Matt Marks Music

Here is a much more compelling call to vote than the video I previously commented on. I don’t really watch his show, but I like his earnestness. One thing I dislike about late-night talk shows is the reluctance of their hosts to have a real opinion on anything, seemingly out of fear that their audience will disagree with them. Ferguson doesn’t exactly say anything shocking, but his directness impresses me. Everything said by Letterman and Conan is hid behind a filter of irony and sarcasm – you’re never quite sure when they are being serious, so in a way it is a type of protection against criticism. I used to do that too when I was younger and more (yes, even more) sarcastic.

In the video Craig Ferguson argues that it is ones duty to vote, if you don’t vote you can’t complain, etc. Ok, I’ll let my readers in on a little secret: I didn’t vote in 2000. Yikes… Yeah, I know. But I complained. A lot. Especially after 9/11 when everything turned shitty. I had a right to complain. I started caring and then I started complaining. When I would reveal that I hadn’t voted (I was smart enough to make this a seldom occurrence), some people would hiss that I had no right to complain. I had the right by virtue of the fact that I didn’t really care in 2000 and I did in 2002. So I should be penalized for my past transgressions instead of welcomed into the world of the “socially conscious”? The whole ‘if you don’t vote you can’t complain’ thing is merely a fear tactic. The idea that said nonvoter would subsequently be sentenced to a 4 year detention period on airing their ideas is ridiculous. We are not in this shitty state because so many people didn’t vote, we are in this state because so many people voted for Bush.

If people want to change politics they need to find a way to convince people to vote, and that responsibility will fall on the Democrats and the third parties. The Republicans don’t want more people to vote, that’s how they will lose. Case in point, have you noticed that most of the states that have that absurd registration deadline today are traditionally red? Not a coincidence.

The other thing we need to change is that ridiculous electoral college bullshit. One of the main things that discourages people from voting is the fact that, as is clear from 2000, your vote don’t mean shit. Give people a sense that what they are doing actually matters and I think they will feel more empowered. We need to abolish the electoral college, enact same-day voter registration in all fifty states, have a commission to fight voter disenfranchisement, and have technologically advanced methods of voting and recording votes with intense oversight. Until this happens, you cannot blame people for not voting. You can guilt them and tell them they are going to um, Die or something, but it won’t matter. We have to find a way to make people care.

PS. did you know that Puff Daddy didn’t end up voting in 2004, after being the face of Vote or Die? What an asshole.

Ha, beautiful.

-via Andrew Sullivan

Check out my boy Caleb in this New York Times feature. It’s a pretty kickass article and there’s a video too!

At 28, Mr. Burhans has pursued a career path so logical that it seems almost foolproof. Just sing, compose and master several instruments (besides the violin he plays viola, guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion) and the New York freelance world is your oyster. But this is a new development. Until recently, the conventional wisdom went, musicians with diverse talents should specialize: decide whether they are better suited to composing or performing, singing or playing an instrument, working in classical music or a variety of pop.

I’ve been playing with Caleb in some facet or another for about 10 years now (hell we’re on a gig right now!) and he’s definitely one of my favorite people to play with, and one of my favorite people in general. If anyone deserves a full-blown feature it’s him. Rock out C-Lab!

Now, y’all know I spend a lot of rant energy on the social efforts of artists. This is kind of ironic I know, since I’m an artist who rails against social issues. But what bothers me are the fuzzy, feel-good efforts that seem inherently divorced from any reality-based expectation of actual results. So many of these I have written about seem to be predominantly self-indulgent, efforts to sanctify oneself through highly-visible acts of charity. So when I saw the headline How John Legend’s hero changes lives with fruit, I was all ready to get my bitch on.

Thing is, it actually seems like it could be a productive approach:

“I don’t want people to only see Africa as a bunch of victims,” Legend says. “The people that I’ve come across in these extremely impoverished villages, they want to work. They want to participate in their own development.”

To help people lift themselves out of poverty, Legend founded the Show Me Campaign, named after one of his songs. Partnering with economist Jeffrey Sachs’ Millennium Promise organization, Legend’s group adopted Mbola, a remote village in Tanzania that has little access to drinking water and improved farming techniques, according to Millennium Promise.

“The folks in Mbola are starting at a supreme disadvantage. Most of them are living on less than a dollar a day,” Legend says. “It’s difficult for them to even survive.”

On his 2007 visit to Mbola, Legend met “Mama” Mwadawa Ruziga, a single mother of two who was freeing herself from poverty. Her entrepreneurial spirit impressed Legend and solidified his belief that sustainable development at the community level can work in the fight against poverty.

Ruziga leads a local business collective that sells products — like wine, jam and juice — that it makes out of indigenous fruits.

“I was really inspired by her willingness to not just wait for a handout, but really take an active role in helping to uplift her community,” he says.

I don’t really get the specifics of the plan from this article, but the approach appeals to me more than most I see. I’m not against aid to Africa, but I’m very skeptical of the type of blanket aid that gets filtered through corrupt governments and rarely leads to any sort of sustainability. I’m a fan of Andrew Mwenda’s approach to solutions in Africa, that any real progress in Africa will come from Africans themselves (notice in the linked video that Bono does not share Mwenda’s view, and in fact heckles his speech).

John Legend seems to get this, and makes the foundation of his charity work the entrepreneurial spirit and energy of the African people. I believe that this is the best way to ensure sustainability. Blanket aid, while essential during crises, is like the old finger in the dike allegory. But give the people the tools to convert that dike into a mill and you’re working toward the future.

The Crystal Method (remember them?) has an atrocious new Obama-inspired track called Now is the Time. It’s a pretty shoddily-put-together breakbeat track that will transport you back to the glory days of late-90s mainstream electronica. Remember those days? The days of The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Orbital, etc., when these groups repackaged dance music from the early 90s for MTV audiences? This is about of that quality, except with worse production.

Meow.

Listen to the pile of propaganda slop here.

Wow! Fun!

(video embed)

Among all of the recent celebrity political videos, I think this one wins the grand smug award. Do they really think that sarcasm is the best way to reach voters? I don’t really know if this was meant to be funny or what. It seems like the different celebrities had varying ideas on what they were supposed to be doing: Forrest Whitaker and Halle Berry were all serious, Jonah Hill and Sarah Silverman were silly, others I couldn’t even tell. It’s just weird.

One more thing. There is nothing wrong with not voting. There are plenty of valid reasons not to vote: protest, ignorance, apathy. It’s our right. I am very sympathetic to nihilists and there is a lot of reason to believe that our world is going to hell in a handbasket. I’ll be voting in this next election, but I can understand why many choose not to vote. I disagree with them, because I still have a shred of hope. But this ‘all the cool kids are doing it’ approach is crap. I think it’s highly unlikely apathetics are going to suddenly start caring about their country because a bunch of celebrities are trying to guilt them into it. Any credibility is also undermined by the fact that everyone in the video is almost certainly voting for the same person. The real message in that video is not that it is essential to vote in this next election, it’s that it is essentially that Obama win this next election. Have the balls to come out and say what you really mean. This is really no better than that pathetic Vote or Die bullshit from 2004.

/rant

Rarely in the course of human events does something come my way that so completely combines my passions for bad music and ridicule of political figures.

This may possibly be one of the best things I have EVER seen:

This is a gift bestowed upon us from God. Let us never again question his divine plan.

I’m still undecided about the merits of this bailout, but you gotta love Barney Frank’s smackdown of the Republicans’ whining.

I just donated to the No On Prop 8 campaign for California. I suggest you do as well. This may hit a little closer to home for me since I’m a native Californian, but anyone who has any feeling for the cause of equality should care about this. This is the civil rights struggle of our time and anyone who opposes it will find themselves on the wrong side of history in the years to come. I try to be careful of issuing blanket statements of what is morally right and wrong, as I see too many on the left and right infusing politics with morality, but this is an area where there should be no compromise. Outlawing gay marriage turns homosexuals into second-class citizens. And “civil unions” are a second-class institution (I’m talking to you Obama).

Please, donate if you can, and bug your Californian friends to get the hell out there and vote.

Someone posted an awesome Stephen Sondheim masterclass at the Guildhall School on YouTube. Good stuff.

My Friends from Sweeney Todd