jzb – Page 22 – Zonker.net

July 7, 2016

“Lungs” by Florence + The Machine (No. 96)

Yesterday I said that we’d be getting into some newer music, and I do like to keep my promises. Coming in at 96 on the list is Florence and the Machine‘s Lungs released in 2009.

Not sure where I first heard about Florence and the Machine, but (according to Last.fm) the first time I checked it out was in 2011. It’s been a staple ever since.

Lungs seems an appropriate title for Florence and the Machine’s first outing. Vocalist Florence Welch has a hugely powerful, and beautiful, voice, She expertly moves between delicate passages and a soaring and almost operatic delivery.

[youtube https://youtu.be/UtnxsIBVm5s]

The music, of course, is not too shabby either. Lungs has some straightforward rockers that will get you up and dancing. The appropriately named “Drumming Song” is a propulsive, exultant song.

“Kiss with a Fist,” which Welch says is not about domestic abuse, is a barn burner with a massive hook.

The music on Lungs is dense, dynamic, and meant to be played loud. This isn’t headphones in the library music, this is “blast it through the largest speakers you can find on Saturday morning” music. It also makes for amazing driving music, if you have better resistance to the impulse to speed than I do.

[youtube https://youtu.be/1SmxVCM39j4]

If you haven’t been introduced to Florence and the Machine yet, I’d recommend looking for Lungs at first opportunity. It’s a wonderful, amazing album.

July 6, 2016

“Deep” by Peter Murphy (No. 97)

We’re on the fourth cut into the top 100, and haven’t gotten out of the early 90s yet. Don’t worry, we will shortly.

Yet again, I have MTV to thank for discovering Peter Murphy’s Deep. Clearly, my tolerance for cheesy videos was as high as my ear was keen for great tunes. “Cuts You Up” was an alt-rock staple when this album was first released. Silly video aside, Murphy’s baritone, sampled viola, and driving bass really made this track an instant favorite. Continue reading ““Deep” by Peter Murphy (No. 97)”

July 5, 2016

“Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf (No. 98)

I deliberately posted the first entry in this series without having the entire list finished. Mainly because I knew that once the list was closed, I’d keep finding albums I had missed or questioning choices. 100 albums? Only 100? Yeesh.

Bat Out of Hell, though. It had to be on this list, somewhere. It has been part of my musical life for damn near 40 years. When Bat Out of Hell was first released, I was just seven years old, and heard it all over the place.

“Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night),” and the epic “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” were staples on the local classic rock station. I think I snagged my first copy of Bat Out of Hell as one of my Columbia selections, one of eight cassettes for a penny. Was I disappointed with the non-radio cuts on Bat Out of Hell? Nope. Not even a little.

Bat Out of Hell is the Blazing Saddles or Blues Brothers of albums. While neither movie is, strictly speaking, the most artistic film, if I am flipping channels and find one of them playing… I stick around until the end. Pretty much every damn time.

Likewise, Bat Out of Hell sucks me in every time. “Paradise” is glorious anthem of 70s rock excess, with a few nods to Little Richard for good measure. “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” wrote the book on power ballads long before they were played out.

Meat Loaf was never able to deliver a follow-up half as good as Bat Out of Hell, though the “sequel” was a nice effort with some decent cuts. Still, one legendary album is more than most artists manage in their career.

Interestingly, Meat Loaf’s magnum opus was produced by Todd Rundgren, who produced at least one other masterpiece on my list. Oddly enough, Rundgren’s solo work has never really excited me that much – but he must be one hell of a producer.

July 4, 2016

“Prison” by Steven Jessie Bernstein (No. 99)

The second entry in my top 100, Steven Jesse Bernstein’s Prison, takes a sharp and dark turn away from the late-80s poppy techno vibe of Information Society.

Sometime in the early 90s, after learning about my love of Charles Bukowski’s work, and Henry Rollins’ books, gave me a dubbed cassette of Prison. If you like those, he said, you’ll love this. And he was right.

The album opens with a jazzy, bassy beat. It’s a few seconds before the nasal, sardonic voice of Bernstein begins the spoken-word delivery of “No No Man (Part 1),” painting a street scene with drunks, hookers, and longing, but also remembering the innocence of just watching the stars as a boy.

My favorite track, “More Noise Please,” is the anthem of anyone who’s worked a night shift or been unable to shut out the world’s noise just to get some sleep:

Myself, I could not sleep last night 
and I could not close the window, either. 
I tried to tear the window out of its frame and put it in a closed position, 
banging and ripping with a hammer and a screwdriver, 
standing on the window ledge in my socks, three stories up. 

But the window wouldn't come out, the factory was screaming 
and the trucks were rumbling and the whole world was praying for silence 
and it was up to me to shut the window and 
I couldn't get it down. 

I was just making more noise.

Bernstein was a poet, not a musician. The project to record Prison started as a live performance at the State Penitentiary Special Offenders unit in Monroe, Washington in 1991. The music was added separately by Steve Fisk, for the Sub Pop label. Bernstein didn’t live to see the album completed – he committed suicide by stabbing himself in the throat at the age of 40.

Prison is dark, but beautiful. It’s a masterwork of a career cut far too short.

July 3, 2016

“Information Society” by Information Society (No. 100)

Things have been a little too quiet on the blog front lately, so I decided I needed a project that would motivate me to write a little bit each day.

So I decided to compile a list of my “desert island” albums. I’m not claiming these are the best 100 albums of all time, even by my own reckoning. But these are the 100 that, if I could only have 100 CDs (remember those?) or 100 albums on my media player, it’d be these.

The goal? 100 posts in 100 days with at least 100 words (probably more) about each album.

First up? The eponymous major-label debut album from Information Society.

Picture the days of the MTV heyday, when the cable channel (brace yourself) still played music.

I know, I know. Boggles the mind. But that’s the backdrop for Information Society. My first introduction to the band was in a friend’s car, might have been the full album, but I think it was a “cassingle.”

While Information Society‘s cutting-edge late-80s synth-pop may sound dated, it’s undeniable there’s some strong song-writing underneath the samples and drum machines. Somehow, Information Society manages to be poppy, a little bit funky (James Brown samples), and nerdy (chock full of Star Trek original series audio samples) all at the same time. It’s as if Depeche Mode went on anti-depressants and a sci-fi binge at the same time.

The singles, “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy),” “Walking Away,” and the Abba cover “Lay All Your Love on Me,” didn’t take over the world – but all hit the top 40, keeping Information Society safely out of the “one-hit wonders” club.

With three strong singles, you might expect the rest of the album to be filler. In this case, the only track that failed to stand as a decent song in its own right is the short, lurching “Make It Funky.” It’s not a great track, but it fits as a come-down after the nearly eight-minute sprawl of “Running,” which ends with a fair amount of intensity.

Nearly 30 years later, I still find Information Society as listenable today as it was in 1988. Not the band’s best effort, but it stands out as an album that doesn’t fit neatly into any category.

April 27, 2016

Unisex bathrooms aren’t the answer

One of the popular responses to the outcry over HB2 has been to suggest that unisex or single bathrooms are the “answer” or a “middle road” (or “common sense”) to avoid conflict over transgender folks using the bathroom that best fits their gender identity. Really, it’s a dodge that doesn’t solve anything socially, and is logistically and fiscally unrealistic.

First, I would love it if all public spaces had private, single-person bathrooms. Not because I’m in any way uncomfortable with transgender folks — but because I’ve never really loved public bathrooms to begin with. Who wouldn’t prefer to be alone when using the bathroom? (And don’t even get me started on urinals…)

But that’s not the reality we have today. Retrofitting the facilities in businesses, schools, and other public spaces would be extremely expensive. Folks who compare ADA compliance to providing bathrooms for transgender folks are ignoring the fact that ADA compliance was about physically allowing people to use facilities, not about anyone’s “discomfort” over sharing a bathroom with someone who needs additional assistance.

Your “discomfort” is your problem

More importantly, giving in to the pressure to segregate transgender folks or force them to use facilities that are not suited to their gender identity holds us back from full acceptance of transgender people.

All of the “think of the children” and “we’ve got to protect our women” arguments are bunk. As many other folks have pointed out, women are far more at risk from heterosexual males that present and act as men.

The drummed-up scenario of sexual predators dressing up as women to stalk women in restrooms rings false for several reasons:

Transgender women are basically being labeled sexual predators without any supporting evidence — and, in fact, plenty of supporting evidence to suggest that transgender women are more at risk of being assaulted if forced to use a men’s room.
Sexual predators aren’t going to be stopped by a law that says they have to use the “right” bathroom any more than they’re currently being stopped by all of the existing laws against sexual assault now.
As has already happened, people trying to guess a person’s sex has led to false positives — that is, identifying someone born female as a transgender woman and attempting to have her arrested for using the “wrong bathroom.”
If everyone in the bathroom is behaving appropriately, there should be no issue. If they are not, then *that* is the issue, and the sex/gender of the person doesn’t really figure into it.

If you are still “uncomfortable” sharing a bathroom with someone who is transgender and using the facilities appropriate to their gender identity, then you are the one with a problem. That should not impact their life at all.

This is no different than people who wanted separate facilities for black folks, and in the long run I’m confident that transgender folks’ rights will prevail. Why is it so urgent, then, that we overturn HB2 and move forward on this now?

Why this needs to happen now

Some folks want to slow this down, and give people time to adjust to the idea of equal rights and acceptance for transgender people. Social change has, historically, been a slow process. Why can’t we just slow down a bit and assume that transgender acceptance will just happen just like other equal rights movements?

Because we’re talking about people’s lives, and asking for transgender folks to bear the brunt while some members of society get their heads straight is profoundly unfair and wrong.

Because society is already particularly hard on transgender people. Their suicide rate is much higher than average. They are sexually assaulted at a higher rate than anyone else. It’s harder for transgender folks to find jobs, and generally just to be accepted for who they are.

Put yourself in the shoes of a transgender man or woman, being told that they have to use the wrong facilities because other people are “uncomfortable” with their presence. Worse, imagine hearing the people who try to paint transgender people as sexual predators — and then to hear them being taken seriously!

Repealing HB2 won’t fix this overnight, but letting it stand is just wrong.

We should be strongly against HB2 and other laws that enable or cause discriminatory situations against transgender people. Segregating bathrooms just perpetuates the idea that a transgendered man or woman is less than anyone else. That it’s OK to be “uncomfortable” with another human being who has done nothing wrong but express the identity that they are comfortable with. It isn’t OK, and we shouldn’t be making laws that support it or defend ignorance.

October 13, 2013

Autumn Is Your Last Chance

Perfect song for an Autumn Sunday. One of my favorite Robyn Hitchcock songs – and that’s saying something, really. He has an amazing body of work, but this is quiet and beautiful little song that always catches my ear when it’s on.

I chose a YouTube video of him playing the song live, rather than a “perfect” clip of the song with only the album cover. Continue reading “Autumn Is Your Last Chance”

August 16, 2013

[Review] Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism

More than 100 years ago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a black man named Ed Johnson was dragged from his jail cell and taken to the Walnut Street Bridge and lynched. That Johnson was almost certainly innocent, and that he was already condemned to die by hanging, mattered not at all to the mob that wanted to see “justice” done swiftly, and resented the federal government’s intrusion into the state of Tennessee’s justice system.

Contempt of Court is a detailed account of the trial of Ed Johnson, the futile attempts at appealing to state and federal courts to save his life, and the subsequent decision that opened the door to federal oversight of state courts.

It would probably surprise many people today to learn that it was generally not believed that the Bill of Rights applied to the states. That is, it was not assumed that states had to abide by the Bill of Rights — courts held that the rights against unreasonable search and seizure, the rights against self-incrimination, etc., were protections against the federal government only. Thus, a man like Ed Johnson tried in state court had no protections or guarantees of a fair trial granted by the federal government.

Written by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips, Jr., Contempt of Court is an extremely well-written and researched account from the impact on the individuals involved in the trial and lynching, to the impact of the legal decisions on the rest of the country.

It is a sad fact that Johnson’s lynching was not unusual, excepting the resulting trial held by the United States Supreme Court that found the town sheriff and several members of the mob guilty of contempt of court. Curriden and Phillips take care to put Johnson’s case in context, lest the reader think that Johnson’s case received special attention because it was so horrific.

It was against the odds that Johnson’s appeal would be heard by the Supreme Court, and the contempt charges that the court levied against the sheriff and members of the mob were unique. The Supreme Court had not held a trial of the sort before, nor since.

The authors have done a masterful job of telling the story and making it engaging, without shying away from explaining the legal issues to the layperson. It paints a bleak picture of life in the 1900s south, and what it meant to a black person accused of a crime against a white person – or to be a white person who committed the sin of trying to defend a black man accused of a crime.

I give Contempt of Court very high marks on all counts. Its writing is solid and compelling. The book delivers on the promise of its title and topic, and it’s really something that anyone living in the U.S. should read.

August 3, 2013

In Which I Finally Install AdBlock

For years, I’ve resisted installing AdBlock or any other type of ad-blocking software. Not because I love ads, but because so much content is ad-supported (including content I used to write) and there wasn’t a clear way to support “free” content otherwise.

What finally drove me over the edge wasn’t an actual “ad” at all, but the affiliate network run by Taboola. You know the ones, you can’t visit many popular sites without seeing something like this:

Ads are annoying enough, but the Taboola stuff is linkbait too far. I’m not shocked to see it on sites like Newsmax, but when it started popping up on Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo, I decided I’d had my fill. (That, and the “one weird trick” ads had also just gotten too damn annoying as well.)

I keep wondering when, or if, we’ll hit the point when people are willing to pay for quality content online and obviate the need for these crap-festooned banners.

(Post rescued from the dustbin of history courtesy of Archive.org. Originally posted on zonker.net.)

June 10, 2013

Weekend Reading: “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?” and “No Country for Old Men”

Cover: They Eat Puppies, Don't They? by Christopher Buckley

Knocked down a couple of fiction books this weekend while traveling to and from Southeast LinuxFest. They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? by Christopher Buckley, and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

I’ve been a fan of Christopher Buckley since I picked up Little Green Men years ago, but he’s probably best known for Thank You for Smoking. (It may be a cliche, but the book truly is better than the film – and the film’s plot diverges pretty heavily from the novel.)

They Eat Puppies is billed as political satire of the relationship between the U.S. and China, but it’s really a farce using China and U.S. relations as a framework. It was a quick read, I got a few chuckles out of it, but it’s far from Buckley’s best work. It’s sitcom-quality humor, and makes for good light reading, but I would be hard-pressed to give it a strong recommendation. If you like Buckley’s other work and want some lightweight reading, give it a try. If you haven’t read Buckley’s other work, pick up Thank You for Smoking and save They Eat Puppies for a long flight when you really just need a distraction. (It was a great palette cleanser after finishing The Corner.)

No Country for Old Men is a quick read, but I don’t think you could call it light reading. I suppose it’s a great novel for people who find Steven King horror novels too uplifting.

On the surface, No Country is a tale about a welder who finds a satchel full of cash at the scene of a drug deal gone bad – and the unrelenting assassin who comes after the money and drugs. It goes deeper than that, though. The primary themes is societal decay, and how one person chooses to react in the face of the decay.

Having seen the movie, I was eager to read the book and get a little deeper into the characters and gather some understanding of Anton Chigurh. On that front, I was disappointed, as the book doesn’t really get into any deep characterizations or go into Chigurh’s thoughts. If you’ve seen the film, you can probably safely skip the book, unless you just really enjoyed the film and would like to relive it with a bit more detail. (I will say that the book is totally unambiguous on a point that the film is slightly queasy about showing explicitly.)

(Post rescued from the dustbin of history by Archive.org and copy/paste. Originally posted on Zonker.net.)