Simon Johnson is a former chief economist of the IMF. His Atlantic article, “The Quiet Coup,” is likely to scare the bejesus out of you—if it doesn’t, please leave a comment and tell me where he’s wrong. I’m serious. I’d really like to believe he’s wrong, but he makes too much sense.

It’s bothered me from the start that the government is relying on the same people to try to get us out of this mess who got us into it in the first place. The thrust of Johnson’s argument is that government and the financial industry are too interconnected and thus unwilling to make the tough choices our dire economic situation demands. In his work with the IMF and various Eastern European countries, Johnson says he has seen the same dynamic at work time and again—but this time, since it starts with the American economy, the stakes are far higher.

I’ve been meaning to link to this for most of a week, but this morning Joan Walsh’s column at Salon.com has a brief summary and quotes from Johnson’s article and context for some of the surrounding arguments. I agree with her, Johnson’s article can’t get too much attention.

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My Life With Cables is pretty fun. Pity poor musicians, indeed. When my studio was all analog boxes, once or twice a year I’d just have to unplug every single cable, untangle the spaghetti mess, and plug them all in again. Otherwise, a 20-foot cable wouldn’t reach a box six feet away. I did get a patch bay eventually, but somehow that didn’t completely solve the problem. Cables are even more mysterious than clothes hangers.

In the Blood, a recent New Yorker article, is sort of a history of vampires in Western literature. It’s fascinating how the idea of vampires has evolved with time. For instance,

These early undead did not necessarily draw blood. Often, they just did regular mischief—stole firewood, scared horses. (Sometimes, they helped with the housework.) Their origins, too, were often quaint. Matthew Beresford … records a Serbian Gypsy belief that pumpkins, if kept for more than ten days, may cross over: “The gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like ‘brrl, brrl, brrl!’ and begin to shake themselves.” Then they become vampires. This was not yet the suave, opera-cloaked fellow of our modern mythology. That figure emerged in the early nineteenth century, a child of the Romantic movement.

I have always been confused by the conflation of the 15th century tyrant Vlad the Impaler with Dracula the vampire—I just didn’t get the connection. Apparently there really isn’t one. It appears that Bram Stoker heard about Vlad (also known as Vlad Dracula) and just thought that Dracula was a better name and Transylvania a better location than Count Wampyr from Austria, as he had started to write it.

There’s lots more, from sociological analysis to the Twilight books and movies, the Sookie Stackhouse books and True Blood. All in all, a pretty fun read.

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I do these every once in a while. Just to refresh your memory, pick a word or two words to enter into your iTunes search window. Sometimes you get an interesting playlist as a result. Shuffle for best results.

1. It’s Only Love / The Beatles / Help
2. Love Is Only a Feeling / The Darkness / Permission To Land
3. I Only Want You / Eagles of Death Metal / Peace Love Death Metal
4. If I Could Only Win Your Love / Emmylou Harris / Pieces of the Sky
5. Only Love Can Break a Heart / Gene Pitney / Anthology 1961–68
6. My One and Only Love / John Coltrane / The Gentle Side of
7. It’s Only Love / John Doe / Meet John Doe
8. Only Shallow / My Bloody Valentine / Loveless
9. I Only Said / My Bloody Valentine / Loveless
10. Only Love Can Break Your Heart / Neil Young / After the Goldrush
11. I’m in the Mood For Love / Tommy Dorsey Orchestra / The Only Big Band CD You’ll Ever Need

PS: “It’s Only Love” may be my favorite Beatles song ever.

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Catching up with some links, finally….

A friend sent this definition from the Encyclopedia Dramatica. If you are one, you don’t know it, so everybody laughs, right?

Salon’s How The World Works, formerly a blog devoted to globalization, has become the voice of sanity I turn to for economic news. Today, in a lighter note: Save the Alabama Condom!

Apparently, to be a Republican you must lose your memory—remember John Boehner just a few months ago, screaming about spending taxpayer money on contraceptives? For that matter, remember 2004 or so, when anyone who questioned the Iraq war was deemed a traitor and there was talk among the pundits about who should be put on trial for treason? Not for wanting the war to fail, but just questioning whether we ought to be there? No memory, that’s the kindest explanation I can come up with.

BTW, you will have to sit through a brief ad to access Salon content, sorry. Once you’re through the ad wall, though, check out this fun and fascinating 2005 story about a legal battle over condom designs.

Finally, I heard this amazing sound on an NPR story the other morning. I stopped what I was doing, completely riveted by the unearthly sound of Tibetan throat singing.

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Posted by pat at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Billy Wharton says Obama is no socialist. He should know—he is the editor of the Socialist magazine.

Posted by pat at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Snicker.

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So, think of 25 albums—vinyl LPs, 8-track tapes, cassettes, compact discs or MP3s—that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Music that dug into your soul and brought you to life when you heard it...Royally affected you...Maybe you just really liked it or it entered your life at a time that made it seem significant.

When you finish, tag 15 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

Pat says:
This is my Top 25 today. On another day, there would probably be a number of different choices. for instance, I'm already kicking myself that there is no Aimee Mann, Kate Bush, or Steely Dan in there. But it's as solid a list as I seem to be capable of.

I'm a little embarrassed that there are so many albums from the ’70s and ’80s on this list. But I think it's inevitable that what happens in a certain time in your life will influence everything that comes after. Perhaps especially for someone who has been a professional musician most of his life. Perhaps even more especially for someone who has had very little formal musical training, who taught himself most of what he knows from listening to these (and many other) records.

There are certainly plenty of records I have played to death recently, i.e., The Shins - Wincing the Night Away, The National - Boxer, A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder. But I can't say they have changed my life the way these earlier records have. No doubt if I were 30 years younger that would not be the case.

Anyway, here goes:

1. The Who - Sell Out
2. Beatles - let's say Revolver, or Rubber Soul
3. Led Zeppelin - IV
4. Firesign Theater - How Can You Be in Two Places At Once…
5. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
6. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
7. Joni Mitchell - Hejira
8. The Records - The Records
9. Pretenders - Pretenders
10. Joe Jackson - Beat Crazy
11. XTC - English Settlement
12. Missing Persons -1st EP
13. The Police - Ghost in the Machine
14. Cocteau Twins - mid '80s EPs, esp. Echoes in a Shallow Bay and Tiny Dynamine
15. The Cure - The Head on the Door, or Disintegration
16. Jules Shear - The Eternal Return, or The Trap Door
17. Richard Thompson - Amnesia
18. Sam Phillips - Cruel Inventions, or Martinis and Bikinis
19. Garbage - Garbage
20. T Bone Burnett - The Criminal Under My Own Hat
21. Peter Gabriel - Passion (Music for The Last Temptation of Christ)
22. Morphine - Cure For Pain
23. Crowded House - Together Alone
24. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
25. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler

1. The Who - Sell Out
For most people, this is not the most memorable album by The Who, but it contained “I Can See For Miles,” the song that made me decide I HAD to learn how to play drums. Also, it mixed fake commercials in with the songs, a practice which for better or worse has been a feature of most mix tapes or CDs I have made.

2. Beatles - let's say Revolver, or Rubber Soul
It was hard to choose a single Beatles album. The first one I really listened to was Sgt. Peppers, because before that my older sister was a major Beatles fan and of course i couldn’t like anything she did! But looking back, Revolver still stands out as a watershed, and there's something about Rubber Soul that keeps me coming back (though I have to say "Drive My Car" doesn't feel like it belongs with the other songs). Honorable Mention goes to the Love album, the mashup from a couple years ago that reminded us all over again what an amazing band the Fab Four really were.

3. Led Zeppelin - IV (or whatever it was called)
Too many wasted nights sitting in a college dorm room with wasted friends, figuring out Bonham’s drum parts by tapping on my knees. A few years later, the first time I ever set up in a big club, I played “When the Levee Breaks” for a drum check, just to hear that reverb. This was before “Stairway to Heaven” became a total cliche, of course.

4. Firesign Theater - How Can You Be in Two Places At Once (When You’re Not Anywhere At All)
Firesign Theater’s brain-twisting surreal albums had a major effect on my sense of humor and world outlook (for better or worse). “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye,” side 2 of this album, was the first one to get me hooked. “It's okay, they're speaking Chinese.”

5. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
To me, a trio of albums by Stevie Wonder all but defined '70s pop music: Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. Not only listening to the music, but staring at the semi-cubist cover art was a complete revelation for a white boy from Kansas. “All In Love Is Fair” is still one of the most heartbreaking ballads I've ever heard. And I've given up ever trying to capture the feel of the drums on “Too High.”

6. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Yeah, I know—one of the most commercial albums ever made, and if I never hear "Don't Stop" again it will be too soon. But at the time, it was world-changing, a sonic revelation, and I really do think it is one of the great pop/rock albums of all time. I still want to cover “I Don't Want To Know” in a band some day.

7. Joni Mitchell - Hejira
I keep coming back to this album in particular, as well as Court and Spark. Lyrically, there are so many phrases that resonate deeply with me. Certain summer skyscapes always make me remember, “These are the clouds of Michelangelo/ Muscular with gods and sungold.”

8. The Records - The Records
It's been decades since I heard this great power pop record, so I can only guess that it's as good as I remember. I do know that during the sessions of the first real album I was on (co-produced by Stan Lynch of the Heartbreakers and Greg Penny), I listened to this record every night back in the hotel room, hoping that we could come up with something as good.

9. Pretenders - Pretenders
I think Pete Townshend said it best: this record is like a drug. As much as I love the Pretenders' subsequent stuff, they never equaled this album again.

10. Joe Jackson - Beat Crazy
I've got a lot of reservations about Joe Jackson, though he certainly has recorded a lot of great songs. This album was a total winner, from the wacky cover art to the mesmerizing blend of pop, punk, and reggae. Very close runner-up: Body and Soul, still one of the best-sounding records I've ever heard, but marred by a couple of horrible wannabe-commercial clunkers.

11. XTC - English Settlement
In 1980, a friend said there was a band coming to Lawrence that I just had to see. She was way into punk, and that was what i expected. XTC turned out to be way beyond punk, and in fact one of the very best live acts I've ever seen—and less than a year later they stopped touring forever. As my former piano teacher said, XTC took the harmonic ideas implied by the Beatles to their logical conclusion. Four or five XTC albums are among my all-time favorites by anybody, but English Settlement was the first one I bought, coming out a few months after I saw them live. I was obsessed with it for months, maybe years. A close runner-up for mind-blowing ideas and obsession was Apple Venus Vol. 1, an amazing blend of orchestral and rock sounds wrapped around a sort of Wiccan season cycle.

12. Missing Persons - 1st EP
In the heady early days of MTV, music seemed to have been reinvented. I helped put together a band which did a lot of the MTV playlist, and we did amazingly well for about six months, when interpersonal clashes blew the whole thing apart. The emotional intensity made for some great gigs while it lasted. We did four or five songs by Missing Persons. Terry Bozzio remains one of my favorite drummers of all time. Unfortunately, the excellent first EP was followed by a succession of weaker and weaker albums. I'm not sure this record is really one of the best, but that was a very influential time in my life and those songs were a big part of it.

13. The Police - Ghost in the Machine
Stewart Copeland may have had a bigger influence on the way I play drums than anyone except maybe Ringo (of course I do steal from everyone I hear). Zenyatta Mondatta was the album that completely blew me away first, but Ghost remains my favorite Police album. Besides possessing mind-boggling technique, Copeland also knew when to leave lots of space, as in “Spirits in the Material World.” Plus I love the dense harmonies on that record.

14. Cocteau Twins - mid ’80s EPs, esp. Echoes in a Shallow Bay and Tiny Dynamine
Such a spooky, wild and lost sound. Elizabeth Fraser is one of my favorite singers ever—when I first heard the Cocteau Twins I thought they had at least two vocalists because she could sound so different. Eventually I thought they got too pretty and lost interest in the band, though lately I've been thinking I need to revisit those albums again. The series of EPs they did in the mid-’80s are my favorites—and what great titles! Besides the two mentioned above, Sunburst and Snowblind and Aikea-Guinea are right up there.

15. The Cure - The Head on the Door, or Disintegration
I am no kind of goth, but Robert Smith is one hell of a songwriter. At the record store where I worked part-time, EPs by the Cure kept showing up and no one else wanted them so I would usually get to take them. Then The Top came out and I was blown away, followed by The Head on the Door which seemed a more consistent album—and besides, it contained “Kyoto Song,” which to this day grabs me by the throat every time. After that, the band seemed to get more dance-oriented and less interesting, though Disintegration sort of became the soundtrack to my life as I went through a divorce last year.

16. Jules Shear - The Eternal Return, or The Trap Door
I think Jules Shear is one of the best songwriters around, though hardly anyone seems to know about him. After the amazing Jules and the Polar Bears records of the ’70s he put out a succession of mostly brilliant solo albums. Watch Dog, the first of these, was great, but The Eternal Return ruled my world for quite a while. 1992's The Trap Door is maybe even better (and not as dated in the production), but it never took over my life like the earlier one.

17. Richard Thompson - Amnesia
I had heard about the legendary Richard Thompson but had never gotten around to listening to him, when a band I was in wound up opening for him in the mid-’80s. They were a stupendous band, including Clive Gregson and Christine Collister, but the centerpiece was of course Richard Thompson. Not just a brilliant guitarist, he’s also a great songwriter and a surprisingly effective singer, and live he is a charming and funny front person. I immediately went out and bought the current album, Across a Crowded Room, but my favorite from that era is 1988’s Amnesia. “Gypsy Love Songs,” “Turning of the Tide,” “Waltzing’s For Dreamers,” “Pharaoh”—most songwriters would be proud to have one of those in a career, let alone on a single album.

18. Sam Phillips - Cruel Inventions, or Martinis and Bikinis
A couple of Sam Phillips albums dominated my life for months at a time: Cruel Inventions, and then Martinis and Bikinis. I've been a fan of T Bone Burnett’s production for ages, and felt his best work was on her albums (they were married until a few years ago). She continues to make great music—NPR recently streamed one of her concerts, and it was amazing—but it doesn't take me over like the earlier albums did.

19. Garbage - Garbage
During the 1996 Rainmakers tour of Norway I was obsessed with this record, and now whenever I hear it I remember the autumn hills and gorgeous fjords of that trip. Butch Vig’s production is incredibly dense, and somehow instead of sounding over-compressed it's bigger than life. I read a review of this album where someone said, “Every time I hear Garbage my world gets a little colder.” Somehow, that works for me.

20. T Bone Burnett - The Criminal Under My Own Hat
This album didn't really grab me at first, but over the years it has become one of my favorite CDs ever. It is a tragedy it is out of print. Simple, mostly acoustic arrangements of simple, straightforward songs—and what songs! “Any Time At All” was played at my wedding. “Primitives,” “Humans From the Earth,” “Every Little Thing,” “Tear This Building Down”—there's not a loser in the bunch.

21. Peter Gabriel - Passion (Music for The Last Temptation of Christ)
Peter Gabriel nearly always seems to break new ground with each album, especially with his sounds—though he is a thoughtful lyricist and amazing singer as well. His album Up from a few years ago still blows my mind every time I hear it. But I keep coming back to this soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese film (which I tried a couple times to watch, unsuccessfully). It is evocative of a place and distant time in a way I didn't know popular music was capable of. Again, sadly, out of print.

22. Morphine - Cure For Pain
I was intrigued by the idea of a rock band without a guitar player. Then I heard the growling sax, 2-string slide bass, and funk drums with film noir hipster lyrics, and I was totally hooked. Every time I hear the intro to “Buena” I'm excited all over again.

23. Crowded House - Together Alone
I love Crowded House, and a lot of the earlier Split Enz stuff, especially Waiata. But there is something about this one…. Maybe because it was recorded in a beach house in New Zealand, it really has a feeling of place about it—specially the ethnic singing and percussion on the title track. Wonderful stuff.

24. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
A friend turned me on to this record without comment. At first I didn't know what to think—a Nordic Pink Floyd, maybe? But I've never been a big fan of Pink Floyd, and besides, this album had overtones of classical music and just a nameless something that would not let me go. It still is my favorite of their expanding catalog. BTW, if you get a chance to see these guys live—do it. They are unbelievable.

25. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler
As I mentioned, as time goes by, it seems to be harder and harder for an album to get stuck in my head and force itself to be a daily listen. This one did, even more than his excellent first record, Music For the Morning After (the second record is mostly forgettable). Each song is kind of its own little world, but the album hangs together as a whole.

Posted by pat at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been on MySpace for a couple of years. As a musician I couldn’t afford not to be. Through my studio and various bands I’ve met lots of other musicians, and MySpace was a convenient way to socialize online, even though it often felt like we were hanging out in a teenager’s club.

Just a few months ago, it seems like everyone moved over to Facebook, even though it doesn’t support music as well. I still check my MySpace page and maintain a gig calendar there, but the emphasis is definitely on Facebook now. It’s strange to see such a sudden and thorough sea change in a social network.

In the meantime, there’s Friendster. Remember Friendster? It’s so sad—apparently nearly everyone left Friendster, leaving only attractive young women with nothing better to do than sit around in their underwear looking pensive. And emailing guys like me, begging to be my friend. Sad, sad, sad.

Posted by pat at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ruminations on that ringing noise….

According to a recent New Yorker article, tinnitus—“the false perception of sound in the absence of an acoustic stimulus, a phantom noise”—is one of the most common clinical conditions in the US. It’s pronounced TIN-nih-tus, btw, not tih-NITE-tis, and comes from the Latin tinnire, meaning to ring. It tends to affect older people, though there has been an alarming increase among young people who have served in Iraq—nearly half of those who have been exposed to explosive noises there now suffer from the condition.

Despite its prevalence, there has not been a lot of research on the subject. Interestingly, it appears that tinnitus arises within the brain itself, not anywhere in the middle or inner ears as one might think.

I’ve been playing drums in rock bands for almost 40 years, and the continuous ringing in my ears has steadily gotten worse with time. Personally, I think riding in noisy vans and airplanes for hours on end has as much to do with my condition as playing shows—a show would last a couple hours, but you might drive six hours to get there, and I know the noise floor in our old van was in the neighborhood of 85–90 dB. Airplanes are loud, too. Lately the noise of my computers and all the external hard drives has started to get on my nerves.

Fortunately, the ringing in my ears doesn’t really bother me most of the time. I’m usually able to ignore it, unlike a number of sufferers for whom it is a major disruption in their lives. I’m trying to take better care of my ears, and almost always wear earplugs when playing these days. And always wear earplugs in clubs when hearing other bands play. I don’t like to do it—I play better when I can hear the subtle nuances of sound “in the air,” but anything is better than losing my hearing.

I’ve tried a lot of different kinds of earplugs, and didn’t really like any of them. Almost universally they cut out the high end of the frequency spectrum, making everything sound dull and lifeless. Worse, especially since I’m usually against the back wall, earplugs can make the lower mids and mid bass so predominant that certain frequencies really stick out—to the point where some songs sound like they’re being played in the wrong key, and that really makes me crazy.

A year or so ago, someone told me about earplugs made by a company called Etymotic Research. They claim to make earplugs with a completely flat frequency response—everything sounds exactly the same, just 20 dB lower in volume. So if your band is playing at 105 dB on stage, pop in a pair and you’ll hear at a level of 85 dB, about the level of a well-lubricated dinner party.

I bought a pair, and to my surprise, when properly inserted in the ear they really work as advertised. Everything sounds bright and normal, just quieter (still not as good as no earplugs, but whatever). My only complaint is that taking 20 dB off the stage volume is just a bit much—the band can sound a little thin, and I have to resist the urge to play harder to fill things up. Incidentally, I can now really hear how lame the mix is for a lot of local bands—too many sound men just turn it up instead of making it sound good.

I want to be clear that I have nothing to do with Etymotic Research. I’m just a satisfied customer. The ER-20 earplugs I bought online were $12, plus $6 shipping. Unfortunately, there are no retail outlets anywhere close to Kansas City. Etymotic also makes Musicians Earplugs, custom-fitted for your own ear canals, and available only through licensed hearing professionals. These are available in -9, -15, and -25 dB models and cost $150–200 per pair.

Posted by pat at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)