Bisco Power Mission benefit.
On Tuesday the band released its fifth studio album, Planet Anthem, and played a show in Philadelphia. On Thursday, guitarist Jon Gutwillig injured his hand after a show in Albany. And Friday's show, in Boston and minus Gutwillig, was cut short by the local fire marshal.
Nevertheless, as bassist Marc Brownstein explained as he took the stage for what turned out to be a long, jam-filled evening with four guest guitarists, including former Disco Biscuits drummer Sam Altman (!), "Tonight is very much Jon's night." Reprising what he'd said in a recent HeadCount interview, Brownstein explained that the guitarist's interest in renewable energy and sustainability had inspired the Bisco Power Mission initiative to assist in the funding and installation of solar paneling at Philadelphia’s Albert M. Greenfield Elementary School. "This is [Jon's] issue," Brownstein emphasized. "This is the money he wanted to raise. This is the cause he wanted to give the money to. This is what he really cares about."
And so the show went on. Coincidentally, the Bisco Power Mission benefit marked almost exactly the tenth anniversary of a legendary March 11, 2000, Wetlands show the Biscuits played as a trio sans Brownstein. (The police broke up that show, too.)
Chris Michetti from Raq and Mike Carter from Indobox filled in creditably for Gutwillig during the first half of the first set. Michetti played on "Commercial Amen" and "Liquid Handcuffs," songs from Brownstein and keyboardist Aron Magner's Conspirator side project. But Carter in particular evoked Gutwillig's looping, pattern-driven grooves during a searing "Confrontation>Cyclone>Confrontation" sandwich.
The evening's first real surprise occurred when Sam Altman, now a physician, took the stage with guitar for "Trooper McCue" and "Barfly," two rarely played early Biscuits numbers. "Yeah, Sammy plays guitar," Brownstein said as Altman launched into a wah-wah driven solo. "I know you've heard the rumors. You get to see it now with your own eyes."
Michetti returned after the set break for "M.E.M.P.H.I.S.," "Digital Buddha," and "Boom Shanker." Then Brothers Past guitarist Tom "The Ham Sandwich" Hamilton, who also performs with Brownstein and Magner in Electron, joined the foursome for "Kameola Sands" and then took over for some searing work on "Little Lai," "Plan B," "Quad D" (the night's only Planet Anthem song), and "Shelby Rose."
Brownstein was ebullient throughout, jumping around, chatting with the crowd, and changing lyrics to fit the unexpected circumstances. "For a couple of weeks we'll just have to take it all in stride," he sang in "Little Lai," "Just for a couple of weeks." And then in "Plan B": "I never imagined that Barber [Gutwillig's nickname] was someone I'd miss." Plan B indeed. It's hard to imagine that somewhere an ailing guitarist awaiting surgery wasn't feeling just a tiny bit better.
Stream or download the show here.
(Top and bottom photos by Liz Odonnell; middle photo by Jamie Huntsman)
posted by: Richard Gehr in HeadCount Community, Interviews, Music and Activism on March 23rd, 2010 | | 33 Comments »
Bob Weir – of the Grateful Dead, RatDog, and, most recently, Furthur – sits on HeadCount's board of directors and has long been a vigorous advocate of voter registration and participatory democracy.
Last fall, during RatDog's four-night run at Manhattan's historic Beacon Theater, Bob sat down with Rolling Stone's David Fricke to discuss HeadCount, politics in America, the new administration, and the Grateful Dead, and several other topics of interest.
You can watch the interview in four weekly installments. Here, in part one, Weir addresses the future of HeadCount, the importance of democracy, the sacred stage, and the personal politics of the Grateful Dead. Or view Part II, in which Bobby discusses how digital music leaves listeners sonically unsatisfied.
posted by: Richard Gehr in Health Care Reform on March 22nd, 2010 | | No Comments »
History was made yesterday. The House reform bill's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better than nothing. Here are the highlights.
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.
(Photo by EPA)
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