We are so proud of our first born. She was the first one on and she had no problems trooping up there and getting down to business. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did:
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Jeff Rubin: Riding Hard and Fast on Energy
Amazing speech by Jeff Rubin. Completely flips your view on oil depletion and provides a reasonable solution out of our hole. Looks long but is very entertaining.... Jeff Rubin (born August 24, 1954) is a Canadian economist and author. He is a former chief economist at CIBC World Markets. He graduated from McGill University with a Masters in Economics after completing his Economics B.A. at University of Toronto. He began his career as an economist at the Ontario Government Treasury Department where he was responsible for projecting future interest rates. He moved on to the brokerage firm Wood, Gundy which was taken over by CIBC and became first CIBC Wood Gundy and then CIBC World Markets. He has accurately predicted fluctuations in interest rates and the value of the Canadian dollar. In the early 1990s he came to prominence projecting a major decline in the Ontario real estate market. He was one of the first economists to accurately predict soaring oil prices back in 2000 and is now a popular commentator on oil depletion and its economic repercussions.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Deepak Chopra: Is the Fate of Democracy in Sarah Palin's Hands?
Deepak is dead on in his analysis below. Palin foreshadows some potential dark clouds for the upcoming mid-term elections. Lets hope, for the sake of the world, that the US doesn't fall for it again like they did in the Bush years.
A recent review of Sarah Palin's bestselling book, Going Rogue, ends by declaring that she is the worst nightmare come true for democrats with a small d. This is both a startling and an obvious claim. It's obvious in that Palin is a rabble-rouser. Without shame or apology she targets the crazy right, fueling their resentment and anger with outright lies. "Death panels" are only the most colorful example. She is willing to bait the mob with any fear about America's future, from financial collapse to terrorist devastation.
Palin's image as an abortion-hating, meat-eating, gun-toting hockey mom is a flimsy contrivance. But if she seems like a prime example of political piffle, Palin's rise is also startling, because her followers truly bond with her in a visceral way that is rare for any politician. In February Palin will give the keynote speech to a national convention of the tea-bag movement. At that moment we will learn something about political passions and the future of democracy -- something we wish wasn't there.
In his year-end roundup, New York Times columnist David Brooks said that he has always looked to passionate outsiders as omens for the future. John Birchers in the Sixties, feminists in the Seventies, and religious fundamentalists in the Eighties are examples of embattled outsiders who gained center stage through their passionate commitment. Brooks sees that same passion among the tea-baggers, with their blinkered obsession over socialism, taxes, and big government. It's a potent, toxic mix. Ronald Reagan wasn't telling the truth when he said that government is the problem, not the solution, but with that slogan he launched a reactionary crusade. Today, thousands of Americans feel more compelled than ever to join that crusade.
Once any political movement wins, it becomes self-justifying. Reaganism was on the whole very harmful to America and at its heart hypocritical, since Reagan presided over an enormous jump in the size of government and a tripling of the deficit. But since the reactionary right was able to seize the reins of democracy, it automatically felt justified. As a result, a generation of Americans has grown up disgusted with government while at the same time buying into a range of bigoted and prejudicial beliefs that make good government impossible. When you will do anything to block health care reform, immigration reform, subsidized spending for a crippled economy, and increased revenues to care for an aging population, government isn't the problem: you are.
People don't like to feel that they are the problem. Therefore, many flock to a myth-maker like Palin. Her hokey frontier ethic is completely divorced from reality. Few poor people can shoot a moose outside our back window or would want to. They need food stamps and other kinds of compassionate help. Palin touts free enterprise and hates federal programs. But Alaska takes more federal dollars per capita than any other state, and a third of its jobs are government jobs.
What we're seeing is an old tactic in new bottles. The right wing thrived by distracting voters from reality. The average person's life isn't remotely affected by school prayer, flag-burning, late-term abortion, or gay marriage. But if you get enough voters aroused by these issues, the party in power can subsidize the rich with vast tax cuts and look aside as real incomes for the middle-class fail to rise. All the benefits of corruption, from freewheeling lobbyists and influence peddling to Wall Street chicanery and subprime lending, go to the haves and hurt the have nots.
Palin has turned up the volume but pursues the same tactic. Her situation is one that's easy to identify with if you are hurting. She holds together a family and fiercely defends it in the face of a teenage pregnancy and a Down's syndrome baby. It's also easy to identify with her knee-jerk reaction against taxes, federal bureaucracy, and unwanted intrusions from Washington.
But if you go one layer deeper, Palin's kind of mobocracy would lead to the following:
-- reluctant assistance for victims of disasters like Katrina
-- a burgeoning underclass cut adrift from government aid
-- an out-of-control medical system at the mercy of insurance companies and ever-rising costs
-- the vicious criminalization of illegal immigrants
-- a belligerent military stance around the world
-- an atmosphere of permanent fear-mongering
-- the driving out of tolerant, educated people from the political system
-- a chaotic attack on all government programs
-- a huge mismatch between income and spending by the governmentThis list would represent fear-mongering on my part except for the fact that all these things occurred during the Bush years. Democracy suffered a huge setback with the long reign of right-wing ideology. All that Sarah Plain offers is an amped-up version fueled by more blatant appeals to mindless fear and rage. Will she succeed? It's an open question. The American public has barely emerged from the fog of illusion; Palin's success or failure will tell us a lot about whether the same fog, only thicker, is about to return.
For more information go to deepakchopra.com
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Sunday, January 03, 2010
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Why Apple Was My Company of The Decade
Back on the cusp of the new century, I was one of the ThinkPad people, rarely encountering Mac machines unless you counted the machines used by Forbes.com’s design staff. In August 2000, when I joined Red Herring (the Jason Pontin edition), I got a Pismo Powerbook running the Mac OS 9.
As a technology journalist chronicling the world of Internet and broadband, I could see that our world was going to change. All media was going to go digital and will be distributed over this new broadband network. It was a matter of when and how.
In January 2001, when Steve Jobs spoke about his digital hub strategy, a light bulb went off in my head. Apple was going to the company that was going to lead us through the transition.
Fast forward to today, Apple has done what Steve wanted it to do. Apple and its products have done insanely amazing things: disrupted an entire industry (music), invented new product categories and now with iPhone is reinventing not only the mobile phone business, but the very idea of the computing itself.
It has survived (so far) near-death experiences of its leader Steve Jobs. Most importantly, it was smart to recognize very early on that the commodity hardware was merely a spring board for premium user experiences. It was also smart in remembering that mass brings morass.
No one can deny the achievements of Google, for many reasons Apple is the company of the decade. Google’s stock performance inspires shock-and-awe, but pales in comparison to Apple. Look at it yourself!
Since Google went public, the search engine giant is up close to 500 percent. During the same time frame, Apple’s stock has climbed up 1200 percent. From 2000 to 2009, Apple’s stock was up nearly 10 times – climbing from mere $24 a share to $211 a share at the end of 2009.
As the next decade of the 21st century rolls around, it is becoming obvious that the battle between Google and Apple is going to dominate the headlines for years to come.
- Fortune magazine: Steve Jobs: CEO of the Decade.
- Harvard Business Review: Steve Jobs, Best Performing CEO in the World.
- Wall Street Journal: Steve Jobs: Person of the Decade.
- Adweek: Apple: Brand of the Decade.
I have great respect for Om Malik and I wholeheartedly agree with his analysis.
William Bradley: The Band of the Decade: The Beatles?!
What does it say that the biggest musical group of the first decade of this new millennium recorded its last album 40 years ago?
That's what sales figures show, that the best-selling album of the decade is the Beatles' 1, a collection of their number one hits. And that, when counting the individual albums in their massive (and very expensive) box sets of remastered recordings released just this past September as individual albums rather than one "unit," the erstwhile lads from Liverpool have sold more CDs than Eminem, the leading solo act of the decade, or any group, for that matter.
That's what the figures show, but what do they mean?
"A Hard Day's Night" from 1964's A Hard Day's Night.For one thing, it points up the fragmentation of the new music scene. For another, it points up the ongoing appeal of the Beatles.
Though I liked them, I was never a big Beatles fan. They were somewhat before my time, and when my time came I embraced California bands and singers. I've gone through a number of musical phases, and there were years that passed in which I didn't listen to the Beatles, aside from the unavoidable snippets one hears passing through life.
When the remastered Beatles albums were released this past September, I was intrigued. As I looked over what was being released, I realized that I really didn't know a lot of the material, as familiar as the Beatles seemed. I had a few of the later classics -- Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, the White Album -- but the earlier Beatles material, which merely made them famous, was largely a mystery. Even though I had compilation albums. The context was lost. And the recording quality, frankly, left a great deal to be desired.
Since I was writing extensively about Mad Men's season three, set in 1963, the same year as the Beatles' first two albums, when the remastered Beatles albums were released, I decided to get the earliest Beatles albums to have a greater feel of the time.
"Please Please Me" from 1963's Please Please Me.Which inadvertently kicked off my own sort of personal Beatlemania. Rather than get all the albums at once, I got them one at a time, to get a feel for what each was about and how it resonated with the year in which it was released.
It was like discovering a new band. The remastering of the albums is so well done, the sound so clear and vibrant, it sounds like the music was only recently recorded. And what a band! They put out a tremendous amount of material in a relatively short period of time, from 1963 to 1970. There are 14 remastered albums released by Apple Corps -- 13 studio albums and one double-album of songs released only as singles. That's an average of two per year. (Let It Be, released in 1970, was recorded in 1969, briefly abandoned amidst squabbling before being released after the final Beatles recordings to be found on the vastly superior Abbey Road.)
I'm especially partial to the early Beatles, 1963 to 1965, because it was so unfamiliar and new to me. I knew some of the songs, of course, but they were wrenched from the and development of the group on compilation records.
It turns out the early and middle period Beatles albums were all wrenched from context in their original American releases, with Capitol Records frankly screwing them up, changing the lineup of the songs and frequently omitting songs altogether found on the original British releases. Naturally, the remastered albums follow the original British format.
"All My Loving" from 1963's With the Beatles.Taking each of the early albums in their original order -- Please Please Me and With the Beatles in 1963, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale in 1964, and Help! and Rubber Soul in 1965 -- it was easy to see how Beatlemania progressed in Britain, then spread to America (breaking huge in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy) and around the world.
The Beatles were fun and fresh. Still fresh, that is, as they'd played together for years and were a ferocious live act, their chops honed with endless playing in Britain and Germany.
America never really got a strong feel for the Beatles as a live act, since Beatlemania was so powerful a force here that the fans' incessant screaming made it sound as though shows here were being performed on the tarmac at a busy airport. And by the time people had stopped screaming all the time, the Beatles were such superstars that touring seemed a disturbing chore, and they retreated to the studio, where they became the first studio band, experimenting with pop music in ways never seen before.
So the two albums from 1963 stand as the best example of the Beatles in concert. The first, Please Please Me, was to have been recorded as a live album at the Beatles' home base club The Cavern in Liverpool. But producer George Martin decided the acoustics weren't good enough. So he and the Beatles recorded the album in a day at the Abbey Road Studios in London. With the Beatles was recorded later in 1963, in six sessions totaling 28 hours shoehorned into the Beatles' extensive schedule of touring and appearances.
"Can't Buy Me Love" from 1964's A Hard Day's Night.What we get on these albums, bashed out in rapid-fire succession by today's standards, with rudimentary recording equipment, is a tight, energetic group with great vocals on a blend of rock 'n roll, rhythm and blues, and pop ballads. While the band still relied some on cover versions of songs they'd played a million times in their live shows -- as was the fashion of the day -- most of the material is original, with the Lennon/McCartney partnership already striking gold.
A Hard Day's Night, which I've quickly come to love, came out in 1964 along with the brilliant pseudo-documentary film by Richard Lester. The Beatles are antic, arch, and vibrant as they make their way through what came to be known as "Swinging London," which they merely own. Seven of the songs play as nascent music videos during the film, a new genre which comes even more to fruition in Lester's 1965 Beatles film, Help!
"Eight Days A Week" from 1964's Beatles for Sale.While they had more time for recording this album, they didn't have much by today's standards, recording the album on the run again in the midst of all they were doing. By any standards, they delivered a masterpiece, the best example of a guitars-and-drums vocal band playing and singing their own songs in live studio recordings.
This time round the Beatles present 13 original songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and they sound tight and fresh and smart, from the classic clanging George Harrison chord that opens the title song to "I'll Be Back."
"Help!" from 1965's Help!After Beatles for Sale, a rather hurried record done for the Christmas 1964 market which nonetheless has some gems like "Eight Days A Week" and "I'm A Loser" along with a return to cover songs, the Beatles hurried to make a follow-up to the hit film A Hard Day's Night.
That's 1965's Help!, which again makes drummer Ringo Starr into an unlikely movie star. Starr, regarded by many as the luckiest man on the planet to get the gig, the runt of the litter, was actually the key to making the group work. The Beatles had suffered for years without a proper drummer. Starr, the working class kid contrasted to John, Paul, and George's rather more posh and educated middle class backgrounds, filled the bill in the nick of time, and added a big dollop of charm to an already charming group.
As a movie, Help! is a Pop Art-inflected, pot-fueled melange of arguably amusing bits. In addition to the obvious nod to the Marx Brothers, it's something of a spoof of the James Bond films -- with the orchestral parts of the soundtrack mimicking John Barry's style, turning a riff from A Hard Day's Night into a mock espionage theme -- perhaps in answer to Sean Connery's famous put-down in 1964's Goldfinger: "Champagne without ice? My dear girl, that's as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."
"Ticket To Ride" from 1965's Help!The plot? Ringo has this enormous ring he can't get off his finger, so naturally a fiendish religious cult and a pair of mad scientists are after him and the rest of the Beatles, and ... Well, enough of that, except to say that the plot took the lads to the Austrian Alps and the Bahamas. All the better for some cool song sequences, this time in color, adding to the reason why MTV declared director Richard Lester the father of the music video.
Help! is not as consistent an album as A Hard Day's Night, but it marked a further advance, with the great title track a Lennon confessional of antic confusion and McCartney's "Yesterday" merely the most recorded romantic ballad in history, along with the brilliant mid-tempo rocker "Ticket To Ride."
"Nowhere Man" from 1965's Rubber Soul.Then came Rubber Soul, the first Beatles album recorded over a consistent stretch of time uninterrupted by tours and appearances, to close out 1965. Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in pop music history, Rubber Soul, a more folk rock-oriented album, marks the real beginning of the Beatles' transition from a live band to a studio band. It's the first of their albums to seriously utilize studio effects, with new instrumentation and the beginnings of psychedelic rock.
After this, the Beatles pulled back from the breakneck pace that marked the pop and rock stars of the era, working hard during their contracts to extract the most possible from their fleeting fame.
It was evident by then that the Beatles' fame was far from fleeting. From then on, with the exception of some brief touring that ended forever on August 29th, 1966 at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, they concentrated on albums that became classics of the baby boomer generational soundtrack -- Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be.
Branching well beyond the guitars-and-drums rock/rhythm and blues/pop sound of their early years, these albums embrace psychedelia, hard rock, art rock, music hall, children's songs, classical strings, and the beginnings of world music with the introduction of an Indian sound.
I already had Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, and the White Album, and the remastered versions of these all sound far better than the earlier versions.
Whether you prefer the later Beatles, long acclaimed as avatars of the counter-culture and progressive politics, or the earlier Beatles, for many of us a largely undiscovered, vibrant young band, it's not hard to understand why their music lasts and lasts and lasts, as fresh and intriguing as ever.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
My Top 10 Songs of the Past Decade
There were so many songs I could have included. However many of these are a bit off the beaten track of radio and iTune's Singles. However give it a listen...it won't hurt your ears and you may end up enjoying yourself!
Parent Mad 6-Year-Old Didn't Like Peanuts Special
ROSE HILL, VA—Bruce Pillard, 34, was angered Tuesday over his 6-year-old daughter's indifferent reaction to A Charlie Brown Christmas. "That show is a classic and an annual tradition!" an incensed Pillard told daughter Courtney after watching the program on CBS. "It is not 'boring,' and the voices do not sound 'weird.' What the hell is wrong with you?" Courtney was sent to her room for the remainder of the evening.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
My Top 10 Albums of the Decade
This is the time for reflection and sadly 'Top Ten Lists'. Well I thought I should share my thoughts on my favourite albums of the past decade. It has been interesting being a music fan during this past decade - watching the music industry implode under the weight of it's own excess has been exhilarating. Here is my list:
- Pinback - Summer in Abaddon
- Interpol - Turn on the Summer Lights
- Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album
- Nada Surf - Let Go
Spoon - Girls Can Tell - The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart
- The Strokes - Room on Fire
- Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
- The Grey Album - Jay Z + DJ Danger
- Stateless - Stateless
Let me know what your top ten albums are.
Michael
Tony Sachs: Ten Records That Made This Cruddy Decade A Little More Bearable
Damn, I hated the '00s -- a decade so crappy that nobody ever even figured out what to call it. From the recession and stolen election that kicked it off to the near-economic collapse at its tail end, and all the bullshit in between, the last ten years have been one long bummer after another. To my ears, the music of the decade didn't make things much better. Fleet Foxes and Fiery Furnaces, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, Jay-Z and the Jonas Brothers, Bright Eyes and The Darkness, emo and screamo, and that goddamn Autotune. Almost all of it made me go "feh," "eh," or "meh," if not all three.
But as the old saying goes, there's always good music out there, it's just that sometimes you have to hunt a little harder for the good stuff. I guess my problem was that, as a record store guy (now a former record store guy) in the age of downloads, blogs and viral marketing, I lost interest in hunting. So the ten records that made my decade may not be the most cutting-edge or most obscure or significant of groundbreaking. But they're mine, and I love 'em all passionately. Here's my soundtrack to the decade of "Mission Accomplished":
10. BRENDAN BENSON - My Old, Familiar Friend (ATO, 2009). I'm somewhat suspicious about placing a record that's barely four months old in my top ten of the whole darn decade. I'm still largely in my infatuation phase; there's no telling how it's going to grow on me, or how much I'll remember it six months from now, let alone ten years. But I can tell you that I haven't gotten such intense pleasure out of a record for one listen, let alone the hundred or so times I've probably spun it, since the Dow Jones was still around 14,000. You probably know Brendan Benson from his stint with The Raconteurs; if you were paying closer attention, you may have checked out the critically acclaimed, sparse-selling power-pop masterpieces he's been putting out sporadically for more than a decade. If you ask me, My Old, Familiar Friend is the most consistent of the lot. If the power chord-laden rockers don't get you, the ballads will. If the harmonies don't get you, the hooks will. If the Motown pastiche doesn't get you, the new wave takeoff will. There's something here for everyone, and all of it sounds dandy to me.
9. MOSQUITOS - Sunshine Barato (Bar/None, 2004). Combine a nerdy Brooklyn indie-popper with a wispy-voiced Brazilian chanteuse, and you get a warm, sunny, melodic and utterly charming album that's just about guaranteed to transport you to a breezy beach somewhere, even if you're standing ankle-deep in January slush. Sunshine Barato is a wispy album full of small pleasures which I never thought would make my end-of-the-decade list when it first came out. But every time I hear its jangling guitars, bossa-rock rhythms, and JuJu Stelbach's girlish vocals, I fall in love with it as though I'm hearing it for the first time. This was their second album -- a few years ago they put out a third one which was darker and less infectious, and they subsequently dropped out of sight. Wherever they are now, I hope there's sand between their toes and a cold glass of cachaca in their hands.
8. BECK - The Information (Interscope, 2006). One thing you could count on with Beck is that each album would sound nothing like the previous one. The wiseguy pomo hipster of Odelay morphed into the oddball bluesy-folkie of Mutations, which begat the funky party animal of Midnite Vultures, followed by the morose singer-songwriter of Sea Change. None of these records were ever less than interesting, and they were all brilliant in places, but after a while I grew tired of the gimmick. Starting with 2004's Guero, he started integrating the Many Moods Of Beck into a seamless whole, and he really hit paydirt on the followup, The Information. If you like Beck for his aural collages, his funky beats, his introspective songwriting, his dark lyrics, well, it's all here in one handy-dandy package. And in every facet of his game, he's in top form. Not only that, but you also get to make your own CD cover with a sheet of enclosed stickers, AND there's a cheap, hastily-shot DVD featuring a video for every song. What's not to love?
7. MORPHINE - The Night (Dreamworks, 2000). Morphine's leader, Mark Sandman, died onstage in July 1999, with this album having just been completed; it was released the following February. Even though there were no warning signs of the heart attack that killed him, The Night seems eerily prescient -- the music is haunted and somber, and many of the lyrics deal with mortality and abandonment. As Morphine's saxophonist Dana Colley told me, "I think a lot of people who are big fans of Morphine couldn't bring themselves to listen to it because so much of it sounds like a eulogy, in a way, or a swan song." The Night was also intended to be a beginning. It adds strings, backing vocals, a second drummer and more to Morphine's traditionally lean bass/saxophone/drums brand of "low rock." It's a tentative step in a new direction, and it's not always successful. I was disappointed with it at the time, and I still think that Morphine's next album, had Sandman lived, would have achieved everything he set out to do on this one. But I kept coming back to The Night for the entire decade, and its beauty and richness hits me anew each time. If that's not the hallmark of a great album, I don't know what is.
6. THE DETROIT COBRAS - Life, Love And Leaving (Sympathy For The Record Industry, 2001). Ever since the Beatles and Bob Dylan made the scene, the presumption has been that to be a truly Great Artist, you must write your own material. Well, the Detroit Cobras have made half a dozen killer records over the last decade which feature a grand total of, by my count, one original song. Bon Iver they ain't -- and I mean that in the best possible way. The Cobras dig up forgotten nuggets of rock n' roll and R & B from the '50s and '60s, rev 'em up, and spit 'em out garage-punk style, making them their own in the process. Sounds easy enough, but try doing a version of "Hey Sah-Lo-Ney" by Mickey Lee Lane or the Otis Redding obscurity "Shout Bamalama" that can hold a candle to the original, and you'll see just how tough it is to pull it off. Much of the credit must be given to frontwoman Rachael Nagy, whose bruising yet vulnerable vocals -- think Joan Jett meets Motown -- can caress a soulful ballad or belt out a 4/4 stomper as well as anyone on the planet. Truly awe-inspiring stuff.
5. THE LIBERTINES - Up The Bracket (Rough Trade, 2002). 2002 was a nonstop drag of a year, with its post-9/11 hangover and pre-Iraq buildup, not to mention the evisceration of the Democrat party in the midterm elections. It was also the year it became clear that music retail -- or my store, at least -- was not going to survive the MP3 wars intact. It was such an annus horribilus that I must have blocked most of it out, because a few years later, when I tried to think of some of my favorite records of '02, I couldn't recall a single one apart from this classic. The British music press annoints a new Greatest Band Ever every six months or so, but this is one of the few that lived up to the hype. Up The Bracket isn't quite punk, postpunk, or Britrock, but some attitude-laden, adrenaline-heavy combination of the three, attacking the eardrums with one infectious raver after another. How co-frontman Pete Doherty survived the decade given his pharmaceutical excesses is a mystery. The band wasn't so lucky, splintering after a good-but-not-great second album. This record, however, is a hell of a legacy.
4. WHITE STRIPES - White Blood Cells (Sympathy For The Record Industry, 2001). If there was one band in this decade that just about everyone from teenyboppers to 20-something hipsters to grizzled classic rockers could agree on, it was the White Stripes. At first they were lumped in with the rest of Detroit's lo-fi garage-rock revivalists, but if they resemble any one band to me, it's Led Zeppelin. The coolest thing about Jack and Meg White, however, is that they betray no evidence that they've ever even heard one of their records. Rather than listening to Zep and imitating them, they took their inspiration from the same country blues and folk records that inspired Plant, Page and Co., and put a 21st century Dee-troit spin on them. The result is a record that sounds like a classic without being a study in classicism. And for the record, I never thought Meg White's drumming was as bad as the kvetchers claimed.
3. THE STROKES - Is This It (RCA, 2001). It's all bullshit, of course, whenever we talk about a proverbial age of innocence in which we lived immediately prior to some awful game-changing event. But the summer of '01 does exist in my memory banks as a pretty idyllic time, especially for a New Yorker. The Twin Towers still stood, the Yankees were three-time world champs, and the hippest new band around -- the Strokes -- were NYC natives. Is This It, their debut record, didn't come out in the States until after 9/11, but my store stocked the import version, and that summer, when it seemed like CDs and MP3s could possibly coexist, I sold it by the truckload. You can pinpoint their primary sonic influence not just to one band -- The Velvet Underground -- but to one song, "Coney Island Steeplechase" (from Another View, if you're curious). But their catchy, concise and astute songs also took cues from downtown legends like Television and Richard Hell, as well as transplanted Manhattanite John Lennon. And what you get is a classic rock n' roll record about what it's like to be young and jaded and stoned, in a certain place, at a certain time, that ceased to exist all too soon.
2. NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - Twin Cinema (Matador, 2005). This band features not one but three certified geniuses (certified by who, exactly, I don't know): A.C. Newman; Dan Bejar; and Neko Case, all of whom also make records on their own. But they all bring their A games to the New Pornos' records, which magnify their strengths and obscure their weaknesses. Newman's songs are equal parts '70s pop, '80s new wave and '90s alt-rock, but always with a unique twist that sends the hooks down a slightly different path than you'd expect. Case's vocal showcases (written by Newman) prove that, as great as she sings her own mournful alt-country ballads, she's an even more masterful pop chanteuse. And Bejar, whose quirky songwriting and speak-singing can wear thin over a whole album, is perfect for a couple of changes of pace per LP. Twin Cinema, their third of four records to date, finds the whole band firing on all cylinders, cranking out 14 ebullient, gorgeous pop songs that are as close to perfect as anyone came in this godforsaken decade.
1. BOB DYLAN - Love & Theft (Columbia, 2001). Say this much for Dylan -- the man has amazing timing. This album was released, as luck would have it, on 9/11. Not knowing what else to do that morning, I showed up and opened the doors of my store for business. And wouldn't you know it, we sold every copy we had that day. "I don't care if the world's ending," one customer said, "I've gotta have my new Dylan." For weeks and months afterwards, this record was one of the things that kept me sane. Dylan had already kickstarted his comeback with 1997's Time Out Of Mind, a dark, resigned album about mortality and lost love. But what the hell was this? Rocking out like Bill Haley, making like a '30s jazz combo, cracking corny jokes, casting a lecherous eye on sweet young things -- Dylan wasn't contemplating his mortality, he was giving it the finger. Without sounding anything like his seminal '60s work, Love & Theft damn near matches it. A life-affirming album that came at the exact time when we desperately needed it.
Follow Tony Sachs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RetroManNYC
Imprisoned, Attacked & Dead Bloggers Increases Worldwide in 2009
Imprisoned, Attacked & Dead Bloggers Increases Worldwide in 2009
Written by Abraham Hyatt / December 30, 2009 3:30 PM / 5 Comments
According to a report released today [PDF] by Reporters Sans Frontières, the number of bloggers around the world arrested because of their online work jumped from 59 to 151 between 2008 and 2009, an increase of 155%. Additionally, one blogger died in prison and 61 were physically assaulted. The most infamous cases perhaps occurred during the violent unrest in Iran following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection. But RSF said the number of overall arrests and attacks can actually be traced to crackdowns in at least 10 countries.
"The number of countries affected by online censorship has doubled from one year to the next - a disturbing tendency that shows an increase in control over new media as millions of netizens get active online," said Lucie Morillon, head of the group's Internet and Freedoms Desk.
The report is a profoundly depressing read. As tech journalists writing from the soft comfort of our homes, it's easy to forget that in many places of the world, the simple act of posting something to a blog has lethal repercussions.
Elections, politics and the economy were the primary reasons bloggers ended up in jail. While China is the worst, Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan also frequently monitor or block websites and blogs.
From the report:
"Two Azerbaijani bloggers, who were sentenced to two years in prison for making a film mocking the political elite.The Turkmen Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is still in jail, while the famous Burmese comedian Zarganar still has 34 years of his prison sentence to serve. Victims of Internet policing also include such leading figures in the defence of online free expression as China's Hu Jia and Liu Xiaobo and Vietnam's Nguyen Trung and Dieu Cay."In South Korea, a blogger was wrongfully detained for commenting on the country's disastrous economic situation. Around six netizens in Thailand were arrested or harassed just for making a connection between the king's health and a fall in the Bangkok stock exchange."
In March, Reporters Sans Frontières will launch what it's calling the Enemies of the Internet campaign to highlight the countries affected by online intimidation and censorship.
Photo by Amir Darafsheh, Tehran, Iran.
Posted inBlogging and tagged with
blogging, censorship, China, deaths, Iran, prison
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Why are you putting bloggers and real journalists in the same discussion?
Journalism is intelligent writing based on facts.
Blogging is whatever you think with enough "facts" to support your opinion.
Not the same.
Posted by: mb01915
What a sobering set of statistics. Great post, Abraham - Thanks for sharing with all of us.
Makes me a lot more thankful for the freedom to be a loudmouthed, obnoxious twit on the Internet when I need to or feel like it. My heart goes out to those who are not so fortunate.
Posted by: Jolie O'Dell
| December 30, 2009 4:49 PM
I see, in the chart, real journalists made distinct from bloggers. Indeed, the journalists are at the top of the list.
As for bloggers, they may be an unreliable bunch, but they are an unreliable bunch under attack, subject to arrest, beatings and even murder just like their more professional counterparts.
I presume that's why.Ll.
Posted by: Droniggle | December 30, 2009 4:51 PM
MB01915 - Go back to watching Fox News if that is what you think. People who make comments like yours would not be able to spot "intelligent writing" if it hit them in their big, hard heads.
Why are you commenting at all if that is what you think? Do you visit blogs just to belittle them? Why don't you go to the Newsweek website? You can read about how the birth of Shiloh (Pitt and Jolie's baby) is one of the top 10 Cultural Moments of the decade. Since Newsweek says it, it must be true right?
Posted by: Danielle | December 30, 2009 4:55 PM
mb01915: I think blogging is too gray of an area to say that bloggers categorically shouldn't be considered journalists. There's no doubt that much of the blogging world doesn't fall into the journalism category. But, for instance, what about someone in Iran who blogs about a protest they were in. How different is that from a reporter do the same thing? The question isn't who is a journalist and who isn't. It's who do you trust. I trust some bloggers more than I trust some traditional journalism entities. If you earn my trust through quality reporting, I don't care who you write for or where. Because of that I'm glad that RSF is including bloggers in their report. Censorship is censorship, not mater who it's directed at.
Posted by: Abraham Hyatt
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