For some reason, I'm glad Slim Goodies reopened.

I spoke to my friend Muscle today, who is currently exiled in DC and hating every minute equally as ferociously as I am hating Phoenix. Each time we talk, we inadvertently expose the ridiculousness of the whole situation; we bitch and moan about having to stay in the godforsaken cities where we are, but really, we didn't lose so much. Well, M's family probably lost their house. So actually, he lost a lot and it's really just me who's bitching about nothing.

But anyway, we tend to oscillate wildly between the best and worst case from conversation to conversation, changing roles each time (today I was the optimist). In any event, for the first time he brought up what happens if we can't go back, because of school, for over a year. We sort of both felt like moving somewhere Northeast - or at least not where we currently are. He mentioned New York, which wouldn't be a bad place to be, I suppose. Of course, we'd both prefer to simply loft the city of New Orleans in a hot air balloon, letting it circle the globe seasonally. Permanent vacation.

And for every moment of desperation, there's an equal moment of hope; the selfish thought that we'll go back and help build back something, wherever we can. Maybe it'll be Nick's. Maybe we'll just hold on to some sort of memory of the city "the way it was". Maybe someday I'll be one of those old guys in Mandina's, if Mandina's still exists. For now, I'm looking forward to getting back and turning the amp up loud.

The St. Charles Avenue Pub opened back up today. Slim Goodies is open again. I'm feeling pretty good about that. I was even happy to see Fat Harry's being cleaned.

And Eddie Compass resigned. Good riddance, but not for anything having to do with the hurricane. Just for being a shitty chief.

If I wrote about this shit every time I thought about it, this space would be nothing but blubbery rambling. Luckily for whomever keeps riling up my hit counter by 3 or 4 at at time (Hello, adbots!), I'm totally capable of maintaining an ironic distance from it all. I can disappear so far up my ass, in fact, that the light disappears altogether.

I'll try to find something meaningful to write about for later.

the Amazon

I spend some days poking around amazon.com, for various reasons, not least of which is that I'm hoping, thru sheer force of will, to get their "Recommendations Wizard" (RW, if you like) to begin making intelligent decisions rather than throwing 19 early 90s Kate Bush records at me because I bought, and rated highly, Hounds of Love. And goddamn, I do love Hounds of Love. I love The Dreaming, too, but that doesn't mean I'm snatching up her whole catalog all nimbly-bimbly. In fact, I can't really forsee a world in which I wind up buying many more of Kate's records. That's not the point. THATS NOT THE POINT! The point is this: why call it a recommendations wizard? It's neither recommending nor is its skill anywhere near what I would call "Wizardry". At best, it is a "Purchasing Aggregator", which is much more dystopian and one of the reasons my dreams are filled with flying robots that find me in my bedroom.

So, of course Amazon isn't going to advertise a "Purchasing Aggregator", for the reason listed above as well as many others. But, really, the RW is, tho addictive, really a lot more trouble than its worth. For instance, I bought a book recently called - actually, it doesn't matter what it's called (I can't remember) - it's about how "the Gift" is a concept removed from normal capitalistic exchange and how art factors into all that. I was really looking forward to reading it, but now its lost underneath Catch-22 and Pale Fire (I know, what is this, high school? Sorry, I was sleeping then, didn't read this stuff. I thought I liked ee cummings then - which I didn't.) In addition to a million other things and all the articles I'm reading for classes at ASU. But anyway, shortly after I bought this book, just about everything with "gift" in the title started showing up on my flying robot machine and overwhelming me. Now, I'm sort of interested in those things that breach normal rules of capitalistic exchange - I'm a fan of the Hayekian conception of the free market as a mover of information, but skeptical that it must exist - but I don't think I want to read 10 books about gifts. Maybe I do, but not now. I don't have the time.

The other thing that pisses me off about Amazon is the customer list. The customer list shows up on sidebars very frequently, and is just as infrequently useful. I often read lists of people's top whatever records, and I'm quite a fan of them, but only in as much as they give some insight into the person's listening habits. As it turns out, everyone on Amazon who as listened to Stereolab hates Radiohead and thinks that, by hating Radiohead, they are striking a blow for real elitism against all those fake kinds of elitism practiced by mouth-breathing members of the General American Public (GAP; thanks Slaven). I happen to think that you can not only like Radiohead and Stereolab at the same time (you can also like Doveman and Supersilent and Deerhoof and all those other oughta-be-two-words-but-is-heavier-because-its-one bands) but that you can maintain a healthy elitism regarding your Radiohead consumption. I mean, sure, Kid A went to number one on the US album charts, but only you caught the Eno refrence on "Treefingers". And before I get called on the "one word bandnames" rant, I didn't exempt my own high school incoherencies. I'm past that now. Mostly. But anyway, unless you're listening to more than 40 new (or newish) records a year, you probably shouldn't be making a list. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If you're not well-versed on Kant, don't send contributions to an ethics journal.

In this way, too, we can maintain our elitism, Radiohead-appreciators. And in case you're wondering, I chose 40 so that I can still make a year-end list with plenty of wiggle-room, should I want to take it.

Just in case you were wondering, this weekend was filled with watching my home flood again and listening to copious quantities of Stereolab and Muslimgauze. And still reading Catch-22.

Apple vs. Warner Music Group?

An article up today about the little spat occurring between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Warner Music Group (WMG henceforth) CEO Edgar Bronfman. Apparently WMG is pushing for music downloads to be placed on a sliding price scale, which Jobs, perhaps rightly, characterizes as "greedy". There are a lot of issues at play here, but I want to focus on the money quote, reproduced here for your pleasure:

“To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer,” said Mr. Bronfman. “Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past.”

Ah, the market. That glorious vehicle for delivery of goods and services. The problem is, the market has already decided how much people will pay for downloaded music. Napster, anyone? Innovation is still a part of the market even if you don't like it and it doesn't fit your business model. Now, of course, the music industry would like some protection for itself from the market, which has proven that a much smaller number of people will pay for the product that a record label delivers, which is, strictly speaking, a service-product.

That's right; record labels don't actually deliver anything in terms of a real product. When WMG releases a record, they are essentially a middleman between bands, studios, producers, promoters, advertisers, media outlets, and duplication services. To the best of my knowledge, there are very few labels that have in-house record-duplication services. WMG is not responsible for a single thing that you hold in your hand when you pick up a record at the store, other than some fronted capital. Basically, WMG floats a loan to your favorite band.

But whatever. That's a digression and not fundamentally important to the matter. What is important is that record labels, like a million other corporations on this planet, like to use "free market" as an excuse for "whatever is best for us". The market works both ways, as an information indicator to both parties - consumers and sellers - and everyone else peripherally invovled. Apparently, a lot of people decided that it was more worth their time to install KaZaa and its massive log of spyware onto their computers so that they didn't have to pay $18.99 for the two songs they wanted from that one record by the faceless band. A smaller, but equally important segment of the music consumer base, decided that their favorite bands deserved their money if they put out great records with beautiful packaging and a tracklist of solid songs that spoke to them.

I say all this as someone who doesn't download music, except from .mp3 blogs, and that's, of course, for sampling purposes only. But whatever. Just don't look for someone to protect you against a shifting market paradigm, part of the motion of a free market, and then invoke the very market you want protection from in order to justify it. Have some goddamn integrity.

Tom Waits on NO Benefit

Apparently Tom Waits waded waist-deep thru a putrid puddle of jam bands to perform at Madison Square Garden for the New Orleans benefit show. He performed "Make It Rain", which is why I love Tom Waits with all my heart, though I sometimes forget this fact. If I can get an .mp3, I will violate my earlier statement about this not being an .mp3 blog anymore and put it up. If anyone has it, please do let me know.

Band camp

Maybe I'm just getting weak, but I was watching MTV2 today and very nearly teared up. Without any pretense at poesy, the horns in the Neptunes' "Hollaback Girl" quite literally thwart my meager attempts to lend some sort of imagery to them. If, as Shlovsky says, the making of literary language exists in the making unfamiliar of reality; in the destruction of the algebra of human thought wherein words are left unfinished and symbols in their place fill our discourse with half-ideas and shorthand, then "Hollaback Girl", in the sheer awfulness of its lyrical content (which extends, certainly, to the delivery, which, like swallowing bleach, has been known to induce tremors and vomiting but does, on the upshot, clean out one's system), defamiliarizes the unconscious musical legacy of a youth surrounded by half-baked appropriations of hip-hop and whatever the hell happened in the seventies that I don't understand. So, yes, my eyes blurred with tears today watching MTV2. Not that this is any comment on their respective merits, but I've never cried while listening to Future Days. Bananas, indeed.

Another shot of New Orleans, and thoughts on microlending

If ever I had readers, they're certainly gone now. Nevertheless, at Contort Yrself I believe in nothing so much as the business of carrying on, despite what the past few months may have inconclusively demonstrated.

I just finished watching Bush's address from Jackson Square, and once I got past the urge to shout at the screen "Get out of my city!" I began to listen, for at least the policy-oriented portion of the address. Of course Bush began with the pledges for billions and billions of dollars - all of which is good but expected. He actually addressed the history of race issues in the city and in the South, which is good also, but I don't see anybody doing much of anything about it. I don't think his day tour of New Orleans (I would assume like a ghost tour, except with water and debris) has opened his eyes to the general nature of poverty in the South in some broader way.

It was his three policy intiatives that I mostly would like to comment on. First and foremost, he seemed to want to introduce an element of micro-lending, which I like very much. If anyone has ever read any of my essays (articles? columns?) over at Newsthoughts, you would see that for a while I was pretty hung up on microlending as a great solution to problems in areas where normal economic infrastructure doesn't exist. This isn't so much the case in New Orleans, but the issue is that many people haven't historically been involved so much in the existing infrastructure. If you microlend (such as Bush's second proposal, setting up worker accounts for training, job searching, and interim childcare), you accomplish two things. First, you put the money right in the hands of those who need it. Second, you engage people who otherwise might not be involved in the economic infrastructure. The biggest benefit to this plan for a city like New Orleans, however, is that these loans will reach those who will be left behind by insurance claims and the flood of tax breaks that Bush will certainly prescribe for the area. I'll address these in a moment.

The third proposal, an Urban Homesteading Act, is something that, on the surface of it, strikes me as a good idea. The Federal government will take Federal land, divide it up, and raffle it off, essentially, to low-income families. They must, in return, pledge to build on the land with the aid of either a mortgage or a charitable organization. I think if you couple this with some other local ideas - job counseling centers in these areas, perhaps mixed-use buildings (which have seen great success, as near as I can tell, in cities like Phoenix - where I'm staying now) with middle-income and low income housing and storefronts.

What I worry about most is the first proposal, the creation of what Bush is calling a "Gulf Opportunity Zone", which is one of those phrases that you know is full of troublesome riders. Sort of like "compassionate conservatism". Now, if I know Bush, and I think after 5 years I do, this will mean rampant tax cuts (Bush left the door open for not only small and minority owned business to recieve these breaks, but also "any employer" - meaning Wal-Mart as well might get a tax break) for any business that moves into the area. Along with these kinds of tax breaks, I'm sure that the Feds will mandate that cities lower some of their restrictions and resistance to national corporations. For anyone who has heard of New Orleans' long-standing resistance to Wal-Mart and other "outside" intruding businesses, this might not fly so well. I've heard rumblings also that they might wish to further lower Louisiana's already dismal local environmental standards, and the even more dismal national EPA ones.

If there's anything New Orleans doesn't need, it's more environmental degredation. It was costal erosion that helped cause some of this flooding to begin with.

And my final bitch-and-moan, which I deliver on the basis of a throwaway line in a recent NY Times article...actually, I don't even need to say it, I'll just quote the article and you can figure it out:

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government...

Here's the link. Fantastic. Now we can count on New Orleans being used to help sustain a permanent Republican majority. Of course, I haven't heard anything confirming this for sure, but if it is true, it is the first real and definitive sign that George W. Bush really doesn't even give a shit if disaster happens in the US. The last thing we need is his fixer leading the reconstruction.

So I hope that's actually false. But, I wouldn't put it past them.

If you'd like to replicate my current mind state, pull out your worn copy of Hank Williams' 24 Greatest Hits and loop "Mind Your Own Business" ---> "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)". Top it off with Gregory Isaacs.

Time isn't up to us.

It's been very many months since I've done anything here, and for a great while I was very much dedicated to not ever touching it again, since the instant gratification I had hoped would come with web diffusion hadn't happened. Now, of course with different priorities (of course), I'm leaning towards coming back to the blog, though what form it will take is an issue that I still have to ponder. Certainly not an MP3 blog - that's too much work and I can't tell if anyone was actually downloading the tracks.

In any event, I'm refugeeing it and living with my mother in Arizona until December probably. Until I figure out something better to do here, I'm going to post, for anyone else in similar relative-comfort-all-things-considered like myself, a few of the records that have been constantly rotating thru the course of the past couple of weeks.

1. Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Tho it is rare that this record isn't in rotation, more recently it's been even on the docket while I listen to music thru iTunes. Usually, while I'm on the computer I tend to listen to music song-by-song as opposed to record-by-record, which is my MO when I'm in the car (as much out of convenience as any sort of metaphyiscal statement about the "appropriateness" of listening to records en totalé in the car. That said, it does seem more appropriate.) In any event, Remain in Light is one of those records that is somehow both bouyant and important, probably because it maintains an ironic distance from its own profundities - like Mr. Rogers reading Phenomenology of Spirit; "under the water, carry the water" - it's almost cute. "Facts don't do what I want them to." No, indeed they don't. And, of course, the cleverest thing about this record is putting the big release right at the beginning. I think, I'd really like to listen to the Talking Heads now, and then I put it in and immediately get the satisfaction of hearing "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" and bum-bum-bum....HA!. Before the curtain can even part, the "trained" animals are already out in the audience.

2. Dr. John - Gris-gris
A lot of people only know Dr. John from his post In the Right Place-era, which is very wrong. In the Right Place has a couple of good songs, but is nothing even close to the haunting, ramshackle gut-punch of Gris-gris. If Odelay was birthed from the swamp instead of LA, and if Beck actually liked both country and soul instead of pretending to for the purposes of Midnite Vultures, this would probably have been something like the sound. Except Dr. John's voice is, like, a million billion times better than Beck's. "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" makes me want to learn Creole. Also, it makes me wish that the I-10 wasn't obliterated, that my house on Magazine had water and power, and that Nick's wasn't under 4 feet of water. Again, facts don't do...

3. Bark Psychosis - Hex
"Absent Friend". Cheesy? Perfect?

I'll be doing more in the next few days to figure out what I'm doing. If you happen to have stopped here before, and are stopping here again, welcome back.