Question authority

It's nice once in awhile to come across a well-written opinion piece making perfect sense. Like Reason Magazine's Jesse Walker sharing a few thoughts about Mr. Obama not being our nation's guidance counselor, as well as other cogent points, like this one.

Children shouldn't be taught that the president—any president—is a beloved paternal figure with a grand plan for everyone. (From the original lesson plan: "Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?") Children should be taught the truth: that presidents are polarizing figures who are constantly dogged by controversy. That Americans don't always agree about proper public policy, and sometimes they disagree enough to do something as drastic as keeping their kids home from school. That politics is about conflict, not listening in unison while a friendly face on a TV screen dispenses instructions.

I also liked the link out to McLuhan and the phrase, "the medium is the message," something I've been rolling around in my head of late.

It puts some of the political craziness of the past week into some kind of manageable context. Maybe that's why the magazine he writes for and manages is named Reason.

You call this change?

I happened upon this while doing some late night internet reading and was struck by a portion of the post:

With Kennedy gone, we are at the mercy of a weak, squabbling, visionless Democratic party and a President whose domestic reform policies are adrift–sliding towards the horizon with each passing day: The lost battle for Afghanistan. (Seriously– the British, then the Soviets, and now us?) The phony victory on Wall Street, one bubble replacing another. Health care reform being taken over by right-wing screwballs at the town meetings. The very idea that amidst all this, Obama is vacationing on a huge estate on Martha Vineyard’s is smack out of the George Bush playbook (except that with W, it was the Texas chainsaw vacation).

It appears that for the many who had hopes and dreams that the New Jerusalem would be ushered in during an Obama presidency, reality has finally begun to set in for all but the Kool-aid camp.

If the Van Jones debacle isn't another example of Obama's inability to stand beside and defend anyone or anything that might tarnish his ties to the establishment, then I don't know what is.

I was struck once again by the political bait-and-switch represented by Obama and his faux leftism, despite what the idiot choirboys (like Beck, Limbaugh, et al) spew about Marxism, as I listened to Jonathan Kozol speak for three hours on BookTV about education in the U.S.

The interview with C-SPAN's Connie Doebele was wide-ranging and touched on Kozol's books about our failed "segregated" system that creates educational haves and have-nots, typically along racial lines, excluding blacks and Latinos.

Kozol talked about being “stunned” by the large number of what he termed “devout liberals,” all living in major U.S. cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—these are mostly privileged white people, self-identified liberals that refuse to face up to the fact that they’ve abandoned poor African-Americans and Latinos to what Kozol calls “apartheid schools.”

Obama, the nation's most prominent African-American abandoned public schools for his own two daughters.

Progressives were duped once again, as they usually are when they pull the lever for a Democrat.

Spouse's Jose Ayerve featured on SistersTalk

I'm keeping the rock and roll theme going here at WordsMatter. Spouse front man, Jose Ayerve, gets a nice feature interview at SistersTalk Radio.

SistersTalk is a Gay/Lesbian podcast, highlighting artists/musicians, authors, entertainers, and others from the Gay/Lesbian community.

Jose talks about his music, his influences behind Spouse, and some of his other music. Beyond music, he also shares his own personal coming out story, and the response of his own parents and others. You also get to hear a couple of Spouse songs, including one of my fave tracks, "Are You Gonna Kiss, Or Wave Goodbye?"

Attention Brooklyn-area music fans!! Jose will be part of a CD release party for "Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy," at the Williams Music Hall of Williamsburg, September 20, an interesting disc he was part of with some other big name rock and rollers.

Great interview!

Random musings during the Friday nocturne

Rather than continuing my recent Friday routine of Shuffle Play Fridays, I leave you some random thoughts I’m ruminating on during the early AM on Friday. The coyotes nearby have roused me from my sleep with their barking and calls to one another, so I decided to leave the comfort of my bed, albeit one that had me lying there fully awake, to visit my office and spend some time in front of my computer screen.

-Writing blues

There was a time when I considered my personal pool of energy to be unlimited. What I’m discovering, based on my current experiences is that our individual reservoirs are more likely finite, and we are able to shift resources around, depending on what our focus and priorities are.

Last spring and early summer, I’d work a full day, come home, have dinner with Mary, and retire to my “hobbit hole” and work another three to four hours (and occasionally longer) on what eventually became Moxietown. That wasn’t a sustainable routine, but I did manage to maintain it for six months, or so. Once the book was released and the Moxie Festival completed (which is where the bulk of my sold out title got dispensed), I took some needed time away from serious writing.

Over the winter and during the early spring, I ramped up my writing and began what I thought would be book #3, a book that I intended to be a compilation of my experiences of my sojourn into fundamentalist Xianity during the early 1980s. After completing about 25,000 words, I found the writing becoming mechanical and devoid of much vigor. About February, I came to recognize that for whatever reason, that project needed to be moved to a back burner because I had hit a wall. It has remained on its own SanDisk in my desk drawer since.

After taking a month off, I got reengaged by writing some longer essays, releasing a few snippets, portions and samplings via an occasional blog post here at Words Matter. There have been weeks when I’ve been as prolific as any period that I’ve experienced as a writer. Unfortunately, the summer months (what we’ve had of a summer) have found those bursts of fury spaced further and further apart.

Blogging by and large has been easy for me. One of the reasons that I’ve persevered as a blogger is that I find 1,200 to 1,500 word posts relatively easy to crank out. This blog has become my veritable semi-regular column on a variety of topics, my most recent inclination to write about being music, although music writing and the recent development of Shuffle Play Fridays have been more about creating a weekly blog placeholder, or a means of putting up something that might draw readers back from time to time, as I sometimes get fixated on things like blog stats and return visits. Stupid, eh?

This past week, however, I think my physical fitness focus has caught up with me. The past three or four days, I haven’t had my usual flurry of blog post ideas flooding my head during my work day. Often I jot them down on a scrap of paper or notebook I keep for idea generation during a 90 minute drive to Skowhegan, or some other remote outpost that I serve in my day job. Hence, there has been a paucity of posts here this past week. My work blog has also languished for a much longer period. An occasional idea has floated by, but I’ve been lacking sufficient energy/passion to post it.

I attribute this to channeling so much energy into the physical side of things, which has siphoned off some of my creative energy and fire of late.

Is this a reality for any other writers out there? Does one have to sacrifice being fit and in some semblance of being in shape if they want to become wildly successful, or at least a prolific practitioner, toiling in relative obscurity?

-MOB rules

I can’t abandon Friday morning music musings entirely. Partly, this is a result of my current reading, which is Michael Azerrad’s excellent book about indie rock, Our Band Could Be Your Life. One of the 13 bands that Azerrad highlights is Mission of Burma that seminal Boston-based band that has influenced so many other bands that followed their blazing of the musical trail.

Only rock obscurantists like me care about MOB (my own preferred acronym, although it’s not unique to me, as I’ve seen the band’s name represented as MoB) and their music has receded into the musty corridors populated by vinyl and cassette tapes, both of which I have a deep affinity for.

Formed in Boston, MA in 1979, the band consisted of Roger Miller, Clint Conley, Peter Prescott and Martin Swope. Musically, they were as intense as any punk band, but they were also able to separate themselves from regular three chord crowd through their use of unusual time signatures and chord progressions, as well as tape effects (courtesy of Swope).

A truly groundbreaking outfit, their music was destined to be ignored, or cited long after the band broke up, like most artists that hit the scene too early, or inaccurately time their 15 minutes, only to be a mere wisp of smoke in some grander scheme, a mere rock and roll footnote.

Actually, I’m being a bit hyperbolic concerning MOB (or MoB) because in 1981, they actually signed a record deal with Ace Of Hearts, a Boston-based label run by Rick Harte. Harte was a producer of some local renown and he took a liking to the band after hearing seeing them play live in Boston. As local labels went at the time, Ace of Hearts was a great place of the band to be. Harte cared deeply about his artists and his product. Like most indie labels, small press book publishers, and other creative endeavors operating outside of the mainstream (read, popular, mass-produced culture), distribution tends to be an issue. It was for MOB and Ace of Hearts, which at that time was one of the few indie labels out there.

Their first single, “Academy Fight Song / Max Ernst” single actually sold out very quickly and both songs have become fan staples of the band.

Next came the EP “Signals, Calls And Marches,” which also sold out its initial pressing of 10,000. It was later was reissued by Rykodisc (with six remastered original songs and two bonus tracks – both from their first single) and Matador (with video material and even more bonus tracks). I own the Rykodisc CD version.

Later, the band released the full-length "VS," which is generally considered to be one of their best works, and has been recognized by several critics as one of the best albums of the 80s.

Despite developing a strong following in Boston, and a few other indie outposts at the time, MOB broke up in 1983, partly because of Miller's worsening tinnitus, due in large part to the band’s notoriously loud live performances. The band went out for a farewell tour and released a live album “The Horrible Truth About Burma,” which came out on Ace Of Hearts in 1985.

During the 90s, it was rare to read an interview with a member of a variety of post-punk outfits without them dropping a MOB reference, citing them as a key influence.

The band reformed in 2002, playing a bunch of reunion shows. They garnered rave reviews, drawing old fans, and new acolytes alike. Bob Weston (who plays in Shellac, a math rock outfit, with Steve Albini) had replaced Swope at the mixing board and on tape manipulation. OnoffOn was released in 2004 on Matador, as well as a new live recording. 2005 brought another new record, with several tentative titles, but finally was christened "Obliterati."

There is a new record in the works set to be released next month, on Matador. Recorded in Boston back in March, "The Sound The Speed The Light" has an October 6 release date.

-Front running in Tampa Bay

I’ve chronicled my personal hatred of the team formerly known as the Devil Rays here at Words Matter. My antipathy for the club has a back story that’s hard for me to let go of. Last fall’s AL final between Boston and ball club with its front running fan base that couldn’t go away soon enough, is still fresh in my mind.

Despite a lineup that virtually has no center, and another sub par outing from Josh Beckett (is he injured again?), Boston managed to take two of three important games from TTFKATDRs, hopefully finishing them off, one year after baseball’s dumber prognosticators were hailing them as the AL’s team of the future. Oh yeah—I owe Clay Buchholz an apology, as the young hurler sucked it up last night and gutted out six innings to log another quality start—Buchholz may actually be rounding into a major league pitcher after all.

Tampa Bay is America’s professional sports armpit in my opinion. An overbuilt southern city, devoid of much in the way of culture (typical of much of the “new” south), fans of TTFKATDRs have to be some of the worst bunch of bandwagon riders in all of MLB. For the past three nights, each time NESN’s cameras would pan the crowd (of what should have been a sellout), we saw a wash of empty blue seats, as the good folks of Tampa Bay couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to even half fill the ugliest and most user-unfriendly professional sports venue in North America (Tropicana Field makes the Big O in Montreal look like Camden Yards), in what was the ball club’s watershed series of the 2009 campaign.

So long Tampa; you got a sniff last year, but now it’s back to being suck city all over again, you foreclosure wasteland, and Siberia of an American urban area, masquerading as a viable place to live and conduct business.

Shuffle play Friday-DIY

I just started reading Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground, for a book club I’ve been invited to join. I can already tell it’s going to be an interesting read for a couple of reasons that are quite obvious to me—indie rock, particularly the type Azerrad highlights, is informed by the DIY ethic that drives me forward in my own life. Also, each of the 13 bands featured are favorites of mine, and I think Azerrad is spot on for highlighting their significance, as well as providing a good deal more detail on most than even I was privy to. The only one of the 13 that I’m a bit dubious on would be the Butthole Surfers, although I’m sure once I get to that chapter, I’ll come to appreciate what they were about in a way that I’m not, at present.

This is a book that puts late 70s/early 80s punk/hardcore into a particular historical context that’s often missing from rock criticism, and any other writing connected to rock and roll. Actually, one of the benefits of the book is that it fills in details about a key period in the evolution of early punk/hardcore, and how it reached its watershed moment in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Sprit,” when the entire indie/underground scene blew up and changed, almost overnight.

In light of Azerrad’s book, this Friday’s Shuffle Play Friday features tracks from some the 13 bands featured, as well as representing some of my favorite rock songs of all time.

Hüsker Dü-Ice Cold Ice/Warehouse Songs and Stories

Back in 1984, stranded in the center (or close to it) of the country, shipwrecked and looking for a new source of meaning, music became my new drug, replacing fundamentalist religion. At the time, Chicago’s WXRT hosted "The Big Beat," a hour-long indie rock show, every Friday night at 11:00. This became my gateway into a whole new world of underground music I knew little about.

Fast-forward to early 1987 (the year I’d move back to Maine, in August after four years in the post-industrial armpit of NW Indiana) and pre-internet, so there weren’t a wealth of places for someone living in Chesterton, Indiana to connect with indie music.

It was on ‘XRT where I first caught wind of Hüsker Dü and their loud, fast rock and roll. “Ice Cold Ice” was being played regularly. I drove up to Michigan City to pick up Warehouse Songs and Stories on cassette, after reading about it in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

Black Flag-TV Party/Damaged

It’s hard to imagine the unbridled passion that Black Flag brought to their music in today’s corporate rock environment. The anger was real, with Henry Rollins working out his issues onstage each and every show, often on the heads of members of the audience that pissed him off.

Rollins wasn’t Black Flag’s first vocalist, but he was the one that moved the band forward and gave them their more serious focus that they become known by.

The band’s sound, characterized by Greg Ginn’s fractured, atonal playing style came to epitomize the hardcore punk sounds, since Black Flag were one of the first playing this kind of music in the U.S.

I picked up Damaged in a used vinyl shop. TV Party is a throwback to some of the goofier tunes that characterized the earlier years when Keith Morris (later of the Circle Jerks) was on vocals.

DOA-51st State/True (North) Strong and Free

I first saw DOA in Chicago, in 1986 on a bill with the Descendants, DC3 (former Black Flag member Dez Cadena’s band), and a fourth band that escapes me now, some 23 years later.

DOA, led by the irrepressible Joey “Shithead” Keithly are still going strong. Like Black Flag, DOA originated as a punk hardcore band, but later introduced a more melodic approach to their songs.

The band, which hails from Vancouver, BC, wear their Canadian hearts on their sleeves. This song captures the Canadian inferiority complex that comes from being America’s neighbor to the north, as well as the love/hate thing that is the reality when you live next door to someone that can potentially make your life hell if you piss them off.

At this stage of their career, think a Canadian Ramones, and you’ll be close.

The Minutemen-History Lesson-Part II/Double Nickels on the Dime

The title of Azerrad’s book comes from this song. DNOTD was released in 1984. I owned it on cassette, acquiring my copy back in the 90s. I still regularly listened in that format, but the cassette player in my old 1984 Pontiac chewed the tape up last w/e, so I’ve got to get it on CD, or vinyl, as this album is one I must own.

I never saw the Minutemen live, but I did see Mike Watt’s post MM band, Firehose back in the late-90s when they played the old Zootz nightclub, in Portland. I met Watt after the show, as he stood and shook hands with everyone that came, a holdover from the days of punk, when by-and-large, bands appreciated their fans, and there wasn’t the star/fan divide common with most entertainment/sports, today.

X-Johnny Hit and Run Pauline/Los Angeles

I don’t know why Azerrad leaves X out of his book, as they warrant a chapter, in my opinion, as they are one of the seminal bands in the early days of American punk. They also have had a tremendous influence on so many other bands that followed.

In 1986, X released The Unheard Music, a documentary chronicling the members of the band, and the Los Angeles punk scene. I heard it advertised on the aforementioned WXRT, Chicago's alternative rock station. It was playing at a theater on Fullerton, in the city, and I drove my 1968 Chevy Impala, with a dead cylinder, the requisite 45 miles from Chesterton, to catch the showing.

There were about 5 people in the theater, in a seedy end of the city, but it was worth the trip and gas to get there. Great rock movie and I was totally hooked on X and have been ever since.

The movie captures the seamy underside of Los Angeles, the one that Jim Morrison sang about in “LA Woman,” and the one I went searching for on my recent trip to the City of Angels.

Yet another album I once owned on cassette.