Music

Well, I guess it’s about time I stopped lurking and started contributing.

So without further ado, here I am.  Blogging.  Fucking crazy.  How do I change my pw on this thing?  Surely I don’t have to remember the made up one they emailed to me.  If I do, you can consider this both my first and last contribution to the cooperative blog.

Now, this might come as a surprise, but I love street performers.  While in NYC recently I didn’t see any of the human statues who don’t move until you give them money, but we did see lots of musicians.  My friend Jessica explained none of them even came close to this guy.  This guy has serious skills.

But this was my question:  do you think his parents are extremely proud of what he’s done after thousands of dollars and hours spent on flute lessons or completely mortified?

Here it is….

The beatboxing flutist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXmeayaHh4U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crfrKqFp0Zg

The Genetic Protection in Insurance Coverage Act of 2007 basically says that insurance companies can not discriminate based on genetic information.

I find this concept amazing.

For a second think about insurance companies.

one mississippi.

Insurance companies are a simple exercise. They take individual risk, weigh it against the pool of insured or likely insured and make a decision on how much a person is worth. They figure when a person is most likely to die and how much they need to charge that person in order for them to profi over the life of the policy.

If I were to apply for a new insurance policy they would weigh (no pun intended) all of the negative factors and balance against their pool and give me a monthly payment. This is why actuaries exist, think ‘About Schmidt.’

So, insurance companies have a good baseline of study. A 29 year-old white male with my height and weight with my socio-economic-status should live to be about 70 (give or take 50 years based on modern medicine).

What amazes me is that we have decided the point at which insurance companies can stop gathering information and must start making guesses. Basically, Math (actuarial science) is ok, genetics is not.

How can we possibly make some sort of arbitrary decision on how much knowledge is ok? Why not assail the actual algorithms altogether (that sentence took some work, but it is fun). How can we allow for insurance companies to compile one list of happenings and base a payment but not another?

How can we possibly not agree that more information is better?

It’s a tricky-deal. Should we punish those, by having higher premiums, who are weak? Now I am entering Darwinian zone here, but why shouldn’t the most healthy of our species be rewarded for their superior genes? We’ve been playing that game for, well, a long time. Then, there is that whole euthanasia thing.

Now, what if I were to argue that we don’t really make any decisions? My ability to be fat is a direct result of how I was raised within my genetic disposition. Nature and nurture. If it is a choice, then it is ok for insurance companies to gouge me–ask smokers (and actuaries usually live within these lifestyle factors). But what if I can’t control my weight? By that I mean any disposition or symptom that we show may not be a choice, but in fact may programmed. What if that is really true? (This goes for any kind of disorder in which people make ‘choice’. I am simply picking on myself for expediency.)

I don’t know, it really fascinated me tonight. There was a dude on Colbert who was talking about this. 2 things struck me.

1) He decided he didn’t want to know if he was disposed toward Alzheimer’s.
2) He had a gene that would say he would be bald by an 80% certainty. He has a beautiful healthy swatch of hair.

Anyway, I was amazed that this guy wouldn’t want to know, and, in the context of his argument, it seemed amazingly disarming. He too was drawing a line of should-be-known-knowledge.

This is what I am saying. Either you want to know or you don’t.

The march of rationalism has and will continue to run against an ethics that was born in a previous era (thank you David Harvey). Every time we run from that we rob ourselves of understanding. How can ever knowing more be a bad thing? It might mess up how we look at the world, but there is no value in pretending that known knowledge doesn’t exist.

Like I said, half-formed.

Two final thoughts.

1) Look at how many tags this topic invokes.
2) I looked up the decay/decadence idea from my last post. It comes from the Latin root–as M-W online states (but won’t let me copy and paste off their website [this is particulary interesing in light on the post, why not let me copy from a definition--how is this sacred knowledge?]) from Late Latin decadere to fall, sink.

Hello! I should have posted this on Wednesday. That was the day I was out boosting the economy with the strategic disbursement of greenbacks at chain stores, listening to some discs while my internal combustion engine killed the earth, taking me from here to there. Funny how my fiduciary responsibility as a red-blooded American is so evil in so many ways.

Jeez, that reminds me of these Cake lyrics. And if you go read those lyrics, the site will even play you the song. Amazing.

But those aren’t even the lyrics I wanted to highlight.

So, I put in a Flaming Lips album I don’t normally listen to, the newest one. And this one song really stands out as the best song, so I listen to it again. And again. And again. And did I mention it was the day after the election? Yeah, so these lyrics really made me happy:

The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)

(You’ve got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)

Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world
Telling us all it’s them who’s in charge of it all
I’ve got a trick, a magic stick, that will make them all fall
We’ve got the power now, motherfuckers; that’s where it belongs

You’ve got that right!
(Power in there)
You know that it is!
(Wand in the air)

They’ve got their weapons to solve all their questions
They don’t know what it’s for
(Because they don’t know what it’s for)
Why can’t they see that’s not power, that’s greed
To just want more and more?
(Just want more and more)
I got a plan and it’s here in my hand; a baton made of light
We’re the enforcers, the sorcerer’s orphans
And we know why we fight
(And we know why we fight)

You can listen to the song or even download it here. Btw, he gets that vocal effect by singing through a megaphone. Most excellent use of a megaphone.

I can’t sleep. So this post will probably just make you crinkle your nose, particularly if you’re sober. No worries.

This is a chapter of a book, Sound Unbound, edited by DJ Spooky (who besides being a most interesting musician working with the broadest imaginable range of artists, majored in French lit and philo and is a long-time friend of Shepard Fairey). I recommend that you read the chapter; don’t be a-skeerd of it even though it looks dense. That just means you’ll get through more coolness in less time.

The essay’s like a series of TED talks on speed for people who are in to technology and art and architecture and geography and music and film and the all-consuming fastness of the speed of life in which all of these things articulate … it pulls together a plethora of things, people, and ideas I’m interested in at absolute warp speed.

But that’s the point. He’s sampling history and books and philosophers and programmer-speak and art exhibits. He’s filtering them, finding the patterns, trying to decipher a system that makes sense in his (and, since I know who’s reading this, it’s safe to say our) world. And the common denominator for him is the archive as the dominant form. The web as an archive, his music collection as archive, ftp having the potential to be the ultimate communication tool so far.

He tells a story of how a clock maker invented the modern system of latitute (as in longitude and latitude), and the moral of the story is that time is the archival system for the measurement (and thus understanding) of space, and that time is also the archival system for the measurement (and thus the understanding) of music (rhythm). Presence and absence of material. Well … I take it back. It may not have a moral. That’s okay, though. It gets me worked up, and that’s about all anyone can ask for from ideas.

FiveThirtyEight.com has a breakdown of Kansas’ voting population’s tendencies. I wish I could say I was surprised. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep because I live in a stupidly Republican state. But in states like Kansas God and guns come before calm and sense.

I love that Starbucks:Walmart ratio is an indicator of the general socioeconomic makeup of a population and thus their voting tendencies.

Here’s a link to a download of the new Bond theme song Another Way to Die, by Jack White and Alicia Keys for the upcoming Quantum of Solace.

I dig both these artists. I think if Keys starts to take more risks like this one she can have the Stevie-Wonder sort of career for which she hopes.

The song’s pretty intense from start to finish, but as it progresses the complexity of the songwriting really emerges. Bring in the horn section. Suddenly the harmonies start to become just a little discordant in an aggressive sort of way that hopefully helps the opening credits build excitement. Then Alicia riffs a little scat, trading musical phrases with Jack’s guitar. He’s always been so respectful of the power of the female vocalists he’s accompanied.

The hook in the chorus is catchy, but not super singable … i.e., this may be a hit song, but it won’t be astronomically popular as the tune on people’s facespaces, ringtones, and whathaveyou.

Tom Petty, Prince and others play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Prince’s guitar is doing something other than gentle weeping. He is a bad ass. Can any identify the others?

We have an extra ticket in our possession, for sale, in case you haven’t heard. Contact for more info. The schedule just came out. My dream itinerary (outlined below) assumes one can live on music alone, because there’s clearly no time for dinner…

June 12 Thursday start 7pm
Superdrag
Soul Rebels Brass Band
Vampire Weekend

June 13 Friday start 1230pm
Drive-by Truckers
Jose Gonzalez
The Swell Season
The Raconteurs
Willie Nelson
Big Sam’s Funky Nation
Metallica
My Morning Jacket

June 14 Saturday start 130pm
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Little Feat
end of Ozomatli
BB King sneak off
Iron and Wine for a minute
Levon Helm
Kanye West or Jack Johnson
Pearl Jam
Phil Lesh and Friends
Chali 2na if still awake…

June 15 Sunday start 245pm
Robert Randolph (then a break for packing up)
Robert Plant & Allison Krauss featuring T Bone Burnett till 745

This is a second gratuitous Tom Waits suckfest.

Since I saw the video I have listened to only Waits and The Black Keys.

and been looking at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiW0PmjWdxM&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzing_Matilda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBdo4DL2cBM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAAzhm1YBBY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wfamPW3Eaw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xpualjuhk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqV8mpTfBHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wfamPW3Eaw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrkThaBWa5c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP1TC21QsnA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX1qpcDchD4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OLA6AiZlVw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrG1r3S6ZA

can’t link worth crap