There’s a phrase made famous by Thomas Hobbes, used to great effect in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, and that is: Homo homini lupus. That Latin phrase roughly translates to “Man is a wolf to man,” and strikes the keynote to part of the powerful film War/Dance.
The film, exquisitely shot by Sean Fine and directed by Andrea Nix Fine, tells the story of a group of Ugandan children who live in a government camp that offers 60,000 refugees a semi-safe haven from 20-year war between the Ugandan government and the Christian terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. The leader of the LRA is Joseph Kony, and his overt aims are to build a Christian theocracy in the northern region of Uganda — which is home to the Acholi tribe. However, what the LRA is really doing is abducting children (who often have to kill their own parents) and forcing them to fill many roles (i.e., soldiers, sex slaves, and torturers) as the LRA attempts to build their utopia. Kony claims to be creating a society based on the Ten Commandments, but, as it’s been pointed out by many human rights organizations, the LRA routinely violates many of the commandments they claim to uphold (the first, obviously, is not to kill.)
In this war-torn environment, we meet three children (Rose, Dominic and Nancy) who live in the camp and have had to witness horrors no one should. Nancy’s father and mother were abducted by the LRA one day while working in the fields, and Nancy and her siblings had to hide for three days in the bush before fleeing to the safety of the government camp. Nancy’s mother eventually escaped from her captors and was able to briefly stay with the kids before moving to another city to find work. Nancy’s father didn’t survive. He was killed almost immediately upon capture (hacked into pieces by a group of kids wielding machetes) and his wife was ordered to pick up the pieces of her dead spouse and bury him.
Rose’s parents were also killed by the LRA and their bodies were displayed in a gruesome way. She recounted a harrowing story of a time when she was brought to the place where rows of pots were boiling with human remains, and shown the head of her mother. Throughout much of the film, there’s an emotionless shield Rose and Nancy use to protect themselves, but it certainly cracks when the girls recount their tragic loss and the alienation they feel. (more…)
Hiya, kids! Welcome back to another week of mixing fun. Sometime around 2000/2001, I was talking to a friend of mine who worked with me in radio, and we were daydreaming about radio formats we’d like to hear. I blurted out “Classic rap and new soul,” to which he said, “I like the classic rap part, but new soul? Why?” I told him the crossover was good because it would grab a larger audience who would like the melodic sounds of soul but still love the classic rap songs — some of which had very short shelf lives. Well, we were inexperienced, broke, and lacked contacts, so we never got face time with anyone who could make that format happen. But there are a number of stations now who do what we were thinking about all those years ago. Ah well, another million-dollar idea that made someone else millions of dollars. So, in honor of that, I’ll do half a mix of our dream format. Enjoy!
“Mama Said Knock You Out (Live),” L.L. Cool J (Download)
Damn! When I saw this performance on MTV Unplugged in 1991, I was just blown away. I mean, I’m not the biggest rap fan out there (indeed, my knowledge of the genre is pretty, pretty, pretty, slim), but no one can deny the sheer power of this version with a full band. I gotta say, it was tough to find this. I searched for an mp3 version but couldn’t find one. But after searching for the right software to do so, I was able to capture the audio from the video MTV streams on their site, and then clean it up with some audio software I use. It’s not the best quality, but it’s not bad. I just wish MTV would release this as a CD or download, ’cause I would pay to have a professionally mastered version of this performance. (more…)
Jon Cummings: My junior year at college I took a creative writing class in which all the students received copies of each other’s short stories and offered critiques in a roundtable format. Almost all the students were earnest, ambitious types practicing to write the Great American Novel, and most of the mistakes we made were problems of overreach – of attempting to go from zero to William Faulkner in 8 seconds. One young man, however, submitted a sweet little story that seemed to be written for – and by – an eighth grader. Its plot was simplistic, its characters were cute but vapid, its message was utterly immature – yet the whole thing was rendered successfully, as far as it went. My classmates and I sat around the table and had no idea what to say to this guy; we didn’t know for sure whether he’d really tried to write a children’s story, or whether this effort represented the full firing of his intellectual circuitry. So we gingerly danced around our critiques, piling on the patronizing praise for what he was “able to accomplish” with the “type of story he wrote.” And then, after we’d made the author feel like a winner, we dug into the next story with the kind of analytical intensity each of us would want applied to our own work.
That story pretty much sums up my feelings about tonight’s festivities. It’s a 200-word substitute for “Joe Biden was playing chess, and Sarah Palin was playing Candyland.” She announced at the outset that she wouldn’t really be participating in a debate – “I may not answer the questions the way you want me to, or the way the moderator does …” – and she proceeded to instead offer up a manic, 90-minute imitation of Dolly Parton hosting Hee-Haw, replete with winks and nose-scrunches and “darns” and “you betchas” and rambling soliloquies so full of shit the highlights in her hair faded to brown.
Neither Gwen Ifill nor Biden chose at any point to remind Palin that there were actual questions she was supposed to be answering, actual policies she was meant to be discussing. Palin’s answers were brain dumps interspersed with folksy witticisms aimed directly at the type of folks who are predisposed to want a know-nothing hockey mom rather than a dedicated public servant living in the Naval Observatory. Ifill and Biden didn’t seem to know what to make of this adorable bumpkin, so they carried on as though they were still taking part in something serious and Palin was merely the comic relief. (more…)
3rd Rail has been around for about 10 years and, according to their MySpace page, were named “Best Unsigned Band in California” at the California Music Awards. Having been in the music business for over a decade has advantages and disadvantages; for 3rd Rail, the obvious disadvantage is not having a record deal and the support of a major label to get their music heard by a larger audience, and the advantage — while not paying dividends in a monetary sense — is having reached a level of accomplishment in terms of musicianship. In 3rd Rail’s style of music (a mix of metal and hard rock), it’s tempting for bands to be louder, harder, and faster. However, while 3rd Rail is certainly loud and has a hard edge, they play as a band but don’t overplay their instruments in order to dazzle listeners with fast and furious chops. Don’t get me wrong, though — these guys certainly have the chops, and you’ll quickly discover how good they are on their new CD, Between Eleven.
Mark Mrdeza’s vocals often alternate between a metal scream and actual singing throughout the album, but it’s the rhythm section of Jorge DeBasso (bass) and Breen Reichick (drums) that adds an impressively thick and heavy underbelly to their songs. DeBasso and Reichick certainly pepper the tunes with tasty doses of spice where needed, and guitarists Mullin and Ed May add both crunchy and atmospheric textures that elevate the band’s sound in powerful ways. 3rd Rail’s style is reminiscent of Deftones on “And I You,” but the standout track on the album (for me, at least) is “Roses & Champagne” — which has some nicely layered vocals that adds an effective growl to Mrdeza’s more melodic voice.
What impresses me most about 3rd Rail is their maturity and a level of playing that creates the right amount of space to really hear the songs. For a band with this kind of talent, it’s just astonishing that they don’t have a record deal … yet. My sense is their “unsigned” status will quickly change as more and more people get to know this Bay Area powerhouse. Samples of their music are available on their MySpace page, and of course right here, but you can download Between Eleven at the iTunes store.
My political/economic socialization came during the heady days of free market zealotry. 1984 was a year when it seemed like many of my friends — who never cared for politics or economics in high school — found a new religion at college: free market economics. Fueled by the Reagan-era drumbeat that the free market can take care of itself, I had to suffer through endless panegyrics about how government regulation was snuffing the life out of a potentially vibrant economy that, if left to its own devices, would shower down the goodies of jobs, better pay, more products, and better services to the masses. The joy with which they talked about this new utopia had the conviction of an Amway convert in search of willing salespeople to join in on the pyramid scheme.
In the political realm, deregulation and lower taxation take the form of a V, where those at the top of the income bracket paid the least amount in taxes, creating favorable conditions for a surge in economic growth. It all seemed to be going as planned — even through recessions, and um, Bill Clinton’s tax increase (Shhhh!). The prescription for a good economy was to continually reward those at the top with a “less is more” approach. In good times, lower taxes. In bad times, lower taxes — and if you do, we’ll all get more in terms of a vibrant economy. One problem is that while people love the sound of lower taxes, they don’t really like it when their government benefits get cut — unless those benefits are framed in such a way as to evoke a negative response. Case in point, the term “Welfare.” I once explained to friend who was enjoying his free market high that I was on welfare (I’m such a buzzkill sometimes).
“Huh? What? Are you on food stamps?” He said.
“Nope,” I said, “I go to a state university and the good people of California pay taxes to maintain that system so I can get an education at a very discounted rate.”
“Well, that’s not welfare,” he snorted.
“Really? What would you call it, then? The free market?” I asked.
“Um no. I would call that an investment into the education of the citizenry,” He opined.
This weekend I was rummaging through my DVDs looking for a particular movie, and kept happening upon some music-related DVDs that I thought would make for an interesting mix. Um, I wish there was more to this story, but it’s as simple as that. So with that shallow intro, let’s get going, shall we?
It’s amazing how well this movie has held up — it really is like a fine wine that needs to be savored for all the little things that make it great. One of my favorite memories of This is Spinal Tap when it premiered on the big screen. The year was 1984, and the city I lived in had a large number of stoners who loved their hard rock without irony and humor. Anyway, my friend and I are in the theater laughing it up, when a stoner dude turns around in the seat in front of us and says: “Hey man, I don’t know why you’re laughing, this is a documentary. It’s not a comedy.” You can’t buy those moments — although it could be argued that I did, since I bought a ticket to the movie. (more…)
This is the first time Barack Obama and John McCain have faced each other as competitors rather than Senate colleagues, and it’s clear that the chumminess of that institution cast a long shadow over the early part of the debate. Both were cordial, often agreed with one another, and had trouble defining themselves as candidates with different ideas on addressing the problems of the country.
It wasn’t until moderator Jim Lehrer pushed the two of them to articulate their differences that we saw that chumminess start to evaporate. One of the overarching themes of Friday night’s debate was about resources and how best to allocate them. Money, jobs, energy, and even troops were the resources in question, and the politics centered on how much for whom. Tax breaks for oil companies and businesses, or tax breaks for families making $250,000 or less? Which was going to do its economic magic and help the economy recover? Trickle down or bottom up?
On energy, the two candidates were pretty much on the same page, and only differed on details of how much and when. What shocks me the most is Obama’s support for nuclear energy. Why, if he’s so keen on preventing nuclear “suitcase bombs” from going off in American cities, does he not see the danger of nuclear reactors as terrorist targets? Also, almost no attention is being paid to the huge costs to taxpayers in setting up nuclear reactors, and once they are set up, how do you deal with the nuclear waste? Yucca Mountain can’t hold it all. His pragmatism on oil drilling is understandable, but it overshadows his commitment to alternative energy — which, when McCain chimes in, makes it sound like both men don’t mean it.
Between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Those are our options in dealing with this financial mess — or so it seems if you’ve been following events since the initial government bailout of Freddie and Fannie. Our, ahem, esteemed leaders in the Bush Administration have acted in a way that’s all too familiar when there are warning signs in the air: do nothing until critical mass has been reached, then make an unprecedented power grab in the name of security. We’ve seen this before: Bush ignores a report about Bin Laden hell bent on attacking the U.S. - and one method is using hijacking airplanes and flying them into icons of western power. 9/11 happens, and what’s the response? How were we to know that terrorists would use airplanes as missiles?
The run-up to the Iraq war: a case study in scaring the hell out of Americans. You remember, right? That “New Hitler” named Saddam Hussein was this close to getting The Bomb, and if we didn’t act, well, let’s just say mushroom clouds going off in American cities would have been in our immediate future. If that wasn’t enough, just throw in a few references to 9/11, Bin Laden, terrorism and one, two, three, we have a compliant populace ready to surrender those pesky things called rights to the government — all in the name of security and overthrowing the New Hitler.
This, my friends, is crisis politics in a nutshell, and it all comes at a price. How much, you say? Well get this: we’re spending over $300 million a day in Iraq, the cost of creating our newest bureaucracy (The Department of Homeland Security) is roughly $37-40 billion a year, and now with the current financial crisis, Congress is supposed to roll over and play dead while they hand over $700 billion (perhaps $1.8 trillion) to the Treasury Secretary to bail out failing or failed financial institutions. You start to add that up, and you’ll see we’re talking about real money here. Might I add that all of this money is being allocated and spent as both candidates for president are talking about tax cuts. If it all seems a bit unreal, that’s because it is. The debt that the government is incurring won’t be paid by us here and now (because, you know, taxes are evil). Rather, it’s being pushed farther and farther into the future where our profligate debt will be some other generation’s problem. (more…)
This mix all started with an article on Billboard.com that I sent to Jason Hare. It was about how the Who’s album of cover tunes (produced by T-Bone Burnett) is on hold until … well, no one really knows. Anyway, Jason and I had a back and forth about Who covers, and the next thing I know, I have this week’s Mix Six pretty much in the can.
Do you ever get obsessed with a song and just have to hear the whole thing after listening to a snippet? Well, that’s what happened when Jason sent me a link for live version of “Dancing in the Street” the Who did in 1979. The sample is from an out of print EP called Won’t Get Fooled Again. Instead of doing the obvious and asking him for an mp3 copy, I spent way too much time trolling sites looking for the song. Alas, I came up short. But Jason eventually tracked it down through his own network of Who fans, and now you have a chance to hear it, too. Kids, what we have here is a very rare recording, so get it while it’s hot! (more…)
Hello, my Mix Six friends! I was trolling the Internets the other day and was curious about popular songs in other parts of the world. So after a few hours looking at charts, artist websites, hunting down mp3s and the like, I’ve assembled what I think are a pretty good selection of pop songs from the big world. So, shall we get started?
One of the most popular Nigerian artists, D’Banj’s music has great hooks and his presence on stage is very energetic — or so I have read. I like his sense of humor, too. Over at his website he has a great intro video that will give you a flavor of his personality. He is, after all, D’Koko master.
“Watch Out,” Alex Gaudino (Feat. Shena) (Download)
Currently the number one song in Mexico. Alex is a Italian DJ and Shena is a vocalist from the UK whose voice has been used in a number of dance songs. While I’m certainly not a guy who frequents discos (not because I don’t like to dance, but because I’m way too old for that scene), I thought this tune, while very good, wasn’t something I would peg to be a number one song. Then I saw the video and I now realize why it’s so popular. (more…)
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That story pretty much sums up my feelings about tonight’s festivities. It’s a 200-word substitute for “Joe Biden was playing chess, and Sarah Palin was playing Candyland.” She announced at the outset that she wouldn’t really be participating in a debate – “I may not answer the questions the way you want me to, or the way the moderator does …” – and she proceeded to instead offer up a manic, 90-minute imitation of Dolly Parton hosting Hee-Haw, replete with winks and nose-scrunches and “darns” and “you betchas” and rambling soliloquies so full of shit the highlights in her hair faded to brown.
3rd Rail has been around for about 10 years and, according to their 
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing 
