Everything Comes Down to Numbers

I'm not sure why this statistical breakdown of the requirements of Madonna's "Sticky and Sweet Tour" seems so appropriate. All spellings and notations are straight from the press release:

MADONNA'S STICKY AND SWEET NUMBERS
100,000 Feet of electrical cable
3,500 Individual wardrobe elements
1935 Model of Auburn Spedster Car brings Madonna and dancers down stage runway
600 Pieces of Luggage for Tour Members and production staff
350 Tons of Equipement Travel from Venue to Venue
120 Powder Puffs
100 Pairs of out-of-stock fishnet pantyhose in old-style weave purchased for Madonna via Ebay and small local dance shops
100 Pairs of Knee Pads
71 Guitars for Madonna and band on tour
36 Different designers contributed to onstage wardrobe of Madonna,
band and dancers
28 Performers on stage during biggest numbers
16 Caterers prepare meals for travelling party
12 Travelling trampolines used by Madonna and dancers for warm-ups
10 Large Flight Cases of Medical Supplies
9 Different hydraulic lifts used as part of the stage show
5 People change Madonna in precision timing in between songs (lucky them)
5 Keyboards on stage for Kevin Antunes, Musical Director
4 Large freezers carry ice packs for Madonna and dancers
4 YSL Lipsticks will be used by Madonna by end of tour
4 Minutes to Save the World (we only got)
3 Romanian Gypsy Musicians perform with acoustic instruments
3 Shu Uemura eyelash curlers travel on tour
1.5 Minutes - Shortest time required to change Madonna's costume
1 Chiropractor
1 Masseuse
1 Set of Swarovski crystal ear phones for DJ
1 Playroom for Madonna's children at each venue

The Creedence Question

The Creedence Clearwater Revival catalogue has been reissued and I've just finished listening to it - easily done since the albums are about a half-hour each. Even if you take into account that some John Fogerty riffs were pretty similar, it's still an impressive feat: six albums in under three years, and all are at least good. Yeah, you skip through Pendulum, but there's a song or two I'd skip on all of them except maybe Green River.

The question that the liner notes for the album hints at is why Creedence wasn't bigger. Why isn't the band beloved? So many good songs, so many hits, such a distinctive sound, but somehow, that hasn't translated into a stronger legacy. If you know the band's story, maybe you chalk it up to a band that was hard to love as personalities, but for me, it's Fogerty's inability to sound dark. For all of the apocalytic imagery of "Bad Moon Rising," the music is still a hoedown and sounds just as emotionally burdened as he does on "Travelin' Band," "Fortunate Son" and "Hey Tonight."

Maybe it was a physical limitation or perhaps it was a conceptual one in that he wanted to be successful too badly to cast songs in darker, less commercial lights. Whatever the reason, CCR almost always sounds perky, and they sound perkier with time.

Voodoo 2008: the Election Edition

Here's my round-up of New Orleans' Voodoo Music Experience for Rolling Stone.com.

A few post-Voodoo observations that didn't fit:

The Bingo! Parlour was the coolest venue at Voodoo - enclosed enough to feel like an environment, but open enough that you didn't have to be inside it to hear. It was also a coherent space, where the theatrical set up framed bands such as the New Orleans Bingo! Show, the Tin Men with the Valparaiso Men's Chorus, and Quintron and Miss Pussycat perfectly. You were cued as to how to appreciate the music in the process, and the setting seemed to bring out the best in the performers. That sort of intelligence also highlights that many of the bands that played there aren't just music creators but art concepts, where the music and the theater are only parts of the whole package.

It was clear by the lack of applause of recognition and singing along that TV on the Radio has yet to penetrate the Gulf Coast consciousness.

The coolest set that 100 or so people saw was DJ King Britt's tribute to Sister Gertrude Morgan. It felt like a contemporary notion of rock 'n' roll with Britt manipulating her voice and other recordings - including Barack Obama's at one point - while a live band accompanied him. "Power" had dub's boinging echo chamber at its heart, while the next piece was a tech-savvy second line. The DJ wasn't just a guy to scratch along to band compositions or spin samples; he was a part of the band and a part of the collective music-making process, and it sounded more modern than a lot of contemporary rock bands on the main stages.

Erykah Badu's set sounded like a perfect merger of music and personality. It was never clear that there was a place where the person left off and the performer began, or that the person left off and the song began. As such, it was an uneven musical experience, but another two hours of expression that personal would have been fine by me.

Non-Apologies

At the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza commented on Michele Bachmann's mea culpa ad. He writes, "What's odd about this ad is that it doesn't seem to know what it is. Is it an apology for her comments last week? Or not?"

What's worse about the ad is that it isn't an apology or an acknowledgment of what she'd done. She says, "I may not always get my words right but I know my heart is right because my heart is for you." She suggests that she misspoke when she called for an investigation of anti-American Democrats in government and kept on misspeaking.

The Real America

I don't live there, so I suppose I'm not a real American, but I can't imagine anyone who lives there feels anymore love than I do right now for someone who spent more than their annual income in one trip to Neiman Marcus.

"We need more zydeco ..."

"... on the Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said last night. Prompting this basic truth - what TV show wouldn't be improved by more zydeco? - was a video she aired of a pro-Obama zydeco song, "Oui, On Peut (Yes, We Can)." You can find it here, and those interested in zydeco will recognize a band that includes Dirk Powell and Christine Balfa of Balfa Toujours, Linzay Young of the Red Stick Ramblers, Zydeco Joe, Jeffery Broussard of the Creole Cowboys, and Corey Ledet.

All the Talk

Girl Talk's House of Blues show was the most rock 'n' roll show I've seen this year, and only partially because of the music. Actually, what was rock 'n' roll about it was only partially connected to the music. At the sold out show, I was the only person I saw over 40, and I saw few obvious thirtysomethings. The crowd was young, and most everybody there was dressed to be a star. The wardrobe choices drew heavily from '70s and '80s notions of glam - a lot of shiny material - but all were more interesting and energized than the handful of people in rock 'n' roll black T-shirts and shorts.

This was the sort of show that drew the Us vs. Them line good rock 'n' roll draws, one that marks who's cool and who isn't. The line's unstable and who's cool depends on the show and the crowd, but the night was charged with the electricity of people who were all quite confident they knew something their elders and the uncool didn't. Two people in line had to ask me (with equal incredulity), "You know Girl Talk?"

Girl Talk - Gregg Gillis - doesn't actually do much onstage. He hunches over a table and rocks while manipulating the tracks in his sonic collage, but there was more genuine danger onstage than I've seen in a long time. Anyone who wanted onstage was welcome, so it was soon packed with people, some dancing, some nodding, some simply into their moment onstage. People were behind Gillis, and at one point people bodysurfed the back of the stage crowd. When he revved up the energy, the crowd onstage surged, so much so that people had to hang on to his desk so that it didn't get pushed into the audience. At one point, two legs were knocked out from under the desk and it banged to the ground with an ugly electronic fart.

As for the music itself, it brought to mind the poet Ted Berrigan's Train Ride. In the book-length poem, Berrigan described what he saw looking out the window while on a train, but he didn't provide the markers to indicate the passing of space. He simply responded to what he saw each time, giving the work a loose coherence - because things don't change that quickly - and a surreal quality as disconnected places and thoughts become connected. Girl Talk's show was a speeding train through the back half of the 20th Century, and his combinations of tracks spoke to each other in different ways. It's hard not to think of the irony of hip-hop voices matched with classic rock, the latter often the musical hiding place for those who hate rap. He also wasn't above easy laughs, at one point alternating between Paul McCartney crooning, "I love you" and 2 Live Crew shouting "We want some pussy."

But Girl Talk's most radical move was to treat all pop as equal. Classic rock, pop hits and hip-hop were equally loved and mocked, equally valuable building blocks for his music. And whether they knew exactly what was going on or not, the audience knew they were seeing something, and they were hearing inclusive values enacted. And they could put their arms around their pals' shoulders or waists celebrate a collective moment. It was a rock 'n' roll thing.

Lost in All the Shit

John McCain and particularly Sarah Palin have been asking who the real Barack Obama is, and even though Obama explained his relationship with Ayers, repeating the question implies that they know differently. That's the strategy after two years of campaigning - Barack Obama, Man of Mystery. That's the line they're pushing via robocalls, and it's the line that the foot soldiers are going with.

The first post-debate sign of what John McCain is going to focus his campaign on came on Late Night with David Letterman. When Letterman asked if Sarah Palin said Barack Obama palled around with terrorists, McCain says point blank, "yes, and he did" (this line of questioning starts at 19:23 on the video clip). No more dancing around or trying to cast veiled aspersions. McCain has gone all-in on the threat that we may be on the verge of electing the sleeper-est of all sleeper agents president of the United States. Ooooh, that Osama's good.

If Rep Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is a harbinger of things to come, the last two weeks of the presidential campaign are going to get ugly to such an extent that some souls will be stained beyond measure. Friday night, Bachmann's appearance on Hardball was a particularly loathsome, naked appeal to the fear of Obama the Boogeyman, pulling out Ayers, Wright and Tony Rezko. Chris Matthews' started down the right road with her - trying to anatomize the distortion - but it would be nice if someone would have the stick to pursue the crucial step: What exact evil was William Ayers plotting when Obama knew him? What was so dangerous about knowing him when Obama did?

Then again, if there's no answer to who Obama really is, I guess no answer and no line of questioning matters. We've gone through eight years of devaluing information and turning everything into a matter of belief. In yet another way, McCain promises more of the same.

The Louisiana Story

I'm sure other cities face the same issue in varying degrees, but in southern Louisiana, the question of how to deal with musical traditions in contemporary music is central to the art. I touch on this tension and the omnipresence of rock 'n' roll in a new piece on the Cajun band the Pine Leaf Boys in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

One bummer, though - one of my favorite stories in the piece bit the editing room dust. Guitarist Jon Bertrand told the story of walking the red carpet into the Grammys this year, when the band's Blues de Musicien was nominated for Best Cajun/Zydeco Album. He explained that someone with a white-erase board walks in front of you as you go down the red carpet so the media know who you are, and so the designated cheerers in bleachers know who they're cheering. He was so amused by the experience that when he finished his trip down the red carpet, he slipped out of line, went back to the front and did it all over again.

McCain's Tear Ducts

A lot has been made this morning of John McCain's blinking last night during the debate, but more disturbing was his grin each time he thought he'd just zinged Obama. Football coaches try to get players who score touchdowns to act like they'd been in the end zone before, and McCain could have used some similar advice.

Really, though, more telling was how often McCain ended a segment with a non-sequitur. After Obama laid out his tax plans and how 95 percent of the country would see tax cuts, McCain followed that by simply asserting that Obama wants to raise our taxes. After Obama pointed out what a small percentage of the budget earmarks make up, McCain reiterated the importance of cutting earmarks. After Obama conceded that McCain had differed with Bush on torture - but only for a while, I'll add - he voted consistently with Bush on economic policy. McCain responded by naming a number of non-economic issues where he split with his party. These exchanges allowed him every opportunity to confront Obama's plans and charges, and in these cases and many others, he had no meaningful, substantive response.

Last thought - hands down, the best debate format and best moderator.

Education Gaps

I knew of the Weather Underground, but I felt a little dumb considering the media's offhanded treatment of William Ayers' Weather Underground membership, as if this was common knowledge along the lines of the team Babe Ruth played for. In David S. Tanenhaus' Slate feature, "Barack, Bill and Me," he admits that he didn't know of Ayers' background in 1990. He writes:

I'm embarrassed to admit that when I first met [Ayers], I had not heard of the Weathermen, let alone its militant offshoot, the Weather Underground, famous from 1970 to 1975 for advocating violent protest against the Vietnam War. I had no idea the group had planned and carried out bombings of the Pentagon and the New York City police headquarters and that its members, including Ayers and Dohrn, had appeared on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

Some of this was naiveté on my part. But it was also generational. Vietnam belonged to history by the time I got around to studying it in college. The books I read were either social histories of soldiers' experiences, such as Al Santoni's Everything We Had, an oral history, or accounts of the decisions that led to the war's disastrous conclusion, like Larry Berman's Planning a Tragedy. The culture of protest and dissent, particularly fringe groups like the Weather Underground, was not part of the curriculum.

He goes on to put Ayers in the context of his work in Chicago - hardly a man of mystery - but I wonder how many people on Fox News knew of the Weather Underground prior to this non-story.

A Word from Bobby Charles

I have generally avoided cross-referencing my blogs, but since I haven't figured out how to put an mp3 up on this one, here's a link to my more New Orleans-centric blog, where I posted a new song by Bobby Charles, best known as the writer of "See You Later, Alligator," "Walkin' to New Orleans," "Tennessee Waltz" and "But I Do." "Take Back My Country" features Lafayette's Sonny Landreth on guitar, and it only scratches the surface of Charles' attitude toward politicians. For more on Bobby, go here.

What is Real?

At a point when McCain and Palin are asking, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" - a question that implies, "Someone other than the person you think you know." - it grabs your attention to run across the line, "This is the story of the real John McCain" in Tim Dickinson's "Make-Believe Maverick" story in the current Rolling Stone. Considering Rolling Stone's lead time, the phrase had to have already been written before the McCain campaign picked it up, but it mocks his effort to stain Obama and is a yet another reminder about the value of remembering who you are and what you've done before going after others.

By the way, Dickinson's story is pretty brutal, going into the up-to-now no-fly-zone of McCain's military record, which he finds to be as, ummmmm, checkered as McCain's political career.

More Cold Truth

[Note: Skip Down to "Words to Live By" and read up to this. They're related.]

More PR 101: A publicist is talking about how brutal sales are. "Record labels are dead," she says, telling people the money's in the live show. Now the audience is starting to peel off and go.

Regionalism

More PR 101: I'm going to stop doing this (I think), but this became more interesting than it was when I sat down. Another guy - damn, name signs would be useful - contends that corporate rap is dead and rap's regional again, and that once again, all business is local (my phrase, not his).

A Real Honest Moment

Still at the PR 101: A rapper from Houston told everybody to keep talking about the things they want to rap about and not worry about what the professionals - specifically the guy connected to Nas - say because they'll be out of jobs in six months. It's funny because it's true.

Now the Nas guy is trying to defend his approach along the lines of "integrity" - good friggin' luck when dealing with popular music of any stripe. Things are getting more engaged now that the Nas guy and the Houston guy are starting to get into a North/South spat, "serious" hip-hop vs. Southern "party" hip-hop. The Nas guy put his foot in it when he talked about Luke and 2 Live Crew only having one hit; everybody in the room started naming other songs that were regional hits.

Someone else has the mic now and points out that Ja Rule, Nelly and many northern hip-hop artists can't chart because Southern rappers are dominating and influencing hip-hop charts.

Another woman has people nodding their heads because she says hip-hop's dead because no one wants to be individual and be the first to do something. "Don't be afraid to be the first to do something because others think like you." She also inspired some guy who's obviously in his mid-20s to say "exactly" when she says Soulja Boy's not for her ... at 28.

Stop Making Sense

Still at the PR 101, and a guy who I think is associated with Nas - no signage on the table - is telling people that they need to be real and realize that music might not be for them. He was advocating people having something fresh to say and/or have a back-up plan. Very sensible advice, but guys at a table to my left are shaking their heads. They and most of the room know their music is strong and the people who shouldn't be making music are somebody else. This isn't an R&B/hip-hop thing; when indie artists from around the country approach me about sending their CDs for review, I tell them only to do so if their musically absolutely kills because regional genre-based artists that don't travel beyond their region are low priorities for us. They all send their CDs anyway. And none of those CDs have killed.

Words to Live By

Funny - I'm sitting right now in a "Professional PR 101" session, an urban/hip-hop-oriented seminar/educational event put on by a PR agency (don't have the name in front of me - a PR mistake, I'd say). The panel has spent much of the last half hour emphasizing professionalism, which is good. Oddly, the agency that put the event together called and mispronounced the names of two invited members of our editorial staff - referring to "Jan" as "Jane." The email press release was similarly full of vague connections, but it didn't have basic information like a schedule. The information coming from the panel all sounds right, but the shaky effort by the PR agency might be the reason there are only 25 people here.

Is It Just Me ...?

... or did John McCain often seem like an old man? At some points during the "debate," it was merely awkward - his weird attempts at jokes - but never worse than when he said yet again that Obama won't admit that he was wrong about the surge. Every time he hits that "he won't admit he was wrong" riff, he sounds like half of a spatting couple that chews on decades-old petty beefs.

Ugly in the Echo Chamber

The video of McCain and Palin appearances and the hostility and suspicion toward Obama is appalling, but it's hard to imagine that playing well outside of the party faithful. This campaign started absurdly early, so people have spent more than a year seeing and hearing Obama. Are the moderates and undecided going to really decide that this calm, seemingly measured guy is really a terrorist? An enemy of the state? Similarly, it's hard to imagine that Ayers and Wright will have any traction outside of the faithful because the stories themselves are old news having first come up months ago during the primary season. McCain and Palin don't have fresh news, or even fresh spin on them; all they have is greater volume and urgency, brought on by the nearness of the election.

Who are moderates and undecideds going to go to - the guy who has seemed on message and engaged in issues for the last year-plus, or the guy who has skittered erratically from crisis-oriented decision to crisis-oriented decision in radical steps? And will they really believe that the guy who thought Palin was a good idea, who gambled and tied himself to an economic crisis that's likely to get worse before it gets better, and who runs as an outsider despite a quarter-century in Washington when he tries to tell voters they don't know the real Obama? I think the polls are telling us the answers. Desperation is sad stench, and it's strong on him.

Word of the Week

Thankfully, the "Main Street/Wall Street" variations have worn that hackneyed phrase out already, but "pivot" seems to have become the political verb du jour, used to describe what politicians do when asked questions they don't want to answer. It seems like I heard it two or three times last week, and the Huffington Post quotes Sarah Palin using it to criticize Katie Couric's interview:

"The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed," [Palin] said. "It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too."

What should Couric have asked her? In an interview with Fox News, she said:

"In those Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars. Some of his comments that he's made about the war, that I think may, in my world, disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of the comments that he has made about Afghanistan -- what we are doing there, supposedly just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That's reckless. I want to talk about things like that. So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside the Washington elite, outside of the media elite also. I just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter and let them know what we stand for."

Evidently in Alaska, "interview" means "opportunity to say whatever shit you want to say without question."

The Truth as Comedy

It's a bad sign for Sarah Palin that Tina Fey's impression of her has become so popular. Gerald Ford admitted after he left office that Chevy Chase's sketches showing him to be a bumbler changed the way people thought of him, and George H.W. Bush says he never said, "Naat gonna do't," but the phrase and Dana Carvey's almost absurdly consonant-deficient Bush pronunciation became the starting point for anyone who wanted to mock him. In their cases, Chase and Carvey presented extreme versions of their subjects; this weekend, fuly half of Tina Fey's lines as Palin came directly from the debate. Palin at her best was the butt of a joke, and it's not a reach to expect that something radical will have to happen to keep her from being seen as anything but a version of Fey.

Getting it Right

DJ Z-Trip has posted his "Party for Change Obama Mix" and while there's a lot smart in it, there's no more perfect moment in it than when he backs a clip of John McCain speaking with "Yakkety Sax." After his frantic activity last week surrounding Wall Street and the will he/won't he debate, the image of McCain as Benny Hill seems spot on.

The Breaking Point

There are any number of basic problems with the McCain candidacy starting with someone with 26 years of experience in Washington - most of it in the party in power - running as the outsider. But the moment last night when I had to stop my TV and yell (thanks to the miracle of DVR) came when Fargo Palin told Joe Biden that sometimes the government can't solve a problem; sometimes it is the problem. How can McCain and Palin seriously run for office when they view the office and the government as a bad, intrusive thing? The current financial crisis and the post-Katrina Gulf South illustrate the product of a government driven by a self-hating ideology.

One last thing - today the press is giving her credit for having better answers and a better command of the details than she did with Katie Couric. That was easy, but would she have done as well without her notes, which you could often see her refer to? Even with them, she got the name of the commander in Afghanistan wrong twice, and her vice presidential answer was one of a few that still had some Miss South Carolina in it.

Details, Details

For the last week or so, we've marvelled at Sarah Palin's remarkable inattention to details. She can't name Supreme Court decisions, magazines and newspapers she has read, or regulatory stands McCain has taken. Contrast that with Barack Obama's appearance this morning on ESPN's "Mike and Mike." He casually and comfortably talked about the teams he grew up watching, the White Sox pitching rotation and ABC's The Superstars. It's not genius stuff, but accessing a memory really shouldn't require finals-like cramming for anyone, and certainly not for someone in one of the most important jobs in the country.