HeadCount Blog

Last week, while on the way to see Phish in Philadelphia, I got an unexpected email from…the White House.

We would like to invite you to join us for a Clean Energy Economy Forum to discuss the important role young leaders have in creating and sharing this opportunity. The event will bring together emerging leaders from non-profits, businesses, and community groups along with experts from federal agencies, members of the Cabinet, and White House officials to engage in a dialogue.

So, I guess some people at the White House heard that nearly 75% of the people we registered voted in the last election. They also probably realize that if they want to get popular support behind initiatives like climate change, the music community is a good place to start.

A few more emails started coming in. The next was from a key environmental group, the Energy Action Coalition, inviting me to a brainstorming and strategy session of youth-oriented leaders attending the White House meeting, which is Wednesday afternoon.

It’s no coincidence that this is all happening now. The U.N. Climate Change Summit is in Copenhagen next week and President Obama has vowed to go there and work toward an international agreement. If he succeeds, and Congress backs him up, we will take the most important steps in history toward averting a climate crises. If he fails, or can’t win popular support at home, many scientists say we’re about to reach the point of no return.

You may say, “HeadCount and climate change. Huh?” Well, actually we’ve been working behind the scenes with JamBase and artists like Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam to launch an initiative called “Music for Action” that will encourage fans to speak out on climate change. We also devote a page of our website to Sustainability and Climate Change – one of six issues we’ve tackled in 2009.

It’s exciting to know that people of influence recognize the impact HeadCount and the music community can have on the issues facing our country. We are still strictly nonpartisan and our message remains the same: “Make Your Voice Heard.” What’s changed is that our message is now pertinent 365 days a year, not just on Election Day.

We’re also fostering discussion about health care in the music community, through a poll and an upcoming series of articles on this blog.

We have big plans for the midterm elections next year, directly tying our Get Out the Vote effort to the key issues we’ve been working on.

I will report back from the White House meeting and let you know about our next key steps as an organization. Thank you for all your support, this year and in years past. If you have any thoughts or insights that might be helpful in preparing for the White House meeting, feel free to pass them along. I can be reached at andyb@headcount.org

The meeting will be webcast here at 4 p.m. EST on Wednesday, December 2, if you want to check it out.

There’s good news, bad news, and interesting news about young voters.

According to Project Vote, 64% of the US population voted in the 2008 general election, an increase of 4% over 2000. While older white people continue to vote earliest and most often, nonwhites comprised 91% of the increase in voters. And while the number of young voters has increased 30% over each of the past two elections, about 21 million potential voters under the age of 30 didn’t vote in 2008. If they’d voted at the same rate as those 30 and over, 7 million more votes would have been cast. Meanwhile, female and minority voters are on the rise. While the percentage of voters under 30 increased, that of their elders did not; and non-whites still comprise the largest bloc of nonvoters. Young black women registered at a higher ratio than any other group. Fifty-two percent of young white women voted, a higher rate than anyone except young black women. The electorate is increasingly diverse, hooray. But there’s still long way to go in a nation where nearly a third of the citizenry doesn’t vote at all.

With all this action among young nonwhite female voters, “No wonder Republicans worry about a Democratic demographic storm,” writes Mark Ambinder in his Atlantic Politics blog.

Well, not so fast. The Daily Kos poll released on Friday asked: “In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?” The results are a wake-up call for Democrats still riding high on Obama optimism:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Republican Voters: 81/14
Independent Voters: 65/23
DEMOCRATIC VOTERS: 56/40

Democratic voters said they “definitely” would not vote at a rate three times that of Republicans and Independents.

Yet another poll suggests that Democrats need to pass health-insurance reform if they want to stay in power. According to a Public Policy Polling survey last week, a generic ballot had Democrats ahead of Republicans 46%-38%. Remove a health-care plan from that equation, however, and the numbers even up substantially, to 40-40. As analyst Nate Silver writes, Democrats “should probably not expect to gain ground if they pass health care — but they’re likely to lose more if they don’t.”

Maybe you can see where this is going. Young voters, who so far have been the biggest advocates of Democratic health-care reform, are being targeted by the anti-reform League of American Voters (not to be confused with the League of Women Voters, whose name they’ve appropriated) with forcedly cute ads imitating John Hodgman’s Apple commercials. According to GOP operative (and former Clinton adviser) Dick Morris, these ads have single-handedly caused a sharp swing against so-called “Obama care” in the three states (Arkansas, Maine, North Dakota) in which they’ve run. Expect to see more of them in the weeks ahead.

Lead guitarist Wayne Kramer and the MC5, the world’s first political punk band, ruled the Midwest rock scene during the late sixties until they flamed out in 1972. In 1975, Kramer was arrested for selling illegal powders to a government agent, and spent more than two years in the Lexington Federal Prison in Lexington, Kentucky. During that time he studied music theory and performed with his cell mate, the great bebop trumpeter Red Rodney.

After his release, Kramer went on to perform with New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders, Was (Not Was), Mick Farren, GG Allin, and other acts. Still a fine psychedelic guitarist, he continues to record and perform both solo and alongside other musical activists, such as Rage Against the Machine’s, Tom Morello. Rolling Stone deemed Kramer one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time in 2003, and his swirly, wailing guitar enhances film and television soundtracks, including HBO’s excellent “East Bound & Down.”

When not performing or making soundtracks, Kramer is committed to the cause of prison reform, and has launched the U.S. chapter of Jail Guitar Doors, a nonprofit started by Billy Bragg in the UK that provides musical instruments to prisons.

Wayne Kramer is as inspiring a person as he is a musician. Hell, how many people have had the Clash write a song about them? It was a pleasure to speak with him recently about causes new and old.

HeadCount: Could you talk me through your involvement with Jail Guitar Doors? It’s an amazing story.

Wayne Kramer: I am an ex-convict, and when I was in prison, playing music was a way to escape. Not physically, but in the artistic sense that I could go someplace that didn’t have to do with incarceration and also do things that would help me in the future. And after I got out of prison and tried to get back into the working world, tried to put a life together, the experience hung with me: What happened to me? Why did it happen? How much did it change me? It did change me, but I don’t know if it changed me for the better, necessarily.

Fast forward to last May, when I had the opportunity to put together a musical program at Sing Sing, the maximum security prison in Ossining, New York. I invited a bunch of my friends: Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Perry and Eddie Farrell, Gilby Clarke, Handsome Dick Manitoba and Billy Bragg, amongst others. I did a talk with the inmates and then played a concert for them. Afterwards, Billy told me about an initiative he had started in England where he was providing instruments, guitars, for those that worked with prisoners for music as rehabilitation. It was called Jail Guitar Doors. The song “Jail Guitar Doors” was a song The Clash wrote about me when I went to prison. And at the time I thought that was a great expression of solidarity for a fellow musician and I was honored and humbled but didn’t think much more of it. But then Billy tied it to this work and I thought, you know, I’ve spent a lifetime of activism and commitment to not only anti-imperialism but to justice itself, and everything fell into place for me.

I am also a sober alcoholic and part of the way I stay sober is to think about other people for a change. As a musician, I am completely self-obsessed and narcissistic. My shallowness knows no limits. But to get better, I have to start putting effort into doing things for others. And so everything combined to say, “Wayne, this is something you should do.” I find myself uniquely positioned with one foot in prison and one foot in music – because you never really get over something like that. Once I took it on, we started putting an organization together. Billy said, “I was just about to ask you if you’d take it over for America.” So we’ve partnered on it. We’ve worked together in England, we’ve worked together in this country, and we’ve worked separately in both countries. We’re just gearing up now. We’re getting our board established and are on the learning curve about figuring out how we actually go about doing this, how we go about making connections with other people who are doing this, and how to find funding.

What kind of equipment do you provide prisoners?

Kramer: Just regular old standard guitars and amps. Whatever we can get our hands on to help people out. We get the “brother-in-law price” from companies like Fender.

What did you do musically while you were in prison. How long were you in for? Did you play with other inmates?

Kramer: I was there for a couple of years. It’s interesting. I thought I would do a lot of writing, but I’m also pretty goal-oriented, and once I got there I realized I may not be making records for a while. I was sentenced to four years and I didn’t know how much of that four years I was going to have to do. I wrote a couple of songs. But what it was really good for was studying music. I had the great fortune to be locked up with a wonderful jazz musician, Red Rodney, a formidable trumpet player who replaced Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker Quintet. Red was a classic dope fiend jazz musician and I was a typical dope fiend rock musician. He became like a musical father to me and we studied together. He taught a Berklee College of Music course in theory, so that became my first theory training. We also had a prison band and played bebop all the time. We played bebop. We played regular Sunday-afternoon concerts in the big yard and other regular events, like holiday shows. Anything we could do, we did. When we both got close to release, and our custody was lowered to “community custody,” which meant you were eligible for community programs and could go on work release or study release, we played jobs in the community. Playing music was huge for me, and I know it’s huge for people in prison today. There’s something deeply profound when you sit down with a guitar and try to figure out how to say something in a new and nonconfrontational way, something complex; maybe something that’s hard to say to your family, to your wife, or maybe even to yourself about how you ended up there. Read the rest of this entry »

Our partners at Sonicbids helped put us in contact with up-and-coming bands that share our belief that music can be a powerful tool for encouraging people to be more active, involved citizens. We chose these tracks from among more than 50 submissions. Have a listen by clicking here

1. Tripsonix – “Great Pub in the Sky”
2. Blue Rabbit – “Like I’d Like You To”
3. Flavien – “I Can Too”
4. Haakon’s Fault – “Pilgrimage”
5. Floyd Boy – “Chaos of Men”
6. Overnight – “This Is How”
7. Slave Unit -”In Time”
8. State of Undress – “Red Waters”
9. The Method – “Will Is Gone ”
10. The Righteous Kind – “Let Freedom Ring”

[pictured: State of Undress]

Less than a month after the “Joy” that was Festival 8, Phish returned to the stage for their fall tour opener in Detroit, Michigan. Cobo Arena is located on the Detroit River adjacent to General Motors headquarters, Joe Louis’s monumental fist, and the big bronze “Spirit of Detroit.”

The city was alive with energy as the vibrant, animated fans entered the show. The downtown area around Cobo was upbeat, friendly, and raucous, filled with thousands of elated concertgoers. Few people were thinking that Detroit, once the fourth largest city in the nation and with a legacy of innovation, ambition, and soul, was at a pivotal moment in its history. The band’s momentous return to the stage was juxtaposed against the setting of a city in relative free fall.

Over nearly five decades, Cobo Arena has provided the stage for performances by legendary artists including Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Journey, Madonna, Kiss, and the Doors. In October 2008, Jay Z held a free concert at Cobo in support of then Senator Barack Obama.

Phish’s performance at the venue was uplifting but bittersweet. The band’s first visit to this famed house of rock was rumored to be the last show before the building is demolished. In place of Cobo Arena, Governor Jennifer Granholm and local officials have planned a $300 million dollar Cobo Hall expansion. The convention center is home to the North American International Auto Show. Judging by the plight of Detroit and the auto industry, who knows how much longer auto executives will want to fly to Detroit to conduct business?

At this point, the automotive industrial lifeblood of Detroit has been largely dismantled and sent offshore. Skilled industrial workers have been left without adequate opportunities to maintain their quality of life and have been forced to look elsewhere for employment. Now the eleventh largest city in the nation, Detroit lacks such institutions as solid public schools, well-equipped and -staffed police and fire departments, and adequate and accessible health and human services. At the same time, the national recession and political turmoil in the city have contributed to an unemployment rate of nearly 30%. It doesn’t take more than five minutes of driving around to find neighborhoods of abandoned and burned homes. Scores of empty offices and closed showrooms line the wide, once bustling commercial thoroughfares. Many neighborhoods are so noticeably vacant that a lifelong resident would feel uncomfortable walking down the street in broad daylight.

Maybe hope for Detroit lies in newly elected political officials. Former NBA star and successful entrepreneur Dave Bing, for example, replaced Kwame Kilpatrick, whose political career was embroiled in scandal. Bing’s focus is reinvestment in Detroit. He speaks extensively about public safety, health and human services, and education. Judging by the depth of Detroit’s problems, however, the city could take decades to stabilize. One thing is for certain. In a city with such a wealth of registered historic landmarks, it is a tragedy to lose a venue that so deeply woven into the fabric of modern music history.

As it turns out, Phish probably did not play Cobo Arena’s swan song. Slayer, Megadeth, and Testament are now scheduled to play there February 6 as part of the bands’ American Carnage Tour. And while the future of both Detroit and the arena remain uncertain, the music will continue. Let’s hope whomever takes Detroit’s helm possesses both an understanding of the past and a vision for the future.

[Trey Anastasio in Detroit by Michael Stein.]

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a figure probably more suitable for a magazine such as The Economist, which featured him in a 2001 cover story titled “Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy,” than on the cover of Rolling Stone. But next month the magazine’s Italian edition will celebrate him “in reward for his rock and roll lifestyle.” Carlo Antonelli, the magazine’s editor, justified his qualifications to the UK’s Mail:

‘Every year we chose a rock star of the year and in the past we have had Rod Stewart, Brian Jones and Keith Richards and Oasis.

‘This year there was no competition and there was a unanimous decision that it should be Berlusconi as this year he has not been out of the spotlight for one reason or another, especially with his parties.

‘It was all down to lifestyle and Berlusconi’s daily life which has a spectacular fury and is inimitable and as a result he has found himself throughout the year on the international stage.’

The cover was designed by Shepard Farey, the artist responsible for last year’s ubiquitous Barack Obama poster image (borrowed from an Associated Press photo), but the leaders couldn’t be more different. (Berlusconi famously complimented Obama on his “suntan” two days after he was elected President.)

Like most other Italian politicians, Berlusconi, one of the country’s richest men due to his extensive finance and media holdings, has long had to deny associations with the mafia. As Prime Minister, however, he has more recently had to wrestle with sexier allegations involving a teenage underwear model and upscale prostitutes. He was also criticized this spring for choosing cute young female candidates—nearly entirely lacking in political experience—to represent his political party in European Parliament elections. Berlusconi’s popularity has remained high throughout all the drama, a divorce, and a long series of gaffes, blunders, and outright insults.

Who said politics was just rock ‘n’ roll without the fun?

Stewart Butterworth, who accidentally helped invent Flickr in 2003 when his company’s socially interactive online pursuit Game Neverending didn’t work out, started his career in computing like many a lad, according to this Globe and Mail piece:

At the University of Victoria, where he did his undergrad in philosophy with a focus on neuropsychology, cognitive science and linguistics – the workings of the mind – he got an account on the school’s Unix server, basically geek heaven. He was also a big Phish fan and connected with other lovers of the jam band to trade tapes. “That seemed to be the principal application” of the Web, Mr. Butterfield joked.

Butterworth went on to sell Flickr to Yahoo for $30 million, and worked there for a few years until entrepreneurialism called him back.

His well-funded Canadian company, Tiny Speck, is cooking up something that sounds even cooler: a massive, multiplayer, socially interactive online game they hope will appeal to everyone from kids to grandparents. Yeah, I know. But it’s hard not to get excited about something described like this:

Inspired in part by the artistry and sensibilities of writers Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and Jorge Luis Borges, Mr. Butterfield says Tiny Speck’s goal is to create a “fun and really interesting world with its own rules, absurdist and strange but fully realized, if imaginary.”

Sounds a bit Gamehenge-y to me.

After reading Debra’s great post on the federal investigation of Gibson Guitars’ Nashville factory for violating the Lacy Act, I remembered watching an episode of “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” on the Sundance Channel that focused on the art of sustainable guitar making. While guitars aren’t the biggest threat to our forests, without sustainable practices guitar companies may find themselves running out of wood. The special focused on Martin Guitars and interviewed the company’s CEO Chris Martin. I couldn’t find a clip from “Big Ideas” but did find a short clip from “Eco Biz” (above).

Martin Guitars, along with Taylor, Gibson, Yamaha, and Fender have all teamed up with Greenpeace to form the Music Wood Campaign.

The Greenpeace Music Wood Campaign is partnering with the music industry to protect threatened forest habitats and safeguard the future of the trees critical to making musical instruments. We are working together to increase the availability of traditional woods used by musical instrument manufacturers that can be certified to the exacting management standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and demonstrating, one species at a time, that there is a strong and growing market for well-managed, FSC certified wood.

Television personalities Stephanie Pratt (left), Ben Gleib and Aisha Tyler were among the faces at HeadCount’s first ever fundraiser in Los Angeles, the “Rock. Laugh. Dance” party at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. It was quite the L.A. welcome.

Also on hand were Wayne Kramer of the MC5, “American Pie” star Jason Biggs, and representatives of Live Nation, Creative Artists Agency, and Red Light Management. Most importantly, it was an occasion for tHeadCount leadership to meet members of the Southern California philanthropic and political communities.

We enjoyed hilarious stand-up comedy from Ben Gleib and Aisha Tyler. In an unexpected twist, comic Ben Morrison was on hand to warm up the crowd with a few minutes of his own standup. Ben, we realized pretty quickly, was the same comic who emceed The Disco Biscuits’ 2003 New Year’s Eve show and was pelted with ice by an impatient audience. As he recounted the story, this time he was greeted only by laughs – the loudest being from HeadCount co-chair Marc Brownstein.

The evening ended with a performance by local rocker Samantha Mollen and DJ Racebanner.

We’d like to thank our sponsor Livity Outernational, the House of Blues, Courtney Ross-Tait, Keely Field, Alex De Ocampo, and all the wonderful people who helped us put together this outstanding event.

Co-host Keely Field and actor/comedian Ben Gleib

Maura Foster of Livity Outernational and actor Jason Biggs

Last week the number crunchers at Overthinking It produced this chart correlating the production of oil with creativity in rock. According to “The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs,” rock creativity topped out relatively soon after U.S. oil production (at least in the lower 48 states) – at least according to Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Based on the assumption that Rolling Stone’s collective critics know whereof they picked, it’s a depressing chart that penalizes new music simply for being, well, new. On the other hand, they don’t call it “classic rock” for nothing. And those early rock hits were all originally released on vinyl, which is made from oil, so…

Underwhelmed by this coincidence, I poked around for other unorthodox musical indicators. According to the Wave Principle developed by Socionomic Institute Executive Director Robert R. Prechter, society’s general mood causes trends in popular music that are also reflected in the stock market. As this clip from the institute’s self-produced movie, History’s Hidden Engine, indicates, a positive social environment leads to happier, more upbeat sounds. So the pop, bubble gum, and British invasion sounds that followed the market’s rise in the late sixties gave way to the hard rock, heavy metal, and punk rock of the late seventies when it declined. Pop, disco, and dance music rose during the eighties and nineties and, presumably were replaced by hard rock, gangsta rap, and emo after the downturn of 2002.

The Socionomic Institute argues that all aspects of society are in accord with the Wave Principle, which follows a fractal model. “This is not a coincidence,” says Prechter. “This is the entertainment industry giving the public what it wants, when it wants it.” People want to wear colorful clothes, shake their booty, and buy stocks in good social mood. When things are grimmer, like now, not so much.

The slightly weird part is how the Wave Theory aligns with late psychdelic guru Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero. Inspired by a meeting with a remarkable mushroom, McKenna’s theory is based on the I Ching and postulates that a steadily increasing rate of novelty, either on Earth or in the space-time continuum as a whole, will eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity in December 2012. And as many current 2012 hucksters realize, that’s snake oil you can take to the bank.

The Socionomic Institute also believes anti-drug laws in the US tend to coincide with high share prices, and legalisation with low — good news for the legalize-it crowd. Alcohol was legalized just as the Depression bottomed out and, according to Socionomics researcher Euan Wilson, “The current mood is very similar to the 1930s.” We look forward to the screwball comedies, big-band dance music, and legal bong hits that await us.