From an undisclosed location near Donner Summit.
(Click on Images +)
Prediction – Spring Skiing Will be Good in California
Toots Thielemans – An Epic Life
A bit late on this post but it does not really matter as Toots Thielemans was a timeless artist. His life and music were extraordinary. If you want to read the standard obit, peruse the the New York Times – Toots NY Times Obit. We will be hearing his music for years to come and his genius will live on.
If you want my take on great Toots Thielemans albums see https://sfjournal.net/blog/essential-toots-thielemans-albums/
As the year came to and end it was interesting that there was a lot of media covering the musicians who passed away in 2016. Prince, Bowie and George Michael seemed to get all the press. Interesting artists for sure but their lives and music were retold incessantly in print and on the radio. Toots on the other hand lived to 94, at least 30 years longer than the three above and played in so many genres and eras it was a life that had a Forrest Gump quality. He was places that defined music and art for years. Imagine in the late 40s playing with Charlie Parker and then Benny Goodman the next year – two people who were at the top of American music but in very different social and cultural worlds. For many years he was working in New York just scraping along, playing jazz gigs and studio dates – TV commercials and movies. Then an amazing era where he played Brazilian music. A few years on salary with ABC studios. Imagine that happening today!
One thing left out of the usual obits is the fact that where he finally made some money was with writing a song called Ladyfingers that was recorded on Herb Albert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights It was a simple little ditty but with every album sold – over a million, Toots got a penny. So he took his $100,000 and bought a house and probably breathed a bit easier.
There is an interesting eBook you can read about Toots written by his friend Paula Marckx. If is more like just hanging out with Toots for a few hours but fun to get his take on his life and the twentieth century.
The Sound of Toots Thielemans
by Paula Marckx
Within the book are a lot of links to unusual videos. Toots traveled a lot and did all kinds of commercials. Here is on from 1982 in Japan. Pretty hilarious!
http://adland.tv/commercials/suntory-toots-thielemans-1982-100-japan
Anyway, rest in peace Toots. Thanks for all the great music. Most people probably have heard Toots from the theme to Sesame Street and various pop albums. One that I remember that had that enchanting Toots Thielemans solos and sound is Night Game by Paul Simon, a song that is never ever covered. Too difficult to pull off with the changing meters and that amazing harmonica solo.
We will be discovering more of Toots work for years to come. It was an epic life.
The Fence
Before
An inspiring piece by Escher
Day One
Day 2
Day 3
All Done
Double Parking in the Bike Lane
Just the local enforcer with a convenient pdf download, for when you are riding down Valencia and there is the Uber car with the flashers on for five minutes smack dab in the bike lane. The SFPD simply does not enforce this law and instead of getting pissed off I simply put these notices under the windshield of the offender.
V21211 – In the Bike Lane Notice – pdf
As an added bonus, here is the chorus to a song called Bike Lane by Luke French
Bike Lane
by Lucas French
On that old bike Lane I’ll ride it once again. Just no longer will I ride with you.
I saw you pretending indifferent. From the warmth of your automobile. This road has broken some strong ones. But it’s never gonna take my will.
The path beneath us is wicked, and best traveled on two wheels.
Cool Photos of Bugs
Had fun taking photos of these to characters. Peaches are from the backyard. Not sure where the caterpillar is from.
+ click on images
Quote of the Week
“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”
― Molly Ivins
Heard this quote from a friend while riding bikes. Molly Ivins gets the point that’s for sure. If you have not read it in a while, The Constitution of the United States with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation are actually a really good reads. Highly recommended for people in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Wil Blades Trio at Big Easy in Petaluma, California Thursday, December 1st
If you are in the north bay, a must check out show. Wil Blades is amazing. Joe Bagale is a great drummer and sings from the heart. If you are within 10 miles, drop everything. You will not be disappointed.
Wil Blades Trio
Thursday, December 1st
7:30-10:30pm
If you are within 10 miles, drop everything and go hear Wil Blades Trio at Big Easy in Petaluma. You will not be disappointed.
with:
Joe Bagale – drums
Kai Lyons – guitar
Big Easy in *Petaluma*
http://www.bigeasypetaluma.com/
The Last Doctor’s Lounge Bluegrass Jam – San Francisco
Doctor’s Lounge
4826 Mission St, San Francisco, California 94112
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
8pm to Midnight
For around 3 years the amazing band The Beauty Operators has played a monthly, third Thursday of the month gig at The Doctor’s Lounge. It was one set then an open jam. Sometimes as many as 15 people would get up on “the stage” and join the effort. It has been a fun run.
But alas, the lease ran out and the owner of the building is upin’ the rent 80%. Good grief! Such is life on the Royal Highway now known as Mission Street. The Dr’s Lounge location has been a bar for over 50 years with a lot of history, some memorable, some probably people will want to maybe forget. I remember a few years back in December showing up for the gig and there was a fundraiser – a crab feed to raise money for a school I think. The place was all dressed up. White table cloths. Candles. The crab, garlic and white wine smelled like heaven. We serinaded them with a trio for the first set. Cool gig.
But usually the place is frequented by the locals. Working class folk. Most making an honest dollar. Retired longshoreman. Roofers. Handyman. Cooks and cleaners.
Anyway, if you are in the area – San Francisco, Mission and Onondaga, stop by by for a pint. They are five bucks. If they reopen as a bar I predict some major inflation.
Doctor’s Lounge
4826 Mission St, San Francisco, California 94112
Photos from the last night at the Doctor’s Lounge (click on images)
Nine Out of Ten
In San Francisco, 9 out of 10 people voted for Hillary Clinton. That is remarkable. Did people in San Francisco think Hillary Clinton was the perfect candidate? Probably not. But what they did do was take their responsibility to vote for someone who was a decent human being who spoke in complete sentences.
While there have been many downright creepy and dim-wit presidents, mark 2016 as when the United States of America elected someone who did not even pretend to be a gentleman or show social graces in any way. Reagan, the Bushes, secretive and criminal like many, but at least they appeared civilized. Now we are a barbaric tribe who is becoming more illiterate every day. There was a time when people would read and think about the Bible. Obviously in the Mid-West and South, this is a thing of the past.
On January 20th, Trump will take the oath of office.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
– Section 1:8
I do hope that between now and then he will read and study the Constitution of the United States. Please pay particular attention to these few details.
Section 4
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
I particularly like this little ditty that has been trampled upon in the last 20 years.
8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
And that freedom of the press thing will be good to go over.
Article [I]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And now what all the Evangelicals that voted for Donald Trump have been waiting for – the religious posters. Hang these up in your kitchens and above your bed just to remind yourself how incredibly inconsistent you are in your beliefs. This courtesy of the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vs-jesus-christ_us_5798e188e4b0d3568f85724a
Quotes of the Week
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
-H. L. Mencken
I do not know much about this character Mencken but what amazing foresight.
And something else to give you pause and maybe pull yourself together with.
We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids and we Democrats can go for a long brisk walk and smell the roses.
-Garrison Keillor
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Garrison-Keillor-Done-Over-He-s-here-Goodbye-10604062.php
Good to know everyone has not gone mad….
For me, the biggest disappointment with this whole election is there should be some level of decorum, respect and dignity when it comes to the election of the president. It just went out the window. Maybe we should’ve seen it coming over the last 10 years. You look at society, you look at what’s popular. People are getting paid millions of dollars to go on TV and scream at each other, whether it’s in sports, politics or entertainment. I guess it was only a matter of time before it spilled over to politics. Then all of a sudden you’re faced with the reality that the man who’s going to lead you has routinely used racist, misogynist, insulting words. That’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. I wish him well. I hope he’s a good president. I have no idea what kind of president he’ll be because he hasn’t said anything about what he’s going to do. We don’t know. It’s tough when you want there to be some respect and dignity and there hasn’t been any. Then you walk into a room with your daughter and your wife, who’ve basically been insulted by his comments, and they’re distraught. Then you walk in and you see the faces of your players, most of whom have been insulted directly as a result of being minorities. It’s shocking, it really is. We talked about it as a team this morning. I don’t know what else to say. Just the whole process has left us feeling kind of disgusted and disappointed. I thought we were better than this. I thought ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ was ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ Watching the last debate, Trump would make a crack at (Hillary) Clinton and you’d look at the fans. The fans would go, “Oooh! Oooh, no he didn’t!” It’s like, “Yeah, he did. Yeah, this is a presidential election, it’s not ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ I’m sorry, this is my rant and I’m disappointed in the lack of respect and dignity that’s involved. That’s the way it goes.
-Steve Kerr – Head basketball coach of the Golden State Warriors
http://www.sfgate.com/warriors/article/Steve-Kerr-vents-about-presidential-election-10605463.php
Presidential Addresses
JFK
“Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to truth.”
From President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address
Just one quote from the speech. How far we have come… or at this point in history be humbled by a great speaker and a bright mind. It is interesting how at the time the word “terror” meant missiles from Russia. I actual fear that today in 2016 we are living in a James Bond movie without James and Melania Trump may be a spy. That would not be good but with all the weird stuff that is going on not out of the realm of possibilities.
Gloria Steinem Quotes – From My Life on the Road (2015)
Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak”
“More reliable than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present.”
I asked her how she has remained herself all these years. She looks at me as if at a slow pupil. “You’re always the person you were when you were born” she says impatiently. “You just keep finding new ways to express it.
Gloria Steinem in conversation with ninety-eight year old former Ziegfeld Woman
All of my life campaigning have given me one clear message. Voting isn’t the most we can do, but it is the least.
All quotes by Gloria Steinem – from My Life on the Road (2015)
Available at your local bookstore.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act 18 Year Anniversary
Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users.
wikipedia.org
It is 1998 – The Senate Now Has E-Mail
Let’s Have a Party!
18 years ago today the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed. I would wager that very few people even know what the DMCA is, but it has affected modern life substantially. It is in many ways just one more version of an old story of plunder by larger more powerful entities, and the taking advantage of the smaller, but often more vibrant creators. In many ways, it has made it so the copyright laws in such industries as music are pointless.
But let’s back up a bit. Everyone can remember the transition that happened when CDs came out and then everyone was ripping their CDs to MP3s and handing off 100 gig drives full of music files to their buddies. Then there was Napster that simply stitched all these drives together in one big mass orgy of free MP3s. Napster got the injunction primarily because the established music industry had no cut of the racket. Along come tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung and to cover their liability the DMCA made perfect sense. If someone has “illegal” music on their devices, they should not be held accountable. Furthermore, if someone uploads a Beatles tune as a video with a picture of Ringo Starr as the graphics to YouTube, why should YouTube be held accountable for such blatant infringement? All good and well. But that was 1998. Today is 2016. I am certain that in 1998 most members of the Senate had no idea the true implications of the DMCA. In 1998, most of the members of the Senate probably did not even know how to manage their own email. They were still licking stamps.
The DMCA’s principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries.
wikipedia.org
Let’s look back a bit. In 1998 the leading browser of the day was Netscape 2. Internet Explorer was at version 5.5. If anyone remembers IE 6, imagine how terrible IE 5.5 must have been. Windows 98 had probably just been released. Man, that is scary. My point is that the DMCA has not been updated for 18 years and is an extremely flawed piece of legislation. The large tech companies have in many ways based their entire industry on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It allows for basically everyone to break the law everyday and not have to worry about it. When was the last time that a cop pulled someone over and wanted to check if the person had pirated music on their phone? There probably is thousands of dollars of contraband on everyone’s devices. Ain’t gonna happen.
Times Have Changed – Google Is Our Master of Information
But this is what is disingenuous about the DMCA. Companies like Google know just about everything about you. What you buy. What websites you visit. Your birthday. Your favorite color.
In 2016 they have the ability to determine if a piece of music is copyrighted via matching wave forms, and indeed this is how they “monetize” this work. But YouTube refuses to acknowledge this UNLESS they are in a position to make money off of that music – they make money anyway but that is another post. The only way the copyright holder can get the videos of their music taken down is with take-down notices. If a song is popular, this can mean hundreds of separate videos with the same song on it. The artists cannot simply tell the ISP such as YouTube “I do not want my work on your network.” YouTube is sort of like that creepy neighbor running a crack-house who borrowed your weed-whacker last spring and refuses to give it back claiming ignorance. Musicians, songwriters and composers have better things to do with their time than chase down illegal version of their work.
YouTube is sort of like that creepy neighbor running a crack-house who borrowed your weed-whacker last spring and refuses to give it back claiming ignorance. Musicians, songwriters and composers have better things to do with their time than chase down illegal version of their work.
Which brings me back to 1998. Do you really think in 1998 anyone could predict such entities as YouTube or Facebook? And unlike the owners of these companies, I believe these entities are not just platforms, they are simply publishers with free content providers and creators. These publishers have to take responsibility as well for copyright infringement. It is within their technical realm but they are playing dumb as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 suits them just fine. The DMCA is to their advantage.
The real master of deception with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is YouTube. Facebook, Twitter and the like have simply entered personal lives and monetized birthdays and other important life events until people depart from this world. Personalized marketing on steroids that the users all agree to though without really reading the privacy policies.
But all such companies are the modern-day plunderers. Instead of grabbing continents, forests, rivers, enslaving the natives and digging for gold, they are plundering your personal events and consumer habits along with the likes of great artists like James Brown, Elton John, Charlie Palmieri, Vince Gill, Willie Green, Slayer, Bette Midler, Woody Guthrie (the list is endless) and any person who has recorded or published a piece of music in the last hundred years.
Conclusion
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act needs to be reexamined and rewritten every five years to reflect and take into consideration the changes in technology, creativity and platforms. It is an important part of combating the many inequities in our society.
The 2016 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards
It is with great pleasure that we were asked again to present The Pelican Cafe 2016 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards . So many great bands… so many stages. It is a world-class event still free to everyone.
As usual, I start this post with a brief assessment of the weather. The first week of October in San Francisco is usually the beginning of our “Indian Summer,” that two month period of time between the horrid fog of summer and the torrential rains of December, where we get some consistent sunlight and winds often blow out of the east. Surfers take to the ocean, as this time of year is when the waves are at their best. Last year during the festival was no exception, but this year during the The 2016 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival the northwest winds were already beginning to howl at around 9 am. Of course this made it so the entire weekend was not what surfers would call “rideable.” It also had another effect. On many of the stages facing west, the sound got literally blown away by the wind. It is not ideal to have these winds when putting on an outdoor festival.
People (all three of you), who follow this publication, know that every year I give out these precious awards to the deserving people and musicians. It is a lot of work narrowing down the selections, but I think I nailed it this time around.
Outstanding Billionaire of 2016:
Warren Hellman
It is easy when you attend a free festival to give thanks to the person paying for everything. In our winner-take-all economy, that guy is Warren Hellman, who now is somewhere six feet under and must accept this award posthumously. Unlike, one of the current presidential candidates, Warren Hellman actual had a passion for something other than himself. That was bluegrass music and the banjo, and he actually gave money back to the community. He spent his days as a banker and venture capitalist and somewhere along the way started the festival. He made so much money that he has funded The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival for a decade after his death in 2011. Mark your calendars. That would be 2021. Thanks Warren. The entire American Beverage Association and all the corner stores within a mile radius of Golden Gate Park really thank you.
Outstanding Musician:
Chadrick Honore – Trumpet Player in Rebirth Brass Band
I took off work early on Friday as I simply had to go see the Rebirth Brass Band play at the Arrow Stage. The band, with a long tradition and many members over the years, is playing really well these days. The trumpet player Chadrick Honore was simply on fire and the way he plays trumpet makes it look effortless. As usual, New Orleans’ musicians are much more than just playing an instrument. Chadrick was singing and working the crowd as well. But, his playing was truly outstanding. It is curious that as time goes on with The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that there are more wind instruments and less banjos. I would wager there were fewer banjos this year than any of the last five. Perhaps the festival should be renamed The Hardly ANY Bluegrass Festival. But that is OK with me. Just bring on more bands from Louisiana.
Terrible Speaker that Needs to Be Replaced
Banjo Stage
With that Northwest winds howling and blowing the trees, I was wondering if that speaker about 100 yards down the meadow from the Banjo Stage was even on? Yes it was. But, let me tell you – it sounded like crap. Sometimes speakers like this just get old and fall apart inside.
Best Babyboomer Singing “Life Soundtrack Songs”
Jackson Browne
I have never been to a Jacksom Browne concert. Now I have. It was pretty good. He played a lot of his big hits, titles that I do not know but the melodies that have been ingrained in you somehow. He is a great singer-songwriter and I came to realize that what he really writes are simply hymns. Lots of IV to I. Lots of V SUS chords to I. All good. Not very bluesy at all. During one of his songs he got about 8 bars in and simply stopped. I have know idea if he suddenly forgot the words or the chords, but he just took a little pause and started it all over. I think half the audience didn’t even noticed. Performers take note.
Band that Never Made it Due to Flight Delays
Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie
With a name like that, how would you NOT want to go all the way across town and check it out. But alas, the flight was delayed and they missed the show.
Amazing Special Treat of the Festival
Curtis Salgado
Man, can this guy sing and play harmonica. A really special musician who has been there through the years. It is truly strange that he was not listed on the schedule. Curtis is the “real deal.”
http://www.curtissalgado.com/
Strangest Aspect of the Festival
So few San Francisco Bands
In the early days of the festival, word has it that there were actual a fair amount of San Francisco bands on the stages. Not so much these days. Sure there are local musicians like Boz Scaggs, part of the booking, and locals who get the gig playing behind him, but I find it perplexing that the band Front Country, a really good bluegrass band from San Francisco, is not on one of the stages. There are many other great San Francisco bands people in the area do not even know. The closest thing this year, was the showcasing of the Little Village Foundation, a local non-profit that is doing some really good work. Diverse and very Northern Californian.
Anyway, I caught about 12 bands in total, a bit less than years past but it was about right. All of The Pelican Cafe 2016 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards are guaranteed for 30 days from this reading. After that you are on your own. Go out and hear some live music from the locals. Until 2017…
Past Years Winners
- The 2015 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards
- The 2014 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards
- The 2013 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards
- The 2012 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Highlights
The Photos (Click on Images)
Echos of New Orleans
I wanted to post this video back a while back and found it in my files. It is a trumpet section practicing in a neighborhood near Frenchman’s Street in New Orleans around jazz fest this past April. Unlike most of the world, I often like hearing musicians practice more than the actual performance. You can learn a lot just from how they go about breaking down the music and get a real sense of the amount of work it takes to play well. I do not know what this tune is but I was walking and heard this trumpet section practicing. A guy came up to me and started trying to bum some money off of me. I asked him to just give me a few minutes to listen to the horns. He explained to me that they were running the scales and that you get a better sound if you tighten your lips. We converse for a bit and I spotted him a few Washington’s for keeping the block safe.
The scale they were playing is what sometimes is called the diatonic bebop scale. I remember hearing that David Baker coined the term but it does not really matter, as I call it the New Orleans scale.
What I love about it is the tension of the I to VII to flat VII. How about the “Welcome to America” scale.
Photos of Hang Gliders at Fort Funston
The winds were about 15 to 20 knots out of the northwest. It was a bit gusty. The sky was overcast. I love to watch these guys fly. There are kites of all kinds at Fort Funston. High performance racers that do arching turns and loops. Larger, a bit clunkier tanks and slow tandems. Fun to watch!
August 6, 2016 around 3: 30 pm.
PIERS LEWIS… I still have your surfboard. It is the last one that works.
Four years ago I made a call out to my friend Piers that I still had his surfboards. https://sfjournal.net/blog/piers-lewis-please-pick-up-your-surf-board/ Since then two of mine sort of bit the dust. After a while, surf boards get dings and become delaminated, sort of like their riders perhaps, and become too gone to repair.
At the present moment I am basically down to the Piers Lewis Nev and a SF Surf Shop big wave board called a gun. The summer is not a good time to surf around here, but I took the Nev out for a test ride today. Piers. The Nev has turned out to be a great board for summer waves around here. Those short period windswelly, shifty buggers. Thanks for letting me store it. Just let me know when you need it back. I will keep it safe and always remember to tie it down on the roof rack. Your friend, Paul
From April 2012…
PIERS LEWIS… PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SURF BOARD APRIL 22, 2012 PAUL LYONS Hi Piers, It has been a long time. Actually a really long time. I hope you are doing well. Where you are, I have no idea. We knew each other back in “the day.” You took up surfing as you thought the paddling would help out the carpel-tunnel in the arms. Exercise. The remedy of last resort for the inflicted. Not sure if it worked but in the end you left town and your surf board ended up in my basement. It is an 8 foot Nev, well-built with very few miles. I have used it perhaps 3 or 4 times. Actually it was my friends who rode it when we were short a board on surf ventures. The issue is this. I cannot find you anywhere. Not on Google. Not on Facebook. Not on LinkedIn. You have done it! You have maintained your sanity and privacy. In the future, when someone needs a privacy policy, I will just send them to you as you got it down. The only problem is, I will have no way to get a hold of you. Anyway, I really want to get rid of the Nev surf board. The surf season is upon us and I have eyes on a more high performance model. Maybe a 7 foot pin tail. Something that really carves. Let me tell you. That Nev is not made for carving. So just email me before say Thanksgiving. Lets work out a deal. Your friend, Paul
Google Buses and the Changing Geography of the Mission in San Francisco
The Mission District in San Francisco has changed a lot in the last five years. When I arrived 28 years ago, it was definitely more of a working class Latino neighborhood. Everyday you would hear a car go by with salsa blasting out of the windows. It was thought of as being a dangerous spot, but if you lived there for just a few weeks you knew right away where not to be at 2 am (these are actually the same corners today) and everyone scraped along to get by. It was possible to move into a place and make it as a young artist or musician. Rents where not extreme. We were lucky. There were still phone booths every few blocks and your best place to get the latest news was the corner store.
The changes in the Mission are not reported about very often in the media very well I think. Sure, there are a lot of pieces about the price of housing and all the “techies” moving in, but not much about what it actually looks like and how it has changed in terms of culture and human interactions.
One street that has gone through a lot of changes is Valencia. A few years back, a Mission neighborhood youth group was performing on Valencia. You know the usual story. Probably a summer program. Keep the kids out of gangs and away from drugs. Part of the performance was a percussion ensemble and that is when it got weird. The luxury, custom bike shop inside, came out and requested the youth ensemble to stop playing as it was interfering with the store selling bikes. A similar thing happened at a nearby playground when some techies reserved a soccer field that was used every afternoon by the local youth for pickup soccer games. Here you could see the insensitivity and sense of entitlement by the newcomers in the glaring light.
Gentrification is the new colonialism
– From a sign in a shop on Valencia
Most mornings during the week I bike to work down the bike lane on Valencia. Going the other way, heading south to Silicon Valley, are scores of “Google buses” – large white tall things with tinted windows where the passengers seem to be riding twenty feet up in air. They pull up to the stops and pick up the workers – mostly white – probably mostly software engineers or marketing coordinators, and take them of to their corporate “campuses.” In many of these companies, these workers have been instructed to not talk to the media. In the afternoon, these same buses come the other way. These same workers, returning from their isolated corporate enclaves returning to the city with the cool zip codes. While it is commendable that they sometimes take the bus, I find it strange that they do not look anything like the diversity of San Francisco. They are the reason that people have gotten priced out of San Francisco. I would wager that not a single person on these buses makes less than six figures. San Francisco teachers’ salaries top out at under 90k. Anyway, it would be interesting to do a study on why these new young techies live in San Francisco.
Peaceful Demonstrations
This past year there has been a lot of outrage about police brutality. It got to the point where eventually the San Francisco police chief resigned – the pressure was just too much. One such situation was the shooting by police of Alex Nieto, a truly tragic event.
https://justice4alexnieto.org/alex-story/
One time while riding home from work, I stopped to take some photos outside of the Mission police department, where demonstrators were holding up signs. They where completely peaceful and it was a quite a sight. People of all ages and walks of life were there with their homemade signs. While trying to take some photos, the Google buses just kept blocking the view. One after another, like the buses were schools of fish.
Turn Down the Volume
One of the things that has changed is the number of white tablecloth restaurants and cafes. They are everywhere. Where are the techies going to plan there next IPO if there are not cafes where everyone is staring into their laptops?
One place that has been in the Mission for a while is Radio Habana, a little hole in the wall at 22nd street and Valencia. It is run by a long-time San Franciscan Leila Mansur. For years there has been a Cuban rumba on Sunday afternoons. Many great rumberos from all over the Bay Area would make a pilgrimage to hangout and play. The level of playing was often quite high and it was a serious place for Caribbean musics.
But alas, the upstairs neighbors started to complain about the music. Too loud I suppose. My comment to them is that you are living in the city. If you want a quiet suburb, move to Walnut Creek! This sort of stifling of performance spaces is going on all over town. Where ever the new condos go in, the culture gets zapped. This sort of cultural event is the reason many people live here in the first place. Fortunately, the Sunday rumba has moved to other spots but there is nothing like Radio Habana. It is a closet with soul.
Burning Down the Place
Then there is the mysterious burning down of some of the older buildings in the Mission. First it was huge building on Mission and 22nd.
This building was from another era, when people got around on horses. The first floor was a microcosm of San Francisco with granted a heavy Latin bent. You had the florist in front, the travel agent, the dress maker, the Asian butcher, the Mission Meat Market which was run by some old-school San Francisco white folk, the Latin grocery and produce store. It had an open market feel that seems to disappear once the old make way for the new. I remember buying fresh wild salmon back in the 90s when they were running. Delicious and affordable. It was a place where a variety of people did business and had to get along. Geographically, it was one of important soulful places in the barrio.
It burned down and then burned down again. The rent-controlled apartments above are no more. The shops all just a memory. Now it is but a hole in the ground waiting to become yet another beehive of condos and apartments, priced for those riding the Google buses. Soulless places made of glass and steel.
In April I was given a painting by Laurie Wigham of this building after the fire, but before the tear-down. Thanks Andy!
Then just last month further down Mission near 30th street, the building where Cole Hardware was burned down as well. All very mysterious.
New Buildings in San Francisco – The Private Life
The changes now are not only the people but the actual physical structures that have made up the fabric of the communities for decades. The very cool funkiness of San Francisco is making way for more modern cold geography. There are places south of the Giant’s ballpark that look like San Jose.
We need the bubble to burst.
A Few Photos of Homeless in San Francisco
The topic of homelessness has been all over the news these days. Series in the San Francisco Chronicle. Radio shows. Magazines. One thing that seems to be missing to me is actual photos of homelessness. Mostly I see tents on sidewalks. Street after street. Housing in 2016. Brought to you by Coleman and the $50 tent.
One thing is true when it comes to homeless people. Everyone who is living on the streets is a unique story. There are the young artists who would rather do their thing than work for the man. There are the middle age men who are tired of the dead end jobs. There are junkies. There are the crazy people who just scream at the stars.
I work in a area south of market in San Francisco where there are basically encampments all over the place. At first it was primarily tents. Lately it has become plywood carts on wheels. I guess we still call this the first world.
Here are some pics… for the tourists.
San Francisco Carnaval 2016
Here are some photos from Carnaval 2016. After many years of camping in Humboldt during this weekend, we now stay in town and take in San Francisco Carnaval. This year we were at both the festival and parade. The weather was stupendous.
The highlight of the stages was hearing Oscar De Leon on Saturday. At 72 years of age he is still singing great. He is an amazing musician. As is often the case at Carnaval the sound is terrible. This year it was JK Sound delivering the incompetence. Oscar got up on stage and after the first ten seconds knew he had to do his own sound check. He stopped the band and started with the congas, got that level set. Next the bongos. That was working. Timbales then bass came next. OK… those mics are on. Piano took a while but that eventually got some volume. He then adjusted the mix a bit and when his garden of sound was working go enough he went into a 90 minute set that was phenomenal. Of course in his improvised pregones he wasted no time in criticizing the sound company and sound guys. It was all pretty funny as it was all in fun and the sound people had no idea that Oscar was playing with them and cutting them down. Oscar De Leon’s band had six horns! Three trumpets and three trombones as well as a guitar. From classic hits to some covers, it was a great set.
The next day we watched the parade. Stationed at 24th and Mission we caught all the floats until about #55 and then left. Hopefully the photos give you an idea of the diversity of cultures. Everything from well-maintained old cars, some with hydraulics to Aztec dancing, to Central American to Brazilian. Fogo Na Roupa numbers were astounding.
We heading back to Harrison, with our very much appreciated folding camp chairs, and heard more local groups. Soltron played there unique blend of Bay Area grooves to an excited crowd.
The 2016 New Orleans Jazz Festival First Weekend Awards
At the New Orleans’s Jazz Fest you can buy tickets at the gate. We never had to wait more than a few minutes. The price per day was $75 and we paid no service fee. One day, my cousin Ben had one to give away. Thanks Ben! This simple information was not easy to find. I would rather give a few more bucks to the festival than Ticketron. Just saying.
First, I need to give a disclaimer that this essay is absolutely ridiculous. There is no way to give awards out at this festival. Every day at the New Orleans Jazz Fest there are at least 60 bands on all kinds of stages. To possibly cast judgement and give out an award, besides being absurd, you would have to literally be six places at once. Instead, in the interest of confessional writing so prevalent today, I will simply highlight the journey and give out a few awards , the most accurate being the one at the end – MOST OUTSTANDING MUSICIAN IN NEW ORLEANS.
Below are the groups that I heard. Many were planned. Others just sort of happened based on the bathroom lines and meal breaks. By the end of the day the portapotties look like they were ready to tumble over but never did. In the concessions, the trout with crab on top was excellent. All the food was really good.
Friday, April 22
Alexis Spight
New Orleans Classic Recording Divas featuring The Dixie Cups, Wanda Rouzan and Jean Knight
Kermit Ruffins
Real Untouchable Brass Band
Michael McDonnald
Steely Dan
Saturday, April 23
Big Sams Funky Nation
Tad Benoit
Keith Frank and the Soliel Zydeco Band
DeJonnette, Coltrane and Garrison
Boz Scaggs
Night at a Club
George Clinton and Parlament
Sunday, April 24
The New Orleans Suspects
Henry Butler and Jambalaya
Leroy Jones and the New Orleans Finest
The Zion Harmonizers
Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter
John Mayall
Other Shows of Note
Treme Brass Band at DBA
Harmonica Marathon at Frenchman Theater
INTRODUCTION
Every time I go to New Orleans I cry. In fact, I remember the exact moment that I cried every day of the festival. It often happens unexpectedly. It is similar to what happened to me the first and only time I got acupuncture. I am not sure modern medicine has researched it but crying, especially for joy is a good thing and the therapy is all that sometimes works to get you through the ups and downs of life. It is cathartic and surely the great balancer of the soul.
The first day we had a very rough plan and were a little disoriented as we entered the gates. To get our bearings we walked into the Gospel Tent and heard Alexis Spight. We sat in the front row, as it was an early show and there I was overcome with emotion. Her voice was strong and clear and you could hear decades of gospel tradition in her voice. The band seemed a bit under rehearsed but the spirit was there and it seemed like the entire group just went with it. And as it does often with the first show, the tears came streaming down my cheeks. Probably not the first person to wail in the Gospel Tent.
The second day it was listening to Keith Frank and the Soliel Zydeco Band. Many times I heard people in New Orleans area say that Zydeco songs “sound all the same.” To me this makes no sense. Sure the accordion can be irritating, in the same way as say the banjo, but the songs do not sound all the same. One of the grooves from Keith Frank sounded like James Brown or perhaps something James Brown appropriated. The next like we were on the Bayou in a cowboy hat. Somewhere, during that James Brown groove it hit me again. Keith Frank with his two kids under ten, one on accordion and the other on cowbell by his side, it just got me again. Tears of joy.
Which brings me to an award.
BEST TROMBONE SOLO IN A SECOND LINE BAND
The Real Untouchables Brass Band… the guy on the far right – stage left. I was unable to figure out his name and apologies about that, but if you show up and San Francisco I will buy you dinner. His solos combined the street sound, the grit and dirt with great pitch and rhythm. I can never get enough of second line brass bands. The reason why I liked this guy’s playing so much is his sound. Full of dirt and smears and all in a very organic, lyric way.
Later that day I heard Steely Dan with the very fine trombonist Jim Pugh who’s long career even includes writing the theme that still runs for NPR’s Morning Edition. But Pugh’s playing, when he finds himself in a bit of improvisational jam, relies on his squeaky high chops and lots of notes. In New Orleans, trombones usually just go with growls and smears. The Untouchables trombone player had that and much more.
But I have become distracted. On the third day I broke down listening to Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The crowd was building up for this one. Big names in jazz. Not a seat in the Jazz Tent. Standing room only. I thought – do people really know what they are getting into here? Herbie and Wayne are some of the most expert improvisers on the planet and the show was just that. Herbie played both acoustic and electric and his synth work brought to mind some of Wayne’s work with Joe Zawinul and Weather Report. Too much music for many folks ears which for the rest of us meant a good seat as people left. The last tune they played was something I would have never expected. A modern, sort of loosely constructed version of “Now’s the Time” in a boogaloo groove. This was not a 12 bar blues but more of a free-flowing thing and was a great vehicle for Wayne’s sparse but thematic solos. He played all soprano throughout the entire set.
BEST TENOR SAXOPHONIST I HAD NO IDEA WAS SO DARN GOOD
Ravi Cotrane. What an excellent player. Period. Not sure how you follow in the footsteps of his father John but Ravi does it well.
ODDS AND ENDS
Some notable experiences while in New Orleans were crashing a Crawfish Boil party in the Garden District and finally learning how to propery eat these bugs. We left that party a bit too early only to be packed like sardines into Frenchman Street clubs and hear some of the locals sweat it out with the tourist crowds.
After the second day, eating another crawfish boil in the garage of a house next to the festival and then heading off to catch George Clinton and Parliament at a club in the Wearhouse District. Now that was about as funky as it gets. 15 member band. George sitting on a stool in the middle of it all directing traffic. I have a feeling there is not a conductor on the planet that could pull that off with such effortlessness. Everyone got a moment to shine and band was dynamic. George is still going strong.
MY PARTNERS IN CRIME
Special awards go to Ben my nephew and Natalie who put me up and Steve my buddy from high school who was an amazing partner on this adventure in New Orleans. Steve still has the ability to scope out a situation, make friends, avoid getting mugged and still brush his teeth when he gets back to the crib at 2 am.
THE WEEKDAYS BETWEEN
Steve caught a plane back home on Monday. I stuck around New Oreans until Thursday riding around on Ben’s bike and exploring New Orleans and taking photos. One day Ben took me to the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and the Barataria Preserve. We hung out in the swamps with the snakes and alligators for a few hours. Tuesday night I caught The Treme Brass Band at DBA with Ben. It was a great to hear them on their home turf. Shamarr Allen on trumpet sounded to me of tradition and essence of New Orleans. Cities get their signature sounds and in New Orleans that sound is the sound of the trumpet. Shamarr was playing what looked like a cornet looking pocket trumpet – tarnished brass, with a sound and skill that would make Louis Armstrong smile. Shamarr’s playing reaches back a hundred years but makes a clear statement about the present. His sound and chops will just blow your mind. Beyond that his singing and rapport with the audience was simply awesome. Everyone was having a great time.
MOST OUTSTANDING MUSICIAN IN NEW ORLEANS
Shamarr Allen… need to say more.
LEAVING
For a few days I probably did not cry. That will happen after you experience about 30 bands over three days. You are all cried out. But, leaving New Orleans, heading to a wedding in Austin and seeing that Megabus in the distance, with Houston on the front, it happened again and I got all choked up. New Orleans. I wouldn’t want to live there but a great place to visit and hear some great American music.
[click on images]
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Ocean Eats Second Parking Lot for Breakfast – Ocean Beach, San Francisco
In 2012 I wrote a piece here on this website called First Glance. It documented my introduction to large waves and surfing in general and talked about how the government was transporting sand from the north end to the south end of Ocean Beach in a valiant attempt to ward off the ocean’s constant pounding of the coastline.
Anyone who has surfed that place in the winter knows that the ocean always wins in the end. If the ocean wants to eat a parking lot for breakfast, there is nothing you can do about it. A big December swell and a 6.2-foot high tide and half that sand will end up back were it came from.
From First Glance
Below is what the second parking lot at Ocean Beach in San Francisco looked like in 2008.
While I had not ventured out to Ocean Beach in a few weeks, I was passing by when I noticed that the second parking lot at Sloat Ave along the Great Highway was closed. It had disappeared. The ocean had taken a large bite out of it for breakfast, probably during one of the big winter swells we have had this year. All the sand that they had hauled from the north end to the south had disappeared. In about five years there will be no Great Highway here. Pretty soon the San Francisco Zoo will be underwater.
In the end, the ocean always wins.
Below is what the second parking lot at Ocean Beach in San Francisco looked like in March of 2016.
I find it a bit strange that the fact that the Ocean ate the parking lot of a major metropolitan city did not make it into the local main stream press.
Beauty Operators at The Doctor’s Lounge – Every Third Thursday
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Beauty Operators
8:30 – 11 pm
The Doctor’s Lounge
Late-night hangout featuring cocktails & standard comfort grub in an old-school, easygoing setting.
Address: 4826 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94112
Phone:(415) 586-9730
Yep. Third Thursday of the Month Show and Jam
But, you probably should not go there. Way too dangerous. Not far from Jerry Garcia’s house off Mission, and I am not talking about the ice cream flavor. Just two blocks over from where Patty Hearst was holed up in a safe house for a month – you know the place, and her image in the late 70s was pasted all over the 6 o’clock news for days on end. Same neighborhood where coach George Seifert’s in-laws lived, and that award-winning burrito spot down the block. Crazy Dan White had a house out there as well… no relation to Barry White. The Doctor’s Lounge this Thursday, 8:30pm. Bluegrass and originals about the treacherous life. Misery. Love. Treachery. And good beer.
THE BEAUTY OPERATORS (SF)
This stringband was born out of San Francisco bluegrass jam scene- on the mean streets of SF and its music venues and various flea markets. The Beauty Operators are known for their high-energy live performances, mixing traditional bluegrass, modern originals, and irreverent transformations of pop songs, and of course, cutting hair.
http://www.thebeautyoperators.com/
Members: Jeremy Pollock – guitar and vocals Perry Spinalli – fiddle and vocals Paul – Harmonica Jed – Banjo Matt Lauer – bass and more bass Lucky Luke – mandolin and vocals
Johnnie Gibbson’s Hammer
Johnnie Gibbson’s Hammer
Who are you?
One who’s house I resurrect
From this unbelievable grime.
Only an optimist would be fool enough.
“The roof is leaking,” you must have said.
Up a ladder you went with carpet and 5 gallon buckets of tar
Many times I know, the roofers covered in that black tar,
With blank stares of disbelief.
Hatchets swinging down on the black gooey bed.
That tar that ended up everywhere.
In the drain in the back yard.
Excavated with a metal rod,
Blows to the concrete and iron pipes,
To the handiwork of the 1940’s,
When this structure came into being.
Repaired with credit at “Home Depot.”
Plastic pipes and tools for scraping.
Floors.
I think I see floors.
A few steps an hour under the
Knee pads covered in the red dust that was a carpet pad.
I see the fog out on the ocean and mindlessly listen to baseball games,
Hoping for extra innings to prolong the company.
“The roof is leaking.”
The ceilings are dripping.
The floor is getting wet.
“More Black Jack and carpet tommorow.”
A great sense of humor you must have had.
The carpet wet to your ankles,
You made your way to the basement,
Holding firm to the bannister on the right,
Then the railing’s end at the bottom,
To the sanctuary in the basement.
Rebuilding cars.
Engines in the downstairs study
One surely under the stairs.
Oil on the concrete – like a birthmark.
The spiders down here I battle with newspapers rolled.
In their stubborn retreats they seem too wise for this simple execution.
These hundreds must go.
They pay not the mortgage but only watch the shadows.
Nuts and bolts in every crevice.
A radiator hose.
A rusted pully.
Endless useless parts.
The sanctuary overflowed to the thickets in the backyard.
Gaskets
Car doors.
Auto glass that grew like clover.
A gas tank like a torpedo.
Huge rusted grates, for rabbits we suppose.
“The roof is leaking.”
Johnnie you were not alone.
A rat holed up behind the tools.
His nest was dry.
He left when you did – I hope.
The mice in the kitchen had free reign too.
They left their trail.
Remedied with toxicity – bleach and trisodium phospate.
A latch on every door.
You were careful in your later years.
The family must have visited often.
You distrusted them no doubt.
I wonder who it was that came
On that day to find you after your last breath.
Perhaps an automotive project on the floor.
Dishes in that nasty sink.
I’m certain you passed away here.
Self-sufficient to the end,
Your truck parked down the street for weeks after.
The tickets came in the mail.
I ‘ve thrown out most of the 50 years.
The old sports cards from the 40’s, a vacuum away under the study,
shed light on earlier days and occupents.
I have kept those as mementos.
Most everthing was hauled off by Marcos, the amazing roofer, to the dump.
Your hammer is still here.
I saved that for the jobs to be done.
Top quality,
It is broken in perfectly.
After days of pulling out 3 inch nails from the walls,
Swearing under my breath, I find it in the basement, in the rubble I know not where.
In a stupor I was.
Time oblivious.
Yet a more perfect weight hammer I have not known.
Wrapped in leather lace.
Solid steel both head and handle.
Weighted like a clock
Weathered the years it tells of a right handed owner.
Slight bend to the left.
It falls with even blows.
With each swing
I shake your hand.
Paul Lyons
June 2004
How to Park in San Francisco
Just a gentle reminder that when you park your car in San Francisco, just think for a second about the next guy. Sometimes it can take a bit of time to park your car around here. Street cleaning. Two hour zones. Lots of driveways. The city is aching to write a fat ticket and put it under your wiper. So if you notice that if just moved your car up five feet or so and it would make for two spaces – go for it! Do the right thing!
Here are two examples of parking for the country, not the city. I hope that next time they will have to circle the neighborhood for a half hour in search of a spot.
Examples of how NOT TO PARK
Where the Parking Guys Get to Park
And then there are the little carts that dole out the tickets. They get to park anywhere. Even in red zones.
New Year’s Resolution Suggestion for Mayor Ed Lee
Dear Mayor Ed Lee,
As I muse over the absurdity of the non-profit status National Football League, I have but one New Year’s resolution for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee: repave some of these streets that are south of Cesar Chavez Boulevard. Good grief! The streets look like some war-torn country in the Third World! With the booming economy now in San Francisco, it seems like a good time to spend some money on this sort of infrastructure. In a few years, when the third tech bubble bursts, there will no longer be all that money in coffers.
Here is my list in order of importance. I am not talking about just filling in the holes. We are talking repaving the entire street. You will get a lot of cyclists on your side. Just do the right thing Ed. This is really a matter of public safety.
STREETS IN SF THAT NEED REPAVING
1. Mission Street at the corner of Valencia and Mission. We all know this gets a lot of bus traffic but just look at this patchwork of repairs. One would think that a city with a billion dollar budget could pave one of the major thoroughfares of the city in need of repair. The irony is that Mission Street’s real name is El Camino Real – the “Royal Highway” Nothing “royal” about the highway here. Imagine if a street was in this shape in say the Marina Neighborhood. Fat chance!
(click to see detailed versions)
2. San Jose avenue behind the Safeway. Anyone who has biked along here has discovered a challenging obstacle course. Mountain bikes strongly encouraged. The photos do not do this justice. Pretty nasty section.
3. Under Highway 280 by the Glen Park Bart. This year I witnessed a middle-aged gentleman wipe out here… he basically did a face plant after hitting a series of pot holes. He looked like an experienced cyclist on a road bike and in full spandex garb. Blood on the cement. Minor concussion probably. Hope he is OK. Fortunately he was not run over by a Google Bus or car.
4. Moscow Street at Excelsior Granted, this may be a little self-serving as this is my street but this street has not been paved for decades. This photo is of the good section. Go up about 20 yards and the street looks like you could turn it into a kiddies swimming pool. You will have to get the kids out every twenty minutes though as the 54 Felton Bus comes flying over the hill.
Those are the roads that seem in dire need. I do know many others in other parts of San Francisco as well. The “Wiggle” in the lower Haight is particularly treacherous. Get on a bike and check it out.
Indeed, the Super Bowl will come and go and this benevolent non-profit, the NFL, will pay many employees the meager $92,000 for their day’s work. I bet in a year many of the roads mentioned above will be worse for the wear. Prove me wrong.
Sincerely,
Paul Lyons
San Francisco resident
4 Best Documentaries on Netflix Streaming
Looking for a movie on Netflix Streaming? It seems that documentaries are the largest category in Netflix. Below are four movies that I highly recommend.
The Legend of Eddie Aikau
http://www.netflix.com/title/70273674
If you do not know who Eddie Aikau was, you will by the end of the movie. A remarkable person, amazing athelete and incredible life. Indeed, “Eddie would go.”
Little White Lie
http://www.netflix.com/watch/80020254
This documentary is remarkable, not only for the story but also the fact that the filmmaker is so young and yet makes a film that is so mature.
The Zen of Bennet
http://www.netflix.com/watch/70236498
I have no idea why this movie has only three stars in places. Even if you do not like the music and singing of Tony Bennet, the movie is a great view into a man, way up there in years, who still has it all together. Features many pop artists including Amy Winehouse.
Muscle Shoals
http://www.netflix.com/watch/70267584
There is no reason why this is at the bottom of the four. I am assuming that you have already seen this movie. This is the sort of history that always seems to get torn out of history books. You may be Caucasian but that does not mean you cannot be funky.
“Saving Capitalism” – Robert Reich is Looking Up
It is a bit odd that when you search for “Robert Reich” on Google you find this.
The fact that Robert Reich is a man who is perhaps often looking up should probably not be the first thing on his list of accomplishments or even personality traits. For Robert Reich, I would probably just pull this line from John Taylor that begins his latest book Saving Capitalism. This pretty much sums it up.
“There are two modes of invading private property; the first by which the poor plunder the rich… sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow and legal.”
JOHN TAYLOR, An inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814)
But with Google, perception is a bit slow and plodding. Just a bunch of numbers banging their heads against one another. On that same page, a bit further down, you see a post by his son who is announcing to the world that his lawyer mom and his professor dad Robert, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, have legally separated. His mom left law, I suppose, and is now a license acupuncturist. No, I did not make that up and that news did not make it onto the front page of the Enquirer so it did not register for Google I guess. His son, in order to clear up and confusing had to write a blog post about it, so that Google could index the information. Bizarre.
Robert Reich “Saving Capitalism”
Available at your local bookstore
A Call for Observations
Some other people in the news. Bernie Sanders seems to rarely get mentioned in the media though his following seems to be growing daily. Any ideas what to make of this stuff? It seems like an odd way to present this content. Google is a private company with interests. I wonder what sort if editorial goes into this stuff. Any observations?
The first thing that seems really strange, is that Robert Reich and the guy on the bottom were born just 10 days apart, not to far from each other. Something to ponder.
BREAKING NEWS! After over 8 years, Google’s Content ID system is STILL IN BETA!
NUMBER OF DAYS content identification tools for YouTube HAS BEEN IN BETA
[getdays]
BETA [bey-tuh or, esp. British, bee-] adj.
A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to try under real conditions.
– PC Magazine Encyclopedia
We all are amazed at this tech giant Google and their many other companies such as YouTube. Their ability to meet the technological challenges of our times is phenomenal. Back in June 14, 2007, they announce an exciting new program called content identification tools for YouTube. I am certain the marketing department had many long meetings trying to figure out a catchy name for this new tool.
The state of our video ID tools
(From googleblog.blogspot.com – June 14, 2007)
“We’ve been developing improved content identification for months, and we’re confident that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll unveil an innovative solution that will work for users and content creators alike. This is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken. But YouTube has always been committed to developing sustainable and scalable tools that work for all content owners.
Even though we haven’t given too many details, we’ve been hard at work.”
Hard at work? Really? Then why is this program still in BETA?
From my submission 11/28/2015
And then when you try to see what is going on with your Content ID submission you get a denied. Just because you took down videos to protect your copyrights should logically have no bearing as to the fact that you own the copyrights to that material.
Ted calls Google, which owns YouTube, “a company that has done more to impoverish musicians and other creative professionals than any entity on the face of the planet.”
Ted Gioia from
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturecrash/2014/10/stop-working-for-free.html
So Google, just so you can keep your important projects up-to-date and rolling out in time, I will keep a YouTube Content ID in BETA widget on the right column of this website. Keep up the hard work Google! Maybe some day by the next millennium in the year 2107 Google’s YouTube Content ID project will get out of BETA and have a Release candidate of this product. Trust me. I am NOT holding my breath!
“Imagine a business model where you are given all of the music publishing content for the last hundred years for free. After you build the initial interface, you basically do not have to do anything. The system is set up so that users and fans just give you content even though they have no rights to the ownership of that content. With much of this illegal content you garner about 50% of all advertisement revenue generated by that content. This can go on indefinitely. Sounds like there is no way you can fail. You will make billions off this stuff. YouTube just laughs all the all the way to the bank.”
Anonymous
FURTHER READING ON THE SERIOUSLY FLAWED Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc.
- http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_executive.html
Here is a really funny transcript of a Senior Copyright Lawyer’s speech to congress in April 2014 Why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Is Working Just Fine… by Katherine Oyama ,Google Senior Copyright Counsel.
Check out the absurdity with this comment
Congresswoman Judy Chu, a job creation advocate from California, provided real time proof that Google was failing in burying pirated sites in their search results. Barely typing in a few keystrokes associated with the Oscar Winning Film, 12 Years a Slave, numerous pirate sites appeared immediately on her iPad near the top of Google’s first search page. Unfazed, the representative from Google continued to extoll the progress that was being made by her company in pushing these pirate sites down in their rankings.
Azabache CD Still Available but Most People Stream
Azabache is/was a salsa band from San Francisco, California. Twenty-three years ago the CD was published by Leopard Music. I am guessing that only 1000 were printed. The music industry was in flux as always, and with the rise of Napster and MP3s everywhere publishing was finding its feet.
Since that time, the CD has made its way around the globe mostly streaming, but probably in suitcases as well. A big thanks to Amazon, iTunes and Spotify for their automation, tireless domination and and endless servers and warehouses, otherwise we would be licking stamps and going to the post office.
Listen to SOME SAMPLES
STREAM AND BUY THE CD at the following retailers:
BREAKING NEWS: CD BABY NO LONGER SELLS CDS, Go figure…
Where’s the CD Baby Store?
CD Baby retired our music store in March of 2020 in order to place our focus entirely on the tools and services that are most meaningful to musicians today and tomorrow.
https://store.cdbaby.com/
(Thanks for letting us know. Does that mean we threw the baby out with the bathwater?)
To order an actual CD, you no longer go to CD Baby. CD Baby is now only a digital distribution facilitator. The music industry is always changing. CDs are now 8-tracks. Jewel boxes in everyone’s basements gather dust until the next wave. A gosar! A bailar!
Ocean Beach Surf – November 29, 2015
Remembering Allen Toussaint
I am not sure that many Americans know the name Allen Toussaint. I surely did not until I was well into my twenties. Like so many really important things, Mr. Toussaint was not a part of the standard core curriculum. I think Allen Toussaint should be on a stamp! He was an incredible musician and force in 20th Century American music. Period. But unfortunately, Mr. Allen Toussaint has left the building and passed away November 10, 2015.
Allen Toussaint
January 14, 1938 – November 10, 2015
You can read about this amazing guy here http://allentoussaint.com/
Harry Shearer’s radio show, Le Show, this week plays an interview with Allen Toussaint from a few years back. It is about ten minutes in, just past the “apologies of the the week.” http://wwno.org/post/le-show-week-nov-15-2015
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I am not qualified to write about this man. I heard Allen Toussaint play live just one time. It was at the San Francisco Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in about 2012. It was at the Star Stage and I was simply amazed that there were not more people in attendance. Allen Toussaint, on the stage, with a grand piano, for free!!! He was there with a quintet. I remembering seeing him back stage, impeccably dressed, smoking a cigarette, by himself. He seemed to be going over the lyrics in his head. His gaze was far off and he seemed to be talking to himself. He was about to go out and sing about twelve tunes in a row, probably a few he had not played in a while. His band seemed in a bit of disarray. But then they hit and all was good. I distinctly remembering him sing a beautiful rendition City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman. Like the absolute pro he was, he nailed every verse.
Night time on the City Of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee
Halfway home – we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness, rolling down to the sea
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Rest in Peace Allen Toussaint.
The Google Buses have Invaded Valencia Street
Cities always go through changes. These changes are viewed in broad strokes like the tide. It rolls in and out and somehow all the details are lost in the generalities. Here are some of the details with the tech invasion of 2015 in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, one thing is for certain. In 2015, it is very expensive to find a place to live. Busloads of young tech workers have moved to San Francisco and everyday they ride the large, usually plain white, employer-provided buses back and forth to Silicon Valley. Their generally high wages have pushed rents up in San Francisco to insane levels. The local folks have been hanging on for dear life but many have been pushed out to Oakland and beyond. Rent increases. Shady landlords. Better housing opportunities inland. If you are an artist or musician scraping by a living, it is really tough.
These “Google Buses” have many consequences. Besides the increase in cost of living they have the effect of turning places like Valencia Street into something like Walnut Creek. Bedroom communities where people do not actually live in the neighborhood but basically just sleep there, come home exhausted to their modern million dollar 600 square foot condo, then occasionally go out to eat at one of the fancy new restaurants with white table cloths that have sprung up. Maybe hit a SOMA bar.
From a telephone pole in Potrero Hill in San Francisco
It is indeed a strange irony that the tech workers actually have little understanding of the actual history of cultural dynamics of the neighborhoods they have invaded. I know this from simply going to Carnival in the Mission and seeing very few of them. Or witnessing “The Box” try to schedule out the local kids out of their pick up soccer games at the Mission Playground. The tech workers have yet to bring anything culturally to the equation. But with all the building, if you are in the trades, you are doing well.
Not a Tech Worker in Sight Here at Carnival 2015
What I also find very interesting about these new tech workers and these buses is just how vanilla every thing is. The commuters stand in line waiting for their bus, staring morosely at their iPhones, rarely interacting with one another. They then get in their massive buses, like the tour bus B.B. King would ride, but it is all white and definitely does not say B.B King on the sides. The fact that these buses do not have any marketing on the sides is indeed strange. Companies like Google have made their billions by marketing and advertising. You would think a bus going down the roads and highways of one the most expensive places in the world would garner some advertising revenue. But in the end Google and LinkedIn probably decided to that being incognito with the buses was more important. Keep peace with the natives. But there is no hiding. When you ride your bike down Valencia during commute hours, these Google Buses travel in herds.
Furthermore, I do not find anyone of these commuters documenting this commute. Do a Google search. Nothing. No one is blogging about this who actually does the commute. With all the publishing tools at their disposal, what a bunch of bores.
A few months ago a friend asked me what I would recommend to some newly arrived tourist who were interested in touring Silicon Valley. You see, for outsiders there is this sense that Silicon Valley and billionaires being made in this very dynamic environment. I told him it probably is not that exciting. It is usually a lot of people not interacting with each other, simply staring into computers in a nondescript office building. Perhaps in meetings trying to figure out how to position a product that does very little as something you absolutely have to have. I suggested to my friend that their visitors should simply try to sneak on to a Google Bus and get an inside view. Anyone done that one yet just for kicks?
San Francisco Carnival 2015 and some folk who have been holding down the neighborhood for decades.
Ocean Beach San Francisco – The Many Moods
Eventual, if you live in San Francisco, you make your way to Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach spans about four miles of the city, of course on the West, by this large mass of water called the Pacific Ocean. It is a major recreation area for locals. People run along the beach and adjacent paths. You can often find volleyball, football and ultimate frisbee going on. Dogs can be found chasing seagulls and romping on the water’s edge.
In the winter the swells at Ocean Beach can get very large, even over twenty feet high. In the spring, the west winds pick up and the swell gets small. Often the entire beach gets fogged in with a marine layer. It gets cold. Then in autumn, the west winds back off and there often is some manageable six foot swell, making for hundreds of surfers in the water.
Below are few desktop backgrounds of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Right click and SAVE AS. Feel free to grab and use for your personal, non-commercial use.
The Official Privacy Policy
There have been many requests for the Pelican Café to have a privacy policy posted and I think somewhere there is a law that states that we must. For crying out loud, we are only a little café! If you want privacy, stay home or crawl into a hole somewhere!!
Pelican Café Privacy Policy
- The Pelican Café reserves the right to refuse service to anyone including people who never have visited the café or website. So there! When you fill out one of the forms on this website, we may gather information such as your name and email address. We may use cookies. We may not. It all depends if we have a sweet tooth on that day and if we actually have eggs in the house to make cookies. We may some day even capture your IP address if we get around to it, but just let it be known, if you spend hours and hours in the Pelican Café, espousing your amazingly intelligent comments or blasphemous nonsense, we may simply email you and ask you to look out a nearby window, get some fresh air and get a life. But if you are worried about remaining anonymous in this world, we wish you the best of luck. Unless your name is Bill Smith, live in a tree fort in Maine and never have had a computer, just about anyone can find you, including strange people you do not even remember from high school.
- The Pelican Café may use your personal information for online promotions and special offers but this is quite unlikely. We are presently at a complete loss as to what these online promotions and special offers would be. We know that if we tried, our email promotions and newsletters would all end up in your email “spam-bulk” folder. We know better.
- The Pelican Café may indeed sell your email address and other important information (i.e. your name) to a large evil company that wants you to buy sexual enhancement drugs, a get rich pyramid scheme or home refinancing. We are presently fielding offers for the highest bidder. All of our readers are from that mysterious 1% of the most wealthy people in our society that seem to just get more and more loot, so make an offer today.
- Clothing is required at the Pelican Café. I know that many people like to use the café as a home base for their streaking ventures around the block, but using the café as base camp to bring back a fad from the 1970s is going too far. You have no idea how many miscellaneous items of clothing I find lying around behind the couches. The socks I can deal with but the underwear is sometimes really gross; please pick up your items from the lost and found. So let it be stated that the only place you can pull down your pants is in the bathroom stall and that is if you have to relieve yourself.
- Speaking of the bathroom, let it be known that we have but one bathroom and that it gets a lot of traffic. Please do not use it as your preferred place for reading. I know the batting averages of the National League West are extremely captivating and that you must read an article until the very end, but in the morning, after a cup of Joe, some people need your favorite seat as well. Remember to flush, turn on the fan and for the love of God, wash your hands.
- The Pelican Café is outfitted with a free wireless network. Being a café though we ask that you take the time to actually interact with your friends and others in the café. Instant messaging others who are just at the next table is just strange.
- On the topic of technology, let it be stated that it is fine to make cellphone calls from the café, but if you are going to rant and rave about the party you went to the night before, please take it outside to the tables on the sidewalk. Do realize that everyone within a two-block radius can hear everything you are saying, so choose your words and topics accordingly. Stories of so-and-so throwing up may be entertaining to some, but unappetizing to someone at the next table eating an Omelet of the Day.
Above is the Pelican Café Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to change any part at any time depending on whether it is to our advantage SO THERE!
Fred Dean and the Zen of Exercise
A country boy from Louisiana, where he developed an impressive muscular build, Dean was convinced the he did not need to work out.
“Whenever I feel like exercising, I lie down until the feeling goes away.”
Fred Dean – All-Pro Defensive End for the San Francisco 49s in the 80s. From Season of the Witch – David Talbot
Chata Gutierrez Mural Celebration
Photos of Soltron, Anthony Blea, Orlando Torriente, Louis Romero and Carl Perazo outside the House of Brakes.
South Van Ness and Mission. 10/10/2015
A minute of Sotron….
Had to be there.
The legacy of the late Chata Gutierrez, radio personality and salsa DJ on KPOO and KPFA, remains in the forefront for Mission District locals. The Chata Mural Project aims to showcase Gutierrez’s cultivation of heritage through an honorary mural by Carlos Kookie Gonzalez — and the proposed location: The Mission.
SFWEEKLY
While the rest of the city was battling the fog, the Mission had a special day honoring the late Chata Gutierrez, a very influential person in the San Francisco music scene. Her shows on KPOO and KPFA informed the entire Bay Area about Caribbean, African and various American musics.
Many local groups played and the 48 MUNI bus keep passing by. Beautiful restored from the late 50s cars were parked out front of the House of Brakes while the music found its groove. The mural is beautiful. It was the old neighborhood crowd and only they knew the significance. Louis Romero, John Calloway, Karl Perazzo, Anthony Blea on the same stage!! Soltron, full or original material and some solid songs are building upon the tradition.
The 2015 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards
Once again, it is an honor and privilege to present the Pelican Cafe 2015 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards to some of the outstanding musicians and acts at the festival. This was probably the seventh Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that I have attended. The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival always takes place the first weekend of October in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In 2015, the weather was superb, with clear skies both days. By the afternoon on both days a moderate to strong west wind started blowing.It was nice to see the trees swaying in the breeze but the sound traveled away with the breeze as well. I went for a few acts on Friday and for most of both Saturday and Sunday. So much music. So many stages. There are always trade-offs and you cannot be two places at once. I missed a few shows I had circled but caught some great acts unexpectedly. This year I mostly listened from the grassy field at the Arrow Stage. Not too crowded and close to the little Band Wagon Stage were some of the real troubadours sing their songs. After flying solo on Friday and Saturday and meeting some real characters, Sunday was a grand party with my honey and some good friends. While Joe Jackson, Boz Scaggs and the Indigo Girls were all just grand playing their hits, it was the lesser known groups that to me really shined.
BEST SONG WRITER IN THE SPIRIT OF WOODY GUTHRIE
Tim Barry
Tim sang “Prosser’s Gabriel” for his album 28th & Stonewall and it was sung with such passion and honesty it really made my day. A man who seems on the edge, his song writing is excellent. His message to the crowd was “do something that scares you.” His passion for the moment came through.
BEST TRUMPET SOLO
Mike Olmos
Mike is a local trumpet player from the Bay Area and grew up in the East Bay. In years past I heard him play with Boz Scaggs and Jimmie Vaughan. His solos with the New Master Sounds were awesome as usual. Unfortunately, when the leader Eddie Roberts introduced Mike Olmos, the crowd sort of looked out vacantly off to the distance. San Francisco. A city with little clue as to the amazing quality of some of the local talent.
BEST FIDDLE PLAYER WHO MAY HAVE DROPPED ACID FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THE DOWNBEAT
Nicky Sanders
Speaking of local talent, Nicky pretty much took over the last tune and man can he play! He is a showman in the tradition of Paganini and will quote some the great classical works in his solos, from symphonies to classical themes all in a very whimsical way. Originally from San Francisco he obviously had home field advantage and pulled out all the stops. Just simply off the charts.
BEST BAND OF REALLY TALENTED MUSICIANS
Punch Brothers
Some things in life are just not fair. I had head the Punch Brothers a little here a little there. I left work early on Friday and biked to the festival. Starting the weekend with the Punch Brothers was awesome and they play with such amazing virtuosity and musicianship it is just breathtaking. The only problem was that after the Punch Brothers the only direction left to go musically was down. While every musician in the group is simply amazing, the banjo player was the one who really impressed me.
WORST BAND OF THE FESTIVAL (OR “HOW DID THEY GET THIS GIG?”)
Michael Franti
I know a little of Michael Franti’s work from an early Spearhead album. It is an awesome album with some stellar Bay Area players adding to the over sound. Charlie Hunter. Some amazing singers. What happened? Franti’s work now is somewhere between a frozen yogurt commercial and a group therapy session at the YMCA. Audience participation is one thing but when that is the point of the show it all seems silly. At one point I began to think that it was to cover for the fact that Michael has a hard time finding the pitch. Someone get with that man and work with a strobe tuner!
BEST LOOKING SAX PLAYER WITH A COWBOY HAT ON
Jay Reynolds
Jay was probably the only sax player at the entire event and there is something just sort of strange about a sax player wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. I had always wanted to hear Asleep at the Wheel. It is such a strange sound that must be extremely regional. Country Swing, which sounds like 40s big band music but everyone is wearing cowboy hats and instead of trumpets and a sax section the sax, fiddles and a guitar play these tight arrangements like they know them in their sleep.
Ray Benson backstage after the show
The leader of the band, Ray Benson was amazing. So relaxed it made me think I was hearing a Bing Crosby 45 record at 33 rpm. Man can that guy sing contra-bass. There is no award here for the lowest note sung at the festival, but Ray would win it by about two whole octaves.
Musician getting the boot
REALLY STUPID RULE THAT WILL BE THE DOWNFALL OF THE FESTIVAL
NO BUSKING
At one of the first festivals I attended, I heard a band called Fruition. Youngsters from Portland who were busking off to the side, behind one of the structures. They were really good, so good and real you kind of wondered why they were not on one of the stages. Probably next year, or in a few years they would make the Porch Stage or maybe the Arrow Stage you thought and then and you could reminisce about when you saw them in 2004 back behind the maintenance shed.
This year when I was leaving the festival, walking down the street, I saw a very traditional sounding bluegrass band being shut down by security. The band was simply playing as people left. The irony was that at the time all the stages were playing rock and roll and these fine young gentlemen were playing the tunes Warren Hellman would have played. It just seemed ironic and strange to be kicking fiddles and banjos out of a bluegrass festival.
While the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is world-class and amazingly free, you have to wonder why the kabash on people playing in the street. All great American music comes from the street. To not allow for this sort of expression seems strange, ignorant and antithetical to so much of the songs being sung inside the gates. Time for an area for the buskers. Time to water the seeds. I think a lot of people who go to the festival to hear bluegrass would be in agreement. After the Warren Hellman money runs out, that is what will be left.
Butterfly Jazz Trio – CD Second Year Anniversary
On August 29th 2013, I assembled a band in a studio in Half Moon Bay, on the Pacific Ocean and made a CD. This Saturday that band (the Butterfly Jazz Trio) is playing again at their steady gig at The Burritt Room by the Stockton Tunnel in San Francisco. Saturday, August 29th 2015 makes it two years.. Come on down and grab a CD (only a few left) and check it out!
The cast
Kai Lyons – Guitar
Erik Von Buchau – Drums
Dillan Riter – Bass
The spot
Burritt Room in the Mystic Hotel by Charlie Palmer
417 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone:(415) 400-0561
Some samples
Overture
My son, Kai Lyons plays guitar and in 2013 I spent many Saturday nights hanging out down in this mysterious place called the Burritt Room in the Mystic Hotel down by the Stockton Tunnel a few blocks from Union Square. There is cheap parking in the garage across the street and it is a nice walk from the Powell Bart. There are so many options but I highly recommend the New Delhi Restaurant on Ellis. The Burritt Room is a restaurant-bar with fancy cocktails and special cuts of meat and fine dining. A crazy place, I would run into Willie Brown or see Tony Hall walk in the door. Often it would be a few German tourists with that sort of wide-eyed, I am a visitor here having walked up mountains on the wrong side of the planet look. Anyway, listening to the band, I got this notion that I should get these guys in the studio. They sounded great! The one day session down the coast was pretty cool.
A little background
Kai met Erik when he was a toddler. When we lived in Bernal Heights Erik lived about a block away and Kai went to daycare with Erik’s son Cole at Joni and Red’s house across the street. The joke is that it is quite possible that Erik changed Kai’s diapers at point. Dillan and Kai met while busking in the BART and at the Ferry Building. Dillan had played bass for just a few years, but his work ethic, listening ability and drive have always been constant. The band has gone through many changes depending on work schedules and which way the wind is blowing. The addition of Parker Grant, graduate of the University of Miami and East Bay native on piano has been awesome. Often Brandon Etsler plays drums but this Saturday the lineup will include Erik Von Buchau on drums so it is a two year anniversary event!
Come on down!
The CD was a limited run and there are just a few left but they will be available at the Burritt Room this Saturday night. I feel blessed just to hangout and hear these guys play.
More info
http://www.kailyons.com/buy-cd/
Who is the Real Bill Evans?
If your last name is Evans, I would never name your son Bill. The Bill Evans’ of the world are all just way too talented and original. Your son would have such large shoes to fill, he would never get out bed. Some day he would end up an insurance adjuster in some far off town like Des Moines. Of course, if you live in a city, and are over say 45, Bill Evans is the great jazz piano player who worked with Miles Davis and all the heavies in the 60s – yeah, that guy. But wait, I am mistaken, you probably meant Yusef Lateef, the fine sax and flute player would did many sessions and was born, strangely enough with the name Bill Evans, but changed his name to Yousef Lateef later in life. Probably a good move. But then again, perhaps when someone says Bill Evans you start thinking of the saxophonist by that name. Famous for a few years but I don’t hear much of that Bill Evans. But wait, I know the guy you are talking about! Bill Evans the banjo player form California and plays shows festivals and clinics. Yeah, that guy. He’s the bomb!
The 40th Annual Father’s Day Festival
“You can play like me – now go get your own style.”
Bill Monroe – as recalled by David Grissman on the Vern Stage at Mando Madness – Saturday, June 20, 2015
I have been to the California Bluegrass Association. Father’s Day Bluegrass festival about four times. My entire family, including cousins, aunts and uncles once removed attend and the festival is a combination of three stages but mostly jammin’ all night long until the sun comes up – literally 5:30 am. Often some really fine players do this all-night jamming, playing mostly classic bluegrass and old time songs in the classic way. People stroll from campsite to campsite in middle of the night and sit in with complete strangers – the music being the currency of friendship.
If you attempt to take a nap in the tent in the middle of the day, you will be listening to the fiddles and guitars and banjos and dobros. They crank out three chord songs one after another and often a completely different group one campsite down will start another tune a whole step away. Often the two bands will play in the same tempo, starting songs at slightly different times so you get an interesting polyphony going. A major over G major. The one chord of the first key bouncing off the four chord of the other. Chords changing in odd places. The tunes stopping and starting at unusual spots. It all sort of echos through the trees and if you are like me, forget about sleeping for more than about ten minutes at a time. You feel like you are on a carnival ride and even the bluejays head out of the neighborhood for more tranquil climes. Ear plugs are no match for a 5 string banjo.
When I arrived on Saturday at about 10 am with my niece Laura, the sun was shining, it was nice and warm and people were stirring. Some had jammed until 5 am the night before. Others looked like they had not slept a wink. My strategy this year was to set up the tents as far away from the “jam zone” as possible. This worked great as my one night stay was very restful in a secret, undisclosed location up a hill, under some pine trees by some sleepy RVs. Just far enough away from any of the pestering banjos.
I only saw a few shows this year. David Grisman Bluegrass Experience with his son Sam Grisman on stellar bass was great but my affinity with David Grisman comes from a discovery of his Dawg music – a jazzy, sort of gypsy form of music he pioneered in the late 70s. I remember having Hot Dawg on vinyl and cassette and listened to it for about two months straight. Tony Rice and Darol Anger complete an interesting group. However, The David Grisman Bluegrass Experience plays a more traditional style and material – Scruggs and Doc Watson tunes.
I heard The Kentucky Colonels Reunion who played pretty well for some really old guys. They seemed like a pick up band of good ‘ole buddies. From some reason those were the two main acts I heard as I realized that the banjo player one camp over could have played the main stage. In fact the entire group one camp over could have formed a band and played the main stage in about five minutes flat. So a lot of the music I heard and played was in the camp.
Sunday was spent with more jamming, Father’s Day breakfast, a Lucia Birthday cake and then a few hours on the Yuba River where the water level was about normal. We baked ourselves on the granite boulders and the Sierra water washed away the worries of the city. The California Bluegrass Association Father’s Day Bluegrass festival. The tradition lives on.
On the SOTA Arts Proposition in San Francisco – Rethinking Arts Equity
This essay is a comment on the the recent proposal, In Support of Access, Equity and Diversity in the Arts at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and Throughout SFUSD” by Commissioner Rachel Norton and Commissioner Matt Haney, by the SFUSD that was passed unanimously. I find it unfortunate that it passed unanimously as disagreeing about things is what makes the end product a lot better. But the title of the proposition is one of those political maneuvers that happens so often these days. Name it something that everyone can rally around but have the actual action items be a bit weak and not get to the root of problems. Of course everyone is for “Access, Equity and Diversity in the Arts.” If you are not, it is political suicide. Just think of Clear Skies Act of 2003 by George Bush which really did not have a lot to do with air pollution. I have great respect for Congresswoman Barbara Lee who does not just flow with the pack.
If you want to read the actual proposal, you can download it here: In Support of Access, Equity and Diversity in the Arts at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and Throughout SFUSD” Commissioner Rachel Norton and Commissioner Matt Haney
Introduction
Passed by unanimous vote, the “In Support of Access, Equity and Diversity in the Arts at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and Throughout SFUSD” is an interesting attempt to remedy San Francisco’s school system engrained problem of an uneven school quality through out the district. In particular it singles out the arts and SOTA, but this problem goes way beyond the access to arts education. The problem has to do with the actual enrollment process in SFUSD.
In the 1970s there must have been school busing in San Francisco; sending poor kids across town to the nice school further west and vice-verse. Now in SFUSD there is a “choice” system, which means any student can apply to any school within the District. This I remember being called OER ( Open Enrollment Registration). http://portal.sfusd.edu/apps/departments/educational_placement/HistoryStudentAssignment.pdf
This gives students and parents the ability to choose what school a child will attend. Sounds great!… right? Now I can send my kid to one of those nice schools in a neighborhood with all those fancy houses. Every parent in San Francisco has gone through this process and for people outside of San Francisco, it is often a stressful thing and results in intense discussions between parents taking care of kids at playgrounds and social gatherings. But why do we even do this sort of enrollment process with school choice in the first place? By the very concept, it is saying that one school is better than the other. What often happens is parents who spend a lot of energy advocating for their children get into the better schools. If you want to get rid of inequities in SFUSD, get rid of school choice. Be diligent in making sure there is equity in all the schools from kindergarten onward.
Why this is important for not only equity but the environment and traffic. Have you ever noticed how light the traffic is in town on certain weekdays? This is because when public school is on a holiday there are literally thousands of less cars of parents driving there kids off to school across town. Young kids is San Francisco rarely go to their neighborhood school. This means they are strapped into the back seat with their breakfast cereal and carted off across town to Clarendon or Miraloma or one of the “good” schools. Does that sound like equity? To me, that sounds like we have a class of the privileged and one that gets the dregs. This all becomes compounded. These “good” schools then have PTA’s that raise a lot of money that is for extra programs for their school – things like art and music and field trips and gardening projects. The less desirable schools will valiantly try to raise funds but not to the point of actually creating “artist in residency” programs.
Why does inequity continue? Often, the elementary school years in a family’s life are incredibly formative. Families, kids and parents make very strong bonds during this time. Families at this time are incredibly busy simply living life. But for the society as a whole this process of school choice actually engrains and deepens the education inequities. If you want to address inequities in the SFUSD, start at the source – get rid of school choice and bring quality education to all schools. Lift up the the schools in the east part of town with more resources and the best teachers.
How School Choice Does not Address the issue of Inequity
Just look at these images of the school ranking by greatschools.org and you can see that there is an institutionalized racism in the quality of schools by neighborhood.
TOP
MIDDLE
BOTTOM
So if you live in Hunters Point, the Bay View or even the now trendy Mission and want to go to one of the “good” schools, head West young man and just hope that you have a parent who has been advocating for you and a car to schlep you across town. Otherwise, if you live in the barrio, you will be sent to your local school that scores a 1 or 2 and you can forget about those free piano lessons and cool art classes. By making the schools in the east part of town better, you will lift up the entire neighborhood.
Two things in the Resolution that Are Good
There are two things about the resolution that are good. One of the main aspects of the resolution is to create a summer program for students from less advantaged neighborhoods, so that they can get more arts “training.” I am not sure why you need a proposition to make this happen but so be it. This is a great idea and it has always amazed me that this approach has been lacking. If you want to increase the overall citizenship and keep people from going to jail, the arts does truly change lives and engage people in creative ventures and create more well-rounded people. But this should not be in anyway dependent on SOTA. It is just a good idea.
The other aspect that I like is the idea of increasing transparency in the audition process. There are many departments at SOTA and the process of auditioning is often convoluted. Sometimes very talented kids are asked to re-auditon not because they are good enough but simply to challenge their commitment and desire to be at the school. This seems disingenuous and childish. Often times extremely talent and motivated kids do not get into SOTA because of a difference of genre. If SOTA mission is to be a conservatory of European art, that is a problem. We now live in the New World in America, so lets be a bit more embracing of our own cultures. Let’s have some self respect.
Race and SOTA
I have had two children attend SOTA during various times in their high school journeys. While SOTA is 37% Caucasian in both departments that my kids participated in, it was obvious that the directors looked at each applicant with an understanding that all kids do not have the same advantages. There were students who where “people of color” accepted into the theater and guitar programs that had no prior experience but are simply very talented and had the desire and drive. The directors and people auditioning could see this and they got in.
Now look at the racial mix of another prestigious high school, Lowell, where the majority of students are Asian. Is that something to be upset about? Having public high schools that accept students based on merit is a slippery slope that will always lead to controversy.
But Why is There An Arts School Anyway?
The concept of an arts school as a pre-professional training is actually not such a great idea. Most high schools use to have pre-professional technical training in other subjects – classes in woodworking, auto mechanics and sewing but those have pretty much disappeared. The concept that there is one school that focuses on pre-professional training in the arts seems odd. Why isn’t there a school that has pre-professional training in say other blue collar trades?
But the problem with having an arts high school in San Francisco is that it makes it so all the other high schools have truly dismal performing arts programs. Anyone who is good at say the violin or singing or dance will end up at SOTA. Because of this talent drain, all the other high schools then end up having performing arts groups that are actually much worse than some of the middle schools. This is truly embarrassing and I have the utmost respect for music teachers in these disadvantaged schools. It is tragic. Balboa High School has produced some great musicians – Wayne Wallace, John Calloway and Gary Flores to name a few I know and now the band program is almost non-existent. It has no momentum.
In high school, the goal of arts education should not be to produce the next Broadway star or the next Picasso. The goal of arts education in high school should be so that all students have access to the arts so that they may live an enriched life with a broad appreciation and understanding of the arts. Playing musical instruments. Throwing pots. Learning about painting all contribute to a more intelligent, well-rounded citizen. If they end up pursuing the arts as a career, they can go down that treacherous road after they graduate.
Cuba and its Music – Thoughts on Ned Sublette’s Amazing Book about American Music
“So imagine the Zarabanda, the Congo god of iron – the cutting edge, if you will – traveled on a slave ship with his magic, his mambo, and his machete as soon as the New World was open for business. Then he went back through Havana, across the ocean again, where he got all of Spain dancing, then covertly crept upward through Europe – through the servant’s entrance, of course – and became part of what we now call classical music. In the process, his name was frenchified, he lost his drum and his voice, and his tempo slowed way down. All that remained was the distillation of his dance onto the lute and the guitar, with only the barest trace of the original flavor remaining. Today we call that process going mainstream.”
Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004)
In December, my brother-in-law, Ted “Banjo” Kuster gave me Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo by Ned Sublette. It is five hundred and eighty pages long and I thought that it would take me until the following December to finish the book, but it was a page turner, at least for any musician who plays American music. In 1998 I wrote a book called Arranging for Salsa Bands – The Doctor Big Ears Essay were I stated – “Let us look deeply into music and explain why things are the way they are.” Ned Sublette goes very deep.
There are many fascinating ideas in the book. One of the main ideas is that African music has had a much larger effect on Western classical music than we realize as the quote above illustrates. The Zarabanda is the grandmother as the Sarabande which composers like J.S. Bach used in pieces like his Bach Cello Suites. And as has been duly noted in many books, the influence of Cuban music on North American music is often ignored and unacknowledged.
The Elephant in the Room – Ned Sublette on the Spectrum of American Music
“If you ever heard an America sax player fail to lock in while jamming with a salsa band, or heard a Cuban band take on a bluesy jazz tune that doesn’t feel right, you know for all that Afro Cuban and African American music might have in common, they’re also very different than each other.
Why? Because essential elements of these two musics came from different parts of Africa, entering the New World by different routes, at different times, into different structured societies.
Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004)
Here Sublette points out how the differences between the Muslim influenced sub-Saharan Africa as opposed to the forests of the Congo. It is the thesis of the book and he convincingly states the case. This concept alone is worth the price of the book.
Ninth Voluntary Infantry Immune Band from New Orleans
During the time of the Spanish-American war, 1898, the US Army sent a band from New Orleans to Cuba. At the time they thought that black people were immune to yellow fever. Unfortunately they were not. Just imagine the mind set of the military. “Let’s get those jammin’ horn players from New Orleans and send them into war in Cuba. They will do anything!” Anyway, the Ninth Voluntary Infantry Immune Band from New Orleans went down to Cuba for about a year.
“There is no documentation of the Immune Band having performed in Cuba, and it is impossible to say whether their stay in Cuba affected the course of New Orleans music or not. But if a band of the best horn players could stay in Cuba for nine months without absorbing something, at a time when the oquestas typicas were all the rage in Cuba, they would be unlike any musicians this writer has ever known.
Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004)
As in many places in the book, the scenes seem almost like historical fiction. It would have been fun to hear this band and if they make a movie, just think of coveted gig of being the costume designer for this epic Hollywood blockbuster! Sublette, of course, points out that Havana and New Orleans were were like cousins both being important and vibrant port towns. Wild and crazy places. The Immune Band was just one of many cultural exchanges.
Puerto Rican’s in New York – The Jones Act
The 1917 Jones Act gave Puerto Ricans U.S citizenship. This enable Uncle Sam to fortify the army for the nastiness of World War I. But the Jones Act would also change the cultural and musical landscape in New York in very interesting ways. Most folks just think of West Side Story but of course much more was going on in the art and music worlds.
Any history of jazz that doesn’t mention Puerto Ricans, is leaving something out.
Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004)
Modernism
Then Sublette presents this heavy concept about modernism that probably makes many academics roll their eyes, but which is an interesting perspective. They did not teach this point of view, in terms of African influence of European music when I was in school, that is certain. Part of the concept has to do with the looting and display of African art around 1900, and that this art was being influential to the abstract artists in Europe such as Picasso and his “Africa period,” but it also has to do with the empowerment of black artists no longer in Africa.
It would later become academic common practice to speak of modernism as being a move toward abstraction and stylization and away from representation and realism, it could perhaps be better explained as the consequence of the liberation of black creativity – which to many white people was an abstract concept.
Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004)
Conclusion
These are all the quotes I will pull from Ned Sublette Cuba and its Music – From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004). There are many more but at this point you’ll just have to buy the book. The book finishes with a few sections about the Mambo and explores briefly the beginning of television, Desi Arnaz and Perez Prado. It is curious to think that Prado and his dissonant, in your face music, was banned from writing in Cuba and had to go off to Mexico where he eventually became an international sensation. There is mention of many Mexican movies that feature his music that I am really interested in checking out. Prado’s music introduced an adventurous dissonance, resolutions to a dominant 7 #11 b9 chord for example, that now we associate with Mambo, but it was very disturbing for many. I have a feeling that this adventurousness then helped propel some of the more interesting work of later “salsa” artists, like Eddie and Charlie Palmeri, Willie Rosario, Ray Barreto and many of the Fania record label.
This era, from about 1970 to 1990, when the urban music of the Harlem Renaissance known as “be-bop,” a music that signaled the end of jazz as dance music, a harmonically and rhythmically rich music that was pushing the status quo, completely fused with the Cuban son and other rhythms in such a way that made both musics even more vital – and people danced. That is not in the book but is my thesis, and I am standing by it!
If you are interested in actually writing for Latin music groups and want to explore more some of the basics of clave, orchestration and arranging, I would seriously recommend the book below. I reread it last week, and I still think it fills a void in the published material in this field. Below is a link to the first chapter which is pretty silly but actually very important. A lot of people from France seem to be buying it.
THE ART OF CUING A SALSA BAND – THE SPONTANEOUS ARRANGER
Feel free to comment on any of the quotes above with the discussion below.
Toots Thieleman’s Solo on Con Alma East Coast West Coast 1994
This last month I have been a bit obsessed with Con Alma by Dizzy Gillespie. It took me a few days to really start to understand the changes. I found that playing the chords slowly on piano in the lowest register possible and really getting the counterpoint and voice-leading in my head, helped a lot. Then of course, being the compulsive, analytical creature that I am, I transcribed Toots Thieleman’s solo from his album East Coast West Coast (1994). This is another get Toots album with a stellar group of players from John Scofield to Mike Mainieri to Charlie Haden on bass, Peter Erskine on drums, Terrance Blanchard. I mean… how can you possibly go wrong with this album. 5 stars on Amazon.
Toots’ ability to milk the meaning out of ballads will always amaze me. Like some of his other work, he will bring an arrangers perspective to the tune. Con Alma starts as a ballad in 4/4 time. Two measures before the solos begin, the tune turns into a 6/8 waltz. When the tune ends we are back into a very rubato ballad. Brilliant!
Here is the Toots solo.
2015 Best of Excelsior District – San Francisco
The first annual Pelican Cafe – 2015 Best of Excelsior District – San Francisco has finally made it back from the editor. The Excelsior is a bit like what the Mission District use to be like with a little hint of the prosperity a few miles north. There are no wine bars out on the street. A few excellent cafes popped up five years ago and the food is slowly getting better. Instead of health food stores, Mexican grocery stores abound. Just about everything you need to survive day-to-day life can be purchased along this stretch of the El Camino Real, the route taken by Franciscan missionaries the first being Junipero Serra in the 1760s.
Best Salvadorian Bakery by a Bus Stop
Pacita’s Salvadorian Bakery
Address: 10 Persia Avenue
Pasita’s Bakery is the real deal. All kinds of Central American specialty pastries. The best stuff comes out of the ovens in the late morning so people line up at the counter in the afternoons buying bread, cakes and pastries. If you buy a lot they will put all your stuff in a pink box, one by one with tongs and tie it up with a string. This is how you know it is the real deal.
Best Burrito
Taqueria Guadalajara
Address: 4798 Mission Street
Phone:(415) 469-5480
Hours: 10:00 am – 10:00 pm
Last year some magazine or maybe it was ESPN voted La Taqueria on Mission and 25th the Best Burrito in the United States. Obviously the judges never had the Super Carnitas Burrito from Taqueria Guadalajara. Now don’t get me wrong, La Taqueria’s burritos are very fine, but the fact they do not put rice in their burritos should simply disqualify them.
The point of a burrito is that in tight times, one super burrito can feed a family of four and the next day people are still so full they skip breakfast. For the past few years the lines have started to grow longer at Guadalajara so expect the salsa to be fresh and the food hot.
Best Bar with a Bluegrass Jam
The Doctor’s Lounge
Address: 4826 Mission Street
(415) 586-9730
Hours: 8:00 am – 2:00 am
The Crab Fest followed by the bluegrass jam in December of 2014 made this the best bar in the neighborhood. I remember walking into the Doctor’s Lounge on that night. All the tables where set with linen and candles. The place was packed and everyone was digging into Dungeness Crab. The smell of garlic and white wine was from heaven.
The Beauty Operators Bluegrass Jam followed and there were good times all around. Interesting artwork on the wall. Pool table in back. Good place to watch a Giant’s game. Sunday Brunch with rotating chefs.
Best Hardware Store
J & J Value Hardware
929 Geneva Avenue
(415) 239-8998
J & J Hardware is old school. You walk in and the owner is there to help you find that weird bolt, nut, washer or screw. He knows where everything is so you can get on with your day. All the usual hardware goods. With street parking on the side streets, and Walgreen’s close by.
Best District 11 Supervisor’s Aid
Jeremy Pollack
Always fighting for us down there at City Hall, Jeremy can get the job done. He also is good at not scaring little kids and can play a mean bluegrass guitar.
Best Mexican Grocery Store
Casa Lucas & El Chico Produce
I had to call this a tie. Casa Lucas has better refrigeration and vegetables generally. El Chico has a better butcher and checkout cashiers. Also, if you are making guacamole that afternoon, you may be able to get a good deal on ripe avocados at El Chico. If you buy the half and half at El Chico, I warned you, it may make for good buttermilk. But we will forgive the refrigeration. El Chico Produce is in what once was a bank. Granite walls and high ceilings. A big mural of the Mexican countryside on the wall. Pinatas hanging all over the place. Welcome to the neighborhood. Se Habla Espanol.
Casa Lucas
4555 Mission St
b/t Harrington St & Brazil Ave
El Chico
4600 Mission Street
Best Dog Park
McLaren Park
Excelsior
Ruff, ruff, ruff…
Best Breakfast Spot
Andrea’s Bakery
4511 Mission Street
I have not actually eaten at Andrea’s but often buy pasties here that are very good. Close to a mural of Jerry Garcia. The breakfast are authentic central american style. Juevos, sausage and chorizo, potatoes and tortillas. Hearty fare.
Best Dry Cleaner’s
Kim K Dry Cleaners & Laundry
4571 Mission Stree
9am – 6pm
Someone forgot to give Kim the memo and it is 2015. Excellent dry cleaning at 1990 prices.
Best Book Store (within 5 miles)
Bird & Beckett
653 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131
Phone:(415) 586-3733
Bird & Beckett Bookstore is actually in Glen Park as the Excelsior District does not have a bookstore. Not to fear. Bird & Beckett in Glen Park is the best independent bookstore in the city. Live music and poetry readings on the weekend.
Coolest Building Sign from the Past
Alemany Emergency Hospital
On the corner of Alemany and Onadaga. If those walls could talk. Not sure what this buliding is used for but what a great front door. Probably from before electronic health records.
Best Hill for the Next Episode of the “Streets of San Francisco”
Italy Street going west towards Mission coming down the hill.
Imagine a car race over this hill! Flying off the top and jumping each cross street. The car crashes into this tree at the bottom of the hill. where there is a mortuary so the screenplay is already halfway there. Where is Karl Malden just when you need him?
“Smoke” (1995) by Wayne Wang – Auggie Wren and his Philosophy of Time
It is not an objective task or even fair to review your favorite movie. “Smoke” (1995) by Wayne Wang and written by Paul Auster is a gem. It is a theatrical movie and could have been performed on stage across the land except for the fact that throughout the movie people smoke. They smoke cigarettes. They smoke cigars. They smoke more cigarettes. They smoke all the time. This is how people used to live. How do I know? I was there. There is no way local health ordinances would have allowed the play Smoke in a high school. But it matters not. Art for art sake. “Smoke is a great movie.
What is refreshing about the movie “Smoke” is that it takes place during that magical time period before the internet. The Twin Towers are seen in the skyline. People smoke in bars and restaurants. People watch baseball games on old analog televisions with antennas and sometimes even in black and white. People hang out. People interact with their neighbors. The late 1980s was the end of the old times. Before the internet. Before cellphones when life was great. “Smoke” is a very well told story, an excellent screenplay, great and interesting acting even by the incidental parts. And by the time you get to the end, the movie it is but a wise and paradoxical Christmas story about kindness, truth and the power of stories and illusion.
The movie follows the lives of over a half dozen people and the main gathering place throughout the movie is a smoke shop in Brooklyn. You are immersed into the working lives of ordinary people save for the main character, the somewhat famous author Paul Benjamin (William Hurt). He has a special relationship with the smoke shop owner Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel).
The quote below really summarizes the humanity of the film.
Auggie Wren: You will never get it if you don’t slow down my friend.
Paul Benjamin: What do you mean?
Auggie Wren: You are going so fast you are hardly looking at the pictures.
Paul Benjamin: They are all the same.
Auggie Wren: They’re all the same, but each one is different than every other one. You got your bright mornings, your dark mornings. You got your summer light, your autumn light. You got your weekdays, your weekends. You got your people in overcoats and goulashes and you got your people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes the same people. Sometimes different ones. Sometimes the different ones become the same. The same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and everyday the light from the sun hits the earth at a different angle.
Paul Benjamin: Slow down, huh?
Auggie Wren: That’s what I recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Time creeps in its petty pace.From the movie “Smoke” (1995) by Wayne Wang
And as the the movie progresses the plot thickens. There are crimes, murders pregnancies, business deals that go south and serendipitous reparations There is an ingenious view into the psychology of adolescence and the defense mechanism of impersonation as Rashid reinvents himself many times thoughout the film. It dives into the complexities of parenthood, tragedy and broken families. By the end, through all the unforgiving realism, we end up with a Christmas story and an simple act of kindness as Tom Waits, in his rusty voice, sings the closing theme You’re Innocent When You Dream.
This is a great movie not on anyone’s holiday movie list. 5 Stars.
NOTE: Review updated 12/9/2024
YouTube, Bob Marley and Following the Money Trail
Everyone likes cheap. Get a deal on something and you feel good. More money for maybe something else. The only thing better than cheap is free. And so I pondered the economics of YouTube videos, especially how you can listen to just about any track made since the beginning of recorded time on YouTube. For musicians and the public alike, this is simply amazing. For free, you have access to an amazing wealth of music. Download a YouTube to MP3 ripper, and you can claim to be a pirate way beyond the skills of Captain Jack Sparrow.
Ted calls Google, which owns YouTube, “a company that has done more to impoverish musicians and other creative professionals than any entity on the face of the planet.”
Ted Gioia from
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturecrash/2014/10/stop-working-for-free.html
For example, I was checking out the music of Bob Marley and noticed that just one of the YouTube videos had 15,514,525 views. 15 million views! I also noticed that before the video there was an advertisement. How does the licensing of this music on YouTube work and whom gets paid out? Does the estate of Bob Marley get a cut? Does the person who uploaded the video get something? How much does Google get paid?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U-TGahwvs
After searching on the web for an answer I found very little. The best article states that the deals are private but one recent stat for a popular video got just $38.49 for the 2,118,200 views. Something seems terribly off here. Google is a company worth 78 billion dollars paying the creatives chump change.
Google/YouTube deals are covered by non-disclosure agreements – and do not allow independent labels to demand audits
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/10/music-streaming-songwriters-youtube-pandora
So you really have to ask the question, who is the robber baron here? Much of Google’s acquiring of vast wealth is simply based on the exploitation of content and ridiculously low payouts. If the estate of Bob Marley got just one penny for each of that videos views, it would amount to $150,000 dollars. Larry Page. Seems like it is time to pay the band.
I would also like to add the copyright notice for this article. Seems like this is always on all the recordings and books I have purchased.
If anyone has more complete information, say how much does the estate of Bob Marley make on the vast amount of copyrighted material available on YouTube, please email me or add a comment below.
Copyright © 2014 by Paul Lyons
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Simón Bolívar Statue and Semour, the Western Gull
The full title is “Simón Bolívar Statue and Semour, the Western Gull. Fuerte still Charging Forward Moving Slower Than the Alaska Glaciers.”
“God grants victory to perseverance.”
Simón Bolívar
The quote really works in this case. One has to “persevere” with a seagull sitting on your head! At this point, I think the seagull is winning. It is interesting the Simón took off his helmet right before the seagull landed. Stay tuned for the latest news on this epic duel. Will Simón draw his sword and do away with the large gull or will he plead for unity?
The Simón Bolívar statue is in United Nations Plaza in San Francisco and makes for a great field trip in San Francisco. At times a little rough around the edges, the United Nations Plaza tends to get a lot of overflow from the disenfranchised but it is generally a peaceful place. The Simon Bolivar Statue is great cheap tourist attraction. http://heartofthecity-farmersmar.squarespace.com/about/
The SF Main Library. SF Jazz Center, City Hall, Asian Art Museum, any many other sites all close by.
A great to time to go is for the farmers market.
http://heartofthecity-farmersmar.squarespace.com/about/
Sundays 7am to 5pm – Open year round, rain or shine.
Wednesdays 7am to 5:30pm – Open year round, rain or shine.
Simone Bolivar, one of the great symbol of Latin American unity and fitting that he rides his horse here in San Francisco. Aqui se puede…
“An ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction.”
Simón Bolívar
“The first duty of a government is to give education to the people”
Simón Bolívar
Hunter S. Thompson Music Quote
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money
trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and
pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There’s also a negative side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
What a great quote. Things have not changed at all but I thing now it would be a “long fiber optic trench.” Stay positive friends in the biz. The act of playing music, in the end, is the reward. The vultures are still in the suits, and be wary.
How to Defrost a Frigidaire Freezer in 2014
If you are looking for a job, any job, and want to work steadily for the next 20 years, become an appliance repairman. Ever since the good ‘ole US sent the manufacturing overseas and the big companies maniacally focused on quarterly profits, the quality of the appliances has diminished. Bad engineering. Cheap flimsy parts. Lousy workmanship.
Superhuman effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.
Ernest Shackleton
In 2012, we bought new appliances. The old ones had lasted 13 years. The dishwasher died. The stove and fridge were pretty beat up. Time to get new stuff. Because of the size of opening in our fridge, we got all Fridgidaire units, a package that cost around $3000 after warranties and taxes. We have had problems with every appliance but the most troublesome has been the fridge. When the fridge has problems, it is unlike the other appliances as food is going to go bad. My Fridgidaire model is the Fridgidaire Professional 21 HA20412058. They should have named it the Fridgidaire POC (Piece of Crap). How they put “Professional” in there is baffling. Even the doors do not close properly.
So here is my advice when buying any appliance in 2014, especially a Fridgidaire Professional 21 HA20412058 refrigerator.
- Get the best service warranty offered. We did and it was a really good idea. After a year when the first one expires, buy the extended warranty. You will need it.
- Buy a large camping cooler and know where the best place in your neighborhood is to buy ice. After 6 months and your “frost-free” fridge looks like Earnest Shackleton’s view out his tent on his South Pole expedition, you can be assured that in about a day you new fridge will be at 65 degrees.
- Buy a hairdryer. You will need this for defrosting your fridge.
- A ¼ socket wrench and extension. That is all you will need to open up the back of the fridge and defrost this piece of crap.
- Buy an appliance thermometer.
If you begin to notice your fridge is frosting up, you really have about a day, so plan accordingly. Do not do any major shopping. Look for coupons to the local pizza and Chinese food delivery restaurants. Do not plan your trip to the South Pole.
STEP 1:
Call your warranty service number. They will tell you they can make it out to your house next March 22nd. Is between 1 and 4 pm OK? Proceed to STEP 2.
STEP 2:
Make sure you have about an hour and a half free and unplug the fridge.
STEP 3:
Empty the main compartment of the freezer.
STEP 4:
Use your ¼ socket and undo the two bolts in the back and the two holding in the ice-maker. Gently pull these out of the freezer. The electrical connection for the ice-maker is disconnected by squeezing on the outside. There is one such connection for the wall in the back too. That way you get both the back wall and the ice-maker, out of the fridge.
STEP 5:
Get our your hair dryer and melt all the frost on the elements. This is actually sort of fun seeing this frost just melt away. Use a towel or dishcloths and dry up the floor of the freezer. Water is your enemy at this point.
The dynamite was of no use. If only I had a hairdryer, I could melt our way out of this mess and free the ship out this icy grip of doom.
Ernest Shackleton
STEP 6:
Notice how cheap and shoddy the construction and marvel at the concept that they got a thousand bucks for this thing. Be gentle. This POC may make it another 6 months. If the mechanical temperature adjustment knob on the back wall that you took out does not click and seems broken because of the frost build up, take those two bolts out and put it back together so that it does not spin freely but clicks and works properly.
STEP 7:
Put the whole thing back together, making sure to connect the two electrical connections. Be gentle.
You are now done. Put your food back in the freezer and plug in the refrigerator. Make sure to have that appliance thermometer handy so that you can confirm that the unit still works.
Be ready to repeat this task every six months. Hey we’re Americans! We’re use to living with just 20 acres, a shotgun and a mule. A crappy fridge made in China is just a small obstacle to “living the dream.”