Coyotebanjo

"The Office" (workstation series) 101 (facin'-up edition)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:13:06 -0500

Some days it's hard to face-up to the work you know you need to do. It can be a personnel issue--where you have to promulgate a decision made by superiors, which you know is unfair and to which you're opposed, but which is beyond your control. It can be a subordinates issue--when you have to give a student a piece of news that s/he doesn't want and won't like. It can be a "do what's good for you whether you like it or not" issue--like taxes or grant writing.

But it can also be work that you really want to do, really believe in, have been really excited about, but upon which you've recently gotten burned. This is particularly true if it's your own scholarly or creative work, once it's out there in the world of assessments, editors, and outside readers. No matter how competent--or autonomous--the typical academic may be, in terms of her/his daily duties, responsibilities to students and colleagues, income, lifestyle, and so on: when it's time to send out a recording, a composition, or a draft, there's still a tinge (or more than a tinge) of Ralphie turning in his theme to the teacher, and a similar sense of vulnerability. It's really, truly out of your control, and--especially given the invulnerable anonymity enjoyed by outside readers for academic presses--the righteous potential for getting burned. And if you don't get burned unfairly, even apt and fair critique can leave you feeling a little bruised.

The body's natural inclination, upon such injury, is to leave it alone--to avoid touching the sore spot, because you're convinced that even a slight contact is going to hurt as bad as the initial impact. This is not physiologically accurate, but it's a pretty-much involuntary and visceral animal/body reaction.

The problem is that this does not get you past it. Avoidance is visceral and animal and understandable--and the more we avoid prodding the bruise, the longer it takes us to realize that it doesn't hurt anymore. Perspective--usually provided by chronological distance--helps this realization. The great Tibetan teacher Pema Chodron says we should actually welcome this painful spots we want to avoid--as she puts it, we should "lean into the sharp place", the places that prick at us and tempt us to avoid them. Avoidance is like denial: it's instinctive but counterproductive. It puts us on the level of responding mindlessly and it doesn't help us cope, or learn to cope, with disappointment. Facing these things--understanding that you can make conscious choices about how you process a painful experience, rather than just dumbly avoiding--is a learning process.

So to today's topic: the first day I've had the clear space, and the mental/emotional energy, to face up to the guts of the minstrelsy manuscript. This was the MS that I sent in around Dec 15 07, on the request of the university publisher, for consideration as part of their impress on American music. In the event, the editor took care and consideration in assigning the sample chapters to outside readers, and it took a while to get their responses. Along about May 15, I had a long conversation with the editor, on the basis of the readers' responses: one brief and effusively positive; one very long and, while proving detailed criticism, essentially optimistic; one of medium length and, as far as I can tell, essentially offended at the premises.

It's incredibly difficult (for me, anyway) to avoid getting defensive and then angry when some jamoke seems to have intentionally misread a MS, seemingly specifically in order to dismiss it. But, one thing that maturity teaches you, and which dealing with a bureaucracy drives home, is not to respond half-cocked. What I wanted to do was write a lengthy and nasty rebuttal to Reader #3 and post forthwith. I've learned that this is not only tactically unsound, but also a faulty psychological strategy: you are not going to feel the same way about the disappointment, after 72 hours, as you do five minutes after getting the bad news.

In the event, after receiving the reader responses, I rang the editor, and asked if we could converse about those responses around a week later. That latter was a very positive conversation, during which she said "well, there's really no reason that we would have to even involve Reader #3 in the assessment of the full manuscript." This was some kind of vindication, not least because she went on to reiterate to me how much she wanted the MS for the series. Though I'd spent 72 hours ranting to myself, and wanting to punch walls, it was a very good thing that I had waited--and that I know myself enough to know that I'm going to feel more optimistic after 72 hours than after five minutes. The editor closed the conversation by thanking me for "being so receptive to the Readers' comments." I didn't feel receptive, that's for sure, but it was a good reminder of the fact that, in a professional situation, what matters is what you do--not what you feel. Yes, you want to know if you're pissed-off and resentful about somebody else's professional decision--but you do not want to respond from that place.

The net result is that, after summer's crazy-busy first-half, and striving to keep punching at extensive other writing projects, today was the day I sucked it up and opened the minstrelsy project files.

And you know what? There is a lot of good shit in there--but the work I've been doing on related projects has substantially impacted (I think enriched) my grasp of the MS. Now I want to rewrite the two sample chapters, because things I intuited, or didn't even recognize, are now much more concrete, realistic, defensible, and original. Getting bruised by two detailed sets of responses--one of them accurate and apt--may have sucked at the time, but the distance, perspective, and additional work I can bring to the material 7 months later mean that the final result will be much better. And that my own confidence in that material will be much stronger--now I know (rather than just intuiting) that Reader #3 is way out of line, and that the material holds water: that it is as original and solid and valuable as I formerly inferred.

Patience is a valuable thing.

Karl Rove's day is past

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:33:59 -0500

Watching the masterpiece O Brother Where Art Thou? again and noticing, again, how much the tin-pot sub-Huey Long demagogue Homer P Stokes (played for laughs and ridden out of town on a rail, pelted with rotten vegetables) looks like Karl Rove.

"Is you is or is you ain't my constiuency?"

Not anymore, you fucking direct-mail Goebbels. Not any more.

My America

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:31:34 -0500

Goodbye Danny. Thank you for your great effort.

Suzuki Roshi died of cancer in 1971. When Zen masters die we like to think they will say something very inspiring as they are about to bite the Big Emptiness, something like "Hi-ho Silver!" or "Remember to wake up" or "Life is everlasting." Right before Suzuki Roshi's death, Katagiri Roshi, an old friend, visited him. Katagiri stood by the bedside; Suzuki looked up and said, "I don't want to die." That simple. He was who he was and said plainly what he felt in the moment. Katagiri bowed. "Thank you for your great effort."⁽¹⁾

Lead, follow, or get out of the way --Sam Adams

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:12:00 -0500

You're toast, junior. You're going to leave office in Jan 09 and they're going to indict you for war crimes.

Bush II at Monticello--which is an obscenity in and of itself.

"The Office" (workstation series) 100 (Independence Day edition)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:17:01 -0500

Coffeehouse "listening" session last night; old buddy Coop on flute and myself on bouzouki. I really like that duet Irish situation, where I'm the only accompanist, because it provides an absolutely huge palette of choices: I can play a lot or a little, play soft or loud, thick or sparse, reharmonize at will, and so on. I like the way I wind up playing in those situations.

But I fucking hate the contemporary audience's inability to grok that live music ought to elicit a different response than canned music. It's not that they are inherently less-considerate people, but rather that they simply don't grasp that there are live bodies up there making those sounds, and that they might want to tear themselves away from the text-messaging and gossiping and incessant narcissistic self-photography and so on. My buddy Roger Landes, very wisely, has a precept that says he won't take a "listening" gig in any space where they typically play recorded music: he believes that people who regularly come to a space with canned music will have learned a bunch of oblivion-behaviors that make it impossible for them to grasp that, on this particular night, something different is happening--and is called for. I, on the other hand, still take gigs in such spaces, and then (absurdly) get pissed when people behave in an entirely normative way.

So with last night: roomful of posing high-school kids (I have to struggle to remember that, for most people, high school is precisely where they have to figure out who they are going to be as adults, and as a result, many spend most of their high-school time trying out personae, and assessing the external reactions to those variants); large table-ful of kids being led in some kind of Bible study session by a coach-type (as Coop says, "St Matthew says you should pray in privacy, in a closet inside your house with the shutters drawn, and he knew Jesus; why the fuck do these people think they 'supposed' to pray in public?"). We play here because, as with our session pub, though the clientele can be clueless, management is incredibly supportive, appreciative, and respectful. It would be nicer if the clientele was too, but it's hard to blow off management who are this nice. But the posing and the chattering and the just-plain flat obliviousness to their surroundings really get to me.

I have a very short fuse when I'm leading a gig. 25 years ago, I would get snotty with band-mates (Dharmonia can attest to the fact that I was hell-on-wheels as a bandleader in the 1980s). With the advent of many years and just the slightest bit more maturity, I've learned not to take it out on people, and, in fact, to be reasonably charming and easy-going in manner on the gig. This is not however because I actually am "charming and easy-going," but because I've learned to project that in preference to the dismissive short-fused behavior of three decades ago.

But I still have a very short fuse, and very small incidents of what I perceive to be inconsiderate behavior from audience members can evoke absolutely towering rage (see my recollections of policing the room at the old Idler in Harvard Square during Dean Magraw's gigs). I've tried to figure out why this is, and I think I actually know why. Realistically or not, enittled or not, I have a tendency to perceive those spaces in which music occurs as sacred spaces; at least for the duration of the performance, when it's working right, the music actually creates the possibility of an alternate, better mode of consciousness. Many musics know this: African-American gospel, Bach's Masses, Pakistani Qawwali, and thousands of other music idioms were created and are maintained because they make an alternate universe of experience possible, at least for the duration of the performance. Certainly some of my own most transformative experiences have happened to me during, and because of, a musical performance.

That's also what I try to create when I play music: at least the possibility, for whichever members of the audience might understand or intuit same, of a transformative experience: something that will take you right out of your body and show you the possibility of an entirely different way to experience the world and other people. I go way the fuck out of my way to try to do that: in terms of sequencing tunes, in terms of involving other players and the audience, in terms of what's said or done, how people speak or move, how we respond to feedback from the audience and so on. When it's a formal setting (concert hall or theatre) you have a lot more control: lights and sets and start-time and so on: in fact, I'd argue that this is one of the great afflictions of 19th/20th century concert music: composers (only slightly down the hierarchy of creation from God, and substantially higher up the scale from the conductors whose existence composers reluctantly acknowledge) were so obsessive about control, critics were so dependent upon an odor of superhuman Greatness, that they conspired to take everything away from the audience.

But I'm a jazz and roots musician and I was raised up to make things happen for an audience, with the audience's participation. The problem is that, to make such things happen, the audience has to get it, if not to the same extent then at least in the same experiential universe and values-system that the musicians are occupying. When you're dealing with an audience who don't know this and are barely conscious that it might exist, then you're already fighting an uphill battle.

Which is why so many of our gigs demand audience education--teaching people (usually by demonstration and example) about what the music can provide, if they engage and respond. Mostly you have to do it implicitly. At the Celtic Christmas, almost all of the staging directions, lighting, programming, pacing, and so on, are set up to create a sense of the circle around the croft fire at the show's opening, and the experience, for the audience over the whole course of the show, of that same circle getting bigger and bigger and bigger, until it encompasses everyone present. Mostly it works. But it's a hell of a lot harder to accomplish when you control almost none of the parameters.

I have a standing joke with my students that, in "my parallel universe, musicians drink for free." That sounds like an aphorism, but I'm deadly serious: we don't set up gigs where we, or any of the participating musicians, have to pay for their booze. Drinking or eating for free, even absent any cash changing hands, in exchange for playing music, takes us back way before Romanticism, out of the modern world, back before the Industrial Revolution, to the places where the music began: the fireplace, the campfire, and the sacred circle. And when people in an audience don't get that, it really chaps my ass. And when the Bible-study leader decides to stand up and fake his way through a couple of faux-Riverdance steps, I have deeply unholy reactions.

So here's my parallel Universe, and the real Independence Day celebration, and the real American heroes, in that universe:

Where the marching band is Jim Reese Europe's 369th Hellfighters Band, sashaying down the streets of Harlem, playing charts by Charles Ives, with Charley's beloved-but-died-too-young father George, the youngest bandleader in the Civil War, trades off the baton with Lt. Europe, with James Brown as the drum-major, with banners heralding Peace and Freedom and Justice flying at the head; and marching in the van are all the boys who didn't have to die in America's contemptible elective imperial wars;

with a picnic on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, where Buddy Bolden, healed from the "madness" that was the only possible to the insanity of Jim Crow, trades trumpet licks with Clifford Brown, who walked away from the car wreck miraculously unscathed, and Janis, with a man who loves her and a church family that supports her, kisses Jimi and congratulates him on a fair record deal, and Bessie Smith, the Queen of the Blues, donates her royalties to a charity hospital for poor people;

and Blind Willie Johnson asks the blessing, and Gary Davis sight-reads the hymns, and Duane Allman and Charlie Christian trade choruses on the offertory while their grand-babies pass the paper plates, and Bird and Trane and Dolphy and Ayler man the horn section, and Fela and Miles swap licks and each agrees that the other is the greatest player;

and Zappa gives the patriotic address, and Bo and Mr Jelly Roll and Mongo and Lemon and Robert Johnson compare their versions of the hambone and argue good-naturedly (while the beer never runs out) about whose is better;

and there's corn and slaw and pickles and peach pie and mashed spuds and sweet tea and pulled pork and barbecue and Hebrew National hotdogs and fried chicken, but no animals ever had to die to provide them, and Tom Binkley approves the hummus and dandles his grandkids on his knee,

and my father is there, sober and happy, sketching the scene,

and saying "just lemonade, thanks."

I will work until I die to help make this nation more what it could be.

Lamest of lame ducks: meet The Shrub

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:34:16 -0500

Allies Worry About President's Schedule

Some of President Bush's allies tell the Political Bulletin they are embarrassed and angry that the White House seems to be wasting Bush's time on frivolous events when much of the country is suffering through economic hard times. "Look at the schedule for Monday," says an outside Bush adviser. "A highlight of his day was witnessing a tee ball game. ... He is being reduced to child's play."

Well, we already know that Big Boy baseball is too hard for him.

"The Office" (workstation series) 099 (blue-collar edition), and Fuzzy People 35

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:39:29 -0500

I worked in the trades for a number of years: oilfield blowout-preventer mechanic and framing carpenter principally. I worked some other blue-collar gigs as well: janitor, restaurant line-cook, grocery-store bag-boy. Some quasi cubicle-drone gigs: administrative assistant, data-entry operator. Some quasi-white-collar gigs: bookstore manager and guitar-studio manager. I've had a job since the age of 12 (still remember the parental tantrum that made it clear that I wasn't going to be able to engage in any cost-intensive sport if I didn't earn the money for same) and I've got no doubts about my work ethic.

But if you're someone of a certain age, upbringing, occupation, and/or set of political convictions, having people working for you brings up some ambivalence. Currently, Dharmonia and I have a "yard guy" who comes twice a month and a "house-cleaner" who does the same. In both cases, we pay somebody else their asking rate (plus an across-the-board +15% "respect" bonus) to do something, faster and better, than we could do ourselves. If it's a question of me spending 2 hours wrestling with a lawnmower--and doing a bad job with it--or 2 hours writing an article, the latter is both (a) probably more lucrative and (b) a better use of our respective skills.

On top of that, this month we have a contractor in doing some renovations (rescuing a garage--an essential appurtenance in this golf-ball-sized-hail-prone climate), adding some french doors and a sun tunnel in the house. This is a guy we've used for several years, off-and-on, to do "quality of life and property value" upgrades (my brother, a really bright guy with a good deal of practical sense about his own wealth, says "you should prioritize those renovations that will either add to your quality-of-life or the value of the house--and you should really prioritize those that do both"). He does great work, at a good price, and he's got a hell of a lot better design-sense and sense of practicality than either of us do. If we come up with an idea, and he says, "You don't want to do it that way; do it this way instead," we pay attention.

But--White Guilt: having a black or brown or blue-collar person coming to work on your house on an hourly wage, doing stuff (house-cleaning, yardwork, renovations--remember, I used to frame houses) that you could do yourself--poorly, but cheaper--is likely to evoke certain levels of ambivalence. Or White Guilt.

I've played music for hire for decades, and I can say that I have been treated best by people at one or the other end of the economic spectrum: either the poor folks (Portuguese fishermen's weddings in Gloucester, MA, where the groom's dad would set aside a special table for the musicians: "you guys got enough to drink? Is the food OK? Y'know, I had an uncle who played music, and I really admired him"; Irish tunes in Mexican mariachi restaurants in the Southwest, where the response is "hey, ese, slow down! Damn you guys play a lot of notes"--much laughter) or the richest folks (house parties for White Russians--Romanovs--who moved to the States and married rich) are the ones who treat you the best. The poor folks know what it's like to work for a living--mostly, they work a hell of a lot harder than the white-collar folks--and they appreciate somebody with a special and unique skill like music. Les anciens have been hiring people to work for them for generations, and they know how to behave to them (noblesse oblige is not a fiction--it exists).

Who treats you the worst? Nouveau riches: the ones who only recently came into money, and want to make damned sure you knew it, and found your very presence distasteful (I still remember the Midland/Odessa oil wives who bitched when, in the 1979 oil bust, hubby decided they couldn't take the company jet to Neiman's-in-Dallas for the afternoon any more), and would tell you to come in the back entrance, and grimace when they had to interact with you, and act resentful when you had to remind them to pay you.

So White Guilt (wonderful punchline from an old Martin Mull routine: "But what if they weren't really from the United Negro College Fund and we never get the magazines?!?"): even though you worked your ass off for literally decades to get a decent-paying job in your area of aptitude, even though you have the money, even though you're paying asking-rate-plus-15%, even though they're doing the job massively better than you could, when you hire somebody to do work you could for yourself, you--or, OK, I--still think "jeez, what the hell kind of a bourgeois asshole have I become?"

The contractors and household help aren't thinking that: they don't give a shit about your White Guilt except insofar as they might have to deal with some kind of weird over-compensatory nastiness (note: when the contractor or yard-guy or house-cleaner decline the offer of a house-key "for convenience's sake", it's not because it wouldn't be more convenient--it's because they've seen Liberal White Folks regress to some nasty shit when something turned up missing). the reality is that all anybody wants out of an equitable services-for-hire contract is a fair (OK, maybe high-end) price and decent treatment, and that the client keep all the weird-ass guilt-and-compensation shit out of the equation. So, as the client, how do you convey respect, and keep your own White Guilt out of the exchange?

Well, you treat people like peers--recognizing that the contractor's ability to re-roof a house tight and swift, so it won't leak at all, is as valuable and practical a skill as your ability to craft a lecture or a lesson plan; you say "Good Morning" and offer coffee or "Have a good night" and offer a beer; you engage with people as people, asking after their families and kids; you back the fuck off your own timetable (nothing is dumber than to bitch-out a contractor, who is working to a quoted price, about the number of hours it's taking--the only person who ought to care about that is him, and trying to bring the job in at cost in the fewest number of hours); and, when you can be constructive about it rather than just being a pest who's getting the way, you pitch in next to them, and haul trash or sweep up. Most importantly, you recognize that, in the hierarchy of skills, the most useful thing you can typically do is stay the fuck out of the way, and be appreciative of the caliber of the work they're doing.

If you do it right, and you just put your White Guilt to rest, abandon the Liberal "What do they think of me?" neurosis, and engage with what those other people working for you can actually use, then, over the course of three days, you have a plumber, a contractor, and a yard-guy, who, in taking the coffee, or the iced tea, or the beer, all three say "Thank you, brother."

You got that right.

Below the jump: Mister Man snoozes.

Thanks to the Rev for the "fuzzy people" appellation.

Open up another can...

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:50:16 -0500

...of ass-whuppin', because McCain is toast:

Shake Up At Top Of McCain Campaign:

Steve Schmidt is taking over the day-to-day operation of John McCain's campaign, according to multiple campaign sources. At a staff meeting in the campaign's Arlington, Va., headquarters this morning, campaign manager Rick Davis made the announcement about Schmidt's new role. Schmidt, a bald and barrel-chested operative known for his aggressive brand of political combat, responded by exhorting campaign aides with a speech that one staffer likened to a locker room pep talk out of the football movie "Rudy."

'Cept this ain't Hollywood.

"The Office" (workstation series) 098 (samsara edition)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:27:35 -0500

To conflate two aphorisms: some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear shits in the woods. Some days the world is at pains to confirm the wisdom of the First Noble Truth: that life is, inescapably, filled with suffering (dukka). To be born, to live, is to commit to suffering. For me, one of the greatest sanities in Buddhism is the unblinking recognition of this: suffering is not, at its fundamental root, due to "sin" (Original or otherwise), but rather to the ignorant attempt to deny this Noble Truth. If we try to avoid suffering--if, even worse, we mistake the causes of suffering, attributing it to guilt, or sin, or "ungodliness", then we increase suffering .

You visit cities in China in which, as buddy Coop points out, "there's not a square meter that's not either under construction or under cultivation," cities where 'most everyone subsists on a tenth of the material possessions and a quarter of the living space of the "average" American, and, by anecdotal observation, works about twice as hard and has about 1/3 the body fat. Places where you literally can't see more than 5 blocks because of the air pollution. Because "environmentalism," in the modern world, is a luxury for First-Worlders--poor people around the world are still just trying to find enough to eat and clean water to drink. And this is the nation that, due to the and incompetence of the American presidency, now owns (and will continue to own) most of our credit: we're not going to get to dictate environmental policy to the Chinese. Or the Russians. Or the Saudis. No matter how much cartoonish sabre-rattling the war criminal in the White House engages in: they own our fat asses.

There's a spot in the South Pacific which consists of a giant, swirling island of accumulating plastic, the final, deadly detritus of our addiction to fossil fuels. There will be no polar ice cap within fifty years. Polar bears, running out of living space, are drowning. Or swimming to Ireland, where the fucking gardai shoot them for fun. T. Boone Pickens is quickly developing a monopoly on clean water in the American West, because, as he admits himself, the way to get ahead in America is to figure out whatever non-renewable resource is next to run out--and to buy that. The Bush Mafia family bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay for the same reason, because, until a leftist government just got in, Paraguay had no extradition--which is why Nazis fled (and flee) there.

Reading today about the emigration of potato Famine refugees from the Lansdown estates in Kerry to Five Points in New York, and the scope of suffering that they both left, and traveled with, because the factor Trench who was charged with managing their emigration cut corners everywhere he could in order to pocket the difference. Was re-reading yesterday Thomas Berger's great Little Big Man, about the only white man who survived Greasy Grass because having being raised by Cheyenne--and about the greed, suffering, and stupidity which caused the '76 Sioux Rebellion. Last night talking with buddy Coop about Lubbock's burgeoning homeless problem, and the Town Fathers' typical reaction (confiscate their shopping carts and sleeping bags and tell them they have to "get off the street"). And then caught a fragment of Fernando Meirelles's great version of John le Carre's The Constant Gardener, a quasi-documentary thriller about the complicity of international governments and pharmaceuticals in the continued genocide and exploitation of Africa; as le Carre says "By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard." Even filming the story was so harrowing for the cast and crew (Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz leading) that they created an NGO to at least address the suffering of those they met. The wheel of fortune turns and turns again and the poor and powerless are always, again and again and again, ground into dust by the wealthy and powerful.

Suffering is real. No-one escapes suffering and suffering will never end. Refusing to accept that First Noble Truth is precisely the cause of suffering's continuation (the Second Truth says "the cause of suffering is desire"; I would add "the cause of suffering is the desire to avoid suffering"). We have to accept that suffering is real. That we are probably environmentally doomed. That children and animals will be tortured, starved, neglected, and exploited for the gratification, adornment, or luxury of the rich. The wheel of samsara will never end.

But, as Sokei-an said about Buddhism in America, "you must hold the lotus to the rock, until such time as it should take root." As one of our own great teachers said, "You have to show up for the impossible."

More: in this generation, we have to show up for the apocalypse. As the world crumbles and suffering logarithmically increases, through greed, ignorance, and delusion, you have to take one positive action.

Because the only alternative is surrender.
----------------
Now playing: Chumbawamba - Song on the Times
via FoxyTunes

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:56:37 -0500

...for all the shit he's caused:

San Francisco may name sewage treatment plant after Bush

FZ said it best:

Matt Groening: So how do you oppose these guys?

Frank Zappa: You want to know what they hate more than anything else in life? They can't stand for people not to take them seriously. If you laugh at them for an instant, it's just like - the devil walks in the room, right? And he goes, "I'm the Devil," and you take a fork and poke him in the belly, and the gas comes out, and he'll go twirling around the room like an unleashed balloon. That's the way these guys are. You can't laugh at them. They hate it, because they're so full of shit, they're so full of themselves that they just can't believe that people don't appreciate them for the grand, highly evolved creatures that they imagine themselves to be. They hate to be laughed at. If they weren't so fucking dangerous, it would be fun to laugh at them all the time, but sometimes you have to take into account how much damage they can do.

Here's a photo.

San Franciscans can sign the petition; democracy in action!

[h/t to Coop for the referral]

"The Office" (workstation series) 097 (observation and experience edition), and Fuzzy People 34

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:04:51 -0500

I learned a long time ago--and continue to be reminded--of the tremendous egocentricity that being a "scholar", and, especially, being a college professor can bring. You spend most of your time engaging very intensely with subjects you've had years to study, think about, and with which to develop expertise, and don't have to spend a lot of time with things you don't know about, and you derive a decent income and very flexible work circumstances from imparting this expertise to young people who, by very virtue of the university dynamic, have neither the knowledge nor the power that you do. It becomes very easy to indulge oneself with a degree of pontification, or what old friend Quantzalcoatl calls "fog and pomposity." You don't very often get questioned on very egalitarian terms, and when you do, typically by a colleague, the lack of overlap between your areas of expertise can make for mutual incomprehension. And when you screw up--particularly if you are tenured--there are almost no concrete consequences: you don't lose your job for "having an unproductive quarter," or for making bad command decisions, or for engaging in the most ridiculously impractical committee decisions, and so on. For academics, about the only criteria for putting forth the vast additional effort that makes the difference between "Meets Expectations" and "Exceeds Expectations" pretty much has to be internally-n, because there are few externals that have much impact. This can lead to situations that make adminstrators tear out their hair, and to the general public propogating ill-informed prejudices about academics in "ivory towers" (which is horseshit--academics are some of the hardest-working, most idealistic people I know: who takes a job like this because of the money?!?).

But it also reminds me of the importance of self-reflection and a good deal of self-debunking. So when somebody asks my advice (give a musicologist a platform to hold forth, and s/he will), I try to always remember to preface that advice with the proviso "In my observation and experience..."

It is so easy to think that, because people constantly ask your advice and follow it, that you know about more different topics than you do, or that your experience or opinions can be vastly overgeneralized to reflect those of most persons, when in fact they mostly reflect your own, (as an academic) rather isolated or unique experience. Any expert--academic, corporate, legal, medical, and so on--is prety to this kind of hubris: you make analyses and take decisions based upon very detailed and extensive knowledge and experience, and (in some cases) those decisions and advice can have a very profound impact on peoples' lives. It is very easy to generalize that, because you can provide sound, expert advice in one topic area, you are therefore more intellectually/analytically able in many topic areas: that somehow, "knowing how to think" can trump a lack of factual data and experience in areas you don't otherwise know about.

This is a major risk and a bad mistake, and it's one reason when, asked for advice or feedback, I will tend to preface with "In my observation and experience..."--it's a reminder to both the other person and myself that my advice is ultimately, like that of every other human, limited by what I know, have seen, or have experienced.

It is easier to remember and to be convinced of the importance of this disclaimer/proviso when you have experienced a lot. It is harder to do this if you have not had the opportunity to experience very much. My particular clientele tends to include a large percentage of young people between the ages of, say 17 and 25. It is only to be expected--and hoped!--that such young people will not yet have experienced some of the events that greater years make inevitable: death, injury, the loss of love, the cycles of joy and sorrow. For example: it's not uncommon that, between the ages of 17 and 25, a young person might experience the death of a grandparent, or a loved one of the grandparent's generation. One hopes that this particular experience will not have happened earlier (e.g., "too soon"), and so as a teacher one tries to help a young person experiencing such a loss for the first time to cope with it. Age does not of itself confer any additional knowledge, insight, analytical ability, or wisdom. But age--sheer accumulation of years--can provide wise insight if you pay attention to what has happened to you. If you have experienced certain life situations or opportunities, but only understood their implications or impact in hindsight, you can still apply those lessons when analogous situations recur.

It's true that way with joyful experiences as well. At the age of 17, I met a remarkable group of people who were involved with the first startup of the "Freshman Year Program" at the New School. They were the right people at the right time for me, and it absolutely transformed my life. I had hated my high-school years-not least because I broadcast to my contemporaries how much I was hating the experience--and that 10 months in '76-'77 on the Lower East Side were absolutely transformative. It happened for Dharmonia and me again at the Guitar Workshop around 1980-81. It happened for us again at Tom Binkley's Early Music Institute around 1988-89. It happened again--and again and again and again--at Zoukfest.

After enough years, even the dumbest, most egocentric, most in-love-with-the-sound-of-his-own-voice musicologist (that would be...uh...me) realizes that magical, joyful, inspiring times end. And, with some age and some hindsight and some reflection and, maybe, belated and reluctant "wisdom", you learn to recognize those times as they're happening, maybe even before they end. Your "observation and experience" tells you, "hey, Dim-O: pay attention here: this is another one of those situations."

And that's when gratitude begins. It's why, again and again and again, in these pages I talk about love;, which comes when you gain a little bit of observation, and perspective, and experience, and the ability to step outside both yourself and your expectations, and you realize that it's worth driving 840 miles round-trip in 48 hours, to play three hours of music and break bread with friends.

Below the jump: Sally, reminding us that, even if we were sleeping in Chipper & Kim's guest room (the "Guitarchive"), the bed still belongs to her.

Thanks to the Rev the "fuzzy people" appellation.

Shortie

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:03:52 -0500

Nice pub session tonight--always nice when there's a bunch of friends in the house, and we can observe a few anniversaries. In about 9 hours we leave to drive 6 hours for another session, followed by about 9 hours return on Sunday. Worth it, for the companionship.

Chris Bowers is my hero

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:50:31 -0500

He's a brilliant numbers and analysis wonk, but he can also turn a phrase (or a 'graf) about the fear-world that hard-core conservatives want everyone to live in:

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

"The Office" (workstation series) 096 (punching the clock edition)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:53:46 -0500

For at least 21 or 22 years--at the very least, since Dharmonia and I first moved to Bloomington for graduate school--I have sought regular gigs: weekly, monthly, whatever (cue the old joke about the accordion band, re-hired after the last set for "next year's New Year's", who say "Can we just leave our gear set up?"). This is in keeping with my general preference to set up schedules and more-or-less standard procedures for everything from cooking to building a website to building a lecture to working-out a concert program: my brain just works better if I'm not constantly reinventing the methods by which I get stuff done: by working out a standard system, I obviate the necessity of having to think up a new one at every iteration. So whether I'm making guacamole or framing a wall, creating a podcast or packing a car full of instruments, I tend to follow the same procedures. And when I'm learning a new skill--whether it's rendering a recipe or a piece of software, the big watershed is when I can go "off the book" and follow the process from memory. A standard procedure speeds up the moment this watershed appears--even when it's things I don't want to do (the elliptical comes to mind), doing things the same way at the same time of day increases the odds that they'll get done.

I've written before about the other merits of this approach: the way that it reconnects us to older ways of knowing, the way it shifts the focus from the abstract/imagined end-result and toward the process of making, the way--certainly in a musical situation--that it gets our noses out of the score and into the communicative dynamic between the players. A regular gig has a lot of the same merits: knowing you have to be there every week constructively removes the whiney five-year-old "but I don't feel like it!" soundtrack in your head. It's a lot easier to be productive if you recognize that the line between "do or don't do" has fuck-all to do with "want to." It's like having a workout partner who'll nag you if you don't show up: you're going to be there because people are expecting you to be there.

And, it's a very useful way to move incrementally toward longer-term goals. At least 4 years ago, I decided that I wanted to get some of my acoustic-blues/roots chops back. I knew that, given the demands of my day job, exercise, research & creative activity, and the fact that I was teaching and playing Irish trad music at least 4 days a week (and continuing to try to build my own skills--to be perfectly honest--to a world-class level in that music), any recovery of blues chops was going to have to go slowly and gradually. Which in turn meant that I needed some kind of regular situation that would keep me working at it: not the 2 hours/day I try for with the principal music, maybe not even every day--but some kind of schedule that would rebuild the blues thing.

So, when we were offered a Thursday-night regular gig at a coffeeshop in town (along with the Friday pub session, and the Saturday teaching session, and the Sunday night rehearsal), I took it, but proposed that we trade off, week-by-week, between Irish trad music and blues. Trad night would be Dharmonia, buddy Steve (flute) and myself, plus whoever we invited, but blues night would be the "Juke Band"--umbrella term for myself and fiddle, second guitar, percussion or whatever else. I'll play National steel or mandolin, and it's around my own versions of things that the other players fall in.

It's been interesting to revisit these repertoires--these specific songs--many of which I at least first heard, if not learned, literally 30 years ago, from my great heroes Martin Grosswendt, Geoff Bartley, Bob Franke, Paul Rishell, Spider John Koerner, and Paul Geremia. However, I make a conscious effort to avoid the approach I tried to employ all those years ago, of copping exactly the arrangements and versions of those players' I admired--great though I still think they are.

Instead, I try to treat them more like "folksongs"--as songs I know, have heard for years, used to play, but which I'm now going to play the way that I hear and play them now. This has advantages: it helps me rediscover these things, rather than trying to "recreate" them; it keeps things loose and improvisational and lets me lead the other players through versions; and finally, I think it takes me closer to the way that some of the first-generation acoustic blues guys played. A second-generation acoustic bluesman like Robert Johnson was demonstrably borrowing, imitating, and elaborating the songs and arrangements he learned, and when he recorded in '36 and '37, he was quite consciously creating set-pieces that were specifically (and brilliantly) tailored for the short duration of the 78-rpm record.

But the first generation players, like Charlie Patton, Willie Brown, and Henry Thomas, were much more concerned with being able to hold down a groove and blast out enough volume, while maintaining his stamina for 4 or 5 or 6 hours in a juke joint. Those guys were not so involved with elaborate set-pieces; they were more concerned with creating an environment in which the drinking and dicing and dancing could go on along with the music. I'm pretty-well convinced that they improvised a lot, just riding that groove (and, in Patton's case anyway, drank a lot of free booze and sneaked away with other people's women).

Playing a lot, on a regular basis, and especially (or even if) the audience isn't paying much attention, is a really good workshop.

"The Office" (workstation series) 095 (fine-tuning the focus edition)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:48:10 -0500

I write this blog for a number of reasons, almost none of which were clear when I began it--that was more a product of blind fury at the criminality of the incompetent buffoons and greed-poisoned CEOs in the Bush Administration. After about a year of posting that was, I belatedly realized, entirely too angry, too reactive, and too redundant compared to the genius of various other bloggers, I decided to shift the tone and consciously hone in on specific targets (see the Blooger Personal Inventory in the side-bar for a more detailed exegesis). That enumeration of topics (see the banner above for the keywords) brought things much more into focus.

But what really finalized the focus, I think, was arriving at a conception of the target audience for whom I thought I was writing. That is not to say that other individuals and groups might not find the thing useful--at least I hope so--but that, as a writer and a coach of writing, I knew that I could further focus by having a reasonably clear visualization of who the writing was targeting. I realized that I might have most tangible, conscious, intentional, insightful things to say about the day-to-day craft of being a public intellectual: in the classroom, in the public prints, in scholarly research and publication, and in the fora of public opinion; that is, the stuff I do every day. That in turn suggested that the potential audiences might include those for whom this information and commentary might be engaging, educational, or useful: fellow educators; others working at the nexus of education, public policy, and political/community activism; a circle of friends and contemporaries with whom I share some past history; and, perhaps most important to me personally, those who might describe themselves as my students: graduate students, junior contemporaries, and so on.

I don't worry too much about who might read this blog--if I were worried about that, or the nefarious or vindictive purposes to which someone might put that information, or if I were not yet tenured, I would maintain a far higher level of anonymity (my current benchmark is essentially "minimal deniability by my employers"). But I definitely think about who I hope reads the blog, and that is those who might benefit by whatever experience, observation, and insights I can bring to bear.

That's the genesis for several of the principle themes: the theme of "how do you be a public intellectual committed to major socio-political change, and also keep your job?" (the "radical politics" tags); the theme of "how do you maintain some kind of a research identity and work-stream while also being a teaching professor?" (the "Office" series); the theme of "how does it actually work, day-after-day, teaching your way through an academic year or semester?" (the "In the trenches" series).

I learned, long before I was able to so articulate the insight, that my highest level of centered satisfaction came from a life that involved a healthy combination of teaching, playing, and creative activity. I learned to articulate that as "make sure, each day, that you make something and that you teach something." Those are necessarily defined very broadly: consider myself to be "making something", whether it's a radio program, a lecture, a pub session, a tune, a blog post, a scholarly article, a transcription, or a meal, and consider myself to be "teaching something" if it's a lesson, a class, or, again and overlapping, a radio program or (certain) blog posts.

Some colleagues and close friends rib me about it: "Oh, jeez, there he goes teaching somebody something again" (I heard this more than once in China), and I recognize that there are myriad social interactions in which the pedagogical impulse just needs to be shut off. That's usually when I shift to "making" as opposed to "teaching".

But these/those are the ways that I create human value in the world. It's how I give back.

Being a teacher, then--in the medium of the classroom, teaching studio, radio program, or, hell, even a thinly-anonymized blog--feels to me like an enormous gift. I am privileged beyond measure that the Universe permits me to do this.

"The Office" (workstation series) 094 ("Is it Summer yet?" edition) and, Fuzzy People 33

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:56:54 -0500

Finally into the saddle--I hope!--for the summer's work, and the damned thing is half over. I've been pecking away at writing projects (described below) on half-days here and there, ever since school let out May 7, but there have been so many big-chunk away days that I haven't been able to get much into the groove. Or, as Steinbeck put it, "squirmed down into the writing chair."

Here's what the past 5 weeks brought:

May 5-9: final exams, final grades, inevitable hysteria by Those who Had Not Done What They Ought to Have Done;

May 9-16: prep for China trip; try to bang out some writing; meet with students working on summer projects; write recommendations referrals job-tasks etc; yard-work and home-improvements; woodshed and try to get my chops up

May 17-29: China tour with friend's university wind ensemble; 4 concerts in 10 days (immediately following the 3 days of Official Mourning for the eighty-thousand people estimated to have died in the Szechuan earthquakes); hard-traveling at times, to be documented in Dharmonia's trip notes, but also including the Great Wall, a visit to Han Shan's Cold Mountain temple and the most astonishing Buddhist carvings I've ever seen, plus a panicked cross-city walk in Yanchou in 100-degree heat, only to be rescued by 5 youthful Chinese angels in a Smart Car, and possibly the most foul distilled liquors I've ever imbibed;

May 30-June 6: right back into the saddle in Lubbock--we made our regular pub session within 20 hours of touching down, after a 30-hour journey from Beijing (don't ever fly United airlines!!!); "First Monday" ceili dance on June 2; meet with students; paperwork paperwork paperwork; second meeting with Celtic Ensemble "Summer Band" (a very informal, off-the-cuff weekly jam-and-rehearsal session with those CE members who are in town and bored - needing - something - to - do over the summer; more on that in a subsequent post); prep for Zoukfest;

June 7-15: Zoukfest. Consistently, now, one of the high-points of our annual calendar, and reliably one of the most intense artistic, personal, and spiritual experiences I've ever had. I said it 10 years ago after ZF I in Weston MO, and it's never more true than right now. For a week, it feels a little bit like it must have felt like to be in Paris in the '20s with Joyce and Hemingway, or Harlem in 1916 with James Reese Europe, Eubie Blake and James Weldon Johnson, or San Fran in '56 at the Six Gallery Reading, or courts of the Burgundian nobility in the 15th century, or hell, even Paris in 1100 when Perotin was scribbling notes in Leonin's composition classes: you just feel lucky to be there, alive and participating at a magical time.

June 16-22: recording with old friends (bit of overlap with ZF: tenor David arrived at our house in Lubbock before we even did). Breaking our necks to live up to mentor Peter Burkholder's expectations (justifiable or not) regarding what we're capable of, in re-recording for the venerable Norton Anthology. Also rehearsing Summer Band, woodshedding on an new baby (5-string tenor guitar by GD Armstrong, more on that later too), teaching and then leading English Country Dance for colleague Susan's Kodaly teaching workshop (in a country line-dancing bar, and chased home by massive softball-sized hail). Also cranking out additional prose and student essay questions for a music appreciation text I'm co-authoring (see below).

June 23: meetings all day (meatspace and virtual) with students needing mentoring and colleagues/supervisors problem-solving for Fall 2008 semester.

But, as of today (June 24), that is about to change, for around 4 weeks: I don't have to travel again until around July 27. Dharmonia is off to Bloomington to help celebrate 10-year anniversary of old friends' and revered teachers' monastic foundation, but I've begged off--airline fuel prices being so high and the caliber of the airline experience so horrifically low. Here's the writing I'm hoping to do in the next 4 weeks--or at least get as far as I can:

Essay for a collection called Lost Colonies, on the theme of the immigrant Irish in the American South. My particular topic is the interaction of Irish and African-American performance arts (music and dance) in the riverine and maritime environments of New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston. Reading a hell of a lot on immigration and demographics in those cities, as well as the history and primary literature on canal construction (and the workers who did it) on the Old Frontiers of upstate New York and Pennsylvania, and finding out that, once again, the received history about who lived there, what work they did, and the extent of their interaction, are all dreadfully incomplete in the scholarship. This is to be expected--there are so many different possible readings of existing primary data that any solid new research question is likely to uncover new patterns not previously recognized because not previously sought. This obviously ties in with the large-scale minstrelsy project, but very usefully kills two birds with one stone by requiring that I deepen my own understanding of black-white musical interaction in other maritime/riverine areas than Long Island. Research on this one well begun.

Essay for a collection (and conference) on 16th century (e.g., "early modern") Ireland. My particular topic is on the intersection of "early modern" (e.g., Continental) and essentially medieval (e.g., Gaelic) harmonic conceptions in tunes from this period, some of the first tunes that are documented--that is, written down--in the Irish tradition. I've suspected for years that the tunes of this period, some of which are clearly organized on modal (that is, medieval church-music) harmonic principles, and others clearly on triadic (that is, post-Buxtehude/Bach) principles, reveal the collision of two different musical traditions and the working-out of their synthesis in composed melodies. This essay and conference paper are a chance to try out that hypothesis. Research on this just started, but it's one I've thought about (and experienced, as a player) a lot over the years so I don't anticipate too much trouble in cranking it out. I expect my copy of Fleischmann's Sources of Irish Traditional Music, which I snagged at an outrageous discount at the AMS meetings about 6 years ago, will get quite a workout.

Conference paper for national meetings of Society for Ethnomusicology, held in my old friend Matthew Allen's old stomping grounds of Wesleyan university. I'm on a panel exploring the uses of music to create community and contexts in the Irish Diaspora. Haven't even begun this conference text, but I've presented on my own on this topic at various conferences, and published, and I've got fifteen years practical experience at using the music for precisely this purpose, so I expect that writing to proceed pretty freely and intuitively.

Writing review questions for publisher of a new music-appreciation textbook. This is contract writing, which pays a pittance, but it's a good thing to do, both for the CV and because it helps sharpen a critical eye one can apply to one's own writing--which is never wasted investment of time.

Continuing to work on my part of the co-authored music-appreciation text for Prentice-Hall. I've been recruited as the author for "Rock" sections (not the topic I would have selected myself--I'd be more comfortable with "Jazz" or "World", but "Rock" is what they had open). It's the first time I've worked on an entire book MS with multiple authors and with a team of editors, and it's proving to be an interesting discipline, to write to order (which I've done a lot), according to another party's multiple and occasionally shifting timetables (which I've done less), and according to a working- and text-organizing-method which is not my own (which I've done very little). Have to (a) try to leave space in the daily writing schedule to respond to editorial requests and (b) refrain from feeling obligated to crank out specific items within 24 hours of their being requested. I don't like having stuff sitting on my desk's (or desktop's) "Inbox"--am much happier "clearing to empty" as the Getting Things Done folks call it--but this compulsion can work against me if I drop other stuff I'm in the middle of.

And, all of that above leaves aside the garden stone I want to lay, the 2-hours-minimum of daily practicing, the 40 daily minutes on the elliptical, and all the other stuff I "told myself" I was going to do this summer.

Gotta get to work.

Below the jump: His Highness sleeping peacefully, post-tranquillized haircut and shearing (he picks up burrs easily but will fight tooth-and-nail to avoid having the resultant mats combed or cut). Below that, the "no papparazzi please" shot. One of the things I like about cats--and you can see it in this shot--is that they're never really tamed; they are always essential feral. And if you die, they'll eat you without compunction.

I like that.

[thanks to the Rev for the "fuzzy people" appellation]

Cheating post: iTunes "most played" selection

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:33:30 -0500

I got stuff but no time to post. So, from another task I was doing, is a cheater's cut & paste post of the top 107 "most played" in this particular laptop's iTunes. Pretty much every single artist on this list is brilliant and eminently worth your attention:

Albert Collins, Albert King, Albion Band, Allman Brothers, Altan, Aly Bain & Ale Möller, Andy Irvine, Angelina Carberry & Martin Quinn, Arcady, Ashley Hutchings, Baltimore Consort, Battlefield Band, Begley & Cooney, Berrogüeto, Bess Cronin, Big Bill Broonzy, Bohola, Bothy Band, Brass Monkey, Brendan Larrissey, Brian McNamara, Bukka White, Carlos Nunez, Cathal McConnell, Charlie Piggot & Gerry Harrington, Charlie Wells, Chulrua, Cran, Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band, Darach Ó Catháin, Dave Swarbrick, Davie Stewart, De Dannan, Derek Trucks Band, Dervish, Dick Gaughan, Dolores Keane & John Faulkner, Elvis Presley, Ewan MacColl, Fairport Convention, Frank Harte, Frankie Gavin, Grey Larsen & Andre Marchand, Guitar Slim, Howlin' Wolf, Hubert Sumlin, J. Geils Band, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy McBeath, Jimmy Reed, Joe Heaney, John Carty, John Hiatt, John Kirkpatrick, June Tabor, Koun, La Musgaña, Len Graham, Leon Rosselson, Little Richard, Los Lobos, Lou Reed, Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Mason Brown & Chipper Thompson, Memphis Minnie, Milladoiro, Nic Jones, NRBQ, Paddy Tunney, Pancho Alvarez, Patrick Street, Paul Brady, Paul Brock & Enda Scahill, Paul Butterfield, Paul Rishell & Annie Raines, Paul Simon, Peter Bellamy, Peter Carberry, Angelina Carberry, John Blake, Pierre Bensusan, Planxty, Professor Longhair, Randal Bays, Richard Thompson, Robin Williamson, Solas, Steeleye Span, Stockton's Wing, Stravinsky Igor, Susana Seivane, The Band, The Irish Tradition, The Morris On Band, The Tulla Ceili Band, The Watersons, Tommy Johnson, Tony Cuffe, Unknown, Various Artists, Willie Clancy, Zappa

The Seven Words You Cannot Say on Television

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:46:01 -0500

Carlin RIP.

The man loved America--more than any of those jerkwads who thought his language was "inappropriate."

On baseball:

On white folks appropriating black culture:

They called Twain a pessimist, too.

The Good Grey Lady agrees

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:32:42 -0500

Well, now I know it's not just punk-rockers and DIY exponents who've realized that you can't download or bootleg an in-person performance: the Paper of Record gets it too:

Live Music Thrives as CDs Fade

A little over a week ago, Patterson Hood, a guitarist and singer in the Drive-By Truckers, stood in front of a sleepy but amped noon crowd at Bonnaroo, the music festival in Manchester, Tenn., explaining profanely that it was time to, um, wake up....Like much of Bonnaroo, the set was a display of the fealty between band and audience so thunderous that you barely hear the sound of a dying business. Yes, the traditional music industry is in the tank — record sales are off another 10 percent this year and the Virgin Megastore in Times Square is closing, according to a Reuters report, joining a host of other record stores. That would seem to be bad news all around for music fans — 70,000 of whom showed up in this remote place to watch 158 bands play — and for Mr. Hood and his band.

Not so, he says.

“The collapse of the record business has been good for us, if anything. It’s leveled the playing field in a way where we can keep slugging it out and finding our fans,” he said while toweling himself off after the set.

It also makes for a hell of a lot better long-term job security, because the fundamental human need (and skills) for live music have endured a hell of a lot longer. Oh, and by the way? It does some young person who's never heard live music about six times as much good to play a show for them as to sell a CD (or a download) to 'em. If you as a musician need additional motivation to get out there and be a musician (as opposed to a "recording artist"), think about how much more good you're doing in the world.

Medieval maw Day 05

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:03:55 -0500

Day 05, hoping it's the closing day (pub session tonight and various parties hope to Drink Heavily in celebration).

[12:30am, after an epic pub session--and six pints apiece for some old friends]

Done. Mixing tomorrow.

Medieval maw Day 04

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:40:08 -0500

One piece down, two to go. Started with the easiest, though not the shortest, so as to familiarize ourselves with this particular combination in this particular facility. You can have really good musicians, a really good studio (gear and rooms), and a really good engineer, and unless and until they're worked together, they still can't know the best way to proceed. Several years ago, when my buddy Steve took delivery of a new wooden flute, he went out to the cotton-fields-in-the-middle-of-nowhere studio where we record and laid out the bucks for a few hours' recording time, just purely in order to be able to try out sounds and approaches before the major multi-day projects came down the pike. These few hours of "no goals" experimentation paid off big-time when he and the engineer went to lay down tracks for our most recent project.

This is not so readily available when the members of our medieval band live at some remove from one another. Dharmonia and I are in Lubbock, but bowed-string player Jann is in Waco and tenor David is in Lansing MI. So we don't have the luxury of meeting once or twice a week to rehearse at somebody's house (back in the Day--the early 1990s--that is precisely how we got our ensemble concept together: through playing together on a daily basis); instead, we meet up once or twice a year to research, rehearse, and record material. We don't the luxury of being off-handed anymore: on those once-yearly windows of two or three or four days, we have to flipping focus.

I used to hate it when professors would say (or just imply) to us poor starving graduate students that someday we would look back and those brutal days wouldn't seem so bad. Well, there were that bad and that hard and that broke. I'm not sorry to have health insurance, home equity, and some job security (not to mention old friends scattered around the world).

But, looking back to those days when we were broke and hungry, but also creative, and ambitious, and had time for each other--I miss the immediacy of the bond.

Fuzzy people 32

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:34:00 -0500

Kim sends along the following: her shot of a litter of prairie dog kits following their mama out of the burrow:

Thanks to the Rev for the "fuzzy people" appellation.

Medieval maw Day 03

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:07:05 -0500

Last day of rehearsals, first of recording (tonight). Historically, medieval music (like most Renaissance and Baroque and other classical repertoires) has been recorded "live" to 2-track--all players in a resonant room together, balancing the audio sound that the stereo pair of microphones here via physical location. Half the engineer/producer's art was in locating the players, "tuning" the room and the orientation of the microphones, and in getting good sound, both for the sake of the master tape, and to maximize the players' ability to communicate and get good musical processes going. This is still the way in which most classical recording is undertaken.

But that does not mean that what you hear on the CD is precisely what was played in the room. On the contrary: a second large part of the engineer/producer's art was in the editing process, the process--as our old friend the master engineer Peter Nothnagle put it--of "putting two 8th notes next to each other." This meant recording all sections of all pieces (e.g., "covering" the pieces), ideally in single, complete, and contiguous takes, in such a fashion that both the expression inherent in the particular performance, the notes being sounded, and the quality of the sounds going to tape, all coincided. This is the ideal, and historically it's precisely the way that most jazz "blowing sessions" (and old-school Irish music recordings) were made: book three hours in a good studio with good instruments and top-notch players, "blow" for three hours on familiar repertoire, with a couple of takes on each piece, and walk out at the end of three hours, leaving the producer to select (and occasionally to perform minimal edits upon) the best takes.

But the reality is that most classical recordings are not realized in this way. Yes, everybody typically plays together in a room at the same time, with the engineer employing some combination of "ambient" (e.g., relatively distant mics "hearing" both the instruments and the room's sound) and "close" (e.g., next to and isolating specific instruments) microphone placement. But even if they do play single complete and contiguous takes, it is very very uncommon for a single take to appear unadulterated or unedited on a final CD release; far more common is to select the best bits from multiple iterations ("takes") and then have the engineer digitally marry those bits together into a single, composite, and unnaturally highly-polished performance. That is simply the expectation of classical music CD listeners anymore: that the performance will be both sonically and technically without flaw, while at the same time achieving some kind of "unique" interpretation, even though the version on the CD was never actually played all at the same time.

This is impossible and unrealistic, and the result is that listener expectations are superhuman and unnatural: the typical classical CD fan hears a performance from another, pre-editing era, and says "why are there all the wrong notes? why doesn't it sound perfect?" This is not the fault of the fan, but of the technology--because technology changes the way we listen. Most people who consume most of their music from pre-recorded sources have little idea what music--even that same music--actually sounds like in a room. Which is sad, because those imperfections, asymmetries, moment-by-moment unexpected choices, are precisely what make both errors and repairs, struggle and transcendence, possible in a musical performance. The reason that we listen to music made by humans (those of us who think about human versus machine issues) is because we value that human imperfection, and the unique experiences it makes possible.

Thus, the aural expectations set up by superhuman technical perfection limit the possibilities for experience that come from listening to recordings, but present a tremendous potential opportunity in the realm of live music. If practitioners of various niche musics can shift the way they market their music, and the music's unique appeal in performance, then there is a chance that they can likewise shift audience expectations. And that the unexpected, the unique, even the ways in which live players get themselves into and out of predicaments, can become a selling point, rather than a handicap.

20 years ago, at the magazine's request, I wrote an article for the principle early music organization's newsletter about this newfangled phenomenon called the "World Wide Web," and the DIY (from punk rock: "Do It Yourself"; e.g., to quote a touring publication of the period, Book Your Own Fucking Life") ethos that early music people could stand to learn from touring folk, punk, and jazz musicians. I argued that the great strengths of early music performance (especially the medieval repertoires, but also Renaissance and Baroque) lay not in their sonic similarity to classical music--which is the way, over the '80s and '90s, they were marketed: as a safely-and-slightly "exotic" experience closely aurally allied with what the symphony and string-quartet audiences already knew--but rather in the way that their procedures, and the experience of seeing those procedures in live concerts, linked early music to these other, more vital, more immediate, less object- and more process-oriented, niche musics. I argued that the Web's self-marketing and -presentation capacities, and the "live music is better" philosophies of these other niche repertoires, presented a far more vital, immediate, far-reaching, inspiring, and, oh by the way, realistic set of possibilities for early music.

Sadly, it didn't take. The Early Music Boom went bust, around 1992, as the Baroque and early-Classical repertoires and performers got swept into the maw of subsidized "it sounds like Mozart so it doesn't intimidate me" recording, and pretty much every festival, agency, and radio programmer ignored anything that didn't sound like Mozart. Some of the best experiences we ever had playing medieval music live were either in Europe (where, as Dharmonia puts it, it is their folk music) or at folk- or world-music festivals in the USA (where the audience was prepared to hear medieval repertoire as simply one more "world" music). And then the entire record industry went bust (hint: do not invest in any record companies) and it became both mandatory and preferable for artists to release their own recordings, on CD, or mp3, or some permutation of the above.

It--and we--are still out there though. Live, improvisational musical performance, players communicating directly and with immediacy with audiences and one another, is still a unique and uniquely rewarding experience, one that cannot be objectified, bought, sold, or copied. If you're a "recording artist" and you're worried about people bootlegging your CDs, you are, to quote Dharmonia's favorite lolcats website "Doon it Rong." Recordings are like calling cards--they let people know that you're out there, and pique their curiousity about coming to hear you live. Once you have them in the room, it's your job--your ancient and eternal job--as a musician to give them an experience so vital, so unique, so emotionally and viscerally satisfying, that you convert them to returning the next time.

Audio recording has been around for a little over 130 years. Live musical performance has been around for about 40,000 years. When the chips are down and the economy slumps, which one do you want to count on for your daily crust?

I know my answer.

YEAH BABY!!!!!

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:59:03 -0500

WORLD CHAMPIONS!

Medieval maw Day 02

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:01:35 -0500

Old friends and colleagues in town, reuniting our medieval band, for rehearsal and recording, and then more rehearsal.

We're re-doing a bunch of tracks from the old Norton CD (formerly LP) anthology which accompanied the Grout/Palisca History of Western Music, now edited (really, entirely recreated and improved) by my dissertation adviser Peter Burkholder. In addition to the particular realizations of specific pedagogical examples Peter is seeking, we are particularly interested in redressing bad memories We of a Certain Generation might have had about some of those versions recorded in the 1960s, versions which didn't particularly seem to reflect the conviction that the music might actually have sounded good, been enjoyable to play, or much relationship to the texts being sung. If you're of a Certain Generation, and went through a US-based university music program, you are likely to remember some of these now-antiquated versions. The chance to re-approach these repertoires, in the context of this most august of music history textbooks, feels like a long-deferred but still-welcome opportunity.

We started demo'ing some of these pieces in Peter Burkholder's undergraduate 400-level music history review courses almost 20 years ago, and are flattered that still, all this time later, he prefers our versions-as-remembered. I am quite certain that these will be the first recordings of medieval music using historical performance practice ever recorded in Lubbock County. Kind of reminds me of the question that we got after tearing the house down at our Boston Early Music Festival concert in a sweltering submarine of a church sanctuary just off of Harvard Square in 1991: "What the hell is going on out in Indiana?!?" Just move along, friend; nothin' here to see. You keep monopolizing the federal grant money and the media visibility and booking your friends and getting re-booked by them and presuming that anybody who lives outside the Left and Right Coasts must be a clueless hillbilly with nothing to offer to your own august and more sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and metrosexual artistic self. And then we'll come out of the MW cornfields (or the NPW rain forests, or the sweltering Southern river bottoms, or the freshwater red-brick universities) where we've been working our asses off and we'll play this music better than you ever imagined.

I hate privilege. Or individuals' presumption thereof.