Slice of Life

We Have Met the Choad and He Is Us

I want to thank the many fans of Dave "Not a Choad" Matthews who have taken time out of their busy lives to stop by and say hello. Your eloquent posts have opened my heart and mind. Overcome by your passion and whipsaw logic, I broke down and bought (well, downloaded) the entire DMB discography. And I must now admit that I was wrong. Dave Matthews is not a choad. He is a subtle genius who must be loved and respected. His words must be studied with reverance, for truly he is a lone voice of compassion in our crazy mixed-up world. His melodies must be memorized, for none but Angels can play so sweetly. He is a god among men.

I therefore extend my heartfelt thanks to Molly for her effortlessly deep understanding of the limits of my aesthetics. Indeed, before you lifted the veil from my eyes, dear Molly, I could not appreciate Dave's art even "if it came up behind [me] and kicked [me] in the ass!!!"

Alison also took precious time away from her studies at University to correct my opinion. How could I have been so dense? Surely no one that has won a Grammy could be a choad!

Finally, a big warm hug for Elaine, another sage advisor from AOL. Elaine proves her pedigree with some blunt words of wisdom, and I am well and truly humbled. Bless you.

In closing, I'd just like to say thank you all for setting me straight. You are all special girls.

Indie 103.1 FM: Too Good to Last?

I admit it. I still listen to the radio in my car. The CD player is broken, I'm too lazy to fix it, and MP3 players are a lot of bother (unless you're a gadget geek). On top of that, LA rock radio is supremely boring--a super-majority of bleating corporate troubadors punctuated by inane DJ patter.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that 103.1 FM had recently changed its sound from a tedious dance format to an honest-to-Satan alternative/underground/indepdendent rock format. Scratch that; I was not surprised. I was elated.

The format brings back fond memories of college radio in the eighties. And don't make the mistake of thinking Eighties = big-hair synth-pop extravaganza (although there's nothing wrong with that--in moderation). I'm talking about the heyday of real alternative rock radio. I'm talking about punk, power pop, reggae and, yeah, even new wavey synth-pop, all blended in to a delicious sonic stew. In short, I'm talking about the music I cut my teeth on.

The obvious comparison is KROQ. I moved to LA much too late to have heard KROQ in its (apocryphal?) early days of fun and experimentation. (I got here in the Summer of '89, just in time to be aurally tortured by hourly airing of the excreable "Bring Me Edelweiss".) But today KROQ is a pure corporate play, driven by ratings numbers and focus groups. 103.1 is the station KROQ wants to be, or wants you to think it is, if only by reputation.

Case in point: driving home on New Year's Eve, I heard Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike" followed by T. Rex's "20th Century Boy". Sheer brilliance. Also, 103.1 regularly plays album cuts as well as bands that KROQ has either tossed into the cut-out bin of history or has yet to discover, exploit and abandon.

Moreover, because they are so new, 103.1 is currently commercial-free and mercifully free of on-air "personalities."

The only down-side I can see is that 103.1 will eventually have to make some compromises in order to win listeners away from KROQ. In other words, I'm afraid the playlist is too good, too unpredictable to appeal to a broad audience. (Yes, I'm calling you a musical philistine.)

There's also the curious history of the 103.1 Mhz frequency in LA. In the past 10 years, the frequency has seen about as many format changes. It's been home to a number of adventurous formats, all of them failures. Way back in 1991, it was home to beloved and lamented MARS-FM, which both shaped and reflected the emergent dance/DJ culture in LA. That lasted about a year and a half. More recently, it was home to the latest attempt to directly challenge KROQ's hegemony--something called "New Alternative Radio" (I think) for which I can't even find a mention on the web.

Nevertheless, I hold some hope that 103.1 will maintain their cool sound. And if they're reading this, how about some Nebula or Ben Wa? And keep the Old School surprises coming from the likes of Aztec Camera, Big Black, Blancmange, the Cramps, Comsat Angels, Chameleons UK, the dB's, Hüsker Dü, the Jam, Let's Active, Magazine, PiL, the Selecter, Sex Pistols, Ultravox, etc., etc., etc.

[Update 1/10/2004: There's an insightful discussion on this topic at waxy.org.]

Got Our Ass to Mars!

We are here →

Front page of JPL's web site as of 9 PM PST: "Spirit Rover Lands on Mars"

NASA's Deep Space Network has received a signal confirming that Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is alive after rolling to a stop on the surface of Mars.

I can't help but feel a twinge of pride. Congratulations MER team!

Forced Perspective

This is going to be a great year. Along with millions of other freedom loving Americans, this year I will vote Resident Bush, our aspiring dictator, out of office and into the dustbin of history.

Or: This is going to be an awful, tragic year. Along with millions of other fearful and cowed Americans, you will be seduced by BushCo's $200 million propaganda machine and its promises of peace through war. The ends will justify the means.

I'm sorry; I can't put on a New Year's happy face and pretend that life is grand in the "greatest country in the world." It's not. These are dark times, and I fear that it's going to get much darker before the dawn - if it comes at all.

Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but it's impossible to deny that there has been a gross intelligence failure throughout America since the last Presidential election. I'm not just talking about 9-11. I'm talking about the massive public indifference to the judicial coup that propelled Bush into the White House. I'm talking about our abject failure as a nation to honestly confront the question of why we were attacked. I'm talking about the fact that an Administration that is blatantly hostile to freedom has even the slightest chance of retaining power (through the democractic political process, anyway).

Is it enough just to vote against Bush? Is there a presidential candidate out there who has the courage to restore the balance of power between the branches of the federal government by repealing the PATRIOT Act and rescinding dozens of Bush's unconstitutional executive orders, and is yet electable? And does it even matter if the electoral process itself has been corrupted beyond redemption?

I admit that I do not have ready answers to these questions, and so perhaps this article reads as mere Bush-bashing. So be it. I know better. A cynic is an idealist that has been betrayed one too many times. Bush has betrayed his sworn duty to the People, but I still have hope in the ideal of America.

So where does that leave us?

I don't know, but I feel comforted for having gotten these words out of my head an into yours. I may even be ready to return to more light-hearted subjects in this wonderful new year...

Black Like Me?

I've been doing a lot of work related travel lately. Last night I got back from aptly-named Pittsburgh after two days of unimpressive training at the Software Engineering Institute. I took a shuttle back from LAX. The van was full and, this being LA, full of a variety of races and ethnicities. I was the last one on the van and, as it turned out, the last one off.

First, we stop at some random downtown hotel to drop off a family of three. It's about 11:20 PM. The driver gets some hassle from the family matriarch about the price, but she pays and we drive on.

Three stops later, an older woman asks the driver to carry her bags up a flight of stairs to her apartment. He brusqulely refuses. Hey, I can't really blame him. He's a driver, not a porter. It's 12:10 AM.

Then it's just him and me. And he starts in.

See, all of the people with whom he had less than perfect transactions on our trip were black. So he's gotta vent about "the blacks". For the next few minutes I get an earful of how "the blacks" are all stingy and whiny and demanding and ungrateful. I sit there with my teeth clenched, but silent.

(By the way, I'm what you'd probably call "white", although I hate that term.)

Then I decide I've had enough. "How do you know my wife isn't black?" I ask him. Instant backpeddling! Oh, he doesn't mean all black people. Just the bad ones, of course. And he's certainly not racist. No, not at all...

What a spineless asshole. And the kicker is this guy was an immigrant (I'm assuming, based on his accent). I mean I'm honestly surprised that he wasn't more sensitive to prejudice, considering the anti-immigrant zealotry of some of my (and his) fellow "whites".

We finally pull up in front of my house. It's 12:20 AM. I'm jet-lagged and ticked off. I pay him the exact amount of the fare. Then I say "Would you like a tip? OK, here's your tip: Go to the dictionary and look up the word 'empathy'."

I turned and walked towards the door, satisfied that I had spoken my mind.