Category Archives: update

After composing the previous post I opened up a Cecil Taylor CD (Trance), lent to me by my friend Peter Riccio.  I read the liner notes, written by Erik Wiedemann in 1963… As I got to the end I could not help but laugh:

“If a man plays for a certain amount of time – scales, licks, what have you – eventually a kind of order asserts itself.  Whether he chooses to notate that personal order or engage in polemics about it, it’s there.  That is, if he is saying anything in his music.  There is no music without order – if that music comes from a man’s innards.  But that order is not necessarily related to any single criterion of what order should be as imposed by the outside.  Whether that criterion is the song form or what some critic thinks jazz should be.  This is not a question, then, of” freedom” as opposed to “non-freedom” but is rather a question of recognizing different ideas and expressions of order” – Cecil Taylor to Nat Hentoff, Downbeat magazine, February 25, 1965

Everything is running a bit late this year, so my recap of the NHIC gig is also late.  Short of it: it was a very cool night of music.

nhic:atlas (Bob Gorry pronounces “NHIC” as “NICK”… go figure) was a blast to play with, and was in the odd position of having a CD release show with 50% new lineup and 80% new material.  But hey, this isn’t a commercial thing, so no worries.  We had Mike Paolucci (Sandy knows him as “octopus boy” due to his fluid style behind the kit) on drums and he was a swingin’ rock of funky rhythm.  Gabriel Kastelle is always a joy to play with as well.  I love an in-tune violin or viola, and he has great pitch.  The Gorry-Asetta-Matlock front end from the original Atlas lineup was intact, and sounded great.  The swingin’ new rhythm section, and new blood in the violin-family chair brough a totally different feel to the group.  Where the original nhic:atlas was leaning toward a formal chamber-jass feel, the new lineup was more funky and leaning more toward a propulsive feel.  On my end, I was playing my Tacoma acoustic bass guitar in place of the original upright bass, and it filled that role like a champ.  No feedback issues, and the deep, resonant sound fit the arrangements like a glove.

NHIC Electric was the new kid in town, bringing a familiar two-guitar NHIC setup to the stage, but we had Peter Riccio on drums.  One thig is for sure, among his many talents, he has a very deep knowledge of jazz, and especially free jazz and hard bop.  I know, because most of the stuff I heard as a kid, I heard out of the record collection at his house.  That one factor gave the group a feel that I haven’t heard in the past.  Not that Peter doesn’t know world music, or prog, or polyrhythmic complexity, but he brought some strong jazz drumming to the party.  My rig was fretless Zon Sonus 5, Line6 M5, and Radial Tonebone handling the switching and fx loop for the M5.  I also ran loops off my iPhone to handle some synthy noises.  It has been a while since I have run effects at a show… and it was a weird feeling, but it was a reminder that I *can* do it if I want to deal with it.  The simplicity of playing bass-cable-amp (and often not running an amp) can be seductive.  I did enjoy blasting some delay and some phaser action in small doses.  I can’t wait to hear some rough mixes of this band.  Should be a hoot.

Thanks to NHIC, firehouse12, and the folks who came out to support the gig.  It was very cool.  I hope to be sharing soem audio and video in the coming months.

nhic:atlas is bob gorry, guitar; steve asetta, saxes; adam matlock, clarinet, accordion; gabriel kastelle, viola, erhu; michael paolucci, drum kit; pete brunelli, acoustic bass guitar

NHIC Electric is: bob gorry, guitar; jeff cedrone, guitar; paul mcguire, soprano sax; peter riccio, drum kit; pete brunelli, fretless electric bass

Just a few tidbits about how “Washington” and “Wall Steet” are fucking this country, and but good.

Job Creators: this is as cynical and retrograde as “Clear Skies Initiative”.  The actual problem with the economy is hidden directly behind this crystalline piece of “douche-speak”.  Actually, these captains of industry are laying people off, and avoiding hiring here in America, because they first and foremost need to keep the profit-wheel turning.  Not just normal profits.  Profits that increase every quarter.  The irrational ever-expanding economy concept at the granular level.  So when (as mentioned here in a previous post) a company that relies heavily on American military spending, like Sikorsky, needs to keep the profit margin rolling, so they can continue to “perform” and their executives can continue to reap performance-based bonuses… they lay off thousands and move them onto the American Unemployment System!  Uncle Sucker provides a backdoor “entitlement” to Sikorsky, as opposed to the “front door” they were using* back in the “aughts”.  Meanwhile, those unemployed people can no longer participate in the economy at large to the same degree, causing other businesses to slow down, layoff, and you have the makings of a true economic Domino Theory clusterfuck.  This is happening on a national basis, and thousands of businesses are complicit, but I am just using Sikorksky because they are so transparent in their efforts.  In Conclusion: Thanks, “Job Creating” Doublespeak Assholes!

When Occupy Whatnot has the time to figure out what is really going on… maybe they will connect a few dots and make some concrete points.  So far I see a lot of vague generalities about the economy, but nothing that you can really hang your hat on.  My feelings are: keep it simple, keep it direct, don’t pull punches, and don’t let yourself get co-opted by a group that is part of the problem (Move On, I’m looking at you)

* What Changed? Back in the heady days of say… George W. Bush… it was easier to just divert the money from multiple war efforts directly to the bottom line, knowing that the GAO would never have the time or resources to figure out if you actually delivered on a contract.  You had a neutered Accountability arm of the Executive Branch, and a lot of open graft, wink, nod, repeat.  We now find out, horrors, that BILLIONS of US Dollars have gone missing in our multiple “wars” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan… who knows since the USA never actually declares war any longer.  We just deploy a bunch of taxpayer funded military resources, and an equal or greater military contractor force, and then stop answering the phones over at the Penatgon.  Seems to have worked so far.  But with the US Government actually paying attention, at least in a small way, it is safer to play this shell game.  Even if it tanks the US economy… I mean, once you offshore enough of your business it really doesn’t matter what happens here, right?

On September 11, 2001, I was on my way to Misquamicut Beach in Westerly Rhode Island.  I had come home the day before for a Monday night target pistol competition, and was headed back to join my wife and some family at a house we had rented for the week.  First, ESPN radio host Mike Greenberg mentions that a “small aircraft” may have hit the WTC… I was in the bank parking lot in East Hartford, CT.  When I came out I was in for the most surreal hour of driving, listening to the drama unfold on the car radio.  My concept of the future quickly shrunk to getting to my wife’s side, and then… the abyss.  It took a long time before I was willing to look past those events and consider any kind of future, for myself or America.

From that morning onward I have watched the United States of America undergo a transformation that I scarcely believed possible.  A world superpower enacting draconian social control measures and surveillance against its own citizens, and descending into a rhetorical hell where fear rules and reason has no quarter.  The Bush-era, I believe, will stand throughout time, as one of the darkest periods in modern history.  The shockwave of September 11. 2001 has been used to rationalize economic rape of the highest order, illegal wars, war crimes, political assassinations, and an endless torrent of social ills that defies direct assessment.  We have allowed the United States financial industry to liberate Trillions of dollars from the economy at large, concentrating it in the hands of the few.  In a recent chapter they were actually rewarded with the full faith of the US Treasury for their crimes, and allowed to keep the money that was “lost”.  The “wars” of Iraq and Afghanistan have served as conduits for wealth extraction of historic proportions.  You can debate whether you have a “war” if there was never a declaration of war.  But you would have a hard time arguing about the scale of the transfer of American Taxpayer Wealth out of the control of the United States and into the hands of pretty much everyone else.  All the while the Trillions, of dollars of US taxpayer money that should be used to rebuild infrastructure here in the US, invest in R&D here in the US, rebuild our Space Program (fer crissakes), educate citizens of all ages here in the US, provide health care for those taxpayers here in the US, and advance the domestic interests of all Americans… is being thrown around foreign countries like Monopoly money, to provide for others what we as a Nation can not (more specifically: will not) now provide for ourselves.

For a brief period of time it looked like the stampede of idiocy that followed September 11, 2001 might abate.  The election of 2008 seemed to have repudiated the Bush Doctrine, under which “his base” turned out to be the social rapists extracting wealth from the US Economy and returning nothing.  A Black American with an Ivy League education won the election for President of the United States of America, against massive social odds.   He campaigned on, of all things, HOPE.  CHANGE.   Greatness of America… A Nation that could once again set an example to the world regarding freedom.

Barack Obama had a chance to change the game.  Now he is just a player, and maybe worse, the football. He has been a huge disappointment to the people who let down their guard for a moment and believed that there was a way toward real change as a Nation. There was a brief twinkling of belief that the country that knuckled under with the Patriot Act, and made a conscious decision to be Much Less Free as a response to external terrorism, might be able to regain its course. They let themselves believe in HOPE, and they got swindled. We now have a government that would make Orwell blush, led by a master of pure concession and rationalized failure.

Instead of bringing that same full faith of the US Treasury to bear on the current economic crisis, as was done for the ultra-wealthy in the financial crash of 2007, we have a string of half measures and economizing rhetoric.  The current economic crisis is far larger, affects far more Americans, and reaches further into the future and across the globe than the crisis addressed with the TARP program.  But that program, and its siblings, was there to keep the ultra-wealthy afloat, and keeping them whole, despite the fact that they brought the crisis upon themselves through their own greed and avarice.  Were the communities, who lost Billions of dollars when their investments tanked, made whole?  Uh, no.  Were the individuals whose retirement accounts, you know… the ones that some politicians would like to use to replace Social Security… were they made whole when they lost their nest eggs?  Uh, ditto… NO.  It would be irrational, if not insane, to ignore the role of the recipient in these examples of US Economic Policy… If you are anywhere below the economic top 1% of the American public, you are fucked.  Your money is being moved into the hands of a very select few, and well, deal with it.  Some will deal better than others.

The one fact that I believe outlines the real crisis here in the Unites States, is that while real income has plummeted, unemployment has increased, home prices fall, and masses of college graduates enter the workforce behind the curve and may never catch up… Corporate profit taking remains at pre-9/11 levels.  The richest have not slowed in their extraction of wealth from the economy. Everyone else, well, their “wealth extraction: has taken a bit of a hit.  The other 99% of Americans, you know, ALL OF AMERICA, are being asked to accept a prolonged economic downturn, and prepare themselves for less return on their tax dollar with every election cycle.  Oh, no real end in sight, sorry… and you might want to take up speaking Mandarin as your next hobby.

Until that inequity is brought into balance, and the American system is allowed to work for the majority of Americans, the game is fully and truly lost for virtually all of the citizens of the United States of America.

Have A Nice Day!

This past year has been a rollercoaster for organized labor across the globe, and my little corner of it in Connecticut has not been spared.  I saw some disturbing, if not shocking, events unfold as the rollecoaster ride went along.  Make no mistake, this most recent ride is just a uptick, since these things happen all year, every year, but usually with less frequency.  Here is a small selection of rants regarding the most bizarre of the bizarre:

Anti-Union Union Leadership: We have seen a variety of people run for elected union office, and win, despite being openly anti-union and anti-organized labor.  They continually fail to recognize the most basic structures and ground rules, but have sown seeds of dissatisfaction among enough people to carry the day in a voting process.  The recent backlash against SEBAC is a great example because SEBAC did nothing more than what it was mandated to do by the Connecticut General Assembly, but somehow there is traction to the idea that SEBAC is supposed to be a membership organization, which it is not.  These same pathetic dopes are now trying to sell their fellow union members on a plot to be represented by a new union, with no experience in collective bargaining, no political presence in CT, and bylaws that look like Pol Pot wrote them, and all because SEBAC did what it has done for 17 years, and followed their charter…

“Race To The Bottom” – you know that you have social power when you can make people vote against their own self interests.  The Republican(t) party has done a great job convincing non-union workers, and even union-workers, that union jobs should pay less because private sector jobs (supposedly) pay less.  They are not asking for better pay and working conditions at their own jobs.  They are asking that others get less so they feel better about not keeping up with inflation.  While they are being led in this race to the bottom, the same characters are raising the standard of living of the mega rich by making sure that corporations have the freedom to send work offshore, pay less here in the US, provide less benefits here in the US, raid pensions here in the US… and so on.  The game is so brazenly transparent that it is shocking that it works, but it does work.  Nobody calls in to convicted felon John Rowland’s radio show to ask what they can do to raise their own standard of living… ever.  If they did they would be hung up on.  No.  They call to complain about how they heard that someone in a State job retired with a living pension… Not once mentioning that the radio host has two such pensions, concurrently.

And last, just for balance, Blind Pro-Union Sentiment: I have been consistent that I do not believe that organized labor is right for every sector of the workforce.  In public service it serves to protect the employed from the rapidly shifting political whims of the political arm of the State.  That is a fact.  Having a defensible contract provides stability to public services during times like the ones we are in now.  Times when political expediency would carry the day, and services and jobs would be slashed.  Instead of seeing every job as a potential organizing target, I think we would be better off focusing on the investment made by the public in the services provided with their tax dollars, and the costs involved in throwing that investment away.

So that, is just a stream of consciousness ramble through a few points of personal interest.  I wish that the people in State service that complain about  the cost of government services while drawing a government paycheck would admit that their position is not defensible.  Maybe they could help their cause and find a job in the private sector.  That would be fair.  Frustrated by the parliamentary system and the statutes of the government that employs you?  Take a real stand and find a job that doesn’t rely on those structures.  And if you are not in a union and are not making enough money, seeing regular raises, accessing affordable health care, or watching your pension drained by a heartless corporation… stop bitching about unions and do something about YOUR situation.