LoudSpeakers

I was a little infuriated today after hearing this piece on Podtech.net.  I usually find John’s shows entertaining and informative, but his most recent podcast should have been researched more.  Listen to the episode and if you feel the same way, I urge you to comment on his blog.  A correction is in order.

Here are some of my comments on his blog:

Your characterization of independent music as being comprised of “a few good artists mixed with a sea of mediocre local bar bands” before the internet is complete conjecture on your part.

“But the web has helped to promote some quality.” Wrong. It’s just made the music more accessible to people who want to hear it created and distributed without the ill intent of the major labels.

Podtech.net: InfoTalk Podcast Series

If “Everything All The Time” was released in 2005, it could have easily been very close to the top of my favorite records for the year. It’s that good.

This poor guy has a horrible flight home on Alaska Airlines where the oxygen masks deploy and he chooses to blog about it.

Negative comments regarding his blob post and experience were found to be from IP addresses associated with Alaska Airlines. This is a PR nightmare on the cusp of getting worse.

I specifically say, “that didn’t do it for me,” because surely someone enjoyed the hell out of Illinois, the most recent Sufjan Stevens record, but I can’t listen to it without a gagging sensation coming over me. Anyway, these are the records that people seemed to go on and on about that just didn’t do it for me.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)
2. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary (Sub Pop)
3. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (Sub Pop)
4. Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh (Honeymilk)
5. Sunn O))) - Black One (Southern Lord)
6. Ladytron - The Witching Hour (Rykodisc)
7. Xiu Xiu - La Foret (5 Rue Christine)
8. Deerhoof - The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars)
9. Animal Collective – Feels (Fat Cat)
10. Jamie Lidell – Multiply (Warp)

My list has changed somewhat since originally posting it in early August. It was really because of some late year show stoppers like Jens Lekman and Great Lake Swimmers.

1. M.Ward - Transistor Radio (Merge)
2. Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures (Sub Pop)
3. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (Vice)
4. Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies And Minds (Misra)
5. Jens Lekman - Oh, You’re So Silent Jens (Secretly Canadian)
6. Spoon - Gimme Fiction (Merge)
7. Deadly Snakes - Porcella (Paper Bag)
8. M.I.A - Arular (XL Recordings)
9. Art Brut - Bang, Bang, Rock n’ Roll (Fierce Panda)
10. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (Matador)

Is it just me or does it seem like this is the year of lists? I typically shy away from reviews that assign points to music on some sort of scale. A 10.0 review indicates a perfect record, but the system is baseless when it’s not open and up for debate nor does it have much merit when I can predict the outcome(re-releases on the Pitchfork scale always get their due). Even the ranking systems that assign 3.5 stars seems like such bullshit. I mean 7.2 on a 10 point scale and 3.5 stars out of 5 seems so fucking precise for something that has such imprecision.

I even get a little grumpy at the big name awards shows that offer up such spectaculars as “Artist Of The Year” or “Best New Rock Band.” Last time I checked, there was no such competition that pits artists against each other in a cage match stylee blowout. This isn’t the WWF. Sam Beam’s not duking it out in the streets with Sufjan Stevens for any such award.

After that tirade, I can fully justify posting a list of records that I enjoyed the most. That’s fair and doesn’t pit artists up against each other.

I was just thinking about the words fear and greed today and then it shows up in a post by Don.  I met a very smart person a couple of weeks ago that said something remarkable to me in reference to the feelings of fear and greed in response to a question about the current state of venture funding.  “Raj, it’s the delicate balance between fear and greed.”  Indeed it is and Don elaborates.

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: Fear is temporary, greed is permanent

Mates Of State - Bring It Back
:: This is the kind of record that makes me do Rodin’s Thinker while staring out the window one minute and then spontaneously switch to head nod and protruded lips a la Jagger the next.

The M’s - Future Women
:: Though this record may sound all over the place initially, it’s beauty comes from being brilliantly stitched together.

The Minus 5 - The Gun Album
:: Good gravy maing — this is undeniable pop glory!

The Weird Weeds - This Is Not What You Want
:: I can enjoy this for the moments when it’s on, but I’m in the process of looking for music for New Year’s Eve, not for a wake.

Espers - The Weed Tree
:: Too down tempo for year-end party playlist making, but a keeper for the somber winter months ahead.

V/A - To: Elliott, From: Portland
:: I can’t help but wonder how this Elliott Smith tribute record would sound if made before his death considering some of the identifiably down tempo covers.

Paper Airplane - Boyhood
:: I can sense that there’s something here and I just need to spend more time with it, but title track, Boyhood, is a standout so far.

Love Is All - 9 Times That Same Song
:: I’m off the fence on this one and it appears I have fallen on the side of like-it-but-don’t-love-it since there are a couple of standout tracks that get my attention while the rest of the record seems to fade out of memory rather quickly.

Pearls & Brass - The Indian Tower
:: There’s some sort of metal resurgence occuring it would seem though this record doesn’t fall squarely into that category, but in either case I don’t care for their brand of it.

Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
:: I liked the record when I first heard it many months ago and it appears to have made more than one prominent list, but now that everyone else likes it I must withdraw my support for it and continue to be indier than thou.

Naval Ravikant has a great post on thinking about VC and the resources they supply.

This is the part that I can associate with:

If you want “Value Add,” that can be purchased more cheaply elsewhere - an external Board member can be hand picked and will cost a small fraction of what an expensive VC will, and comes without the Control. If you’re looking for someone to “open doors,” that almost never works. Big companies deal with you based on your merits, momementum and timing, not based on which big-shot happened to introduce you.

StartupBoy.com - Journal - VC Bundling

I spent most of the day listening to new records and picking out just the right tracks for this podcast. It was indeed an enjoyable way to spend the day. I’m off to enjoy Chinese food with my Jewish comrads at the local vegetarian joint. It’s a Christmas tradition.

The Minus 5 - With A Gun
Love Is All - Felt Tip
The M’s - Shawnee Dupree
The Weather Machines - Last Stop
Mates Of State - Fraud in the 80’s
Eric Matthews - Needle In The Hay
Okkervil River - Get Big
Ester Drang - Hooker With A Heart Of Gold
The Standard - A Curtain Drawn
Golden Smog - Until You Came Along
Shins - A Call to Apathy
Pedro The Lion - Bad Diary Day
Yo La Tengo - Tears Are In Your Eyes

To play with iTunes:
1. Download iTunes version 6 and install it
2. Select Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast, and enter this into the dialog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/internmentcamp/loudspeaker

LoudSpeakers At InternmentCamp.

Alternately, you can play the mp3 here.

With occassional idle time, I tend to wonder where I was at some given point in the past compared to the present. Where was I last year? 5 years ago? 10 years ago?

Sometime this contemplation is about more than just where I was physically —- it usually surrounds exploration of where my thinking was in the past compared to the present. Comparison of personal progress along the years is important to me too. I can’t stand the feeling of personal stagnation. It drives me up the wall to consider the possibility that I’m not progressing year over year in certain aspects of life.

Thinking about what I was listening to at some point in the past is a fun one too. I tend to associate meaningful music with meaninful events. The unique landscapes and imagery of foreign travel makes for living music videos when coupled with great listening.

In the Winter of 1995, I was listening to a lot of records from Chapel Hill, NC. Dillon Fence in particular was in heavy rotation during my visit to the UK and India in November and December of that same year. Dillon Fence’s “Any Other Way” is forever associated with the train ride from London to Edinburgh, but specifically the Firth Of Forth.

Though I made my first trip to India at 6 yrs. old, this was my first international trip by myself. I stopped in Scotland along the way to India to visit my dear friend Kelby Hutcheson in Edinburgh. We ended up roaming around the UK for a couple of weeks and spent Thanksgiving in London with a bunch of other very smart people who were in the UK for their junior year abroad.

I made my way to India from the UK to visit relatives, some of which I hadn’t seen in over 15 years. It’s strange being a first generation anything when your relatives are so far away. In today’s day of common and frequent travel, long distances are no longer a barrier to maintaining imporant familial connections.

I remember specifically thinking how strange it was to hear Indians singing Christmas carols. Christians are a minority in India compared to Hindus. The CIA World Factbook says that just over 2% of the population claims Christianity as their relgion, according to a 2001 census. “Jingle Bells” with an Indian accented chorus is something to hear in light of this!

The spread of Christianity in India is a subject for another day because the motives are insidious and the result is appalling, but the overwhelming and noticeable appearance of harmonious living amongst the major religions in South India was obvious. Sure, it’s not the same in all parts of India, but at this particular moment it seemed as if it couldn’t get any better.

Dusty streets, off-key singing of Indian accented carols, and weathered old Christmas decorations made me realize that world could get along if they wanted to — all that people have to do was do nothing.

That was the attitude of my relatives, who are Hindu, when I asked them questions about the carolers and Christmas. They were very nonchalant about the whole thing as unique as it was for me to witness.

Taken on the early morning of December 25, 1995 in Madras, India with my grandparents as I was preparing to leave India.

Me in Bahrain for a couple of days on my return trip to the US.

Kelby and I in St. Andrews, Scotland visiting a friend who was studying there at the time.

This is a must see video for anyone who’s never been to India and is remotely interested in the results of globalisation.  I’m obsessed with this subject for many reasons — being an Indian is one of the primary reasons.  The uneducated backlash of people who don’t fully get being part of a global economy is one of the other reasons.  In other words, I’m clearly motivated by my Indian heritage. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  Doing business with the world’s greatest democracy is a good thing — for everyone in the long term.

Maybe I was too young to really get an accurate litmus test at the time, but I don’t remember the movement of manufacturing jobs to Mexico creating the same level of furor that it has with technology jobs and India.  Maybe it’s the level of education of the people who’s jobs have left for India, or maybe it’s the fact that so many more people are affected due to the new world order.

Globalisation is not just a matter of Americans getting technical support and credit card questions routed to India.  Indians are quickly becoming more American-ised at a rate quicker than some are willing to accept.  Liken it to Elvin Presley and his questionable hip movements during a time when sex was still taboo.  But I’m not really over concerned with the minutia of Indian youths being obsessed with material goods and pop culture.  My concerns lie squarely with India’s poor.

Indians are changing in parallel to the rest of the world.  Americans benefit from a free market economy.  But on the other side, literally across the pond, India’s poor are being left out of the economic boom.  Things are only getting more expensive for people who already earn very little.

The Other Side of Outsourcing

If I happened to be in the military and a Christian hip-hop outfit showed up to entertain me and my brethren during wartime, I would be listed as AWOL before the show was over.

I can only imagine what their lyrics might be…

Religion and popular music just don’t mix well in my opinion.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Stars turn backs on America’s troops in Iraq

Good gravy!  If they only understood the value of application data, they would be even better.  Margins on hardware will only continue to decrease.  At least someone had enough sense to pull the trigger on the Decru acquisition.

NetApp’s Affable Aggressor

I read an article in the Nov. 24 edition of the Economist magazine regarding KR Narayanan, former President of India from 1997 to 2002. He passed away recently, but not before serving his country and his people.

He was a dalit or an untouchable as the West has come to recognize and associate the people at the “bottom of the heap” in India’s caste system. He didn’t let his second-class citizenry stop him in a society that has a well structured system of categorizing people.

Naturally, when society teaches people that they are in a higher category (or lower for that matter) of people than others they might begin to act on those thoughts. Lower-caste members of Indian society have long since been shit upon by the higher-caste members. Discriminatory practices still exist in areas that are not-so-cosmopolitan. (sound like something we’ve heard before, huh?)

It’s changing slowly though. Younger generations of Indians recognize the importance of unity amongst a billion people who are otherwise splintered by language, customs, and religion. The government is recognizing this as well. But putting laws into place is only as good as the enforcement of such. India can be a lawless place in consideration of the corrupt nature of politicians and the police. (Before angry mobs of Hindu Nationalists send me nasty-grams, I recognize that the West is corrupt as well and blah, blah, blah. Happy?)

The words class and caste sound a lot alike, but they invoke very different responses in people when heard. We use the much more mild sounding “class” when referring to people and how much they make. That’s what it really comes down to in the States: it’s your profession and how much money you have.

What makes me a little angry in reference to this and most other Western published articles regarding Indian caste is that they fail to compare it to our own caste system here in the States. It might not be called a caste system, but look no further than the neighborhood you live in to recognize that we have just such.

Americans love an underdog. And the Western media loves to incite a little rah-rah spirit in us when portraying the seemingly inhumane conditions of an otherwise backwardly depicted place. The resulting depiction of Indians and Hindus in Western media tends to be at the fringe and weird, even in the more intellectual rags like the Economist.

Yes, there are very poor people in India. Yes, they have to do the work that others who are wealthier and more educated do not want to do. Yes, they live in situations that most would otherwise choose never to step foot into.

But that’s not really that different here in the States, is it? Let’s be honest. You drive through a “bad neighborhood” during an odd hour and get scared. You drive past “bad people” and get a little anxious. We choose to live amongst our peers. Can you imagine living next door to someone who’s substantially less educated and in a completely different tax bracket? Not likely. And neither do Indians.

The lines in the American caste system are harder to identify because it’s really merit and money that count. (Unless of course, you live in the South where many more variables are added to their equation.)

American also love a good trainwreck. As long as it’s not their trainwreck to deal with.