Cellphone Focus

There has been a lot of talk among educators about how to reach the dumb-phone addicted. This short video might be a decent demonstration. Show the little morons how staring at some brainless "tweet" when you're supposed to be working is a great way to crush a brand new career before it gets started. One instructor noted that, after explaining his "no electronics in class" rules, he simply explains that "If I see you staring at your crotch and smiling, you're gone." AJ could have used a little of that tough love.

This was AJ Clemente's first (and last) day on the job. In fact, I'd imagine his hopes and dreams of being a television broadcaster probably went down the toilet with his over-priced, under-disiplined education. On-line, since he won't be on screen anytime soon, Clemente said, "Unfortunately KFYRTV has decided to let me go. Thank you to them and everyone in North Dakota for the opportunity and everyone for the support." In response to some comments about his "misfortune," Clemente followed that up with "I'm a free agent. Cant help but laugh at myself and stay positive.Wish i didnt trip over my 'Freaking Shoes' out of the gate."

I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't obviously a brainless little rich kid. He has a degree in something-or-other from West Virginia University, a state diploma mill with the usual low education standards we've come to expect from the southeast. What do you want to bet that school hands out A's at the usual 70%-of-all-grades rate? Literacy is, clearly, not one of WVU's strong points; either is a decent work ethic.

To illustrate the near-complete breakdown of society, a variety of morning-moron shows "invited" this idiot on to national television to explain how his tiny brain works. Obviously, owning a television is an invitation to become mentally disabled. My wife can put up with hours of these chittering chimpanzees, but she's 3/4 deaf. I can't stand more than a few seconds of that awful noise without wanting to toss the televisions from our house (probably grounds for divorce in most states).

More Than We Needed to Know

This series of interviews proves that a whole generation of "music lovers" is so full of bullshit that it's a wonder they aren't used, directly, for fertilizer.



Kimmel's interviewer had to be having Clevon Little flashbacks, "Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so dumb!" With an audience this moronic, how can today's musicians fail to take their money?

Another Current Show: Peter Wolf Crier

This was the last show of the season and the guy, Andrew Halverson, who recorded and mixed this show knocked it out of the park: The Local Show April 7. Not only did Dave Campbell and the guys love the mix and interview segments, but the band put the show on their website, too. For the 2nd time in two years, The Current posted the whole show, interviews included, on their website: Peter Wolf Crier performs at the McNally Smith Soundbite Series. Andy gets a great credit on that page, too.

The MPR folks have been incredibly generous to my students in this project. Dave Campbell gives the engineer who mixed the show full credit, often multiple times, at least once and sometimes more often. You can't ask for a better starting point as a professional in music than to get a shout-out on the best radio station in the country.

Why Music Stopped Growing

The musical sky is falling. CD sales have disappeared and iTunes barely keeps the industry from falling off of the radar entirely. Did music stop, did people stop caring about music, or did the music business just shoot itself (starting with the feet and working upward)? I vote for the latter option.

One place where that is most evident is in concert ticket sales. Sellouts are about as common as unicorns, where they used to be expected. Part of the blame for that has to come from ticket prices, typically in the range of a working person's daily income. I was reminded of how dramatic a change this is when I attempted to nail down a date for a show I saw in Denver in 1994. I was surprised to see that the all day 1994 LoDo Music Festival, that headlined James Brown, and was previewed by the Radiators, WAR, Marcia Ball, and the Sundogs cost  between $24 and $28 and there were no bad seats. JB was at the peak of his reincarnated career, still cruising on the Livin' in America popularity bump and promoting the 1993 release, Universal James. The Radiators were also doing well, riding on the resurgence of R&B and New Orleans funk. War, of course, never fails to attract their core audience. It was an amazing day and JB's band was unforgettable. It was the last time I had an opportunity to see the King of Soul and it was as good as every other time I'd seen him. (This would be when I normally might say, "Fuck the critics, I still love Gravity." I guess I did, didn't I?)

In his intro to Behind the Glass, Volume II, George Massenburg wrote, "What happened was that in the late 1980s large music corporations were consolidated, and often bought5 out, resulting in debt requiring a great deal of cash; cash that labels of the day were hoarding after the huge success of re-releasing their catalogs on CD. Music men--people like Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker, and Bob Krasnow, among others-- were ousted, to be replace with accountants, themselves responsibly only to new managers; managers who simply saw no reason to continue old policy, methodology, and style. Among those axioms bushed aside were the importance of building an artist's long-term career and the expectation that no more than one out of 20 recordings would turn a profit. Labels' bank accounts were stripped of cash to pay off corporate debt, leaving nothing for development, let alone artist support. Projects were directed by numbers alone; gone were the men and women who made decisions from their instincts, quick brains, sincere heart, and guts." That's a pretty good wrap-up of the decline of the American Empire, let alone the reason why the music died.

Offensive Technique

In my field recording class, we recorded a 3-piece rap/hip-hop/dj sorta thing with a jazzy rhythm section. It's safe and honest to say this music s out of my normal territory. I get so little of it that you'd be fair in saying I don't get it at all. The usual simplified rhythm and shortage of musicality, based on the restrictions was typically overbearing, but I can live with that. Back in the 70s and early 80s, I recorded a collection of "poetry" performance artists in southern California and that was a similar experience: lots of angry women and upset boys cursing the bad luck of being born of educated middle class parents and suffering the usual slings and arrows of affluence. All done with a background of meandering saxophone "jazz" or electronica. Rap is more authentic than that, so I can sympathize if not appreciate. I don't love it, but I'm OK with it.

The usual black on white conflict was a good part of the act, but that doesn't bother me. Most of that complaint is true and I sympathize and appreciate that struggle. Ever present were the strings of four-letter words, apparently intended to shock either the college-age audience or the small percentage of instructors in the room. I work on my own mechanical devices and electrical/electronic equipment. I can cuss the chrome off of a Harley and strip the bare metal suitable for primer. Nothing any kid can say will come close to the noises coming from my garage when I smash a finger or drop some expensive piece of hardware. I'm ok with that.

After the show was over, the mc came back to FOH to thank us for doing the show and asked if he'd offended us with the language.

"Nope, I was offended by your mic technique, though."

It's a fact, I am not OK with that lack of skill. Design engineers work hard to design microphones that convert acoustic energy into electrical signals. It's not a simple task to accurately reproduce the movement of air into electricity and back again. When an "artist" disrespects the effort that goes into the equipment they use, I can be offended.

For some reason, a generation of modern black artists have decided to toss off the skills of 40 years of R&B and imitate a marginally talented white boy. Mic Jagger taught scores of R&R kids how not to use a microphone and that lousy technique seems to have filtered across genres into rap/hip-hop/dj/whateveryoucallit. Worse, the music they are promoting is, supposedly, all about the lyrics. Since they have banished melody and harmony, and the lyrics are unintelligible, it seems to me that what hiphop is selling is noise and attitude. Nothing new there. Teenagers have been making noise and pretending to be something they aren't for centuries.

Another Current Show: Kill the Vultures

Februrary 10, MPR/The Current and Dave Campbell ran another of the school's Soundbite shows, this time with Kill the Vultures. The student who recorded and mixed this show, Darren Prentice, did an outstanding job and David gave him well-deserved credit for the work. It starts at about 56 minutes (http://www.thecurrent.org/listen/minnesota/the_current/programs/2013/02/10/the_local_show/the_local_show_20130210. 

Milk of Human Kindness

Not much more to say about this, is there? Scott Jarrett is one of the most insightful artists I've ever known and you can never go wrong with his music.

The Perfect Application

Incredibly, someone found a practical use for one of these things. She asks, "Tell me dad, how are you managing with the new iPad we gave you for your birthday?:

Another Current Show: Chastity Brown

November 25, MPR/The Current and Dave Campbell ran another of the school's Soundbite shows, this time with the incredibly talented Chastity Brown and her band. The student who recorded and mixed this show, Joe Kimple, did an outstanding job and David gave him well-deserved credit for the work. It starts at about 19 minutes (weirdly, right after Funkytown):



The story of the whole show can be seen here http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/11/21/chastity-brown-soundbite and heard here:

Making Music from Scratch

While American music school students whine about not having the right pitch-correction plug-in, a non-vintage Mexican-made Strat, or having to suffer with the indignity of small audiences, these students are creating music and community with "recycled instruments" (instruments made from landfill trash):



On the technology side, give a kid a computer and you might end up with something either surprising or terrifying: "We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."