the blog quebecois

For no reason whatsoever I post this classic as performed at Knoebels Grove by Rick K. and the Allnighters.

I think it's just a wee bit unfair that we couldn't find even one crazy drummer when these guys apparently had two. Ever hear of sharing the wealth, guys?

Sometimes Turkish visual effects make you feel like you've solved a puzzle when you realize what they were trying to do. I mean, some of these planets still have glitter snowflakes on them. And those are the ones that look the most realistic since they don't have the fish-eyed reflection of a Turkish camera man bobbing towards them.

As you might guess from the sobriquet I gave to my cousin's girlfriend, I subtly resented her influence on the band. But being the true professional, I was able to put all that aside for the sake of the song. I found that not having any sort of emotional connection to the lyrics allowed me to concentrate more on the mechanics of the vocal. Here's what I wrote about it when I initially posted this:

One day my cousin showed up with these lyrics about DamnYoko™ and wanted some help putting them to music. So I said sure, went off somewhere and returned a few days later with the body of the song. (I believe we both worked on the bridge.)

Although my cousin was much more proficient than me in almost any aspect of music, he was just starting to write his own songs. I'd been doing it from the start. I suppose it is somewhat a matter of focus; a songwriter sees the song as the target and the music as part of the puzzle getting there; a good musician is more interested in the journey, and the nuts and bolts of the jalopy we're riding in. If I may mangle a metaphor or two.

My cousin wasn't exactly Noel Coward when it came to writing lyrics, but no nevermind. Obviously a good song with good lyrics is preferable to a good song with bad lyrics (or -- and I know, having written many examples of the genre -- a bad song with bad lyrics), but I've never considered lyrics as a pivotal element of the song; rather as a framework to hang the vocals (which I do consider essential) on.

This was the first time my cousin added backing vocals. Also a few ad-libs aimed at cracking me up.

Note: I usually keep the volume of my computer speakers low, and listen to these (or anything else) with headphones. If you can, I'd recommend doing the same for this song, at least. There's a truism that you should listen to music at around the same level that it was recorded at. As this would be inconvenient for most rock music (not to mention for your neighbors), producers use compression and equalization to make the record sound smoother at lower volumes. In part because we still hadn't figured out how to record acoustic guitars, they sound jumbled and undifferentiated unless you crank up the sound somewhat. If the boss starts bitchin', you can point out this highly scientific explanation.

========================

[Verse]

Together you and me
Can reach the sky and see
The things we believe
But torment and frustration
Can break the concentration
Then we grieve
-------------------------------------------------

[Chorus ]

But it's you and me
Me and you
Just us two
Together
J.B.

[rpt.]
-------------------------------------------------

[Verse]

The colors on the wall
Seem to give us the call
The forces are there
The final judgement can wait
'Til we secure our fate
The loving we share

------------------------------------------------------

[Bridge]

Forgetting the bad times we had
To make room for more of the good
Will keep us together
Forever

Will keep us together
Forever

-------------------------------------------------

[rpt. 1st verse, chorus]

========================

Greg Gutfeld:

From high schools to townhalls, the topic of bullying has elbowed its way to the front of the grievance parade. City councils are passing “anti-bullying laws,” and the term is now used to describe all sorts of bad behavior. And of course, America is always accused of being the world’s bully - despite the crap we take from just about everyone (especially Belgium, and their stupid chocolates).

There’s a reason for this. It’s an easy thing to get earnest about: no matter how much of a jerk you are (and I’m at the top), you can’t say, “bullying is awesome.” You can say it builds character, but don’t tell that to a parent of a terrified kid.

And it’s a slam dunk for celebrities. It makes for legitimate and easy outrage that even the shallowest dope can get behind. More important - as every celebrity constantly reminds us - they were once bullied too. The cause becomes about them, just like everything else.

And it's an easy epithet for "disadvantaged" groups -- feminists, homosexuals, and hard-charging up the middle, Islamists -- to throw around while working the system to their benefit. The hysteria over "bullying" is just the latest manifestation of their power grab, under the color of law, in the service of the biggest bully of them all: Government.

For an earlier example of how the game is played, I'd recommend Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys (2001), though it's no less applicable to Canada in 2010. (It's still available from Amazon for about $15, and I heartily recommend it.) The Atlantic published a lengthy excerpt:

It's a bad time to be a boy in America. The triumphant victory of the U.S. women's soccer team at the World Cup last summer has come to symbolize the spirit of American girls. The shooting at Columbine High last spring might be said to symbolize the spirit of American boys.

That boys are in disrepute is not accidental. For many years women's groups have complained that boys benefit from a school system that favors them and is biased against girls. "Schools shortchange girls," declares the American Association of University Women. Girls are "undergoing a kind of psychological foot-binding," two prominent educational psychologists say. A stream of books and pamphlets cite research showing not only that boys are classroom favorites but also that they are given to schoolyard violence and sexual harassment.

In the view that has prevailed in American education over the past decade, boys are resented, both as the unfairly privileged sex and as obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. This perspective is promoted in schools of education, and many a teacher now feels that girls need and deserve special indemnifying consideration. "It is really clear that boys are Number One in this society and in most of the world," says Patricia O'Reilly, a professor of education and the director of the Gender Equity Center, at the University of Cincinnati.

The idea that schools and society grind girls down has given rise to an array of laws and policies intended to curtail the advantage boys have and to redress the harm done to girls. That girls are treated as the second sex in school and consequently suffer, that boys are accorded privileges and consequently benefit -- these are things everyone is presumed to know. But they are not true.

The mendacity and corruption that Sommers details is stunning. If I had a son of school age, I'd be moving heaven and earth to get him out of that abusive environment, if I had to homeschool him myself. These people have no business with anyone's children; some deserve to go to jail.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner aid camouflage cover. They carried the stand ard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds - and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

Every war seems to take on its own artistic identity. World War I is thought of mainly through the poets: John McCrae; Siegfried Sassoon; Wilfred Owen. By the Second World War novelists had taken up the torch -- Norman Mailer; Joseph Heller; Kurt Vonnegut. The only connection most people have with Korea is the film M*A*S*H, but that was also inspired by a series of books by Richard Hooker. By Vietnam, though, the focus was very much cinematic, as befitted the "Living Room War": Apocalypse Now; Hamburger Hill; and Oliver (ick) Stone's Platoon.

There was good writing to come out of Vietnam, though. Some of the best is by former infantryman Tim (Going After Cacciato) O'Brien. His The Things They Carried achieves a poetic intensity in its cataloging of the common and prosaic. I'd never read the complete book, just some chapters published in Esquire.

While Googling around for some quotes from it, I came across the entire text here. (It's not an official site, judging by the number of typos, just something put up by someone who really liked the book.)

Update: Oops. That wasn't the complete work. Just an excerpt.

For reasons detailed below, I really wanted this to be a good take, to the extent that we actually rehearsed it two or three times before recording. And that certainly paid off, in that we didn't flub a note, nor misplace a verse/chorus. All that planning can have its downside of course -- I find the song somewhat sterile and unspontaneous. But it was becoming clear that we could play with some degree of precision.

This, unlike any of the other songs, has been heard by Famous Ears. Whose Famous Ears, you ask? Well, how about David Freaking Foster's Famous Ears, that's who. He was the main judge in a song contest sponsored by the local Recording Association. At least I think he heard it, though I'm betting not much more than thirty seconds worth until his oh-so-refined immune system kicked in and he collapsed into a writhing heap on the floor.

Mind you, I don't exactly regard David Freaking Foster (I have no idea if his middle name is really "Freaking." But it should be.) as the ultimate authority on rock music. He had most recently been famous for (co?) writing and producing the Canadian entry in the African-famine trilogy ("Do They Know It's Christmas"/"We Are The World"), a song so stirring and unforgettable that I've, ah, forgotten what it was called.

Apart from that, he produced and wrote for notable rockers like Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (an extensive discography here). I remember reading a magazine story about him in which he was reminiscing about, among other things, his days as a working musician, including playing keyboards in Chuck Berry's backup band. He went on and on about how sloppy and unprofessional his bandmates were, including Berry, whose guitar was constantly slipping out of tune. This was especially painful for Foster, who, as the writer pointed out (several times), was blessed with "perfect pitch." It also, as far as I was concerned, was part of the reason why he didn't really "get" rock music.

[I thought it was Chuck Berry; however his Wikipedia entry doesn't list him, so I might be thinking of someone else.]

The only person I've ever known with perfect pitch -- or close enough to it -- is my cousin. Oddly enough, it didn't really help us out very much (except when tuning the guitars, heh).

Sloppy. Unprofessional. Out of tune. Could be a perfect description of half of the Rolling Stones any given night. More to the point, rock has a sort of laissez-faire attitude to imperfection: Whatever works, works. It's not exactly like improvisation in jazz, though there are some of those elements in it.

The Beatles were fond of telling the story of when they were working on a particular song (I've never found out which one) when Ringo wandered into the studio stoned out of his mind on one thing or another and tripped over a cymbal. Lesser musicians would have shrieked and started recording anew, but they were of sturdier stuff. As one of them observed, "Hey, he was on the beat, so we decided to leave it in."

Another view on the human element in recording. This is a site that obsessively lists every bad tape edit and drum-pedal squeak in Beatles' songs. You'll be amazed at how many there are.

What's it about? Nothing, actually. The title is the only real thing about it -- I was living next to one of those big artificial lakes that are built in new communities to:

a) increase property values;

b) divert water from overloaded storm drains; and

c) collect every abandoned shopping cart in the vicinity

The rest is overwrought poetic dreck.

We changed hats on this recording, with me playing most of the guitars and my cousin switching to bass. I have mixed feelings about it. I liked the Townshendesque chords I was throwing around; but I never could find a way to integrate the chorus and verses. I needed a song for the contest, though, and this was the best I had.

=========================

Verse:

This solemn vow I do undertake
Forged in sorrow and it cannot break
A purpose, a will
Too much to shake

Chorus:

I found my love
By the lake
By the lake

There was a stinging wind coaxing dirty foam afloat
And on the beach the bleached shell of a boat
A gull overhead
This song in his throat

By the lake

A desert of water crushed by clouds
An ocean of tears cried aloud
Fossils in amber sunk beneath
No swimming allowed

By the lake
==============================

Previous: By The Lake (2)

The spread of anti-Semitism on Canadian university campuses is an alarming and obvious phenomenon. The University of Toronto is making a shocking contribution to the spread of hate.

It is the birthplace of the odious so-called "Israel Apartheid Week" which has best been described as, "the week in which the Western campus Hitlerjugend, Marxist-Leninists, and Islamo-fascists unite to demonstrate against and call for the destruction of the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime."

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) is the home of some of the most appalling of The University of Toronto's extremist radicals. It's no coincidence that OISE, the home of suspect programs of dubious academic value like 'Diversity Studies', is host to a number of anti-Israel lectures during the bigotfest of "Israeli Apartheid Week."

But to what extent has Jew hate permeated the academic programs at University of Toronto? Judging by some of the theses that are being granted a form of legitimacy, alarm bells should be going off and an investigation may be merited.

Time to cut these weenies off at the knees. Let them get their funding from their generous kindred at Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm sure they've got a few million that hasn't made it to Zurich yet.

From us, now that I think about it.

More here.

This was my cousin's first (well, the first I heard) song, for the contest as well. Still waiting to hear from Foster -- he probably just misplaced our numbers. Yeah, that must be it.

I didn't really like the song at first. The tempo changes and distorted vocal in the chorus reminded me somewhat of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of which I was never a fan. And I thought the opening lyrics were somewhat weak.

But my cousin aced his guitar parts, and the bass was rock-solid. All in all, I now think it's a better song than my much-laboured over "By The Lake."

Here we are, with 15 million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed, and the EPA is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability, and making it less likely they will hire.

EPA’s action amounts to rewriting the Clean Air Act to suit its own bureaucratic and ideological objectives. At a time when the Obama administration should be focused on job creation and the nation’s economic recovery, promulgating stringent new environmental rules should be its last priority.

The new EPA rules call for a reduction in the national ambient air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, a cut of up to 20 percent.

While this might seem innocuous enough, setting a more-stringent ozone standard will in fact cause economic havoc.

Hundreds of U.S. cities and counties already don’t meet the current standard. If the EPA tightens the rules, these counties will fall permanently into noncompliance, even with costly investments in new pollution controls.

Under the Clean Air Act’s nondegradation provision, state and local governments are not permitted to take actions that would worsen air quality, even if the area is in compliance with EPA standards.

If a county or city is not in compliance, its economy won’t be able to grow-so the EPA’s proposal would spell economic stagnation for many communities.

A study by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a 75-year old organization that provides economic research and training for business executives, warns that the new standard would destroy an estimated 7.3 million jobs nationwide and add $1 trillion annually in new regulatory costs beginning in 2020.

In Mississippi, the EPA proposal would kill an estimated 130,000 jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new regulatory costs from 2020 to 2030.

Direct compliance costs are only part of the burden, however. If the new standards go into effect, the costs of nearly everything we buy also will go up, as higher energy prices raise production costs.

This huge price tag, however, wouldn’t appreciably improve public health. So it’s fair to ask why a more stringent ozone standard is even needed.

Efforts to achieve cleaner air over the past 20 years have been extraordinarily successful, with pollution in some places cut in half.

If we’ve learned anything from clean-air regulation to date, it is that there is no low-cost way of substantially curtailing ground-level ozone or greenhouse-gas emissions within a relatively short time frame, which the EPA insists is necessary.

I got Lisa Jackson in the dead pool for March 15 of next year.

New York:

An unlikely defender arrives on the scene:

. . . I am very particular with my words, and the emotion I felt at that time wasn’t worded exactly right - but everybody came and said ‘Oh my God!” - I’m talking about five years ago, not a year ago, I’m talking about five years ago, I’m talking about Katrina - and everybody said, “Oh my God, Kanye, I love you so much, I hated you until you said that. But now I see you’re speaking for me. I always thought you were an a****** but now you said something that represents me, but the whole time, whole time I’m thinking in my mind I was thinking that’s not exactly what I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to say, I was emotional, that was not exactly the way I wanted to word it, but I wrote it, I rode it, just as Taylor never came to my defense in any interview, and rode the waves and rode it and rode it, that’s the way I rode the waves of the Bush comment. I rode it. It’s not about popular opinion. It’s about when you look in your heart, and know what’s right and what’s wrong. When you look in your heart, look at what the media did, look at how they exploited him, they said that he said it was his lowest moment and as a mass, as America, we took that as a fact, and if you look at the interview he said that was one of his lowest moments and he said it about ten different things! But because the popularity of me, they exploited that, to make you watch the interview and make you feel that he was stupider than ever, to think that a rapper’s comment could be his lowest moment. That’s not what he f******ng said! That’s not what he f****** said! That’s not what he said! He said it was one of his lowest moments. But it shows you - the way they try to villainize, the way they tried to do that.

Mind you, as usual it's all about me me me ME ME ME; but what the hell, baby steps, baby steps, albeit profane baby steps.

I wonder if Obama's lost yet another celebrity endorsement.

A simple little tune, as befits the simpletons scrambling to plug in a vital cable at the beginning. It actually turned out well, with my cousin's swirling guitar and some nice touches on the "cymbals."

AFP:

China was "scared to death" over a visit by US Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is outspoken on human rights, and rejected her request to visit Tibet, according to files leaked Monday.

A top diplomat at the US embassy in Beijing said he asked China to consider letting Pelosi go to Tibet during her May 2009 visit to China, according to a cable obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei responded that China could not arrange the trip due to Pelosi's "tight schedule," according to the cable reprinted by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The Chinese ambassador in Kazakhstan was blunter, telling his US counterpart over an expansive dinner that Beijing was "fearful" over Pelosi's visit.

"She had the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) scared to death on the eve of her visit," Ambassador Cheng Guoping was quoted as saying in the classified memo by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland.

Yeah, I'll bet they were just shaking (from laughter, if nothing else). If you scroll down and read the comments, it's plain that Pelosi strikes a similar fear in her countrymen.

Oh, sure, they try to disguise it with outright contempt and hostility, but you can tell that they secretly crave the lash of the San Fran Nanny.

Ride, ride on, you crazy lady!