by David Burn | Dec 8, 2005 | Music
High time to get past the Grateful Dead v. Their Fans thread. Like DK said in a comment here, there is so much great music happening today. Ergo, it’s time we salute the finer workings of Steve Earle’s mind.
Earle has some massive balls to come out with a song called “John Walker’s Blues” in post 9/11 Amerika. I love that in an artist, or in any American citizen, for that matter.
Here are the lyrics:
John Walker Blues
I’m just an American boy raised on MTV
And I’ve seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of ’em looked like me
So I started lookin’ around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him
chorus:
A shadu la ilaha illa Allah
There is no God but God
If my daddy could see me now — chains around my feet
He don’t understand that sometimes a man
Has got to fight for what he believes
And I believe God is great, all praise due to him
And if I should die, I’ll rise up to the sky
Just like Jesus, peace be upon him
chorus
We came to fight the Jihad and our hearts were pure and strong
As death filled the air, we all offered up prayers
And prepared for our martyrdom
But Allah had some other plan, some secret not revealed
Now they’re draggin’ me back with my head in a sack
To the land of the infidel
A shadu la ilaha illa Allah
A shadu la ilaha illa Allah
It’s truly a beautiful song. Of course not everyone agress with my assessment. According to CNN, Nashville radio talk show host Steve Gill said “it celebrates and glorifies a traitor to this country.” But what does this Gill guy know? He’s probably never even heard the song.
Here’s some more from the CNN piece:
“I’m not trying to get myself deported or something,” said Earle. “In a big way this is the most pro-American record I’ve ever made. I feel urgently American.”
Danny Goldberg, CEO of Artemis Records, the company releasing “Jerusalem,” has rallied to Earle’s defense.
“The song does not glorify John Walker Lindh.” said Goldberg. “It would be a pretty shallow culture if songwriters only wrote about nice people.
“Anyone who listens to the ‘Jerusalem’ album will discover that Steve Earle remains a thoughtful singer who has chosen to incorporate current events into his poet’s vision.”
by David Burn | Dec 8, 2005 | Music
What are we to make of this?
A Statement From Mickey About Archive.org
The last several days have been a whirlwind of activity and commentary regarding the Grateful Dead and archive.org. I am posting this message due to the fact that despite news stories to the contrary, I have been one of the earliest backers of the taping and sharing of Grateful Dead music. I fully support the position taken by Phil in his message and always have. Being a field recordist myself, I stand united with the taper community and always will notwithstanding anything in the media to the contrary. Efforts have been made by Grateful Dead Productions and archive.org to rectify the situation and I hope our loyal fans, friends and family will continue to enjoy and participate in Grateful Dead music.
Sounds like spin to me. What about the 3-to-1 vote? What about Barlow naming names? “Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann,” he said.
by David Burn | Dec 7, 2005 | Politics
John Gorenfeld writing for AlterNet explains how the Rev. Sun Myung Moon wants to build a 51-mile underwater highway that will connect Alaska to Russia. But that’s not the weird part. The weird part is the President’s brother, Neil, apparently supports the project.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion “Peace King Tunnel” dream. As this self-described Messiah envisions it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God’s plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.
Moon’s lobbying campaign is “ambitious and diffuse,” and the sheer range of guests revealed just how many Pacific Rim political leaders the Times owner has won over, including Filipino and Taiwanese politicians. And the head of the Arizona GOP attended a recent stop in San Francisco. But perhaps the most surprising VIP to tag along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush’s youngest and most wayward son, who made both the Philippines and Taiwan legs of the journey, according to reports in newspapers from those countries and statements from Moon’s Family Federation.
Neil isn’t the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father, President George H.W. Bush, traveled to Buenos Aires with the Reverend in one of several such fundraising expeditions. “The 41st president, who told Argentine president Carlos Menem that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires for the money, had actually known the Korean reasonably well for decades,” writes former top GOP strategist Kevin Phillips in his book American Dynasty. “Their relationship went back to the overlap between Bush’s one-year tenure as CIA director (1976) and the arrival in Washington of Moon, whose Unification Church was widely reported to be a front group for the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency.”
by David Burn | Dec 7, 2005 | Music
Christian Crumlish of Uncle John’s Blog was on CNN’s “On the Story” last week, addressing the Archive.org issue, as bloggers are wont to do.
Jackie Schechner, a reporter on the show said, “as far as he and I can tell, Chirstian is the very first Grateful Dead blogger.”
I don’t know if that is the case, or why that is an important distinction, but Mr. Crumlish does have an impressive online footprint. He’s also the author of The Power of Many: How The Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, And Everyday Life .
by David Burn | Dec 6, 2005 | Music
Over on David Gans’ blog, Playback, Steve Marcus, former head of Grateful Dead Ticketing weighs in on the economics of the band.
When the Dick’s Pick’s series was started each one sold about 25,000 units, but in the last few years that has dropped to 10,000 or less (which is why the Fillmore boxed set was limited to 10,000. Hind sight is most likely now telling GDP that they could have easily sold 25,000.)
Offering a new Dead Download every month is NOT going to make any one rich, and the fact is that because of the way that the band ran their business none of them are rich in the true sense of the word. Some of them put away their money and invested, but I would be very surprised if any them are worth more than $15,000,000.
15 mil! That hardly buys anything in Marin, today.
by David Burn | Dec 6, 2005 | Music
You want to hear something funny? Actually, no. It’s sad.
Bob Weir spoke to KBCO in Boulder about the Archive.org issue that has divided the band and disappointed so many heads. He sounds like President Bush. And that’s about as gernerous as I can be.
David Gans transcribed some of it (but you really need to hear it for full effect):
We had to cover our asses. What they’re doing is illegal, unless there are arrangements made… particularly in the case of covers – other people’s material.
If we’re perceived to be distributing their songs without their agreement, they have every right, and really and every obligation, to sue us…
We had to take it down. We had no choice. It’s archive.com’s [sic] job to make arrangements with the other people whose material… we’re playing, and then everything’s good….
Probably a lot of it is stuff that we intend to release in the future anyway.
We need revenue. Our music division needs revenue so we can digitize all of that stuff.
The ‘information wants to be free, man’ – those folks… this is not information, this is music. It’s kind of value-added information. Some people prefer to call it art….
We had to go ahead and do the right thing, and it upset some folks. I’m really sorry about that. So they started up a petition, a boycott, and all that kind of stuff. I really hope they can stick to their guns, and boycott us, and… seeya….
Gans is distressed at Weir’s classless and bumbling display. I think it’s perfect.
Guess what, Bob? We’ve gone out of our way to be nice to you all these years. That game is over.
[via Live Music Blog]
by David Burn | Dec 5, 2005 | Go Big Red
BBC: A meditating teenage boy in south-central Nepal is drawing the attention of scientists after attracting huge crowds in the past six months and earning himself the name Buddha-reincarnate.
Ram Bahadur Bamjan’s friends, relatives and managers say he has been meditating without drinking water for six months now and that he will carry on for another six years until he gains enlightenment.
Most people can live without food for several weeks, with the body drawing on its fat and protein stores. But the average human can survive for only three to four days without water.
Followers of holy men and ascetics have often ascribed extraordinary powers to them, but such powers are seldom subject to scientific inspection.
But the number of people seeking real evidence here is increasing.
by David Burn | Dec 2, 2005 | Music
Well, isn’t this special. Grateful Dead, Inc. has decided to let us have the audience “tapes” that we made and shared in the first place. But they’re going to try to keep soundboards from the interweb. An effort which they will fail miserably at, by the way.
Band spokesman Dennis McNally said the band consented to making audience recordings available for download again, although live recordings made directly from concert soundboards, which are the legal property of the Grateful Dead, should only be made available for listening from now on.
The soundboard recordings are “very much part of their legacy, and their rights need to be protected,” McNally said.
Consented? What a pompous ass.
by David Burn | Dec 1, 2005 | The Environment
Business 2.0: Most solar panels are bulky, pricey, and difficult to install. But imagine if you could turn windows — or entire skyscrapers — into solar power generators. That’s the goal of XsunX, a startup in Aliso Viejo, Calif., that has invented a way to stick semitransparent solar cells on plastic film, which manufacturers can use to transform ordinary windows into PowerGlass. “It’s like a power-plant skin on a building,” says XsunX CEO and president Tom Djokovich.
XsunX’s amorphous silicon solar cells aren’t more efficient — they convert just 6 percent of light energy that hits them into electricity, compared with 15 percent for traditional silicon cells. They are, however, more versatile: A 20-story building has about 10 times more space for PowerGlass than it does for roof panels. That puts XsunX on the cutting edge of a trend in the $7 billion solar industry called building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV.
“We’re seeing a revolution where solar is disappearing into the building,” says Ron Pernick, co-founder of energy research firm Clean Edge. Next year, XsunX plans to begin selling its manufacturing technology to glass and optical-film makers and collecting licensing fees and royalties. Meanwhile, a firm called Iowa Thin Film Technologies has released solar-film radios and tents, and it’s now developing opaque BIPV products for roofs. But as the only company making see-through cells for windows, XsunX can envision a bright future ahead.
by David Burn | Dec 1, 2005 | Music
Bobby, Mickey and Billy went way out on a limb last week. And for no good reason. No matter what they decide from here, they’ve lost serious face, possibly forvever. And it’s far from over. We don’t know yet how many more stupid shenanigans they’re likely to pull.
Dennis McNally in yesterday’s New York Times:
“One-to-one community building, tape trading, is something we’ve always been about,” Mr. McNally said. “The idea of a massive one-stop Web site that does not build community is not what we had in mind. Our conclusion has been that it doesn’t represent Grateful Dead values.”
Most fans, he continued, “understand they were being granted an extraordinary privilege, and they responded by taking it very seriously” by respecting the band’s wishes not to sell their live recordings. “This is not the same situation,” he added.
Dennis McNally is a scholar and author, in addition to being the band’s longtime publicist. He’s the guy who used to say things like, “Jerry has an enlarged heart.” Well, we already knew that.
Barlow says it’s like “these guys” just discovered “this was going on.” And for sure, McNally knows squat about Archive.org. That site, and Nugs.net certainly do foster community. They’re not pirate ships.
Let’s remember that this is happening in a community where there are literally thousands of coder geeks who listen to the band. And marketing execs, writers, journalists, mayors, you name it, who listen to the Dead and consider themselves Deadheads, in one form or another.
Ask! Communicate with the people. Get off your thrones and mingle.
Who knows, maybe we can all learn to trust again.
