Burnin’

Richard Ziade at Basement.org points to a message board post about file-sharing from Will Sheff, the front man for the rock band Okkervil River.

My real concerns with file-sharing are primarily aesthetic.

There’s a story by Jorge Luís Borges called “The Library of Babel.” It describes a fantastical library composed of an apparently infinite number of identical rooms. Each room contains 1,050 books. Printed on the pages are words whose lettering and order are apparently random. Because the library is complete, among the gibberish it also contains every book that is possible, every book that could ever be written. It also contains every imaginable variation of every book possible, whether that variation is off by thousands of letters or by a single comma. Borges adds that it must contain, somewhere, a book that explains the meaning and origin of the library itself – just as it contains thousands of variations of that book, true and false. He writes, “When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure…As was natural, this inordinate hope was followed by an excessive depression.”

The Internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the Internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less.

Damn, a rock star made from brains. Who knew?

According to Wikipedia, Sheff was an English major at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (which explains a lot).

To read more of his writings, visit this Jound.com page.

Metropolis Magazine published a feature last September on the rapid acceleration of New Urbanism in Omaha.

The magazine claims much of the groundwork for Omaha’s urban-design plan was put in place by the Omaha Community Foundation, which started working on a vision for the city in 1999. In 2002 the foundation asked Connie Spellman from the chamber of commerce to spearhead Omaha by Design, a nonprofit set up to focus their efforts, and they brought in Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces to help.

Omaha by Design came up with 73 urban-design recommendations as part of the Omaha Master Plan. The plan encompasses everything from the landscaping of street corners, the design of important civic sites, and streetlamp choices available for neighborhoods to regional development, protection of watersheds, and the creation of a citywide trail system.

“Corporations were realizing that Omaha didn’t have the energy that a lot of young workers were looking for,” Steve Jensen, Omaha’s planning director says. “They’re saying, ‘It’s important to have a city that’s interesting and active—and a little edgy.’” That’s something community leaders appreciate about Saddle Creek Records. According to the Omaha World Herald, the city helped finance Saddle Creek’s new entertainment complex in NoDo. The 56,000 square feet complex consists of Saddle Creek Records, live music venue Slowdown, the Film Streams art-house theater and spaces in which artists can work and live.

Joe Gudenrath, spokesman for Mayor Mike Fahey, said the mayor’s office was “active in encouraging them to locate in north downtown.”

“We didn’t want to take the chance of losing Saddle Creek Records to another city,” Gudenrath said.

We visited downtown Asheville on Saturday. After securing a healthy start (comprised of fresh squeezed apple juice, organic coffee, tempeh scramble, grits, toast, fruit, etc.) at Over Easy Breakfast Café, we sauntered over to The Courtyard Gallery for the 13th annual Twin Rivers Media Festival where we watched four shorts–Siren, The Little Gorilla, Buoy and Press Play. Afterwards, Andrea Lee Higgins, a singer-songwriter from Columbia, SC performed some of her originals.

We then walked up the hill to Malaprop’s Bookstore where author Elizabeth Gilbert was speaking to a packed house. Add to this a little shopping at Hunk’s and Rags Reborn Eco Chic Boutique, dinner at Savoy and live entertainment at Westville Pub later in the night and you’re talking about a heavy hit of culture courtesy of this funky southern mountain town.

Now in it’s 17th year, The “Risky Biscuit Hayseed Hoot”™ hosted by Dondo Darue, is a mix of insurgent Americana: country, folk, bluegrass, singer-songwriter, rock, spoken word, humor, etc. The show airs Saturday mornings on 100.1 FM KTHX in Reno, Nevada; 95.3 FM KPND in Sandpoint, Idaho and on KTRT in the Methow Valley in North Central Washington state. Shows like the annual Ed Abbey Memorial are also available for download.

The “local crew” at Patagonia’s Reno distribution center writing on the company’s new blog says:

Wanna get some Ed in your head? Then sidle on up to the Hoot Hut and have a listen to this year’s Ed Abbey show, where you’ll find tasty instrumentals, a little blues, a little folk, a little outlaw country, and a generous helping of Mr. Abbey reading straight from classics such as “In Defense of the Redneck” and Desert Solitaire.

Abbey sounds clear as a bell in these recordings. And the supporting soundtrack with tunes by Shannon McNally, Robert Earl Keen, Michael Martin Murphey, John Prine, Chuck Brodsky, Marshall Tucker Band and many more is an outstanding compliment. My hat’s off to Dondo Darue.

Kathleen Rooney interviewed poet and rock star, David Berman, in 2003. Berman’s first book of poems, Actual Air, was critically acclaimed. Now that it’s sitting on my coffee table, I can see why, for he writes strangely lucid lines like: “Out the garage window he sees a group of ugly children enter the forest. Their mouths look like coin slots.”

KR: Whose work, if anyone’s, are you influenced by? Who do you like to read?

DB: The books I took the most from were Henry Miller’s Nexus, Sexus, and Plexus when I was a 14-year-old. It gave me permission to enjoy life. He was filled with praise for the universe and scorn for suckers. After that, I’d say Robert Stone, especially Dog Soldiers and a short story called “Helping.” Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samara, Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Melville’s The Confidence Man had an effect on me.

KR: I can’t help but notice that you don’t list any poets among your chief influences–are there any poets (or, for that matter, songwriters) whose work you especially enjoy or from whom you draw inspiration?

DB: There are hardly any great poets from the last 50 years. Poetry has been taken over by uncharismatic nerds who use the word “desire” pointlessly and “absence” as a noun even more pointlessly. That being said, the poets that kill me are, Kenneth Koch, and…..Kenneth Koch. After that it’s Michael Burkard (who I can’t figure out why he’s so amazing), half of Franz Wright, Robert Frost, and, big surprise, Wallace Stevens. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is like the “Stairway to Heaven” of 20th-century poetry.

Boulder is an important town to me. I went to school there in ‘86. I spent a month there in the summer of 2001. I lived nearby in Denver twice. I’ve seen an inordinate number of stellar shows at The Fox and Boulder Theatre, imbibed on Pearl Street’s best infused mojitos, nibbled the tofu, etc. But what it all comes down to is this: there are lots of good people in Boulder. People I am lucky to call friends.

Boulder is also blessed with musicians who like to come down off the mountain on special ocassions to jam. Rockygrass is such an ocassion. And local pickers, Yonder Mountain String Band, did descend, along with the hill folk who follow them.

After the first night at our friends’ cottage on Alpine, and two nights sleeping in our REI tent along side the St. Vrain River (waking at 7:30 am to get out of the hot sun both mornings) we motored into downtown Boulder on Sunday afternoon and checked in to the St. Julien Hotel & Spa, “where nature meets nurture and simplicity meets style.” Ms. D enjoyed a hot stone massage. I took a nap in the four-poster bed after showering in the all-slate bath. Slate, not just on the floors, on the walls as well.

Of course, I’m far from the only one who thinks highly of Boulder. One of the world’s most creative companies just opened an office there, in order to offer its employees the choice of working in Miami or Boulder.

When living amidst all the natural beauty, organic food, beautiful people and world class athletes, one can, from time to time, find it all a bit too much. Yet, when one steps back–as I have several times in my life–and looks at Boulder through fresh eyes, mostly what’s there is a model community filled with active, educated citizens making their own reality better day-to-day.

You know you’re adjusting nicely to the South when you buy Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1973 debut on iTunes. At $7.92 it’s hard to resist. My purchase today was in part motivated by an event I didn’t see coming. Last Friday we ate sushi with friends and then we went to Rider’s Lounge, where I encountered my boss, another co-worker and her husband, as well as a high school band from Bluffton known as The Gnomes.

Here’s what the Island Packet said about them last summer:

In a town where cover bands are about as common as drink specials and the strains of “Freebird” blend into the background noise like cicadas, it can be hard for a seemingly innocuous set of teenagers to gain a foothold, much less a following.

The best part of their show for me was a rendition of “Simple Man.” I stood back against the bar after downing a Jaeger bomb (not somethng I do much of), and took it all in. Namely, that three teens in this small South Carolina town know how to rip and they like to rip Skynyrd. They do pretty well by their musical idols, I’d say.

On a related note, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s biggest hit single, “Sweet Home Alabama”, was an answer song to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man”. The common belief that Ronnie Van Zant and Young were rivals is incorrect–they were actually fans of each other and considered collaborating together on several occasions.

Paul Ford is a great writer. Evidence for this theory exists on his website. He’s also employed by Harper’s Magazine and he has a new novel out. Like I said, the guy can write.

Here’s something he wrote last fall that I find funny.

Back in 1995 Jerry Garcia died. I was just finishing up college at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. I never really cared about the Grateful Dead all that much. Some of the Dead’s music is okay if you don’t have anything better to listen to, like, say, silence, or the sound of flies buzzing. I don’t really have a problem with it, but I do have a problem with pious hippies. They get on my nerves in the same way that, say, Objectivists do. And I like all the stuff that hippies hate, like wearing solid colors, and living in a house that’s not made of corncobs, and Western medicine.

My roommate in college had the same problem with hippies that I did. So we decided to put together a one-hour radio program for the college radio station, WALF, about the assassination of Jerry Garcia, complete with commentary and analysis and a slowed-down, audio-processed, totally fake bootleg of the song Sugar Magnolia to which we added fake gunshots. We played it one night and our friends were amused.

This was the early days of the web, and I figured I might as well put up a few pages about our assassination theory with some audio clips and see what happened. What happened is that Jerry fans sent me long emails explaining how important Jerry was to the world and that my theory was insanity and should be removed from the Internet immediately. Sometimes people would ask to speak to my supervisor.

I’d always write back. I’d send a fake email from the Internet Management Council, an organization that does not exist, telling the complaining party that their Internet would be shut down from this day on. And then they’d write back even more full of burning rage, telling me that they were going to write the Internet Management Council as well and have my Internet revoked. Sometimes I’d let them in on the joke, reminding them that Jerry Garcia had been in close contact with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and wasn’t afraid of a good prank himself. They didn’t write back. I did it over and over, and I was happy.

I share Ford’s distlike of pious hippies, but I like Grateful Dead music. And I like hippies when they have a sense of humor and adventure.

Mary Minow of Library Law Blog had the good fortune to see a pre-release copy of The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics (Free Press: forthcoming in October, 2005), by editor and annotator, David Dodd. Dodd is also chair of the California Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and director of the San Rafael Public Library.

MM: How unusual to see a Deadhead who is a library director!

DD: Actually, there are a few of us around—there’s even a Deadhead Librarian listserv. I hear from people all the time!

MM (a little taken aback): Really. The Grateful Dead is well-known for allowing and even encouraging fans to make recordings of their live performances and even to distribute them to their friends. Did you have any problem getting permission to publish the lyrics in your book?

DD: I think that taper ethic goes a long way to differentiating the Dead from pretty much anything else in the business world. The marketing model of allowing free distribution of the music just flew in the face of all the common wisdom. In a way, the file-sharing programs that are the target of such vilification from the mainstream music business world today are the direct descendants of the Dead’s approach. That said, they have been (rightfully) quite cautious in allowing this project to go forward as a print-on-paper book. Over the years, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Ice Nine Publishing, who granted permission to me to use the full text of the lyrics on my Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics website, but the permission to publish that site as a book came after a long period of having the project back-burnered. Problems, no; patience, yes.

MM: What’s it like, really, to publish a book?

DD: I really think that the writing and publishing of books in the US today is a cottage industry. This is my third book, and each has carried with it a greater or lesser degree of do-it-yourselfness. The first book, an annotated bibliography about the Dead, published by Greenwood Press in 1997, was pretty much completely DIY: I delivered camera-ready copy, complete with index. The second book, The Grateful Dead Reader, published by Oxford Univ. Press in 2000, was laid out by Oxford, but my wife Diana and I did all of the permissions work on our own. We even held an Amish-style proofreading party, with a group of Deadhead writer friends spending the day going over the entire book! And this book has required that I do all the permissions work, hire a reference librarian to do fact-checking, coordinate the illustrations, and be very hands-on with the design of the book, and with the indexing. You don’t just sign a contract, turn over a manuscript, and sit back and wait for the book to appear.

MM: So, why do it?

DD: Each time, I’ve said “never again!” But I think it’s like going backpacking: you forget how painful it is, and you remember the good stuff. And if, like me, you love books, then there’s something extremely appealing about helping to make books happen. Fame and fortune are elusive, but at least I can walk into almost any public library in the country and find my books on their shelves. That’s very satisfying.

photo by Evil Vince

Our friend, Chris May, a.k.a. DJ Evil Vince, is out on tour with Ben Harper this summer and his photos are being showcased on the Ben Harper site, under On The Road (on the nav bar). When you get to the tour page, click the letter [P] in brackets for the photos to pop up.

It’s nice to see Evil’s work get this type of high level exposure.