It Doesn't Take That Much

Halfway Through Tunesmith: Jimmy Webb's Most Excellent Craftwork

I'm halfway through Jimmy Webb''s Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. It is simply the best book on the smithy aspects of songwriting I've had the good fortune to read. My thanks to Chuck Puckett for insisting I get and read it. It had been mentioned in other contexts but that was the sign of the symptom. Used copies from Amazon with shipping are less than ten bucks; so for the price of a latte and a doughnut, you can own a treasure trove explaining in detail how to craft a professionally written song. If you are a songwriter, getcha one.

I thought this would be a breezy book full of anecdotes of an unarguably spectacular career. Instead it is a densely packed master course in the craft of songwriting full of anecdotes of an unarguably spectacular career. The only place I might quibble is his distaste for home recording studios but when the book was written, the Nineties, he was right. As Terry Woodford at Wishbone Studios once warned me, "They get those fuckin' four tracks and turn into engineers and forget to write songs." Having experienced the four-track to eight-track to sixteen-track to sequencers to samplers and finally to digital workstations evolution and wasted hours and hours chasing a ground fault instead of recording, he was right. Complexity kills creativity. On the other hand, like the character on Night Court, it is much better now and a good home recording system that is easy to operate is within anyone's reach. That said, if you can't just step into the "magic circle" turn it on and start working, get rid of it and buy something simpler. Gear junkies are not the friends of songwriters or music in general. Really.

The chapters on writing lyrics are quite good. I don't know many songwriters who use the term metric foot but those who understand it write better lyrics from a musical standpoint. An irritation when listening to songwriters perform their songs is that they can't precisely understand why a lyric sounds forced or is awkward to sing, that is, getting vowels and consonants lined up with the beats is really not an inconvenience. Musicality and semantics (what do I want to say in this song) contend for dominance but it is a song and musicality or singability should win.

Now comes the part of the book I suspect many people skip: chord theory, progression, substitutions and functions. Here is where the good songwriters and the excellent songwriters part company usually in the snark of a Nashville attitude of chord policing. Webb talks a bit about that but disregards it and goes on to explain the aspects of voicing that make the difference between a guitar player and a guitar thinker, between someone who can sing a Crosby Stills and Nash harmony and someone who understands why Mozart is as good as it gets.

One can network and get a certain distance even a profitable one into the music business. One can study theory and find oneself shut out of certain networks or called "cerebral", but eventually triads run out of steam and writing about daisy dukes, whiskey, and screwing in the back of a pickup means the songs are interchangeable and forgettable, then success or a career is a matter of who you know or blow and not your skill and the elegance of your work. Pretty only goes so far or lasts so long and even cleverness loses to one prettier that day or more willing. Be appropriate to style but don't limit yourself to one. The ability to analyze and write in any style is the hallmark of a professional.

There are singers, songwriters, singer-songwriters and composers and if one wants to take the adventure of a lifetime that is music, it pays to keep at the study of music as much as the practice. And this is where too many who frequent the songwriter nights fall off the chuck wagon.

Life is a long song. If you want to thrive in the multiverse, cross the bridge.

Open Mic at The Bluebird

This article is mainly for my friends who are songwriters considering going to The Bluebird in Nashville for their Monday Open Mic Night. Open Mic Night is the opportunity to simply show up and play in a room that is arguably the Carnegie Hall of songwriter rooms. In other words you play there to play there. Songwriters don't get "discovered" or "make it" at The Bluebird. They get to play their songs to an appreciative audience. Full stop. Adjust expectations accordingly.
I've played at the Sunday Songwriters Night which is an audition-filtered event. That is a different show where songwriters who pass the audition can appear when scheduled in six month intervals and play a show with nine other writers one of whom will be the headliner and a professional. The open mic night is a "line up, sign up, get a number, go on when called". You wait in a long line outside because the seats inside are given to the paying customers who also wait in a long line for the privilege of getting a seat. Some pointers:

1. The sign up time is 5:30PM prompt. At that time a fellow will come out and put people in the right group. Songwriters are in one line. Audience are in the others. It is a first come first seated and it fills up quickly. If you want a good seat, get there early. If you want to be sure you are going to perform, get there early. Some folks were lining up at 3PM. I got there at 5:35 after a short jaunt into the country side and my number was 22. Songwriters and audience were still arriving after six and were being told by security to come later but that they might not be seated.

2. There is security now. That didn't used to be the case but the crowds post-Nashville series have made the Bluebird a very popular tourist destination even on a Monday night. Send Callie Khouri a note of congratulations for turning the most famous songwriter room into a Hollywood icon. The black-shirted security fellows aren't obnoxious but parking is limited and people can get upset. So they are a good thing.

3. The Bluebird is a very small room. It is a converted sewing shop in a small strip mall on Hillsboro Pike. The Bluebird you see on the show Nashville is a Hollywood set and is larger than the real Bluebird. If you don't know precisely where it is you will breeze right past it as I did and I have been there multiple times. Go early, find it, then go have lunch. Get back early.

4. The songwriters stand outside while the paying audience is seated. The room has been through multiple owners since Amy Kurland founded it years ago and it is now a profitable room and no one should object to that. But the comfort of the songwriters is no longer the concern it once was. This isn't to say that the staff is not gracious. If anything they are now more gracious than when I played there some years ago after it taken over by different owners. The staff is working hard and the crowds are large. The implication is don't take your entourage, family, mistresses whatever to open mic night. If you insist, make sure you get there early enough to get a seat because otherwise they are going to stand outside while you perform one song. Some of the people in the line have driven or flown hundreds of miles to be there. Let that humble you. Be courteous, professional and go solo. You can take a playing partner if you need that but leave the band at home. It is a songwriter night, not a band gig.

5. You are standing in line with a lot of other songwriters and audience waiting for someone to leave so they can get a seat. This is a good time to network as they say. Take your business card. Listen. Some are sitting on the sidewalk playing songs for the others and they tend to be the young. Most of them are very young. You will hear good and bad songs, see smiling faces and brand new guitars. You may be asked to loan someone a guitar who flew in that day for this open mic or a capo for someone who forgot one. An amazing number of these people are staying at a local motel in hopes that in the time they are there they will be "discovered". Some are very intense focused people determined to be heard and make their mark. A few are locals who come regularly to play at the open mic. Some are songwriters who have come to promote their new indie album. Everyone has a story and they are worth listening to. Make friends. A fellow next to me said the last time he played the open mic it was with a young girl named Taylor Swift. In other words, while performers aren't necessarily discovered there, almost everyone who is played there. Take your best manners and listen. You never know.

6. After you sign the slip of paper with your name outside, a fellow will come give you your number. If you are in the high teens or twenties, you have time to go get a meal. Remember you aren't going inside until your name is called and there is no easy access to a bathroom. Tune your guitar before you go inside (a keyboard is provided if you are a keyboard player but I didn't look at it so have no idea what it is). The reason to do this is "this is a tiny room". You will be called as the songwriter before you is going on. So one on, one waits just inside the door. It is a narrow space and the room is packed wall to wall. So best to prepare outside. It is a cold walk on. If you need to warm up, do that on the sidewalk or in your car, van, whatever.

7. It is very quiet. Unlike local rooms, people don't talk or kibitz while the songwriter is singing. You get to sing one song. Plug in, tell them your name and the name of your song, then sing it, enjoy the applause (people are very nice about that), then unplug and go back outside. This isn't the time for stories, apologies and restarts. I didn't see any music stands so learn the song by memory. Pick a song you play and sing well and can do when you are terrified. You will see people go in with a swagger and come out a bit pasty. It's called adrenalin and it's healthy. Everyone is scared and if they aren't check their pulse. Do enjoy the moment because if you are there you are among those who have the confidence to be there and the people really do appreciate it. They do this every Monday and you can come back.

8. Most of the songwriters are singing country songs and some of them are decidedly un-country people. They have a speaker outside that lets others hear you. The number of really awful faux country accented singers is really awful if like me you really are a southerner and not a Canadian come to show us how it is done. That's Nashville. In my opinion, fake country accents don't help but opinions vary. Mine is it's your song. Be yourself. Play the music you play best.

9. You are in and out quickly. This is a performance production line because it has to be. Again, they are going to put around thirty acts in and out in a few hours and then a late show that may be say an album release party. So the clock is running. All systems are ready, the guitar cord is usually on the mic stand or on the floor at your feet. Most people sing standing and that is a good idea but if you sit as I do there are chairs. This is an "intimate room" meaning the audience is right there in your face. On the other hand the room is very dark and the lights are such that you really can't see them. They are very polite, very quiet and you will be heard. The mics are dry so if not having reverb bothers you, it will bother you. But it is a professional room, well-eq'd and the sound is warm. It is a good sound. (Hint: did you check the batteries in your axe?)

10. There was a young lady giving out the directions to another room, Daisy Dukes (no kidding) that you can go to and perform after you finish at the Bluebird. I needed to get back to Huntsville so I didn't go but some of the other folks in line did. I may check it out next time when I can stay overnight.

Take your best song, a guitar with fresh strings and your humility. This is fun, it is good for your confidence and it is The Bluebird. It won't make you famous. It will make you better. As a songwriter AND a musician, get up every day and get better.

A postscript: as I was leaving town, I went into a Burger King to find a bathroom and get a burger. The restaurant manager behind the counter was looking at a rap video a customer was showing him and telling him how to best market his song. This is Nashville: Wall to Wall.

Forgettable

I find myself thinking about the realities and unrealities of songwriting as a business. As a creative process, it isn't difficult but as a business it seems to be more warped these days by the industry that while saying "it's all about the song" hides the reality that it is all about the deal, the image and the trite repetition of cliches about country life or rock life or folk life or blues life that bear little resemblance to how people actually live while dumbing music itself down. Harlan Howard was the songwriter who made the famous statement that country music is "three chords and the truth".

The music mills have the three chords part down but the truth slipped away. The brilliance of the American songbook has been steadily going down the drain of spreadsheet analyses of what will sell and how to sell it. As the desperation to be part of the market machine in hopes of wealth or fame or a good time reaches out into the C-lists of wannabe songwriters who are told how to "cooperate and network" but little about how to recognize a good song I am struck by a remark by Joni Mitchell passed on by an interviewer:

“Somewhere after 2007, around that time, I think,” she says she heard, on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.’ ”

To those who claim it was ever thus, I say bullshit. There was a time when creativity combined with a deep knowledge of music counted for more and if one believes what Howard said, we have to admit that a list of Grammy wins and co-writer credits may only testify to one's willingness to accept that reality, put it over and go along for the ride. One reads blog after blog about what it takes to be "commercial" and nothing about what it means to honestly observe the world as it is and write songs one will be satisfied to sing.

The epitaph of this generation of songwriters and songs may be a single word: "Forgettable."

Is Diversity In Music An Insult to the Audience?

It was an intriguing question after our gig last night: can this town or any other audience these days embrace groups that choose to play diverse styles and sounds or are we forced by the narrowing tastes of the loudest in the audience and the curators of local culture to play only one, to take on that image and to rise and fall with the popularity of one style? Labeling for the sake of marketing and clique formation plays a role in selling but when the market controls dominate the creative processes the results are predictable both on the product and the producers.

The explosion of the Sixties was not fueled by one style or lit by the domination of blues, folk, so called roots music, jazz or any other single form but the fusion of them by eclectic songwriters and arrangers who understood their connections and how to create background/foreground compositions both original and enticing. Ever since that time as musicians and writers have been forced into the labeled molds, music has declined in brilliance, intensity and originality.

The Beatles never stopped learning new things. The Beach Boys were the product of a group of jazz players who understood technique and how to fuse different styles. The hits of Glen Campbell were the outcome of the eclectic chordal and melodic reach of Jimmy Webb in defiance of the so-called Nashville Sound whose Chord Police would have strangled them had Campbell not been a member of the legendary Wrecking Crew with access to the best players in the world at that time. Yet just as post after post in social media yearns for those times and celebrates that music, the audience driven by social agendas and self-serving curators keep wrapping steel ribbons of This But Not That around the creative classes as if to say they cannot fly because to allow that is to admit wings are not common among ground walkers.

"Where shall we go now, where shall we go
To hear the sweet voices of liberty?
How shall we come again come to the flaming torch
The light that shines in our memory?
The shattered hopes of happiness
Are lost in foam and splinters
Of men like wooden ships
Broken on the reefs of contentment.
" The Reefs of Contentment - Ground Level Sound (1991) "

iDUBBY: How to Handle Trolls in Social Media

I found this picture on the web and it captures the spirit of trolling: an ugly cuss who quite enjoys vile, who will use the politics of personal destruction early and often even when the topic is abstract and there are no personal issues in play. They collect information, twist it and then in short quick bursts piss in the punchbowl.

I call this fellow iDUBBY to remember how one handles him. With most social media platforms such as Facebook, there is an order of operations that will get rid of iDUBBYs when they invade your space.

i - ignore: Ignoring them is the first operation because you need to establish if they are a troll or if someone is just getting online before they have their coffee. Everyone farts as Benjamin Franklin said and ignoring it is better than a conversation on that topic. Unless you are very funny but then you might start a round of counterfarts.

D - Delete: Do this because you don't want a counterfart conversation and you don't want the comment in your post. Some think it rude so don't be oversensitive either. Simply being offtopic is not really a delete offense. Guide them back to the conversation unless they persist.

U - Unfriend: If you establish to your satisfaction this is a troll or someone who goes personal when uncalled for or is repeatedly making things smelly, you should uninvite them to the party. Now this is the first really truly personal move you make that cannot go unnoticed. Also some people bring out the troll in you. It may be family, a friend, but the fact is something in the relationship doesn't work online for you or for them and it is best if you don't talk in public. Remember that unfriending doesn't stop them from seeing posts you make as Public posts. They can search for your name on Google and the posts will be there. They can still message you so if you want to converse one on one, it is still possible. So think of it as the good fences make good neighbors policy. It may not be personal; just smart networking.

B - Block: Blocking is the nuclear option. When you put someone on a block list you are stuffing them into the negative space of the social coordinates. You not only don't want to chat, you don't want messages that unfriending still permits. You don't want them to see your posts on other pages. You don't want to hear them inhale a breath. Blocking is death for the dead as the movie spook said. Use this sparingly if ever and if you find you are creating a long blocking list you may wish to take a long look at yourself in the social mirror to see if you are attracting trolls. Blocking is for exes who refuse to let go or real enemies who hate your sock collection. This is for the boss who spies on you or the co-worker who collects dirt. Sad but so, this doesn't always work because people acquire false name accounts and then whatever you post publicly is still there for them or you friend them again. A careful consistent use of the filtering options on Facebook, for example, is the best strategy for handling conversations. If you don't want it on the five o'clock news, don't say it. If it is sensitive, keep it among close friends. If you want to start the fight, go public and put up your Mortimer and Randolph.

B - Boot: Booting is after a block. You go through previous conversations, blogs, etc., and delete every comment, post or fart the troll or you ever made to each other. In other words you de-reference them so that search engines won't assume a relationship. It is drastic and tedious to boot someone. Sometimes the person you want to boot is you.

Y - Yell: Ask for help by reporting them to the site administrator. Most social apps have dialogs for doing this. Try to limit yelling for cases where a person goes so far over the line from being a troll to threats of violence, etc. Don't hesitate to do it but don't use it for punitive measures or politics. Then you will become the troll.

Social media implies a responsibility to preserve your own reputation even if it means shutting up. It also implies a responsibility to be smart and non-reactive. Again, sometimes the person stayed too long at the nachos and dip bowl and then failed to slip outside for a smoke before moving on to the anchovies. Best to tolerate what is not too odoriferous or move next to the band where the noise drowns out the heavy sighs.

To The Guy Who Says Streaming Doesn't Hurt Musicians

As in every part of the economic culture there is a class war between upper and lower classes. If one is at the top where the money is still good, stuff is curated and served up on platinum platters and the impact of the streaming services is felt as a lifestyle hit. The A-listers want more. They may need more but to be sure they want more.

Some such as Percy Sledge watched their incomes evaporate not because of streaming but because Sledge's one big hit was recorded before 1972 and copyright law today makes it impossible to collect. So where Michael Bolton got the money (and Percy did not begrudge that because he liked the cover), Sledge got zilch. Nada. Before he died Percy was being taken care of by friends in Muscle Shoals who played help gigs for him. Levon Helm was hurt by streaming and piracy. Once again, the music tribe stepped in to help but it was tough and is still tough for his widow.

The top tier is trying to organize themselves to compete and having a hard time of it because the image they projected for so long is working against them. It is simply hard to feel sorry for Madonna with her leg on the table trying to look young or a guy who walks on stage wearing a mouse head. They look spoiled and that doesn't make a good case for paying more money for their music if it can be gotten for less from legit but shady streamers. Good luck with Tidal but the zeitgeist is against it.

In case the impact of losing record sales revenue isn't completely clear, some years ago when working on web standards I debated those who said this was a good thing for music and musicians telling them that in the future the big bands would be the old bands that made it in the seventies and that ticket prices would be $300 a seat. They said it could never happen. The following is a screen snap of an online ticket ordering form for The Eagles courtesy of Michael Buffalo Smith.

A little depressing, eh? I underestimated by a factor of three.

At the bottom where the overwhelming vast majority of us operate, the ones the curators refer to as "strictly second rate" and are desperate to curate away, the results are mixed. We have to produce independently, watch our pennies and so folks such as I have to scramble and burn 401ks to bury our parents. We see pirates taking our music and streaming it out of Russia, shrug and move on because we can't fight them. Our best gigs are brew pubs that will pay 75 dollars a man a night because otherwise we are working for tips.

We can try to punch through the Nashville-We-Only-Work-With-the-Best crowd that turned Chet Atkins' Music City (a generous man) into a ten year town. We are told if we offend the wrong person at any step, we are done in that town. We are told we have to "write only with the right people" and anything we organize locally that helps locals, they send their representatives to take over. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC are johnny on the spot to collect fees even if all the songs are original and unregistered. They threaten small rooms needed to keep the beginners alive. They are the Mafia For the Labels. Reverbnation and YouTube get our music out there and whatever rate we are, we aren't curated into oblivion to satisfy the social warrior agenda of some industry maven who can't play a note but knows what he or she likes and everyone must like what they like or "it isn't good music". Meh.

For the lower class, these are better times than ever as far as distribution but we won't get paid same as the A-listers.

No matter what class we are in, artists are the losers. Almost all of the publicity you are reading right now about this is designed to help the major labels who are simultaneously buying up the streaming services, making deals and passing none of that to the artists while also asking for more of their touring income. Talk about gang rape; this is buggering by the bundle.

Music is a brutal business with hands out everywhere to take money from the artists. If the top tier is feeling our pain down here, well, they at least get to moan and cry in their Escalades drinking expensive vodka and telling us we need each other. That would be nice but I'm not holding my breath. I'm selling my mom's furniture, clothes and cookware for pennies on the pound because the man at the funeral home gives us six months. Not sure what happens after that. I don't think he can return her. Whatever.

Where money is concerned, we are not all in this together. The haves and have nots of the music business are still pretty much glaring at one another and that won't change. When they beg us to sign their petitions for new laws but can't explain how it helps anyone but the one tenth of one percent at the top, we shrug and go back to fighting each other for the brew pub gigs. As Waylon Jennings once said when criticized for his disregard of Nashville, "Man, I was just trying to survive."

On the other hand the comp-sci industry and the dumb-asses who think they have a valid opinion in the face of the largest hijacking of cultural wealth in history are most certainly the villains in this piece because at least we are producing something and they are taking and gouging eyes out. Like all class wars at some point the peasants will put pick axes through their skulls metaphorically or otherwise. Those servers out there aren't fortresses. Right now Google, Spotify whoever are protected by the rigged laws of the US of The Big Banks and Bought Senators. But there are third world countries where such laws don't exist and where there is plenty of hungry technical talent. Imagine a sharable app that has only one job: to ping the hell out of every streaming server it can find, an app that can be hosted outside the US, and which for those who are sympathetic can be put on their machines and run in the off hours the same way the SETI app was run.

Would I write such an app. Heck no. Even if I had the chops, it is war of money on money and anyone in the middle without the money would be phaser fodder by the time the first server goes blue screen. But as an analyst, I think it inevitable that some will. Consider the Richard Clark speech recently where he apologized and confessed the Internet and web applications are a cybercrime wet dream. There is no securing it and certain agencies who insist on putting their biggest secrets on web servers are stupidly manned. And of that, I am certain. But as the kids say, Whatever.

At some point negotiations break down and all hell breaks loose because the greedy and smarmy fail to understand we may not be in the same classes but we are on the same Internet. And they can be hurt.

I think the artists will still get fucked because when it gets down to it what the best of them and the rest of them care about is their art. Like Lenny Breau they aren't good at taking care of themselves and can end up at the bottom of a swimming pool strangled by persons unknown but probably their wives because they can't quit and they can't pay the bills.

And if the streamers and schemers and curators and mental masturbaters don't get that, may the bird of paradise fly up their noses. They suck.

Respectfully of course. We wouldn't want to offend them. :)

When In Doubt, Lay Out

The morning news is awash in the teasing that today Secretary Clinton will announce her candidacy for "the nation's highest office" along with the expected scree on a "historic candidate" because she is a woman. That is right. It will be historic. Many events are historic, in fact every event is. But the future is not made of anticipating how it will look in the future. The future is made of picking goals and achieving them as well as one can achieve them. There is nothing about being a woman that better suits her to being President. That is all cotton candy politics, the color and swirl of a taste of sugar that has no substance. One doesn't have to look further than next month's bills to know what the issues are, or to look at the massive trash piles in our oceans filled with cotton candy containers to understand what is in our future.

I've been a fan of Hillary Clinton since the Tammy Wynette answer. I have no doubt that she is qualified, capable and can make an excellent President. On the other hand, I am a white southern male and gasp, I live in Alabama. So in today's narrative, I am in the villain class, the hand picked, consensus driven makers of all that is evil and wrong in the world. It isn't so but what is perceived is believed and that is politics as practiced in the age of insubstantial consumption. I am also a musician and in music we have a guideline for communicating musically: when in doubt, lay out. And that is possibly what I should do, in fact, what men should do in this election. It isn't about us and we have no candidates who represent us because they need us to be their zanies, puppet fools for the bigger fool to converse with, to mirror and then make the punch line possible to the delight of the kings and their courts.

Let the women have this one, gentlemen. As long as they are serving cotton candy we can be sure this is a circus and after the elephants have been marched around the ring, pooped on the grass and trumpeted from the whip, after the clown cars depart their tents will be folded and the farmland where they played out their tired acts will be spoiled for the planting, ruined and in need of fresh sod. Unless something changes this piece has a furious beginning, a loud middle and is all rhythm on two chords, a Bo Diddley, a single riff and while you can dance to it the musicians only know when it stops because it stops.

Lay out and tend your own garden. That way when the circus leaves town you'll still have a basement stocked and something to trade for coffee.

ZUS, aka, the No-Go Zones in France and the Ongoing Debates About the Rise of Islamic Jihad

There is much discussion of the so-called no-go zones in France. Favorable press describes these as "sensitive urban zones" which is poli-speak for areas designated for special investments in urban renewal. Non-favorable press describes neighborhoods where state authority has weakened and is being supplanted by local clerics and others who wish to live under Sharia law regardless of the State authority.

I do not know who is right. I've no first hand experience and the world press is every media is now so pervasively stage managed knowing who or what to believe without first hand experience has become a crap shoot. However, the approach to so-called bad neighborhoods in the US has a history and theories one referred to as "fixing the broken windows". 

This approach is in some disrepute but that is how those who believe money applied gets the results desired. Sometimes the desire is more mysterious and if so, the results are uncertain.   A seldom noted effect of the US Model Cities projects (urban renewal in the 60s) was the clearing of large parts of the original zones to repurpose the property thus requiring the relocation of the original area to a better neighborhood. In other words, it is a complex endeavor and in such many motives predicate many goals. Caveat emptor.

What is certain is there will be no change from a ZUS if the community to which it is applied does not cooperate or are otherwise dispersed.The fact of the Muslim who saved the Jews in the kosher store is a testimony to human decency and courage. The more powerful lesson in my opinion is the fact that a Muslim was an employee of a Jewish shop owner. By hiring him, the owner saved their lives as well because he didn't let the fact of the man being Muslim stop him from hiring a good man. Of such wisdom is good karma made.

We can take endless treks into the relevancies or irrelevancies of people's prejudices and use those to avoid looking directly at the fact of sworn jihad. If that lets some feel better, then feel better. But the fact of sworn jihad by individuals predicates many kinds of response and only some of them require recognizing sworn jihad is a Muslim oath. The rest are about learning to live together.

For that to succeed, US experience, a place where that challenge has been met again and again with much success and some failure, is the more the people work together, play together and worship each according to their own belief and practice while ensuring the right of all not of their faith to do as well is the paradigm that works. What worked in the US however may not work the same in this instance because a minimum of three religions are involved. In the South the fact of common Christianity helped to build a community. It gave the Bham Church bombing a context that illuminated hate as none other could.

This is not the case today in Europe.  Europe must confront not only the fact of multi-culturalism but also the responsibility to be both unafraid and wise enough to hire the clerk who takes the money for services to a kosher business and uses it to build a family free by virtue of peace to learn about their neighbors.   And the business person who hires them must take the profits of the laborer to do the same.   Everyone is not Charlie.   Everyone lives in the basement of a church be it in a poor neighborhood or the finest flat in Paris.

It seems to me that to enable the fact of worship to add strength, real respect, understanding and appreciation of the spiritual life of those not of one's own faith must be a cornerstone of cititizenship and education. We do not need teachers that rail against one or all religions because religion will not be managed or eliminated by such negative emotions. We need teachers and leaders who can honestly and earnestly reveal the great common beauty of these human acts that have as their common goal the well-being of the family of man.

Gamergate, Feminism and Getting the Right Numbers

In high school I read a book called Games People Play.  As science goes, it was weak pop psychology but I vaguely remember two of the games described, rapo and hurrah.   In rapo a person is the aggressor but as soon as that is noted they immediately become a victim and then start the game of hurrah, a game where a mob piles on to the person who noted the person playing victim.   This is what is going on in web activism in some corners these days.   It has become mob rule and that is how the web has operated in far too many social justice campaigns.   Aggressors start culture wars to advance a social agenda then claim to be victims.   They may have a just cause but means matter.

Before getting into the meat, one note: if you are sending emails, tweets or passenger pigeons to other people threatening violence, you are committing a crime and in this wall to wall, 24 x 7, bathroom to boardroom surveillance state, you can expect a knock at the door and you deserve it.   If there is one unarguable issue above all, it is this: violence is a matter of humanism and against the law.  Threats and violent actions are unacceptable.  There is a considerable body of writing on that aspect of Gamergate.  Read it and be well-informed.

The point of this article is Gamergate illuminates what web activism too often comes down to: Spy Vs Spy. The same strategies played by all sides for power, not fairness, superiority not equality. As from the very inception of the web, they are played in the cause of social justice.

So Microsoft hires Danah Boyd and sets her loose on openness in technical systems and the party goes on despite the fact that in technology, change that does not improve form, fit or function is fashion, and usually for profit. This is how we got the WWW and then traded away privacy, security and local culture. And so it goes.

Here is a campaign message that makes me ask a different question: is this video an example of feminist activism or child abuse?

http://www.eonline.com/news/590557/watch-these-adorable-little-girls-drop-f-bombs-and-truth-bombs-to-promote-feminism

As a parent, if my child were used that way I'd be taking heads regardless of the message or cause.  Means matter and that video doesn't inspire me to look at the message.  It obscures it in the offensive content then says we can't be offended.

So.... fuck that.    We're adults and we protect children.  And feminism takes a bruising kick to the head by it's own boot heel.

That the video is on a page next to a picture of Renee Zellwigger showing off her "new look" and being celebrated for it by the Hollywood press could not be more ironic  or a better example of how hypocritical the web press is on the topic of feminism.   It's ALL click bait.  Web activism is a mess of "crossed streams" and as Egon said, "Don't cross the streams."

It seems that Gamergate will be seized on as a cause to promote the need for feminism at a time when feminism in the West is at an all time weak point. This may or may not be justified as the gamer community can't be said to be representative of the world at large.

There is wide variation across the globe in conditions that justify feminism as a call to action.. If a woman lives in Pakistan, for example or India or Saudi, feminism may be the difference between life and death. In Southern California or London England, much less so.  In Iran a woman who killed a man that she accused or rape was hung.  Unless she did that defending herself during the act, it is likely she would face serious jail time in the US.  Is that good law?    It is situational and generalizing can have side effects in systems of precedent or case law.   Justices stay up nights.

I think it important to have some perspective of locale or this topic devolves into Spy vs Spy, Men Bad Women Good, your side sucks but we don't, etc. And it is too important to let that happen. Memes so shrill as to be offensive even to supporters will surely weaken the discourse.

The statistics rolled out are in dispute. For example there is a study published by the US Senate that disputes the claim of a 23 per cent salary gap.

http://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=2a1f8ad4-f649-4ad3-a742-268d946962db

And another that says it is real.

http://www.aauw.org/files/2014/03/The-Simple-Truth.pdf

And a video that says the favorite statistics are all myths:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TR_YuDFIFI

Who to believe? 

If you have the time, here is a Marxist theorist's approach to the theories about the identity politics.   Have a glass of wine first.   This is hard reading.

http://libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

A more useful question is not what does equal pay mean but how does one quantify equal work. It isn't as easy as citing job classifications but that may be all that can be done.  The Hudson Group study cited above does exactly that and the difference is around 9 percent, not 23. Who is right?   That takes reasoned research where the answer is not assumed before the question is asked.

Yet asking that question of Ronny Cox, a famous character actor elicited harassment and harrangue from him. Vile stuff.   And when the famous do that rather than have a reasoned answer, the gaming of the conversation is way over the top.   So I unfollow them.   Not a problem on Facebook but an example of how strange things have become.

There are disputes based on FBI incident reporting that the rape count is as high as claimed. However, anyone famiiar with NIBRS and UCR knows these are not the right source for those numbers but I don't know what is. The claims are wildly varying and there is too much personal anecdote taking.

If we have learned one thing from media-driven cause du jour events lately it is wait until there are hard forensics before burning down the village.   We cannot simply pile on and assume the social justice activist has a valid cause.   Perceptions fool us.  The common knowledge can be dead wrong.  A reasonable scepticism is reasonable.  We need a cold sober professional assessment of rape statistics. Even one is too many but as gas on a fire, this one needs real numbers.

As Monica Lewinsky has been opining as Patient Zero, the web is a marvelous tool for shattering and ruining lives.     Feminism has heroes but also foolish examples who became victims of their own foolish actions in the eyes of mobs.   She kept the dress, shared the infidelity and let the dogs out.   If we are to be reasonable, perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to sacrifice a 22 year old to a political agenda disguised as a social justice cause.   It was a private event between consenting adults.  In my opinion, not my circus, not my monkeys as they say.  On the other hand, it is not clear what her current campaign is about.   If it is that the web is a very large amplifier of whatever is cited most frequently by the most people at the greatest amplitude, then she is right.  And the lesson is?

"Mama told me not to come.  That's not the way to have fun."

Gamergate finally elicited a response from the Queen Geek, Felicia Day. I'm a fan of her writing. When she wants to be funny, she is. This piece is sad because as someone who has profited by being the role model of online female gamers, this piece has the feel of a first class passenger rowing away from the Titanic realizing that the gaiety has ended and though she survives, the deck on which she danced carefree is forever gone.

http://thisfeliciaday.tumblr.com/post/100700417809/the-only-thing-i-have-to-say-about-gamer-gate

Yet as in the great sea tragedy, she never once asks if perhaps game content might have something to do with the raw ferocity of Gamergate.   She doesn't seem to be capable of questioning, just expressing fear.  That's a pity because for some reason we do expect an elevated concern of our celebrities although as with Cox, I'm not sure why.  They are actors, not scientists.   And that is a clue that who we elevate to prominence in conversations on matters of importance should be able to reason as much as emote.  

Here unfortunately the hard right has a point:  Hollywood and the entertainment community don't of necessity have a better seat at the show or a wiser point of view.   They have opinions just as the rest of us do.  The size of their fan base is the tool of those who may simply use them.   Once again, these are mob politics not reasoned debate.  As soon as she published her opinion, she was doxed (malicious publication of personal details such as address, phone number; a favorite tactic of web hacktivists such as anonymous).   And it sucks.  It is also a nasty problem of being a celebrity.   She did speak up and that is laudable but because she made her reputation as a famous geeky gamer, loves the games, perhaps she took some responsibility however shallow and it is the best she has.   I am sceptical about her surprise as the author of those Guild episodes where she pummels a Wil Wheaton clone for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  In other words, Felicia Day has always known about the sexist side of gaming and has parodied it for fame and fortune.  Now she is afraid.   Wow.

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/10/23/3583347/felicia-day-gamergate/

Some try to have a conversation about real and well-documented problems of women in other cultures but will often be shouted down by a person representing yet another social justice cause, then remonstrated by a member of the original group of victims.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2014/10/25/comment/an-open-letter-to-ben-affleck/

Social activists on the web have become like web standards:  there are so many to choose from.

Then there are the no-denials-possible sexists.  

http://pando.com/2014/10/22/the-horrific-trickle-down-of-asshole-culture-at-a-company-like-uber/

This is where posts and remarks and moves made in and out of tech companies are straight up Title VII events that should and must get a response.  I've seen too many Title VII actions in tech companies come to nothing because the guy OR the girl making the complaint was guilty but couldn't be touched.   And yes, both genders use Title VII for power and a quick ride up the ladder.   If you work in the office world be it old school brick or neo-startup, young or old, guy or gal, become very familiar with Title VII.  It is precedent based and really bad law but it is what we have to protect ourselves so learn how it works, what doesn't work and what to be careful about.  

Title VII is a Human Resources nightmare and managers fear it because it rips across business units like a seismic fault and does lasting damage.   So accept the responsibility to understand the implications and everyone will be better off, but don't expect it to be automatic.   A Title VII complaint can kick off six months of the office cubes shaking and grinding.   Caveat vendor.

Feminism is not a minority cause as was the case with gay marriage or treatment of racial minorities. Women ARE the majority. They have the power of the vote and can make that work for them. Or they can be made to work for others who adopt feminism as a mantle of social justice but who only seek power for its own sake and have no intention of changing much past the election. We do well to be wary because we have been and continue to be fooled again.

Games are simply product.  Feminism should be taken more seriously and it may not be the case that we can say which is more important without being attacked.  The vitriol of a Ronny Cox or the fearfulness of a Felicia Day can't be the ponies we cling to.   We must take the riders off the horses if the race is to be adjudicated fairly.

Feminism is important. If those statistics are valid, we have a lot of change to make but we cannot make it based on false assertions, premises and questioned statistics. And we can't do it without each other. It simply won't work. And playing games for points will destroy any credibility this issue has and rot any change required in the box. If the cause isn't important, let it die in the soup. If it is, turn down the heat before it boils over and is ruined for a generation.

Yet instead some feminists are working up a mighty steam, calling it humor but their approach is what it is:  hate in service of power, belittlement in service of superiority.

https://medium.com/the-archipelago/men-get-on-board-with-misandry-4a3bc6c08e16

Men are asked to approve.   It is not surprising some don't and many others consider it yet another reason to dismiss feminism.  

After all, the last laugh is the laugh that is heard just before things get hairy.   We've a long history of hate movements.   They are seldom composed of the majority of any particular group but they are the loudest and they provide the excuse to look the other way or dismiss a legitimate cause.

Look at this video. In my opinion, this is feminism: humanism with a woman's face, a woman's heart and a woman's achievements not simply for other women, but humanity.

Urge for Going

This song was on my solo play lists for all the early years I was a performer in the local clubs and restaurants.   I'd learned it from the cover by George Hamilton IV on a 45 my family owned.   I wouldn't know about Joni Mitchell for some years to come.  It was the evocative haunting imagery that captured me and remained with me.

A few days ago I decided to cover it with friend, RickVan Nostrand.   A song of the season so to speak.

Percy Sledge and The Jackson County All Honky Band

Even on the D-list as a player your path will occasionally cross with the B-list and A-list famous.  Over the years I've met and worked with some rather famous people not because I am or should be but because it is a business where sometimes one is hired to fill a space and if one can reasonably do that, one does,

That is how I played a gig in a pick-up band for Percy Sledge.   I am reminded of this because today in Sheffield, a historic plaque was erected on the spot where Percy recorded his hit, When A Man Loves A Woman.   Percy attended, members of the Muscle Shoals elite were there and a concert to help him pay his bills is being held.   The Tribe looks after its own when they can't help themselves and A-list or D-list, they do what they do best:  put on a show.  And that's a grace of being a musician.

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2014/09/29/musicians-plan-benefit-concert-percy-sledge/16451169/

But that's not the story of the Jackson County All Honky Band.   This is.

Without naming names, the club owner, a courtly Italian fellow, hired a local lady who played minimal keyboard and sang to hire other musicians to be his backup band at a one night stand. Some of the people hired are names locally so I won't name names.    Most are dead and one is dangerous.

Most had never played together before and had been given lyrics with single letter chord changes, and few had ever heard any Percy excepf for WAMLAW. The songs as a lot of soul is seemed simple but it's all in the rhythm and if you don't know it, you can't fake it.    Me,  I can play Bach but in those days I did not boogie so I was a space filler because another musician backed out or wouldn't work the gig for the scratch offered.   The Other Guitar player who recruited me said it would be easy, he'd show me the licks and off we headed to Scottsboro, a city famous for selling lost airline suitcases full of other people's clothes and a miscarriage of justice still talked about whenever someone wants to play the race card on PBS.

We got together the afternoon of the show for the half hour of rehearsal Percy allowed. As usual he rolled up in a limo-of-sorts driven by his nephew, a rather quietly intense kid.  He looked at us and asked "Do YOU know MY music?"   We all smiled and said we did.  We didn't but this is entertainment and entertainment is about faking it even if you aren't making it.   We played the hit ok and then he got to the rest of his thirty minute set. At one point he turned around, looked at us and laughed a deep serious laugh.  I figured we would all be fired on the spot.. Then he said, "How long have y'all played together?" The other guitar player who was actually a rather good player said, "About 45 minutes. We're the Jackson County All Honky Band." Percy laughed out loud and said, "I thought so."  He just smiled and headed back to the limo with his nephew. 

The show was way way underattended.   In a room meant to hold a thousand plus, maybe a hundred people came.  We waited an extra half hour but then they turned on all the disco lights and Percy led us through the fog of our pasty whiteness.   It could have been worse except for two black gals who danced the daring dance and every time he hit a long high note, they screamed like they were having the ultimate expression of female fecundity. "AHHHHH!!!! PERRRRCY!!" The band sucked bad and the nephew dressed as Percy was in a fine tux, stood on the side looking at me like he was going to personally take me out back and teach me the beat one beating at a time. 

You had to give Percy credit; he sang, he sweated, and occasionally looked over his shoulder at the band with a look of pain, as if he could summon with his own personal magic soul some semblance of a beat he could stand on from a band that was as pale as the moon above.  He was relentless.  He gave it all he had for fifteen minutes then he ended the show.  

The courtly Italian dude was obviously losing his shirt but Percy was going to be paid regardless. One of the band members was crabbing because he expected his wife whom he brought as a backup singer to be paid. The manager told the other guitar player to get him out of there quick.   In music circles, that is a let-off, meaning if we did as we were told, we were off the hook and the Italian would square it with his backers.  Not a meeting one wants to go to, best to do as asked and we did.

Percy was being real polite and nice because he could see we were ... embarassed and said some nice and totally untrue things about our playing.   The Other Guitar Player thanked Percy, grabbed me and said "Let's split, pronto". And we did,   tails tucked and pedal to the metal all the way back to Mad County.

Percy Sledge is a real professional and a legend.  My guess is none of that evening registered and he forgot it all on the drive home through the cool green hills of North Alabama.   I don't want to run into his nephew these decades later because I still can't play soul worth a beating.

Thank You, Patrick Macnee. Salud, John Steed!

Television has a long history of heroes from the virile Wyatt Earps of the 1950s to the rough hewn Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs of today.  Yet few have ever been as cunning, classy and laissez faire as The Avenger John Steed.

While the series changes considerably in cast, tone and special efffects over the eight year run, John Steed is the single constant throughout.  As young boys, we all fell in love with his beautiful assistants, yet it was Steed who shaped our characters, who demonstated qualities that would serve us well as young men and older men.  He was polished, unfaiingly polite even when he took advantage of his assistant's skills, always the courteous companion.  Even when taken by their charms, he was ready to serve, ready to defend and never stood in their way or questioned their judgement.  He was in fact, the perfect gentleman.

This is a character almost impossible to find on television today and as we wind through the zeitgeist when everything about men's behavior toward women and others is being questioned, young boys would do well to emulate the ever bowlered John Steed.  If in fact the character of Steed owed his witty ripostes to his writers and his wardrobe to the best of British and French clothing designers, he owed his gentlemanly manners to the actor that portrayed him, Patrick Macnee.   While Macnee would go on to play other TV characters including the notorious Cylon Nebeli in the original Starship Gallactica, he is best remembered for his portrayal of John Steed.

As an older man, a Southerner, someone born in the counry to the country folk of Alabama, it seems right to thank Patrick Macnee for John Steed.  Art reaches further than we know and molds characters in ways and at distances often unknown to the artist.  Macnee showed us how a man could be both refined and a man of action, cunning and kind and that a woman must be treated as an equal and a partner.  If his diction was crisp, he was never condescending.  If his walk was slow, his back was straight.  And every person be they high born or the village drunk was accorded courtesy. 

This is what it is to be a well-bred man and whether it is a quality of birth in some or self-made character in others, it can be taught by example. If ths is a credit to Macnee's acting skills or to the evolution of the character, it little matters. Both achieve a perfection of an archetypal good man, admirable, to be respected, cherished and remembered.

So my hat is off to Patrick Macnee and wherever he is, let him know he taught well and for that many are grateful.  I wish there were more of him.

Salud, John Steed.  Thank you, Patrick Macnee.

A Little Bird Whispers

A little bird whispers into the ear of a monster, Qaddiysh,
A secret that wounds the heart of darkness.

There is a light that cannot be unshone.
There is a love that cannot be undone.
Two sparks separated by a million years
Two hearts with a single rhythm
Can never be apart, can never be alone
Are ever one. Dark Angel, one.

Space pushes every point in heaven and earth
Time shares every cry in the pain of birth
Your strength, your will, your malefaction
Are swallowed without your satisfaction

What cannot be counted cannot be destroyed
Your impotent pleasure strikes into a void.

Though the fires you set rage across the fields
The corn still stands, the wheat still waves
The winds blow gentle, the hot sky yields
The rains that harvest's bounty saves.

Though demon legions you command to come from hell's dominion
To scar the faces now upturned with eyes firm fixed on heaven
I sit here on your shoulder freely singing that song given
By love to all from whom the light your presence now is driven.

len bullard - sept 17 2014

You Have Cancer: You WILL Beat This

So far so good.

Cancer treatment is orders of magnitude better these days as they are much better with dosing in chemo. Radiation is still a bitch. There are a few pointers.

Attitude is everything.

People will hear and become somewhat death obsessed. If you are the patient, the first day you are told is just... awful. Scary. And the next week or so aren't much better. Then attitude kicks in, the sense of humor and that is good. But people start dropping by who think they are seeing you for the last time and you want to be polite but don't listen. Get this fixed in your mind: YOU are going to beat this.

And the odds are good you will.

You have a long stretch of the legs to travel, so this is a time that it is ok to put yourself first. Selfish isn't.

Steroids: if your treatment includes steroids, they don't call them rage roids for nothing. Word. I took a good friend's head off one night on FB for nothing important. Soooo... when taking roids, social media isn't.

Depending on the treatment, it's mostly inconvenient but what you will see at a cancer institute is often worse than what you are enduring. I won't get into it here but if you are even mildly empathetic, some of it is heartbreaking. On the other hand, the staff at these centers do the work of saints and you'll be treated as well as you ever will be in your life. Keep in mind they are seeing what you are seeing every day. Appreciate that. Attitude is everything,

Last and touchy for some, if medical marijuana ever comes up in your state, vote for it. It works. Enuff said.

Treatment is not without side effects. The main one is fatigue. Over the course of typically six months it will wear you down. Get sleep, don't fret about it. You need it. Not everyone loses all their hair. Agains it depends on the treatment. Most thin out but that comes back. There was a lady in our group who had a box of wigs and every one was named. She pulled out one long red haired wig and said "My husband really likes Raquel" and smiled.

Attitude is everything.

Another problem is your immune system will go to zero. Some people choose to stay home for most of the treatment. I worked in a surgical mask because I had a job where people needed to know I could be there. Some can; some can't. Choose for yourself but this is a good time to have a hobby you can do alone because you do need to control who has close access to you. I composed a Latin mass (with full orchestration and four part harmony in the spirit of Arlo Guthrie). When asked why, I said that when I die I don't want the funeral home to play bad Amazing Grace and at my last gig, dammit, it would be MY music. If that seems odd, the point is simply take this time to do the work that makes you feel most satisfied. That way you keep anxiety down and you will feel better. Whatever you do best, whatever makes you feel that you are in control of your life, do that.

Attitude is everything.

Cheers. It is tough but you are going to beat this and when you do, you will change and for the better. This is a disease that will get your attention, make you cherish what is worth cherishing, and rise up.

Good hunting!

A Forest In A Wasteland: The Challenge of Decency

Wendlyn Alter

One person making a huge difference. All by himself, slow and steady. (Thanks, Katy!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do

Decency manifests one man, one seed at a time. Yet one man's work can disappear in a single year if other decent men do not value and protect it.

This is the great question before us. We believe we are a nation of decent people and that this decency is our most valuable asset as we stand before the world offering leadership. But I look at the behavior of our elected leaders, I see the corruption from Wall Street, I experience the fraud and lieing of even local organizations, established companies and I ask myself if this is still true, if this decency has become a feint, a means to exploit us and take the work of single men, the profits of local initiative and give it to others to add to their own accounts?

A man can plant a forest. Another man can cut the wood and sell it to light the fires that forge the weapons that kill decent men everywhere, and who will stop them without the same weapons until at last there are no trees to burn, and no decent men to plant more?

Lowe Mill Arts and Entertainment Center

Color Photos courtesy of Allison Lewis

Some people travel to the southeast to see the arts, visit the old studios in Muscle Shoals, see the zoo in Birmingham, maybe make a quick stop in Huntsville to look at the rockets and travel on sure they have sampled the best Alabama has to offer.  They are wrong.

If you go a few miles further past the Saturn V standing on I-565 in Huntsville, and if you know where to turn, you may see an old cotton mill that once housed a shoe factory called Genesco.  Long ago it was a major employer for the hundreds of workers who sat within the redbrick walls on the wooden floors cutting a sewing in the sweltering summer heat as the aging machines labored. 

Then it was closed, employees sent home and Huntsville lumbered into the Space Age as the rocket ships plowed their way like mules into the blue skies and on to the Moon.

But the buildings remained.

And the city that built the rocket ships changed as new high tech industries made the local research park home to more diversified and in some ways darker places to work.  As weapons industries replaced America's ambitions in space, as the universities grew and the city spread out beyond the emerald necklace of green hills that once circumscribed the city proper, quietly the art communities also expanded. 

Where once there was only the old Arts Council housed in an ancient city school, then torn down to make a parking lot and the arts scattered across the city, when all of the counter culture artists could be gathered into a small bungalo for a party, suddenly there were many many more artists. And they found a champion in the owner of Hudson Alpha, a genetics firm, who bought the old Lowe Mill and dedicated it to the arts. 

For the past few years, the factory space was transformed into galleries, studios, and artists, painters, dress makers, rug makers, photographers, collectors and sellers of old clothes and even a maker of cigarbox guitars took residence.  The loading dock became a concert stages and bands from the southeast began to play free concerts. 

And the crowds came.  2000 to 5000 people a week come.  And they still come.  And it is marvelous, joyous, light and wise.

And if you come to Alabama, you should come to the largest single arts studio in the Southeast and possibly the country.  Walk in the shops, visit the theatre, see the place where young movie makers come to be trained.  Come to what is made when independents gather in one place and call it home.  There are seven galleries, ninety three studios, over one hundred and forty eight artists, and soon thiry per cent more space as another building is opened,

This is love.  And love is never wrong.

Digital Nudes. Turned On Yet?

The article says we should be very upset about digital crimes.  We should. We definitely should. Meanwhile most are googling for the nudes...

 Then this "And rightly so, because these photo leaks aren’t sex scandals. They’re sex crimes."

No they aren't.

They are theft of property just like stolen movies and stolen music. This is the web and if you don't want it stolen, don't use the technology. It was designed by social nitwits for other social nitwits and enabled the biggest wealth transfer in technical history to the technologists who designed it without safeguards.

If they can make this someone else's fault, they'll feel better and maybe she will like them. Meanwhile as another writer noted an infinite supply of idiots is required to keep financing the systems that enable the very actions the nitwits are calling crimes because the idiots and nitwits embarassed someone who posted nude photos of herself based on the promises of nitwits to idiots.

And so it goes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/leah-mclaren-leak-of-nude-photos-is-a-sex-crime-not-a-scandal/article20334805/?click=sf_globefb#dashboard/follows

The Importance of The Ecosystem of Expression

A response to Jon Taplin'e excellent post on supply and demand of quality art in the age of digital distribution and a million channels with nothing on (If Great Art Was Popular Again):

You have to square the originalist over traditionalist issues of culture and see the curator as not being a barrier to access but a preserver of what is important. Access to what is good is controlled by the artist who determines how they will be distributed in so far as that is possible. Kate Bush satisfied herself with a comfortable lifestyle instead of a fabulously wealthy and notoriously public lifestyle, waited thirty five years to go live again, then in one series sold 100,000 tickets in fifteen minutes, policed the theatre for cameras and stands to recoup many times that amount with the DVD release. IOW, controlling one's own greed is part of the strategy.

The example quoted in another article about Duane Allman is too one dimensional. If the curator says only Allman's slide playing is important because it is best, he tells George Harrison to never bother to pick up a slide. It isn't a pyramid. Good enough in the right setting is good enough. In fact, an a-list approach is now impossible. The curator has to distinguish between popular and important because one is driven by market economics and it is not possible to dam that up with critiques. Vaudeville stood side by side with broadway and HoneyBooBoo for the short time she lasts stands side by side with Meryl Streep.

I play a few gigs. I usually fill the room with people who are of a certain age and economic demographic. I play quality material from others and some of my own. I compete with kids who beat guitars, sing songs of either sugarlove or suiciderockkillmania. They play often to one or two fans and the drunk who owns the seat. Quality has to compete on its own and by dint of serious hard work. The money is exactly the same and that is tough to solve. However, when there are more people playing in rooms, more rooms need people to play so one has to admit that 500 channels is better for the artists even if hard on the curators as long as the curator believes it is their tastes that determine success and that gatekeeping is more important than preservation or promotion.

The key is the ecosystem of expression. Henry Burnett said it: "I only work with the best." And that works as long as his timing and what he has to say is relevant. But for every OBWAT, there will also be a Secret Sisters that where production quality is high, the material falls flat and fails to find an ear craving to hear that. The Hunger Games were created not by the movie industry but by the youth book industry. Knowing when a message is ready to be heard is easily as important as knowing what is of quality. Pop art and classical art, what is saleable and what is worth keeping, what is original and what will become traditional cannot be divided. You cannot build dams in a flood and they aren't worth having in a desert.

The Next Gig: Feeding the Room

While a room owner is responsible for keeping their room profitable, a wise musician understands the necessity to help feed the room.  Essentially, no rooms, no gigs.  Even where there are private parties, unless one is aware of the realities of being the fire in the corner, they will hurt the business and themselves.

1,  Ready.  Equipment works, band is sober, songs are learned, yadda.  Scope out a room before you play it.  Look at the electrics, the lighting, the number of seats, the regulars.  If you can do this a week before you play there or at least with enough time to make any changes you might have to make like leaving the extra lights and big amps in the van because as soon as you crank up, the switch box fuse blows, you can avoid a small problem or the kind that costs the entire gig.  And that hurts a lot.   People remember bad much longer than good,  This is just good sense.

2,  Appropriate.  All acts don't work in all rooms.  If you are a big hair really really loud piercing band, Bob's Country Bunker is not your gig.  If you are a really quiet, thoughtful singer-songwriter, the corner bar may not be your gig (too sleepy).   You may be a coffee house act.  Is your material appropriate even then if the room is "family friendly"?  If half your set consists of bawdy risque songs, or "I want to kill my girlfriend and then off myself or maybe not myself" (real depressing even for coffee drinkers) songs, you may not be.   See item 1: go see what is working there and think before you book.  Or work with multiple bands.  Many full time players do this and just make sure these acts don't compete with each other.  Bad blood is bad blood,  And if everyone is working for tips, work for tips.  If you go in demanding more money than the room can support because you are That Good, you suck.  Even if they are foolish enough to promise you that, if they lose money you will lose the room.  No rooms; no gigs.  This will hurt you and hurt others.  Set your price and if they can't meet that, move on.  No harm; no fault, but don't book the gig with expectations that the room can't meet.  And more important, don't set expectations you can't meet.

3.  Consistent.  You really hurt the room if you don't have your shit together that night.  This is more than ready:  it is a sense of how your songs work together, or simply, what your act is about.  You are not a laptop with a playlist.   Think through your sets but be ready to adjust according to the mood in the room.  Don't make it hard for the rest of the band to keep up having to make too many adjustments too fast and if necessary, be sure someone (if not you, someone who is good at this) is at the mic filling dead air.  Know when to turn down or turn up.  Don't play crazy at the end of the night in a room where people drink heavily.  Fights are bad for you and bad for the room.   Don't feed hecklers and trolls and don't let them get to you.   Stay out of the conversations going on in front of you.   A discreet distance is a good thing, not stuck-up, but professional.    The wait staff can work with you or against you and YOU DON'T WANT THEM AGAINST YOU.  The wait staff is the front line of your continuing success and publicity.

DON'T QUARREL ON STAGE.  Ever,  An audience can smell it a block away.  If personal problems are getting out front, it is time to stop gigging with this band.   If you are fighting with yourself, keep it entertaining. 

4.  Crowd smart.  Some crowds simply cannot be mixed.  Like appropriate, if your following is middle aged wine drinking talkers, don't take them into the room where the beer drinking rowdy souls hang out.  Don't mix the hippies with the truck drivers.  Kumbayah sounds good but it doesn't work.  Don't go to the mic and talk politics or religion unless you are in a room where a lot of that was going on when you got there; or that is what your act is about.  Even then, watch it. See item 2.  You may have friends you care a lot about but who insist on bringing their personal dramas or professional agendas to your gigs.   This is a very tough one to handle but you will have to or the room owner will and that may not work out well for your friend.

5.  Butts in seats.  You really really really are responsible for finding and caring for your fans.  A good sound, heck an a-list sound without a following isn't going to last long.  The room owner may love you but he or she or they are there to make money, not promote bands.  Again, the wait staff can help you or hurt you so try to help them make tips, and don't start trouble they can't handle.

6.  Don't talk down your competition particularly if they are working and you aren't.  It's not just bad form, the more rooms that have acts the more rooms that need acts.  Some people both young and old believe it is a zero-sum game and if others are working they won't be.  It is exactly the opposite, so don't resist recommending your competition as long as you know they meet the other requirements to play the room.  Also, when you are older, those people will be your tribe and most of them will be your friends.  Over a long career, you are more drawn to the people who do what you do, not the audience that likes you.  "Life is a long song", to quote Tull.

7.  Pick your art carefully.  Being open to all life experiences turns out to be unhealthy and you need to be healthy to do this.  It is physically and mentally demanding.  Pick material you want to perform.  A top forty house band is a terrible way to live and wears through your soul because it is so repetitive and you become a monkey with an electric box on your tail.   At some point you will do this kind of gig and my best advice is to figure out how to get out of it.   It's a trap and you will fall into the mode of it being a job.  It is right to be a professional but in which profession?  Nothing feels more like prostitution than singing songs you hate.  Really.  And you owe the songwriter not to do that,  Really.

8.  Be on good terms with other artists doing other media.  The digital illustrators are your best friends and you can recommend them to other bands and other room owners who need ad work, posters, band photos and so on.  Wherever there is a healthy performance scene, there is a healthy ecosystem of expression, common themes, common reputations and common conversations.  Seek out, recruit and work with other artists.  Collaborate. 

Actors?  Maybe not.  Whiny. :)

9.  Be aware.  Many rooms, owners, bands and people have side gigs.  It is all too common for those to be the vices:  drugs, sex and gambling.   Unless you involve yourself, they will usually not involve you but once into the games, it's hard to keep your business and their business separate.  Stay smart and don't discuss what you don't want to be involved in.  There are many forces at work here from the owner to the local vice squad to the crazy person one shot away from going postal.  Be careful with charity events.  Ask questions.  Too often people organize these for special events in rooms and the money is not going where promised.  It's good to be a community contributor but don't be a shill for a con.  It is unfortunately common and an easy gummy bear to get stuck with.

10.  Do not bite the hand that feeds you.  If you are working a room on a street regularly, are respected and it's working, don't go to the competitor across the street to book a free weekend.   You are drawing from one room into another and the owner will notice.  As long as you are respected, return respect.

It's all simply good business.  Stay competitive, refresh your sets with new material, don't let slack invade the practice and so on but keep in mind that from the room owner's perspective, the money in the cash register is the ultimate decision maker and you are part of that formula. Don't let them make you feel responsible for all of that because many a room owner is also an idiot in the wrong business and you want to stay clear of them, but what you can do that is good for you and good for them, do.  Again, no rooms; no gigs.