Archived Editions of Chromatic Musings

State Of Fear

The latest work from Michael Crichton is a screed masquerading as a book. There may have been a story buried there at one point, but it's been hopelessly obscured by the very large chip on Mr. Crichton's shoulder.

A disclaimer: I'm somewhat sympathetic to his point of view. The science of global warming does have some rather glaring weaknesses to it. Having said that, I'd rather have had a story than just someone yelling very loudly how wrong the other side is.

Even if you are completely simpatico with Crichton's opinions on global warming, there are too many gaping holes in the plot to ever invest in the characters. This is very clearly a story built to service the dissemination of his point of view. I lost count of the number of incidents where a character takes the time to deliver a long and length diatribe about the evil conspiracy of criminologists. Just to add to the incredulity of it, he would usually take the time to monologue while in the midst of a life or death situation.

The saving grace to this book are the appendixes. Crichton lays out the evidence on which he built his thoughts as well as very clearly delineating his mindset. To be quite honest, I'd rather he have just done that rather than try to shoehorn his opinions into a storyline.

(as a side note, I'm way behind on writing about some of the books that I have read recently. So, there's going to be a deluge as I catch up...)

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

Written by J. Maarten Troost and subtitled "Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific", this is one of the funnier books I have read lately. I'm talking laugh-out-loud funny. Broken into a number of chapters (with titles like "Chapter 4 -- In which the author finally sets foot on Distant Tarawa [the island where the author goes], where he is led by the Evil Kate, who seeks to Convince him that Tarawa is not what it seems and and, Conceding that it is indeed Very Hot on the Equator; he Bravely overcomes his fear of Sharks and encounters something Much Much Worse"), Troost tells of he and his girlfriend moving out to a distant speck of a Pacific island and all the cultural changes that he encounters (the much, much worse he finds is the direct sewage system while he's swimming. and let's leave it at that).

Troost's writing is dryly amusing. If you like British humour, you'll probably like this book. It's good for quite a few chuckles, some gaffaws and a few out and out belly laughs.

Me And My Bass Guitar -- The Life Of Victor Wooten

I recently finished a biography of Victor Wooten, written by Paul R. Hargett. As Wooten is one of my heroes, I was looking forwards to reading about his life and better understanding the man. I did get what I expected, but not what I hoped. This book is best understood by the phrase "if only" and the word "hagiography".

While the book is well written, after reading the first three chapters, I half expected Wooten to walk on water. I would be hard pressed to be tell you of anything negative about the man as based on this text (well, there's one incident about a dance contest from when Wooten was a child).

The excising of unflattering data led to some fairly strange developments in the book. The author mentions that Wooten and his wife were separated for a time. In most biographies, that would be considered a major item, one worthy of several pages (if not an entire chapter). This book? One sentence.

During the time of the recording of Yin-Yang, Vic and Holly [Victor's wife since 1994] were separated. Victor spent time with Tali [Ovadia, a close friend of Victor's] and they became close.

Okay, two sentences. I suspect there's a lot more to this story than is encompassed in these twenty-three words. Actually, the afterword written by Wooten himself exposes more detail on the event and it's fallout than the biographer. To me, that's a shortcoming of the work.

A stronger section of the book tells of the development of Wooten's music style and the influences on it today. Hargett explores the family dynamics, the influence of the natural world and how martial arts impacts on his life and music. The book is worth the price of admission for that insight.

It seems to me that Hargett has genuine love, admiration and respect for Wooten. So much so, that I think it clouds his objectivity. While I can understand having that sort of feeling, I expect it from friends and fans. From a biographer, I expect a little more clinical detachment.

It's a good read, don't get me wrong. I learned a lot about the man and about the influences that shape his playing. However, the definite biography of Victor Lemonte Wooten remains to be written.

Amazon refuses a review

Amazon allow readers to post their thoughts on a given book. J.D. Lasica posted his review of Mindjack (by Dan Gillmor), only to find out that Amazon yanked his writing immediately.

So instead of an informed review that places the contents of the book in context, they'd rather have ramblings such as: "I looked up what the author had to say about chat rooms, Yahoo!, free speech, etc. and was always amazed to find merely a sequence of vacuous ramblings offering nothing new. I find it even difficult to write a critical review because there is almost nothing to here to criticize."

Which would nicely capture the reason why I don't bother with the reviews on Amazon in the slightest.

Thanks to Wendy for the tip.

Coding Slave

I finished Coding Slave by Bob Reselman the other day. I had hoped for a good story about coders. That's not what I got.

Almost half of the book is a combination of glossary and an exact translation of Plato's Meno dialogue. What's left is broken up so that each chapter tells a portion of the story from the point of view of a single character. Not a spankingly original idea, but a failed one in this instance. Characters appear, serve their function in moving what little of the story there is forwards and then they are discarded like so much chaff. The story itself lunges from tax fraud to technical incomptence to commercial intrigue with no transition and minimal connectivity.

The author throws in a sex angle from time to time, but it feels much like the afterthought bolt-on that it so clearly is. I would suspect that the author was told to "sex it up" -- some advice that he took quite literally.

The book itself is not well made, either. It's spiral bound -- like the kind of pamphlets you would get made at the local Kinko's.

All in all, I would highly recommend avoiding this book just about at all costs. I'd offer it for sale on Amazon, but I can see little point of it -- I'd just about pay someone to take it off my hands. If you want a fictional book on coding, check out either Microserfs or The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest. Either one is a far better read.

Omega

Jack McDevitt's Omega was a decent enough sci-fi book. The basic idea is that there is a massive nanotech cloud floating through the universe, destroying any object in it's path made up of right angles (of a sufficient size -- a book wouldn't be big enough, but a skyscraper would). There's one of these clouds floating towards Earth, but it's not due for a few more centuries. As would be expected by human nature, the denizens of Earth at the time chose to ignore such a far off threat.

Enter a space exploration team which discovers one of these clouds heading towards a world populated by sentient beings. Beings of a vaguely Athenian world which happen to look like characters from a popular childrens' story. Public sentiment grows and a rescue mission is launched. Will they make it? Will the interference of a alien species affect the development of the creatures (shades of the Prime Directive)? Will I care enough to find out?

Honestly, not really. The story didn't move very well, nor were either the characters or the plot all that interesting.

Ugly Americans

Ugly Americans is the true story of ex-patriots heading over to the Asian rim to engage in financial speculation. Set in the mid-90's, these gaijin cowboys gamed the system, traded on rumor and innuendo to exploit minute shifts in the Nikkei and ended up making billions. The book follows the exploits of an ex-football player from Princeton who heads over to Osaka with little more than an invitation from a Princeton alum cum trader. He quickly finds himself immersed in trading millions of dollars on a daily basis, as well as the seedier side of gaijin life in Japan.

It's a good and riveting read. The financial details are well explained and never dragging, while there is enough of a story about the activities of the traders to hold a reader's interest through some of the more dragging parts. And, whenever the author gets into trouble, he drags out some unseemly details about the sex trade in Japan (while no doubt true, and I know full well that bonding over beers in a sex club happens everywhere, I felt that it was an attempt to spice up the story). In any case, there's something for everyone.

Written by Ben Mezrich, who also wrote the book on the MIT grads who took some casinos in Vegas for quite a bundle. I haven't read his other book, but I'll probably make some time for it fairly soon.

Start & Run Your Own Record Label

I recently finished up Start & Run Your Own Record Label by Daylle Deanna Schwartz, and it was good. It's a good write up of the big picture of getting a record label off the ground as well as the details that are needed to succeed.

The text covers how to conceptualize the necessary business plan, how to find funding, distributors to contact (and how to package up the label to get their cooperation), ways to track down retail outlets, negotiating points -- in general, just about everything you would need to start getting your head around a label birth. Schwartz's writing style is engaging and brisk; she's written another book that I will probably be picking up in the very near future.

It's a good book, one that I would recommend to anyone who wanted to understand the nuts and bolts of how a label would work.

A review of what looks to be an interesting book

Mixerman is a diary/story about the real life story of recording a rock album from the engineer's perspective. It looks to be pretty interesting.

Hit Men

This morning, I completed Hit Men (by Fredric Dannen) on my way to work. This particular book is frequently referenced as an exposé on how the music industry really works.

This book picks up at the end of the payola scandals in the late fifties through to the end of the eighties. While this does make the information rather dated, it's still a good look on how we got where we are. Basically, the point is made that radio time has just about always been bought and paid for. Initially, it started with the labels paying the DJs. Then, it went to the labels paying the program managers of the station. When the attention/heat got too much, it changed to the labels paying "independents", who turned right around and paid the program managers (pocketing a small fee along the way). Finally, after a report from NBC news, the labels gave the money to the artists who then hired the independents who then paid the PMs -- but now, it's a recoupable expense, so the labels get all the benefits and none of the cost or exposure.

The book does make a pretty damning case that the payola laws are a sham, at best. No one follows them, no one wants to prosecute them. Organized crime seems to have more than a small hand in the system. And artists don't want to be the ones to try and go against them, either.

"When we first went off indies, Maurice White came into my office. He made the rounds and found out this [boycott] comes from Asher [who is speaking in this quote]. We had a long conversation. He was saying he had to have independents. I said, 'We're just not doing it, Maurice.' I said, 'Maurice, you're the greatest artist in the world, you're such a huge talent. Isn't it demeaning to you have some guy with an Italian name has to get paid off to get your records played on the air? You Know'

"He said, 'Look, man, I only have one career. So don't make me your crusade.' "

When talking about the independents themselves, there's an interesting story about Pink Floyd and LA. During the tour for The Wall, Pink Floyd had one of their few hits with Another Brick In The Wall. At the time, CBS records decided to see what would happen if they didn't pay the independents to promote in LA. Well, what happened is that no radio station in LA played the song. Not one -- not even when Floyd was in town, playing a huge venue for two nights and selling it out. But as soon as CBS cut some checks to the indies, the song shot up to number one record played within the week.

Graphic novels gain respectability

The graphic novel (of which I have been a fan for some time, even if some people have made fun of me for it) is gaining more and more dignity these days. Glad to see that others are catching up, even if they do ignore some of my favorite writers.

The Psycho-Ex Game

Last night, I completed The Psycho-Ex Game. This book is written as a back and forth between two LA-based characters Lisa (a film and TV writer) and Grant (a musician). Both are older, a bit world weary and scarred by years of trench warfare love.

The two of them meet at a performance by Grant and sort of recognize each other. They decide to email each other back and forth. In fairly short order, the emails turn into a game in which they compare horror stories about things that happened with a psycho-ex, scoring points along the way ("helping her score heroin the night before an interview with the press, 200 points" or "listening to him scream about how the waiter brought the wrong food but it was somehow my fault, 450 points"). All the while, their respective lives go on, with some people moving out of the one's life and into the other's.

The book feels like an actual back and forth, with misunderstandings and miscommunications abounding. One of the reasons it feels this way is that it was actually written by two writers, one male (Andy Prieboy as Grant), one female (Merril Markoe as Lisa). Andy is actually a musician in LA and Merril a writer in LA -- how much of the story is autobiographical, I couldn't even begin to say.

The book itself was engaging more as a concept than as an actual read -- I mean, who doesn't have a psycho ex (or five) in their past? The characters in the book restrain themselves to a single psycho in their past, instead of branching out to other people. Which I didn't quite buy, but I suppose the choice may have been made for economy. Still, it was an enjoyable enough read.

Victory

A few days ago, I finished up Victory, by Stephen Coonts. I had picked this up from a remainder pile about a week ago, having read one of his other books at some time in my past. There's a reason why it was in the pile.

To be honest, I'm not sure as to why I continue to grab books from the remainder list. The only reason why books end up there is that the publisher thought it would be more successful than it was (either no one bought it to start with or not as many bought it as originally expected). It must be that siren song of cheap books that just might be good that keeps me hopeful.

This particular book is part, well part x of something or other; I really don't know. It's not all that important. There are enough details of importance from any prior novels that matter sufficiently to this story that I didn't feel I couldn't pick up as I went along (or, if there are, I'm not aware of them). The main thrust of the story is fairly generic techno/military thriller. There's a military situation going on (in this case, four nuclear weapons being smuggled into the US by Islamic terrorists), only a small group of US military can solve the problem (Navy pilots and CIA operatives), and only the US has some super secret technology that will win the day (computer processing of public cameras). Will the four warheads be found in time? Will the various sub-plots of a personal nature to the characters be resolved? I'd say tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel, but I'm no where near motivated enough to care.

J. Michael Strazinski's Demon Night

A week ago (give or take), I finished up JMS's Demon Night book. I picked this one up because I'm a fan of some of his writing on TV.

This is a fairly rudimentary horror novel in the vein of Stephen King 1988 or so. It was his first novel, and it shows. There are too many people introduced who flit by without much impact and then are referenced seemingly at random subsequently in the novel. I found myself flipping back and forth, trying to figure out who was who and from whence they came. The story itself was pretty straightforward -- a little Indian mythology, a little pre-Christian demonology, a healthy dose of paranoia and strange happenings.

JMS himself probably provides the best critique (as to why the book was written and how) in the afterword to the text:

What made Demon Night work -- even with all the inevitable flaws and excesses of any first novel, for which accept a year's supply of mea culpas -- and the reason that it has now been picked up for republication by ibooks, is that I wrote it for myself, out of a love of the form, the genre, and a desire to be entertained by a story told about characters who mattered to me.

The lesson was not lost on me, and informed not just the novels that followed, which are also due to be reprinted, it had a profound impact on all of my writing, prose, television and otherwiseIt's the only lesson I've learned that really means a damn, the only one that I can convey to aspiring writers at conventions and workshops and bookstore signings without hesitation, conflict or reservation.

Write the story you want to read.

Live the live you want to live.

Do what gives you joy.

The rest will attend to itself.

Whether you like the book or not, that's some pretty damn good advice for anyone, writer or not.

The Zenith Angle

Today at lunch, I finished reading Bruce Sterling's The Zenith Angle. This was a rather unusual book. Starting out on the morning on September 11, 2001, a computer scientist finds his world changed. After the day's events, he begins to work for the government.

Basically, this book starts out as a cypher-punkish exploration into computer technology, bridges over to a government paper chase (á la some kind of John Grisham novel) and ends up on the Tom Clancy side of the house with a black ops special forces kind of activity. All featuring the same computer scientist. While it's an affable read, I can't particularly recommend it to anyone.

This Business Of Artist Management

At lunch today, I finished This Business Of Artist Management. A book firmly aimed at being a primer into the roles and responsibilities of a manager in the music industry, it touches on many of the basics without delving too deeply into them.

Written in 1997, a good bit of the data in this text is rather out of date (when the author talks about sending in demo cassettes to a label, that should probably be a clue). The work of a manager is discussed in very broad strokes, most of which will seem to be common sense once read, but maybe not immediately obvious without the pointers. Still, the text can be useful to a band and/or musician who is wondering what a manager should be doing and why a good manager earns 10-15% of the gross pay.

As with the other music book I've read recently, you're probably better off going with a more comprehensive work that covers the music business in more detail, then extrapolating to figure out what is needed to manage an artist.

Label Launch

This morning, I finished up reading the book Label Launch. Perhaps I should say I finished reading the pamphlet Label Launch.

This very slight book supposedly covers all the information you would need to know if you wanted to start your own record label. It does cover it, if only at the really, really high level viewpoint. Chapters (and I use that term very lightly) average about 8 pages or so, and each of those pages are broadly spaced and small of size (the book is about three quarters the size of a normal book). Indeed, the lion's share of the data is in the appendix, and that is a listing of resources (associations, radio stations, promoters, etc.) that can only be rather dated, as it is over two years old.

I suppose this book might be good if you are very new to the subject matter, or haven't read any of the more comprehensive books that are available on the music business. It also might serve as a pocket checklist for starting a label. But I can't really see much use of it other than that.

The Last Jihad

Today, I finished up Joel Rosenburg's The Last Jihad. This was a complete piece of puff; I finished it in two sittings.

Nominally set in the near future, the US is attacked by agents of Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction are used, and a Wall Street analyst bounds into action to save the world. Really. A stock market guy.

Published in September of 2003, to say this book feels dated doesn't even begin to cover the bases. It's amusing to read the hyperventilating concern applied to a war with Iraq; particularly in light of the actual combat experience. Much like many of the prognosticators before the war, Rosenburg expected hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of casualties.

I picked this book up for a few bucks out of the pulp pile. Having read it, I can see why.

This Business of Music (Marketing/Promotion)

I finished up a little book on marketing music to the masses. This was a pretty decent book, covering most of the basics of marketing as well as some of the odder things more specific to the music biz. Unlike a number of these books I've picked up over the years, this one has a few templates and step-by-steps that can be used if a musical group doesn't have any real idea as to where to start with their marketing effort.

Broken Angels

Over the weekend, I finished up Broken Angels. I had read Richard Morgan's first work and rather liked it, so I thought I'd give the sequel a go.

One of the things I liked about the original novel was the idea of stacks and sleeves. In this future world, humans have implanted a stack into their spinal column that allows their entire mental being to be captured to disk. Such technology opens the possibility of the consciousness surviving the death of a body -- which in this world happens regularly, as a person trades their current body for a new sleeve with regularity.

So how to create a sense of danger in a world where death doesn't mean the end? Morgan manages to pull off the tension with aplomb. By necessity, the motivations of characters are greatly different in this world, but not so different that everything is completely foreign.

In Broken Angels, the lead character from Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs) is back, this time leading a cadre of soldiers in some war (the details aren't particularly forthbomind or, indeed, pertinent). While there, he is approached by an unsavory lot about the existence of an alien spacecraft.....

Altered Carbon is a better read than Broken Angels, but either book is a worthwhile pulp read. I'd recommend it if you are into SF.

Brave New Bass

I finished up Brave New Bass earlier today. It's mostly a collection of interviews from the pages of Bass Player magazine, with the occasional odd "lesson" thrown in about some detail of the interviewee's playing style.

I found this to be a good book; the lessons weren't particularly insightful, but it was very interesting to learn about the influences and attitudes of some of the best bassists in the last twenty years or so. Of particular note (hah! no pun intended -- really) were the interview with Tony Levin, John Patitucci, Pino Palladino and Bakithi Kumalo. These four are some of the true unknown greats of bass playing; they tend to be both overlooked and somewhat private oriented, so it's not often that any insight can be gained into their methods.

If you are a bass guitarist looking around for some inspiration or just wanting to pick up some new ways to approach the instrument, I'd recommend picking up this book. In fact, I liked it enough that I added it to the essentials list.

Thanks to Rob for suggesting this book to me in the first place.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, by Vince Flynn, is a straight ahead military thriller. More or less a story about Al-Qaeda terrorists attempting to detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States (by the way, this isn't a spoiler; it says this directly on the dust jacket), the book unfolds with some of the standard problems of a character driven mil-fic book. There's a single character who knows everything, can do anything, walks on water, sees through walls; you know, the usual kind of thing. Someone's about to kill lots of people? Anyone want to bet that he stops them?

A side note on this book. If I were planning on keeping it (it's on sale at Amazon, read only once!), I could use it as a bookend. The author (and this text) leans so far to the right, I think it would hold back quite a bit of weight. I don't particularly mind politics in my fiction, but this was a bit much. The Patriot Act didn't go far enough, torture for terrorists is a good thing (which is just a bit in the wrong, not to mention very poorly timed) and women in power are shrews and sluts. Not the most enlightened of works, I would dare say.

-- Update --
Nevermind, it's already sold. God, I love selling off all the useless crap in my house on Amazon!

The Ultimate Survival Guide to the New Music Industry

In what has to be one of the longer titles I've ever reviewed, Justin Goldberg's The Ultimate Survival Guide To The New Music Industry (Handbook For Hell) weighs in on a more than a few topics.

The book is primarily structured around a number interviews with noted people from all walks of the music business. There are some good nuggets of information buried in the text for those who might be thinking of trying to make some headway in the industry.

I'm not sure who it was that first pointed out the analogy, but somewhere along the path of my first year of experience in the music business someone said to me, "The music business is high school with money." An odd thing to say, I thought at the time, but eventually, a revelation -- the gossip, the cliques, the In Crowd on the fast track, the backstabbing, the egos and the pettiness...it really is high school with money.

But I don't know if the value of the information is worth the read. I would probably characterize this work as a second tier resource. It's good to read when you've been through the A list, but not so good that I would drop everything just to finish it.

A closing quote from the book, though, that does bear repeating:

...if you want to get paid for maing music, you are going to have to start compromising immediately. It doesn't matter if you are standing on the street corner singing "The Times They Area a Changin'" for quarters -- someone's going to come along and say, "Can't you play 'Maggie's Farm'?" It depends how bad you want that quarter.

Confessions Of A Record Producer

I recently finished up Moses Avalon's Confessions Of A Record Producer not too long ago. I would highly recommend this book to any one who wants to enter into the shark tank known as the music industry. Enough so that I made it one of my essentials.

Not quite as detailed as Passman's book, the writing style is very approachable and informal. Both Confessions and All You Need To Know focus on how things are supposed to be and both the legal and financial sides to that, with All You Need To Know not going quite so far in depth. Confessions, however, drills more into the human side of the business, with all the delight and detrius that implies.

Avalon spends a great bit of time detailing the various scams and myths that are ran in the industry, some of which are:

• Clears and Cleans (ways to scam record sales)
• Copyright Protection (not many cases actually make it to court, and the ones that do rarely win)
• A&R Myths (the promo kit doesn't really matter, and the quality of the recording is secondary to the quality of the music)

All in all, it's a good perspective on some of the less savory segments of the music industry, pitched with enough humour and good graces to make you want to stick with it.

Ken Auletta's Backstory

Today, I finished up Ken Auletta's Backstory. I should probably start off by saying that the title to this book is somewhat of a misnomer; it's not a story, it's a collection of previously published essays on the media. I was hoping and expecting some cogent media criticism (along the lines of Howard Kurtz). What I got instead was banal puff pieces about New York journalism cloaked in vaguely hard hitting phraseology. Not even Fox News could raise Auletta's ire beyond a mildly disapproving rebuke.

For a collection of essays published in the New Yorker (as well as one or two other places), quite a few of the pieces could have stood a bit more stringent editing, both for grammer as well as for coherence. I would not recommend this particular book.

Finder's Paranoia

I just finished up Joseph Finder's Paranoia. It was a decent, escapist read. The book centers around a young man working for a technical firm who gets in over his head (misappropriation of funds) and basically gets blackmailed into spying on a competitor. Once he gets to the competitor's firm, he finds that he respects the people in the other firm far more than his original firm (even putting aside the blackmail). The open question becomes how he will balance the competiting interests.

This book reminded me a lot of another book I've recently read (Money For Nothing, also about a guy caught in espionage against his wishes). I found that I could relate to a lot of the political machinations in Paranoia -- not because I'm a spy or anything, but because I've worked too many places where people smile at you just before they knife your back. Or your front, depending on how bold they are. If you have worked in any high pressure places (or highly political places), you'll probably recognize the types: the win at any costs boss, the smarmy guy who pretends to be your friend only to set you up, the just-don't-give-a-rat's-anymore sideline workers/slackers.

I also got a kick out of the not-too-subtle characterization of the original firm's CEO, Nick Wyatt. It's very clear that this character was modeled pretty closely after Larry Ellison (huge ego, fascination with all things Japanese -- particularly in his home, even the same joke about God).

The book's a good way to while away a few hours, perfect for a trip of some sort.

All You Need To Know...

I finally finished up Donald Passman's All You Need To Know About The Music Business (where's the subtitle "but you were afraid to ask"?) this morning on the Metro. If you ever wanted to learn about the business side of the music industry, this book would be a great place to start. Walking through the more common aspects of record contracts and how advances and royalties are determined all the way to the arcana of negotiating underscore arrangements in film, this book gives a good leg up to non-lawyers, pointing some areas where attention should be paid.

Two things that this particular book made rather clear –

1. If you ever are in a position to negotiate any kind of agreement with someone else in the music business (record company, publisher, other members of a band), you almost certainly need to have a lawyer involved.
2. Once certain concepts are explained (cross-collateralization, retroactive producer royalties, tour support recoupments, manager/agent/legal/insurance percentages, etc.), it's actually somewhat understandable to see how a band that sells millions and millions of albums can still go bankrupt.

I would highly recommend this to any musician who is interested in the financial side of the industry.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the book

I finished up the book version of the documentary on the Metro home today. While the film was about all the musicians with an emphasis on Jamerson, the book was all about Jamerson.

I'm glad I read this; it helped flesh out the man who was so wildly influential on so many people. Towards the end of the book, there are pieces from a veritable Who's Who of bass players (Geddy Lee, Anthony Jackon, Will Lee, among many, many others) talking about how influential Jamerson was to them and their rendition of some of Jamerson's work, as well as some exercises and transcriptions of Jamerson playing.

It seems to me that learning about the history of a chosen avocation can only help the comprehension of the craft. Books like Standing in the Shadows can only assist in this process.

Doing Our Own Thing

I finished up John McWhorter's new book Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care on the Metro this morning. It was decent enough, but not exactly a "I-couldn't-put-it-down" kind of book.

The main thrust of his book is that the English language in America has declined precipitously ever since the mid-60's when rebellion against the Establishment took over the popular culture. He offers a good bit of evidence and arguments to support his position, and does so somewhat compellingly. There's a bit of Boomer navel gazing (particularly in how much impact his generation has had on culture and the usage of English in America), but that is to be expected. I am sympathetic to his point, even if I think he overstates it a bit.

Only after the change in the mid-sixties would this become possible, when the black sound became less a fetish than the cross-racial bedrock of the American musical sensibility.

For most Americans under stixty, one of the hardest things to adjust to in 1936's mainstream America would be that the music would be too sweet, the rhythms too tame, the singers too arch and soppy. Counselors would have to work with applicants for weeks preparing them for "funk cravings" in a mainstream America that didn't know such music yet."

Doing Our Own Thing (pp213-214, 1^st edition)

One of the more interesting segments of the book discussed the rise of "keeping it real" to it's present place of prominence. I can easily see the validity of his observation: I know that when I see musicians perform, the passion and emotion they invest in their playing tends to be more important than the mechanics and technique of the performance.

Join Me

I finished reading my latest book on the way home this morning from my day job. A friend let me borrow Join Me before I left on holiday.

This was an entertaining and interesting read. It's all about a guy in Britian who gets bored one day, posts a classified saying "Join Me, please send a passport photo to .... ". And people respond. Over the course of the book, he gets 1,000 people to join with him, even though there is no defined purpose for this group/cult/collective.

The book is written with lots of Briticisms. I can see how it might be a bit off putting for some people, particularly if you don't know what "crisps" are (just as an example). While the book is hardly an "I-couldn't-put-it-down" kind of book, it's a nice lightweight read.

For more information on the Join Me group, go here.

Goldberg's Arrogance

I finished reading Bernie Goldberg's Arrogance today. It's a nice little read, but I have the same compliant with this book that I had from his prior one. It's full of snappy lines, and I'm even sympathetic to some of his points, but there's next to no documentation to back up what he says. No footnotes, no endnotes, no references, no sources, nada.

Here's an example

The antigun people don't like anything about guns. Guns do not give them peace of mind. Just the opposite. And the vast majority of mainstream media people--certainly those who work in the biggest, most important newrooms in the country--fall into this antigun category. To a lot of them, guns are destructive and evil. Period. In fact, they think there are no credible arguments on the other side, just the irrational rants of all those crazy "gun nuts."

Arrogance, (pp187-188, 1^st edition)

It's a great quote. Too bad he doesn't give any sources, makes overly broad generalizations and does much the same as the people he critizes.

The issue of bias is a tough one. I happen to think that there is a bias in the media. One that cuts many different ways and you have to pay attention to what is being said as well as backstopping anything that might sound a little suspicious with a little judicious research. So, when I listen to NPR, I expect a tilt to the left. And a bend to the right should I happen to catch any Rush Limbaugh. I read as much as I can, preferrably written by people who may not agree with me, but all of which make me think. I figure that should set me up to be able to judge for myself as to what's going on.