Gina Harris's Blog, page 48

Rules of threes: Bands

Sometimes I think about Tony Banks and Andy Summers.

I would think about them, but have to look up their names. I mostly remember their names now. Kind of.

For anyone who is not sure, Andy Summers is the guitar player in The Police, and Tony Banks is the keyboard player in Genesis. To be fair, Summers plays some keyboards and Banks plays some guitar, and both do backing vocals.

You can probably picture them in your minds. They have participated in many concerts and music videos and recordings, and both have had pretty nice side careers where they do interesting things as respected musicians.

However, they are still less known than Mike Rutherford and Steward Copeland, and way less known than Phil Collins and Sting.

I have no reason to believe that this is a problem for either of them, but sometimes I would think about what it was like being, "Oh, and that other guy."

Maybe they could form their own band, I would think, but then it would seem like that band should be a trio, with an additional other guy.

I would just get stumped on who should be that guy.

Thinking about it more lately, I came up with a few ideas.

Initially I had thought maybe Alex Lifeson, from Rush, and less known than Neil Peart and Geddy Lee. In his case, Lifeson was the only original member as they became famous, though to some extent early lineup changes are too common to worry about.

Yes, I thought, it should be Lifeson. Glad to have that straightened out.

Then, that very same night, Maria played a Depeche Mode song.

Crap! Obviously it should be that guy who is not Dave Gahan or Martin Gore (nor Vince Clarke who left the band early on, but is still more famous due to Erasure and Yaz).

There were arguments that could go both ways. For my MTV generation, Depeche Mode music feels more contemporary with Genesis and The Police than Rush. We did see some Rush videos, but they felt older, and they never played early Genesis which was fine.

It did occur to me that Lifeson would be closer in age to Banks and Summers than Andy Fletcher, but I was surprised to find out that Lifeson was younger than either of them. Lifeson was born in 1953, Banks in 1950, and Summers in 1942. Fletch was born in 1961; I'm not sure how I feel about any of that. 

(Banks was named "Prog God" at the 2015 Progressive Music Awards, so that might indicate he would lean more toward Lifeson.)

Perhaps the more pressing question is whether it is better to have two guitarists or two keyboardists; isn't there a trio with a lesser known bass player?

Still, I was pretty much settled on Fletch, but I turned on the television and "Release Me" by Wilson Phillips was playing. Of course! The one who wasn't Chynna or Carnie!

Wendy Wilson was born in 1969. She seems to only do vocals, and perhaps only in three-part harmony, which may not be the strongest qualification. However, when they spoof your band on Saturday Night Live, and your band mates are played by the youngest woman in the cast and Chris Farley in a red wig, but you are an extra, you know something about being one of the other ones!

But I was probably sticking with Fletch.

For some reason, I kept thinking of Johnny Marr. 

That made no sense at all; there were four Smiths. Then I remembered Electronic, and of course there was someone in New Order besides Bernard Summer and Peter Hook. 

It turns out that Stephen Morris (born in 1957) did it better than anyone. 

As a multi-instrumentalist, he would be a wonderful choice, and perhaps the most age and era-appropriate. However, when they wanted some additional keyboards for New Order, they brought in Gillian Gilbert. 

He dated her. He married her. He formed a band called The Other Two with her. 

He was way ahead of me on the concept. Kudos to you Stephen Morris. Bravo.

This post is dedicated to José Carreras -- the Third Tenor -- born in 1946.

Vaguely related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/12/math-rocks.html

Shame and personal responsibility

I just finished re-reading You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame, Resilience, and the Black Experience.

This is an anthology curated by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown. I found it moving, but then I was not sure that I had absorbed what I needed to. I went through again, breaking down the twenty essays and journaling about them.

Previously I had not really liked Brown, whom I know to be very popular among friends. I didn't relate to her experiences, though I found her analyses good. (I was drawn to the book because of Burke.)

That made it interesting so see how many of the contributors consider her to be a friend, but also interesting to learn that in her research she has been criticized for oversampling Black and Latinx populations. She was surprised to hear back from Black readers that they had to work to see themselves in her books, but her stories do come from a very privileged position.

That is from the introduction, shared as a conversation with Burke explaining the genesis of the product and the need it fills. Then it goes into the essays of the different contributors, some of whom I was familiar with, and some not.

It resonated more for me, and yet many of the problems presented are specifically rooted in racism. That may be why I did not absorb it enough the first time. I care about this, but I do not suffer from it.

I think where it started hitting more the second time around was noting the effects of poverty and the stigma on fat; those are familiar. Being white (and perhaps college-educated, though many of the contributors also have degrees, often advanced) has shielded me from some things, but there are other areas where I am vulnerable, and I have felt shame.

I needed to go back for more than one thing. (One of those was a referral to Audre Lorde's A Burst of Light.) The quote that I needed most may have been from Yolo Akili Robinson in "Unlearning Shame and Remembering Love".

He writes, “Systems of white supremacy teach us shame because they have no guilt.”

Something I think of a lot is a focus on personal responsibility. I take it very seriously. I know the planet is warming, and that water and soil is not being treated well, so I recycle and conserve energy and try to reduce my footprint.

How many millions of people doing it would it take to make up for corporate polluters?

It's not that I shouldn't be responsible for my use, but that individual responsibility cannot be enough. 

Apparently Jeff Bezos thanked his employees for his space flight. 

I think it's great that Wally Funk got to finally go into space, but was the flight itself that much of an accomplishment? If so, would it justify the employees abused and the businesses destroyed by Amazon? Even more, given the vast wealth Bezos has, couldn't a great deal still be accomplished with reasonable working conditions?

These things may not seem directly related to white supremacy, but they all fold into dominator culture, with greed and racism feeding off of each other in a cycle.

I have noted before how greed kills guilt; I can see where racism does too, and really any other reason for deciding someone is less. Others are clearly lazy, or incompetent, or in some way inferior where their suffering is justified, but mine would not be; I am not like that.

That's not how it works, and nothing good can come of it.

I saw a comment on individual choice for masking and social distancing, that people need to choose to protect themselves. Well, if the mask were as good at keeping disease out as it is in keeping it in, that might be a reasonable statement.

As it is, globally over 4 million dead, over 600,000 in the United States. Mitch McConnell and Fox News may be starting to feel guilty (or vulnerable to lawsuit) based on recent statements, but there are many who have contributed, and are still going strong. No guilt.

Here is another line from Yolo Akili Robinson:

“Rejecting shame for Black lives means rejecting individual responsibility for structural failures.”

We may not all be included in that statement, but when there is a structural failure -- and there are many -- we need to be able to recognize it. 

It is not rejecting personal responsibility to know when it is not enough.

Me and Layla F. Saad's Me and White Supremacy

I have already written about this book on the Sunday blog:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2021/05/fighting-white-supremacy-cleansing.html

That post had its own context, though, and I did not write everything.

One thing I did admit is that I had a bad attitude about the book right from the beginning.

Although I was pleased that it was not written by a white person -- as their books often tend to be the most popular among other white people -- Saad is not from the United States. The US has its own specific problems with racism (though we have done a great deal of successful exporting), and it may be more valuable to hear from people who have dealt specifically with that. 

Right now, the book I would recommend most strongly is Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made For Whiteness. It is excellent, and touching, but even so I found it from an article where I was once again irritated by Robin DiAngelo, so there's that.

(Yes, I know I'm white.)

(Also, racism is a big enough deal that reading more than one book is advisable; just let some of your author choices be people who actually have to deal with it.)

There were things that made Saad's book a good fit for the book group. It is divided into individual assignments that build on each other, with discussion questions and a section in the book on how to go over the material in a group. 

In addition, I really like the subtitle: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

Especially with that last part -- about becoming a good ancestor -- I like that eye to the future. 

Still, I was frequently irritated with the book when it was going over material that I was too familiar with. Yes. I know that. I don't do that anymore. I have not done that for seven or eight years! 

Then I would worry that I was fooling myself, or trusting too much in my own growth. That didn't make me less irritated.

What brought me around to the book was hearing the thoughts of the other group members, people who had not specialized in African-American history for their undergrad, and continued reading lots of history since then, with it growing into a conscious effort to listen to marginalized voices for several years. 

(This sounds like bragging; a "but" is coming.)

As other white people -- mainly with the same religious background, but also people willing to join a book group that was focused on countering racism -- spoke, I got to hear thoughts and opinions that sometimes appalled me, but then, I also got to hear their growth. They absolutely did grow by working through this book.

That is worth a lot.

Here's the "but": if I were Black, I would never have been able to have been surprised or shocked or caught off guard by the things admitted by nice white people. 

That is part of my white privilege. I can do things to try and pay attention, and I should. I believe that is important. 

But it doesn't get thrust in my face.

One thing I had to question for myself was how much of that was merely white privilege, or whether a lot of it was exacerbated by how isolated I have become during this care giving followed by pandemic, burned out phase of my life.

That school board election comes up again, in that as I tried reaching out to other nice white people I know (all from church), well, I was ignored more than getting outright disagreement, but the conversations that did happen were really disappointing. 

Which I guess means that as I get out there more, especially in the cause of anti-racism, I will get more frequent reminders of how selfish, small-minded, vapid, condescending, and ignorant people can be. 

And yet, there's still not really the microaggressions or the outright hostility. Maybe I am not trying hard enough, but also, that is white privilege. 

If that allows me to absorb some of the brunt of it, I should do that.

Examining inner bias

Some of you know that I teach a Sunday school class with one of my sisters.

I don't even remember what we were talking about when it happened, but it came out that one of our students thought we were a couple.

My first thought was that we would not be the teachers if that were the case. We might have people be nice to us at church, but they would never let us teach impressionable 15 year olds.

I did say something like that. It wasn't as detailed, but in retrospect I felt bad. If he believes that such a thing is possible, I don't want to damage that attitude and innocence. 

That wasn't really the problem anyway.

My sister got really defensive. It bothered her, and she felt compelled to affirm her heterosexuality.

There is still a stigma on being a lesbian.

Yes, there definitely is at church. Our church doctrine could be better, but it is actually more progressive than many of the members' tightly-held beliefs. 

Beyond that, in a church that emphasizes family so much, there is some stigma on old singles. That may be one reason that it seems more logical that two middle-aged women with the same last name living together are a couple than unmarried siblings (of which there are actually three). What's wrong with them?

We generally assume that people assume upon looking at us that we are not attractive enough (mainly because we are fat) to get married. 

However, in our patriarchal society -- even outside of church or any kind of religiosity -- that is reinforced. There is pressure on everyone to be attractive, but there is more on women, and you don't have to look very hard to find "jokes" about unattractive women being lesbians because they can't get a man.

There is a lot that you can unpack there. Whether it is that not wanting men is the whole point of being a lesbian, or that you can find attractive lesbians, not forgetting that attraction is not always a cut-and-dried process, plus unrealistic expectations about body size and the impact of environment and economics... there is just a lot.

But what it comes down to is that there was an alarm that went off in my sister's mind that someone thinking she was a lesbian was calling her ugly and gross.

It's not fair. She herself understands why it is not fair, and a lot of the factors that go into that quick response, but it is still there.

Things intersect. There has been a point where people were becoming better about accepting gay men, but still had something against lesbians. That included gay men. 

We are in a largely white environment, but race would have an impact too.

Think of it this way: would the first step for my sister be to forget that the stigma exists, or to get over worrying about her physical appearance? Which would be easier? Which would be more beneficial to her? Which would be more beneficial to society?

Which would not result in that naive and optimistic 15 year old feeling bad?

I can't promise you any answers. I feel good that I was not offended; that seems like a good place to be. I suspect some of that is knowing more lesbians now and seeing them as individuals and caring about them. 

I hesitate to give that all of the credit, because there is this little concern in my head that it sounds too much like I have gone on a lesbian safari, familiarizing myself with their exotic ways. Plus, I know that interracial dating doesn't cure racism, and family members finding a provisional acceptance doesn't solve homophobia... it's just not that easy.

Some of my knowing things that don't work has come from the reading and studying. Understanding more about how patriarchy is structured and plays out probably does help too, though I also doubt the intellectual is enough. Some people will understand something just enough to exploit it.

Some of it is also probably having become more self-assured, and more whole. That might mean that not only am I less likely to take something as an insult when not intended, that even an intentional one might not wound me as much. I am pretty sure I am not all the way there yet -- watch me crumple under the right circumstances -- but I think I have gotten better.

So there's a lot of work to be done, on multiple levels.

It does seem worth taking a moment to recommend Suzanne Pharr's Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism I found it very insightful, including it merely focusing on women and looking at race. 

Even when focusing on one marginalization, it is easy to forget other intersections. So racism becomes worrying about Black men, and homophobia for gay white men, and sexism for white women.

That is not enough.

This blogging week is going to be about that looking inside and rooting out.

Music Review: Timothy Buss

Timothy Buss is a composer and mentor for other musicians. 

While his web site focuses more on offered services, you can also listen to the music there, and purchase for download.

Listening to Solar Neighborhood first, the word that immediately came to mind was "cosmic", completely appropriate for material based on the sun and planets.

It is not an automatic either. Listening to the other collection, From Out of Nowhere, Buss's music is that same blend of progressive and ambient, but there is not that feel of being out in space. 

That is also completely separate from watching the available videos, where images reinforce the themes. It is interesting to think about what -- in the absence of words -- makes certain sounds evoke certain ideas.

With a total of ten tracks, it is worth some exploration.

All relevant links are listed below.

Cosmic.

https://www.timothybussmusic.com

https://www.facebook.com/timothybussmusic 

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

https://twitter.com/timothybuss

 

Content moving forward: Music, movies, and books

Tomorrow I will post my fourth music review since getting restarted. It will be the first one pulling from musicians who have followed me on Twitter.

Previously I had worried a lot about calling them "band" reviews because sometimes they were single artists or something other than a band. I am now just calling them "music" reviews, though I believe I will still specify "album" or "concert" review as applicable.

I do not feel prepared to take on interviews again yet, but I have started contacting the band about a week before the review. I let them know what I am doing, and ask if they have anything specific they want noted. I am trying to go through one round of listening first so I know if I am going to hate them. That doesn't happen often, but it can make things awkward.

Possibly the other area for change is that I am still using my ancient AOL address for the contacting, which may make it hard to take me seriously, I know. However, I don't want to have anything but job hunting things coming into my Protonmail. Maybe once I am safely employed...

Daily songs right now are coming from my Black Music Month viewing and watching. Right now they are songs that Nile Rodgers worked on (performing or producing), but I will also get in some ragtime and songs from people featured in The Defiant Ones. Then it will be focusing on reviewed artists, both new and recent, but on specific themes in October, November, and December.

(Note: It has already been the song of the day, but "Hourglass" by Mary J. Blige, which played over the end credits of Mary J. Blige's My Life, is amazingly beautiful. If you haven't listened yet, do so!)

I cannot emphasize enough how much the review retrospectives helped me get back into reviewing.

Once I finished them, I started charting out books from my various reading "months". This is the precursor to building some recommended book shelves. I am almost done with that (the collection; not the selection), but it has led to a new project.

I feel that I need to add my reviews for each of the films that I watched for the director spotlights, and probably at least some of the films beyond that. It's really the same thing as creating a playlist after a retrospective: there was "something" here; did I absorb it enough?

I will definitely add reviews on https://www.imdb.com/, because that is the site I look at. I am open to suggestions on other sites.

Entering the early months was not difficult. In 2010 I read four books for Black History month and read three books and watched a video for Native American Heritage month. Things didn't really start getting out of hand until 2018. That includes watching 60 pieces of media (several were feature films; but not all) for one "month" that took about two years and will now require posting reviews for each, possibly on multiple sites.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that as intended reading and viewing got longer and more complex, it could never be reviewed in a single post.

I am still in catch up mode, where I have overly long lists to try and be where I want to be, but I think going forward, there are just going to be posts on groupings of books as I have thoughts on them.  

That may change again. Once I get "through" (should such a thing be possible), maybe I will go back to four books and a movie during the requisite months. That can not possibly be before 2023.

Also, I am really close to writing about some personal stuff again. I think.

Dee Barnes and Dr. Dre

I watched The Defiant Ones because a friend recommended it, and I really liked it. 

I did feel some hesitation to start it, because I worried that it would gloss over Dr. Dre's assault of Dee Barnes. It sounded like Straight Outta Compton did.

There was no glossing. In the second episode the documentary talked to Dr. Dre about, they talked to Dee Barnes about it, and they showed footage of the Pump It Up episode that directly led to it. 

It was still incredibly unsatisfying.

There are a few reasons for that. For me, one is that Dr. Dre's acceptance of responsibility is still pretty sexist. It seems that a great deal of his shame is because he, a man, put hands on a woman, which he calls stupid. There might be deeper issues that he could examine. 

Certainly there is some residual frustration because it doesn't matter that he says it was wrong, it still happened. He can't erase it and make it go away. That appears to haunt him.

I don't know if for him that is solely a matter of personal embarrassment, but it is also an inescapable fact that it destroyed her career, thus victimizing Barnes twice.

The low-level possible way forward could be Dr. Dre asking Barnes what he can do for her. I don't know if that has happened. There was a suit and a settlement, but regardless of the final amount, there was still the loss of career, and definite financial hardship for Barnes more recently. 

So, there might be something to talk about there, and restitution that allows the person who was harmed to specify the terms may be something that helps with a feeling of actually being able to put a situation in the past.

However, I think part of that feeling of emptiness is also that there were really so many people involved besides those two.

Dee Barnes was the target of Dr. Dre's rage, but she was not the source of it. She was a convenient target because of the Pump It Up episode, but that was two separate interviews that were edited together to stir things up. There were people other than Barnes making those decisions.

Editing aside, the material was unquestionably there. There was great animosity between Ice Cube and the remaining members of NWA. I had never heard of The DOC before the documentary, but I was mad at Ice Cube for the way he mocked his voice. So there is anger there that doesn't pertain to Dee Barnes nearly as much as it pertains to Ice Cube and Eazy-E and Jerry Heller. Other than Heller, I think all of them eventually made up, if not when Eazy-E was dying, then when they made the movie, but that did not undo all past damage. There is probably unrecognized damage.

Beyond that, there was the fact that a victim of an assault was shunned out of an industry in deference to the one who assaulted her, which isn't that uncommon, but it is still a problem. It is impossible to feel good about that.

In fact, there was a broader pattern of sexual harassment common in the industry. For that Barnes is probably the most prominent victim, but the total damage would be hard to calculate.

I don't have answers for that. The culture that is based on dominating and pushing everything that you have to take downhill is built on suffering, so it perpetuates it.

Religiously, I believe the reason that Christ can offer forgiveness is because he can also offer healing and resurrection, actually repairing the harms that were done. Then it can become sanctifying.

Without that level of power, I still believe in the importance of facilitating as much healing as we can.

This issue has not been resolved, but it doesn't have to be impossible.

Food for bodies and souls

In my review for Lady A, I mentioned interviews she did some "Food for the Souls" interviews for Black History month.

I listened to more than one, but there was a moment in the interview with Dexter Allen that got me thinking.

He mentioned his mother's smothered pork chops, and the way they filled you up.

It reminded me of something that the Gin Blossoms' Jesse Valenzuela had posted once, asking his mother about her putting potatoes in the burritos when he was growing up. She said it was to fill him and his brothers up.

Potatoes are good; they are very popular in breakfast burritos now. It's not like he was complaining about the burritos. 

Potatoes are also cheap.

It started me thinking about how there can be different perspective between the parents and the children, especially when they are poor.

Pork chops are meat -- though you can get good deals on them -- but Allen also mentioned the onions and gravy and biscuits that were a part of it, and then said "It sticks to you."

The other nice thing about that meal is that it can be made quickly, which I am sure doesn't hurt. 

I don't know how much stress it is for parents sometimes, just trying to keep their children full. I do believe it is a beautiful thing that so often those end up being favorite foods, and comfort foods. 

And then people criticize those foods -- which are often very starchy -- and discourage indulging, of course, but they also served a purpose. It is comforting that the only memory isn't struggle. Sometimes it is a memory of a belly that is warm and full, maybe for just pennies a serving.

I wondered if there might not be an opportunity for a album raising funds for hunger, with different musicians turning their food memories to song. It probably wouldn't work; people hate paying for music now, and what if they all turned into the same kind of country song?

But it's fun to think about.

And as grateful as I am that when we were filling up on cornmeal mush (which is basically polenta) or casseroles of rice or potatoes, or ramen (and not Top Ramen either; the cheaper packs), it is not fun to think about how some parents do have to worry, and that sometimes there isn't something rib-sticking available. 

About a year ago I had just finished up a fundraiser for the Oregon Food Bank. There are lots of food banks and pantries out there. If you have help to give, there is someone out there who needs it.

https://www.oregonfoodbank.org/

https://www.nokidhungry.org/

Wrapping up Black Music Month 2021

I feel really good about this month.

There was mission creep, but I liked the directions it went in. I learned a lot. I came away with some new music.

I am going to write a couple more posts based on it, but they are less about music and more about people.

It worked out well that it came along as I was finishing up the Review Retrospective. That was a good transition into doing reviews again, and my first new reviews tied in well.

Two of those retrospectives specifically pertained to Black music: Stevie Wonder in May and Black Women Rock! in March.

In both cases I felt like there was more to know. I had always known that I would need to get back to Stevie Wonder.

It has more recently become a solution of mine to create a playlist when there is something I want to capture. I introduce to you my Stevie Wonder playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3a30gRgQOxVFw1U1NDeX0s?si=72e22679adde46ac 

I agonized over what to include, and I still have doubts that I have not missed really important tracks. However, I think there is a case to be made for just going back and re-listening to the entire Stevie Wonder discography every few years, and I can live with that. Having gone through and created the playlist, even those songs that I decided not to include are more fixed in my mind. That worry that I had heard good things and forgotten them is resolved.

(The concern that there is a more perfect arrangement that I have not figured out may be more of a thing I just need to live with.)

Obviously there was the intention to do a playlist for Black women too, but that has been more complicated.

Of all of the deep dives I have done -- into any musical topic -- that initial section inspired more individual reviews than anything else. Yes, I have bands that I intend to review from the emo and greatest guitar listening, but it doesn't compare. That initial list had 172 unique entries, including some team-ups, plus additional artists that I did not find until after but really like. There is just a lot there.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/07/musical-black-girls.html

I could make a playlist simply reflecting the songs in the order played; that would not be well curated. It would be ground that was already traveled but somewhat shallowly, so it would not solve anything.

Initially I had thought it was just a matter of groupings, like maybe the playlist would be for disco and rock and with a little bit of blues, but that I didn't need to do the girl groups and the gospel singers.

Even if that felt fair, just trying to decide who is who for that is a challenge. Like, if I decide that the Blues, Jazz, and Swing singers can go together, and that combining the Gospel and Classical works, there are still at least five distinct lists, and maybe I want a playlist that is all Blues. 

So right now there is not a playlist; there are merely notes for listening more, and getting to know enough that I feel comfortable with what I know.

That is how a lot of these things go for me.

Music Review: Ragged Blade Band

The Ragged Blade Band is a St. Louis-based specializing in old jazz, blues, and ragtime favorites. I became aware of them after attending a presentation on early African-American composers given by two of their members.

Although there are some newer compositions, it may be more interesting that songs that were written over a century ago (in some cases) are still compelling and fun. It's not surprising when you consider the power of music, and how relevant songs from past periods of your life remain, but it can also be easy to forget.

Listening then becomes a pleasant stroll down memory lane, though the memory is more collective than individual.

Although What Kind of Love -- with a title track that gets under my skin -- is available on Spotify, you can find much more music on the band's Soundcloud. There are links for it and some embedded music on the band's main page as well.

I especially enjoyed The Tennessee Sessions for their liveliness, but I think many people will enjoy the humor built into "At The Devil's Ball". Maybe it will be more for people with mothers-in-law.

The Ragged Blade Band will be playing at "Summer on the Square" in Kirksville, Missouri on July 30th, and at the Big River Steampunk Festival in Hannibal, Missouri over Labor Day weekend. 

Catch them if you can!

https://www.raggedblade.com 

https://www.facebook.com/theraggedbladeband 

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

https://soundcloud.com/theraggedbladeband

https://www.instagram.com/raggedblade/ 

https://twitter.com/raggedbladeband