|
By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
August 9, 2002
Monday is a holiday in Rhode
Island: Victory Day. The holiday remains
controversial, since its origin was the old V-J Day (August 14, before
holidays were moved to Mondays) that commemorated the end of World War
II. The old name actually persists in conversation, but attempts to eliminate
it routinely fail because nobody wants to give up a day off in August.
No blog, we'll all be at the beach.
Link
to this item | Comment
The Internet Power Grab: Here's John
Ellis at Fast Company.
The great transition that is taking place on the Internet -- from free
to fee -- is now gathering speed...
None of the dotcom revolutionaries ever thought through the permission-advertising
model that might have enabled "forever free" Web content.
The Webmasters went with a broadcast-advertising model instead. White
space on a Web page was filled with billboards that no one wanted or
needed. The Webmaster's response to consumer indifference was to make
the advertising ever more invasive, which made it ever more annoying.
We have gotten to the point where "traditional" advertising
on the Web is probably an exercise in bad brand management. And so the
end of free content nears.
With free content heading toward extinction, free telephony on hold,
free sharing of private property under attack, the design of personal
computers in question, and the Free Software movement in the gun sights,
you might think that Silicon Valley would be organizing itself to fight
back on the political front. But they're late to the game. And remarkably,
they still haven't appealed to the public for support.... The Internet
army, which is enormous, hasn't been engaged or conscripted.
Ellis cites a blog called The
End of Free that chronicles that transition. Today
Steve Outing, in the group blog E-Media Tidbits at the journalism
site Poynter.org, writes of a new
companion to it: The
Start of Fee. "The new blog focuses on online payments, electronic
bill payment and presentment (EBPP), online fraud and how to prevent it,
subscription management software, etc. "
Link
to this item | Comment
The winners of the annual
5K contest are...: The aim is to create the most interesting web
page that's smaller than a breadbox... well, a 5000-byte breadbox file.
Here's the
grand prize winner, frutiger toy. "AUTHOR'S DESCRIPTION:
small browser toy based on a symbol-generating matrix created by Adrian
Frutiger. Roll over the little squares and watch the fun unfold!"
All the entries, more winners, editor's picks, rules, history etc. are
here.
Link
to this item | Comment
Intelligent life: Smart
Crow Makes Her Own Tools. Check out the video on the same page
as this story.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Betty was hungry, but the food was out of reach and
the tool needed to get at it had been swiped by a bully. What to do?
Grab some wire, bend it into a hook, and get the food. Betty may be
a crow, but she's no birdbrain. And she repeated the success over and
over, using bent wires to pull the small bucket of food up by its handle.
Her exploits are reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Link
to this item | Comment
Wanted:
Professional Hermit for Cave-Dwelling Duty: Do you think women
would be welcome?
LONDON (Reuters) - More than 200 years after they went out of fashion
in Britain, professional hermits are back in the job market.
A newspaper advertisement seeking a resident hermit for the stately
Shugborough Home in Staffordshire, central England, has prompted a flood
of replies... This is the first time the job of a resident hermit has
been advertised in more than 250 years," organizer Corinne Caddy
told the Daily Express.
The successful applicant will be expected to live in a cave on the
grounds of the estate and abandon human contact, except for scaring
visitors -- and will probably have to give up shaving and bathing as
well. ...
Link
to this item | Comment
 Candy
is dandy but liquor is quicker: A week from today, the postal service
will issue a stamp honoring one of our most accessible poets, Ogden
Nash.
More catchy, and searchable, lines are at Ogden
Nash Online.
Link
to this item | Comment
August 8, 2002
Projo's mp3 site is back: (Warning: shameless
plug) For more than two years, projo.com/music
had hosted music by southern New England bands, and linked a band's name
in the gig listings
to its tunes. On March 29, when the site switched to the Belo template,
it all broke.
Today, it's all back. New bands can again create
pages with mp3s they own the rights to, and add photos and links to
their websites; bands already on the site can finally update their mp3s
with new tunes. (If you don't know how to make an mp3, get your CD to
me with
this form and I'll rip it myself.) Readers will again be able to hear
what a band sounds like before they pop for the cover at a club.
We created this mp3 site for the readers, local musicians and fans (including
ourselves). It's all free, there are no strings. If you know of any Southern
New England bands who want to get their tunes out, please tell them to
check
it out.
Link
to this item | Comment
The dream of a common language, again:
J.D. Lasica offers
this one.
The U.N. conducted a worldwide survey last month. The only question asked
was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to
the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a HUGE failure.
In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.
In Eastern Europe they didn't now what "honest" meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.
In South America they didn't know what "please" meant.
And in the U.S.A. they didn't know what "the rest of the world"
meant.
Link
to this item | Comment
Zappa
Fest Descends on German Town: The 13th annual Zappanale
happened last weekend.
BERLIN (AP) — Living in communist East Germany, Wolfhard Kutz
used all kinds of schemes to smuggle in his beloved Frank
Zappa records: secretive rendezvous with West Germans at highway
rest stops. Hidden compartments in his car doors. Accomplices who sneaked
albums across borders.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Kutz could pursue his passion
openly, and created a fan club: the Arf Society, a reference to Zappa's
Barking Pumpkin record label.
Thanks to the group, the little town of Bad Doberan, in an economically
depressed area near the Baltic Sea, has become the unlikely site of
an annual Zappa festival. This week, the town also dedicated a bronze
bust of the late American musician in its central square...
Link
to this item | Comment
August 7, 2002
The Incredible
String Band, Scottish mystical minstrels, were among the strangest
and most original of the psychedelic bands. The instruments used on their
great 1968 album The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter -- some might
remember the opening of Cellular Song ("Amoebas are very small,
aren't they?") -- include guitar, gimbri, whistle, pan pipe, piano,
oud, mandolin, jew's harp, chahanai, water harp, harmonica, sitar, Hammond
organ, hammer dulcimer, flute, finger cymbals, percussion and harpsichord.
They played
at Woodstock. (When it rained Friday night, they balked at the possiblity
of electrocution and yielded their spot to Melanie,
who asked people to light matches so we could see how many we were; the
moment became part of history and of the movie. ISB played Saturday afternoon
after Canned Heat and were way too delicate for a moment that begged for
hard, loud straight-ahead rock.)
Now they're coming back, playing dates between April 11-28, 2003, the
first performances by the Incredible String Band in the U.S. since 1974.
Audio
and video clips are here. via Robot
Wisdom
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Hobohemians: On the rails with the new freedom riders by Ben Ehrenreich
at LA Weekly is a long, good read:
"The grizzled old hobos may be dying off, but they're being replaced
in boxcars and on the porches of grain cars by street kids, gutter punks,
dreamy anarchists and eco-warriors, train-obsessed professionals, all
held loosely together by a vision of freedom as old as the nation itself,
an America of movement and self-reliance, of mythic vastness and silence,
of discovery, escape, rebellion. It's an America that was offered long
ago and never delivered, that we're all supposed to love but not allowed
to look for, that's just around the corner and always out of reach.
"
Link
to this item | Comment
What
if America Wasn't America? is a video public service announcment
by the Ad Council supporting civil liberties. (Who'd ever have thought
we'd need one?) Quick sketch: A student asks for some books. The librarian
looks up the titles, and replies: "These books are no longer available...
may I have your name, please?" He's surrounded as he tries to leave. The
punchline: "What if America wasn't America? Freedom. Appreciate it.
Cherish it. Protect it. " via Nick
Denton
Link
to this item | Comment
The whole world is watching: "Representative
Howard Berman (D-CA) has introduced legislation that would grant copyright
holders near-immunity from the law while attacking a citizen's computer.
" Should you wish to object, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation has a page where you can send a message to your
rep.
The
Age: "American movie, recording and software executives could
be prohibited from entering Australia or extradited to face criminal charges
if a copyright protection bill before the US Congress passes into law."
Same bill.
Link
to this item | Comment
He said what he really thought, but stepped over
the line: "Former Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson writes
as "Banjo Jones" on his Brazosport
News Web site. He pens critical observations about politicians and
local media, including the Chronicle." via Jim
Romanesko
When the identity of "Banjo Jones " was revealed, the Chron
ordered
Olafson to shut down the site and fired
him three days later. (Banjo Jones wrote about local politicians whom
Olafson covered as a Chron reporter.)
It was the anonymity that sunk him.
Dave Copeland wrote
a bit nervously when this was first revealed, "I guess that's
why I blog under my real name and refrain from commenting on topics related
to my beat (steel and manufacturing). Not to mention I have my handy disclaimer
('Dave Copeland currently works as a business reporter at the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review. The opinions presented here do not represent those of
the Tribune-Review and are solely those of the author.')."
A week later, he
sounded relieved: " Looks like I'm in the clear:
Many reporters freelance, and some media outlets allow reporters
to write opinion page commentary, Heider said. Combining those with
anonymity causes a problem, (Don) Heider (assistant professor of journalism
at the University of Texas at Austin) said.
"If a reporter wanted to put a Web site up with their name
on it and publish what they thought and let people know it was them,
I think that's a whole different question as to whether you go on anonymously
and sort of become the tattletale of the county," Heider said.
Link
to this item | Comment
August 6, 2002
A
heretic in the Church of Bob
With links to a concert's afterlife
Friday night in Worcester, Mass., Bob Dylan resumed a tour
that paused May 12 in London.
Saturday he played the Newport Folk Festival.
Sunday I blogged it.
Flames followed.
"Dylan was never big on sacred cows, and probably wouldn't
want to be thought of as one," I wrote to someone whose email had begun,
"I hate Sheila Lennon." (He wasn't at the concert.)
He's "more like a living deity," my flamer shot back. "But
I'm not into that."
Uh-oh. Moo.
"It seems a living deity might care more about his people,"
Joe said tonight. " 'Course, the Big Deity doesn't seem to be paying
too much attention, either," he laughed.
As a powerful poet in a different time, Dylan did what artists
do: Writing and singing what he seemed to have been born knowing, he threw
a line to the future for a lot of people.
Saturday, Bob and the band obviously worked hard in the heat,
and long. But if that breakaway energy exploded, reviews suggest, it held
off till the final encore. If you stayed till the crowd thinned out, Dylan
bless you. (A-choo!)
"It seems like he could have given more than he gave," Joe
says tonight. "The joint wasn't jumping. And we were ready. He just never
ignited the spark," at least in the first 100 minutes.
You neglect that Dyonisian element of a concert at its peril:
The Appolonian spirit can rejoice in a sunset, but only when viewed
through a Greek Temple. The Dyonisian strives to transcend and shatter
all structures. ... eros (is) the ultimate Dyonisian energy. The Appolonian
energy is always to exclude it. (here)
Carnegie Hall by the sea with BYO seats, ya say?
On some nights, in some places on this tour, the roof blew
off, his fans write. Other times, they say, bad venues, attitude and too
much else got in the way.
* * *
Here's Daniel
Gewertz of The Boston Herald: "...The mysterious one said nothing,
as usual. And while there were a few fine moments, the show wasn't one
of his stronger affairs.
"(Dylan) sang a typically generous set, his great band switching
as usual between acoustic and electric. Dylan's recast, recadenced versions
of his oldies were about as slouchy, sing-song and silly as they get.
``Mr. Tambourine Man,'' which was sung back at Newport '65, was especially
lame, and almost unrecognizable. He weirdly merged the obscure ``Mama
You've Been On My Mind'' and the famous ``Don't Think Twice'' into one
song, the verses shuffled together like an odd card trick.
" 'Desolation Row'' and ``The Times They Are a' Changin' ''
were among the weakest, with ``Times'' done as a roughly crooned waltz.
It was ironic that Dylan was back in Newport finally singing political
lyrics, yet with a song in strange disguise.
"He got better, though..."
Sounds like we were early, coming at 3:30. Should have shown
up around 7 and caught the last stuff. Before then, a lot of us were bored
with what one comment called "Sinatra style" on a cowboy vibe.
* * *
As we left the field Sunday, heading for that bus again, we
had a weird conversation with a couple Joe knew from way back, serious
old freaks.
"Still not communicating with the audience," she said, laying
that line down with a grin.
Irony flashes among us. We've checked in on Bob again, as
we have so many times before.
Some people track Dylan's music, concentrating on the changes;
some follow him around, catching all the shows they can. Already, probably
far too many life-changing statements have been delivered by quoting old
Dylan songs, like he's everybody's public Hallmark stash.
We just drop in now and then, seein' if he's changed at all.
* * *
Paul Andrews, Why We Need Blogs,
Pt. II (scroll down)
"...Who's telling the truth? While it's possible, of course, for two people
to watch the same train wreck or fireworks display and come back with
vastly different reports, a couple of principles bear keeping in mind.
"The instinct of a mass media reporter is to pump something
up -- be promotional, in other words. This makes advertisers, editors,
and to a certain extent, readers, happy. It helps explain how we got into
the Internet bubble where thieves like Ken Lay and Joe Nacchio were dubbed
the smartest men in the world and icons of the digital age. The centrifugal
force of "positive spin" in mass media is so great that only the most
seasoned and tough-skinned reporters can resist it.
"Secondly, the difference may be simple logistics, having
to do with mass-media access. A Times reviewer stands the chance of getting
front-row, or even side-stage or backstage, viewing of the concert. He/she
will hear all the songs, and see nuances onstage that are lost to the
typical concert-goer. I don't know if this was the case here. It does,
however, seem to me that Sheila went as a typical concert-goer. So her
view is "street level," and probably the one that most accurately reflects
what the audience got to see.
"Mass media do get the great access, it's true. But the secret
handshake is, we'll give you a good ride in return. It's an ethical consideration
which, in the wake of the Internet's truth-telling and the scandals rocking
politics, business, sports and everything else today, needs to be re-examined
in newsroom policies everywhere..."
I deliberately did not request press credentials for Newport,
and I paid my own way on my own time. I'd blog it as I saw it.
I didn't have to go, didn't have to stay, didn't have to file.
The ProJo asked to include what I might write in its Sunday
lead package. It turned out to be a simulblog.
* * *
Other stories
Below are some quotes from diehard fans that may surprise
you, and links to more reviews.
Bob Dates - Schedules, setlists,
fan reviews and tour experiences.
Expecting Rain - They're logging
mainstream press reviews of Dylan's tour here.
Kaos2000 magazine -
Concert Review - Bob Dylan - San Jose Compaq Center Arena, San Jose, CA
- Oct. 12, 2001. A first-timer reviews a Dylan concert. (Tough stuff.)
* * *
Thad Williamson:
(Newport, Saturday) "I think a success overall though probably not one
of the best or even one of the better Dylan shows I’ve seen in the last
10 years."
* * *
Stephen David Walter
(Worcester, Friday) "Let me admit right now that I had high -- dangerously
high -- expectations for Worcester; much more so than for Newport the
day after. I had thought, or rather, let myself believe, that the long
hiatus and musical endeavors of a filmic variety were going to lead to
some serious upheavals in live performance. That I realize the futility
of such expectations never seems to prevent me from actually _having_
them, you see.
Well, not only was the setlist pretty well unchanged, as anyone
can see, but also the show was, I have to say, quite weak by and large.
Rough edges are to be expected of a warm-up, to be sure, yet this one
seemed rather more like a slow night mid-tour: few risks taken musically,
vocals largely noncommittal ... just an over-arching lack of engagement
with the material at hand. All those interesting developments "off-stage"
hadn't had the impact I'd hoped they might (poor pitiful me) on this somewhat
less-than-thunderous return to the road."
"There were exceptions, of course, and promising ones at that..."
He liked Newport much better:
"Speculations will abound about the hair, about the ponytail and beard,
all of which I can 100% confirm were not in evidence at Worcester. A stolen
movie prop? Or one still somehow in use? All I can advise is to enjoy
the absurdity of the best joke he’s pulled in years. It made my day yesterday,
and it hasn’t even quite sunk in _yet_, the sheer, grand absurdity of
it all.
"The show was pretty grand... Nothing spectacular in itself,
perhaps, though with some genuinely fine performances, and definitely
taking on a certain grandeur from the setting. Much, much better than
the night before, and boding extremely well, I think, for the tour that
lies ahead."
* * *
Correction
I don't write about music for a living, as a commenter assumed.
The
guy who does wrote that the intro was, "Olympic-style marching music
played through the speakers, a trumpet call and thunderclap..." without
trying to name it.
The opening flourish was the beginning of an Aaron
Copland medley and I've altered yesterday's review to reflect that. Most
of the western cluster of the audience had assumed -- erroneously, as
it turns out -- that Dylan's show opened with the theme from Star Wars.
(We were lowbrow out west.)
Link
to this item | Comment
August 5, 2002
Letter from Larry #3: Onetime New Bedford
Standard Times reporter Larry Novick and his wife Victoria left Providence
in May, retiring to Victoria's native Cape Verde. Here's his third report
on adjusting to life as an expatriate.
A deep thought as I go into my third month and step out on my veranda
to watch a half-dozen goats grazing under my papaya tree. A beautiful
woman rings the bell to sell unique crustaceans (percebes) and
her son brings the limes.
What should I be missing?
Hot-water showers? No. The water comes from a cistern on the roof and
it's never colder than 68 degrees
TV? No. We have four channels, Portuguese and French beamed and programmed
for Africa, a local channel and a wierd Brazilian channel for soap operas,
reality crime shows shot live from the favelas
(squatter settlements) in Rio and music.
Library? No, I have very little leisure time. I'm active in a turtle-conservation
program (more on this later, but Cape Verde is a major nesting place
off the African coast).
Friendship? Of course I miss the gang but here it's a real neighborhood.
Everybody watches out for one another. We get together nightly in the
grocery store across the street to drink beer and plan a pig roast for
August 12. Last Saturday, it was live music in our courtyard -- acoustic
traditional music played by members of the local census bureau.
Sundays, as an honorary census-data collector, I join the group of
about 20 for a day-long picnic at a wild beautiful beach where we play
cards, soccer or just sit and watch the six-foot waves crash onto the
black sand.
So that's my deep thought.
The Baia Music festival -- a three-day bash based on Woodstock except
that it's on the beach, not a dairy farm, and it will feature Cesaria
Evora -- is August 22-24. Nothing posted on the net yet but it will
be soon.
 |
| Duduca plays the cavaquinho, a four-stringed banjo-like
instrument during an impromptu music fest at Cova Inglesa in Mindelo,
Cape Verde. |
Please let me know if this goes through because this is Africa.
The Woodstock angle interested me.
Sure enough, a page
at U. Mass. - Dartmouth reports that "the origin of the Baia
das Gatas Music Festival held annually on Sao Vicente can be traced to
a showing of the movie Woodstock in Mindelo in July of 1984. Vasco
Martins, a well-known Cape Verdean musician and composer, and some of
his friends saw the movie and shortly thereafter came up with the idea
of putting on a major music festival in Cape Verde. Less then one month
later the first festival took place. The festival now attracts upwards
of 15,000 people and features musicians from Cape Verde and abroad."
Earlier Letters from Larry:
June 25, May
23
Link
to this item | Comment
Plain folk: We've put up some
photos from the weekend's Newport Folk Festival. (Flash required)
Meanwhile, the flames are coming in over my
review of Dylan's performance Saturday.
Dylan was never much for sacred cows, but some folks have turned him
into one.
(The version on my personal
site made it to the Daypop
top 40 yesterday, with Daypop misspelling my name as "Shelia.")
Link
to this item | Comment
Populist hero: Musician Janis
Ian posts a follow-up to The
Internet Debacle - An Alternative View called Fallout.
Among her proposals: "All the record companies get together and build
a single giant website, with everything in their catalogues that's currently
out of print available on it, and agree to experiment for one year. "
Link
to this item | Comment
Intelligent life: Monkey
troop rescue their orphan from police station. I hope this story is
really true.
Link
to this item | Comment
Quote of the day: Wayne
Robins, reviewing the 256-page September 2002 Ninth Anniversary issue
of Vibe magazine:"The best page, though, was an ad for Bob Marley
footwear, five different, attractive, and hip-looking two-tones, part-sneaker,
part-shoe, with Bob Marley writ large on the side of the heel along with
the Rastafarian flag with Lion of Judah logo. My thought? Bob Marley died
for our shins."
Link
to this item | Comment
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
|
