The Rise of Private Cops: How Not to Tackle Homelessness

Forgive me for expressing my considerable frustration with this article. On the one hand, it does describe a problem that is routinely ignored: they way private police are clearing the homeless out of public spaces, and beating them up while doing so, and the regular cops are not defending the rights of the homeless even when bystanders present evidence the private cops were out of line.

Author Sonali Kolhatkar points out that homelessness is primarily the result of the lack of affordable housing. When I was a kid who had just come to New York City, and Manhattan had plenty of ungentrified ‘hoods, there were also plenty of single room occupancy hotels where the poor could still get a bed and have access to a bathroom. As the tide turned back in favor of city living, those buildings were purchased, razed, and replaced with upscale housing. So there is some merit in describing where ultimate solutions lie.

But what about the fake cop abuse right in front of her? What about action to combat that? The homeless man beaten up in this account was on a public sidewalk. A private guard has jurisdiction only over the private property of the party that hired him. It does not extend to public areas, or even to the property of someone who does not employ him, say a neighboring business. Private guards similarly are not allowed to use force save defensively.

It is disappointing not to see Kolhatkar spell out why the guard was acting illegally, since far too many are deferential to men in uniforms, much the less suggest action steps, like filing a report with the local precinct and cc’ing the chief of police, the mayor, and important local media (the big local TV stations, any important local papers). One report won’t change things but a series of complaints will raise the specter of bad press about out of control security thugs. (...)

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism |  Read more:

The Rise of Private Cops: How Not to Tackle Homelessness 

During a recent visit to Portland, Oregon, my husband and I watched a private security guard help up an unhoused man from the sidewalk. Three white women looked on at the interaction that took place in the trendy Nob Hill neighborhood on August 7, 2023, right in front of a yoga studio.

But the guard was not responding with compassion. Seconds earlier, the tall and very muscular man sporting a flak jacket emblazoned with the word “security,” had walked right by me toward the unhoused man and savagely knocked him to the ground without provocation or warning. Blood streamed from the victim’s face and onto the sidewalk. He stood up as the guard hovered over him and stumbled toward the damaged glasses that had fallen off his face during the assault. The guard, who was twice the man’s size, picked up and offered him the hat that had also fallen off his head and ushered him away.

It’s increasingly common to see private security guards patrolling the streets of Portland—considered one of the most progressive cities in the United States. Not only are businesses banding together to pay for private armed patrols, but even Portland State University is using such a service on its campus. The city of Portland also recently increased its private security budget for City Hall by more than half a million dollars to hire three armed guards.

The trend is a knee-jerk response to sharply rising homelessness. There are tents belonging to unhoused people sprinkled throughout downtown Portland and Nob Hill. Like much of Portland, many of the unhoused are white, but, as Axios in a report about a homelessness survey pointed out, “the rate of homelessness among people in the Portland area who are Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander grew more rapidly than among people who are white.” (...)

In a detailed three-part investigation for Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) in December 2021, Rebecca Ellis examined how businesses have begun paying unknown sums of money to hire private security patrols. According to Ellis, “Private security firms in Oregon are notoriously underregulated, and their employees are required to receive a fraction of the training and oversight as public law enforcement.” She added, “They remain accountable primarily to their clients, not the public.”

Business owners and residents are claiming that rising homelessness is the result of increased drug addiction, forcing them to resort to private security. But researchers point to high rents and a lack of affordable housing—not drug use—as the cause of people living without homes.

As we responded to the assault against the unhoused man with an appropriate level of shock, the three white women who had also watched the incident unfold rushed to the guard’s defense. They seemed to know instinctively by our visible horror that we were visitors to the city, and informed us in no uncertain terms that the guard was simply doing his job. “Leave the poor man alone,” said one of them, sporting what appeared to be scrubs (I wondered, was she a health care worker?). She wasn’t referring to the victim, but rather his assaulter.

Meanwhile, an employee of prAna, the storefront where the attack took place, shooed us away from the still-wet blood spatters that now stained the sidewalk. He used a spray cleaner to wipe away the evidence, seconds after I photographed it. The yoga studio, which also sells high-end clothing, boasts on its website that the Sanskrit word for which it is named, is “the life-giving force, the universal energy that flows within and among us, connecting us with all other living beings.” (...)

There is indeed a serious problem of homelessness in Portland and the business owners who have resorted to private security claim they simply want to “clean up” the problems that the city refuses to. A political battle is ensuing over allowing homelessness to flourish rather than cracking down on the unhoused.

But there is a glaring omission in the police-versus-private-security and violence-versus-the-unhoused fights, and that is the fact that Oregon is simply an unaffordable place to live. One economist told OPB’s April Ehrlich, “We have the worst affordability… Low vacancies and high prices… [are] indicative of a housing shortage.” According to Ehrlich, “Oregon is among states with the lowest supply of rentals that are affordable to people at or below poverty levels.”

by Sonali Kolhatkar, Z/Economy For All/ Naked Capitalism |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Eh, where to begin (how about rebranding homelessness as the "unhoused"). I certainly agree that private security is a problem but this account seems more like some liberal's birdseye view rather than a deep dive into the complexities. Comments about methheads could come straight from any city. Here, from Naked Capitalism: ]

***

"I cringe each time I see Sonali Kolhatkar‘s byline.

She is beyond clueless. Aside from her failure to call 9-1-1 when witnessing an apparent (to her) unprovoked assault, she claims to be a “reporter.” Why then, didn’t she follow-up with a public-records inquiry about the eventual (no thanks to her) police response? Kolhatkar can only be bothered to share her superficial, personal, and privileged reaction, which apparently isn’t shared by the presumably quite “liberal” yoga class, who evidently saw more than her. We’ll never know the whole story.

Kolhatkar has discerned that “Oregon is simply an unaffordable place to live”??? News-flash: if a person has no job, no income, and no assets, nowhere is an affordable place to live."

***

"I have to admit that I didn’t read the article because homelessness has become a trigger issue for me. Just writing this quick comment is going to ruin my morning and I will now be thinking about my former home for hours and I won’t be able to think about anything else. I won’t be able to read any responses either so feel free to call me a hater or whatever, I’ve heard it all before so many times. When homeless people begin to frequent an area, it certain cities with a big enough homeless population, there is always a second wave. First wave is people who need help and can benefit from it. Second wave is what I call the methheads. Apologies I know we aren’t supposed to call people that but I feel it’s an incredibly fair label. These are the people who were on meth before they became homeless, or more accurately, made their home under the highway. They bully and rob the other homeless people, and everyone else. The go to the bathroom everywhere all the time. And they panhandle for meth. Soon, all the first wavers are gone because they can’t handle it and now that community if left with nothing but second wavers destroying homes and businesses, bullying, threatening, and attacking everyone. Darting out into the street in front of cars intentionally. And smoking meth all the time. Hanging out with the young kids from the neighborhood. After 5 or 10 years of the second wave taking hold, things get really desperate until you get around the idea that you are going to have to leave your home and start fresh, leave your friends and neighbors, your home town. It’s such a weird feeling to see a community torn apart because a small number of activists thought they could let people ‘camp’ in a city and do drugs all day and night and that that wouldn’t turn into a huge disaster for the drug addicts and the rest of the community. I’m still struggling with the trauma of having a second waver attack me with a golf club in 2021. Since then the hardest part has been hearing all of the activists talk about criminalizing homelessness or housing is a human right, when all I asked about is can we get some police to take action against the people who are destroying our community? Not talking about arresting any and all homeless people, I just want the person who threatened to kill me in the park to get arrested, or the person with the golf club, or the guy selling meth to the teenagers. I don’t care if they get charged and do time, but at least getting processed might make them change their ways? If the idea is that enforcing the law would cause someone harm because they are poor, what about poor people with cars? Shouldn’t they be allowed to drive drunk? Any attempts to clarify are often met with shouts of “YOU CANT CRIMINALIZE HOMELESSNESS!!!!!” So people are left with no good options. Especially businesses. Often a person living on the street will get mad at a business for some reason and then decide to torment that business until it’s forced to relocate or close. I don’t think it’s a good idea for businesses and residents to hire goon squads to harass homeless people. I can also understand why many are, they have been left with no choice. If a business was doing it in my old neighborhood I would not complain. As more and more blue cities turn into meth camps, people are going to start finding solutions where ever they can, like hiring goon squads. It’s just human nature. The left can keep pointing fingers at everyone and acting like they are morally superior, but that’s just going to make more regular people so pissed off they vote republican. It certainly isn’t going to help people living on the street, no matter which wave they rode in on. Now I’m going to go spend the next few hours, maybe the rest of the day, thinking about my former city council, mayor, and activists stealing my home and my home town. And about all the first wavers in Austin that weren’t able to escape before the second wave, and the activists who insist everything is going according to plan, destroyed everything."

Sardinecore

Name: Sardinecore.

Age: Freshly spawned this summer.

Appearance: Fishy.

Sardinecore, you say. What fresh (fish) hell is this? Are you planning to make a lot of fish puns?

I am: it’s o-fish-ial. So what’s sardinecore? Well, tinned fish – often in beautiful, colourful packaging – has been hot for a while. It is served in bars at an eye-watering mark up and London’s Saltie Girl restaurant even has a “tin list” menu. Then a chef called Ali Hooke made #tinnedfishdatenight a TikTok phenomenon.

Tinned fish date night? Holy carp. There’s nothing erotic about a pilchard or a sprat. Sexy is in the eye of the beholder. Apparently, Hooke’s husband “Leaned over and told me he had always dreamed of sharing a moment like this with someone he loved”. Anyway, scales have also been having a design and fashion moment.

You mean a fishion moment. I do not. I mean LA brand Clare V produced “Liberez les sardines” T-shirts and caps, and luxury label Bottega Veneta has created a much-coveted “Sardine” bag. (...)

It’s very beautiful, but how many tins of tuna can you fit in there? Four, I reckon.

Sold! It’s over £3,000.

Are you squidding? Unsold. But hang on, I thought this summer’s sea-themed trend was mermaidcore? That was back in early summer, a fashion lifetime ago. But, yes, all those gauzy, iridescent, diaphanous fabrics and fishtail shapes probably paved the way for sardinecore.

by The Guardian | Read more:
Image: UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images; CLARE V

[ed. Love 'em (much more than politicians, read below).]

Mike Pence is Still An Absolute Coward

Three things sum up the essence of Mike Pence, the former vice-president of the US: the first is that he reportedly calls his wife “Mother”. He has denied this, but he is creepy enough that the rumours have never been definitively refuted. The second is that he refuses to eat a meal alone with any woman who isn’t his wife. The third – which may be linked to the first two items – is that he doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming president.

Ever since announcing his campaign for the 2024 nomination, Pence has been polling in the single digits. But you don’t need to look at the polls to realise that the 64-year-old’s chance of being the Republican nominee, let alone the next president of the US, are nonexistent – you just need to look at him. It may be a cliche, but passing the “would I have a beer with them?” test is still an important component of getting elected as president. Vibes matter. And Pence? He has all the vibes of a resurrected corpse of a 17th-century Puritan minister.

He has the politics of one as well. Pence, who is an evangelical Christian, is a reactionary zealot who spent his vice-presidency kowtowing to Donald Trump. He is the most anti-abortion mainstream presidential hopeful out there, supporting a federal ban on abortions at just six weeks and a ban on abortion even when pregnancies aren’t viable. He has spent his political career fighting to undermine LGBTQ+ rights and once argued that homosexuality was “learned behaviour”. He has downplayed the climate crisis and wants to ramp up fossil fuel use.

The good news is that Pence will never be president. The bad news is, rather than being a genuine presidential run, his campaign feels like a rehabilitation tour. One that seems to be working. And why wouldn’t it? There is nothing that certain factions of the US media seem to love more than whitewashing the reputations of odious politicians. Look at George W Bush: he has gone from being an accused war criminal to being portrayed as a lovable grandpa and latter-day hero. In March, for example, on the 20th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the New York Times published a piece about all the overlooked good stuff that Bush did, with the headline “In This Story, George W Bush Is the Hero.” It was a fascinating way to mark the anniversary of a war that displaced approximately 9 million people, directly killed at least 300,000 civilians, destabilised the Middle East, and unleashed devastating environmental contamination that is causing birth defects in Iraqi children born long after Bush announced that his mission had been accomplished.

Pence doesn’t even need to wait 20 years for the “hero” treatment to begin. After all, he is the guy that, during the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021, bravely told Trump: “Look, mate, I’m not sure all the votes for Joe Biden were fake. I don’t think you did win the election.” During his appearance at the Iowa state fair last week, Pence played up the image of himself as the saviour of US democracy and a lot of the media seemed to buy into it. “Pence is having a moment. It’s all about Trump and Jan 6,” a Politico headline read. “In Iowa, Mike Pence delivers a powerful message against Trump,” a Washington Post piece opined.

I am glad that Pence had the decency not to try to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election. But, let’s be clear, the fact that he refused to subvert democracy doesn’t make him a hero; it just means he did the bare minimum. One of the many pernicious legacies of the Trump era is how low he has set the bar for everyone else.

by Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
[ed. Funny/not funny. It's disgusting that our political system produces these types of candidates, regularly. Hardly the best or the brightest. Anyone running for a political office should be immediately suspect, just on motives alone. But the other not funny thing is that the media elevates such people endlessly, making their various Machiavellian pursuits seem almost normal and worth attention.]

Nippon Gakki: A Short History of Japanese Guitar Making

On June 29, 2023, Fender launched its first flagship retail store — four floors of Fender products finished with a Fender-themed café for you to quietly contemplate your next 6-string purchase.

Considering Fender’s been in business for 77 years, this was a momentous event in the company’s history. Surely, it opened near the historic Fender factory in Fullerton, California, right? Maybe adjacent to the modern Corona, California, factory? Leo Fender’s childhood home?

If you guessed any of these locations, then you’re only a couple of continents off — Fender’s flagship store opened in the bustling megalopolis of Tokyo, Japan. And as crazy as that might sound to American guitarists, no other country is so deserving of representing the 6-string’s historic legacy outside of America itself. The steel-string acoustic and electric guitar might have been born in the United States, but, as you’ll soon see, they’ve found a second home in the land of the rising sun.

• Japan’s Classical Upbringing
• A Pause Until the Postwar Years
• Boom & Bust
• The Lawsuit Legend
• A Farewell to Clones
• A Long-deserved Re-evaluation

Japan’s Classical Upbringing

Where to begin? While this story is primarily concerned with the history of Japanese guitar making through our uniquely American perspective, Japan’s interest in the 6-string stretches back to before the rise of mid-20th-century MIJ (Made In Japan) exports.

The year was 1853. The first solidbody guitars were nearly a century in the future. America’s oldest guitar manufacturer, C. F. Martin, had just celebrated its 20th birthday. California had entered statehood three years prior, and several thousand miles off San Diego’s sunny shores, Japan was sequestered in 200-plus years of isolation.

That is, until the United States arrived. Japan entered diplomatic and trade relations with the USA, and the country was introduced to a rush of Western ideas and goods. Naturally, this included the star of our story: the guitar, in its contemporary, gut-stringed, classical variation.

The classical guitar and many other Western instruments were quickly adopted, with several reports of Japanese musicians enthusiastically venturing across the ocean to train with European masters. However, few prominent Western musicians dared to travel to the East until 1929, when maestro Andrés Segovia — arguably the first world-class Western guitarist to perform in Japan — performed a string of concerts in Tokyo and Osaka. All at once, the classical guitar’s popularity skyrocketed, with bountiful demand and precious little supply.

It’s around this time that a few familiar faces begin to appear. A small bookstore in Nagoya, Japan, founded by Matsujiro Hoshino, started importing classical guitars from Salvador Ibáñez — yes, that Ibanez. Yamaha (at the time known as “Nippon Gakki,” or, in English, “Japanese Musical Instruments”) had already accrued nearly half a century’s worth of instrument-building expertise before jumping into the Spanish guitar game in the early 1940s.

During this era, Japan experienced a concurrent musical craze — Hawaiian music — fueled by early electrified lap steel guitars. The first Japanese electric guitar company, Guyatone, began constructing electric lap steel guitars and amps by 1933, only a few years after their inventions in America. Japan’s instrument industry was barreling toward the same 6-string revolution that was happening in America, with one rather significant hurdle in their path: World War II. (...)

Boom & Bust

The ’60s would be the first time American guitarists really got an authentic taste of Japanese electric guitars; as we’ll soon see, it was a veritable flood of instruments.

But first, let’s take stock of Japan’s early ’60s musical proclivities. The rock revolution led by the bands of the British Invasion was still a few years off, but surf music was immensely popular on both sides of the Pacific, driving increased demand for electric guitars and basses.

Why was Japan so fond of surf rock? For one, it was a fresh, new form of music that exclusively featured the electric guitars and basses that were steadily winning over the hearts of young Japanese musicians. And, more importantly, surf music is mainly instrumental — there’s no language barrier to muddy the musical waters.

The first big-name American act to tour Japan would be the Ventures in 1962, and the band’s impact on Japanese guitar culture cannot be overstated. Remember the classical-guitar stir caused by Segovia in 1929? Magnify it tenfold. The demand for electric guitars experienced exponential growth in Japan, further driving the need for more Japanese guitar factories. (...)

The Lawsuit Legend

It’s an almost universally accepted fact among guitar historians that the ’70s was a tough time for the guitar industry. Japanese factories reacted to the dismal landscape by taking a more cautious and conservative approach to guitar building; the wild and peculiar Japanese 6-strings of the 1960s largely disappeared for a time. Moreover, even a few big-name American brands began outsourcing production to Japanese factories, such as Gibson transforming Epiphone from an American-made brand fully on par with its Kalamazoo counterparts to a lower-priced brand aimed at the student market.

The quality of American guitar manufacturing continued on a downward streak, but, at the same time, the Japanese factories left over from the guitar boom’s bust only raised the quality of their instruments. Brands such as Greco, Hondo, Fernandes, Burny, Takamine, Suzuki, Ibanez, and Aria began creating heavily inspired or near clones of classic American guitars, some of which (but certainly not all) built to a higher standard than their contemporary American equivalents.

Most of those instruments were relegated to beginners or hobbyists (the reputation, if not the quality, of Japanese guitars was still rough at this point), but by the latter half of the ’70s, American companies began to take notice, and these imitations were regarded less as flattery and more as “cutting into our bottom line.”

If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese guitars from the late 1970s and early 1980s are referred to as “lawsuit” guitars, then here’s why: While many parts of a guitar can be cloned with impunity, Gibson secured a trademark for its headstock shape in hopes of scaring off would-be clones. Many Ibanez copies from that time featured a nearly identical headstock to an actual Gibson instrument, prompting Gibson to take Ibanez to court — the two companies settled, and Ibanez modified its headstock. That’s it. Frankly, this was one of the period’s only full-scale “lawsuits” — it’s all a bit less exciting than the name implies!

Fender took a slightly different approach at the time. Japanese labor and production costs were significantly lower than their American equivalents, so the lower-priced 6-string copies made by Japanese companies like Tokai and Greco were far more alluring to consumers than a full-priced Fender.

Instead of a lawsuit, Fender established a joint venture in 1982 between several Japanese distributors and the FujiGen Gakki factory — the same factory that was making the clones that were eating into Fender’s sales. This would mark Fender’s first move outside of the United States.

by Cameron Day, Sweetwater |  Read more:

Images: Toshiyuki IMAI, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

[ed. I've had two Ibanez 335 Gibson copies, a Takamine 12 string (Martin copy) and a Yamaha "red label" acoustic over the years. My buddy had an Ibanez Les Paul copy. All were equal to, if not better than the originals. Heard about these "lawsuit" guitars over 40 years ago from a retired Nashville musician when it was all very mysterious and no one knew the whole story. He sold me my first one.]

TOAGOSEI Hydrogen station Tokushima

via:

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk

via: here and here

Robbie Robertson's Big Break. A Reevaluation of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz

The Last Waltz represents a dramatic reimagining of the possibilities inherent in the "rockumentary" genre. Ostensibly, the film chronicles the final concert given by The Band in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, but ultimately it stands as much more than a simple documentary. It may be the best film ever made about the music scene, but rather than celebrating the now fabled rock group, what The Last Waltz really does is foretell is death. Yet as a film that moves beyond the music to engage with ideas about imagemaking (both that of the guitarist, Robbie Robertson, and, more indirectly, that of the filmmaker himself), it has resonance beyond its own history. Recent screenings of the re-released and digitally remastered print have engaged unexpectedly large and varied audiences. United Artists has also released the remastered film on DVD, complete with extra footage, audio commentary from Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and liner notes by Robertson.

Earlier concert films such as Gimme Shelter and Woodstock featured relatively low-quality footage and unimaginative camerawork. Their rudimentary approaches implicitly question the importance of the very events that the films attempt to capture, as though they were just rock concerts and did not deserve the expense and care given to more serious subjects. But from the outset, Scorsese and The Band commited to making The Last Waltz the first concert film shot in 35 mm. It is crammed with astonishing visual depth and unexpected images -- the stage presences in intimate and overwhelming close-ups set against a dark and brooding background. The influence of the film's clarity can be clearly traced in such later works as the Talking Heads' Stop making Sense (1984) and U2's Rattle and Hum (1987). Moreover, Scorsese's camerawork further confounds the expectations of the genre by essentially eliminating the audience from the film, thus focusing all the attention on the musicians themselves.

Beyond its obvious importance as a concert film, The Last Waltz deserves renewed critical attention simply as a film, because no thorough explication of its basic thematic contruction has yet appeared. It has long been relegated to the margins of Scorsese scholarship and generally merits only a passing mention, alongside his 1978 documentary American Boy, as a minor diversion for the director that helped to fill the gap between New York, New York (1977) and Raging Bull (1980). This is unfair, because The Last Waltz marks a crucial turning point for Scorsese and is the first installment in a tetralogy of films that dominate his mid-period of work. It stands as his first exploration of the manner by which image may be manipulated as a means for eliminating risk, a thematic obsession which continues in The King of Comedy (1982), The Color of Money (1986) and Casino (1995).

In addition to critical neglect, The Last Waltz has also been the victim of general misinterpretation. It is often viewed in idyllic terms as an embodiment of nostalgia for the past, when in reality its focus is the future. Seeing it as a film built around a musical event reveals a calculated, commited and personal narrative. The movie's real subject is not The Band as a whole, but Robbie Robertson. The film represents a highly crafted and complex exercise in image-making. There is ample filmic evidence to suggest that Robertson influenced Scorsese's contruction of the film in order to establish himself as a star within the Hollywood community and launch his post-Band career. Robertson was the only member of the group to work with Scorsese during the 18-month postproduction period, and in drummer Levon Helm's estimation the duo "edited the movie to please themselves.". To his credit, Michael Bliss does pick up on Robertson's overwhelming presence in the film and argues that "given the amount of footage devoted to Robertson, the film might just well have been titled Robbie Robertson Speaks.". The guitarist's dominance goes far beyond the amount of camera time allotted to him, however, because virtually every visual and thematic aspect of The Last Waltz is designed to showcase his talents at the expense of the other members of the group. Because of this, the movie has no interest in simple nostalgia, despite the presence of numerous luminaries from the Woodstock era who approach their performances with an air of hushed reverence, as though they were taking part in the last hurrah for a rapidly evaporating age.

Robertson took a tremendous risk when, in 1976, he decided to disband the group because of its commercial failures and late keyboardist Richard Manuel's burgeoning drug and alcohol problems. He himself needed to establish an identifiable public persona; his talents as a songwriter, guitarist, and producer were widely acknowledged, but the group had publicly avoided the usual egotistical posings of rock stars. The Band enjoyed a reputation as a cohesive whole, which served to downplay Robertson's individual identity. But in reality, The Last Waltz represents an exercise in self-mythologizing -- through the interviews with their distinctive camerawork and settings and the on-stage footage of the actual concert -- for Robertson, and the deconstruction/destruction of the group as a whole. (...)

Although Scorsese handled the planning for the filming of the concert, the idea to do interviews came from Robertson. They were conducted in 1977, almost a year after the event. The guitarist also suggested that Scorsese do the interviews, but in retrospect the director feels that this was "not a good idea" -- finding the members of the band to "very quiet and very formidable.". But in fact the interview segments constitute the most facinating part of the movie: this is where the construction of Robertson's image and the deconstruction of The Band's really occur. Scorsese talks with the members of the group, both singularly and together, at different locations at Shangri-La, their studio/headquarters in Malibu. In keeping with his own reservations, he truly is a terrible interviewer -- nervous, tentative, and clearly in awe of Robertson. Scorsese's deficiencies, however, only serve to acceuate Robertson's skills as a rhetorician: although he frequently bandies about pseudo-intellectual cliches, he is always articulate and well-spoken

Conversely, Scorsese's inexperience as an interviewer hurts the other band members, whose answers betray their relatively limited vision or their reluctance to speak. Manuel and Danko seem like precocious children who offer up amusing anecdotes about stealing bologna, and suggest that women are the real reason The Band stayed on the road for 16 years -- "not that I don't like the music." Compared with Robertson's artistic posturings and grand designs, Manuel's admission that "I just wanna break even" seems downright refreshing, but it's also sophomoric. Similarly, Scorsese admits that Helm proved a "formidable" subject who was not interested in talking. Helm himself is less reserved in his judgement of the situation: "I already had a bad attitude when I realized that the cameras had completely ignored the spirit of the event... I said, 'This shit don't mean nothing to me.' Nothing. I was just coarse and rude, country rude, because I was so damn angry." 

Organist Garth Hudson, however, stands as the exception, speaking with a quiet intensity and perspicacity about The Band's attraction to the rustic lifestyle of Woodstock and the role of street musicians as a healing force. Unfortunately, he only speaks twice, and in both cases, he is surrounded by the other four band members. Scorsese never approaches him in a more personal and revealing setting, and it must be noted that of The Last Waltz footage, Scorsese cuts short only the performance of "Genetic Method/Chest Fever," a pairing of songs which had long served as Hudson's concert showcase. Helm laments that The Last Waltz includes nothing to show "how Garth Hudson led the band and inspired us all." Perhaps Robertson felt threatened that the keyboardist's undeniable talent and quiet leadership would overshadow his own contribution to the group, and used his influence with Scorsese to marginalize Hudson's presence in the film. (...)

Quite different strategies are applied for the other members. While discussing how The Band got its name, Manuel curls up on a coach in the fetal position, looking, in Helm's words like "Che Guevara after the Bolivians got through with him," Conversely, Helm is never interviewed alone; Robertson is always present, although at times he is off-camera and only his voice is heard. During two conversations that take place in the backyard at a picnic table, Scorsese carefully frames Helm with the pool table in soft focus in the background. The central metaphor of cutthroat remains ever present. (...)

Thus Casino, The Color of Money, and The King of Comedy all revolve around the complicated relationship between image and risk. But Scorsese had already begun to examine this issue through the persona of Robertson in The Last Waltz. And the difficulty in applying the term "documentary" to The Last Waltz derives from its decidedly non-objective presentation of the demise of The Band. The focus of this film is Robbie Robertson; Scorsese built it around him and built it for him. After screening the movie for the first time, Ronnie Hawkins, the Canadian singer for whom The Band played back-up in the early 1960s, joked sarcastically, "The goddamn movie'd be awright if it only had a few more shots of Robbie" [emphasis original].

by Stephen E. Severn | Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Call Me Levon (The Bitter Southerner):]

“My joy is to play the drums,” Levon told CBS News in 2007. “The singing part is just something I glommed my way into.” I hear that.

And I recall that Levon attended Berklee School of Music, which happens to be exactly 5.7 miles from my house, for a semester in 1972.

“I'd always had a complex about my total lack of musical training — beyond several million hours of field work," he writes in his autobiography, “This Wheel’s on Fire.” And so he shaved his beard and enrolled with his given name, Mark L. Helm. Why he only lasted a semester, I don’t know. But I love that this bona fide rock star gave education the old college try. (...)

Hollywood is more than ready for a movie about the very troubled Band — we don’t just have the Robbie-Levon drama: The Band backed Dylan when they went electric; singer and pianist Richard Manuel hung himself in a hotel room; bassist Rick Danko pegged out at 56. And of course it will come — complete with an amazing re-mastered soundtrack and maybe a few new songs written and sung by Robbie Robertson.

This film will directed by Martin Scorsese, who, of course, made “The Last Waltz,” and who lived with Robbie when they both got divorced. Levon says that during the editing of “The Last Waltz” the two became “blow buddies” and “their wives kicked them out and they moved in with each other, and they just … poor guys. You know, that looks OK in Hollywood, but it just looks weird everywhere else.”

Well.

Robbie now does the music for each and every Scorsese film, and is an executive at Dreamworks. Nice work if you can get it.

Levon didn’t get it. And neither did the rest of them. Instead, he got cancer.

After the Maui Fires, Locals Fear Being Shut Out of Recovery

For years, Lahaina has had everything that makes Hawaii special: sweeping views of the Pacific, a charming main street and a rich cultural heritage.

Lahaina also has everything that makes Hawaii an increasingly difficult and frustrating place to live. Tourism dominates, putting pressure on the environment and disrupting daily life. Wealthy visitors drive home values to astonishing heights (the median home price in the Lahaina area is $1.7 million), placing homeownership out of reach for most permanent residents. Within its small patch of western Maui, the oceanfront community of 13,000 people — once a center of whaling and ancient Hawaiian power — contains all of the economic tensions that have simmered beneath Hawaii’s gorgeous surface for years.

Those strains are being laid bare by the devastating wildfires that leveled Lahaina this week, killing at least 80 people and destroying or damaging as many as 1,700 buildings.

Officials and residents stress that the fires did not discriminate, wiping out fancy vacation rentals and modest homes dating back to the days of Lahaina’s sugar plantations. Mick Fleetwood, the leader of the band Fleetwood Mac, lost his popular restaurant, Fleetwood’s on Front Street, and the staff members lost their employer.

And many have pointed to the way the community has immediately stepped up to help each other, with volunteers and neighbors offering food, places to stay and transportation.

Yet, as residents were allowed back into their neighborhoods on Friday for a first look at the damage, many worried about how or whether they could rebuild — a reflection of the disparity among Hawaii’s multilayered society of renters, owners, part-time and full-time residents, low-wage workers, newcomers and Native Hawaiians. Some Hawaii residents who lost their homes and jobs said they could not see how they would be able to stay.

Many said they feared Lahaina would simply re-emerge as another Waikiki, dominated by corporate-owned luxury brands and packed with tourists.

“My concern is that we’re going to lose a lot of people, because it’s going to take too long” to recover, said Angie Leone, 46, who built a business in Lahaina managing 50 rental properties with 12 employees. After the fires, about five units were left. Four of her employees lost their homes.

The Leones’ own home just outside Lahaina was spared. But the community she and her family love had begun unraveling. Already, a friend who ran a jewelry business in Lahaina told her that he planned to move his family to Kentucky. She said she hoped officials would approve building permits for reconstruction and allow people to reopen businesses that employ workers quickly.

“I think the people of Lahaina would want it to be restored historically,” she said. “The local community would not allow it to become a Waikiki. It needs to be preserved and rebuilt with the character and the heart that it has.”

Her husband, Michael Leone, 48, added: “It won’t be the same. But it could be better.”

How this vivid microcosm of Hawaii recovers from the disaster could either end up exacerbating economic tensions or prove a turning point.

Angus McKelvey, a state senator who grew up in Lahaina and now represents parts of Maui, said the town was at a “fork in the road.”

Many of the neighborhoods that burned were densely populated with many of the town’s original plantation-style homes that, over time, had been bought by investors and subdivided into apartments that were rented out to workers. Because of the town’s density, he said, the destruction of the hundreds of homes there translates into as many as 6,000 people who are now homeless.

Mr. McKelvey, a Democrat, said the state should work swiftly to purchase and redevelop the land into higher-quality, affordable housing. The alternative of leaving it to market forces could lead to investors taking advantage of the tragedy “to put up more million-dollar homes,” he said.

It’s a “bold opportunity,” he said, but “people are generally scared of what could emerge from the ashes.”

by Jill Cowan and Michael Corkery, NY Times | Read more:

Image: Philip Cheung for The New York Times
[ed. After the initial shock, this is what I wondered. How do you recreate something so unique, in an equitable way?]

The Band (w/Robbie Robertson)

[ed. Had this up a while back but thought I'd do it again with Robbie's passing. I've been to Nazareth, PA (home of the Martin guitar factory. And, Mario Andretti. Big race track near town. Nice place. And yes, we did sing this song as we were driving into town, doesn't everybody?). See also: Every time the music dies, we lose a little bit of our souls (Guardian); and, How ‘The Last Waltz’ Became One of Rock’s Greatest Docs (NYT):]

"The film capturing the Band’s final performance in 1976 is a showcase for the group’s main songwriter and guitarist, Robbie Robertson. And for some, that was a problem."

Pat Martino Trio

[ed. Passed away recently. A guitarist's guitarist. See also: Pat Martino, Open Road (Documentary); and This Musician stunned me. Pat Martino a Guitar Giant. [Update]: Robbie Robertson, too. Geez.]

Lahaina Burns

Lahaina Emerges From ‘Devastating’ Fire As Relief Begins To Arrive (Honolulu Civil Beat)
Image: Matthew Thayer/The Maui News, via Associated Press/NYT; Maui Fire Department/US Civil Air Patrol

[ed. Heartbroken. Former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii and legendary whaling port wiped out. More photos here; here and here: [Update]: have many relatives in Lahaina who seem to be safe at the moment, but not everyone is accounted for, and my uncle and his wife (80s) lost their home. Completely burned to the ground.]

Farley Katz
via:

How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party

At ten o’clock on a recent Saturday night, the rapper Flo Rida was in his dressing room with a towel over his head, in a mode of quiet preparation. Along one wall, a handsome buffet—lobster, sushi, Dom Pérignon—sat untouched. Flo Rida, whose stage name honors his home state but is pronounced like “flow rider,” is fastidious about his physique. He is six feet three, two hundred and twenty pounds, and often travels with a trainer, though on this occasion the trip was brief enough that he would do without. That afternoon, a private jet had carried him, along with eight of his backup performers and assistants, from South Florida to Chicago. By the following night, he would be back at his mansion in Miami.

Flo Rida, who is forty-three, attained celebrity in 2008 with his song “Low,” an admiring ode to a Rubenesque beauty on the dance floor. “Low” went platinum ten times over and was No. 1 on the Billboard charts for ten weeks—a longer run than any other song that year, including Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” In 2009, Flo landed another No. 1 hit, “Right Round,” which broke a world record, jointly held by Eminem, 50 Cent, and Dr. Dre, for the most downloads in an opening week. Flo never matched the stardom of those peers, but he has recorded another nine Top Ten hits, sold at least a hundred million records, and secured for himself a lucrative glide from ubiquity. His endorsement deals are of sufficient scale that, in a recent breach-of-contract dispute with one of his brand partners, Celsius energy drinks, a jury awarded him eighty-three million dollars.

A man with this kind of nest egg might never need to leave home again. But, on this evening, Flo had journeyed north on business: he was playing a bar mitzvah, for a thirteen-year-old boy and three dozen of his friends, in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire. The bar-mitzvah boy, in keeping with the customs of his forebears, had chanted his way into adulthood; then, following a more recent tradition, the celebrants had relocated to a warehouse-size event venue that is highly regarded on Chicago’s mitzvah circuit. A production company had installed the décor, including roller coasters stencilled across the dance floor and a banquet table made to resemble a red Ferrari. The whole affair was invisible to the outside world, except for the word “Andrew” projected by brilliant red floodlights onto an exterior wall.

The entertainment had been arranged by Andrew’s father, an executive at a financial-services company. At first, he had doubted that Flo Rida, his son’s favorite artist, would agree to come, but an agent informed him that most big-name musicians are available these days, under the right conditions. Flo Rida’s fee for private gigs in the United States runs between a hundred and fifty thousand and three hundred thousand dollars, depending on location, scale, and other particulars. Reginald Mathis, his lawyer, told me, “Internationally, it could run you up to a million.” For the Lincolnshire bar mitzvah, the contract stipulated private-jet travel, suitable accommodations, and a fee “in the six figures,” Mathis said; Flo Rida would perform for thirty minutes. When I saw Andrew’s father at the event, he was thrilled with the outcome but declined to have his name in this story. “I work on Wall Street,” he told me. “I don’t want to end up on Page Six.”

As showtime approached, Flo changed from his travel T-shirt and jeans into performance attire: a much nicer T-shirt (vintage Kiss concert merch), a sleeveless black biker jacket, and cat-eye shades speckled with rhinestones. While the opening act finished up, I stepped out of the dressing room to assess the crowd. From a balcony overlooking the dance floor, surrounded by a hefty array of professional-grade lights and speakers, I watched a desultory turn of the hora, backed by a recorded Hava Nagila. The children seemed preoccupied. Then a platoon of production staff started handing out flashing L.E.D. sticks, and the kids rushed toward the stage in anticipation.

I was joined on the balcony by one of Flo’s bandmates, a younger rapper known as Int’l Nephew, who wore a red sweatband and a black puffy vest over a tank top. We peered across the railing toward the back of the room, where a few dozen parents were sipping cocktails. In the realm of private gigs, those secondary guests are a high-priority demographic—future clients who don’t yet know it. Int’l Nephew saw the makings of a worthwhile trip. “They’re all big-money people,” he said. “And they’re, like, ‘Oh, we want you, Flo.’ ”

By the time Flo Rida bounded onstage, his hands to the heavens, the kids were bouncing to the opening strains of “Good Feeling,” one of his club hits, featuring the sampled voice of Etta James. The edge of the stage was lined by teen-age boys in untucked shirts and jeans, alongside girls in spaghetti-strap dresses and chunky sneakers. Flo was flanked by dancers in black leather bikini tops and mesh leggings. Out of the audience’s view, he kept a set list inscribed with the names of his hosts, as an aide-mémoire. “We love you, Andrew!” he shouted, and barrelled into “Right Round,” a rowdy track about visiting a strip club and showering a pole dancer with hundred-dollar bills. When he pulled Andrew onstage, the bar-mitzvah boy didn’t miss a beat, dancing along to Flo’s verse: “From the top of the pole I watch her go down / She got me throwing my money around.” (...)

In January, Beyoncé did her first show in more than four years—not in a stadium of screaming fans but at a new hotel in Dubai, earning a reported twenty-four million dollars for an hour-long set. More than a few Beyoncé fans winced; after dedicating a recent album to pioneers of queer culture, she was plumping for a hotel owned by the government of Dubai, which criminalizes homosexuality. (As a popular tweet put it, “I get it, everyone wants their coin, but when you’re THAT rich, is it THAT worth it?”) Artists, by and large, did not join the critics. Charles Ruggiero, a drummer in Los Angeles who is active in jazz and rock, told me, “The way musicians look at it, generally speaking, is: It’s a fucking gig. And a gig is a gig is a gig.”

If you have a few million dollars to spare, you can hire Drake for your bar mitzvah or the Rolling Stones for your birthday party. Robert Norman, who heads the private-events department at the talent agency C.A.A., recalls that when he joined the firm, a quarter century ago, “we were booking one or two hundred private dates a year, for middle-of-the-road artists that you’d typically suspect would play these kinds of events—conventions and things like that.” Since then, privates have ballooned in frequency, price, and genre. “Last year, we booked almost six hundred dates, and we’ve got a team of people here who are dedicated just to private events,” Norman said. An agent at another big firm told me, “A lot of people will say, ‘Hey, can you send me your private/corporate roster?’ And I’m, like, ‘Just look at our whole roster, because everybody’s pretty much willing to consider an offer.’ ” (...)

A random selection of other acts who do privates (Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Jon Bon Jovi, John Mayer, Diana Ross, Maroon 5, Black Eyed Peas, OneRepublic, Katy Perry, Eric Clapton) far exceeds the list of those who are known for saying no (Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and, for reasons that nobody can quite clarify, AC/DC).

Occasionally, the music press notes a new extreme of the private market, like hits on the charts. Billboard reported that the Eagles received six million dollars from an unnamed client in New York for a single performance of “Hotel California,” and Rolling Stone reported that Springsteen declined a quarter of a million to ride motorcycles with a fan. But privates typically are enveloped in secrecy, with both artists and clients demanding nondisclosure agreements and prohibitions on photos and social-media posts. 

by Evan Osnos, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Victor Llorente for The New Yorker

Ry Cooder

[ed. Can't imagine a Kia prompting this kind of devotion. See also: Live at the Record Plant, Sausilito, CA; and more recently, The Prodigal Son (Live in Studio).]

via: here and here

Cocaine Prices Are Plummeting

Partly because of massive overproduction.

The world’s demand for cocaine appears insatiable. According to the latest data from the un Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), although the number of consumers of the illegal drug in the United States has remained broadly stable for the past two decades, the number of users in Australia, Europe and Asia has kept increasing (see chart 1). Last month in Sydney, the biggest city in Australia, five people were shot in the space of five days because of gang-related turf wars sparked by a booming market for blow in that city. Yet in some parts of Colombia—the country that produces about 60% of the world’s supply of cocaine—white chunks of coca paste are piling up and prices are plummeting.

Villages across Catatumbo, a coca-abundant region in the north near the border with Venezuela, used to be awash with money off the back of the illicit market. Music used to blare through the streets and billiards clubs were full on the weekends. But for the past year shops have been closed and locals have started to go hungry. “People who sell now, sell at a loss,” says Holmer Pérez Balmaceda, whose family, like most in that region, used to cultivate coca leaves. Similarly in Cauca, in the south-west of the country, prices have plunged from 70,000 Colombian pesos ($17.25) for a unit of coca leaves (12.5kg) a year ago to 38,000 pesos today.

Why has the boom turned to bust in parts of the country? For a start, there has been overproduction, which pushes down prices. The UNODC data suggest that in the past few years cocaine production has accelerated more than demand: a whopping 204,000 hectares were covered by coca crops in Colombia in 2021, an increase of 43% on the previous year. That is a bigger area dedicated to coca crops than ever before. Farmers have also worked out how to grow the coca plant more efficiently, while the labs to produce cocaine hydrochloride (the refined product) have become bigger. This is making the whole process more productive. According to the un, potential cocaine hydrochloride production yield in Colombia went up from 6.5 kg per hectare on average in 2016 to 7.9 kg per hectare in 2020.

And Colombia is not the only supplier flooding global markets with coke (see chart 2). Peru has increased its production by 62%, from 49,800 hectares in 2017 to 80,700 hectares in 2021. Bolivian production has increased by 24%, from 24,500 hectares to 30,500 hectares in the same period. Production in Venezuela, Honduras and Guatemala is taking off, too.

A bump in the road

“Overproduction is certainly happening. But it cannot explain everything,” says Ana Maria Rueda at Fundación Ideas para la Paz, a Colombian think-tank. Another factor she points to is the shifting fortunes of criminal groups. Colombia’s cocaine market used to be dominated by individuals such as Pablo Escobar, who ran the Medellin gang. Their rivals were the Cali gang. In the early 1990s these groups were broken up when their leaders were killed or captured. Their activities were mostly overtaken by two guerrilla organisations: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). These guerrilla outfits also “regulated” the market for coke, controlling the whole supply chain as the Medellin and Cali cartels had done: looking after everything from harvesting and processing coca to transporting it out of the country.

However, in 2016 the Colombian government struck a peace deal with the FARC. That ended an internal armed conflict almost half a century long. It also had the unintended consequence of splitting the drug market. Now there are more than 500 criminal groups across the country. Gangs who buy cocaine wholesale can pick and choose which regions they purchase it from and drive prices down locally, says Ms Rueda. (...)

These developments have halted coca processing in some regions. It has also helped disrupt the established norms over price and quality. According to Mr McDermott, the fragmentation of Colombia’s criminal networks means that gangs who are buying the finished product wholesale—mostly Mexican, but also increasingly European gangsters, too—now travel all the way there to put together big shipments themselves. Previously, Colombians would have done this for them. International gangs tend to prefer to go to areas where they already have established connections. An example of this is the Nariño region, which borders Ecuador and where there is a permanent presence of Mexican gangs, says Mr McDermott. It has not seen the same fall in prices as in other parts of the country. This hints at a potential changing dynamic in the drugs market. The power used to lie with the gangs who had the drugs; now those who have good access to distribution networks call the shots.

Another factor affecting the price of cocaine was the election, last year, of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first avowedly left-wing president. During the previous right-wing governments of Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque, crop-substitution programmes doled out subsidies to coca-producing families to abandon their illicit crops. This had the perverse effect of making coca farmers grow more, and of prompting others to start growing it too, in order to gain access to these benefits, says Ms Rueda. These subsidies were combined with mass coca-eradication policies.

Mr Petro has long argued against his predecessors’ approach, particularly targeting farmers and destroying coca fields, rather than going after criminal intermediaries. In his inauguration speech he declared that “the war on drugs has failed”. (Mr Petro also blames the fentanyl crisis in the United States for the falling price of cocaine, though many experts doubt this has had much of an effect.) (...)

As a result, all Mr Petro has done so far is to slow the government’s coca-eradication efforts, with a goal of eradicating coca on 20,000 hectares of land annually, which is 30,000 hectares fewer than Mr Duque achieved. Alongside this, President Joe Biden’s administration has rolled back American satellite monitoring of coca in Colombia. Both policies have contributed to the coke pile-up.

Falling prices mean not just a collapse of the rural economy in parts of Colombia, but also an acute social crisis. More than 230,000 Colombian families rely on coca as their primary source of income, according to a federation which represents peasants who grow illicit crops. In July the government began to give out cash to families in some of Colombia’s 181 coca-producing municipalities. “This is a contingency plan,” says Felipe Tascón, director of the government’s illicit-crop substitution programme. He thinks that a change in the substitution policy is needed, in order to get farmers to move away from coca to other, legal crops. “What we’ve been doing till now hasn’t worked,” he admits.

by The Economist |  Read more:

Image: The Economist

[ed. Always supply side, never demand. Like cigarettes, cocaine (and other drugs) won't recede until people begin to internalize risks vs. benefits and allow others who are willing to take those risks create teacheable examples (and make drug-taking in general passe).]

via:

[ed. While you're at it could you make The Law great again, too? See here and here.]

Anne Collier, Woman Crying (Comic): #8

via:

What My Musical Instruments Have Taught Me

I keep a small oud in the kitchen, and sometimes, between e-mails, I improvise with it. Ouds resemble lutes, which in turn resemble guitars. But where a guitar has a flat back, an oud has a domelike form that presses backward against the belly or chest. This makes playing one a tender experience. You must find just the right way to hold it, constraining your shoulders, moving mainly the smaller muscles below the elbows. Holding an oud is a little like holding a baby. While cradling an infant, I feel pretensions drop away: here is the only future we truly have—a sacred moment. Playing the oud, I am exposed. The instrument is confessional to me. (...)

Nahat ouds can be especially big. My arms have to travel more in order to move up and down the longer neck; the muscles around my shoulders become engaged, as they do when I’m playing the guitar. Moving this way, I become aware of the world beyond the small instrument I’m swaddling; I start to play more for others than for myself. The cello also makes me feel this way. You have to use your shoulders—your whole back—to play a cello. But cellos summon a different set of feelings. Playing one, you’re still bound up in a slightly awkward way, bent around a vibrating entity—not a baby, not a lover, but maybe a large dog.

The khaen, from Laos and northeastern Thailand, is the instrument I play the most in public. It’s a mouth organ—something like a giant harmonica, but with an earthy, ancient tone. Tall bamboo tubes jut both upward and downward from a teak vessel, angling into a spire which seems to emerge, unicorn-like, from the forehead of the performer. I first encountered one as a teen-ager, in the nineteen-seventies, during a time when I was exploring Chinese music clubs in San Francisco. These were frequented mainly by older people, and often situated in the basements of faded apartment buildings. The khaen isn’t Chinese, but I noticed one resting against a wall in a club and asked if I could try it. As soon as I picked up the khaen I became a rhythmic musician, driving a hard beat with double- and triple-tonguing patterns. The old men applauded when I finished. “Take it,” a woman holding an erhu said.

Later, I learned that my instant style was completely unrelated to what goes on in Laos. It emerged, I think, from how the khaen works with one’s breathing. On a harmonica, as on many instruments, the note changes when you switch between inhaling and exhaling—but on a khaen, one can breathe both in and out without changing pitch. Breathing is motion, and so the khaen and its cousins from Asia, such as the Chinese sheng, are liberating to play. I’ve been lucky enough to play khaen with many great musicians—with Jon Batiste and the Stay Human band on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” for instance, and with Ornette Coleman. When I played the khaen with George Clinton and P-Funk, Clinton stood facing me, leaning in until we were just inches apart; he widened his eyes to make the channel between our beings as high-bandwidth as possible, breathing ferociously to transmit the groove he was improvising. It was the most physically demanding performance of my life.

If playing the khaen turns me into an extroverted athlete, then the xiao—which is held vertically, like a clarinet or an oboe—invites me to explore internal dramas. This isn’t just a mind-set but a physical sensation: while playing xiao I feel a rolling movement in the air just behind my upper front teeth, and a second area of resonance in my chest, and I seem to move these reservoirs of air around as I use the instrument. I’m not the only one to have this kind of sensation: singers often say that they experience air in this way, and flute teachers I’ve known have talked about “blue” or “yellow” air flows. I’ve had long conversations with wind players about how we seem to be painting the flow of air inside our bodies. I have to suspend my skepticism when this sort of talk starts—I don’t think we’re really doing what we describe, but I do think we’re describing something real. It’s possible to shape tone by adjusting the mouth, tongue, lips, jaw, throat, and chest. When I find my tone, I even feel the presence of a structure in the air between my lips and the flute—a tumbling, ineffable caterpillar, rolling rapidly on its long axis. The caterpillar collaborates with me, sometimes helping, sometimes pushing back, and by interacting with it I can explore a world of tone.

Did the xiao players of the past perceive invisible caterpillars like mine? Maybe they did. Xiaos have come in many shapes and sizes over the centuries, but, judging by the illustrations that have been preserved, they’ve all been recognizably xiao. On the other hand, there are many ways to play a flute. Perhaps xiao notes used to end in elegant calligraphic rises; maybe the breath was emphasized so that the sound of the flute seemed continuous with nature; or possibly ancient xiao tones were lustrous and technical, with perfect stability. Perhaps the sound that xiao players sought was deceptively transparent but filled with little features, or maybe they were show-offs, playing high, fast, and loud. These descriptions fit contemporary flute-playing styles, and it seems possible that historical styles resembled them—or not. (...)

As a technologist, my work has often focussed on the creation of interactive devices, such as head-mounted displays and haptic gloves. It’s sobering for me to compare the instruments I’ve played with the devices that Silicon Valley has made. I’ve never had an experience with any digital device that comes at all close to those I’ve had with even mediocre acoustic musical instruments. What’s the use of ushering in a new era dominated by digital technology if the objects that that era creates are inferior to pre-digital ones?

For decades, researchers have been attempting to model acoustic instruments with software. Simulated saxophones and violins can sound impressive but only within an artificially constrained frame. Listen to one note at a time and the synthetic instruments sound good. Connect the notes together and the illusion fails. This may be because the experience of interacting creatively with such models is sterile, vacant, and ridiculous. One is usually clicking on little dots on a screen, or pushing buttons, or—in the very best case—adjusting variables with physical knobs and sliders. From a commercial point of view, this doesn’t make simulated instruments useless; embedded in the mix, splashed with reverb and other effects, they sound just fine. But physical instruments channel the unrepeatable process of interaction, a quality lost with modern production technology.

Human senses have evolved to the point that we can occasionally react to the universe down to the quantum limit; our retinas can register single photons, and our ability to sense something teased between fingertips is profound. But that is not what makes instruments different from digital-music models. It isn’t a contest about numbers. The deeper difference is that computer models are made of abstractions—letters, pixels, files—while acoustic instruments are made of material. The wood in an oud or a violin reflects an old forest, the bodies who played it, and many other things, but in an intrinsic, organic way, transcending abstractions. Physicality got a bad rap in the past. It used to be that the physical was contrasted with the spiritual. But now that we have information technologies, we can see that materiality is mystical. A digital object can be described, while an acoustic one always remains a step beyond us.

Today, tech companies promise to create algorithms that can analyze old music to create new music. But music is ambiguous: is it mostly a product to be produced and enjoyed, or is the creation of it the most important thing? If it’s the former, then being able to automate the production of music is at least a coherent idea, whether or not it is a good one. But, if it’s the latter, then pulling music creation away from people undermines the whole point. I often work with students who want to build algorithms that make music. I ask them, Do you mean you want to design algorithms that are like instruments, and which people can use to make new music, or do you just want an A.I. to make music for you? For those students who want to have optimal music made for them, I have to ask, Would you want robots to have sex for you so you don’t have to? I mean, what is life for?

by Jaron Lanier, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Michael Turek

[ed. See Jaron playing the khaen here.]

A Barbie Aged By AI Tells A Too-Bleak Story Of Getting Old

Recently, not one but two Barbies have appeared. The one that everyone knows about by now is Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film. Movie Barbie.

The other, which I doubt you ever heard of, is an AI-generated photo of an 83-year-old Barbie, reproduced by a company that makes personal alarms for the elderly and distributes a blog about aging issues.

Pensioner Barbie. That’s what they call her.

This article published by the personal alarm company and others tries to use Pensioner Barbie to, as they say, “normalize” conversations about aging.

In fact, their discussion does the opposite.

Barbie the movie, on the other hand, is an excellent way to learn about aging. It makes you think. The AI-created Pensioner Barbie simply makes you cringe.

When it comes to learning about what it means to grow old, beware of the experts.

The article circulating on the internet sees aging only in terms of sickness and loneliness — deficit-speak. It succumbs to Specialist Temptation, focusing on their self-proclaimed expertise and ignoring everything else. You’re a malady specialist? Look for maladies.

And boy do they ever.

“We all get older, and it’s nothing to fear,” the article says.

And then it goes on to describe Pensioner Barbie’s life only in terms of exactly what we fear.

Here is the article’s description — better yet its diagnosis.

“After a lifetime of wearing high heels, Pensioner Barbie now suffers from chronic foot pain and poor posture as well. At her age, Barbie has a one in two chance of having at least one fall each year.”

She has “deteriorating eyesight and development of cataracts has also impaired her vision, meaning she can no longer drive her iconic hot pink car.”

And the worst of all: “With an empty chair in the background, it’s also assumed that lifelong heart-throb Ken has also passed away, and Barbie is likely struggling with loneliness.”

Adding to that doom scenario is Pensioner Barbie’s gaunt appearance, as if she’s tried to keep the “cute figure” she had in high school except that after a lifelong effort she’s lost her curves.

Good lord. This is not Pensioner Barbie’s life. That’s her medical record. She has no life here outside her tchotchke-filled room. (...)

That’s not normalizing aging. It’s oversimplifying aging, stigmatizing it and scaring the stuffing out of someone who wants to understand the life of her uncle in Florida. Or for that matter, a middle-aged woman who has learned to live with cellulite but now discovers she can’t really wear high heels anymore.

Pensioner Barbie is a conversation stopper. On the other hand, in terms of aging, Barbie the movie is a conversation starter.

Considering what you probably know about the awesome Barbie phenomenon that’s often referred to as “The Barbie Industrial Complex”, this probably surprises you. You know, Barbie and Ken, umpteen kinds of Barbie dolls, Mattel’s multi-billion-dollar Barbie sales, first-order feminism, second-order feminism.

Who knew?

Well, Greta Gerwig, the film’s co-writer and director, sure knew. Aging sets the movie’s tone.

by Neal Milner, Honolulu Civil Beat |  Read more:

Image: Midjourney via:

[ed. Caution: Barbie movie spoilers. Ageism is a real problem, and the least of many "isms" to get any real attention or revision (feminism, racism, sexism, capitalism, socialism, etc.). Many cultures honor and celebrate elders - their wisdom, life experiences, traditions and contributions to family cohesion. Western culture does not, America in particular.]