the pod bay door

:: Alan Kellogg is one of my favorite local newspaper columnists (and a kind soul – he agreed to return with two Steely Dan t-shirts for me, when he saw them play at Roseland in NYC last September. You see, I had neglected to buy the shirts when I saw The Dan in concert at The Gorge in August, a few weeks earlier. But I digress…) Alan’s April 1st column analyzed the Federal Court ruling on downloading music in Canada. (Warning: the column will remain online for just one week, as the Edmonton Journal maintains a seven-day archive only. Very frustrating and annoying.) The point that hit home for me the hardest, however, wasn’t about the impact this ruling will have on the music industry, whose sales were heading downhill before Napster came into existence three years ago. Rather, it was Alan’s straightforward take on record stores:

“Many mall record stores are simply terrible, with limited stock and clueless staff“.

That was my emphasis on clueless staff, not Alan’s. I might add that the clueless staff are not restricted to mall record stores, either. Long before downloading caught on, I began noticing, probably in the mid-90s (slightly post-grunge) that service in A&B Sound and other Canadian chain stores was riding the down escalator – staff, when they weren’t busy comparing piercings and tattoos, could barely be bothered helping me find a record that wasn’t in the best seller racks. Such interactions usually ended with blank stares and shoulder shrugs.

“Do you have the new Oysterband album?” “Blue Oyster Cult?” “No, sorry, Oysterband?” “Prairie Oyster?” “Er, no, Oysterband, from the UK, played the folk festival in Edmonton 2 or 3 times?” Watching the staff member “helping” me, the expected shoulder shrugs would follow at that moment, and I might as well have been staring into the eyes of a chicken. Recently, a friend shared with me this story: A&B called him to tell him a CD he’d ordered had arrived. When he went to pick it up, they told him it wasn’t there. Welcome to Customer Service, 2004.

The music industry is in really, really bad shape right now. It has not come to grips with downloading, nor with the fact that is has been overpricing music for years while simultaneously releasing questionable product. Whoinhell wants to keep paying unreasonable prices for crappy music? The industry’s insistence on blaming downloading as the major reason for poor sales isn’t holding up under scholarly scrutiny: a study released this week by researchers at Harvard and U North Carolina indicates that file swapping and downloading has had little impact on the slide in CD sales over the past while:

“We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales,” the study’s authors wrote. “While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”

My own buying patterns have slowed down. Yes, I’ve downloaded some songs, but after an initial flurry in 2001-02, very little in the past 12 months or so. In fact, most of what I’ve downloaded is old material, some “out of print”, so to speak, and a lot of which I own already on vinyl, and want to either hear on my computer, or burn to CD for listening in the car. But another reason I cite for the change is the poor service offered by the chain stores like A&B. Add to that their own dwindling inventories because of declining sales. It’s a bad scene, and I have no solution for the mess it’s in.

April 2 update: Alan’s column in today’s Journal features an interview with Denise Donlon, CEO of Sony Music of Canada. Of note is the following:

“Upon leaving her old job as vice-president at MuchMusic, she declared her first priority at Sony was to aggressively promote new Canadian music.

‘It’s taken longer than I had hoped, because since the day I walked in the door it feels like we were dealing with these other pressing issues. But there are hugely talented artists everywhere you look, for every taste, smart people with a point of view. It’s exciting’.”

A quick check of Sony Music of Canada’s site this morning reveals the following “Featured Artists”: Delta Goodrem (Australia), Incubus (USA), Jessica Simpson (USA), Switchfoot (USA), Lost Prophets (UK), Harry Connick Jr (USA), John Mayer (USA), and a little-known, obscure Canadian artist named Celine Dion. Under “New Releases”, we find: 1) Various – Oprah’s Pop Star Challenge 2004 Cast Album (USA), 2) Nas – Nas: 10 Year Anniversary Illmatic Platinum Series (USA), and 3) Shakira – Live & Off The Record (Columbia, South America.) Aggressively promoting new Canadian music??? As for Edmonton, we haven’t had a major artists in pop music emerge from this city for decades, and there is no excuse for this. I’ve played in bands and with individual artists in town since the mid-1980s – believe me, there is Major Talent in this city, but Big Music continues to ignore it. (PS: Remember, you have seven days to read the column here before it self-vaporizes!)

:: This is too cool. I’m a fan of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. On Eric Alterman’s blog, I saw a link to FootnoteTV, which is a site that provides analysis of a very select group of television shows, including TDS, SNL, West Wing, Law & Order, and a few more. FootnoteTV is part of Newsaic. The site is written and produced by Stephen Lee, a journalist/lawyer, whose intention is to focus on issues rather than breaking news:

“My ultimate goal here is to create a kind of Internet journalism that reaches out to modern audiences in new ways. Ultimately, I want to get people more involved in the news, especially younger people, the kind of people that newspapers and television keep losing. The answer is not more channels or simpler stories; it lies in new perspectives and tools. I expound more on this at length in the Site FAQ.”

So to return back to the beginning, fans of Jon Stewart can read Stephen Lee’s footnotes to each episode here, in which Lee provides background and information on the topics presented in each show. My question: where does he find the time and energy to maintain such a detailed site?

:: While driving home after my workout tonight, I was listening to CBC News. The newscaster reported that the new leader of Hamas, in the Gaza belt, is a 54-year old avowed militarist and hard-liner, bitterly opposed to Israel’s existence, who has warned there will now be “total war” with Israel. In the same breath, the newscaster also mentioned that he is a pediatrician. A pediatrician!

The world is a scary place right now. The Middle East is set to either explode or implode, and even though I live in perhaps the safest country in the world, right now I don’t feel particularly safe, as a world citizen. Are we that naive, those of us who don’t understand such hatred as it exists in other parts of the world?

Any openings on the next flight to Mars?

:: Meanwhile, the best analysis and criticism of the recent neck-breaking assault of Steve Moore by Todd Bertuzzi turned up in, of all places, a cartoon by Ward “Slap Shot” Sutton, in the Village Voice.

:: I’ve been a huge fan of Dennis Miller for years. I liked him on SNL, loved his Chicago-based talk show way back when, and enjoyed his wisecracking on HBO for nine years. Now he’s on CNBC, has shifted considerably to the right, and the change doesn’t suit him. He’s become mean-spirited and hard-edged, and disappointingly, very unlikeable.

Last night he “interviewed” Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?, and co-author of The Book on Bush. Miller blew the interview so badly that it was literally painful to watch. He treated Alterman rudely, was obviously unprepared in advance, acted like a kid who couldn’t get his own way, and ended the interview abruptly, mocking Alterman by turning to the camera, saying, “OK, you’re great, come back anytime soon.” As one contributor on RateItAll noted, “it was the most embarrassing train wreck I have ever seen.” South Knox Bubba provides a great blow-by-blow description of what went down during the interview. Better still, watch the interview here, and cringe as it progresses.

But the best viewpoint of what happened last night comes from Alterman himself:

Since my hotel here in Santa Monica does not get CNBC, I remain among the category of the vast majority of my fellow countrymen and women who have never seen the Dennis Miller show. So I don’t know how it looked to its miniscule audience. There is a description here, however.

Anyway, what was so weird about it was how professional it seemed until I finally sat down with Miller. It was set up long in advance by the book’s publicists. The car came on time. In my dressing room, which was pretty elaborate as such things go, I met with a series of staff members who informed me that Dennis would be wanting to discuss topics such as George Soros and the funding of 527s; whether Bush was exploiting the 9/11 families, and I forget what else, just like a real talk show. Then I go out there and what? I’m talking to a stoned teenager, who can’t be bothered to say more than, “Whoh, man, you are so totally screwed up. Like, you really believe that stuff, dude?” I paraphrase, but really, Dennis did not say much more than that. Everyone on staff was extremely apologetic afterward and the word “unprofessional” was used over and over.

I try to avoid most of these guys, though I’ve been on O’Reilly, and Scarborough and Michael Medved’s silly radio program a couple of times but never have I encountered a guy who could not be bothered to make his own case on his own show. Really, what can CNBC be thinking with this guy? His ratings are not just in the toilet they have traveled all the way to the septic tank. And as we all know, they need to pay audience members to show up. It has got to cost more than the Phil Donahue show to produce, given the size of the audience and the set and that was yanked even though it was then the highest rated show on MSNBC.

I used to think I should be given half of Joe Scarborough’s show. His ratings aren’t so hot and we sort of get along and things could only improve. Now, perhaps I should be patient and just wait for Miller to implode a couple of more times and then offer my services to the machers up at NBC News. No need for lengthy negotiations. I’ll take whatever Dennis was getting, plus money for liquor and food for my friends when they do the program.

What’s annoying to me is that for years, I chose Miller as my favorite all-around performer – a great comedian, I loved the non-sequitors and obscure references, and he was an entertainer who gave credit where and when credit was due. He never seemed to take for granted that he was one of the lucky ones who made it in “the biz.” Now he’s kissing Dubya’s Texas behind, giving Bush “a pass” on his show. That’s his right, so to speak. But if he is going to treat the guests on his show who don’t side with him with no dignity or respect, why bother going through the motions? Instead, feature a bevy of right-wing nutbags and turn it into a 21st century version of the Rush Limbaugh show. And his sidekick on the show is a monkey. No, really. A monkey. And people in the audience get paid to be there.

Dennis! Say it ain’t so. Come back, we miss you.

:: This is straight from Derryl’s site, it is at once frightening and thought-provoking:

“There has been all sorts of nastiness cropping up lately, reminders that the vestiges of civilization that remain south of the border are slowly being picked away. So it’s nice to come across a well-conceived essay, not only on the dangers of such madness, but one that analyzes its history and looks for some possible solutions.

Here’s a little piece of “The Fundamentalist Agenda“:

They identified five characteristics shared by virtually all fundamentalisms. The fundamentalists’ agenda starts with insistence that their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God—and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right—must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini’s Iran, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.

The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and it’s vulgarly simple: Men are on top. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and homemakers.

A third item follows from the others. (Indeed each part of the fundamentalist agenda is necessarily interlocked, and needs every other part to survive.) Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this picture and these rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, fundamentalists must control education by controlling textbooks and teaching styles, deciding what may and may not be taught.

Fourth, fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it’s helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase “overcoming the modern” is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.

The fifth point is the most abstract, though it’s foundational. Fundamentalists deny history in a radical and idiosyncratic way. Fundamentalists know as well or better than anybody that culture shapes everything it touches: The times we live in color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. Fundamentalists agree on the perverseness of modern American society: the air of permissiveness and narcissism, individual rights unbalanced by responsibilities, sex divorced from commitment, and so on. What they don’t want to see is the way culture colored the era when their scriptures were created.

Is this overreaching? Are all fundamentalists in some way equivalents to fascists? Maybe so, if one remembers that fascists are control freaks (to put it lightly). Fred Clark at Slacktivist has been talking about evangelicals for some time, making sure that his readers know that there is a difference between the two religious mindsets. And while I mostly agree with him, I can speak with experience about friends who inhabit both worlds, quite happily, who are evangelical in their furvor and desire to spread the Word of God (and indeed, who would normally classify themselves as evangelical), but very fundamental in their belief in that Word as well as in their desire that their society behave as their interpretation of that Word would have it, even at the expense of another person’s freedoms.

It’s no surprise to think that our fundamentalist nature might reach back to a time that fundies don’t even believe existed. Animals behave the way they do because it is hardwired into their brains, although allowance for learning must be made. Hell, even computer programs can behave in similar fashions. It is a concern, though, that there are powerful groups of people (mostly men, as noted in the article) who wish to run things their way, and no way else, and the article quoted above gives some eloquent arguments about how to fight back.”

:: In the 60s and 70s, I lived and died by the Montreal Canadiens. The past 25 years has seen a waning in my interest in hockey, with baseball overtaking it for a number of reasons. Last week, Todd Bertuzzi of the Canucks assaulted Steve Moore in the Canucks/Avalanche game. He’s been suspended, and the Vancouver police are investigating.

The fallout has been predictable and at times, pathetic. Proof that the players are out of touch with their own sport and behaviour comes from listening to Wayne Gretzky, Tie Domi, and others, who call the assault “unfortunate”, and use the crutch of “emotions running high out there” as an excuse for what happened. Had Steve Moore been hit by a car, that would have been an unfortunate incident. What happened on the ice was disgusting, premeditated, unwarranted, stoooopid, and the lowest of the low.

An “unfortuate incident”? Oh, puh-LEASE.
Read more »

:: What’s next in writing tools for weblogs? Dave Winer wants your opinion. I’m wondering if something like Textpattern is where things are headed. Then there is the corporate blog movement; anyone heard of SilkBlogs?

:: When I drive, I play word games with licence plates on vehicles in front of me. When it’s a plate with three letters, I try to form words using the letters in the order they appear from L-R. For example, my plate’s letters are WZN, which could be wheezing or waltzing. My previous licence plate was STR, which could be straight, stretch, mustard, magistrate, saturate, etc. Today I saw a plate with CRD, and could though of chord, card, cradle, etc. I also though of The Communards, an 80s UK band. Later while driving, I was switching radio stations (all of the pop music stations in Edmonton suck bobos), and the first song I heard was “Smalltown Boy”, by the Bronski Beat, which later became…The Communards.

Coincidence? Psychic phenomenon? Rift in the space-time continuum?

:: Grey Tuesday happened yesterday. An LA DJ, Danger Mouse, “created” a remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ White Album, and released it on the Internet, calling it The Grey Album. (Jay-Z had released an a cappela version of The Black Album to encourage sampling.)

EMI, claiming copyright of The White Album, is attempting to stop the album’s distribution, having previously sent Mouse a cease and desist order, re: online distribution of the record. The Grey Tuesday web site notes that “Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most “respectful” and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z.” Jason Kottke suggests that “musical sampling without prior consent of the copyright holder should be legally allowed because it does our society more good than harm.” Hundreds of web sites turned grey on Tuesday in protest.

I can’t buy this argument. I’ve been a musician for 37+ years, and don’t see anything creative or inventive in the “sampling” of another artist’s original work by adding new lyrics or rhythm, then claiming credit (or co-credit) for it as an original work. That opinion notwithstanding, how does not informing a copyright holder that her or his music has been taken by another “artist” and morphed into something else, do harm to society? WTF?

So why am I against this, while not against downloading? Because I believe these are two different issues. If the music industry can get its act together (right, and the sun will go nova this weekend, too) to create a fee-for-service downloading service, I’d be happy to pay to download music, if the fee structure was within reason, and the quality of the product could be guaranteed beforehand. So far, the industry hasn’t responded. And P2P downloading is legal in Canada. With “sampling”, an artist takes an original work, changes it, and we are expected to view this as a new, creative and unique product.

DJ Danger Mouse “honors” The Beatles with this effort? The album cover shows Jay-Z in the centre, with The Beatles standing behind him, as if to suggest collaboration. Still other versions have him sharing space with The Beatles on the Revolver and Yellow Submarine covers. Sacrilege.

Many artists allow sampling of their music, but the process begins with permission to use copyright material, and then negotiations for compensation with the copyright holder(s). Many other artists, The Beatles included, do not allow sampling.

Then again, this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.