I’m off to Russia for a few Alarm Will Sound shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so there’ll probably be nothing here for a week or so.
In the meantime, if you are or find yourself in the Miami area, please go check out my good friend James Moore’s Banjo Recital at The Harold Golen Gallery. He’ll be premiering a new piece of mine, Like A Prayer Remix for Banjo and Track. As you may have guessed it’s a remix of the Madonna song with the banjo playing the main part. It’s pretty zany. Also on the program are pieces by such awesome NYC composers as Wil Smith, Paula Matthusen, and Laine Fefferman.
And to hold you tight for the week here’s something to mull over:
Well, I’m back on Netflix after a hiatus of a year or so.
What brought me back?
Why, Mac support for the Watch Instantly service of course!
I signed up for the $8.99 a month/one DVD at-a-time/unlimited-viewing plan. I signed up and within minutes found myself watching a very-clear No Country for Old Men.
Thank you Netflix. You’ve made this film-nut a very happy boy.
Whoolery and his wife couldn’t believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.
“They just hadn’t heard anything like this before,” said Whoolery. “They were chanting on the bus, ‘Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.’
The only thing that could remedy this is an appropriate response from the school to address this problem:
After the incident, the Madison School district superintendent (Rexburg, Idaho) sent an email to all teachers, principals, and bus drivers saying that all students should show proper respect for elected officials.
I realized I’ve been neglecting to use this blog to let y’all know when I have an interesting performance. I guess I’ve been so caught up in the election season and everything, I didn’t even think to post about my concerts…
Anyway, tonight I’m playing with Luke Rathborne, who is a really cool young singer/songwriter, kind of in the folk/country vein. Here’s a video of one of his songs:
Also playing in the band are some of my best friends, so it’ll definitely be a good vibe. Stop by tonight if you want to hear some really nice, chill music.
Luke Rathborne’s In Search of the Miraculous with Bowery Boy Blue & Cameron Hull Le Poisson Rouge 158 Bleecker Street 8pm
Featuring: Luke Rathborne – Guitar, Piano, Vocals Steven Bard – bass Todd Cohen – drums Matt Marks – French Horn Gina Valvaso – Bassoon Eileen Mack – Clarinet Kelli Kathman – Flute Christa Robinson – Oboe
An interesting Slate discussion among (mostly) smart conservative voices descends into the Republican Party’s achille’s heel: futile abortion debate. Ross Douthat, one of the more sensible young conservatives loses his cool and crassly lambasts Douglas Kmiec’s suggestion that conservatives relax on the three-decade-long abortion fight that has obsessed the party.
I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term “useful idiot” was coined, rather than persisting in his folly.
While we have not met, so little of what you have written is in any way respectful or acknowledges that you are addressing not some abstraction but a fellow human that I can only pray that if any of your family or closest friends come into contact with this commentary that they reach out to you in the most gentle and understanding way, without precondition, to calm an anger that is harmful to the soul.
I picture that Family Guy episode where Stewie provokes a fight between fellow children, and shouts, “Dance puppets, dance!”
This is to be expected. It is apparent that the rift in the right wing will be between social conservatives and economic conservatives. But the division is stickier than it may appear. Douthat in a previous topic on the same Slate forum calls for conservatives to relax on the anti-evolution and abstinence-only rhetoric, but he easily gets snagged on that old hot topic. Look guys, it a losing battle. Social conservativism is a futile movement. Societies change. Ain’t nothing gonna stop that, short of some sort of Taliban-style totalitarian state. This doesn’t mean that any erosion of values or adoption of new values is well and good, but it means that we all have to be open to how values change, not reject them out of hand.
I was listening to this track on the subway coming home the other night. From a production standpoint it’s simply incredible. Lyrics are pretty badass too.
El-P – Deep Space 9MM
Lyrics: One two Get behind the walls of new Roma, wanna buy the farm But the land’s not yours to own? Who owns Police? Who holds floor grease on a sandy beach? Blood beach Dance with a man he starts clutching, he ugly Punks hung halo teach Hugged by the math with the cable reach A hundred and sixty-six channels lit To train that animal shit Where the mind’s eye redefined Where’s God? Buy a car, Kick tires
Back in Eighty-Six I lived With a four-course artistry Metal ones took turns showin’ off colors and shit Like I invaded the mating dance ritual Criminal now Wild things defined beautiful under my power El Producto flash-fest-iss Motherfuckers be like, “Ow, why haven’t we left yet” Blithering sideway twang, the youth and brain management troupe The man is like BOOOP You can’t touch the Krush Groove I live by the lunch table Touched fables Ducked labels Lookout for the one he’d abide with the terrible stables Signed to Rawkus I’d rather be mouth fucked by Nazis unconscious Callin’ all bomb threats Radio re-activated, caress Under hella-ified missle defense Fenced in, better blame it on fame shit and grin Walk with a bag full of kittens Take it to the river and throw yourself in In about four seconds the ether will begin to leak
Who wanna hold hands with this sicko malnutritionist Soaked in newspeak? Dissolve into the syncopated fragments of vinyl splashed on loose leaf We can embrace on the business end of my face first Joe vs. the Volcano suicide beef Dance with the vinyl monster Devil in a blue skyline with clean conscience Save the gesture But can’t save the children, weren’t worth the effort I’m a Caveman Your modern ways frighten and confuse me I watch your spirit box with the blinking lights and think Are those little people trapped in that box? (No, Caveman) But I do know converted mic digital 8-bus Mackie Avalon compression Combined with 8-step effected Dirty words paralyze words and infect shit Infectious Insofar as the ineffectual bed for elections Development arrested Trapped in the Cuckoo’s nest Looking for the nexus If it’s wild like that y’all found infrared scope in the clutch of a tyrant New World lullaby Sirens Stuck migrants, bust ’em by violence It’s all bad timing Getting merked on a Tram over Roosevelt Island You think that’s spacey? Deep Space 9 millimeter, son, keep smiling
This is for the fringes and such My generation just sit like dust Feed ’em off of us and ask what I trust Tell these stories, I’m right here holdin’ my nuts Right here holdin’ my nuts Right here holdin’ my nuts Right here holdin’ my nuts Right here holdin’ my nuts
This is for the fringes and such My generation ain’t friends with slugs Thank god for the drugs and drums Tell these to read it, I’ll be right here hidin’ from guns Right here hidin’ from guns Right here hidin’ from guns
I’d like to see an exit poll of Prop 8 voters, showing how people voting based on their level of personal relationships with gay people. I’m certain it would show that those with more gay acquaintances tended to vote against the draconian measure, and those with less for it. This is because it is easier for those without significant relationships with gays to dehumanize them, treat them as second-class citizens, literally.
Simply put, before I had gay friends I thought being gay was weird as fuck. It seemed so different than my experience that my brain told me that it must be wrong. Then, being a classical musician, I came in contact with a ton of them, and I realized, duh, there’s exactly the same as me, with just a different sexual preference. Pretty damn simple. I’m not shocked that my home state of California decided to fuck over thousands of good, loving people. It makes me angry, sad, ashamed. I saw pictures of supporters celebrating and thought to myself, what a grotesque display? Rejoicing over the misfortune of others, people you don’t even know, people you haven’t taken the time to understand?
Tuesday night, in the two poles of our country – New York and California – we had people rejoicing the optimism of a potentially bright future in the streets of New York City; and we had people exalting in the ignorance and fear of the past in California. I’d never felt like less of a Californian and more of a New Yorker in my life.
A generation ago, Republicans were dominant among college graduates. Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans more conservative on social issues. College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.
It will definitely be interesting going forward and seeing how the right reacts to this trouncing. Frum is of the post-boomer generation Republicans, and is also one of its most conservative voices – for better and worse. This generation, and even more so the conservatives from Gen X/Y, seems to be much more willing to ease up on the social conservativism. Still, I don’t see the boomers letting go of their culture war-loving strangle-hold just yet. Rush is still extremely popular and is not going to be easing up anytime soon, which does not bode well for the party. It will of course prove to be poison for them, which I suppose I should make me feel happy.
Still, I would like there to be a sensible economically and governmentally conservative opposition in this country. I’m not one of those worried that Obama and the newly blue congress is going to tax us to death and nail up a poster of Stalin on the door of the capital building. They’ll probably spend at least two years undoing the damage of Bush before they can get anything done anyway. But there is something admirable about sensibly cynical conservative voices such as Frum, and I’m even more optimistic about the voices of my generation such as Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Megan McArdle and others. I disagree with them more often than I agree, but their views are most often unique, well thought-out, and independent of any sense of sticking to the ‘party line’ (perhaps the most dreaded relic of the baby-boomer age).
I think we’ll see a civil war in the right, with the old guard fighting an unwinnable battle, as the culture war inevitably is. It’ll be a slow death, though, with its throes providing endless entertainment and headaches for the rest of us over the next few years.
Tonight has been one giant sigh of relief. I attended the Newspeak concert and as the announcement came over the large screen TV, the band (which has never sounded better) went into a bangin cover of The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again. Everyone in the place was screaming at the top of their lungs, people were dancing, bawling, clapping along, hugging each other, and I was fighting back the tears. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. A weight felt lifted off of my shoulders. I walked outside to a city in revelry: shouts, screams, cheers coming from all directions. People walked by carrying American flags. Horns were honking all around me. Pure raw emotion reigned tonight. I screamed, cheered, whooed. It was an incredibly sentimental evening.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel embarrassed about how I feel right now: the innocent joy, the peace, the rampant optimism. But the buried grief and shame I feel for the thousands who have died for my country’s mistakes, the thousands who have suffered from a failing economy, the years of totalitarian-style propaganda in the media, the elevation of ignorance as a virtue, everything that has sickened me and made me wonder why the fuck I would want to live in this country has bubbled up to the surface and seems ready for deliverance. In short, I’m tired of the people in charge of my country making me feel like shit. That we now have one that makes me feel great is a really nice feeling.
I feel calm, happy, and comfortable. It was a good night.
Matt Marks Music 