I am … unhindered by talent

Common working people has got to take the seat
in Washington, in Washington.
And I’m gonna tell you workers
‘fore you cash in your checks
they say America first but they mean America next
in Washington, in Washington.
— Woody Guthrie, “Lindbergh”

Is it annoying if we keep wrestling with the same issues, or does it just mean they’re eternal?

Related posts

• Randomoid stuff from the tubes of the Intarweb (1)
• More fun (with skulls) in London (1)

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Chris Butler is doing a specialty show on KUMM this semester that opens with an hour-long interview segment. He’s asked me to be his guest this week (6-7pm tonight, Wednesday, 17 Sep), and as part of that I was asked to list (and bring) my “5 favorite songs”.

Five.

Just five.

Yeah, right.

My 5 star iTunes playlist here at the office has 388 songs on it and runs over 21 hours, and that’s just based on things I’ve bothered hauling up to the office and ripping at some point, and includes almost none of our old vinyl.

And I’m supposed to choose five.

Five.

I eventually gave up pretty much entirely on the idea of “favorite” songs ’cause there was just no way to whittle things down that way. I instead started to focus on songs that have been important to me (”life changing”?), which narrowed things down a fair bit. There are a lot of songs I adore that didn’t really change me, but there was still a surprising number left even after that - a number considerably larger than five.

So there was swearing, consultation, swearing, trolling through playlists and CD racks, swearing, notes scribbled on battered sheets of paper, and more swearing. And here’s where I ended up, in no particular order. All these are great songs and songs that I’ve enjoyed consistently for many years. Would I make the same list if I had to do this again next year? Probably not, but I don’t think I’d be unhappy with this list.

• “Jelly Roll Stomp” - Skeleton Crew - Hallelujah anyway: Remembering Tom Cora - This album was my introduction to an entirely new world of experimental music, and Cora and Fred Frith (the founders of Skeleton Crew) remain huge faves of mine. (This is the kind of stuff that my family semi-affectionately refers to as my “Weird noise music”.)
• “Can’t truss it” - Public Enemy - Apocalypse ‘91: The enemy strikes black - Discovering P.E. was such an eye opener in a totally different way, and their sonic landscape may never be heard again now that the law has made their style of sampling inviable. I was seriously considering “Welcome to the terrordome”, but I came back to this because the combination of massive beats and heavy, heavy history is something I’ve never gotten out of my system.
• “Awungilobolele” - Udokotela Shange Namajaha - Indestructible beat of Soweto - My sad little tribute to the enormous amount of great music outside of the U.S. This is a Zulu wedding song, and conveys a spirit of community that is totally compelling, as is that brilliant shuffle beat. You just have to dance to this one.
• “Death letter blues” - Son House - Legends of the blues, Vol. 1 - Still one of the two songs (along with Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord, I just can’t keep from crying”) that totally defines the blues for me. The story is so rich and painfully matter of fact, and the guitar work is sonically incomprehensible. Listening to this for the first time lead directly to the writing of the earliest song of mine that I can still remember and perform. (But my song, and my performance of it, sucks by comparison.)
• “Trashman’s shoes” - Shoulders - Shoulders - Much, much, much of my sense of music was developed in the years I lived in Austin, Texas. The scene there was so cool, and I could easily hear great shows every week in an enormous range of styles and genres. It was in Austin that I discovered that there was lots of really great country music, and not just the Nashville drivel I’d grown up with, and where I finally began to understand punk. There are so many great songs that I first came across while I was living there that choosing is effectively impossible. Other tracks were arguably more groundbreaking (”People in the house” by Glass Eye) or more crazy-in-your-face-fun (”Reading” by Ed Hall) or more likely to upset your neighbors (”Sweat loaf” by Butthole Surfers), but in the end I picked this because it’s the one that I’ve always wanted to be able to perform.

And here are a few alternates just ’cause I couldn’t entirely leave them off, again in no particular order:

• “I’m so lonesome I could cry” - Hank Williams - I sing this when I’m sad, or when I’m walking by myself. I sang it a _lot_ when John Peel died. When they say songs are poetry set to music they’re mostly talking crap. Here, though, it’s true.
• “Reading” - Ed Hall - Albert - Hands down the best 2 minute burst of noise on the value of a liberal arts education that I know of. Really.
• “People in the house” - Glass Eye - Bent by nature - This entire album really shifted my head about what “rock” music could be, and was the soundtrack to probably at least two years of my time in Austin. Glass Eye is still one of my favorite bands of all time and one of the most influential on how I think about music. Of all the really hard decisions that I had to make in forming this list, leaving them off the top five was probably the hardest. This song is a great example of their dead pan off-kilter lyrics and their weirdly familiar-but-not approach to music.
• “Sweat loaf” - Butthole Surfers - Locust abortion technician - What a great, great song, going from that deliberately over-the-top “dialogue” into a howl of noise and fun. Their “22 going on 23″ from the live bootleg album is also totally brilliant.
• “Waiting for a train” - Jimmy Rodgers - American roots music - I’ve never performed this in public, but there are few songs I think about performing more often. Unfortunately I can’t yodel, and I’ve never figured out a reasonable alternative. Jimmy Rodgers captures such a wonderful feel of life on a rails, which was already just a memory when I was growing up.
• “Present joys” - Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Anthology of American Folk Music - A gorgeous example of shape note singing, and a song that opened up a whole new set of music doors for me, especially about the possibilities of singing. One of about a zillion spectacular songs from this remarkable collection; it’s remarkable, really, that none made the final five.
• “The coo coo bird” - Clarence “Tom” Ashley - Anthology of American Folk Music - Ashley’s early recordings are full of a wonderful rough, flat singing style that perhaps didn’t come into its own again until Dylan (perhaps via Woody Guthrie). This is probably my fave of his, in part because it makes no sense. I had the honor of performing this with Eagan Heath while he was a student here at UMM, and I’m unlikely to sing with a better banjo player anytime soon.
• “One road more” - Flatlanders - One road more - Discovering the various members of the Flatlanders in Austin was a key part of the realization that country music didn’t have to suck, and this (their one and only album in their original incarnation) remains a great example of drawing that thread up from Jimmy Rodgers through Hank Williams to the present day without getting lost in Pop Country along the way. Some spectacular writing here, and a wonderful old-time twang.
• “The singing leaf” - Wang Chong Lor - River of song: A musical journey down the Mississippi - A mind-bending performance on a banana leaf by a Hmong gentleman in St. Paul. Apparently Hmong is tonal to a degree that this sort of playing can be heard as “vocals” with lyrical content. This was always the most arresting song for students when I used this collection in FYS years ago.
• “Baked beetles” - Ivor Cutler - A wet handle - An single CD of over 80 tracks, all of which are short little spoken word poems like this. Dozens of absolute gems here; this one is the basis of one of our “liners” with Tom.

Lord only knows what I just gapped in the rush and will slap myself for later, but such is life.

I actually tried uploading this playlist to iTunes, but not surprisingly iTunes only has a handful of these songs (4 or 5, I think), so the exercise is clearly futile and I canceled. So, unfortunately, you’re left with my words instead of the wonderful music that inspired them. Check out the show (89.7 FM or on-line at kumm.org) tonight and you can hear the first five, intermingled with far too much of me talking…

P.S. In reading through this I realized that I never actually mention my wonderful family anywhere in here. This is really weird because my parents, my sister, my wife, and my son all weave through this in all kinds of deep, important, and mysterious ways. But none of that made it onto the page. Hmph.

P.P.S. There’s no jazz or classical on this list in any traditional sense. I made a decision to largely set those huge and important (to me) areas aside for this exercise just because things were already so desperate and thinking about those areas only made it worse. But Miles, Mingus, and Monk (not to mention Ellington, Coltrane, and Louis) all belong here, along with gregorian chants, Bach, Beethoven, Kodaly, and Shostakovitch. Life’s a challenge, isn’t it?

Related posts

• Show me what they really want (and don’t assume it’s the money) (2)
• 3.1415927 reasons to tune in to KUMM (on- or off-line) (3)

We just finished two consecutive day trips to London (Friday and yesterday) and I’m thoroughly tired, and full of undigested photos. This fellow, one of the few I have processed, is from the Egyptian mummification exhibit at the British Museum (Rooms 62 and 63).

On Friday we started down in Greenwich. It was our first time through the Docklands on the DLR — it would be nice to walk those canals and take photos — and our first time to the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian. I wish we’d had more time there - it was a beautiful day and there was a ton of cool stuff one could see. Time was tight, though, so we zoomed off to the British Museum before rush hour hit, and spent the rest of the evening there.

While WeatherGirl wandered the museum, however, Sub-Evil and I snuck off and bought tickets for Avenue Q at the Noël Coward Theatre for the following night. He’s been keen to see that ever sense we got here, and it was nice to finally make that happen, but it did mean two consecutive days into London, which is frankly pretty tiring.

Yesterday Sub-Evil and I started at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology on the UCL campus. Sub-Evil is very into Egyptian history, writing, artifacts, etc., so he really wanted to see this. It’s a very cool collection, but pretty desperately in need of a new home, with the collection crammed into old victorian cabinets and spilling down an emergency exit staircase! Next was the British Library, which was just tremendous! The King’s Library alone was worth the (free) price of admission, and the display of the treasures (Magna Carta, illuminated manuscripts, handwritten scores, drafts, diaries, and letters by amazing folks) was really wonderful.

After all that we grabbed some dinner and then headed off to Avenue Q! We both had listened to the soundtrack about a zillion times, so there weren’t a lot of surprises. The production was tons of fun, however, and watching the puppet masters sing, dance, act, and run the puppets at the same time reminded me of the line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels :-).

Now we pack and organize, for tomorrow we’re off to Methwold Old Vicarage for our first stay in a Landmark Trust property!

Related posts

• Wishing Jenny well (0)
• Riding out of Spain (Back to the UK, and then off to home) (1)

I have taught sections of UMM’s First Year Seminar (FYS) course pretty much solid since it was created back in 1999. My topic has been American Roots Music, a subject I love dearly and have greatly enjoyed exploring with my students. I’ve met a host of really wonderful folks through that course, including some of my best student connections outside of Computer Science. That topic has drawn in a broad range of students, many of whom have gone on to play major roles at the radio station and in the open mic night series, and it’s been a great excuse to buy, listen to, and talk about some really wonderful music.

Thus it is with very mixed feelings that I am considering changing my FYS topic for next year when I return from sabbatical. I’ve taught this for a long time and feel like I’m running out of steam on it. I also continue to struggle with lifting the subject from being about “entertainment” to being about human life and culture; I’ve found it difficult to convey my belief in the vitality of the subject. Another issue I’ve struggled with has been critical thinking. FYS replaced a course called Inquiry that had critical thinking as one of its core elements; I always thought that was very valuable, but never really felt like I included that in a consistent way in my roots music course.

So I’m considering changing topics.

In particular I’m thinking of something like “Climate change: Global crisis, or a tempest in a teapot?”. I think this is one of the (if not the) major questions of our age, and that it can be damnedly difficult to make sense of all the contradictory things said on the subject. My vision is for the class to be an exercise in critical thinking, using climate change as the underlying source of questions and material.

In a one semester, two credit course it’s clear that there’s only so much that we’re going to be able to address, so they’re not going to become experts on the subject (just as I would never claim to be one). Hopefully, however, they’d have a better understanding both of this subject, and of how to approach complex subjects like this in the future.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Related posts

• Transforming our thoughts about teaching (2)
• In praise of a little quirkiness (5)

Is it just me, or is this a desparately classic case of old folks (i.e., people my age) just not realizing that the world has moved on a wee bit?

The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology is proud to announce that the University of Minnesota is soon to become a member of ResearchChannel. ResearchChannel was founded by a consortium of leading research and academic institutions to share the valuable work of their researchers with the public through a cable television distribution network. ResearchChannel is now available to more than 30 million U.S. satellite and cable television subscribers and more than 1.6 million people who visit the ResearchChannel Web site at http://www.researchchannel.com each year. The channel also is available on 70 university and school-based cable systems in the United States…

Cable TV was cool when I was college age a zillion years ago (back in the 80’s), and we thought MTV was pretty darn cool.

That was then, though, and now is different. Sub-Evil’s generation don’t channel surf through the cable offerings, amazed that they have more than 4 options. They just don’t watch TV like we did. They time shift like mad, and cruise through a vastness of on-line offerings that make those early cable days seem positivity puny by comparison.

And now the U decides to get excited and pipe its research out to students on a cable television distribution network?!?

Uh, sorry, but I have my doubts. 30 million U.S. satellite and cable television subscribers?

Ooh.

Ahh.

Yawn.

In fairness, however, they do almost address this, even if in the tone of an afterthought:

…and was recently launched on iTunes U and YouTube.

w00t! YouTube! They get it!

Well, sort of.

You see, a quick look suggests that what they’re providing is honking great collection of lectures. They’re almost all long (mostly on the order of an hour, some closer to two), and seem to be largely academic “talking head” videos. Just what a college student wants to unwind with after a long day of…um…lectures.

Thus it’s hardly surprising that ResearchChannel’s most viewed video on YouTube has only been viewed (as of 2 Mar 08) 1,592 times, and their 10th most viewed has only been viewed 153 times (so a very steep drop in views). For comparison, the video of Sub-Evil’s performance of “Taco Man” at the ASA Talent Show 1.5 years ago has been viewed 1,033 times. It’s 1.5 minutes long, was shot will a cell phone from the audience, and only shows the second half of the song. But it would place a solid fifth in view count amongst the 166 videos that ResearchChannel has on Youtube. To be fair, it doesn’t look like any of the ResearchChannel videos has been up for much more than a month. Sadly, though, I suspect that the fragmentary “Taco Man” video will continue to hold its own against most of these even if we check back in a year or two, even with whatever marketing and promotion ResearchChannel and the associated universities might put into this.

And that video of the cute kid summarizing Star Wars? Almost 4 million views in less than two weeks.

I’m a big fan of serious content vs. sound bites, and I think ResearchChannel has their heart in the right place. There are cool examples of videos generated by university types that really take advantage of the medium and are successful in reaching an audience. I have grave doubts, however, about the likelihood that this simplistic mapping of the old lecture model onto (semi-)new technology is gonna get any traction with our son’s generation. I’m sure that some are quite good, and I can imagine that some might be quite popular/successful. But I’m guessing that those are the exceptions rather than the rule, in large part because this model just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It’s like TED, but four times as long-winded, with less quality control, and worse production values.

Ought to just pull in droves of kids.

Really.

Droves.

Related posts

• Show me what they really want (and don’t assume it’s the money) (2)
• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)

• They have a fancy new redesigned web site.
• You can check out cool photos like the one above in their new gallery.
• They have the schedule on-line so you know who you’re listening to!
• They’re way cooler than the lame radio station that those other people are listening to.
• You know you want to listen to a station where the DJs have that many CDs to play with.
• We’re in Britain, so you’ll almost guaranteed not to hear our voices for several months. (It’s not 100%, though, because the promo spots that we’ve done over the years have a habit of turning up now and then.)
• Cory Funk (a mighty and wondrous KUMM alum) is back on the air and has a killer 1 hour show at 5pm (Central time) on KUST. (Yeah, I realize that I’m plugging another station here, but Cory wouldn’t be that amazing without all his KUMM experience, now would he?)

I enjoy listening at what are very odd hours back in Minnesota and then IM’ing requests. It really messes with their heads to have profs listening at 3am…

Related posts

• UMM students are just so cool! (5)
• The world at your fingertips (2)

A couple of weeks ago the wonderful Desert Donkey posted a comment tipping us to a nice article at Atlantic.com on the future of radio.

The iPod shows you mainly what’s already going on in your head—it’s cool, but only as cool as solipsism can ever be. I’ve got a way cooler device: a squat little box that sits on your kitchen counter or your bedside table and connects you to pretty much the entire Earth. And in so doing makes you think anew about the global and the local and what community amounts to—makes you think about connection, which is, after all, the main topic of our age. It’s a kind of home epistemology center that also happens to rock.

There’s some nice analysis, and lots of pointers to cool on-line radio stations (including plenty of Beeb product). One thing I think it misses out is the interaction between live radio and podcasting, or at least the possibility of timeshifting radio as a matter of course. The piece also assumes that listeners want to hear new things and have their horizons expanded, and I think the jury’s still out on that one.

Thanks to DD for the tip; sorry for being a bit slow about promoting it!

Related posts

• It’s not about me getting old. Honest. (2)
• After this, I may have to go lie down (1)

I ran across this great dismantling on Whatever of Sony BMG’s truly ludicrous new semi-kinda-sorta-DRM free music system last night and just about wet myself giggling.

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Come on - you know you don’t really have anything important to do. Go treat yourself (to the post, not one of their stupid cards).

Related posts

• Show me what they really want (and don’t assume it’s the money) (2)
• Randomoid stuff from the tubes of the Intarweb (1)

The video is from 1948, the music is by kugelplex, and the vocals are by Jewlia Eisenberg from the wondrous Charming Hostess.

If we’re gonna have the silliness of the season, we might as well have people singing about Santa in Yiddish :-).

Related posts

• Fast Film definitely worth a quick look (0)
• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)

I was listening to a recent podcast from Steve Lamacq’s “In new music we trust” program where he was interviewing the Video Nasties. At one point Lamacq asks them how they got turned on to all these classic punk recordings as kids. It was from going through their dad’s record collection!

When I went through my Dad’s record collection, I was discovering excellent jazz from the 40’s and 50’s, as well as brilliant stuff from Mort Sahl and Tom Lehrer. Other kids my age might have reasonably found early recordings of Elvis and classic 50’s R&B, blues, or country.

For Sub-Evil Boy’s generation, this is how they might find the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie And The Banshees.

Now I definitely need to go lie down.

Related posts

• The world at your fingertips (2)
• It seems that the “why” makes all the difference (0)