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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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October 19, 2002
Friendship is a multi-splendored thing
Here's a beautiful tribute to the meaning of true friendship.
Oh, and be sure to send it to ten of your best buddies.
posted by Al at 10/19/2002 12:36:00 AM
Benefits to the record business of downloading
The big, fat inefficient record companies put out almost nothing but CRAP at exorbitant prices, yet want to blame P2P downloading for their declining fortunes. Yup, that's the problem.
Or to put it slightly differently, no it is not.
One obvious MAJOR sales benefit to the industry from downloaded music is the "try it before you buy it" use. For example, I downloaded a couple of songs from the first Macy Gray album. They rocked so good that I bought factory copies of not just On How Life Is but also the outstanding second album The Id, which didn't have any radio hits (both albums are great). I would never have invested money without hearing more than the one song once or twice on the radio. Those sales DIRECTLY stem from downloading.
Note that this perfect promotional vehicle doesn't cost the industry a dime. The RIAA should have been subsidizing Napster, not shutting it down. Geez, how much money do the labels spend on sleazy payola trying to get people to listen to their records? One tenth of that spent promoting P2P would be much more effective.
Another commercial benefit to consider from downloading is the clearly beneficial effect it has on selling concert tickets. I've gone to at least one or two shows from acts that caught my interest via the net. [For example, David Allen Coe caught my interest via downloading some of his commercially unavailable underground "x-rated" material.] This may not specifically benefit the labels, but artists often make better money from selling you a concert ticket [and maybe some overpriced t-shirts] than from selling a CD. And downloading ain't EVER gonna replace the live concert experience.
You can run up some surveys and studies and such, but I'd bet you dollars to Homer Simpson's donuts that the heaviest downloaders of music are also typically the biggest PURCHASERS of music as well. Hey, Mr. Record Label Exec- we're your bread and butter.
Also note that a pretty big percentage of downloading goes for out of print items, bootlegs, and other things that are difficult or impossible to buy at the store. The seven Beatles fan club only Christmas recordings, for example, have NEVER been commercially released. I certainly didn't take anything out of their pockets by downloading them from Napster users.
It would be foolish to pretend the industry doesn't loose any sales to P2P, but they also have some major benefits that must be taken into account when you add it up. Indeed, here is an academic analysis that says the best reasonable interpretation of the available data suggests that P2P causes at least a modest INCREASE in revenue for the record labels. This report is not even considering the benefits to drawing paying concert audiences for the actual artists.
All this, moreover, is based only on judging the economic impact on music labels. What policies on downloading and file swapping most economically benefit the major labels might not ought to be the top or only consideration. Consider also the classic policies of "fair use" and how long copyrights should reasonably last in the first place, and the costs of copyrights to the rest of society in myriad ways. We'll save that for another day, though.
posted by Al at 10/19/2002 12:33:00 AM
October 18, 2002
Chuck Berry, Brown Eyed Handsome Man
Chuck Berry was born October 18, 1926. Happy number 76!
Among several possible names, Chuck Berry most deserves the title of being the architect of rock and roll. More than anything, this means he wrote some classic songs which became the models for how others did it. The basic guitar moves and structure of a thousand others can be traced right back to Uncle Chuck.
Chuck Berry didn't play the hottest, fanciest guitar around, but he's the model others used to learn their trade. Jimi Hendrix was playing Chuck Berry songs, not the other way around. Much less for other fancy boy guitar players. Some conservatory jackleg from the accounting firm of Emerson, Lake and Palmer could probably play circles around Berry technically, but did any of them play a lick that anybody now remembers? Chuck Berry didn't play as many notes, but his notes by gummy MEANT something.
Uncle Chuck also taught the Stones how to be dirty old men. He was already thirtysomething when he wrote the original definitive groupie anthem "Sweet Little Sixteen." The Stones were just being slightly more explicit with, say, the "Stray Cat Blues."
Moreover, he created real poetry in his lyrics long before Dylan. His use of language was years ahead of his peers. He didn't have fakey French symbolist name dropping tricks that Dylan was prone too, though. He just had a real eye for lyrical detail, and subtle and unforgettable ways of putting things, such as the baby daughter with "hurry home drops on her cheeks".
One thing not noted so much about Berry's songs has been the distinctly adult nature of many of them. Rock and roll supposedly was created as music for the kids, but Chuck was singing about harsh marital disagreements ["30 Days"] and the heartache of divorce and custody problems ["Memphis"].
He also created the definitive rock icon in "Johnny B Goode," with the little coloured boy playing guitar by the railroad tracks and dreaming of making the big time.
If there was just one definitive rock and roll black pride anthem, it has to be "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." He wasn't concerned with fake niceness in the way he expressed it, either. He had a way of sticking in the hardcore stuff in subtle ways.
Arrested on charges of unemployment,
He was sitting in the witness stand
The judge's wife called up the district attorney
Said you free that brown eyed man
You want your job you better free that brown eyed man
The unemployed negro is doing the [presumably white] judge's wife. Sweet. This was a major hit single during 1956 with Jim still a-Crowing, and I've never heard of anyone having objected to or even having noticed the obvious implications. Chuck was "that kind of guy" long before LL Cool J. You go, bad boy.
posted by Al at 10/18/2002 10:31:00 PM
October 17, 2002
Lautenberg, si!
I had an instinctively negative reaction to the Torricelli-Lautenberg substitution on the New Jersey ballot. The law seems pretty clearly set against it, but the New Jersey Supreme Court did rule unanimously in favor of the switch.
Richard Winger at Ballot Access News, moreover, makes a pretty good case defending the substitution. Consider the importance of court challenges to restrictive ballot access laws for independent candidates trying to get past the Democrats and Republicans who write these laws. He also notes that ANY court challenge to ballot access laws at all ever would likely be construed as "changing the rules in the middle of the game." He argues fairly persuasively in favor of erring on the side of maximizing voter choice.
Still, it seems highly unlikely that the Green or Libertarian parties would get near this much leeway.
posted by Al at 10/17/2002 02:30:00 PM
Nordlinger's Newspeak
Writing in his Impromptus column at National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger whipped up some particularly stupid Orwellian Newspeak. "In New Jersey, ex-senator Frank Lautenberg won�t debate his Republican challenger unless all candidates are included � every fringe-ist and nut in the state. That means there will be no meaningful debate...That�s pretty gutless � and it serves the public ill." He might as well have noted that freedom is slavery, and that war is peace.
Apparently a debate is only properly meaningful to the likes of Nordlinger if it is limited to the pre-annointed two "legitimate" candidates. You know, the ones with the pollsters telling them what the public wants to hear, or what their research tells them will cause the least number of voters to hate them. Other than tribal loyalty, it's most difficult to tell the Republicans and Democrats apart in most races. They're both spinning out their pricey consultant's sucky suck-offs dumbed down for the stupidest end of the voting pool. Other candidates can be presumptively dismissed and squashed on grounds of being a "fringe-ist and nut." No need to expose these folk to the voters and let them decide which is which.
There are a total of six candidates set for the New Jersey US senate ballot. You can't have a meaningful debate between six people? Why not? Few races in the country have even as many as six candidates. Even the presidential debate would have no more than half a dozen candidates based on the reasonable and objective minimal requirement of being on enough state ballots to have at least a theoretical chance of being elected.
Third party "fringe" candidates provide great public service. They cause the candidates to differentiate. Republicans, for example, have lost at least a couple of US senate seats in close elections recently and control of the senate because of votes going to Libertarian party candidates. Perhaps the Republicans will keep in mind that they need to nominate something besides a watered down Democrat if they want to keep their base. On the other side, of course, Ralph Nader and his Green party famously cost Al Gore the White House in 2000 for not being quite enough of a commie- a service for which I for one will be eternally grateful.
Then again, sometimes the "fringe" candidates actually suit the public, and end up taking the office. Jesse Ventura would be the obvious recent example. It happens from time to time. Even without winning and actually holding the office, a strong vote for a third party can send a powerful message.
Third party candidates serve a particularly valuable function in public debates. They generally don't expect to actually win, and have come to say their piece rather than just parrot some tracking poll. They inject valuable issues that the front runners would never touch. For example, it pleased me very much to watch Libertarian Ken Krawchuk in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate this week repeatedly waving around a copy of the Pennsylvania state constitution demanding to know the source of the governor's authority for any of the other candidate's very similar schemes for further socializing the medical industry. Maybe one of these candidates will take off, or one of their issues will resonate. Maybe they won't. You don't know until you put it in front of the voters.
All the candidates for an office need to come face to face in order to say that you've had a fair election. It would get real sticky to have to legislate this; it should be just a basic expectation of democracy. The voters should demand that ALL the candidates for an office face off in debate. There should arguably be consideration for considerably more substantial electoral reforms to say you're really having fair representation, but at a minimum candidates who jump through the ballot access hoops have earned a right to say their piece.
Interest groups sucking off the public teat throw many millions of dollars at candidates who will do their bidding. Fine. Everybody has a right to spend their money supporting whatever viewpoint they wish in this country- even if I think they're scurrilous. Give the people a face to face debate among the candidates. After that, if the trial lawyers and unions want to spend $200 million buying every tv ad slot for six months, they're within rights. Let the voters take it from there.
posted by Al at 10/17/2002 12:55:00 PM
Mike Judge is king of the hill
Mike Judge was born 10-17-1962, which makes him 40 years old today, and due to go middle aged crazy any time. Note that this birthday means he was born in the middle of the Cuban missle crisis. That'd mess you up. Maybe that's why he's a Butthead.
Of course, many people know him primarily for Beavis and Butthead. They made good amusement. They also caused great wringing of hands from busybodies who were sure they were about to bring on the end of civilization. That's always fun.
He has made a far greater and more emotionally resonant artistic achievement, however, with King of the Hill. It doesn't have the shock value of B&B, but it's got a lot of heart. In it's own backwards way, it conveys some of the most solid conservative values on television- not what you'd expect from the great Cornholio.
Hank Hill is the most sensible, responsible, loyal and all around admirable character on television. He's got some personal issues, what with his rabbit-ass crazy dad and the narrow urethra and all. Still he shows better judgment, and more forbearance than any ten normal guys- yet knows when he has to fight back. He bears the white man's burden with exceptional grace.
The rich palette of characters and motivations make this a sleeper. It doesn't get the hype, but artistically this show will just about go head to head with even the mighty Simpsons.
posted by Al at 10/17/2002 06:00:00 AM
The immortal Granny Clampett
Irene Ryan was born 10-17-1902. She would have been 100 years old today. We sure need her now.
Daisy Mae Moses struck a chord with many millions of country folk. They saw reflections of classic ideas of their strong granny women who raised the families and kept everything on track.
We need more of them. If there were more hardcore granny folk like this on duty, you wouldn't have half the nonsense that's going on in the world. You wouldn't have idiot kids shooting up schools, that's for sure. She'd have brought them up better than that. She sure wouldn't be bringing them up to whine and pitch and bitch every time they didn't get their way.
Also, Granny Clampett could handle the likes of some punk like Saddam Hussein. Usually, Jed would haul her off before she killed someone. This one, he'd probably just let her have at.
The Beverly Hillbillies
Beverly Hillbillies Photo Galleries
posted by Al at 10/17/2002 05:20:00 AM
Bad boys with birthdays
Couple of notorious bad boys with birthdays today:
John Rocker was born October 17, 1974. Not the most important guy around, but you got to like a rebel with his own mind. Plus, he got a tremendous LOT of crap for no real legitimate reason, so let's all send him out some love.
Eminem, though, HAS asked for much of the flak he's caught. On the other hand, he's a sincere artist of considerable skill and vision who has made some outstanding and REAL music.
On the third hand, Eminem turns 30 today, and he really needs to think about getting some new material. A 30 year old still carrying on about what a bitch his mother is really ain't cutting it. As OK Go puts it in the jam of the year, "Get Over It." Plus, autobiography as the basis of your art in general becomes very limiting and repetitive very fast. If any y'all gets to talk to him, direct him to Walter Rimler's book on songwriters whose work has stood the test of time, Not Fade Away. It'd do him a world of good.
posted by Al at 10/17/2002 02:13:00 AM
Second thoughts on the Cuban missile crisis
Steve Chapman has a good column today giving a basic alternative view of the Cuban missile crisis with possible ramifications for the current world situation. Perhaps President Kennedy overreacted, and brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation for no need. Were the missles in Cuba more dangerous to us than the ones they already had at home?
posted by Satan's at 10/17/2002 01:45:00 AM
October 14, 2002
All hail our hero Christopher Columbus
Hey, it's Columbus Day. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Thank Rand he did, cause there was a hell of a good continent just plain going to waste, waiting for somebody to come over and make something of it.
posted by Al at 10/14/2002 09:16:00 PM
October 13, 2002
Screw the queen, God save Maggie
Margaret Thatcher was born October 13, 1925. Britain's "Iron Lady" was Prime Minister from 1979-1990. She was the best thing that's happened to that country since Winston Churchill. Happy # 77!
Margaret Thatcher Images 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
posted by Al at 10/13/2002 10:45:00 AM
We're not old. God is old.
Paul Simon was born October 13, 1942 Happy number 60!
He has really maintained his artistic credibility, even momentum throughout a long career, which almost no other rock era musician has done. His quality control has been outstanding; you can't go wrong buying a Paul Simon album. They're all good, and most of them are absolutely GREAT.
If you have any sense, you already have a couple of copies of everything Simon and Garfunkel related, and probably three copies of Graceland. Looking for something to expand your Paul Simon universe, try The Capeman, made up of songs from his Broadway musical. Fascinating experiment, outstanding songs, and quite different from anything else in the catalog.
For his 60th birthday, let's conclude with a some appropriate lines from "Old," his excellent Buddy Holly styled song from his most recent album.
The human race has walked the earth for 2.7 million
And we estimate the universe about 13-14 billion
When all these numbers tumble into your imagination
Consider that the lord was there before creation
God is old
We're not old
God is old
He made the mold
Take your clothes off
Adam and Eve
posted by Al at 10/13/2002 10:45:00 AM
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