Good Morning Everybody!

I have a hard time waking up, especially on Mondays. I thought I would start posting videos every week to help get the juices flowing! Please respond with a musical selection that moves your blood!

On Thursday I promised to have this damn thing ready by Friday night. However, the fickle finger of fate intervened, and made that impossible by occupying my time with other matters for the last 3 days. And like some of my better moments in life (i.e. like cramming a semester's worth of organic chemistry inside my brain in a 7 hour period), I have somehow pulled it together to give you this... Crap.

The standard warning for those of you who've never seen one of these before: If you would like to see some of the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip and odd crap making the rounds, keep reading. However, if you are easily offended by half-nude men & women or other such things, you might want to stop right now.

You've been warned.

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon with the I-Pod on "shuffle."  In rapid succession it gives me "A Song For Europe" by Roxy Music, "China My China" by Brian Eno, and "Japan" by Be-Bop Deluxe.  And that gets me to reflecting about all the great songs in my collection that have geographical locations in the title.

The High Sierra Music Festival

will kick off in Quincy, California on Thursday, July 3, and run through Sunday, July 6.  It is

"...a world-class event, due in no small part to the caliber of our audience. We take great pride in knowing that our audience knows how to enjoy themselves while respecting their neighbors and the community.

On-site you'll find incredible music on five daytime stages and in five late night venues, a fun-filled Kidzone, quality art and crafts, delicious food and drinks, great microbrews, ice, an ATM machine, a General Store offering sundries and essentials, Yoga, Pliates and dance classes, and much more. Quincy, CA is a small town with a great natural foods co-op, and outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, rock climbing and swimming."

The music festival is held at the Plumas-Sierra County fairgrounds, the "cleanest and greenest" fairgrounds in all of California.

Update:  here's a Wikipedia link telling more about the festival.

Does neo-soul fit into the elitest, late drinking, prius driving, college educated, environmentalist, profesional label.

How much is a song worth? This should-be-simple question is fundamental to an ever-more complex intellectual property debate. Normally, to determine how much something costs, you go to the store and check the price tag. Easy.

But millions of us now buy songs off the Internet, where there is no "easy." The old Napster-style scheme, essentially music for free, is supposedly shut down. But new outlets have sprung up, hundreds of MP3 sites that all want your credit card. But ... again, "how much?"

Apple's iTunes emporium originally called the tune at 99 cents. And they still dominate the market. Rhapsody, a chief competitor, fooled with 49 cents, but settled at 89. And, exploiting international copyright loopholes, a huge number of Russian and Ukrainian sites have appeared with high-quality MP3s available anywhere from nine cents to 20. Most famed of these is probably AllofMP3.com, which was sued for 1.65 trillion dollars by the RIAA. It simply morphed into MP3Fiesta and/or MP3Sparks. Some ex-AllofMP3 customers report that they found their accounts still in good order when re-directed to the new sites. Over 1.5 trillion bucks is big, scary money, unless you don't have to pay it.

I just read Brad Miller's wonderful piece at TPM, "Does McCain Understand The Music?", in which he points out that our diplomacy is built around a very narrow set of interests and perceptions:

...Anne Applebaum observed that we usually place our trust in world leaders for "their excellent English or their preference for Scotch whiskey, their interest in 'doing business with us' (in the Saudi case), or in liberalizing--even democratizing--their countries (as in the case of Bhutto)," when those very "western" qualities "are precisely what some of their countrymen hate most about them."

He goes on:

We've made enormous misjudgments because we acted on our estimation of leaders, not an understanding of the societies over which they presided. Norman Mailer claimed, perhaps obnoxiously, to have asked President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, "Don't you understand the enormity of your mistake--you invade a country without understanding its music?"

It's true.  I want to talk about this for several different reasons.  Follow me below the flip...

I imagine many of you, like me, are a bit tired of the ridiculousness of day to day politics, and might like a short music break.  Well, one of my favorite groups combines great music with an enlightened and progressive anti-war message that I thought many of you would enjoy (you may know him already)

I present for your enjoyment "Michael Franti and Spearhead," below:

As you know, most Americans get all their knowledge about the world from television.  However, I find that too limiting.  So I have decided to expand my knowledge of the world to what I can glean from brief conversations with employees at offshore call centers.  This way you can get a first person account, without having to go to through the mess and fuss of actually going there.

Today's country: The Phillippines

...and lived to tell about it.

In a post about Nixonland, Tristero suggested that to really understand that era, you need to watch the DVDs of the Beatles' appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show under clinical conditions.

Let's be clear, this is not about the Sunday gasbags.

It has nothing to do with Russert.  Or George Snuffalaguffus.  Or any of those guys.

It has to do with David Byrne, the former lead singer for Talking Heads, who has more brains and class in his little finger than any of those guys.

Here is what I'm wondering:  what the fuck does the chopping motion he does down his arm in as he sings, "Same as it Ever Was", "Once in a Lifetime" Mean?

I've been trying to find out most of the weekend!

It's at about 3 minutes in this.

Same as it ever was .....

Same as it ever was .....

Same as it ever was .....

Same as it ever was .....

Same as it ever was .....

Every hobby has its own panoply of bizarre-looking tools, machines, and items that a non-hobbyist can't possibly understand by just picking it up and looking at it.  Why should music be any different?

No matter what instrument you play, you probably have a few of these items that non-musicians can't identify.  Maybe you have some stories you like to tell about them.

See the mystery item?  Click thru to find out what it is.  If you already know, maybe you can share something even harder to identify.

My first diary ever, and sorry that it's not substantial, but I think we could use some fun and more light-hearted stuff to end the day.

Oh my, it's been a good bit since I've done one of these diaries. It's always like piecing together different sources for a term paper with this damn thing, and over the past two weeks the phone would either ring or something else would come up that required my attention. And so without further ado, let me see if I remember how to do this.

The standard warning for those of you who've never seen one of these before: If you would like to see some of the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip and odd crap making the rounds, keep reading. However, if you are easily offended by half-nude men & women or other such things, you might want to stop right now.

You've been warned.

As some of you know my life has been full of stress as of late. I have decided that I wanted to post a topic light and silly. If light and silly is not your type of topic then I am sorry.

But hey... it has a poll!

<More after the break>

Although this diary is loaded with songs from an earlier time of war, I thought I would kick it off with an excerpt of an ABC interview with Neil Young, from 2006.

We trusted the administration after 911. Everybody did. And they misused the trust.

Listening to the interview was a good reminder of the role that music and the arts can play in our social conversation, and prompted this round-up...

The songs on the other side aren't necessarily the 'best' or most representative songs of protest from the Vietnam era, just what I dug up to suit the mood I'm in. Feel free to add any other protest songs in the comments, from that time, or any other, if so inclined.

It's been too long since I ran one of these!  So let's call this one a Fathers Day Present, either to you, your dad, or that special Dad to someone else in your life.

How did your dad affect your view of music?  Did he play an instrument?  Did he teach you to play?  Did you learn because of him?  In spite of him?  In memory of him?

Strum through and I'll share my story, then you can share yours.  Happy Father's Day!

OK, let's enjoy ourselves with this one.