Wednesday, August 20, 2003
LAST DANCE AT THE OLD TOWN PUB
DESPERATION SQUAD AT THE OLD TOWN PUB W/ THE GROOVEY REDNECKS - FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 - 9:30 PM - 66 FAIR OAKS, PASADENA - (626) 577-6583 - 21 & OVER - $5 COVER
I've been working at the Pasadena Weekly off and on now for the last several months, which means on certain selected "special" mornings I get to hop on the 690 Express Bus. It's a real kick believe me, in fact, in these days of $2 a gallon gas it's a damn top shelf bargain (of course, I don't own a car anyway so those prices mean very little to me).
Anyhow, the bus drops me off a block or two from our buddies at the Old Town Pub and about a month or so ago I'm cruising down the street, on my way to see the mysterious and sensual server girl at the Equator with the cropped blond do, when I chance upon a most unusual and unprecedented sight.
They're tearing up the parking lot next to the Old Town Pub.
I'm not the only one there. Standing beside me is blues singer, local icon and Old Town mainstay Red, and just one glance at him - he had this doleful look on his face, like his intuition was telling him something was wrong, really wrong - and I realized that this was about the worst thing to happen in the whole billion year existence of Old Town/Loch Ness, whatever the hell you want to call it, tearing up the parking lot was bad, bad, bad news for everyone involved, save Art the former owner, who looks like a genius for selling out a step ahead of the wrecking ball.
Well, okay, it's only the parking lot, and maybe the only ones who have lost their jobs are the surly attendants or the hot dog guy, but something tells me they've been able to relocate. Old Town has to stay right where it is, and if you thought it was near impossible to find tucked in behind a parking lot, just wait till you have to wend your way through the alleyway next to Tortas Mexico and back behind Billy's Dugout and some place called the North Forty, just to arrive at your preferred destination to drink.
Needless to say, this is going to put a damper on the business. At first, it seemed that this would only be a temporary glitch. The word on the street (well, I heard it inside an office building) was that they were putting up a new building and I immediately thought that perhaps this would be an example of the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" in reverse - that they would tear out a parking lot and put in a shop called Paradise - but no, I think this is it, I think the Old Town may have mopped up its last puddle of puke.
And after all that work upgrading the bathrooms.
Well, even the Panda Man gets a little sentimental, and if a place is going to go down it may as well go down "Rocking" as we say, so please join us if you will as we team up with our buddies the Groovy Rednecks for a night of drunken revelry. For all we know this may be the last time we play the Old Town and if it turns out that this is just a bogus Venue-style "Orange" alert, please excuse us. Maybe it takes a false alarm to get the old fires burning again.
Besides, we're debuting our newest hit, "Welcome to the Drunkfest"! It's a killer!
Bone appetit!
DESPERATION SQUAD AT THE OLD TOWN PUB W/ THE GROOVEY REDNECKS - FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 - 9:30 PM - 66 FAIR OAKS, PASADENA - (626) 577-6583 - 21 & OVER - $5 COVER
I've been working at the Pasadena Weekly off and on now for the last several months, which means on certain selected "special" mornings I get to hop on the 690 Express Bus. It's a real kick believe me, in fact, in these days of $2 a gallon gas it's a damn top shelf bargain (of course, I don't own a car anyway so those prices mean very little to me).
Anyhow, the bus drops me off a block or two from our buddies at the Old Town Pub and about a month or so ago I'm cruising down the street, on my way to see the mysterious and sensual server girl at the Equator with the cropped blond do, when I chance upon a most unusual and unprecedented sight.
They're tearing up the parking lot next to the Old Town Pub.
I'm not the only one there. Standing beside me is blues singer, local icon and Old Town mainstay Red, and just one glance at him - he had this doleful look on his face, like his intuition was telling him something was wrong, really wrong - and I realized that this was about the worst thing to happen in the whole billion year existence of Old Town/Loch Ness, whatever the hell you want to call it, tearing up the parking lot was bad, bad, bad news for everyone involved, save Art the former owner, who looks like a genius for selling out a step ahead of the wrecking ball.
Well, okay, it's only the parking lot, and maybe the only ones who have lost their jobs are the surly attendants or the hot dog guy, but something tells me they've been able to relocate. Old Town has to stay right where it is, and if you thought it was near impossible to find tucked in behind a parking lot, just wait till you have to wend your way through the alleyway next to Tortas Mexico and back behind Billy's Dugout and some place called the North Forty, just to arrive at your preferred destination to drink.
Needless to say, this is going to put a damper on the business. At first, it seemed that this would only be a temporary glitch. The word on the street (well, I heard it inside an office building) was that they were putting up a new building and I immediately thought that perhaps this would be an example of the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" in reverse - that they would tear out a parking lot and put in a shop called Paradise - but no, I think this is it, I think the Old Town may have mopped up its last puddle of puke.
And after all that work upgrading the bathrooms.
Well, even the Panda Man gets a little sentimental, and if a place is going to go down it may as well go down "Rocking" as we say, so please join us if you will as we team up with our buddies the Groovy Rednecks for a night of drunken revelry. For all we know this may be the last time we play the Old Town and if it turns out that this is just a bogus Venue-style "Orange" alert, please excuse us. Maybe it takes a false alarm to get the old fires burning again.
Besides, we're debuting our newest hit, "Welcome to the Drunkfest"! It's a killer!
Bone appetit!
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
CULTURE WAR, PT. 2
So you question whether rock and roll is losing the culture war, do you? Well, you should take a look at the Monday LA Times Calendar section, if you want to see actual proof of this. On the cover is a big huge above the crease photo of R. Kelly and a review of his concert over the weekend. Turn the page and you see on page 3 a picture of Perry Farrell and the Lollapalooza review.
Let's take a moment to unpack this.
So here's an artist, R. Kelly, whose career is, frankly, on the skids (to put it mildly), who's looking at serious jail time, whose show didn't come close to selling out the venue (and would have likely been cancelled for lack of sales if not for the opening act, Ashanti) and whose performance was "clumsily paced, lurching to a halt midway through" and "an odd show and an odd point in the star's life and in the public's attitude toward its heroes." (R. Kelly is a hero?)
Meanwhile, Lollapalooza was sold out weeks in advance, the Jane's Addiction performance was "easily the best it's been since dissolving", the reviews for the other headline bands were generally good, and overall it was fairly positive coverage, much more positive than the R. Kelly review. I mean for once Perry Farrell is the Good Cop, sober, focused and marketable.
So why is R. Kelly on the cover and, despite a massive months-long PR blitz and trucks and trucks of support money, Jane's Addiction in the back pages?
That's the culture war, baby!
But more on that later. Right now I want to say a few thousand words about the evolution of newspapers. (How's that for a transition!)
Newspapers have been there since the beginning. Once upon a time, in colonial days, if you wanted some type of information you had to go to a town meeting. However, a technology craze was sweeping the colonies, that of printing, and though it took several decades to make it convenient and affordable to produce, the broadside and later the newspaper, as it came to be called, became the most influential and reliable source of information to the new forming nation. If you don't think so then just go find a copy of the Federalist Papers, which argued for the adoption of our present day Constitution (not everyone was for it you know), and read, read, read!
In the beginning, newspapers were much different than they are now (duh), as they were mostly the product of political parties, which dispensed news only of interest to say, Whigs, if it was a Whig paper, and relied solely on subscriptions, usually 6 cents an issue (pretty expensive in those days) and catered to a somewhat elite clientele. Of course, literacy was not so widespread in those days, and if you could read it was generally held that you were of a higher economic class. But literacy was a passion in early America, and over the years the middle to lower economic classes started getting the hang of it too. This created new exploitable markets.
Enter James Gordon Bennett. Bennett was founder and publisher of the New York Herald and pretty much the Godfather of what we now think of the modern newspaper. It was Bennett that first ran local and sensational stories of local crime and other oddities not found in a subscription newspaper. He also dropped the price to a penny (hence the term "penny papers") and offered it for sale on the street, all the better to capitalize on "breaking news" (yes, even back then it was important). He also was a pioneer, credited with conducting the first "interview" of a news subject, in this case a woman standing trial of murder, which was dutifully reported in the paper every day until it's conclusion (sound familiar?). Of course, Bennett was crticized by the elites as a kook and also for subverting ethics, which led to a crusade against by orgainized publishers, "The Moral War".
So there was a lot going on with this guy. Bennett was also the first to tap the effectiveness of advertising as a way (as opposed to subscriptions) of sustaining the profitability of a newspaper. Though Bennett gave way to other pioneers (Pulitzer, Hearst) later in the century, no one ever came up with a better way of funding a paper than paid advertisment, and that remains in place to this very day.
By the end of the century, party papers were history and newspapers had established themselves as the best and fastest way for Americans to keep up with world, national and local events. Along the way, newspapers had considerable help from new technologies (movable type, telegraph, photographs), all of which made it easier for the papers to extend their information monopoly. And, as companies realized the effectiveness of paid ads, the newspaper business experienced a boom rarely equaled in any business. Competition was fierce, and not just for circulation, but also for those advertising dollars. The more ads placed, the more news reported and the more resources available for the publisher to improve their coverage.
Enter the 20th century.
By this time technology was moving swifter than ever, and not all of it was of help to the newspapers. For instance, photo reproduction helped papers but they also gave rise to magazines (with names like Life and Look and Ladies Home Journal). Magazines also needed advertising to survive so they needed to get a bit of that revenue pie. This didn't hurt newspapers too much - it was kind of an apples and oranges thing. Local papers looked at local vendors; national magazines looked at national vendors.
Motion pictures were there too, although they weren't in the news gathering or advertising business. However, the income needed to see a movie might well come out of the newspaper budget, which would have the effect of less circulation and hence less advertising revenue.
Then along came radio. At first, it didn't seem possible that the radio could have an adverse effect on newspapers. Radio was, in the beginning, for nerds who would build their own in the basement and try to find other nerds in the nether regions to communicate to (sound familiar?). It stayed this way for many years, until the band width on the radio became so cluttered and noisy that one could hardly be heard across the street, let alone clear across the country.
So regulation was introduced (you know our friends the FCC?). Somewhere among all this was a huge fight in Congress between moneyed interests, like RCA, and educators. The culture war here had to do with the fact that, and this was discovered accidentally, once business discovered that they could sell "time", as opposed to space, they could "broadcast" (a brand new term) entertainment programs sponsored by advertisers. Hence "Lucky Strike Presents the Fibber McGee and Molly Show". Educators, of course, had the utopian vision of radio being used only for good, but since they had no money, and since broadcasters made a convincing case that Americans preferred entertainment programs, Congress, with some restrictions, allotted the whole entire band width to the fledgling industry.
And even though they didn't initially produce news reports, radio - being mostly local entities - started competing for and winning over advertisers that heretofore had been exclusively the province of newspapers. Make a pie chart based on advertising revenue. Let's say that in 1900 the whole entire pie, 100%, is the domain of newspapers. By the 1930's that share by newspapers had decreased dramatically, perhaps as much as 50%. It only got worse when television was introduced. By the 1960's newspapers had maybe 25% of the pie. Today, it might be less than 10% of all total advertising revenue.
And you wonder why there are so few newspapers published today.
Okay, so what does this have to do with culture wars and rock and roll and Jane's Addiction and R. Kelly and all that?
Easy. For most of it's life, rock and roll has had the whole music culture pie to itself, just like papers had in its earliest days, at least that's the way I see it. From Elvis Presley to the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Guns N Roses to Nirvana (and every band inbetween) throughout its entire history rock and roll has been top dog, not only dominating the music culture but inspiring others to take up arms (i.e. kids learning electric guitar) and preserve the culture. Yes, there have been close calls - teen idols early in the 60s, disco late in the 70s - but rock and roll constantly has been able to reinvent itself and call upon its considerable resources to sway the culture back its way.
Then it all stopped. As I mentioned yesterday, I pinpoint the moment it stopped as being the early 90s, when so many competing forms of music muscled their way into the culture that most kids growing up decided to join another army, whether it be the rap, pop or country army. We now see the results of this: these genres of popular music have pushed aside rock and roll, if not completely aside than certainly to alarming levels.
Take that ad revenue pie chart and apply it to modern music. Years ago, rock and roll had the entire pie. Now its share could be as low as 25%. So what, you say? How is this effecting the current output?
Well, like ad revenue, there is only so much resources (money) available in the entertainment industry. Factor in movies and television, extreme sports and video games, and other things consumers like to spend their money on, and you can see where current artists (and future) may well have problems getting their work financed. Less money means less choice to the consumer, less choice will lead to less interest, less interest will eventually lead to extinction.
We're seeing this in the recording industry. That's what all the piracy hoopla is all about. Two years ago you could have never convinced anyone that a close to 100-year industry could just come to a screeching halt but we're seeing it. Maybe future investors will think about putting money in a skateboard or a computer game instead of a recording artist. Whatever, if you are in the business of making records now, things are not good for you, and the genre effected the most, I say, is rock and roll. Otherwise Jane's Addiction would be on the front cover of the Calendar section and not R. Kelly.
So I don't know how to fix the industry. I'm a rock and roll guy. My concern is the future of rock and roll. I feel, to fight back and reclaim pop culture is not only doable but not so farfetched. But it is going to take a whole new perspective, a new model, a new system. I mean, I'm not talking about a rock and roll world dominated by small time independents with no money or interest in breaking bands on a huge scale. The hell with that. I'm talking big huge fat bands that dominate magazine covers and only grudgingly share space with all the other genres. I'm talking about 13-year old kids once again picking up electric guitars because they know that girls will eventually want to fuck their brains out if they become a big enough star and play sold-out shows at the Staples Center. That sort of thing.
And, by the way, I'm convinced that Desperation Squad, the greatest rock band of all time, ignored and abused for so long, is just the band to start the war and right the ship. We couldn't do any worse than Jane's Addiction.
Next time: How much money had to be spent for the Jane's Addiction/Lollapalooza comeback? Was it money well-spent?
So you question whether rock and roll is losing the culture war, do you? Well, you should take a look at the Monday LA Times Calendar section, if you want to see actual proof of this. On the cover is a big huge above the crease photo of R. Kelly and a review of his concert over the weekend. Turn the page and you see on page 3 a picture of Perry Farrell and the Lollapalooza review.
Let's take a moment to unpack this.
So here's an artist, R. Kelly, whose career is, frankly, on the skids (to put it mildly), who's looking at serious jail time, whose show didn't come close to selling out the venue (and would have likely been cancelled for lack of sales if not for the opening act, Ashanti) and whose performance was "clumsily paced, lurching to a halt midway through" and "an odd show and an odd point in the star's life and in the public's attitude toward its heroes." (R. Kelly is a hero?)
Meanwhile, Lollapalooza was sold out weeks in advance, the Jane's Addiction performance was "easily the best it's been since dissolving", the reviews for the other headline bands were generally good, and overall it was fairly positive coverage, much more positive than the R. Kelly review. I mean for once Perry Farrell is the Good Cop, sober, focused and marketable.
So why is R. Kelly on the cover and, despite a massive months-long PR blitz and trucks and trucks of support money, Jane's Addiction in the back pages?
That's the culture war, baby!
But more on that later. Right now I want to say a few thousand words about the evolution of newspapers. (How's that for a transition!)
Newspapers have been there since the beginning. Once upon a time, in colonial days, if you wanted some type of information you had to go to a town meeting. However, a technology craze was sweeping the colonies, that of printing, and though it took several decades to make it convenient and affordable to produce, the broadside and later the newspaper, as it came to be called, became the most influential and reliable source of information to the new forming nation. If you don't think so then just go find a copy of the Federalist Papers, which argued for the adoption of our present day Constitution (not everyone was for it you know), and read, read, read!
In the beginning, newspapers were much different than they are now (duh), as they were mostly the product of political parties, which dispensed news only of interest to say, Whigs, if it was a Whig paper, and relied solely on subscriptions, usually 6 cents an issue (pretty expensive in those days) and catered to a somewhat elite clientele. Of course, literacy was not so widespread in those days, and if you could read it was generally held that you were of a higher economic class. But literacy was a passion in early America, and over the years the middle to lower economic classes started getting the hang of it too. This created new exploitable markets.
Enter James Gordon Bennett. Bennett was founder and publisher of the New York Herald and pretty much the Godfather of what we now think of the modern newspaper. It was Bennett that first ran local and sensational stories of local crime and other oddities not found in a subscription newspaper. He also dropped the price to a penny (hence the term "penny papers") and offered it for sale on the street, all the better to capitalize on "breaking news" (yes, even back then it was important). He also was a pioneer, credited with conducting the first "interview" of a news subject, in this case a woman standing trial of murder, which was dutifully reported in the paper every day until it's conclusion (sound familiar?). Of course, Bennett was crticized by the elites as a kook and also for subverting ethics, which led to a crusade against by orgainized publishers, "The Moral War".
So there was a lot going on with this guy. Bennett was also the first to tap the effectiveness of advertising as a way (as opposed to subscriptions) of sustaining the profitability of a newspaper. Though Bennett gave way to other pioneers (Pulitzer, Hearst) later in the century, no one ever came up with a better way of funding a paper than paid advertisment, and that remains in place to this very day.
By the end of the century, party papers were history and newspapers had established themselves as the best and fastest way for Americans to keep up with world, national and local events. Along the way, newspapers had considerable help from new technologies (movable type, telegraph, photographs), all of which made it easier for the papers to extend their information monopoly. And, as companies realized the effectiveness of paid ads, the newspaper business experienced a boom rarely equaled in any business. Competition was fierce, and not just for circulation, but also for those advertising dollars. The more ads placed, the more news reported and the more resources available for the publisher to improve their coverage.
Enter the 20th century.
By this time technology was moving swifter than ever, and not all of it was of help to the newspapers. For instance, photo reproduction helped papers but they also gave rise to magazines (with names like Life and Look and Ladies Home Journal). Magazines also needed advertising to survive so they needed to get a bit of that revenue pie. This didn't hurt newspapers too much - it was kind of an apples and oranges thing. Local papers looked at local vendors; national magazines looked at national vendors.
Motion pictures were there too, although they weren't in the news gathering or advertising business. However, the income needed to see a movie might well come out of the newspaper budget, which would have the effect of less circulation and hence less advertising revenue.
Then along came radio. At first, it didn't seem possible that the radio could have an adverse effect on newspapers. Radio was, in the beginning, for nerds who would build their own in the basement and try to find other nerds in the nether regions to communicate to (sound familiar?). It stayed this way for many years, until the band width on the radio became so cluttered and noisy that one could hardly be heard across the street, let alone clear across the country.
So regulation was introduced (you know our friends the FCC?). Somewhere among all this was a huge fight in Congress between moneyed interests, like RCA, and educators. The culture war here had to do with the fact that, and this was discovered accidentally, once business discovered that they could sell "time", as opposed to space, they could "broadcast" (a brand new term) entertainment programs sponsored by advertisers. Hence "Lucky Strike Presents the Fibber McGee and Molly Show". Educators, of course, had the utopian vision of radio being used only for good, but since they had no money, and since broadcasters made a convincing case that Americans preferred entertainment programs, Congress, with some restrictions, allotted the whole entire band width to the fledgling industry.
And even though they didn't initially produce news reports, radio - being mostly local entities - started competing for and winning over advertisers that heretofore had been exclusively the province of newspapers. Make a pie chart based on advertising revenue. Let's say that in 1900 the whole entire pie, 100%, is the domain of newspapers. By the 1930's that share by newspapers had decreased dramatically, perhaps as much as 50%. It only got worse when television was introduced. By the 1960's newspapers had maybe 25% of the pie. Today, it might be less than 10% of all total advertising revenue.
And you wonder why there are so few newspapers published today.
Okay, so what does this have to do with culture wars and rock and roll and Jane's Addiction and R. Kelly and all that?
Easy. For most of it's life, rock and roll has had the whole music culture pie to itself, just like papers had in its earliest days, at least that's the way I see it. From Elvis Presley to the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Guns N Roses to Nirvana (and every band inbetween) throughout its entire history rock and roll has been top dog, not only dominating the music culture but inspiring others to take up arms (i.e. kids learning electric guitar) and preserve the culture. Yes, there have been close calls - teen idols early in the 60s, disco late in the 70s - but rock and roll constantly has been able to reinvent itself and call upon its considerable resources to sway the culture back its way.
Then it all stopped. As I mentioned yesterday, I pinpoint the moment it stopped as being the early 90s, when so many competing forms of music muscled their way into the culture that most kids growing up decided to join another army, whether it be the rap, pop or country army. We now see the results of this: these genres of popular music have pushed aside rock and roll, if not completely aside than certainly to alarming levels.
Take that ad revenue pie chart and apply it to modern music. Years ago, rock and roll had the entire pie. Now its share could be as low as 25%. So what, you say? How is this effecting the current output?
Well, like ad revenue, there is only so much resources (money) available in the entertainment industry. Factor in movies and television, extreme sports and video games, and other things consumers like to spend their money on, and you can see where current artists (and future) may well have problems getting their work financed. Less money means less choice to the consumer, less choice will lead to less interest, less interest will eventually lead to extinction.
We're seeing this in the recording industry. That's what all the piracy hoopla is all about. Two years ago you could have never convinced anyone that a close to 100-year industry could just come to a screeching halt but we're seeing it. Maybe future investors will think about putting money in a skateboard or a computer game instead of a recording artist. Whatever, if you are in the business of making records now, things are not good for you, and the genre effected the most, I say, is rock and roll. Otherwise Jane's Addiction would be on the front cover of the Calendar section and not R. Kelly.
So I don't know how to fix the industry. I'm a rock and roll guy. My concern is the future of rock and roll. I feel, to fight back and reclaim pop culture is not only doable but not so farfetched. But it is going to take a whole new perspective, a new model, a new system. I mean, I'm not talking about a rock and roll world dominated by small time independents with no money or interest in breaking bands on a huge scale. The hell with that. I'm talking big huge fat bands that dominate magazine covers and only grudgingly share space with all the other genres. I'm talking about 13-year old kids once again picking up electric guitars because they know that girls will eventually want to fuck their brains out if they become a big enough star and play sold-out shows at the Staples Center. That sort of thing.
And, by the way, I'm convinced that Desperation Squad, the greatest rock band of all time, ignored and abused for so long, is just the band to start the war and right the ship. We couldn't do any worse than Jane's Addiction.
Next time: How much money had to be spent for the Jane's Addiction/Lollapalooza comeback? Was it money well-spent?
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
Among the recent textual sparring between my friend Sue and I recently, I have been remiss in reporting that Sue has played a vital role in creating the D-Squad look. So I will rectify that now. Not only did Sue take the fabulous Qtopoia's photos, she is also the architect and administrator of the sassy Twin Panda outfit.
Here is how the Panda mask came to be. The original was first owned by Bob Fritz, who gave it to Mark Givens (scroll down), who stashed it in his parents garage where it stayed until 1986-87, it bugs me because I can't for the life of remember the exact date, when Mark regifted it to the band, where it became the most prominent feature of the band of all time. No one, and I mean no one, could have predicted this at the time. It was just a mask, you know? The band has had many archival materials lost or stolen over the years but the Panda mask survives, and it's a good thing too, although it suffered much abuse over the years, including not being washed, honest to god, for close to 15 years.
With this in mind, about the time we were invited to play Warped 2001 I realized that perhaps the poor old Panda might have more historic value than performance value - in other words I was afraid of our most cherished image being lost, damaged or stolen on the road. So one night at Laura's house I wondered just how or where we could find a replacement mask. It was Sue who said that she could just make another one, and we all kind of looked at her funny, but that is what she is good at, creating just these sorts of things, and before we knew it Road Panda was born. The amazing thing is that if you are not intimately familiar with the original you cannot tell the difference between the two - it's almost an exact replica. So now, Original Panda is retired, in moth balls (well, actually, it's laying very unceremoniously on top on a bunch of clothes on my living room couch), and Road Panda is now the one getting abused, in ways that Original Panda never had to deal with.
Even before that, much to the exasperation of my friends and long-time fans of the band, I had taken to wearing a thong or sometimes even a G-string on stage. This was questionable enough, but it worked. So, once again, we were having a poolside discussion on this very subject and I remarked that it would be even more dazzling and moronic if there was something attached to the front of the thong, some sort of image that could stun and awe the audience. We kicked about some ideas until I said, "Hell, we should put the Panda man there!" And Sue was all over it and in no time at all had produced the cutest little set of Panda Jr's you have ever seen, which made their debut at the much lamented Battle of the Bands at Domenico's several winters ago.
And that's the faq, Jack. Thanks Sue. Your unabashed contrary and combative nature drives me crazy but we wouldn't be nearly as great without you!
Among the recent textual sparring between my friend Sue and I recently, I have been remiss in reporting that Sue has played a vital role in creating the D-Squad look. So I will rectify that now. Not only did Sue take the fabulous Qtopoia's photos, she is also the architect and administrator of the sassy Twin Panda outfit.
Here is how the Panda mask came to be. The original was first owned by Bob Fritz, who gave it to Mark Givens (scroll down), who stashed it in his parents garage where it stayed until 1986-87, it bugs me because I can't for the life of remember the exact date, when Mark regifted it to the band, where it became the most prominent feature of the band of all time. No one, and I mean no one, could have predicted this at the time. It was just a mask, you know? The band has had many archival materials lost or stolen over the years but the Panda mask survives, and it's a good thing too, although it suffered much abuse over the years, including not being washed, honest to god, for close to 15 years.
With this in mind, about the time we were invited to play Warped 2001 I realized that perhaps the poor old Panda might have more historic value than performance value - in other words I was afraid of our most cherished image being lost, damaged or stolen on the road. So one night at Laura's house I wondered just how or where we could find a replacement mask. It was Sue who said that she could just make another one, and we all kind of looked at her funny, but that is what she is good at, creating just these sorts of things, and before we knew it Road Panda was born. The amazing thing is that if you are not intimately familiar with the original you cannot tell the difference between the two - it's almost an exact replica. So now, Original Panda is retired, in moth balls (well, actually, it's laying very unceremoniously on top on a bunch of clothes on my living room couch), and Road Panda is now the one getting abused, in ways that Original Panda never had to deal with.
Even before that, much to the exasperation of my friends and long-time fans of the band, I had taken to wearing a thong or sometimes even a G-string on stage. This was questionable enough, but it worked. So, once again, we were having a poolside discussion on this very subject and I remarked that it would be even more dazzling and moronic if there was something attached to the front of the thong, some sort of image that could stun and awe the audience. We kicked about some ideas until I said, "Hell, we should put the Panda man there!" And Sue was all over it and in no time at all had produced the cutest little set of Panda Jr's you have ever seen, which made their debut at the much lamented Battle of the Bands at Domenico's several winters ago.
And that's the faq, Jack. Thanks Sue. Your unabashed contrary and combative nature drives me crazy but we wouldn't be nearly as great without you!
Monday, August 18, 2003
CULTURE WAR
Here is a quiz with no right or wrong answers:
Which band has had more cultural impact:
NWA or Jane's Addiction?
NWA or Nirvana?
Nirvana or New Kids on the Block?
Nirvana or Travis Tritt?
We'll get back to this in a bit, but before we do, let's look at some recent publications:
In their June 21 issue, Billboard magazine launched a new editorial column entitled "Taking Issue". The inaugural piece was written by Don Passman, a "leading music attorney" that Billboard also cites as "one of the industry's top legal minds." His column was headlined "The Digital Tunnel Will Yield Light." Here are some excerpts:
"[I]t's true that the major record companies are having a hard time turning their gigantic ships. They've built massive infrastructures around the traditional CD retail business, which is suffering badly."
"At the moment, artists and companies are still figuring out what kinds of deals to make with each other. Which is exactly what's supposed to happen when there's a tectonic shift in the industry - as when CDs and cassettes first showed up. With the introduction of any new technology, there's always a period where nobody understands the economics, and one side or the other ends up disadvantaged; historically, it's been the artists."
Unfortunately Billboard doesn't "link" its articles but if you want to read the whole piece you can go to their website and possibly buy it from their archives (or go to Beverly Hills Public Library, one of the few libraries that carry Billboard in their Periodical section). Passman makes his point and offers his solutions to solving the industry-wide problem.
In the August 3rd issue of the LA Times Sunday Calendar Geoff Boucher wrote an article entitled "Now fans call the tune; The same era that has vexed the recording industry has brought more control to the consumer." In it he profiles a number of new businesses that have sprouted up in response to the new technologies: The Apple Store, Streetwise Concept and Culture, XM Satellite Radio. Boucher also makes this observation:
"The sunny visions of those Apple commercials are hard to reconcile with the gloom and doom that have been pervasive in the music industry in recent years. The grim chorus is now as familiar to the public as any Top 40 hit: Piracy has gutted profits, CD sales are going steadily south for the first time since the format was introduced in the 1980s, corporate conglomeration has stultified any art in the commerce of record labels, radio and the concert business.
All of that is true, and in private even the titans of the business express fears that probably echo the anxious mutterings of railroad barons in the days when Model Ts began rolling down the line. "
"Still, the currency of the music industry remains the compact disc, and that is a problem. Sales of the CD are down 20% since 2000 and a major comeback is as likely as a boom in Laserdisc sales. In a wry twist, the CD itself is one major reason the business finds itself in dire straits today. The embracing of that format in the 1980s sparked a huge boom in profits as the digital quality and durability of the silvery discs inspired many consumers to replace their vinyl collections.
The windfall made the business more attractive to multinational conglomerates and led to huge investment. As profits waned, though, consolidation and a more strident corporate ethos pervaded. The "art" of music would now, more than ever, have to pay off on a quarterly basis. That set the stage for crisis when consumers, who have long complained about the price of albums, abruptly found MP3 computer technology in the late 1990s, an avenue for snatching any song they wanted for free. File sharing, via Napster and similar services, created a new model that the industry has yet to figure out."
The next week, in response to this article, a local musician, Will Ray, had his letter published. Here are a couple of excerpts:
"As a musician and producer, I welcome the much-needed changes in the music business brought about by the Internet . . ."
"I welcome any new system to replace the old one, which no longer works."
Interesting stuff. These are not the words of cranks, but Big Media articles and editorials about the very subject that I have been spouting off on in this very blog for months. When I wrote my piece "Shaking Kids Down For Their Lunch Money" I was addressing roughly the same problem, only from a different angle.
What's important to note is that it is generally understood by just about everybody from top to bottom in the industry, with the notable exception of the RIAA itself, that new techologies have skewed the market place and that you better do something about it besides play your fiddle while Rome burns. Pop culture stars will still be manufactured and thrive - how they are brought to the marketplace is a big fat question mark that doesn't have a clear-cut answer right now.
Which is why I have been spouting off on this in recent months. I recognize this trend too, and I have determined that this gives my band a new life in the marketplace, where for the last 20 years, under the old system, we seemingly had none. However, the solutions offered by Passman, Ray and others don't satisfy me either. I do not advocate a tumbling of the Berlin Wall approach to Big Music, which will give way to the more economically minded and surging Indie movement. Why? Because I believe that the Indies are just as culpable as Big Music for the deteriorating clout of Rock and Roll, probably more so.
Why would I think that? After all, it is possible that their are more great rock and roll bands playing today as ever before. Yes, but, as I have already noted, rock and roll itself, in pop culture terms, now lags behind Rap/Hip-Hop, Pop/R&B and Country. So why is that important? Because, as I will try to show, dwindling cultural potence gives way to dwindling resources which narrows even furthur the chances of bands making real huge cultural impacts on modern pop culture.
So it's about magazine covers, you know? And if you don't care if another Rock and Roll band graces the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, then you won't care much for my argument. But if you long for the days, like I do, when pop culture was completely dominated by Rock and Roll, and all those other genres were fighting for the scraps, then please read on.
It's a culture war. And Rock and Roll didn't just start losing the war in the last year or two, it started losing it back in the early 90s. So let's return to the quiz. Most people would answer the four questions - NWA, Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana. But not everyone. The drummer of my band chose NWA, Nirvana, New Kids on the Block and Travis Tritt. I picked NWA, NWA, New Kids on the Block and Travis Tritt.
What's that? How could I possibly think that Nirvana had no cultural impact? Well, I didn't say that they didn't, I just noted that they didn't have as much as the other bands. NWA, along with all the other bands that created the "Gansta" genre, is the easiest to justify. Before these bands rap was more of a niche genre; afterward, every kid in the country - Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Green - wanted to be a rapper. Now you have Eminen, the most popular music artist in the world.
New Kids on the Block? Well, have you heard of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and American Idol? Actually, it's Menudo that pioneered this stuff, but the New Kids brought to every teenager in America.
Travis Tritt? What the hell did he do? Well, I can remember a conversation I had with Rockin' Johnny early in the 90s where we noted that many of the newly emerging country artists were more or less failed rock and rollers. Guess what? Country music is not just for backwater rednecks anymore. Remember the Dixie Chicks and all that crap they've gone through? Well, they grossed $60 million this year in concert sales. Toby Keith isn't doing too bad either.
Who does rock and roll have? The White Stripes, Good Charlotte and Jane's Addiction.
So, again, who's had more impact - NWA, Nirvana, New Kids on the Block or Travis Tritt?
How can I tell? Well, all these huge artists like Eminen and Christina and Toby had to be listening to something back in the early 90s, they had to heavily influenced by some artists who then compelled them to enter the field. That's what I mean about culture war. More emerging artists will say that they were influenced by rap and pop and country than the grunge music that was sales-wise more popular at the time, but wound up being somewhat of a death knell to the genre.
That's all the time I have for this post. But I'll be right back here tomorrow (or maybe the next day, you know how these cultural wars go, you have to fit them into your schedule) with Part Two of my rant.
Comments?
Here is a quiz with no right or wrong answers:
Which band has had more cultural impact:
NWA or Jane's Addiction?
NWA or Nirvana?
Nirvana or New Kids on the Block?
Nirvana or Travis Tritt?
We'll get back to this in a bit, but before we do, let's look at some recent publications:
In their June 21 issue, Billboard magazine launched a new editorial column entitled "Taking Issue". The inaugural piece was written by Don Passman, a "leading music attorney" that Billboard also cites as "one of the industry's top legal minds." His column was headlined "The Digital Tunnel Will Yield Light." Here are some excerpts:
"[I]t's true that the major record companies are having a hard time turning their gigantic ships. They've built massive infrastructures around the traditional CD retail business, which is suffering badly."
"At the moment, artists and companies are still figuring out what kinds of deals to make with each other. Which is exactly what's supposed to happen when there's a tectonic shift in the industry - as when CDs and cassettes first showed up. With the introduction of any new technology, there's always a period where nobody understands the economics, and one side or the other ends up disadvantaged; historically, it's been the artists."
Unfortunately Billboard doesn't "link" its articles but if you want to read the whole piece you can go to their website and possibly buy it from their archives (or go to Beverly Hills Public Library, one of the few libraries that carry Billboard in their Periodical section). Passman makes his point and offers his solutions to solving the industry-wide problem.
In the August 3rd issue of the LA Times Sunday Calendar Geoff Boucher wrote an article entitled "Now fans call the tune; The same era that has vexed the recording industry has brought more control to the consumer." In it he profiles a number of new businesses that have sprouted up in response to the new technologies: The Apple Store, Streetwise Concept and Culture, XM Satellite Radio. Boucher also makes this observation:
"The sunny visions of those Apple commercials are hard to reconcile with the gloom and doom that have been pervasive in the music industry in recent years. The grim chorus is now as familiar to the public as any Top 40 hit: Piracy has gutted profits, CD sales are going steadily south for the first time since the format was introduced in the 1980s, corporate conglomeration has stultified any art in the commerce of record labels, radio and the concert business.
All of that is true, and in private even the titans of the business express fears that probably echo the anxious mutterings of railroad barons in the days when Model Ts began rolling down the line. "
"Still, the currency of the music industry remains the compact disc, and that is a problem. Sales of the CD are down 20% since 2000 and a major comeback is as likely as a boom in Laserdisc sales. In a wry twist, the CD itself is one major reason the business finds itself in dire straits today. The embracing of that format in the 1980s sparked a huge boom in profits as the digital quality and durability of the silvery discs inspired many consumers to replace their vinyl collections.
The windfall made the business more attractive to multinational conglomerates and led to huge investment. As profits waned, though, consolidation and a more strident corporate ethos pervaded. The "art" of music would now, more than ever, have to pay off on a quarterly basis. That set the stage for crisis when consumers, who have long complained about the price of albums, abruptly found MP3 computer technology in the late 1990s, an avenue for snatching any song they wanted for free. File sharing, via Napster and similar services, created a new model that the industry has yet to figure out."
The next week, in response to this article, a local musician, Will Ray, had his letter published. Here are a couple of excerpts:
"As a musician and producer, I welcome the much-needed changes in the music business brought about by the Internet . . ."
"I welcome any new system to replace the old one, which no longer works."
Interesting stuff. These are not the words of cranks, but Big Media articles and editorials about the very subject that I have been spouting off on in this very blog for months. When I wrote my piece "Shaking Kids Down For Their Lunch Money" I was addressing roughly the same problem, only from a different angle.
What's important to note is that it is generally understood by just about everybody from top to bottom in the industry, with the notable exception of the RIAA itself, that new techologies have skewed the market place and that you better do something about it besides play your fiddle while Rome burns. Pop culture stars will still be manufactured and thrive - how they are brought to the marketplace is a big fat question mark that doesn't have a clear-cut answer right now.
Which is why I have been spouting off on this in recent months. I recognize this trend too, and I have determined that this gives my band a new life in the marketplace, where for the last 20 years, under the old system, we seemingly had none. However, the solutions offered by Passman, Ray and others don't satisfy me either. I do not advocate a tumbling of the Berlin Wall approach to Big Music, which will give way to the more economically minded and surging Indie movement. Why? Because I believe that the Indies are just as culpable as Big Music for the deteriorating clout of Rock and Roll, probably more so.
Why would I think that? After all, it is possible that their are more great rock and roll bands playing today as ever before. Yes, but, as I have already noted, rock and roll itself, in pop culture terms, now lags behind Rap/Hip-Hop, Pop/R&B and Country. So why is that important? Because, as I will try to show, dwindling cultural potence gives way to dwindling resources which narrows even furthur the chances of bands making real huge cultural impacts on modern pop culture.
So it's about magazine covers, you know? And if you don't care if another Rock and Roll band graces the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, then you won't care much for my argument. But if you long for the days, like I do, when pop culture was completely dominated by Rock and Roll, and all those other genres were fighting for the scraps, then please read on.
It's a culture war. And Rock and Roll didn't just start losing the war in the last year or two, it started losing it back in the early 90s. So let's return to the quiz. Most people would answer the four questions - NWA, Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana. But not everyone. The drummer of my band chose NWA, Nirvana, New Kids on the Block and Travis Tritt. I picked NWA, NWA, New Kids on the Block and Travis Tritt.
What's that? How could I possibly think that Nirvana had no cultural impact? Well, I didn't say that they didn't, I just noted that they didn't have as much as the other bands. NWA, along with all the other bands that created the "Gansta" genre, is the easiest to justify. Before these bands rap was more of a niche genre; afterward, every kid in the country - Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Green - wanted to be a rapper. Now you have Eminen, the most popular music artist in the world.
New Kids on the Block? Well, have you heard of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and American Idol? Actually, it's Menudo that pioneered this stuff, but the New Kids brought to every teenager in America.
Travis Tritt? What the hell did he do? Well, I can remember a conversation I had with Rockin' Johnny early in the 90s where we noted that many of the newly emerging country artists were more or less failed rock and rollers. Guess what? Country music is not just for backwater rednecks anymore. Remember the Dixie Chicks and all that crap they've gone through? Well, they grossed $60 million this year in concert sales. Toby Keith isn't doing too bad either.
Who does rock and roll have? The White Stripes, Good Charlotte and Jane's Addiction.
So, again, who's had more impact - NWA, Nirvana, New Kids on the Block or Travis Tritt?
How can I tell? Well, all these huge artists like Eminen and Christina and Toby had to be listening to something back in the early 90s, they had to heavily influenced by some artists who then compelled them to enter the field. That's what I mean about culture war. More emerging artists will say that they were influenced by rap and pop and country than the grunge music that was sales-wise more popular at the time, but wound up being somewhat of a death knell to the genre.
That's all the time I have for this post. But I'll be right back here tomorrow (or maybe the next day, you know how these cultural wars go, you have to fit them into your schedule) with Part Two of my rant.
Comments?
Sunday, August 17, 2003
CALL ME A CRANK, BUT . . .
As promised, here is a recent comment sent to My Completely Random Life which, unfortunately, "broke" the machine, and precipitated a switch to a new, superior (and typically ignored) feedback generator. In the process the original comment had to be wiped from the board (UPDATE: actually it's not, it's still there ) but I saved it and will now reprint it, in its original form:
Sue Lawler @ 5:58 AM 2003-07-29
So how come you don't ask for comments after every posting? I mean, 3rd bike on the bus, OK, get a car, man. But what about that Warped Tour thing? You keep saying you're not bitter but you sound very fucking bitter to me, and not just in your blog posting, but every time I see you in person, also . . . Stop begrudging every new band their success. They may be working at it harder than you. They may be working to make contacts instead of expecting the business to come to them. There is a lot of great new music out there, major label and indie. You should try to get a piece of it while you still have that "window". Dump that performance art crap and fucking ROCK OUT DUDE!
Rebuttal: It should be pointed out that Sue is a friend of mine, for over 20 years. That's part of the problem here - with these kinds of friends, why worry about enemies! I would think that any artist anywhere could count on some sort of "blind" support from their friends, not enough to lose complete perspective, but enough so that they can confront the real battles in the marketplace with a smidgen of confidence, knowing that behind them are true believers.
But what are you going to do?
Otherwise, this argument is vague and all over the map without detailing a whole lot of specifics, and much of it is personal opinion. Am I truly "bitter" or am I merely "cynical". By definition, there's not much of a difference. Hell, I could even argue that I'm "passionate". In any case, my gut feeling is that truly bitter people don't spend a lot of time looking at the future as they do grumbling about the past. Are there truly great bands playing now? Some say yes, others say no. And I have to think that one part of Sue's criticism comes from a July 8 post with the headline "Saving You The Trouble Of Digesting My Sour Grapes" and the other from a July 2nd post called "Shaking Kids Down For Their Lunch Money." Since Sue doesn't cite any actual passages, it's hard for me to tell. In any case, I reviewed both posts and although I make lots of strong, disputable points, in both cases I am lashing out at a process and an institution and not, to my knowledge, begrudging any band their success. In one, I bag on the Warped Tour for coming through my hometown and not inviting me, and then provide documents showing why we perhaps should have been. In the July 2 post, the bulk of the tirade (or perhaps manifesto is a better term) details how foolish the recording industry is, how their problems are more of a result of their processes and misfires and then I chide artists as a group, at least the ones who are carping about getting "compensated" for their work, when in reality it is only those artists with current or past market value who have that right. These artists are not speaking for me, that's for sure, or anyone else in my shoes.
Now I certainly don't expect people to say, "Gee, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense" and agree with me blindly. It would be nice, it would make my job a hell of a lot easier, but I expect some flak, a lot of it in fact. Still, if you're going to argue with me, I want specific citings ("We are outflanked by an industry that rewards marketing success over the much more dubious performance skills") and solid counterpoints (e.g. "Performance skills are highly valued as a marketing tool. Most bands signed to contracts today do so based on their ability to dazzle huge crowds, who then flock to the merch booth and buy T-shirts.") Please do me that favor, so I know better how to respond. Progress is only made by dialouge - I can't learn much reading my own stuff, you know?
But, on a larger scale, by beef goes well beyond individual bands. I am much more ambitious than that. The only thing that really stuck in my craw is the remark about somehow not working hard enough. That's about as much bullshit as I have ever heard and speaks to my point that the D-Squad has always been judged not by what it's done but by what it hasn't done. So we've followed a different path than others. So what. Most near all the bands from when we started, in 1984, are gone. What does that tell you? Maybe we're the stupidest band on the planet but we are still in there swinging away. Form your own conclusions. I say it's a testament to a somewhat quaint notion and traditional American value called "not giving up" which is a kissing cousin to "follow your dream". If traditional industry processes have not worked for us in the past, and if those processes are now failing with alarming regularity, perhaps it is time to go outside the conventional boundaries that separate art and commercial success and find a new model, one that embraces the new technologies of the age (without fighting against it) and one that can work for a band like D-Squad. This is being bitter? I would think that challenging the status quo would excite people, especially given that our collective age pretty much makes us a dead item on any kind of playing field that could be offered us nowadays. Fight the system! Right?
Well, call me a crank but the fact is, I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
Stay tuned.
As promised, here is a recent comment sent to My Completely Random Life which, unfortunately, "broke" the machine, and precipitated a switch to a new, superior (and typically ignored) feedback generator. In the process the original comment had to be wiped from the board (UPDATE: actually it's not, it's still there ) but I saved it and will now reprint it, in its original form:
Sue Lawler @ 5:58 AM 2003-07-29
So how come you don't ask for comments after every posting? I mean, 3rd bike on the bus, OK, get a car, man. But what about that Warped Tour thing? You keep saying you're not bitter but you sound very fucking bitter to me, and not just in your blog posting, but every time I see you in person, also . . . Stop begrudging every new band their success. They may be working at it harder than you. They may be working to make contacts instead of expecting the business to come to them. There is a lot of great new music out there, major label and indie. You should try to get a piece of it while you still have that "window". Dump that performance art crap and fucking ROCK OUT DUDE!
Rebuttal: It should be pointed out that Sue is a friend of mine, for over 20 years. That's part of the problem here - with these kinds of friends, why worry about enemies! I would think that any artist anywhere could count on some sort of "blind" support from their friends, not enough to lose complete perspective, but enough so that they can confront the real battles in the marketplace with a smidgen of confidence, knowing that behind them are true believers.
But what are you going to do?
Otherwise, this argument is vague and all over the map without detailing a whole lot of specifics, and much of it is personal opinion. Am I truly "bitter" or am I merely "cynical". By definition, there's not much of a difference. Hell, I could even argue that I'm "passionate". In any case, my gut feeling is that truly bitter people don't spend a lot of time looking at the future as they do grumbling about the past. Are there truly great bands playing now? Some say yes, others say no. And I have to think that one part of Sue's criticism comes from a July 8 post with the headline "Saving You The Trouble Of Digesting My Sour Grapes" and the other from a July 2nd post called "Shaking Kids Down For Their Lunch Money." Since Sue doesn't cite any actual passages, it's hard for me to tell. In any case, I reviewed both posts and although I make lots of strong, disputable points, in both cases I am lashing out at a process and an institution and not, to my knowledge, begrudging any band their success. In one, I bag on the Warped Tour for coming through my hometown and not inviting me, and then provide documents showing why we perhaps should have been. In the July 2 post, the bulk of the tirade (or perhaps manifesto is a better term) details how foolish the recording industry is, how their problems are more of a result of their processes and misfires and then I chide artists as a group, at least the ones who are carping about getting "compensated" for their work, when in reality it is only those artists with current or past market value who have that right. These artists are not speaking for me, that's for sure, or anyone else in my shoes.
Now I certainly don't expect people to say, "Gee, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense" and agree with me blindly. It would be nice, it would make my job a hell of a lot easier, but I expect some flak, a lot of it in fact. Still, if you're going to argue with me, I want specific citings ("We are outflanked by an industry that rewards marketing success over the much more dubious performance skills") and solid counterpoints (e.g. "Performance skills are highly valued as a marketing tool. Most bands signed to contracts today do so based on their ability to dazzle huge crowds, who then flock to the merch booth and buy T-shirts.") Please do me that favor, so I know better how to respond. Progress is only made by dialouge - I can't learn much reading my own stuff, you know?
But, on a larger scale, by beef goes well beyond individual bands. I am much more ambitious than that. The only thing that really stuck in my craw is the remark about somehow not working hard enough. That's about as much bullshit as I have ever heard and speaks to my point that the D-Squad has always been judged not by what it's done but by what it hasn't done. So we've followed a different path than others. So what. Most near all the bands from when we started, in 1984, are gone. What does that tell you? Maybe we're the stupidest band on the planet but we are still in there swinging away. Form your own conclusions. I say it's a testament to a somewhat quaint notion and traditional American value called "not giving up" which is a kissing cousin to "follow your dream". If traditional industry processes have not worked for us in the past, and if those processes are now failing with alarming regularity, perhaps it is time to go outside the conventional boundaries that separate art and commercial success and find a new model, one that embraces the new technologies of the age (without fighting against it) and one that can work for a band like D-Squad. This is being bitter? I would think that challenging the status quo would excite people, especially given that our collective age pretty much makes us a dead item on any kind of playing field that could be offered us nowadays. Fight the system! Right?
Well, call me a crank but the fact is, I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
Stay tuned.
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