Band Review: Tigers Jaw

On my first time through the Tigers Jaw music, an interesting thing happened. A song started that sounded like Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy", and sure enough, "Gypsy" was the track title.

My first thought was why would you cover that song, but then I remembered how Lindsey Buckingham had come up in the greatest guitar songs comments, and as we got to the guitar near the end of the song, yeah, then it made sense why you would cover it. It was familiar, but I hadn't really noticed it listening to the Fleetwood Mac version because it is overshadowed by everything else. When I brought up the Fleetwood Mac version later, I heard it better. Pretty cool.

One of the things that I find encouraging about doing band reviews is that even if the initial posting does not get a lot of hits, it will get other hits later. Last week I saw page hits for Touché Amoré and Dads. This made sense, because they were touring together, but then it made me feel deficient that I did not have a review for the other band on the lineup, Tigers Jaw. So here we are.

Tigers Jaw is a grunge/indie pop duo from Scranton, Pennsylvania. They have kind of a muddy sound. It's not as heavy as sludge, with its pop leanings. I believe they are achieving this via off-tuning rather than using a lot of distortion, which gives it a milder feel.

At least on Spotify they have a pretty broad discography, going back to 2006. I focused on the current release, Charmer. "Hum" even has a video, and in it the instruments don't quite stay in place for the players, giving an interesting feeling of disconnection.

They only show one guitar and one keyboard, but the sound is fairly full and deep. "Hum" is a good starting point. It highlights the strong guitar, but gives a feel for their vocals and aesthetic, which does feel very indie but is also sometimes kind of folk-flavored.

I do also want to mention the slightly older track off of the Remastered version of Belongs To The Dead. "Heat" is short, but has some funk in its layers that I think is worth appreciating. And of course, I am grateful for the lessons in the "Gypsy" cover.

Current tour dates go through July 26th, but one tweet led me to believe that there will be another tour shortly after that.

http://tigersjaw.tumblr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/tigersjaw

https://www.youtube.com/user/runforcovertube/featured

http://tigersjaw.bandcamp.com/

https://twitter.com/tigersjaw

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-trouble-with.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/02/concert-review-dads.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/11/concert-review-touche-amore.html

Band Review: Lionfight

Lionfight did follow me on Twitter, but recently enough that it would not be their turn for a review for probably about four months. However, they followed me after I wrote something about not being able to make it to Farewell, My Love's Portland show, as they are touring with them.

This tour is currently ongoing, with several tour dates left over the next month taking in cities across the United States, it felt like it would be more valuable to review them now than later. Also, tomorrow I am reviewing Tigers Jaw, and I am a sucker for these kinds of pairings. If I had a "bear" band on deck, I would have had to do three reviews this week.

Incidentally, Tigers Jaw is currently touring with Touché Amoré, and if you are a fan of Touché Amoré you are probably going to like Lionfight. There is a similar energy in the vocal delivery, with lots of throaty growls and shouts. The similarity can probably be best felt on "Fake Friend".

At the same time, the instruments are not going full on all aggro, all the time, but tend to be more thoughtful. "Vortex" demonstrates this especially well on the intro, bringing in some softer notes that reach out to the universe, giving a cosmic feel to the rest of the song.

"Uncle Ben" starts more softly and more melodically, so that even as vocals, percussion, and guitars amp up, there is a lingering poignancy. Actually, I would say one of their strengths is doing a setup to each song that will give the right flavor before it starts thrashing.

I am currently only aware of five songs, but they are currently getting some great tour experience and showing a lot of stamina. They should have some options as this one wraps up.

https://www.facebook.com/lionfightmusic

http://www.purevolume.com/lionfightmusic

https://www.youtube.com/user/LiFiTV

https://twitter.com/lionfightmusic

Library memories, Multnomah County Central

I am jumping around a bit now, because there are some things associated with the college years that I want to leave for next week.

Before my mission my jobs mainly consisted of food service and retail, with the occasional odd sports job thrown in the mix. Coming back I just really wanted to have evenings and weekends free, like a normal person, which is how I ended up at Clear Connections. That is how I met some people, and it is how I got the phone experience that led me into the tech sector, and where I had my first experiences using a computer, but for the purposes of today's blog, it was the first thing to get me regularly into downtown Portland.

Actually, I worked near the Barbur Transit Center, but I would take 57 into downtown, then 12 out to work, and on my way home I would often spend a little extra time in downtown. Loyalty to Aloha aside, I've always liked the energy of downtown Portland.

At the time, they were renovating the Central Library on 9th and so the library was in a temporary location conveniently located next to a bus stop. How could I not go in, and look around, and get a card and start checking out books?

The thing that must be understood about the Central Library is that the book you were looking for was almost never on the shelves. Even if it showed as checked in, and you carefully checked the location, it just wasn't there.

With the Cedar Mill Library now we request everything online, and then Maria picks it up, and this has been beautifully convenient. At the time, though, especially after the location moved back and I was not always sure when I could get there, I didn't like to commit to having someone find it for me, trusting me to pick it up promptly.

There were frustrations with that, but there were good things too. I looked for Little Women, and it was not there, but some short stories from when Alcott was writing her more sensational stories was there. And, yeah, they weren't that lurid. If that's the kind of thing Jo grew ashamed of, she could have afforded to have lightened up a little.

I was looking for The Stranger Beside Me and it was gone, but Dead By Sunset was there. Although we did eventually read the Bundy book, and many more by Ann Rule, Dead By Sunset was really the best introduction. We knew the officer who reported to the scene, we were familiar with the locations, and it is a really well-written book.

(I also did eventually find and read the unabridged Little Women, but I kind of liked the abridged one better.)

There was a sort of chaos to that library, I guess, and it was a chaos I understood better after a brief stint in library work after I returned to college, but it was also a chaos that allowed for surprises, and many of the surprises were good.

Library memories, part 2

Something I was getting at yesterday is that it was like each of the libraries had its own personality. While the books that I got there were partially a matter of how broad their catalog was, there is also an element of display and organization.

When I got to junior high and high school, I don't remember a lot of displays. My selections were more random because of that. At Five Oaks I remember just going to the Fiction shelves and scanning titles. Somehow this resulted in me reading a lot of Science Fantasy. It was there that I was introduced to Terry Brooks and Piers Anthony, whom I would end up reading much more of later. That was where I read The Wolf Bell and part of the Belgariad, but never finished either of those series. And I tried The Black Cauldron, but I just couldn't get into it.

Once at Aloha High School I seemed to try to get more serious, but it was often disappointing. I tried reading biographies of Anne Boleyn and Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were pretty interesting women, so it stands to reason that reading about their lives should be interesting too, but no, not they way those authors wrote.

I also tried reading The Magic Mountain my senior year. I didn't want to take AP English. I sort of thought it would suck the joy out of literature for me, and I was more interested in the Writing 120 and 121 sequence. There was also an English Literature class that one of my favorite teachers was teaching, so I took that regular English course as an elective.

That being said, I still wanted to take the AP English test. Most of my friends did take it, so checking out their reading lists was fairly easy, and the book that seemed to have the most prestige was Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, so I tried it and failed. Let me tell you, the reason getting through that book is such an accomplishment is because it is so tedious. It's hard to believe it shares its name with an amusement park full of roller coasters.

(In all fairness, I tend not to do well with translations from German, and that description of the tubercular cough has always stayed with me.)

I believe I chose wisely. I did well on the test, and my classes were good. Writing 121 was especially worth it. I continued to enjoy literature, even if there are less memories of great books from that time period.

If I did not check out a lot of fun leisure reading from the high school library, I nonetheless was able to acquire some books for my personal shelves there. They were having a giveaway one day and I came away with one book set in Egypt, two books set in Norway, two set in Ireland, and three set in England. They must have been purging books with foreign viewpoints.

All of this begs the question, did the Aloha High School library have less enjoyable books, or were they just harder to find? Plus. knowing that they had enjoyable books that they gave away to me, did something go wrong?

The other real coup from that time period was accidentally finding the old Aloha co-op library on the day they were having a book sale, and picking up the novelization of The Lost Boys movie. This meant that even though I have still not seen the movie, when I saw the play I got all the jokes.

I actually have one more memory of the Aloha High School library that is not book-related, but relates a lot to the '80s. I once set off the alarm on my way out. No, I wasn't steeling any books, but I had this metal belt, and as I was leaving the belt's interaction with my digital watch apparently created a magnetic field similar to the security system used with the books. I wasn't even that fashion forward!

Library memories, part 1

Yes, I am stalling. Still, I did want to talk about this.

The Bookworm post got into some of my memories from the Chehalem library, but and I think I have even written about some of my comfort books there before (one on pets and one on Dinosaurs). What I have not mentioned yet is how often that library shows up in dreams.

There are few default set pieces that my mind seems to use when dreaming. One is a stretch of road on the way to the coast, and but the one that gets used most is probably my grade school library.

I'm sure it doesn't even look that way anymore. I haven't been inside for ages, but when driving by they have added so many portables and things that it would be hard to imagine that anything still looks the same. I still have that picture though. Grades 1 through 4 were in the upper half of the school, and then you would go down past the office and the cafeteria, and there was a ramp leading down into the library. The 5th and 6th grade classrooms fanned out around it. I went down that ramp and into those book shelves so many times that they are a part of my subconscious now.

Chehalem is where I discovered Pern. It was where I read lots and lots of Newberry Medal books, without realizing yet that it was not a coincidence that those were the books on display, and also the books that made up so much of the Scholastic and Weekly Reader order forms. It was where I was delayed in my love for L. M. Montgomery, because the librarian at the time referred to them as Gothic romance, which sounded unappealing to me. It's okay, she was right about other things.

My book access expanded three times in elementary school. The first one happened in 4th grade, when I entered the Talented and Gifted program. For that first year they held in at Mountain View junior high, and we were allowed access to the library.

In the midst of a Greek mythology fixation, I found Heraclea and a book of how Greek myths influenced words we use today. I also found a book on how to draw different dog breeds, and spent a lot of time on Pugs, and I read many Nancy Drew mysteries.

I guess that was the first year of the program for the school, the it did start in 4th grade anyway. They bussed us over to Mountain View for one half-day a week, where we had a single classroom with one teacher and one assistant, and it was all Chehalem, mixed ages but only 4th through 6th. I don't know if they worked with other schools on other days.

The next year they moved the program to C.E. Mason. It was still Wednesday for about half a day, but we were separated by grades now, and with students from other schools. Also, C. E. Mason had its own library.

It may not have been as impressive as the Mountain View one, and they didn't really give us a lot of time to check it out, but I managed. From there I mainly got books of fairy tales and ghost stories. I adapted one on White House ghosts into a short play. I played the ghost of Andrew Jackson. His ghost is mainly known for swearing, so I held up a sign with the comic profanity indicators and said "Bleep bleep bleep, bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep." Still loving Greek mythology, four of us also did a scene from The Trojan Women. I was Andromache and Gabby was Hecuba. I can't remember the names of those who played the soldier and Cassandra, but I can still picture them.

As nice as the expanded library options were, sometimes I just still couldn't find what I wanted. Specifically, when a picture in the Junior Encyclopedia Brittanica of Jean Valjean giving Cosette the doll made me want to read Les Miserables, and the school libraries did not have it, I went to the Beaverton library and checked out it and also Pyewacket, a book about some very independent cats. If one was more age appropriate than the other, that was rarely the sort of thing that I let influence me.

Because I did pretty well with the school libraries I didn't go to Beaverton much, but whenever I wasn't finding what I needed, it was backup. I remember finding more Nathaniel Hawthorne books there, when I chose him as the author I would report on. And whatever I went there looking for, I always found something else as long as I was there.

Books lead to more books. True now, and true then.

Band Review: JD Greer

On first listening to JD Greer I was very much reminded of All 4 One. They were kind of an R&B boy band that I would have forgotten about if "I Swear" hadn't been used for the end of Despicable Me 2.

Although Greer is primarily a solo artist, he has sung in an a cappella group before, and he seems to do a fair amount of collaboration in his songs, so that makes sense.

I was surprised at the mellowness of the sound, because from his Twitter account he seemed a little more aggressive and maybe kind of redneck, but you don't hear that in the music. Unfortunately, I don't hear much of anything else. It struck me as very generic.

His voice is good. He has sung the National Anthem for Raiders games, and that seems like a good fit. It might also be possible that he good do well in concert settings that focused more on Broadway or classical. However, he seems to be doing fairly well in pop, so I guess that makes sense too.

https://soundcloud.com/jdgreer

https://www.facebook.com/jdgreermusic

https://www.youtube.com/user/JDGreertv

http://www.reverbnation.com/jdgreer/song/21097399-hey-now

Band Review: Thesis Himself

I was not sure whether to use Thesis Himself or NyM-Pro as the title, but the tracks I have been listening to specify Thesis Himself for the most part.

The other thing that I should probably mention is that he has been at the top of the list for a while, and every time I would start listening I would just feel assaulted by the language, and think "Not this week."

Fortunately, when actually buckling down and listening, you can often find things to appreciate, and there are some things that sound a little better, though I have not liked the artist overall.

Giving credit where credit is due, the sound quality is great. He lists himself as a producer and engineer too, and I think artists can have confidence in his technical skills. The music he chooses generally works well. I just can't get past the words.

I realize that profanity, and everyone being either an N-word or a B-word, is common in hip-hop. Even without liking that, I can see times where it is used to give emphasis, or used with wit and intelligence, and I find ways to appreciate that.

"Cold!" almost gets there, but it still ended up feeling tiresome. It was a relief to finally hear an instrumental, and then I looked and that was not Thesis Himself. So I believe him to be a good engineer and a good DJ, but requiring improvement as an MC.

https://soundcloud.com/nympro

https://www.youtube.com/user/VapingWithThesis

https://twitter.com/ThesisHimself

What it means to be an American after 9/11

I need to explain the title to this one because it has been kind of a journey.

It started when I posted an article about the VA scandal. It drew some comments, but one was particularly weird. It referenced an obscure philosopher and didn't actually seem to relate to the post or any of the comments.

My first thought was to ignore it, but there was one line in there about "what it means to be an American after 9/11" and that worked on me. It better mean the same thing now that it did before. I finally had to go back and respond to it, and it had disappeared. I suspect the reason it didn't make sense in context was that he had actually written on the wrong post, which can be easy to do, and then realized it. That made it all look less crazy, which was a good thing. Still, we needed to not have that attack change us.

Except of course that I was working on my Black History Month reading, and now am reading a book that covers prejudice against Chinese immigrants, and the history of U.S. involvement in Hawaii, and okay, actually we do need to change, but not that way. We need to change so we actually live by our values.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That's where we began. It continues with Indians not counting and slavery written into the Constitution, Mormons being driven from Missouri and Illinois, persecution of the Chinese, slavery ending and being replaced with Jim Crow, lots of broken treaties, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Exclusion Act, internment camps, the Patriot Act, Citizens United, and lots more - I know I'm leaving things out.

Compassion happens and courage happens and many beautiful things. I realize that too. We have our good parts. Nothing will make us lose that more surely than constantly finding ways to justify why some animals are more equal than others.

Values like Liberty and Equality are high aspirations; maybe it's not that surprising that we have failed so regularly. Ignoring the ugly spots won't fix that. We need to face them unflinchingly and then correct. I don't think we can do that without caring about people.

It can't be only caring about people who have jobs or people who are wealthy - some of the wealthy people accrued that wealth in jobs that sunk the economy. It can't be only caring about people who have never served jail time - not after the War on Drugs and the way that has been waged. It can't be only caring about white people, regardless of which code words you use to avoid saying that it is only white people.

I am going to try and unpack the different things in my head over the next few weeks, but they will all kind of circle back to this. The more you dehumanize others, the more you lose your own humanity, and why would you think that it could be any other way?

"O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath---

America will be!"

-- Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again

Libraries and democracy

After yesterday I started having all these great library memories. I kind of do want to just go over all the different libraries I have had cards for, and the books I found there, but there is another point that I want to make that seems more important right now. Maybe I will share library stories some other time.

One thing I have realized is that for me a library has just been about a place to get books, and that's huge. If I had to buy every book I wanted to read, it would be impossible. If I switched to e-books, which I do not want to do, that would solve the space problem, but it would leave the money problem. I love libraries as sources of books, but that is not all they are.

I started thinking about it recently after watching this short documentary:

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/371084/why-libraries-matter/

There are so many things here that I don't need, but it is wonderful that those needs are being met. There is a sense of community. There is assistance. There are new interests. I recently attended a gardening class at a library, and before that I attended an Eagle Court of Honor.

What I started thinking about after that video was how democratic libraries are: knowledge and edification should be available to all.

I was looking for the link again to share it, and I found a different one, in progress, that looks like it will focus on the democratic aspects:

http://www.freeforalldocumentary.com/index.html

For now we will just think about this quote:

"For over 150 years the free public library has educated the poor, Americanized the immigrant, inspired artists, and shaped our democracy."

That is something worth preserving. It has become more meaningful to me after reading this:

http://nppsd.fesdev.org/vimages/shared/vnews/stories/525d81ba96ee9/SI%20-%20The%20American%20Dream%20-%20Slipping%20Away.pdf

This was one of the articles for my Social Issues through Comic Books MOOC, from Module 3: Social Inequality. There are a lot of areas it could focus on, but this one comes down to ability to learn to read. There are factors of availability of materials and guidance, but even the obstruction of signs by graffiti says something about how some areas get written off. When those opportunities for development are lacking, do we care about that and want to make up for that, or do we decide that it's just not our problem? It's their fault right? Okay, maybe the little kids haven't done anything yet, but growing up in those circumstances they will probably become part of the problem, so that's all good right?

And okay, we have had these issues in poor areas for a while, but then I start thinking about how there were reading programs that specifically caused kids to dislike reading, and educational programs that say they are about improving education, but really seem to make things worse, and different things about how the job market is looking, and it worries me. Well, sometimes it sickens me, but it also worries.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, but that doesn't mean it's a coincidence.

I'll be coming back to this.

Bookworm

A friend posted a question recently asking about the first book that made you love reading. I don't remember one book I couldn't read, and then four.

I desperately wanted to be able to read before I could. I remember checking one book out of the library. It was a picture book, with pictures of a barn and horse and rooster, and I was willing myself so hard to understand the words and I couldn't.

I have told this story before, but I had not gone to kindergarten, and it seemed like every other child in my first grade class had. It was not standard yet then, but it was common. We were divided into different reading groups based on skill, and I was in the lowest, with ditto sheets folded into books where no word was longer than three letters. (There was a tin man and a pig.)

But I was determined to read, and I had this plan that I would work my way up, through all of the groups, and so I would get all of the books and be able to read all of the stories in all of the books, and then suddenly I was moved up to the highest group, with the Green Feet book.

I'm not sure how that happened. It don't remember any struggles or flashes; suddenly I could read, and I wanted to read everything. That's where the four came in.

I have a sort of a desire for completion. What happened may have happened because I saw a cartoon of The Practical Princess, by Jay Williams, on TV, but suddenly I not only saw that we had that book in the school library, but I also found The Light Princess and The Princess and the Goblins by George MacDonald, and The Plain Princess by Phyllis McGinley, and I had to check them all out right then. This was an issue because the school library had a checkout limit of three books, but I told the librarian I was doing a project on princesses. Okay, the project was a reading marathon, but she went for it.

There were other developments in my growth as a reader than I can point to. My friend Jennie introduced me to Madeline L'Engle, Jane Austen, and Neville Shute. (I think I was already of Jane Eyre, but she nonetheless gave me a copy of it which I still have.) My friend Karen introduced me to the Anne of Green Gables series as well as Sweet Valley High, and if I have a greater appreciation for L. M. Montgomery now than I do for Francine Pascal, it doesn't take away from the place that Pascal filled.

I am still pretty much that girl who wants to read all the stories. (I did read extra chapters in college textbooks. Sometimes the professor really had a point in not assigning them, but I had to find out the hard way.) I am not ruling out that some day I will purchase the entire Keys to Reading series that my grade school used, so I can read the books I missed. For now, I'm not exactly short on reading material.

It makes sense, though, that when I am thinking about something and want to know more about it, my first thought is to find books on the subject. Possibly, I will find lots of books. I want all the knowledge, and so I want all the books.

At the same time, it bothers me recently seeing discussions about reading programs that actually made children dislike reading. What a horrible thing to do to a child.

I believe the discussion started with the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign. One reason the series was originally canceled was a decision to concentrate on fundamentals of reading. The "Reading Rainbow" series was emphasizing a love for reading, not the skills. I won't deny the skills are important, but the love seems to help those skills come along.

Books are the closest things we have to time machines and teleportation devices. The can fill us with empathy and spark passion. They need to be something we are sharing, but it seems that we are slacking off. I'll pick that thread back up tomorrow.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/readingrainbow/bring-reading-rainbow-back-for-every-child-everywh

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Theodore+L.+Harris&search-alias=books&text=Theodore+L.+Harris&sort=relevancerank

Artist Review: Nina Simone

I have used "Band Review" for solo artists but this time it didn't feel right. There are a few things different about this review anyway, so we'll just go with it.

I worried about covering Burden of Sanity yesterday, because I had just written about Mental Health Awareness Month, and I wasn't sure if that band name might bother some who do have mental health issues. It was also the week that I wrote about Black History Month, though, and I really wanted to cover some black artists, and I was looking for anyone of color in my lists only not rap, because I wanted to like them and I often don't with the rap. And then I saw them, and their first track was "MLK", and I had just listened to Nina Simone's "Why" (The King of Love is Dead)", and it felt right.

I really had never known much about Nina Simone, but I had read somewhere the story of her writing "Mississippi Goddam", and it stuck with me.

I am not sure I have the story right. I thought I had read it was after she heard of the death of Medgar Evers, and then I couldn't find that account, and when I found another account it said it was after the church bombing in Birmingham. Still, what I remembered reading was that she went into her garage to try and build a gun, and when her husband found her he pointed out that her weapon was her music. Then she wrote the song.

I related to that. I try and hone my writing, and I want to use it for good, and whatever obstacles there are in the way of that, I am more likely to succeed at writing something powerful than building a gun. So as there was buzz going around about the Zoe Saldana movie, Simone got more in my mind, and yes, I needed to spend some time on her.

Coming to her via that route, I thought of her as so political and activist that it was surprising when I started listening. There are so many standards, and gentler fair, and even "Mississippi Goddam" does not sound as angry musically if you don't listen to the lyrics.

As I read more about her, it made more sense. She started out as an aspiring classical pianist. Denied a scholarship because of her race, she begin playing in clubs, making her a singer and getting her into other musical styles. There is such a strong musical foundation there, but there is also a good foundation, based on being held back early by prejudice and due to the time period she was going to see, to become political.

So she can call "Mississippi Goddam" a show tune, and it does fit that form, but it also references blues, and gives a pretty full picture of what was going on. And by calling it a show tune without a show, and putting that spoken into the song, she is both pulling in the audience, but pointing out the song's orphan state, there is that separation, and confirming that the story is not over. And she can pull from Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry, and she can include classical, jazz, blues, and gospel, because she had the talent and she paid her dues.

She also paid financially for that. A Jet interview from 1986 says that her political songs got her boycotted, and she didn't regret that phase, but also at that point she wasn't being as political. You can argue about whether that's a legitimate choice, or whether that time period called for the same level of activism, but I admire her awareness. I admire that she understood what her art meant, and made conscious choices about what she was going to do with it.

I knew going in that I would not be able to go through everything three times. I could spend a lot of time listening and still just scratch the surface, and there is a lot of history, both musical and otherwise, to give it all context.

Also, there is no Twitter and Facebook account to link to. She is gone. You can find videos on Youtube and lots of songs on Spotify, but ultimately we are looking back here. So doing that, I listen and hear strength and warmth and determination. It was worth the time.

I didn't think I had anything special planned for my 150th artist reviewed, but I did.

Band Review: Burden of Sanity

Burden of Sanity is a hard rock/alternative metal quartet based in Miami.

They list several influences where they names are familiar - like A Perfect Circle and Deftones, but I don't really know the music, so I can't say how accurate that is. However, especially in regards to the guitars, they remind me a lot of the '90s.

So I hear a little bit of Cypress Hill on "Feel This" and "Dreamland" reminds me a little of Foo Fighters as in "Everlong" and a little bit of Metallica in "Master of Puppets", and I thought something reminded me of "Glamour Boys" from Living Colour.

None of this is to call Burden of Sanity derivative, but if you like '90s rock, and don't mind if it leans a little toward metal, you should check this band out; they are right in your wheelhouse.

Burden of Sanity currently has a 7-track album available, Decimate, along with a video for "Ease the Pain".

http://www.rocktobos.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Burdenofsanity

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVs4mjiYuGzRdI_ViJvyHvw

https://soundcloud.com/jervis_b_o_s

http://www.reverbnation.com/burdenofsanity

https://twitter.com/BurdenOfSanity

Black History Month 2014

Here we are again, not really anywhere near February. However, last year I did not get started until June, so finishing in June is an improvement. This was probably my most ambitious reading month yet, and in light of many fairly recent events, I am still digesting what I want to say about everything, and what order to say it in, so this is just a brief bit on each of the books and movies.

The Quest of the Silver Fleece, W. E. B. Du Bois

Last year's Slavery By Another Name mentioned Du Bois researching a report of those practices in the South, and then the report was rejected so he turned it into a novel. This is that novel.

As it started my first thought was that this was the purplest prose ever, and maybe he was better at non-fiction, but it kind of grew on me. Then I begin to worry about who would go to jail and would they ever get out of the mine. As it turns out, the novel did not focus a lot on debt peonage, but more debt as a way of keeping labor attached, political machinations as Reconstruction got dumped for better relationships with the South, and even a lynching.

It ended up being more human than I expected, with a compassion for even some very flawed individuals, and some hope.

Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves, Art T. Burton

I read this because of an article about Bass Reeves that mentioned it, and the article was really fascinating. The book was a little more dry, so there were frustrating things about it. There was still a lot of information that was completely new to me. I had not realized how deadly being a marshal was, though it makes a lot of sense. I think his long career and retirement was only possible due to his being an unusually good shot. I did not know about the Lighthorsemen set up for maintaining law in Indian Country either. And, although I had read John Hope Franklin's autobiography, I do not remember anything about his Chickasaw blood, but it was in here.

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson

In many ways it just reinforced what I already understood, but it also clarified. I knew it was political machination to find a black conservative to replace Marshall, I did not realize how egregious it was. I did not doubt she was telling the truth, but I did not - as a young college student - have as much of an understanding of the dynamics of sexual harassment. So that there could be people who truly never saw that side of Thomas is something I understand better now.

I did not know about how much corroborating evidence there was supporting Hill that was squashed, but I can't say I am surprised because I remember thinking at the time that it wasn't that they didn't believe her, they just didn't want to have to deal with it. However, the other thing that I see now, and that makes more sense now, is that when someone is saying what you don't want said, how vicious you can get.

To Keep The Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells, Linda O McMurray

I remember reading a newspaper article about Ida B. Wells in high school and just becoming enamored of her. Not only did this teach me more about her life, it explained why she had become somewhat unknown despite having once been very prominent, and how her daughter's fight for recognition led to a book and a stamp in the '70s, and it would appear to be this shift that led to a 1989 "American Experience" episode that I realize now led to the article that I read.

Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, edited by Major Jackson

These are really excellent poems. He pulls from a more classical tradition than Langston Hughes, so it's a different feeling. With Hughes I felt like I was hearing the rhythms of a specific time and place, and that does not happen with Cullen. However, there is still humanity. It works on a different level, but it does work.

The Harlem Hellfighters, Max Brooks, art by Caanan White

I found another relevant comic book. I should probably call it a graphic novel, not due to a lack of respect for the term comic book, but there are parts where it is really graphic. It is easy to forget how much warfare changed in WWI with the use of chemical weapons and other killing technology, and this makes you feel it. I don't even know how accurate it is - I don't know if you would really see someone's intestines unspooling that way - but the horror of war is there, and so the horror of the treatment and disrespect the soldiers get because of racism despite their service is felt.

Spies of Mississippi (2014) directed by Dawn Porter, Trilogy Films

This is based on a book, which I will probably get to eventually. It is a chilling example of how badly people will ignore decency for some horrible reasons. I will give two examples.

One is the story of Clyde Kennard, who was well on his way to integrating a university based on his good academic and war record. Phony evidence was planted on him to get him to jail for robbery. He wasn't released until a few months before he died from cancer.

Also, this bothered me so much I transcribed it from a news reel of the time that I believe was meant to be reassuring:

"The Jackson Police Department operates with the best demonstration deterrent of any city in the country. In addition to Thompson's Tank, armor-plated and equipped with nine machine gun positions, the arsenal includes cage trucks for transporting masses of arrested violators, searchlight trucks, each of which can light three city blocks in case of night riots, police dog teams, trained to trail, search a building, or disperse a mob or crowd, mounted police for controlling parades or pedestrian traffic, and compounds and detention facilities to hold and house 10000 prisoners.

Along with these ironclad police facilities are new ironclad state laws, outlawing picketing, economic boycotting and demonstrating. Other laws to control the printing and distribution of certain types of information, and laws to dampen complaints to federal authorities."

Black Indians: An American Story (2001), directed by Chip Richie, Rich-Heape Films

And getting back to John Hope Franklin, there are a lot of times when someone has both black and Indian blood, and it is not known, or hidden, and so for many of the people they talk to in the film it becomes about being free to embrace all of their heritage. It was touching, and it puts some other things into context for me.

There have been some additional things that don't relate directly, but felt like they might be relevant, so I also watched Erasing Hate, a 2011 MSNBC film about a former skinhead getting his facial tattoos removed, and I am reading How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev. It does pertain to race, but it looks like there are better books on the subject. And, because I finally got around to reading about Bass Reeves, I am going to read about Chang Apana.

That may not sound like it makes sense, but while I was doing some of my reading, I really wanted to bring in Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. I thought it was because I was going to be drawing something with a lot of rats, which I actually have not gotten around to drawing yet. However, it reminded me about some important things about press and journalism that were relevant as the biographies sorted through newspaper accounts, and it will come up again. So things work out.

Mental Health Awareness Month 2014

I have never observed this before, but apparently May has been Mental Health Awareness month since 1949.

I saw something about it last month, and it was really very similar to the first Black History month I observed. Someone mentioned it, I remembered things I wanted to read that were pertinent, and decided to put it together.

One book was The Day the Voices Stopped by Ken Steele. It was in the big reading list. It has been a fairly recent addition, but once I found out about it, I needed to read it. Knowing people who have voices, it was exciting to know that they could stop.

I had also been seeing a lot of buzz lately about the film Home:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2393825/combined

Finally, ages ago I had read an interview with Linda Carroll about her book Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love. The interview was in Psychology Today, probably from when the book came out in 2006.

They were good choices. Yes, not only was there hope in The Day the Voices Stopped, but there was also so much more understanding of what it was like, and therefore so much that resonated in what other people say about their own experiences. This is what she meant!

It was frustrating to see how bad some of Steele's experiences were, when some of them could have been made better so easily. Often it was just a matter of what hospital he ended up at.

One thing that held him back was his family's refusal to seek treatment because of the stigma on mental health, and knowing that everything would be blamed on the parents. That also ended up being a factor in Carroll's book, with the added complication of adoption with its own stigma.

I do think there are a lot of things that we do better today, but Home was completely modern and while it again had a lot of hope, there were still things that were heartbreaking. As one member in group therapy describes a date, and the joke that cut him to the core but he had to pretend it didn't, it really hurt. At the same time, horrible treatment on a group outing is painful, but turns into a scene of mutual support and cake.

It has also led to more reading, because Carroll references the Summer Hill school, and now I need to know what that is all about. However, I have also been able to tell someone who wants to be a counselor but struggles in school that it is possible, because Carroll's experience bears that out.

I am able to better understand what some people say about their voices, and know that there is a possibility of those voices leaving some day. I have seen some examples of effective organizing, with Steele's work. I have learned about some experiences outside of my own.

And there's a lot more to know, so I could be back here next year, and I might end up not getting it done in May, but it was valuable. I'm glad I did it.

Innovation week

Last week was Innovation week at work. My sister who works at a different company just got an innovation award, so I started to think it might be larger-scale than I thought.

Searches do show other hits for Innovation week, but they are for different time periods. It does not look like there is a national or global agreement on when to focus on innovation. That is interesting, because one of the focuses of the guest speaker was collaboration.

He talked about coming into a company that had been having problems, and one thing that they did was physically rearrange the space to make conversations and sharing easier, and they felt it was successful.

That was interesting, but I know that I have been at other companies that had similar initiatives, and they spent a lot of money and time on changing the space, but I don't think it changed the culture.

There were a couple of things I was thinking about with this. One is my great love for telecommuting. While it is certainly convenient for me, I always remember that one presentation on the environment. He was so hung up on video conferencing instead of travel, because no car is really efficient enough. At the time I thought it was overkill, but the more I read, the more I see his point. I have managed to commute before, and by using public transportation I was not as bad as I could have been, but more people telecommuting is better for the planet.

If telecommuting is bad for a healthy business, that is something to be considered, because we need to balance different needs. However, my other though was comic book creators. Their work is extremely collaborative, and they are almost never in the same room. They share emails, scans, and chats across countries and continents.

Of course, that is a somewhat specific form of collaboration, that is not necessarily going to lead to innovation; there are some things about the output that can be assumed. There will be pages with words and pictures telling a story, usually - it's surprising sometimes what can change. And even with the basic formula, it can frequently happen that the normal and expected story turn is not taken, and yes, there is innovation in that.

I don't really have any answers there. Some of my personal development goals for the year may be focused around exploring that topic further. I want us to be able to adapt and do things better. That is needed. I also want to be friendly to the planet, which is also needed. And as much as I like downtown Portland, there are a lot of benefits to working from home.

So, just some things that I have started thinking about, and I will not stop.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/06/stop-collaborate-and-listen.html

Band Review: The Amplifires

The Amplifires are a female-fronted alternative rock band operating out of Matlock in the UK. I mention that because as I was looking for more information I seem to have found three others of the same name, based in Finland, Florida, and Sydney Australia. So just to be clear, this is the English band.

The female fronted part stands out. The guitars are strong and vigorous, but vocals are more reedy and delicate, reminding me a little of Judy Collins. It creates an unusual contrast.

Sometimes it is jarring, as on a cover of the Ramones' "Pet Sematary", though that may merely be due to familiarity with the original. "Fire On The Moon" works much better, combining blues and rock with adrenaline. With that and "Next Time" you get a better idea of the band's actual potential.

There is a generous helping of recordings on Reverbnation. Sadly, the sound quality is often not great, which sets the band at a disadvantage, but it looks like they are doing some new recordings, so that may be rectified soon.

http://www.reverbnation.com/theamplifires

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Amplifires/200379716656537?sk=timeline

https://twitter.com/TheAmplifires