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March 24, 2006
TV everywhere
I walked into the breakfast room at the Holiday In Express. There was one other couple in there, and I asked them if they’d mind if I turned off the TV. It was tuned to the Oxygen chanel, showing a movie, and no one was watching. No problem, said the couple.
As I ate my cereal, a hotel maid walked in, turn on the TV, tuned it to Fox News, and started to walk out of the room. She caught my eye, noted my distress, and - I don’t remember exactly what she said and what I said, but rather than turn it off she switched it to The Weather Channel.
I just wanted to scream, “DO WE HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS NAZI PROPAGANDA?” She must have seen that on my face anyway.
(I caught a little bit of Fox News Channel in the breakfast room yesterday, too. The anchor-fellator was on w/ Dan Bartlett, and he began his interview by joking that he had asked Helen Thomas to write his hard-hitting questions. Then, of course, he went on to ask Bartlett how these goofy liberals have the nerve to suggest that the president is “dangerously incompetent.”)
It got me to thinking. Is it in thye hotel worker’s job description to turn the fucking TV set on? Does her church or NRA chapter or someone else encourage her to tune the damn TV to Fox News?
Never mind the greater question of why there has to be a fucking TV set on and blaring crap in every public space?
Posted by gans at 5:28 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
March 20, 2006
Family values
Jon Carroll, in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, offers a very angry and personal take on the latest front in the culture wars: “gay adoption.”
According to the Catholic News Service, “Catholic Charities of the Boston Archdiocese announced March 10 that it will stop providing adoption services rather than continue to comply with a state law requiring no discrimination against gay and lesbian couples who seek to adopt…. Prompted by a similar issue arising at Catholic Charities of San Francisco, a top Vatican official has said Catholic agencies should not be involved in adoptions by same-sex couples.”
To which Jon Carroll responded:
Last year the Ford Motor Co. started to buy ads in several publications aimed at gay readers…. Then the company got assaulted by the American Family Association, a creation of the Rev. Donald Wildmon, a clever right-wing agitator with a hate-based agenda. So Ford announced that it would stop advertising in gay publications.But then, whoops, Ford reversed its reversal and said, never mind, it was going to advertise in gay publications after all. So then a representative of the AFA announced that it was reinstating its boycott. “We cannot, and will not, sit by as Ford supports a social agenda aimed at the destruction of the family.”
What a vile sentence. What a vile sentiment. What overbusy, underbrained worms these people must be. I am not yelling.
My older daughter is a lesbian. She is also the single mother of an adopted child, working to make and sustain a family with jaw-dropping tenacity. I am a member of that family, but she is the head of it. The idea that any part of her social agenda involves the destruction of the family is insulting and stupid. She adopted a child, which means that a child who would not have had a home now has one. It means that a child who would not have rested safely in a mother’s arms now does so. These are real family values, not the poison spouted by these thoughtless, gossip-mongering abominations.
All over this nation there are gay and lesbian families working hard to make a life for themselves and their children. I know a few of them. They could have done it the easy way, stayed in the closet and decided not to endure the hassles of having children, but they didn’t. They wanted a family. They wanted a lover and companion to share their lives with, and they wanted children to love. And for this they get insulted by cretins….
The people who hate America are the members of American Family Association and its ideological fellow travelers. They’re the ones who do not believe that all people are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. They’re the ones who believe that this country was founded on hate and fear; they’re the ones who want the hate and fear to continue.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s out picketing a funeral of a gay veteran.”
“Will he be home in time for the flute recital?”
“Your father is very busy, dear.”
I mean, render unto me a break. If your family feels so threatened by my family that you think you have to organize a boycott of a car company, then your family has problems my family can do nothing to solve.
In other news of religious evil, a man is on trial in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity. He faces the death penalty if he doesn’t reconsider.
Trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah told the BBC that Mr Rahman, 41, would be asked to reconsider his conversion, which he made while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan. “We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him,” the judge told the BBC on Monday. But if he refused to reconvert, then his mental state would be considered first before he was dealt with under Sharia law, the judge added.
Posted by gans at 8:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 19, 2006
Groucho's Sunday
Posted by gans at 6:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
A report from outside the USA
A friend pointed me to a story on jambase from Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident) and Chris Berry (Panjea), who are traveling in Africa, and this quote in particular:
I highly suggest all of you leave the Unites States at some time soon to remove yourself from the “psychic net” our government has craftily woven over our psyches. I imagine that I am preaching to the converted, but when you get away to see other parts of the world, it becomes painfully obvious how insane our way of life is in the US. Even though most people will take you at face value when they meet you, it’s obvious that the whole world is watching us in disbelief and amazement at the seeming apathy that has stricken our society. The concept of not voting is pretty foreign to most South Africans. I try to persuade the people I meet that there is a silent revolution happening in the States that is gaining strength, but the more I say it, the more I realize that it’s time for all of us to really stand up for what we believe in and manifest change. I know that many of us are doing exactly that, and I just want to let you all know that I will be here to help in any way I am able.
Posted by gans at 12:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
Michael Peter Smith
The following is distilled from several WELL posts by my friend and musical buddy Rik Elswit (and posted here with his permission, of course). It concerns a house concert by Michael Smith that we both attended on February 26:
Listened to Michael Smith, a wonderful veteran singer-songwriter from Chicago, at a house party yesterday. The party was a gift to our friend Drew from [his partner Jen], and a bunch of us chipped in in secret to get Smith, Drew’s favorite singer-songwriter, for it - but it wound up being a gift to us all. It was an absolutely superb afternoon of music and story, and it was a pleasure watching a man who has spent his life mastering his craft.Mike Smith, like his pals John Prine and the late Steve Goodman, comes from a school of early-’70s singer-songwriter craft that was a huge influence on me. One of its most important features is the ability go go from hilarious to poignant to stunningly sweet all in the space of three songs. Not a speck of cereal in that show.I’ve known of the guy by word of mouth for over 30 years, but this was the first time I’d actually heard him, and I was just floored by the quality of his songs and his low-key, deceptively simple, delivery. The songs are rich, complex, melodic, and dripping with great lines, with an incredibly diverse set of references. You have to bring some awareness and a college education to the party to catch them all. In fact, I felt flattered that he assumed I’d done the required reading. He has a novelist’s ear for character and nuance, and all of it is backed up by a very subtle, simple-sounding, but actually quite complex guitar style rooted in swing, blues, and urban folk.
It’s rare to be as captivated as I was by that performance. But I shouldn’t be surprised: Mike Smith, Steve Goodman, John Prine et al. pretty much established the paradigm of singer-songwriterdom for me when I was a pup in he early ’70s, although Smith did so indirectly via Goodman (who recorded “The Dutchman” and “Spoon River,” and played other Smith songs in concert). But I hear a lot of Goodman in his sound and manner, which is to say there was a lot of Smith in Steve, too.
Noting that Smith used nothing but the standard guitar tuning in the performance we saw, Rik added: “I learned a lot watching him. He had this great way of moving up the neck using open E, A, and D strings as pedal tones to hold it together. I do this a lot in E and A. He taught me how to do it in G, using A and D as pedal tones when he’d be playing V chord (D) forms up the neck on the high strings.
I bought both of the CDs Smith had for sale, and I guess Rik did, too:
The more you listen to it, the more you hear. At first I was lulled by the apparent simplicity and it took me a bit of time to hear the musical, lyrical, and rhythmic complexity and the stylistic variety. My current fave (they change with the time of day) is “The Ballad of Elizabeth Dark” which sounds to me like what you’d get if Springsteen went to college in the late ’50s-early ’50s. And my language maven wife just loves his wordplay.Listening to that album after having seen the show underlines, for me, the level of craft involved. Michael Smith has a well-honed act based on a character he’s invented and inhabited, also named Michael Smith. It’s like watching Leo Kottke. The first time I saw him I just enjoyed the show. But after having seen him several times I could see the structure of what he was doing and I developed a new appreciation of just how much work was involved in crafting the artifice. And I liked him even more.
It’s nice, getting a present for somebody else’s birthday.
The two CDs I bought have some overlapping content, but both are entirely worthwhile. I guess if you’re only going to get one, I’d start with Live at Dark-Thirty. But Such Things Are Finely Done is well worth the money, too.
Here’s a sample of the lyrics of “Zippy” (which is on both CDs):
Sun zips up sun zips down
Zippy little clouds zipping over Zippytown
Palm pilots pagers beepers
Faxes and such
Folks in Zippytown are down with
Keeping in touch
Barreling in their SUVs passing on the right
Zipping through the zippy day
Zipping through the night
Zippety-zip they get the jobs and money
Zip they have the kids
Zip they in the coffin
Folks is zipping up the lids
And speaking of lids manLife gets pretty zippy
When you quit doing weed
Posted by gans at 10:44 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 15, 2006
Jamie Raskin gets it right
I love this quote from Jamie Raskin, a candidate for State Senate in Maryland:
“Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn’t place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”- Jamie Raskin, testifying Wednesday, March 1, 2006 before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in response to a question from Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs about whether marriage discrimination against gay people is required by “God’s Law.”
Thanks to Jennifer Powell for calling it to my attention.
Posted by gans at 9:12 PM | TrackBack
Disaster on the Garden Isle
My wife and I have spent a lot of time on Kaua’i, and we love the place and the people we know there.
An earthen dam broke yesterday, causing a flood that has washed out the Kuhio Highway, destroyed several houses, and taken several lives.
Here’s a collection of photos from the newspaper The Garden Island showing the damage.
Our friend Don Mussell, who works on KKCR’s transmitter and other equipment and spends a lot of time on the island, has been keeping us abreast of events.
Bad news from the north shore today. A reservoir failed this morning at around 5:30 AM after 4 inches of rain fell in a few hours overnight. A wall of water 15 feet high and 1/2 mile wide came roaring through the Waiakalua area. 7 people are missing, 4 houses were washed away, Highway 50 is gone (washed away, asphalt, rock, roadbed, everything) for about 1/4 mile between Kilauea and Moloa’a. Power lines are down, and the coast guard has been offshore looking for survivors. The water broke through an earth dam that has been in place for over 100 years, after overtopping it sometime in the early morning.KKCR radio is on the air providing updates as they become available. One of the rescue staff is on the air this morning, after being on standby all night. The north shore of Kaua’i has received a huge amount of rain in the past week, around 25 inches from reports I have seen.
Posted by gans at 5:05 PM | TrackBack
You GO, Molly!
Molly Ivins gets my vote again:
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight….Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the political system back from the moralists and corporatists - well, the answer might be contained in the question: we need to drive a wedge into the unholy alliance between the kleptocrats and the theocrats. All they really hav in common is a desire for power and influence.
If we could get the progressive, humane side of the political ledger to grow some balls, we might get somewhere. But I despair.
Posted by gans at 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
More musical adventures!
Last week was really great fun, all of it. Started with the Waybacks recording session at KPFA (to be broadcast April 19 on KPFA), then continued through the Hotel Utah gig w/ Henry Kaiser et al., and then two nights at the Freight w/ the Waybacks. And just to put a cherry on top, on my drive home from the Freight Saturday night I finally solved a problem I’ve been cogitating on for months: a couple of lines in “Shove” have been bothering me, and I sorta knew what I wanted to do but hadn’t come up with the right replacement til now.
Original:
So many things I’m glad to know
Are contained within those pages
All our bonds are self-imposed
It’s the wisdom of the ages
Changed to:
So many things I’m glad to know
Are contained within that text
If you deal with what you’ve been through
You can deal with what comes next
My opening sets at the Freight were ludicrously short: the house manager told me I could have 15 minutes - 18 tops. So I did three songs on the first night, and managed to squeeze four in on the second. I also sat in with the Waybacks - “That’s Real Love” (Stevie Coyle loves this song!) on Friday, “Jackaroe” on Saturday. Got a great reaction to my solo sets and my sit-ins, sold more than $100 worth of CDs, got two pages of new names for the mailing list.
The Utah sets were underrehearsed, but everyone had a fine time anyway. And all these players - Josh Zucker (bass), Josh Kaye (keys), and David Phillips (pedal steel) - are interested in playing more gigs together. I’m hoping to keep Adam Perry in the loop on drums, but he’s committed to The Love X Nowhere and may not be able to make the time. I love Adam’s playing, but I’m starting to like the idea of having a band that plays around here regularly and that might entail having a drummer who isn’t so tightly bound to another project (and let’s assume things are going to get busier and better for Adam’s main squeeze). He’s my first-call drummer until he says otherwise.
There’s a new club in Oakland called The Uptown. Dan McGonagle is working there, and he wants me to play. Might do another night with Henry there in April.
I’ve also confirmed May 13 at the Larkspur Theatre Cafe, with the Rowan Brothers. We’ll share a band - Josh, Josh, and David, plus Jimmy Sanchez on drums - and we’ll all be together in the middle for a Rubber Souldiers set of Beatle songs. We’re going to make a big deal out of this, pushing for coverage in the Chron etc., so I hope some of you will come out and help make it a success.
Last night I went to Kathi’s All-Star Jam at the El Rio in San Francisco. David Phillips is in the band, Train Wreck. The rest of the band are not people I’ve heard before, but they hold it together pretty well behind a parade of mostly amateur musicians. Ben Fong-Torres was there, singing two parody songs he wrote for the occasion (I gather he does new ones every month). I followed Ben, and I took maximum advantage of the band and my own skills by choosing the very familiar “Willin’” and “Pancho and Lefty” - both of which I have made my own over the years. I got a lot of good feedback after my performance, and I wound up singing harmony and playing acoustic guitar behind several other players, too. Kathi has a great posse of regulars, and she runs a very welcoming jam.
Also of note this week: I, along with Angie Coiro and her producer Lisa Lindelef, took a Pro Tools lesson from Gregg McVicar on Monday. Thus inspired, I finally got my Pro Tools system updated and configured, and I started playing with it in my studio. I’ve recently rearranged things in the house so I can rehearse, compose and record in the office, and now I need to do some more rearranging so I can connect the Pro Tools rig, the guitar rack, and the studio monitors and all the outboard gear I’ve got in the closet.
Posted by gans at 10:20 AM | TrackBack
March 9, 2006
Walter Keeler (1957-2006)
We lost Walter this morning.
Walter Keeler was one of my “imaginary friends” - not imaginary at all, really, but one of the people I met and stayed in touch with primarily online, in The WELL. We had musical tastes in common, which is always a good basis for friendly dealings, and over the years I came to appreciate Walter’s deeply humane political and social views and his sharp wit. He was shy and quiet in person, but articulate and insightful in the text-only realm where we interacted most often. In political discussions (I am one of the moderators of a media forum in the WELL), Walter often summed up my own thoughts handsomely and incisively.
Walter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last fall. He started a blog to keep his friends and family apprised of his treatment and his state of mind. The first entry was posted on November 18, recounting the events of November 7. As you read the journal, I think you’ll get a sense of Walter’s nature: a sensible, well-adjusted soul who faced his struggle bravely and wisely.
Having been through my wife’s battle with cancer - which had a much more positive outcome - I can only begin to imagine what Walter’s widow is feeling today. Helen Rossi is as sweet and funny and wise as her life partner was, and her account of Walter’s struggle - posted on the WELL and not readable from the web - was a model of clarity and compassion.
Theirs was one of those marriages that clearly worked. I’m sending all the love I’ve got to you, Helen. Life must go on.
Walter, We’re going to miss you.
Posted by gans at 9:22 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Gans gigs March 9-11
Tonight! Thursday, March 9, 9:00 pm
THE INVITATIONAL
Henry Kaiser - guitar
David Gans - guitar and vocals
David Phillips - pedal steel guitar
Josh Kaye - keyboards
Joshua Zucker - bass and vocals
Jeff Blair - drums
The Hotel Utah Saloon
500 Fourth Street, San Francisco
Tickets are $7 at the door
Friday and Saturday, March 10 & 11, 8:00 pm
Freight and Salvage 1111 Addison Street, Berkeley
Tickets are $17/50 advance, $18.50 at the door
Posted by gans at 8:54 AM | TrackBack
Let's vote in South Dakota
Molly Ivins on the South Dakota anti-abortion law:
The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. THEY will decide. Women will do what they decide.[…]
The South Dakota Legislature has made it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion under any circumstances except to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or to preserve the health of the mother. Should this strike you as hard cheese, State Sen. Bill Napoli, R-Rapid City, explains how rape and incest could be exceptions under the “life” clause. Napoli believes most abortions are performed for “convenience,” but he told The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer about how he thinks a “real-life example” of the exception could be invoked:
“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl, could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”
Jack Mingo, by way of today’s Jon Carroll column, suggests a way we can help:
Cultural ornament Jack Mingo (who was helped in his scheming by Erin Barrett) describes the situation: “Fewer than 400,000 people (in South Dakota) voted in 2004. We can assume that not all of them are boneheads. After all, only about 60 percent — 232,545 — voted for GWB. 149,225 voted for Kerry. A recent senatorial race was lost by the Democrats by only about 500 votes. If we could convince a mere 90,000 of the Californians, New Yorkers and other Blue Staters who have long been grousing about overcrowding and high living costs to move there, we could make a huge impact on national politics.”[…]
Using facts gathered from Minnesota Public Radio (Minnesota abuts South Dakota on the east and has some interest in the politics there), he outlines his fiendish plan. The quotes are from MPR; the ideas are from his brain:
1. You don’t have to move to South Dakota to register. You just have to vacation there long enough to have a temporary address at a campground, motel or RV park. “In Hanson County, population 3100, more than 800 RV’ers are registered. Most have never stayed in South Dakota for more than a few weeks.”
2. You don’t have to be in the state when the vote takes place. “In South Dakota about 70 percent of the RV’ers registered to vote have requested absentee ballots.”
3. It’s legal. The law was deliberately written to make “RV voters” possible. It’s a law apparently designed to help the Republicans, but we can make it blow up in their faces.
4. The tactic I’m suggesting is already being used on a smaller scale by the Republicans. In Minnehaha County, says County Auditor Sue Roust, “there’s a slight Democratic edge in registration. Whereas with the RV’ers, it’s Republicans 46 percent, Democrats 27 percent.”
[…]
It’d take some work, but think of this: If we were successful, girls in South Dakota would no longer be required to ruin their lives because of one bad decision they made when they were 16. That would be a thing.
Posted by gans at 8:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 8, 2006
Many musical adventures
Interesting times! Monday night I rehearsed at Henry Kaiser’s house for our show at the Hotel Utah Thursday. Also in the band is David Phillips, a terrific pedal steel player with whom I have wanted to work for years and years. I ran into David a couple of weeks ago at a benefit - he was in Lorin Rowan’s band, and I sat in and we had a fine time. We both agreed we want to work together, so I invited him to join us at this Hotel Utah gig. (Also with us will be drummer Jeff Blair, keyboardist Josh Kaye, and bassist Josh Zucker. Drummer Adam Perry had to withdraw due to a commitment with his main gig, The Love X Nowhere.)
Yesterday I confirmed a show with Lorin and Chris Rowan - adding them to a date I had already reserved at the Larkspur Cafe Theatre: May 13. We’ll do our “Rubber Souldiers” Beatle set in between my set and the Rowan Brothers’ set, and we’re going to share a band that includes Phillips, Josh Zucker on bass, and possibly Jimmy Sanchez on drums. This is exciting!
Yesterday I participated in a recording session in Novato with Ned Lagin and the great guitarist Terry Haggerty! Ned is a keyboardist who hasn’t played in public in 30 years - he was a computer music geek at MIT in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and he made very adventurous record called Seastones with Phil Lesh (and played electronic music with Phil between GD sets) in the mid-’70s. He’s been developing some new works and also reworking Seastones for a while now, and I am very happy to see him moving forward with all of this.
The session with Ned and Terry was great fun. We just plugged in and played for about three hours. Turns out Ned was imposing some structure, but I just went with the flow - and apparently I passed the audition.
The two of them have been getting together once a week for the last six weeks or so, and bringing me in was the next step in the evolution of what Ned expects will be a live performing ensemble. We’ll do this again soon, and Ned wants to move it to a recording studio and bring in a rhythm section.
After Terry went home, Ned and I played some more.
I was very happy with my playing in this free-form context, both with and without the loops. This was a great circumstance in which to use loops w/ other players - both Ned and Terry were very good at locking in w/ the loop, and I was in turn wise about when to drop the loop and let the live musicians evolve the jam.
AND I have an idea for future solo loop performances that I am very excited about: using both the old Loop Station and the new Echoplex! The Echoplex can be programmed to have multiple loops, and to automatically go into RECORD when you stop on the “next loop” button and the next loop is empty. I’ve done some experiments at home with this - I can cycle through two or three sections and add new material to each jam at will. That’s one great new capability - but what I can do with the other, separate loop device is something I have done in live situations a couple of times before (includng that thrilling jam out of “Psycho Killer” a couple of Invitationals ago) is make a loop that is not synchronized - record some swelling, sustained overdrive sounds for an arbitrary period, then add more swelling notes to create a sort of cloud of sustained sounds w/ shifting harmonic content. In a solo show, I start with that and then begin a more conventional loop jam in the Echoplex.
The trick w/ that will be getting out of the cloud loop. To do it properly will require a mixer, and tapping into my signal path in a couple of places. That way, I can fade the cloud jam out manually while the other loop continues.
Also this week: I am opening for The Waybacks at the Freight and Salvage Friday and Saturday nights. (Tonight we’re recording a Waybacks set at KPFA for broadcast in April, when their new CD comes out.)
Posted by gans at 10:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 3, 2006
My Letter to the SF Chronicle
This letter appeared in today’s San Francisco Chronicle:
A thankless job
Editor — Poor, dear, Mike DeNunzio, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party (Letters, “Pelosi’s dodge,” March 2). It’s his job to defend the indefensible, and so in Thursday’s paper — as so many times before — Mike issues his canned denunciation of those who fail to denounce those who denounce his failed president.
Get a clue, Mike: We who oppose the vicious, ignorant agent of corporate evil who heads your party are supporting the troops and defending America.
DAVID GANS
Oakland
Posted by gans at 9:15 AM | TrackBack
The Invitational w/ Henry Kaiser 3/9/06
Henry Kaiser, guitar
Jeff Blair, drums
David Gans, guitar and vocals
Josh Kaye, keyboards
Joshua Zucker, bass
Adam Perry, drums
Thursday, March 9, 9:00 pm
The Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth Street, San Francisco
415-546-6300