Guitarists I Admire: Jimi Hendrix

I imagine that most of the small crowd that reads this blog knows that I play guitar. It’s the great pleasure of my life, and “musician” is a key part of my identity. I’ve been playing guitar for about 20 or so years now, and I’ve come a long way in terms of ability. While I don’t consider myself anywhere close to being a virtuoso or even an expert, I’m pretty comfortable with my instrument and can play pretty much anything I hear in my head, electric or acoustic.

Part of being a serious musician is having and acknowledging your musical influences. I am no exception. Certain guitarists have influenced and inspired me since I was a kid of 14 just learning to plink out a few hesitant chords on my mom’s nylon string guitar. I can’t say that all of what I liked when I was a kid has stood the test of time (Mark loves to give me crap for liking crap like Whitesnake and Britney Fox in the 1980s), but over the past two decades, there are certain artists/bands/guitarists whose influence upon my style and taste in music has proven durable and deeply influential to me. And, given the fact I am a total music nerd who can talk for days about music that I dig, I feel like sharing what inspires me.

So, this is Part One of what I plan to be a occasional, long series on guitarists I admire. I’ve been drawn to loud rock n’ roll from a pretty young age, so it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the guitar gods you’ll read about in this series come from that tradition. It’s not that there aren’t fantastic guitarists that I like in other genres such as jazz (Django Reinhart, Pat Metheny, Stanley Jordan) or classical (John Williams, Andre Segovia), etc., it’s just that rock n’ roll is the family of music that has left a lasting mark on my musical personality.

As I’ve often said, my tongue only half in my cheek, “I was born to rock!”

First up in the series of Guitarists I Admire: Jimi Hendrix

This is kind of a no-brainer. A cliché too. I mean, what fan of rock music doesn’t consider him among the greats? But I have to weigh in, because Jimi Hendrix’ music was very important to me as a formative musical influence.

I think I first heard Hendrix on a tape that my friend Nat gave to me when I was a sophomore in high skool. The first song? “Are You Experienced?” It was mind blowing for my 15 year old adolescent brain, that thick, hypnotic, incredibly complex, sidewinding electric guitar figure that comes in over the trippy backwards drums, and a guitar solo recorded backwards in the middle, too. I listened to that tape over and over again… I think I actually still have it somewhere.

Hendrix was a man of many and immense talents. To this day he is primarily known for his guitar solo pyrotechnics (literally… at one famous show he set his guitar on fire before smashing it to bits) and his liberal, revolutionary use of fuzz tone. And it’s true that his abilities in this arena have rarely been equaled, before or since. He had a naturally flowing, lyrical style to playing guitar solos that made them seem effortless. His vibrato technique was among the most expressive and instantly recognizable anywhere. And he pioneered guitar sounds that are still admired all these years later, even though the technology for producing them was quite crude by today’s standards (slashing speaker cones to make them sound “dirty”, first generation fuzz boxes, arcane guitar effects like the Echoplex and Univibe).

The band he became famous for fronting, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, consisted of himself and two seasoned jazzmen, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass. Indeed, it’s difficult to separate his own talent from that of the phenomenal talents of his “sidemen”, both of whom, while being slightly lesser known than Hendrix, have nearly equal status in musician’s circles. Mitchell, in particular, is considered to be one of the greatest of all rock drummers and is certainly responsible for much of the magic of Hendrix’ early albums. Prime examples of this band firing on all cylinders are “Manic Depression”, “Red House” and of course his first big hit “Hey Joe”. None of these are particularly musically complex (“Red House” is in a standard 12 bar blues form), but they are prime examples of what master musicians can do with simple ideas.

These guys were so talented that they would record entire albums with minimal rehearsals, sometimes recording tunes that Hendrix had written the same day. That is a significantly different aesthetic than modern recording techniques, which are far more sophisticated and time consuming. The primitive techniques they used resulted in some timeless music, and didn’t rely on technological gimmickry to sweeten them up.

But to label Hendrix as merely a great guitar player does not really do justice to his multifaceted talents. He was also a first rate songwriter. “Castles Made Of Sand” is a melancholy, somewhat simple song that nonetheless shows of some tastefully understated guitar chops. The chord progression to “Little Wing” is a beautiful example of the ideas that sprang from him, lilting and longing. Though his voice was not particularly good by traditional standards and he used a sort of “speak/sing” technique on most of his work, it was nonetheless expressive and well suited to his compositional ideas.

On later albums such as Electric Ladyland, he toned down the flashy guitar solos and focused more on songwriting and use of recording techniques; although this being Hendrix, flashy guitar work is in abundance.. The result was, predictably, great music. Psychedelia just doesn’t get much better than a song like “In 1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be”

Hendrix eventually parted ways with Mitchell and Redding and formed a new band, the Band Of Gypsys. While not quite as legendary as the Experience, they were more than capable of backing Hendrix and his music. And my favorite Hendrix tune of all, “Machine Gun”, dates from this era. The song was recorded live and is famous for both its politics (a Vietnam War protest song) and the stuttering palm-muted guitar technique that Hendrix used at the beginning to imitate the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun.

But what really makes it stand out is the guitar solo in the middle. Beginning with a single, sustained note that he holds for a ridiculous length to build suspense, it then carpet bombs everything in its path for the next couple of minutes with liquid napalm. All other electric guitarists before and since are felled by this solo. I hereby proclaim it The Greatest Electric Guitar Solo Of All Time!

You think I’m kidding? No. That’s not hyperbole at all. Okay, maybe the caps were a bit much. But if you really want to know why Hendrix is worshipped by musicians to this day with such reverence, listen to this song and your question will be answered. I get goosebumps just remembering it in my head now. Also, "Machine Gun" is an excellent example of what the aforementioned Univibe effect sounds like.

I still like to pull out some Hendrix once in a while, even though his music, particularly his big hits like “Purple Haze” and “Crosstown Traffic”, has been nearly over played to death on classic rock radio. But he was a genuine rock and roll pioneer. His huge impact on later generations of musicians, including myself, means that it makes no sense to write about great rock guitarists without a hat tip to Hendrix. RIP Jimi.

Wendi's stone update

Quick blurb to update everyone about Wendi's salivary gland stone problems. Her surgery was yesterday. Here is what they pulled out of her...

I have read and heard from the medical professionals in our family that most salivary gland stones are about the size of a grain of sand. Wendi has had this one for more than 20 years and it grew to the size of a pea. In Mark's words, "That's a big honkin' stone!"

Though the surgery itself went well, she is having a difficult time swallowing, is in a lot of pain and is rather loopy from the pain meds. I feel bad for her. We are watching her condition closely.

So, I'm at home today again helping with Simon, who is blissfully oblivious to most of this, though I do think he understands that mommy isn't feeling very well. Oh well at least I got off work again.

Get well soon, hon.

Professional sports: parasites of the public

This post started as a response to Mark’s latest post rhapsodizing about the Nuggets. It’s nice that the Nuggs have finally overcome their jinx. They do seem to be playing better than at any time in their history and Denver is really rallying behind them. Awesome!

I’m being sarcastic. Now I’ll turn on the charm.

I don’t have the obsession that most people have with professional sports. In fact, I hate professional sports, almost without exception. And college sports are nearly as bad. If the Nuggs, Broncos and Avs left town never to return, not only would I not miss them, but I would cheer and openly celebrate.

Why, you ask? What did the Nuggets or the Broncos ever do to Matt?

But that’s the wrong question. My question is, “What have the Nuggets or Broncos ever done for me?” I understand the appeal of watching a game. What I don’t understand is the sentimental attachment. The Nuggets are not our friends. Most are not from Denver. They are millionaires, hired mercenaries, paid to use their athletic talents to fool you into thinking we have some kind of stake in their success, that their triumph is ours. We have no stake, and their triumph is not ours. They do not care for us, they do not love us, and they have no loyalty to Denver.

Neither do any of the other major professional sports teams have any particular loyalty to any location. They are notorious for pulling up stakes as soon as they find they can make more money elsewhere. It’s not surprising. Any business would do the same.

What is surprising is the adoration and love that sports fans shower upon their “heroes”. It is completely one-sided – we can read in sports magazines about the sadness sports fans every time their idols do not live up to their perceived status as “role models”. Which is quite often, though the reality never seems to sink in to the fans. Sports stars are generally egomaniacal prima donnas, jerks who relish their status and care what the fans think only so far as it affects their abilities to sign fat endorsement contracts.

And why would they? To be a sports star in America is to be the closest thing to royalty we have in this country, and rare is the scandal that ends one’s career. The worst forms of behavior are winked at. The reality is that the culture of sports encourages it. And people expect these overgrown babies to be role models?

But sports star culture is not even close to being the worst thing about professional sports. Far worse is the parasitic nature of the industry on the economy. Most sports teams could not survive economically without public subsidy of their enterprises, through public financing of stadiums, special laws granting them the ability to effectively operate as monopolies, etc. If the public balks at providing subsidies for the multimillionaire owners, the owners threaten to move to a town more favorable to their public extortion scheme. And they do not hesitate to follow through on these threats if their bluff is called.

Here in Denver, the public provided nearly 70% of the financing for the Bronco’s home, Invesco Field at Mile High, nearly $250,000,000, through a special metro-area sales tax levy.

The rationale behind this public “investment” is a supposed benefit to the economy at large. In reality, the positive effects on the economy are dubious at best, non-existent or negative at worst.

But certainly, some people do benefit economically – the wealthy owners and athletes. They are lucky to have such a deep reservoir of public goodwill and trust, which never seems to deplete, no matter how badly they misuse and abuse it.

It’s true that, in Denver’s case at least, the tax increase in question passed by a wide margin of a popular vote, so clearly the public believes it derives some form of value from the Broncos et al. My question is therefore, what value? The right to purchase overpriced tickets and merchandise? $8 beers and $5 hot dogs, while being prohibited from bringing your own food into a facility that your tax dollars paid for?

Of course not. The “value” to the public is what they perceive to be the “team spirit”, the loyalty to the hometown, the vicarious thrill of victory when the “hometown boys”, who are neither boys or in most cases from the hometown, defeat the enemy. But as I have shown, that is manufactured, not genuine, the result of successful branding campaigns and gigantic marketing budgets. The reality is precisely the opposite. It is cynical exploitation of mass delusion, and very, very lucrative. Every time you buy something in the Denver area, you are paying the interest on the bonds that were issued to pay for Mile High Stadium.

If you feel good about that, consider this: perhaps the worst thing about the public subsidy of pro sports is what economists call “opportunity cost”. An opportunity cost is the result of choosing one economic option over another. How much affordable housing could have been built for that $250 million? How many schools built and funded? How many public works like parks and infrastructure could have been paid for? Don’t ask the owners of the Broncos. They’re too busy putting that new wing on the mansion or vacationing in Bermuda.

I am under no illusion that professional sports are going away any time soon, or that they don’t command significant popularity. I just think that people should try to be a little more aware of the realities of the world of pro sports before they go painting their faces orange, or arguing about statistics in some bar. Professional sports teams are not your friends.

Wake up. Class dismissed.

Slack and a salivary stone scare

For the record, today was a classic rainy day in Denver. So, I thought I would write a short post, just to show I haven't disappeared or anything.

Y’all don’t have to tell me what a slacker I am. I will just say that there are 2 reasons I haven’t posted anything for more than 2 months.

The first: school. Or “skool” as I like to spell it. I am taking a really hard tax class this semester and I’m in skool 2 nights out of the week. Wendi is of course back in skool too. From Monday to Thursday, it seems we barely see each other. So when I’m not at work or at skool, I’m at home taking care of Simon. And when he goes to bed, I usually don’t have the energy to write much. Sorry. Plus, this tax class I'm taking is really difficult.

The second reason: music. I have finally found a good drummer to work with. I have been playing with Will for about 2 months now, and am looking forward to summer when I will have more time to devote to creating loud, obnoxious music that will frighten decent people, disgust upstanding citizens and make children cry. That’s really what I live for, after all. Plus, a very good situation has come my way recently that I think will give me a great foundation to network and play with even more musicians. More about that later.

For now, we had a bit of a scare this evening. Wendi has had sporadic problems with a salivary gland stone since she was 17. Her stone had been hurting her for a couple days but this afternoon it really started to hurt and swell. A conference with Dr. Mark and internet research revealed that an abscessed salivary gland stone can be very serious. We made the decision to take her to the ER at Swedish Medical Center, where she spent a good portion of the evening.

Don't worry, everything is more or less OK. I picked her up a few minutes ago from the ER. She will probably need surgery for it. Bummer, but at least she won't have any more stone problems. Geez, it seems Wendi and I are on track for having an average of one surgery each per year. As Wendi is fond of saying, "Ain't nobody getting any younger."

Anyway, I plan on posting again soon. From famine to feast and all that…

Say it ain't so, Rocky!

By now I’m sure you’ve heard. I bought my last-ever copy of the Rocky Mountain News today. No I’m not going to have it framed. But this is definitely a very sad day.

Most people know that I am a voracious consumer of news. I’ve long been in the habit of reading an actual newspaper several times a week at the very least. Since I’ve been taking mass transit the past few years, the Rocky has been an indispensable companion on the way to work. Reading the paper is one of those little morning rituals that helps me wake and mentally gear up for my day.

I’ve lived in Colorado for 20 years now and though I sometimes read the Post, the Rocky has always been my favorite. I’m not sure why. Even though its editorial page was much more conservative than my general views, I think the reporting and overall quality of the paper was more consistent.

I do feel that the quality of the Rocky went steeply downhill the past 2 or 3 years though. The past few months, it seems they’ve been focusing on reporting on what the TV news stations are too – crime, puff personality pieces, sensationalism. I hate TV news and never watch it anymore so I was disappointed in this turn of events. I’ve barely even bought a paper in the last month. The sports section was still robust and they seemed to be pouring their limited resources into it, but I care nothing for professional sports. The rest was all national AP/wire stories that you can read anywhere online.

However they still did a great job of covering the state legislature, and though their business section was pretty stripped down, they still had some great journalists like David Milstead and good business reporting. Plus they have won several Pulitzers in the past 7 or 8 years. It wasn’t all bad, and will be sorely missed. It was the oldest operating business in Colorado… less than 2 months shy of being 150.

I am very sad today. I will remember the Rocky like an old friend with whom I didn’t always agree, but whose absence leaves me wondering what will fill the void.

I've added to my blogroll

This week it occurred to me how thankful I am for what has become known as the blogosphere. 5 or 6 years ago, blogs were still relatively new and unknown. Look how much has changed!

I believe that with the rise of the blogosphere, the Web has finally begun to fulfill the potential that I remember being hyped so much in the early 1990s. I'm still relatively new to this and I am not good at html, but am thankful to have the blogosphere to make my workdays spectacularly unproductive ;-)

So, I've now added some links to a number of blogs that I follow nearly every day. To your right you will find a section titled, "some other blogs I read." Clever, no? They mostly deal with economics or politics, but I will add others soon. Check them out... they are all very intelligent, informative and some are very, very funny... particularly Sadly No and Jon Swift. It's a brave new world, baby.

Don't spare the change

Well yet another eon has passed since my last post. It occurs to me that I would probably be better off posting lots of little posts rather than these mega-screeds that nobody wants to read anyway. Mea culpa..

Now, to bizness. I am of course thrilled that President Obama was elected by such a landslide, as you could probably guess from my last post. Heck it just feels so good to put the word “president” in front of his name and not Bush’s for a change. It has been a long 8 years and it seems like the world has really entered a new age since January 2001 when Bush took office. The sense of transition is more pronounced than I can ever remember in my lifetime.

There is no other politician that I can remember who brought tears to my eyes with such a wonderful inauguration speech, anyway. It was profoundly moving, and unlike most political speeches actually contained substance – acknowledgement of the troubles we face and a rejection of the direction we are going. I’m cynical, but I also long for reasons to be proud of my country. Men like Obama make me proud.

He seems to have hit the ground running, with a flurry of activity. We’re only 4 days into Obama’s administration and it really seems like they are trying to make a legitimate break from Bush, at least so far. I could not be happier. There has been a lot of speculation among we flaming, pinko, godless, America-hating, liberals since the election about whether Obama really intends to shake things up as was promised during the election. In particular a lot of his cabinet appointments of people from the Clinton years have drawn cries of alarm.

I’ll admit I was nervous too, as I never liked Clinton much. At times during the latest campaign, the thought of Hillary Clinton as president sent shivers of horror up my spine. Do we Americans need two decades of control of the most powerful office of the most powerful country in the world by only two families? The prospect is awful on both symbolic and functional terms. Ugh.

However, I give Prez O credit He has demonstrated time and again that he is a master of political strategy. He has been building a political juggernaut that might well be unstoppable. He has a mandate, momentum and vision. I just hope he uses these for things I want to see happen.

So the first week looks like a great start. I am a big fan of Obama and am inclined to trust his instincts. There will be mistakes and slips on the way I’m sure. But after 8 years in the Bush, I will be overjoyed if on balance things change marginally for the better. I don’t expect that I will agree with 100% of what they do.

But I am also going to hold his administration to a high standard. If it doesn’t perform, you can bet I will say something about it, and I won’t be nice. Mark my words. I have enough problems with Democrats already. If I am forced to say “et tu, Barry?” I may never vote for another Democrat again.

This is the day

This is MY flag, OUR flag...



I am proud to be an American today. Very, very proud. And happy.

Now if I can just stop that tear in my eye from welling up...

Bubba: a retrospective

This week it occurred to me that I have not posted any photos of my family for a while… in fact since Simon was born last year. It’s time for a retrospective of Du Bubs, as Wendi affectionately calls him. I tend to call him Bubba. Whatever you call him, he’s a great guy and so much fun to be around! Usually, anyway ;-)

In December of last year, Don Vito Corleone made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

"Daddy, your fly is down." I have had this problem most of my life, but now I have this little guy to help me out.

This is how Wendi looks at me if I forget to take out the trash. Truly, he is his mother's son. Great.

Next are a few pics from his first birthday party at Mark's house. Those of you who were there probably remember that it didn't go to well. It started out happily enough...

"I want a cool slide like this of my own, Dad!" "Kid, we live in an apartment... sorry."

Simon and Justin, buddies (except if Sy has one of Justin's toys).

Ask not for whom the baby comes... he comes for Daddy.

All dads know that a major portion of their duties involves imitating a jungle gym.

I have my revenge!

Well, shortly after dinner, Simon fell off his chair and landed squarely on his forehead with a resonant *THWACK*. No real harm done, but he wasn't too happy even when we sang "Happy Birthday" to him later:

Poor little guy. We all felt bad for him. He cheered up a little when it was time for cake...

More or less, ha ha! He even shared some cake with his mommy...

Wendi finds the fingers and toes of young children to be tender and delicious -- and even more delectable with some frosting on top.

Well, the birthday party wasn't the best of times for our little guy. I guess birthday parties aren't really his idea of a good time right now. He does seem to enjoy beeing outside though. A few weeks later we went for a short hike near Kenosha pass:

The crisp autumn mountain air and peaceful stillness of the wilderness... rudely interrupted by the continual shrieking and jabbering in my ear of the little boy on my back!

Finally, Wendi's mom was in town to help after Wendi's surgery last week, which went perfectly BTW. We strolled around downtown Littleton and snapped a few pictures in the park:

I believe this is the most recent photo I have of our bubba at the moment.

Being a parent is demanding, tiring and expensive. It is also a lot of fun! I am learning more about how to do it every day. Simon is an intelligent, good natured kid, somewhat cautious in nature -- though he loves all kinds of foods, even broccoli! We have enjoyed getting to know him and watching his personality develop over the past year. I think I can safely speak for Wendi also when I say that we wouldn't trade this sweet little boy for anything in the world.

And the wheels came off

Some are already calling it "Black September".

If you’ve been following what’s been happening in the economy and markets, as I have, you are probably shaking your head in dismay. Even I, the eternal doom-and-gloom pessimist, didn’t expect that what happened over the past 3 weeks would snowball so quickly.

Events in the markets and the financial sector are moving faster than the reactions from the government and public can keep up. There doesn’t seem to be any real leadership about how to deal with multiple converging crises either. That light at the end of the tunnel is looking more and more like a train. Insert your own disastrous metaphor or cliché here.

To recap: the worlds largest mortgage insurers and buyers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been effectively nationalized. One of the biggest and oldest investment banks, Lehman Bros., went belly up. Another, Merrill Lynch, would have too had it not been swallowed at the last second by the Death Star, otherwise known as Bank Of America. The only remaining Wall Street investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, had to desperately change their business model and get permission to reorganize as commercial banks. Washington Mutual collapsed last night and is now the largest bank failure in American history. Other banks such as Wachovia are looking increasingly fragile. Credit markets have frozen.

AIG was bailed out at the last minute by the government after agreeing to giving the government an equity stake. It was the first-ever government bailout of an insurance company. Wendi’s mom works for AIG, but now she effectively works for Uncle Sam.

Some of you may recall that I work for a wholly-owned subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. I do not know what the future holds, only that I have a personal stake now in what is happening. This week Morgan Stanley was courting the sickly Wachovia for a potential marriage. This did not make me feel good inside, but I laughed anyway when I heard it. This is getting more and more absurd by the day.

And, biggest of all, our fine, upstanding elected leaders are furiously debating how to force the rest of us to pay for the mistakes of guys who make more in a week than I do in a year, by throwing $700 billion of new debt into their begging hands. After basically denying for almost a year that there was any systemic problem, Secretary of the Treasury Hank “the shank” Paulson now says that financial catastrophe is imminent unless we do whatever he says. This is such a repulsive idea to some Republicans that even they balked at the price tag – and they have never been shy about spending money that they didn’t have.

Yes that’s right. Socialism, economic disaster, higher taxes and big government brought to you on a platter by the party of small government, low taxes and business. Wow. Choke it down and like it, it’s for your own good, they say.

Hypocrites, liars and thieves – are those words too strong? I don’t think so.

Not that the Democrats are much better – in many ways I have more problems with them than I do the GOP. The point is that the old paradigms are useless and the failure of leadership, laziness and corruption of our corporate-controlled government, combined with the unsustainable and fantasy-based economic model that it promoted, have brought us to this point. History is being made these past few days, keep watch on what happens next because it's going to be interesting... in the ancient Chinese sense.

I do not have the answers, just a few ideas that maybe I’ll write about some other time. For now, one of my favorite blogs about economics says it much better than I can.

New linkz, peeps!

I have posted new links to other pages I have been maintaining. Check them out and let me know what you think!

I finally got a MySpace music page up and running for some of my older tunes. So now you can listen to my music any time you want! Isn't that awesome? The page only holds 6 songs but you can download any of them you want. This newfangled Internet thing is da bomb, yo.

Because my Flashback: 1980s series last year ended up being much longer than I meant it to be, and I love writing about music but don't feel like cluttering up this blog with every thought about music that pops into my head, I have begun posting some music reveiws on my Amazon profile. Amazon is nice that way because they let anyone post reviews of music or whatever, and the interface is pretty easy to use. It's almost like a blog in that you can network with people and join discussions about anything on their site -- which, as everyone knows, is a lot of stuff.

So if you are interested in what I have to say about this or that album or artist or what makes me tick musically (and who isn't interested, really?), take a peek.

The eternal student

Skool is back in season. We started a week early this year, but had this pre-Labor Day week off, due to the DNC.

I am enjoying my new classes much more this semester than last. While my finance class was great (I really dig business classes involving number-crunching), the Organizational Management class which I took last semester really sucked. One would imagine from the name of the class that one would learn things about managing a business in a dynamic, globalized, competitive environment.

No. I spent $185 on the textbook and the teacher did not crack the book for three weeks. He instead used his own text in that time. We had to write papers about the merits of capitalism vs. communism. He reveled in repeating standard, tired right-wing talking points in nearly every class: “Reagan defeated communism”, “the most evil words ever written was the communist creed ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’” with zero context or historical exposition. He never wrote a single note on the dry erase board, and when he did get around to using the textbook, he merely used key topics as jumping-off points for aimless and rather dumb class discussions.

Towards the end of the semester, I hadn’t been staying current on the text (didn’t relate much to the essay tests he gave!) so one evening I made a halfhearted attempt to catch up on about 4 chapters of reading, each chapter about 30 or so pages of dense text. After about half an your I threw the textbook down in disgust. I just didn’t care, and reading the text was a waste of time for the class. I got an A, but felt like I had wasted my time and money. I have little enough of either!

I am happy to report that this semester is looking much better on the teacher front. I am taking Cost Accounting and Business Ethics.

Cost accounting is another of these number-crunching classes that I enjoy. Most people who do not work in accounting or are not accounting majors would find the subject hideously boring, so I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, do you ever wonder how companies can keep track of how much it costs to produce a single item or service? Do you ever wonder how they calculate what profit margin they need to have on said item or service in order to stay in business?

That’s cost accounting, and it is distinct from financial accounting in that it is not required to conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP as we call them (pronounced “gap). It has wide implications in the fields of marketing and finance as well. I’m pretty interested in this class, not least because we will be doing quite a bit of pretty advanced stuff with Excel. I happen to love working with Excel (unusually good for Microsoft software, they got it right for once), and it is pretty much the standard spreadsheet software for business, and accounting in particular. My teacher seems pretty knowledgeable too, which is a nice change of pace from that egotistical Reaganite last semester.

The other class is Business Ethics. This class is a required one but actually falls into the category of philosophy at Metro State. The running joke about Business Ethics is that the term is itself an oxymoron. Whether or not that’s true, I am very interested in this class. It’s another subject that is very important in this day and age, with the accounting scandals that seem to still be surfacing in the business world with depressing regularity, the current economic downturn caused by reckless financial speculation that I have extensively written about elsewhere, the sometimes exploitative economics of globalization, and so forth. This teacher as well seems to know his stuff and he is very good at leading focused classroom discussions about various topics.

The only problem is that because I’ve had this week off, I have been ultra lazy and haven’t studied at all! I’m planning to do some tomorrow since I have the day off from work. It’s good that I have some interesting looking classes this semester because it keeps me motivated.

I am no longer as gung-ho about finishing my degree ASAP, as I was a couple years back. I am nearing the end and therefore would rather have the least stressful time of it as possible. To put it in perspective, if I graduate as planned in Spring of 2010, I will have spent nearly 8 years on a 4 year degree. Sometimes I feel like an eternal student but the end is in sight...

God bless America!

Wow. Nearly nine months since my last post. This blog really keeps you on the edge of your seat, huh? This time lag was indeed an egregious violation of my numerous, previous pledges to keep the dang thing timely. So what happened, you ask?

I think the biggest reason is that I was discouraged by the somewhat ugly direction the discussion in the comments went. I didn’t mean for things to get so heated. I blame myself.

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea to link to the inflammatory video. Though I still agree with every word of James McMurtry’s powerful protest song and the sentiments it conveys, I intended it as a kind of punctuation, like an exclamation point on the end of a sentence, to drive home the points made by the linked articles and blogs that I posted.

As it turned out, seems like most of the people who read the post didn’t pay too much attention to the links. Some (one of whom will remain nameless, Dad) got the impression I was cackling maniacally as I gleefully set fire to Old Glory, and cheering for a Communist overthrow of the US government as I congratulated Osama Bin Laden for his efforts over the phone.

That was not quite the case.

It was a stimulating discussion, but an exhausting one. I guess I deserve it for bringing up politics and economics in the first place. I mean, really what did I expect would happen? It’s now been the better part of a year since that controversial post. My interest in the issues I wrote about and linked too has only grown since then – I just haven’t blogged about it.

If you check out the first link in the last post (the official White House “Jobs & Economic Growth” page), you may notice a change from last year. Last October, it was trumpeting the strong economy, proclaiming a new era of prosperity and opportunity and thanking George W. Bush’s economic genius at every opportunity; now we get a fact sheet “Charting A Clear Course For The Economy”.

It’s pretty funny. Here we have a great example of your tax dollars at work to bamboozle you with cherry-picked statistics and economic initiatives of dubious merit, but what is really striking is how the narrative has changed since last year. Exactly what happened to that strong economy? Gotta love propaganda.

The reality is that since last year events have moved on. Nobody can predict the future but it ain’t looking too bright to me. I think what really disturbs me is that we seem to have lost what once made us great as a nation: the ability to govern ourselves. This is the country that once produced great leaders such as Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and MLK. We saved the world from the Nazis and American ideas of freedom enraptured the world. What happened?

As a nation, we have never before seen such confluence of political decay, erosion of freedoms, corporatism and economic exploitation. Our country has been sold off to the highest bidder, and democracy is now considered more or less an obstacle to the global flow of capital and corresponding transfer of wealth from the lower to the upper classes.

This is happening via a number of conduits, lax government monetary policy and the globalization of the flow of capital without regard to the needs of human beings being two of them. Overshadowing everything like the Sword of Damocles is the looming specter of peak oil, which I am personally more and more convinced will be the number one nightmare for humanity for the foreseeable future. Oil hit $145 a barrel yesterday, and the national average price for a gallon of regular 87 octane gasoline was at $4.10.

That sucks huh? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There may be temporary drops here and there in prices, but the overall trend line is clear. Gasoline prices will never again be $1.15 a gallon. They won’t even be double that. I personally think that by the end of the year, the price will be around $5. If we go to war with Iran, double that.

Sounds pretty bleak huh? I don’t have any surefire solutions. I think there can only be treatments to mitigate the pain, not a cure for the disease. Unfortunately, I think that our culture, economy and government are incapable at this time of doing even the minimum necessary, thereby ensuring even greater pain down the road. This is a second reason I feel so pessimistic about our future. Believe me, nobody would be happier than myself if I was wrong.

So, I'll bet you're thinking: "Wow, what a crank Matt is! Why does he rant like that? How did it come to this?" Two books I have read over the past few months have profoundly influenced my thinking about these issues. They make me look like Pollyanna by comparison, but they make their cases more solidly than my "ranting" ever will. If you are at all interested in issues like peak oil or problems with globalization and the capitalist model to which we are accustomed, please check them out.


Jim Kunstler’s book The Long Emergency makes some dire predictions about our prospects for grappling with converging crises such as peak oil, global warming, and their effects on the economies of not just the United States’, but that of the world. The central thesis is that we are woefully unprepared to live in a world whose entire economy rests upon the premise of cheap fossil fuels. Simply put, in Kunstler’s view there is no possible way to avert the coming catastrophe.

Kunstler is a longtime critic of the post-war suburban housing pattern that now is the dominant form of development in the US, which he calls the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. He predicts (and I am inclined to agree) that this pattern of development, with its big box stores, shopping malls, freeways and parking lots has no future in a world of scarce oil.

Though the amount of investment in mass transit over the past fifty years has varied greatly from place to place, most places in the United States have given little thought to the long term and in some areas such as the deep South, there is next to no chance that any kind of mass transit will realistically come on line.

He is also dismisses the idea that renewable energy has any chance of preserving the post-war suburban lifestyle, and examines various schemes in detail to determine why exactly they cannot replace fossil fuels – solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, hydrogen, and even drilling for more oil are all looked at. Moreover, we are woefully unprepared for the coming shock.

This book was published in 2005, at the height of the last economic bubble when things were looking rosy, so to read it to day in the light of $145 per barrel oil is pretty scary. He goes so far as to doubt our ability to survive as a nation – “the long emergency” as he describes it a rather apocalyptic vision.

While even I am not quite so negative about the future as Kunstler, this book is a must read for anyone trying to understand the current economic gloom and the reasons why gasoline prices keep going through the roof. And don’t dismiss him as some radical leftist either – he supports drilling for oil in ANWR, investment in nuclear energy, and though he didn’t really support the second Iraq war, he regards it as having been pretty much inevitable.

Even if you don’t agree (as I don’t) with all of his predictions, this is an excellent resource that pulls a lot of loose threads together. Kunstler is also an engaging, witty writer – his gift for a pithy turn of phrase is on full display here, with a good dose of black humor. He also has a blog that he updates weekly here. In my opinion he’s one of the sharpest writers today covering this subject. Check it out if you’re interested in learning more.


The other book that has heavily influenced my thinking lately is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. This is a detailed account of how the so-called “Chicago school” of economics (the dominant school of economics worldwide since the late 1960s), with the late Milton Friedman as its champion and figurehead, came to preside over a series of economic disasters in dozens of countries around the world.

The Chicago School is known for its embrace of extreme principles of free markets without regard to the short-term human costs involved. And though we have been lead by the corporate media and various leaders to embrace so-called free markets as being synonymous with democracy, in most cases these “free market principles” have been imposed on other countries by force, with the explicit aim of causing such dire economic consequences that all resistance is rendered impotent by the sudden shock. Hence, the title of the book.

The Shock Doctrine describes in great detail events that took place in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, the Maldives, Poland, Russia, China, Mexico, Sri Lanka and other places when, after some kind of shock natural (the 2004 tsunami), man made (the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pinochet’s coup and dictatorship in 1970s Chile) or economic (the so-called “Asian Contagion” currency crisis of 1997, the free-market ideologues in various governments and institutions such as the World Bank or IMF sought to impose radical free-market reforms in very anti-Democratic ways.

In Chile’s case, this took the form of University of Chicago educated bureaucrats advising and abetting a brutal dictatorship that overthrew a left-leaning but democratically elected government. In the case of Russia, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a fire sale of state assets to the many of the high-ranking officials of that oppressive state and created a new class of oligarchs, along with nearly a decade of spiraling organized crime and economic chaos.

And so on, with depressing regularity. None of these shocks were accidental, but rather were explicitly called for by the adherents of this “neoliberalism” (as it is known in the rest of the world). They sought a proverbial “clean slate” in which to impose their ideology, and to bring it about they advocated exploiting these kind of shocks, and in some cases actually brought them about through shady speculative practices.

This book pulls together a lot of threads and paints a very big canvas. What is really striking is the similarity of neoliberalism to Leninism, its diametric opposite and mortal enemy. Both systems explicitly advocated advancing their economic philosophies by use of anti-democratic means. Both systems sought to shape the world according to their ideological visions. And though both of them never succeeded in doing what they claimed to do, their adherents only redoubled their efforts to remake the world in their image -- even though in most cases what came about was economic hardship and oppressive government. Makes you think, hmmm?

I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand why many of the events since the end of the Soviet Union transpired as they did. It’s thoroughly researched, and a damning portrait of what capitalism has become under the radical philosophy of neoliberalism.

Sorry to ruin your day with my blog. I'm really not that unpleasant to be around. I just think that people aren't realizing the great danger we as a nation (and the planet too) are facing. I would just like to see people be more informed about what is going on in the world so that we at least don't make things worse than they already are. The past 40 or 50 years were a gilded age. It's time we realized that things are going to change and the old models won't get us very far. But the world won't end. At least, I hope not -- for all it's flaws, I'm pretty fond of it.

Ok, that’s probably enough about this stuff. I promise not to bore you with politics and economics so much anymore. Gotta start keeping people up to date on my boring life. I know you’ll want to read about that. Stay tuned... more soon.

UPDATE 7/9/08:

Not to beat a dead horse, but Naomi Klein has a very timely column on disaster capitalism's influence on current events. This is why I roll my eyes when I hear people bleat about “free markets”, which too often really means "free for multinational capital, expensive for regular people -- suck on it."

Point, counterpoint

An attempt to stimulate debate and thoughtful contemplation re: the state of the U.S. economy, utilizing the power and promise of the Internet for said purpose. And if someone has better sources than me, then use them for Pete's sake.

Point: Don't worry, everything is fine. Really. Would the government lie? Go and buy something.

Jobs and prosperity! Yay!

A strong, strong economy.

Did we mention that this is a strong economy?

Wow, things are looking great! I guess things are looking up and there's no need to fret about the future as long as W's crew are writing the economic "analysis."

In an attempt to support our noble president, I tried to pluck similar, upbeat opinions from the vast universe of business/financial/economic commentary that is available on the Internet, I really, really tried, please believe me.... you think I want to quote the government in my blog?

Hmmm... not much positive stuff out there. Instead, I found a lot of arguments along these lines... and there are tens of thousands more.


Counterpoint: what has the President been smoking?

Make your minimum payments, and we might extend your line of credit! Wouldn't you like that? Aren't we generous?

Be happy, be productive.

Work for a living but can't seem to get ahead? Screw you, it's your own fault.

Pay it forward.

The American dream, or hamster wheel?

The Consumer Price Index: a lie?

Yes.

Well, that's just how free markets work, slacker! Oh, wait a minute...

What do I think?

James McMurtry is no newcomer -- he's been recording and touring for nearly 20 years. The following song is from his excellent album from last year, Childish Things.

I believe this video is unofficial, but it pretty much summed up how I feel about the state of this land when I came across it a couple of months ago. It's a powerful, moving song, simply stated in terms anyone can understand.



But why listen to James McMurtry, or to me for that matter, when W is so clearly on top of the game, and Bernanke and the Fed are just waiting to bail out the billionaires from their bad bets? Isn't that good for us all?

If you're not angry or worried, I'd like to move to your planet. The weather must be nice there.

I would love to be able to tell my son that the USA will be a free, prosperous and shining beacon of democracy when he is older. I'm not optimistic. Now, discuss...

Behold my boy!

Okay, I know it's been nearly a month, but those of you with little kids can probably understand why Wendi and I have been a little distracted lately.

Simon was born September 7th after what we believe to be a particularly grueling labor. He was a week overdue and labor was induced by Wendi's fantastic and compassionate doctor, Dr. Wester. Wendi's water broke on its own (she was quite proud of this) and after about 12 hours of labor was ready to push.

And push she did, for nearly three hours. At first things were progressing nicely, but about halfway through the second hour she tired considerably. Eventually things stopped progressing and Wendi made the decision to have a cesarean section.

Dr. Wester earned his money! I will never be able to thank him enough. As it turned out, Wendi made the right decision because Simon came into this world a big boy -- 9 pounds 11 ounces. We heard that if they had tried to go ahead and deliver him with forceps, the results would have been pretty bad for both mommy and the boy. NO!

Wendi was very, very strong and this fact was remarked upon by all attending medical staff. She kept her composure better than me, because I kind of um, broke down at one point when I saw her in tremendous pain. My hat is off to her.

We were in the hospital together for the better part of a week, both because of Wendi's recovery and Simon's developing a bit of jaundice, which thankfully cleared up nicely after a day strapped to a glowing, comfy looking UV device. We jokingly called him "UFO baby" after seeing him like that.

I took off a week of work, most of which was spent in the hospital with my wife and boy. Wendi's mother, Shirl, flew in from NC and spent the second weekend with us, and we have had many meals and good wishes thanks to her, my own family and friends. The past few weeks we have spent enjoying and consolidating our bonds as a family unit.

Simon is generally a mellow guy and though caring for him can be a strain, as with every baby ever born, I think Wendi and I both agree that he is the best thing that has happened to us. We love him intensely.

At long last, some photos to show you what I mean.... we think he's probably going to have blue eyes, and that seems to be the consensus among others who have met him.

Whatever his eyes' color, one thing is certain: he's going to be a handsome guy, even better looking than me ;-)

We three, in the hospital tired but happy.

Simon himself, resting on my hairy leg about an hour ago.

Daddy loves his boy!

Hurry up and wait

Here's some general news about what's happening in my life. There will be no encyclopedic treatises on musicology this time. I know I've written about music a lot, and will again in the future. It is after all a major presence in my life.

I'm taking a short break from writing about music. I'm glad most of you seemed to enjoy my epic breakdown of 1980s music, and thanks for your own insights.

It sure beats writing about my other professional field, accounting! Would anybody like to know about how pipeline inventory accounting works. Anybody?

I hear crickets chirping.

What follows is just general stuff:

In case you didn't know (how could you not?), Wendi and I are expecting a baby boy. Soon. Thursday was the due date. Both of us, especially Wendi, are beyond ready for Simon's arrival.

But the kid is stubborn, just like his parents. Wendi has been having increasingly intense and frequent Braxton-Hicks contractions for some time now, but there has not been any definitive sign that labor is imminent. The irony is that we've educated ourselves thoroughly on the ins and outs of child birth attended many hours of childbirth classes, consulted several doctors, talked to numerous experienced mothers and read half a dozen or so books; we still don't have a clue as to what is happening! Heck, Wendi knows better than I do what's happening in her own body. A lot of times she describes some-or-other sensation she's having and I can only mumble in agreement, because I'm not female and have no idea what she's talking about.

I think we both feel it's time for this ripe bean to come O.U.T. Wendi is increasingly miserable. Particularly in the past month, aches, pains and cramps have multiplied exponentially. Poor girl! I am doing what I can by giving her lotion rubs and massages daily, as well as moral support, but of course it's not enough. Only popping that kid out will bring any real relief.

Yesterday evening we thought Simon was on his way! We dined at a little Vietnamese restaurant up the road that we discovered shortly after moving to our new neighborhood a couple of months ago. We had almost made it through a plate of egg rolls when Wendi's face scrunched up, her eyes widened and she said "oooooo!"

As I said before, I'm not female. I can't tell what she's feeling. I must rely on her descriptions of what she's feeling, and her body language. "This feels different," she said, slightly out of breath -- meaning it wasn't a typical, common Braxton-Hicks. I hated to see her in pain, but I think that we were both excited that it might actually be happening.

The contraction faded after a few minutes, but by the time the waiter had brought Wendi her plate of pepper shrimp, she had already had another. Which was followed by another. By this time she had lost her appetite (which was a shame -- the shrimp was very tasty) and left the restaurant to wait in the car while I hurredly scooped our food into boxes and settled the check.

We kept joking with each other that it was the spicy food that caused it. If palates really do develop somewhat in utero based on the food choices of the mother, as I've read, then Simon will definitely crave hot peppers, green Tabasco sauce, curry, Mexican food, Vietnamese food and Thai food. We definitely like some kick to our meals.

Sadly, no baby last night. The four or five regular contractions ended almost as soon as we arrived home. So now it's back to playing the waiting game. The past three weeks, since Sy has been officially full term, has seemed to last almost as long as the entire preceeding eight months.

This won't go on much longer, though. Wendi's next doctor's appointment is Tuesday. If the baby hasn't come by Thursday, she will be scheduled for an induction next weekend. We hope it doesn't come to that, but either way this means that there will be pictures of Simon posted on this blog within a week or so. So stay tuned!

My job at TransMontaigne is so-so. I've gained a lot of invaluable knowledge and experience at my new position for the last ten months, and I am very glad that I work with the accounting group that I do -- my boss Nick is a genuinely nice guy and he's very smart and good at what he does. Most of the problems I have with the company are with the organization itself, or lack thereof as it were. The corporate culture is of a notoriously chauvanist, good-ol' boy sort. Fiefdoms and petty rivalries abound there.

And the stories I could tell you about our trading group, the type-A personalities who trade petroleum futures and contracts all day on the NYMEX exchange! These guys think the that the company exists for them, and them alone... which I guess it kind of is. See what I mean? Jerks, all of them... as I am fond of saying, they are not paid for their kind dispositions and sunny personalities. They are paid as they are because they make money.

On to music. I haven't really recorded any music or done much writing at all for nearly three years, for various reasons -- college, estrangement from/reconciliation with my beautiful wife, financial difficulties, all too many moves, and now an imminent baby. Entire seasons have gone by with me barely touching my guitar.

After we moved to Englewood, I decided that I really need to accomplish something musical this year. I forced myself to start playing regularly again, and we bought a 12-string guitar recently on a whim. In short order I found some inspiration coming back... it's funny how the muse never really goes away and can be awakened again with a little bit of effort.

There were times in the past couple years when I felt like I just couldn't write music anymore. Ideas would be tossed aside, forgotten or half-baked and left for dead. Sometimes I didn't have much focus and when I did try to concentrate I often was stymied by a lack of ideas and frustrated that I couldn't finish the ones I had. Most of all, I often just couldn't work up the motivation to sit down and write something.

It's funny how it works. I've always thought that anybody can write a song. They do take effort, concentration and willpower to create, but some of the best ones I've ever written have just popped into my head out of nowhere -- a fragment of melody, a chord change, a chorus, a line of lyrics or sometimes just a song title -- while I was hiking, or doing the dishes, or something equally unrelated to music.

I don't know where this stuff comes from, nor do think that I'm specially blessed. Long years of appreciation, practice and love of music have just allowed me to listen to and follow my ideas where they lead... sometimes. On a good day. I'm nobody special and I've had my own fallow times and failed experiments with music.

Anyway, I've now written about twelve songs for what I'm planning to be a full length "album" of almost completely acoustic music... just me and my guitar for the most part. The songs are mostly introspective and more than a third are purely instrumental. Sometimes a piece of music just doesn't need words to make a statement, and I've really enjoyed having a 12-string guitar for the first time in my life. I want to show it off, as well as my new set of bongos.

This is an ambitious project, given the limited amount of time I have. Heck, I will have a new son to take care of, and my job ain't getting any easier. But I need to do this, and I think people might even enjoy listening to it. I don't record songs that I don't want to enjoy listening to. I've got all the gear and software I nead, and recording will allow me to learn Sonar (my exceedingly, indimidatingly complex recording/mastering software) the way I've been telling myself I will for the past two years, since I've had my computer.

I'm not doing this for money. I don't care about being famous anymore. That stuff is all a racket, anyway. I'm doing this because... well, music is what I do! If that's tautological, so be it. Music is a passion in my life. I will never, ever give it up for any reason, as long as I draw breath (and as long as I have fingers to play).

And now, movies. Since we moved, we've been going to see a movie every other weekend or so, among them Sunshine (an intense science fiction thriller), The Simpsons Movie (very, very funny and just as bitingly satirical as the TV show, though I utterly tired of the marketing campaign behind it), and today we saw Sicko.

Uh oh.

I know what you might be thinking: "Here goes Matt again on one of his political tirades." No, no. I'll save that for later. Sicko is a documentary made by Michael Moore about the U.S. health care industry. Whether you love Michael Moore (he's one of my personal heroes) or hate him should not prevent you from seeing this movie, which I believe to be his best.

Michael Moore has an undeserved reptutation as an America-hating, left wing extremist. He's been painted that way for a long time by the right, and though I thought Farenheit 9/11 was rather shrill in a preaching-to-the-choir sort of way, I was happy that he had the guts to make that movie.

I don't think Michael Moore hates America at all. I think he wants to see it become a better place. What could be more patriotic? He's only anti-American if you consider dissenting from the Bush administration/neoconservative agenda to be equivalent, which I don't. Watch his conversations with average Americans in his movies and then tell me how much he hates America.

One quality that makes Sicko so powerful is that the stories it tells are mostly not of people without health insurance, but of people who had health insurance that failed them spectacularly. I think most Americans would agree that our current health care "system" is headed for a train wreck in the near future, or at least that the system as it exists now is grossly ineffecient, unfair and wasteful. For all the talk of a market-based system being the most inherently effficient one, we have tens of millions of people with no health care at all, and large corporations with a manifest interest in providing less health care to control costs.

These are fundamental flaws in the capitalistic, corporate model we currently use to provide healthcare to Americans, and other countries do it better and more cheaply. The current system cannot continue for much longer. America is losing its competitive edge to the rest of the world. No amount of flag waving and singing of anthems will change that. You want America to be the best country in the world? Listen to people like Moore. And me, of course.

But don't take my word for it. See Sicko for yourself. It is Moore's most compassionate and least shrill movie -- though there is plenty of sarcasm and more than a few of his trademark absurd moments -- and at the very least it will make you think, even if you disagree with some or all of it. Check out his website here.

See? He's not some raving monster after all! He's a very funny and compassionate guy. There should be more patriotic Americans like him :-p

That's all for now. Look for baby pictures soon :-)

Flashback: 1980s, Part III

OK. This is it. I promise that this will be the last time I write about 1980s bands for the foreseeable future. I know it’s rough knowing a longwinded music nerd who thinks anybody cares about this stuff, but hey, in the end I think that I wrote these posts mostly for myself anyway, just because I enjoy listening to, and thinking and writing about music.

So, now for Part III… lets start with a couple of legendary bands I didn’t mention in the last two posts…

The Pixies

After my last post, Wendi and I were discussing this list. We realized with a shock that, once again, I had left out yet another fantastic 1980s band, The Pixies… which is even more unforgivable considering that Pixies are one of my favorite bands of all time – not just the 1980s – as well as one of the most influential of the past 20 years.

This band predated the 1990s so-called “alternative rock” (I have always loathed that term!) movement by a few years, but Pixies’ deep influence upon thousands of bands in the years since then belies their short lifespan – really only four years (1987 – 1991), four albums (Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova, and Trompe Le Monde), plus a debut EP that was really their demo tape remastered for commercial release.

Singer Black Francis (who now goes by the handle Frank Black – get it?) was the major creative brain behind Pixies, though bassist Kim Deal also contributed, particularly to their first bona fide album, 1988’s Surfer Rosa, which was produced by über-indie producer Steve Albini and sports his immediate and unpolished studio sound – the band in a room, playing their songs… loudly.

That album sounds fresh to this day -- Pixies took the standard pop/rock band lineup of guitars/bass/drums and turned it upside down; their model for writing songs became known as “loud quiet loud” to reflect their unique fusion of pop with punk rock dynamics, which has been borrowed by countless bands since then. The formula: build the tension in melodic, subdued verses only to explode with unleashed energy during the choruses. Pixies songs have no flashy guitar leads, can go from melodic crooning to crazed screaming in a manner of seconds, and usually employ remarkably unusual, taut song structures that still manage to sound like pop songs… most of the time.

The first thing you notice is Frank Black’s voice -- it’s a crazed, unhinged yet surprisingly melodic thing that grabs your attention if it doesn’t make you recoil in fright. Frank sounds wild and dangerous, which compliments his screwy lyrics, most of which have an internal “logic” of their own – sometimes he even sings in Spanish for no particular reason (he holds a college minor degree in Spanish).

The lyrics deal with things like old art movies (the immortal “Debaser”), sea monkeys (“Shrine Of The Sea Monkeys”), the planet Mars (“Bird Dream Of The Olympus Mons”), traveling through time and space with one’s sweetheart (“Velouria”, a song with extremely bizarre chord changes), sarcastic mockery of higher education (“U Mass”, with a sneering refrain of “it’s educational!!” after describing various college debaucheries), and the pleasures of driving one’s car into the ocean (“Wave Of Mutilation”). They also covered a Jesus And Mary Chain Song, “Head On.”

Sounds weird, I know… and Pixies were definitely weird – heck, they even had a song called “Is She Weird?” I don’t really know what most of their songs were about, to tell you the truth, but I can tell you that all of them will smack you sweetly upside the head the way that great rock music is supposed to. They were yet another band with no bad albums. Their musical arrangements were as tight as the songs, never overplayed but musically compelling.

The tension between Black (who has since released a slew of excellent solo albums) and Deal (whose band the Breeders found quite a bit of commercial success in the 1990s) proved too much for the band, which split up in 1992. The irony is that, since they broke up, the Pixies have become more popular, more influential, and sold many more albums than when they were together.

This led to a reunion tour in 2004/2005, which Wendi and I were privileged to see down at Richie Center on the DU campus. It was a packed house, and I was amused to notice that Wendi and I were of approximately the same age group as the rest of the crowd. We are used to being older than most people at rock shows these days. I guess Pixies must be a Generation X thing.

Are you listening, you little whippersnappers?!??! We’re cooler than you!

The Police

Everybody knows the Police, so I won’t spend too much time on them. But it should be noted that, in addition to being one of the biggest pop bands of the 1980s, they were also one of the most interesting. The Police’s unique blend of reggae, rock, jazz and pop influences set the template for the New Wave sound, still sounds original today, and has inspired countless, mostly inferior imitators.

Singer/bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland were all excellent musicians, and though their chops are apparent on all five proper Police albums, they went out of their way to keep things simple. There’s hardly a guitar solo to be found in any of their songs.

From their first album, Outlandos d’Amour, the band clearly had reggae on the brain – they mixed reggae beats with punk attitude, plus fantastic songwriting courtesy of Sting. Much more than a cheesy pop songster, Sting’s songs brimmed with clever wordplay, compelling storytelling, social consciousness and sarcastic attitude.

Copeland also happens to have one of the more recognizable drum sounds in rock music. The guy’s beats and fills were both minimalist and unique, always throwing in a fill here a snare crack there, or a backbeat where you least expected it, never flashy, but jaw-droppingly proficient. Plus, he just smacks the skins so hard and precisely…. few rock drummers have ever equaled his creativity and talent.

The Police’s biggest hit was the deceptively tender ballad “Every Breath You Take,” from their best selling album , 1983’s Synchronicity, which if you listen closely to the lyrics not only never utilizes the word “love”, but is in fact a dark tale of obsession and jealousy, set to a nearly perfect pop accompaniment.

Personally though, my favorite record is 1981’s Ghost In The Machine. It has a dark and spacious sound throughout that compliments the introspective but energetic songs such as “Spirits In The Material World”, “Invisible Sun” and the upbeat “Rehumanize Yourself”. It also contains the ferocious masterpiece “Demolition Man” which manages to sound totally punk rock without actually being punk rock at all… this song in particular will prove to you that Copeland is one of the greatest rock drummers ever, and it even has cyberpunk horn chart stylings to give it lift.

You really can’t go wrong with any of the Police’s albums, or their songs for that matter – even though they are vastly overplayed on the radio to this day. Amazingly, for a band that broke up acrimoniously in 1984, they even reunited for a tour this year. Too rich for my blood – the cheapest tickets to the Denver show were over $100.00. It’s hard to have much respect for gouging people like that. But that’s OK I guess… I can still listen to Ghost In The Machine for free.

Squeeze

Yet another British band.... I’m starting to think that the early 1980s could almost be considered the 2nd British Invasion. Another preeminent band of so-called the New Wave, Squeeze’s three massive hits, “Tempted,” “Pulling Mussels From A Shell” and “Coffee In Bed”, were soulful exhibitions of superb songwriting, with a focus on the complexities of relationships. “Coffee In Bed,” in particular, is one of the bitterest breakup songs I know of, inspired by a coffee mug stain on an old notebook. And all three of these songs enjoy heavy rotation on classic rock radio to this day.

Indeed, Squeeze in the early 1980s was a worthy successor to the Beatles. Their soul-inflected melodies and clever, infectious songwriting gave Squeeze quite a bit of success backing the day. But they were much more than the sum of their hits – as far as I know, there’s not a bad song on any of their albums.

Talking Heads

Among the greatest – and most artistically complex – of the New Wave bands, Talking Heads enjoyed more success than almost any other band of the 1980s except for perhaps the Police. Talking Heads was essentially David Byrne’s vehicle. This band is too well known for me to comment extensively here… I imagine that every American has a favorite Talking Heads song at this point. But no mention of great 1980s rock music would be complete without Talking Heads.

Listen to the lyrics of now-overplayed rock classics like “Once In A Lifetime”, “Burning Down The House,” “And She Was,” “Life During Wartime,” “Nothing But Flowers” or their first hit, “Psycho Killer.” Byrne’s sardonic humor, absurdity and storytelling ability shine through every one. One of Wendi’s favorite TH songs, “Up All Night”, was written by Byrne about babysitting his infant nephew. “Once In A Lifetime” is about a midlife crisis/breakdown. And of course, the music was a groovy mix of rock, pop and world rhythms that the band exploited to great effect on albums such as Fear Of Music and Remain In Light.

Paradoxically elliptical and immediate, Talking Heads songs always made you think. And I can’t think of one that I don’t mind hearing to this day, even though the radio plays them to death. Talking Heads is another band that really doesn’t have any weak songs or filler material, except for maybe their last album Naked… which still contains several bright moments.

This band will probably never play together again, because their breakup was particularly bitter. Byrne later disavowed all the other members’ contributions, even though keyboardist Jerry Harrison had made his own mark with Johnathan Richman the proto-punk/indie band Modern Lovers in the 1970s, and bassist Tina Weymouth with drummer Chris Frantz had several hits as Tom Tom Club, including the quirky hit “Genius Of Love “

Lest you think that Byrne was an egomaniac, Harrison, Weymouth and Frantz released a terrible album in 1996, called No Talking, Just Head, that proved the band was nothing without Byrne’s talents. Oh well… as John Lennon once said of his own band, which likewise disbanded in acrimony and infighting, “you can always go back and listen to the records, even if the band isn’t around anymore.” Amen to that.

That’s a paraphrase… you get the point.


Tears For Fears

Another band that probably doesn’t need much explanation, but they need a mention too. The hits from their 1985 album Songs From The Big Chair are almost synonymous with the decade. Anybody reading this who hasn’t heard “Shout”, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” “Head Over Heels,” or their later hit “Seeds Of Love” from the album of the same name, either wasn’t born at the time, or needs to go back and determine why exactly they apparently were hiding in a deep, dark cave in the deserts of Mongolia.

But this band was pretty deep – I believe their name comes from an interest in “primal scream” therapy. Their songs are personal, well-written and cathartic, and hold up surprisingly well after twenty years.

The The

The The was the brainchild of British songwriter Matt Johnson, and his dark, introspective songs were melodic, disarmingly catchy, and, as in the case with so many great British bands of the era much more popular overseas than in the U.S. I’m not sure why this band isn’t better remembered today, as The The’s brooding songs have an intensity and staying power moreso than most bands of the era.

Nevertheless, The The made a lasting mark on the American and British “alternative” scenes. Johnson fused electronic drums and synths with guitars and acoustic instruments in a manner that sounded natural and effortless, which is probably a big reason The The’s music doesn’t sound dated now, even though the records definitely have an 80’s sound. They recorded about 7 or 8 albums over 12 years or so, of which the best are 1983’s Soul Mining, 1989’s Mind Bomb, and 1993’s Dusk, the last of which mostly abandoned the synths in favor of a more organic, bluesy sound.

As far as I know, there’s not a bad song on any of them. “This Is The Day” (from Soul Mining had the good fortune to be featured in a car commercial some years back… which was an odd choice because the song is actually more about despair. The lyrics, if taken at face value, might seem optimistic – if Johnson didn’t sing them so desparately…

“Well you didn’t wake up this morning / ‘cause you didn’t go to bed / you were watching the whites of your eyes turn red / the calendar on your wall / is ticking the days off / you’ve been reading some old letters / you smile and think / how much you’ve changed / all the money in the world / couldn’t buy back those days / you paw back your hands / and the sun burns into your eyes / you watch a plane flying / across a clear blue sky / this is the day your life will surely change / this is the day when things fall into place”

Catch the darkness in there? It sounds like a man who’s watching his hopes slowly crushed in an orgy of self-loathing, sung desperately… but set to a very nice melody, of course. I guess that’s why somebody thought it could sell cars. Matt Johnson’s lyrics are personal but they don’t hit you over the head – they are open to interpretation, as the best lyrics usually are.

Another melancholy, but paradoxically hopeful song is “Uncertain Smile”, from the same album, which is to me sounds like a love letter from one separated, scarred lover to another… it’s a song that just, well, sounds like new love and radiates a kind of heartbreaking, guarded optimism despite the vague lyrics… in this song the mood of the song and the vague lyrics compliment each other. Does that make sense? I would quote the lyrics here, but I like this song so much that I plan to record my own version of it. So there.

U2

What can one say about U2 that hasn’t been said before?

They were the superstars of the 1980s, and one of the few bands whose popularity has barely diminished since. In my opinion their best era was their first five albums, of which the first, Boy, and the fifth, The Joshua Tree are the best – nice bookends to their most creative and passionate work.

1980’s Boy is an often-overlooked masterpiece of early, punky New-Wave stylings, every song bursting with energy and passion. The highlights are the heart-on-sleeve, soaring “I Will Follow,” the driving “Into The Heart”, and my personal favorite, the full-on guitar rave-up “Electric Co.” – though my favorite version of that song can be found on the 1983 live album Under A Blood Red Sky, which incidentally was recorded here in Colorado, at Red Rocks Amphitheater, just outside Denver, in Morrison.

However, my favorite U2 album (and I think there is a consensus that it is their best), is 1987’s The Joshua Tree. In addition to spawning several massive radio hits like “With Or Without You,” “Where The Streets Have No Name,” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” there are also great songs like “Red Hill Mining Town” (about the economic/social death of a small Welsh mining town), “Bullet The Blue Sky” (about the Vietnam War… I think), “Mothers Of The Disappeared” (about the thousands of “disappeared” victims of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1970s Chile), “Running To Stand Still” (about a heroin addict), and the weirdest U2 song of all time, “Exit”… ok, I have no idea what that tune is about, but it’s full of tension and darker than almost anything they’ve ever done, before or since.

U2’s previous album rivals The Joshua Tree in excellence – The Unforgettable Fire is Wendi’s favorite U2 album, and includes their tribute to Martin Luther King “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” (which was a massively popular single), and expansive and heartfelt classics like the twisted “Wire” and desperate love song “Bad”. The album was titled after a book of the same name, The Unforgettable Fire referring to the sight of the first atomic bomb detonating over Hiroshima in 1945.

Let’s just say U2 never knew of A Weighty Topic Of Great Social And Political Importance that they didn’t attempt to tackle in some way. Eventually, U2’s weightiness began to sag. On the successor to The Joshua Tree, Rattle And Hum, their pretentious righteousness began to bore a lot of people.

Seeking higher ground, they reinvented themselves in 1991 with Achtung, Baby an album of songs that dripped with sarcasm and winked at their reputation as earnest prophets of righteous passion. On songs like “The Real Thing” (a sarcastic ode to slick advertising campaigns), they managed an ironic grin while staying musically potent (or trying to, anyway). But this new, self conscious U2 always seemed a bit too calculated to me… though they cranked out records throughout the 1990s, they steadily strayed from what once made them great. Irony and sarcasm can be powerful, but when combined with a rampaging, narcissistic personality like Bono it can get old – really fast.

By the 21st century they apparently realized that their era of jeering at commercialism – while reaping its benefits at the same time – had become transparent and ugly. Once again they attempted to change their attitude on the albums All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, returning to the earnestness that had once been their trademark on songs like ATYCLB’s “It’s A Beautiful Day”.

I’m glad that they’ve matured, and given up the sneering commercialism… their release party for the album Pop from 1997 was held in K-Mart! That’s a bit too ironic, even for my taste… heck, it borders on hypocritical. But its hard to take seriously anymore a rich rock star like Bono, who these days campaigns for impoverished countries while setting up shelters to avoid taxes in his native Ireland. Plus, he apparently thinks he’s Jesus. U2’s glory days have long passed, but their best era – the 1980s – will always be near my heart.

“Weird Al” Yankovic

Rather than spend a thousand or more keystrokes explaining to you the genius of Weird Al, I ask you to see for yourself, if you don’t know already. He is known for his hilarious parodies of pop songs, of which there were many. But he could also be very funny with his own tunes. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Dare To Be Stupid” It’s a loose parody of Devo, but stands proudly on its own. Wallow in its greatness.

XTC

Where does one begin with XTC? They were one of those bands that never really went away… their music is that timeless. They are remembered as purveyors of intelligent, masterfully written pop songs, yet they never achieved massive success in the USA – though they have always had a devoted cult following.

There are a few reasons for this lack of mainstream success, none of them convincing. In a perfect world XTC would’ve been showered with as much or more praise as the Beatles for their mastery of songcraft. Every single one of XTC albums is worth hearing, and most of them are classics from beginning to end – the best are 1979’s Drums And Wires, 1986’s Skylarking, and 1992’s Nonsuch -- but interspersed with these there are a half-dozen others that are all excellent listens..

Their first two albums harped on a sort-of proto-New Wave, herky-jerkyness (their first record is great, but Partridge’s yelping can get a little tiring, lost amongst the manic music. Their 2nd album Go 2 has one of the best and most bitingly sarcastic album covers ever, composed entirely of text, as well as containing the immortal song “I Am The Audience”), and though they are both quite good, the band really hit it s stride with Drums And Wires. Not really a pop album in the usual sense of XTC, Drums And Wires is nonetheless a great example of how pop music mutations can achieve new heights of inventiveness. XTC hit it big with the song “Making Plans For Nigel” from that album – a thudding, sarcastic song about an upper-class boy whose life is planned to the second by his overbearing parents.

That they never achived superstardom can be chalked up to several factors. The band never played live after 1982, due to panic attacks suffered by singer Andy Partridge onstage because of a murderous touring schedule, into which they were forced for several years by their record label. Though Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding were always the heart of the band, in the 1990s, the band was forced into semi-retirement by departures of other members and a dispute with their record label (a different one) which prevented them from releasing any music at all for more than seven years. And really in the end, the rather dumpy Partridge and bandmates didn’t really look like rock stars anyway, which is a mortal blow to any hopes of stratospheric sales in the MTV age.

Despite all this, their records are gems, and there are many of them. Skylarking alone rivals the Beatles’ best work, and even trumps it a bit, being more topical and jaded. For instance, the working-class anthem “Earn Enough For Us” tells the story of a poor young couple on the edge: “I can take humiliation / and hurtful comments from the boss / I’m just praying by the weekend / I can earn enough for us”. It’s not a whiny song, but its definitely cathartic to hear for anybody whose ever lived from paycheck to paycheck with little idea of how to plan beyond the next one. “That’s Really Super, Supergirl” is a bitter relationship song, “Ballet For A Rainy Day” is a gorgeous exercise of melody and impressionistic poetry, and “Dear God” became a surprise hit in America – in fact their only real hit here, I think.

Clever lyrics and topics abound in XTC’s music. Drums And Wires is an earlier album with an almost punk-rock edge to it that helped set the template for the New Wave sound – but holds up after 27 years on its own. Other 1980s albums like Black Sea tackle topics like militarism (“Generals And Majors”), thuggery (“No Thugs In Our House”), and English Settlement’s rollicking, sarcastic “Respectable Street” gives a thorough whipping to classism by describing a suburban couple who can’t believe what’s going on their street.

XTC’s instrumental prowess should not be taken lightly – they were among the most inventive of pop groups, using unusual chord changes, melodies and instrumentation on songs like Skylarking’s “Another Satellite”, at other times going for utter simplicity as on the later song “Stupidly Happy” (from 2000’s Wasp Star) which consists almost entirely of a single chord. Partridge is an excellent guitar player – listen to the finger-picked chord changes to “Knights In Shining Karma”, from 1999’s Apple Venus to see what I mean.

These days, XTC is pretty much done for… Partridge and Moulding are nearing retirement and are pretty sick of each other. Who wouldn’t be, after 25 or 30 years of making music together? But what a legacy!

Ok, I proclaim this list to be at an end. But there are literally dozens of other bands & artists from the 1980s that deserve to be mentioned, like The Smiths, Jane’s Addiction, Prince, Lords Of The New Church, 45 Grave, The Clash, Simple Minds, Cocteau Twins, The Knack, Dead Can Dance, They Might Be Giants, The Alarm, Missing Persons, Nina Hagen, Kate Bush, The Cramps, The Cult, Men Without Hats, The Teardrop Explodes, Bauhaus, The Fixx, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Peter Murphy’s solo work, Genesis, Yaz, Pigface, Blondie, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers…. but I have to stop somewhere unless I’m going to write an encyclopedia.

Sheesh, maybe I already have!

If y'all are really, really nice to me, and if you ask in advance, I may have a compilation CD of some of these bands to give out next time I see you. This stuff is just too good to ignore or forget.