posted by: Scott Kaplan in Health Care Reform, Issue Updates on July 30th, 2010 | | 1 Comment »
The big debate about Health Care Reform simmered down with the passage of the bill, but it continues to be the core of a nationwide ideological battle over the role government should play. The special interests are also battling it out over how to interpret - or in some cases, I'd say misinterpret - the new law. Here are some recent highlights:
- A pair of Congressmen say some states might have to secede from the union if the health care bill isn't overturned. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) both say the law puts some states in an untenable position and may force them to go the way of the Confederate States if it isn't repealed. Wamp, who is running for governor in Tennessee, said: "I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government." He has also promised to refuse to implement the law at the state level if he is elected.
- Some insurers, faced with the realities of health care reform, are offering lower cost plans that narrow the number of doctors from which patients can choose. This isn't the only area in which they're looking for loopholes. The bill states that $.80 of every dollar will be spent on actual health care. Are the insurers cool with that? Not so much. Some want to include the costs of checking doctors' credentials and ferreting out fraud as "patient care," and think commissions collected by insurance brokers shouldn't be part of the calculation at all.
- Within the parameters of the new bill, "preventative services" will be free. However, the foggy definition of "preventative care" remains an issue. Immunization and mammograms are among things classified as "preventative," but one item notably not included is birth control, which some feel is "the very definition of a preventative service." And, fellas don't duck out of this debate: you could be a consumer of birth control in the near future too. An Israeli professor has developed the Bright Pill for men, and says it could be on the market in the next five years.
- What about dental? If you were waiting for health care reform to visit a dentist, (which I wouldn't recommend) the new bill offers no relief. Right now, it is estimated that around 132 million don't have any dental plan. Is that bad? This guy thinks it is "white collar robbery." What's your opinion?
- While the debate rages, the fact is that the lion's share of the laws won't come into effect until 2014. In the meantime, maybe your favorite pastime is good for your health after all: treehugging turns out to be an immunity booster. If treehugging or rainbows aren't meeting your needs, and like me you're in the market for an affordable health plan, check out these helpful websites to compare costs and apply for insurance.
There are all sorts of ways to stay informed and active as the election season nears and HeadCount wants YOU in the mix! So follow our daily headlines on Twitter or check out our Health Care Reform Issue page.
posted by: Jonathan Perri in Personal Liberty, Trends in Music and Society on July 28th, 2010 | | No Comments »
As Phish's Telluride run nears, the beautiful Colorado village is preparing for whatever it is they think will happen when the circus comes to town. They've already taken measures to help with their biggest concern: the large number of fans showing up without a ticket (or money to buy one). But according to Telluride Chief Marshal Jim Kolar, they're also concerned about the use of psychedelic drugs causing bad trips.
“There are a lot of drugs involved with these folks,” said Kolar, describing the range of expected narcotics as “a whole potpourri of illegal substances” including marijuana, cocaine, LSD and heroin in addition to “a lot of drinking.”
Attached to the medical tent normally set up for large events like the Bluegrass and Blues and Brews Festivals will be a secondary “trip tent” where those high on hallucinogens can essentially go for a time-out if they need to.
Softly lit and containing cots and chairs, the tent will be manned mostly by concerned friends of the trippers and overseen by some Emergency Medical Services personnel, said Chief Paramedic Emil Sante.
“They can stay as long as they like,” he said, noting that the goal is to prevent law enforcement holding facilities from being clogged up with trippers.
“As long as they’re not a threat there’s no reason they can’t be in the tent,” said Sante.
In the U.S. it's generally considered difficult to implement harm reduction strategies at live music events because of the RAVE Act, a law that holds venue owners responsible for any drug use that occurs on their property. This created a particular problem for the rave and electronic music scene where MDMA use is common. Many venue owners refused to allow any type of information about the harms associated with using ecstasy or to even provide free water for fear of being viewed as encouraging drug use and losing their business.
The trip tent idea seems to be catching on. They exist at a more festivals than you think, but often try to fly under the radar by avoiding any promotion other than word of mouth. Seeing one take place openly at the Telluride shows is more than just an embracing of harm reduction values - it is ultimately engaging in the larger scale debate of how to address non-violent drug offenders and providing a way to separate those who create trouble for themselves from those making trouble for others.
posted by: Josh Greenberg in Gulf Coast Recovery, Trends in Music and Society on July 28th, 2010 | | No Comments »
Overcoming serious obstacles, New Orleans remains a city rich with culture and personality. Now with the help of an one of a kind interactive sound map, any one in the world can get a taste of NOLA's spirit, while bypassing the humidity.
Until your budget permits for a trip to Louisiana, enjoy the scene through Open Sound New Orleans. Users can simulate a stroll on Canal Street by clicking on the map which includes many aspects of the vibrant 'soundscape' like street jazz and random background noise. This website, created by a non-profit organization of the same name, manages to capture the authentic feeling of "The Big Easy" with ease.
Open Sound New Orleans seeks to celebrate and unite the city. On their website they state:
Our intent is to make more accessible the authentic, unedited sounds and voices of New Orleans. Sharing the sounds of our city as we hear them, move through them, and create them, is an act of celebration. But it also serves each contributor – you and me and anyone else who might participate – as a simple way to extend our own experience to others, harness our representations and those of our city, and participate in New Orleans' public culture with intentionality.
posted by: Richard Gehr in Trends in Music and Society on July 28th, 2010 | | No Comments »
Let's give The Dark Side of the Moon a rest, OK?
One of the greatest musical events I've experienced recently was the Matt Groening-curated All Tomorrow's Parties at Butlin's Holiday Centre (don't ask) in Minehead, England. 
That's where Britpop stars Spiritualized, which is actually one guy – Jason Pierce (AKA J. Spaceman) – and a bunch of hired hands, performed Pierce's glorious 1997 psychedelic breakup album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, in its entirety. Horns, strings, and a wailing gospel chorus joined the usual rock lineup for a show that took off within about thirty seconds and didn't let up until the last drop of heroin nostalgia had been wrung out of us. If you happen to be in New York City and want to give it a spin in person, Spiritualized is bringing this moving extravaganza to Radio City Music Hall on July 30 for the only North American performance of their Exile on Main St. for the '90s.
Spiritualized's sublime set got me thinking about bands covering albums – their own and others – and about when it works and why it sometimes doesn't.
But is it more creative for a band to cover its own album(s), or to drop a guaranteed crowd pleaser by covering a beloved chestnut, no matter how classique? The most obvious recent example of the latter is Flaming Lips' slightly gimmicky and punked-up Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd's greatest hit is easily the most covered album around, having been covered by Phish, moe., the Squirrels (The Not So Bright Side of the Moon), dub-reggae group the Easy Star All-Stars (Dub Side of the Moon), a cappella group Voices on the Dark Side, and Dream Theater. As I said, the album could probably use a vacation. After all, it's more or less held a place on Billboard's pop albums chart since its release, and someone's reckoned that one in every fourteen US citizens under the age of 50 owns a copy.
Covering your own album these days is more often than not the final refuge of the geezer band. Brian Wilson resuscitated his career in 2003 by finally completing and performing Smile, the 1966 "teenage symphony to God" whose release was scotched by Brian's abusive father, Murray, and brother, Mike. Brian's current backing group, the Wondermints, and the project's original lyricist, Van Dyke Parks, convinced Wilson to polish up Smile, after it had lain dormant in his brain for nearly four decades, and take it around the world. I saw Wilson and company perform it at Carnegie Hall, where it felt a little too formal but grin-worthy nonetheless.
Steely Dan performed Aja and The Royal Scam in their entirety during their Mo' Rent Party '09 tour. 
Which was a little strange considering how much better Gaucho and Pretzel Logic are. To me, tongue-in-cheek jazz-rock mercenary geniuses like the Dan are slightly more appealing than old-fashioned money grubbers like the Who, who took their 1973 masterpiece, Quadrophenia, on a long British and American tour beginning in 1995. They blew the roof off of Madison Square Garden in 1996 and demonstrated, even more than Smile did, that they don't call it "classic rock" for nothing.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was part of the All Tomorrow's Parties series Don't Look Back, in which groups cover their own classic albums. At earlier Parties, the Stooges have played Raw Power, Suicide has played Suicide, and the Raincoats have performed The Raincoats onstage in their entirety. It's a cool idea, one you think more American groups might indulge in. Isn't it about time that Pavement played Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Prince played Purple Rain, and Phish played Rift? The ATP concept reportedly almost inspired the Rolling Stones to take the plunge. As recently as May, Keith Richards was hinting that the Stones might play Let it Bleed or Exile on Main St. from front to back. Noise rockers Unsane whipped out their 1995 squalling Scattered, Smothered & Covered this summer. And Spiritualized no doubt inspired Primal Scream to begin performing their own 1991 Britpop hit Screamadelica later this year.
The rock norm used to be that fans attended shows in order to hear bands play their latest album. Yet few groups have ever 
played those albums onstage as an organic and self-sufficient work of art, probably because fans also like to hear music they're familiar with. I have no idea how many bands have ever simply played new albums from beginning to end prior to Phish – who of course ripped through all of Hoist (minus "Riker's Mailbox") during their legendary "GameHoist" gig on 06/26/94. But don't you wish the Beatles had played all of Abbey Road, rather than just three songs from Let It Be, on their headquarters rooftop in 1970? And don't you wish the Grateful Dead had performed six of their albums during their heyday rather than waiting for Furthur to do it at their recent festival?
Hidden Tracks reminded me that Phish's musical Halloween costumery has inspired several other groups to try their hand at gathering up other bands' spillage. Rose Hill Drive alone have performed Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies, Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic, and Led Zeppelin II. And the Easy Star All Stars have created rich reggae versions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Radiohead's OK Computer in addition to Dub Side of the Moon. But covering albums is one of those great ideas that seems to have gone the way of, for example, improvising new scores to movies (like when the Disco Biscuits jammed their asses off to the anime classic Akira to cap New Millennium's Eve).
Do cover bands count? Probably not so much. Still, it's always great to hear the Fab Faux work through the Beatles because the quintet don't simply mimic the bandmembers (à la Dark Star Orchestra) but rather re-creates Beatles music as faithfully as possible no matter who's playing or singing what. (The Fab Faux will also convince you that "I Am the Walrus" hinges on the tambourine.)
Cover albums are such a dependably commercial prospect that I've long expected the concept to explode any day into a nostalgic apocalypse that's more Broadway than barroom. What rock's greatest improvisers really should do, in the end, is take a tip from Beck, who's been quietly recording the most innovative cover albums as part of a project he calls simply Record Club, "an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week."
Record Club's latest album, believe it or not, is that old PBS fund-drive stand-by, Yanni Live At The Acropolis. 
Thurston Moore and Tortoise join Beck and a rhythm section in the studio for some of the most smartest and skronkiest outside music you'll ever hear/see (the videos of each track provide only slightly self-conscious, and often revelatory, moments of studio spontaneity). Beck and posse have also covered Songs of Leonard Cohen, Skip Spence's obscuroid masterpiece Oar, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and Kick by INXS. Even if you never creamed for the album in the first place, Beck and his famous guests always make it new. They let you hear it again for the very first time better than anyone else around.
posted by: Brigitte Bard in Gulf Coast Recovery on July 27th, 2010 | | 1 Comment »
The Gulf Oil disaster was 30 years in the making according to an eye-opening TED Talk by conservationist Dr. Carl Safina. The noted ecologist and author spoke at the TEDxOilSpill conference in Washington, DC. Through detailed investigation and heartbreaking images and stories, he answered the questions: “what does the Gulf oil disaster really mean and why did it happen?”
Dr. Safina identifies the trend that has befallen the country and the environment: the culture of deregulation where corporations have risen above the law. "I refuse to acknowledge this as anything like an accident... I think this is the result of gross negligence, not just BP. BP operated very sloppily and very recklessly because they could, and they were allowed to do so because of the absolute failure of oversight of the government that is supposed to be our government protecting us,” he said.
Safina examines how the approximate 30 year trend of deregulation has been behind some of the major and recent crises our nation has experienced including the BP oil disaster, the bank bailouts and the mortgage crisis. "Where did this oil leak stem from? It really started from the destruction of the idea that the government is there because it’s our government meant to protect the larger public interest... root causes: money and ideology." Safina adds, “There has been a culture of deregulation that is caused directly by the people who we need to be protected from, buying the government out from under us.”
If we accept his premise as true, then it also leaves us with some questions to ask ourselves. How did we, the public, let it get this way? As consumers who have gotten used to getting pretty much whatever we want and rather quickly, have we turned the power over to the corporations who have everything but our best interest in mind? By corporations feeding our “wants” like a drug dealer feeding a heroine addict, have we become so comfortable and complacent that it’s us – the American people - who have allowed them to grow so big? Is it possible for us to reduce the power of corporations by retraining ourselves to seek out smaller businesses, mom and pops, farmers markets, coops etc... and doing more for ourselves? As Safina said, "We're either going to have an absolutely unmitigated catastrophe of this oil leak in the Gulf, or we will make the moment we need out of this..."
Does this get your brain going? Check out TED Talks. Billed as “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world,” TED gathers some of the world’s best public speakers and streams their talks wordwide. Find out why TED has a huge cult following. Warning: there are some mind-blowing experiences underneath this link. http://www.ted.com
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