News from Tennabama

THE LOCAL SHOPPER I picked up somewhere near the Tennessee-Alabama border covers towns or "places" including:

Bible Hill, Black Cat, Bobo, Cash Point, Coffee Pot, Coldwater, Delrose AND Dellrose (typo maybe??), Gobblers Knob, Goodsprings, Hollands Gin, Lick Skillet, Locks Crossroads, Minor Hill, Pisgah, Toney, and U-Take-It. 

News from the region: 

• Chad Farmer engaged to Misty Sorrow. Farmer is self-employed at Farmer Construction. Sorrow is employed by Hunstville Hospital Emergency Room.

• Entries now being accepted for the Ardmore (TN) annual Rodeo Queen and Cowboy Contest. Also don't miss the Ardmore Tractor/Truck Pull.

• Addison Claire Tiemann, daughter of Kendall and Holly Tiemann, turned two years old on May 30. She is the granddaughter of Wayne and Sherry Browning and Chuck and Terri Tiemann. Addison celebrated with a Bumble Bee Party (sic) and (sic) her Meme (sic) and Papa's house. 

• Obituaries: Barbara Ann Martin (nee Caudle).

Did Barbara Ann Caudle have a sister named Molly Caudle? 

Ad:

Ain't Charlie 

Nifty?

On June 26th,

She was Fifty! 

Happy Birthday,

You Old Doll!

The laughing woman in the photo appears to be dressed up like a man and wearning a fake mustache.

Celebronicity

SO THE OTHER NIGHT I was watching "The Soup" with Joel McHale, who kinda reminded me of Craig Kilborn. So I sez "hey where the HELL is Craiggers, anyway? Is he ever coming back to TV?" So I hop on the Nets and find that, lo and behold, he is coming back, with a new show on Fox -- in less than one week. Sweet!

"The Daily Show" was way better in the Kilborn days. I've heard people say he was "smug" and "smarmy," but they don't get that it's a shtick, a joke. He's playing a character. Unlike Jon Stewart, whose smugness is deadly serious (and totally unfunny IMO). His audience are the type who think they're the smartest people in the room. Ehh...

And I find that other Craig, the Scottish dude, about as funny as a steaming bowl of haggis. You do know what haggis is, right? I have never managed to get through a full episode of that guy. Kilborn should've stayed. 

AND THEN TODAY, when I get on line, something -- I dunno what -- says: I wonder what’s up with my girl Samantha James? 

So I go to SammyJ's Myspace. Whaddya know! Her new album just came out. 

 Today!

 Now if only I can just put these psychic skills to more lucrative use. 

SOME FOLKS HAVE A PROBLEM, apparently, with the fact that young white hipsters are such a large portion of retro soul act Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' audience. 

My reply to the Chicago Reader piece went like this: 

White people, it is OKAY to be white and like black musicians. It really is! It is even okay to be young and white and like older black musicians. Whether enjoyed as a "hipster" or not, by age 30 none of that will matter yet they will likely have a lasting respect for the music, and that's all that matters.

I'm sure SJATDK appreciate people of all ages and ethnicities who buy their records and come to their shows, as long as they're paying customers.

By the way, I am a black dude who grew up in the late '70s and '80s and I hated Motown music. It was my parents’ music. The records sounded ancient and tinny, and they weren’t even in stereo.

But I was a huge fan of Hall & Oates. I started building a Hall & Oates record collection in high school. Little did I know I was listening to two white guys channeling doo-wop and Philly and Motown through New Wave. So now, I can appreciate Motown music. (I never really disliked Philly, I guess because the style was still in during my formative years and I heard it often: see Spinners, O’Jays, Frankie Valli in Theme from Grease…)

In similar fashion, I got into the British group Swing Out Sister, who do jazzy loungy pop. They in turn got me into -- or reintroduced me to -- SOS influences such as Fifth Dimension, Laura Nyro, Astrud Gilberto, Ennio Morricone, Burt Bacharach, etc. *

And how many soul or funk or jazz records would people have never heard if it wasn't for hip-hop samples?

People like Sharon & the Daps deserve to get this kind of love, finally. If they can't get it from black kids because they're too busy listening to Young Money or Trey Songz or whatever, let them get it from white kids.

 

 

* Ed. note 2/5/11: Add to that illustrious list the great John Barry, who died just this week.  

still peeved at this r & b

IN AN OLDER POST I shared why I was peeved with contemporary rhythm and snooze. In that post I blamed Sean P. "Puffy Pops/Diddly Squat" Combs for helping kill off hip hop. I have now received confirmation of this fact, from no less an authority than Pu$$ycow.

Slop culture update

IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD, there's this fascinating new nature show called "Jersey Shore." It's quite educational.

I have watched several episodes so far. Fascinating! Watch the little round one right there. See it constantly displaying its hindparts? That must be a female in heat, looking for a mate. And look, there's a male showing off its mating colors, puffing up its chest, and utilizing "product" to make its fur stand on end in a bid to attract and penetrate more females. Wow! There go two of them, fighting for supremacy!

The best thing about these critters is, they look just like people and they're really quite clever. They even have rudimentary speech skills.

TOO BAD LADY GAGA's actual songs are as boring as her video concepts, costumery, choreogaphy and set design are creative. But wait -- that describes 95% of major-label music.

New Flash: J.D. Salinger Has Died

Again?

How companies are going green

GREEN IS ALL THE RAGE. With mounting fears of global warming and the heightened popularity of planet-friendly products, even the biggest companies are racing to jump on the bandwagon. Here's how some businesses are "greening up" their products and images. 


STARBUCKS: coffee now grown with solar energy

MOTOROLA: : Employing only Third World workers, who consume vastly fewer resources than Americans

CHARMIN: Toilet paper 100% recycled

COCA-COLA: Now with real, natural cocaine

YOUR LOCAL USED CAR DEALER: Selling 100% used vehicles

PROCTER & GAMBLE: Removing up to 10% of the toxic, caustic chemicals from its personal-care products

POTBELLY SANDWICH WORKS: All employees crazy baked

Introducing the "New Urbanist" shopping mall

JUST FOUND THIS while Ixquicking (that's my new term for Googling) "Faux New Urbanism."

In a misguided attempt to inject some classical urban charm into the North Conway, New Hampshire location of Lowe’s, someone thought is would be a good idea to build-in a pretty hilarious row of fake second-story windows on their otherwise completely suburban box-store.

But how about the "New Urbanist" suburban shopping mall? This one in Burr Ridge, Ill. (not far from where I live) is the reason I was Ixquicking "Faux New Urbanism" to begin with.

The nostalgically named Burr Ridge Village Center boasts a "vibrant main-street setting." (They don't mention it's built right next to an interstate highway.) And yes, the buildings do attempt to mimic the homes-over-storefront look of real classic town centers. But instead of the variety of a real town (like Homewood, IL* , a rail-centered south suburb of Chicago), where on a typical block you might have a gas station, a corner grocery store, local mom-and-pop coffee shops, taverns, pizzerias and ice cream parlors, local banks, civic buildings, and locally owned hardware stores, every store in these fake company towns is a shiny clone of a national chain.

Rather than living quarters for shopkeepers and other normal people, the "apartments" above the Banana Republic and Starbucks in the Burr Ridge Village Center are high-end condos. In short, it's a mall disguised as a small town.

No doubt a candidate for "localwashing": "Shop Local! All your favorite hometown shops here — from Starbucks to The Gap!"


*I couldn't find any good photos of downtown Homewood, but thanks to Google and the U.S. government's scary satellite technology, you can just go to Google Maps  punch in "Ridge and Dixie, Homewood, IL" into the address bar, zoom all the way in, and you'll get the street view in downtown Homewood. You can zip up and down the streets to your heart''s delight.

Or try Hinsdale, Burr Ridge's neighbor to the south, also with the advantage of commuter rail. For Hinsdale, punch in "Garfield and Chicago, Hinsdale, IL."

Michael Jackson died for our sins

WAS I A FAN of Michael Jackson? For a child of the late '70s and '80s -- and an African-American to boot -- that's like asking: "Are you a fan of the sun?" "Are you a fan of the earth's rotation?" C'mon. But some distinctions are in order.


There was Michael Jackson the man: flawed, weak, vulnerable -- the one who danced with death, and stumbled.


Then there was Michael Jackson the natural talent, the consummate professional, the phenomenal songwriter, singer, dancer and all-round flawless perfomer.


And there was Michael Jackson the public persona, the mystery, the symbol, the "icon" -- the idol.


I felt for the first MJ and I hugely respected and enjoyed the work of the second. I don't care much for the third MJ since, as a believer in God, I don't really do idols.


Folks who don't worship a higher power, find lower powers to venerate instead. It's unavoidable, part of our makeup. In practical reality this makes for messy situations. A god here, a god there, a god everywhere. Thousands of gods, endless ladders and hierarchies and taxonomies of deities, often in conflict -- is it any wonder their worshipers are forever in conflict, with each other, with themselves? For example, people whose God or ultimate authority is the state are have maimed and killed others in the hundreds of millions in the last century, simply because their respective state-gods commanded them to do so. It's the same mechanism that leads people to believe Michael Jackson was superhuman. 


But it's evident that like many idols, Jackson himself had a complex, tortured relationship with his status. Arguably, it's the idolatry that killed him.


The ancient Incas had a tradition of taking a servant and elevating him to deity for one day.


Then they sacrificed him.


In exchange for his a brief time as a god, Michael Jackson went to his Maker long before his proper time. Yet like the slave-king -- or perhaps, like most kings down through history -- he wasn't really in charge. His status as god-for-a-day was cynically milked by those who surrounded him: the industry, white-coated drug pushers and other assorted hangers-on and enablers who profited from him as long as they were able. They rode him until finally the ride was over.


What a tragedy for the man sacrificed to provide others not only with entertainment, but for meaning for their otherwise hollow existences. What a tragedy for a family. And what a trauma for a culture. Will this serve to jar us awake, close a chapter in American history, break the spell of celebrity silliness and allow us to be grown-ups again? Will it help us shut down this out-of-control star machine that chews people up and spits them out -- often, into a waiting grave? 

Will it help nail shut the coffin of celebrolatry, at least for a few of us-- allow us to go back to letting God do his job, and entertainers theirs? 


Or will we remain a Michael Jackson nation, alternately stroked and traumatized, so at the mercy of forces beyond our control we feel the need to retreat into a cocoon of magic kingdom make-believe?



LEFTOVER THOUGHTS: About the pedophilia rap, I still don't know what to think. We know the guy was warped. We know he had an interesting porn collection but porn -- or, let's say, a nude and partially-nude art collection -- but contrary to popular rumor, it was not kiddie porn, according to the evidence released by police.* We know he loved children, but it's not clear that he loved children that way. Part of me wants to believe that his thing about children owed to the fact he was in a very real way a child inside -- for better and for worse -- and in that sense, was only preferring the company of his peers.

I HOPE ALL aspiring and working young singers will avail themselves of the selection of live Jackson footage going back to the Jackson Five, and watch their flawless, professional performances. That's what performers are supposed to do.

* Update Aug. 2010: This site runs down all the "porn" found in Jackson's collection that police bothered to make public. The general finding was that none of the images constituted child pornography or anything else illegal.

More new old posts!

Top 10 worst pop music trends

How to lie without lying

Rhythm & snooze

Dead beats, or the death of melodies and chords

Party like a mock star

"I don't know why we make art"

What not to watch

Some poetic licenses should probably be revoked

Indeed.

Google + ADD = ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS. You start out searching for info on the heart chakra -- which takes you to someone's MySpace, which triggers another Google search, and you end up watching "Young Cheezy: The Fred Fredburger Remix."

THE CINNAMON BEAR (that's a link)

YOU WILL GET hooked on this Wizard-of-Oz-like, wonderfully whacked-out Christmas-themed radio series from 1937. Enjoy the acid-trip-like adventures of Paddy O'Cinnamon and his foes such as Crazy Quilt Dragon, the Candy Pirates, the Wintergreen Witch, the Ikaboos, the Scissor Soldiers, and the Bad Dolls. And, oh yeah, Santa is involved somehow, too. I happened to hear a part of one episode when I stumbled upon WCSF 88.7 FM (St. Francis College of Joliet) while dial-surfing as I sat in my car, warming up my freezing feet during a break from work. Take a listen.

America's Circus Maximus

THIS MORNING I HEARD sportswriter Sal Paolantonio on the Dennis Miller show (yeah, I know, I listen to that glib, snickering-at-his-own--jokes Republican shill so you people won't have to) plugging his book How Football Explains America. The biggest revelations in that interview are no secrets to any thinking person conversant with history and with the ways of the power elite; but what knocked off my socks was that they exposed it on national radio for the masses to hear: America's preeminent national sport, football, is the "Circus Maximus" (Miller's words) of the American Empire; according to Paolantonio, it is about "violence," about "religion," about "manifest destiny," about war and conquest.

American elites wanted to form a national sport to replace the European sports of soccer and rugby, which most Americans hated. The "Founding Fathers of American sport" got together in two meetings in 1880 and 1882, at Harvard and Penn State respectively, to "fix" the game of soccer. Their first innovation was to add the first down, which enables the team to "capture territory, hold it and defend it" -- an allegory for the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The next innovation was to add a general called the quarterback, the "cowboy outlaw figure" and "main protagonist" who "tells the story of the game as it marches across the field, just as we marched across the continent."

$tarbucks: Your Community Coffee Store!

STARBUCKS HAS CHUTZPAH. Fashioning a warm-and-cozy, earth-toned, earth-friendly, feel-good glow around itself is a Starbucks specialty. Its use of art is a case in point. You go into one of their stores and you see art on the walls that fits in with the rootsy, funky, artsy vibe they fervently try to create (and then replicate exactly across nine kajillion locations). You look at it, or perhaps just unconsciously take it in via peripheral vision, and it feels nice, it feels warm, it feels soothing.

It's also glibly self-promoting. As it turns out, the art is actually a subtle image ad for Starbucks itself. Take, for instance, the piece that pictures a tree of words -- words such as "coffee," "love," "passion," "place," "community," "people." And various inspirational sayings, or presumable comments from satisfied Starbucks customers. The piece is captioned: "The Deeper the ROOTS, the Higher the Reach." What is that supposed to mean? Nothing, really. Like an Obama campaign speech, it has no meaning; it's about how they'd like you to feel about the brand.

Generally, the faker and more uncaring and more remote a huge corporate business is, the more it has to advertise to us about how real and caring and community-focused it really is. While I don't know the hearts of the folks behind Starbucks, it's not really about their conscious intent; it's about the system, and system logic inevitably drives out diversity and individuality.

The irony is that one block away from the local Starbucks store where I first saw the "tree" piece was the former location of an actual community coffeehouse -- founded by a guy I went to high school with -- that this Starbucks had helped kill off. In a Starbucks world, "community" is marketing copy and corporate art emanating from a headquarters hundreds of miles away. The people you live with? Ha, screw 'em -- they're just a revenue stream.

New old posts!

THESE ARE POSTS I meant to finish up and add long ago but just recently got around to doing so.

Actually, I prefer nonduality : (skeptical take on Eastern mysticism and "enlightenment")

"When we're not on, we're not watching either": not-really-that-juicy gossip on local TV news folk

Bringing stars back down to earth: the one redeeming thing about celebreality TV

Siamese Band Names: I've added some new ones.

Jen, Jane -- whatever: A synchronicitous meetup with a onetime date who actually may be my cousin.

Bright, happy, and deadly : selling birth control pills like candy

Top 10 worst pop music trends of the last 10 years

LAST TIME I POSTED about the MTV Video Music Awards. More than any other force, the music video is responsible for shrinking pop music from an art in its own right, into mere background material for dazzling imagery and fancy filmwork. Accordingly, the VMAs provide an annual snapshot of the decline of pop music, largely since the late '90s. Some of the worst trends in our video-driven pop culture, in my book:

10) Timbaland, Neptunes, and Lil Jon producing everything

9) Reggaeton

8) Simpering whiny-boy vocals in R & B

7) Female artists obliged to sing angry-bitch man-dissing songs

6) Every R &B single using the same drum sounds and synths borrowed from trance music

5) Hip-hop replaced by snap rap


4) Abandonment of chords and chord progressions (this was actually deteriorating in the mid-90s but has really hit rock bottom in the last 10 years)

3) Abandonment of melody (Covering a 2-or 3-note range in an entire song barely qualifies as melody.)

2) The loudness wars, -- leading to fatiguing all-loud-all-the-time recordings, lacking space and dynamic and emotional range. *

1) Autotune


* I mean, have you listened to anything on vinyl lately? Check out anything from the '60s, '70s, '80s, even '90s, and compare with stuff released in the last decade. This digitally laser-polished, glossy-finished, over-compressed, up-in-your face, all-loud-all-the-way-through sound that's been going on in pop and rock music for the last several years is nice as an occasional effect to signal "this is some extreme shit -- check it out." But any extreme effect used all the time becomes fatiguing. Especially when it's on every fricking song.

The other day I was listening to Frankie Valli's "Grease" and some '70s Hall & Oates stuff, like "Bigger Than Both of Us." What a reminder of how refreshing it was when recordings allowed space -- space for loud and quiet, for surprises. You remember how good the sizzle of a high hat sounds against a mellow background that's not all up in your face. You know. Percussion? Remember that?

VMAs: Very Much Annoying

WHAT CAN YOU SAY about the MTV Video Music Awards? It is what it is, and everybody (except, perhaps, its key target audience) knows what it is: a big-production parade of factory-made corporate music performed and produced by hard-working, expert performerbots and crack technical crews, with absolutely no soul or feeling. (Every once in a while, however, a genuine performance manages to slip in unnoticed.) Generally the VMAs induce a sense of despair and malaise in me -- I skipped the show last year -- but I watched it this year, figuring it'd at least be fun to ridicule.


* The only thing more disgusting than the Bush administration is some prancing, preening Brit mincing in on a high horse and telling Americans how they ought to feel about the Bush administration. We'll figure that out ourselves, thank you very much, Mr. Russell Brand. Also pretty disgusting: tasteless jokes about deflowering the Jonas Bros. and slamming them for their chastity pledges.

* The best way to view Rihanna doing "Disturbia" -- her zombies-with-lightsticks-"Thriller 2008"-filtered-through-"Dirty"-era-Christina-Aguilera number -- was with the volume down and, preferably, to avoid viewing her face. (She made that part easy, though, what with the thigh-high boots and fishnets.)

* Katy-come-lately Perry: "I Kissed a Girl"? Hey, nice original song title! And what a refreshingly subversive, "dangerous" concept: lite bisexual experimentation! Wow, we're really shocking the bourgiousie now.

* Pink is hard to categorize. She's clearly kinda punk in her origins and attitudes, so I wanna like her. Yet the vehicle she's chosen to ride to the top is pure glossy, gimmicky pop in the worst way. She lets just enough of her punky persona shine through -- in fact, she has to dial it up to overdrive just to overcome the sheer shiny plasticness of the music underneath it all. I've heard just about all of her hit singles, but I can't remember a single one, except the one that's out now -- again, disturbingly slick in its production, disturbingly like everything else out there, but at least I like the galloping beat (cribbed from Gary Glitter) and the Irish-jig "na na na" hook -- that's a little different.

* Kanye? Kanye, you out there? Look, you're from my hometown, I got mad respect for your story and your achievements an all ... but come on. Does the world really need another rapper trying to Auto-Tune himself into a singer?

For all you rappers who wants to sing, do like Kid Rock did and actually learn how. Drop some of that cash you're stackin' and get a respectable voice teacher. L.A. is crawling with them.

* Speaking of Kid Rock, he provided one of the best and realest performances of the night. (The rap by Lil Wayne: totally superfluous. And speaking of Lil Wayne: will someone please kill him already?)

* And last but not least: I think I have watched about one episode of American Idol, total. So I had no idea who Jordin Sparks was until I saw her on Larry King Live a couple years ago. And I thought: Wow, she's an amazing singer (though she deserves better material) and she's gorgeous and she's intelligent. What? Seventeen?

She carried herself and spoke with a maturity and charisma far beyond most 17-year-old girls. I mean, I don't go ga-ga over stars and I generally haven't been attracted to teen-agers since I was one, okay? Yet I found myself getting a mini-crush on this girl. But then, "girl" is not the word. As I watched and listened to her, the only comparison I could make was to some Christian homeschooled young adults I've known: they stick out like neon signs, since they tend to act and speak more like, well, adults than like the typical silly kids their age. As it turns out, Sparks actually was homeschooled, for a few years at least. And from K-8 she attended a Christian school.

So it's no surprise she showed the courage to slap back at VMA host Brand for his desperate, leering jokes about sex with the Jonas Bros. and crude putdowns of their chastity pledges. Sparks, who has pledged herself to premarital chastity as well, stepped up and reminded the world that "not everybody ... wants to be a slut." Good for you, Jordin. Keep being beautiful and talented and mature beyond your years and non-slutty.

Hey, guess what

CHICKEN BUTT!

It's my longtime friend from the Internets - Heather Bradley. This chick is wacky crazy talented -- I think the name of her production company, "Country Breakdance Inc," says it all.

UPDATE JUNE '09: Aw, she's taken all but three of her songs down, as well as her "Chicken Butt" skits. I hear she's preparing some new stuff to put up, though.

How to lie without lying

IN THE WORLD OF ADVERTISING free speech and artistic license allow the wolf to dress as a sheep, and no law will stop him. It’s bad enough advertisers lie with words and are rarely caught, and by omission, and nobody notices; but the worst lies are implied  lies told by cartoon mascots and actors playing fictitious characters acting out fantasy situations which, we are led to believe, are somehow connected to the how the advertised product actually works in the real world. These fictions transmit impressions intended to be received as fact – and yet more insidiously, to bypass our rationality by evoking desired emotions and linking them to the product, company or belief being sold. How do you accuse a fictitious character of lying?