David de Sola's Blog, page 5
March 18, 2016
March 17, 2016
Presidential Election – The View From Abroad
There’s a great story in the Washington Post citing anonymous current and former foreign ambassadors posted in Washington D.C. offering their take of a possible Trump presidency:
Donald Trump’s unorthodox campaign is causing growing anxiety over how U.S. trade, military and diplomatic policies would change if he were elected president, according to ambassadors from six continents.
Diplomats from many of the United States’ closest allies said there has not been a U.S. election since World War II in which representatives of foreign nations have felt so completely cut off from a leading presidential candidate or so unsure of his view of foreign policy.
“Scary. That’s how we view Trump,” said one ambassador whose country has a close relationship with Washington. “Could we depend on the United States? We don’t know. I can’t tell you how the unpredictability we are seeing scares us.”
Foreign diplomats and nationals have no influence on domestic elections, but the fact that none of the ambassadors quoted knows anyone on Trump’s foreign policy team (if he has one) or what his policy would be if he is elected to the office should raise alarms on both sides of the American foreign policy establishment.
The post Presidential Election – The View From Abroad appeared first on David De Sola.
Layne Staley’s Orange Shirt
Xana La Fuente – fiancee of the late Andrew Wood – wrote a blog post about how Layne came about the long sleeve orange shirt he wears in the “Would?” video. It’s an interesting read, further connecting the song, band, and video to the fallen grunge pioneer.
The post Layne Staley’s Orange Shirt appeared first on David De Sola.
A Gift For Me
If any of you are looking for a birthday or Christmas gift for me at some point, this would be an excellent choice:
New for locker room celebrations: The Champagne Super Soaker ($459) https://t.co/pJvlNeFEil (H/T@Ryan_Pfefferoni) pic.twitter.com/2m6i9b4HSn
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 17, 2016
The post A Gift For Me appeared first on David De Sola.
March 13, 2016
Demri and Dave
From Dave Navarro’s Twitter account:
Me and Demri in rehab! https://t.co/8XOSNqvx2H
— Dave Navarro (@DaveNavarro) March 12, 2016
Yeah we were all super close friends – I miss those two! https://t.co/xpD4p3lZ1n
— Dave Navarro (@DaveNavarro) March 12, 2016
The post Demri and Dave appeared first on David De Sola.
March 8, 2016
Unintended Consequences
There’s an interesting article in Newsweek by Kurt Eichenwald about the unintended but ultimately disastrous consequences of the GOP embracing the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.
Looking at the last two presidential election cycles through the post-Citizens United prism of Super PACs, the clear conclusion is that this near unlimited campaign spending by the wealthiest interferes with the natural selection process of weeding out weak campaigns and candidates. The last two GOP presidential primaries illustrate this too well. First, there was the unnecessary prolonging of the primary season in 2012, followed by the chaos of the current cycle despite efforts by the Republican Party to accelerate the timetable in order to coalesce around a nominee quicker. Now many party insiders are praying for the chaos of a brokered convention to save themselves from the possibility of Donald Trump winning the party’s presidential nomination.
Yes, Democrats have Super PACs as well, but they do not rely on them anywhere near as much as their Republican counterparts. Most Democrats publicly rail against the decision. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both said during the Democratic primary that they want to overturn Citizens United, by judicial decision or through the legislative process.
The entire article is well worth reading, especially if you want to try and answer the question of how much is too much money in politics.
The post Unintended Consequences appeared first on David De Sola.
March 2, 2016
Super Tuesday From Afar
I’ve been in Germany the last few days, so I’ve had to do a few late nights in my hotel room to watch the results of the primaries. Unless something drastic happens in the weeks ahead, I’d say it’s almost a certainty it will be Clinton v. Trump in the general election in November, although establishment Republicans are doing their best to come up with a way to derail or at least slow down Trump’s path to the nomination.
In the meantime, a brave source smuggled this dramatic video out of Marco Rubio’s campaign headquarters:
I’ve also decided to take the plunge and endorse a candidate for 2016:
Picked my candidate for 2016… #politics
A photo posted by David de Sola (@daviddesola) on Mar 2, 2016 at 8:59am PST
Update: This series of tweets from Politico’s Michael Grunwald is the best explanation I’ve seen on how the Republican Party wound up stuck with Donald Trump as their front runner, and how it’s their own fault. The whole thing is well worth taking the time to read.
The post Super Tuesday From Afar appeared first on David De Sola.
February 24, 2016
Requiem for a Dream
GIF H/T The Daily Show
With a formidable string of endorsements and a $150 million fundraising machine, Jeb Bush was the favorite for the Republican nomination going into the 2016 election cycle. But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. To cite the famous Beatles song, money couldn’t buy Jeb love.
Despite name recognition and resources, it became obvious from early on that Bush’s campaigning skills were lacking. Between that, the changed GOP primary crowd not receptive to his message, and the seemingly unstoppable Donald Trump juggernaut, Jeb was simply the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There have been numerous post mortems analyzing why the campaign failed (these stories by , Politico, and Vox come to mind) but here are some highlights of the findings:
The Jeb Bush campaign spent approximately $150 million to get 94,500 votes, at a cost of approximately $1,600 per ballot. (Twitter)
Best headline: How Jeb Bush Spent $130 Million Running for President With Nothing to Show for It (NY Times)
According to the NYT report, here’s how campaign’s spending breaks down:
Positive Advertising: $84 million
Clubbing: $94,100
Valets: $15,800
People: $8.3 million
Branding: $88,387
Vegas: $48,544
Consultants: $10 million
Pizza: $4,837
This campaign will be studied, psychoanalyzed and written about for decades. It’s still early on in the election cycle, but I’m already dying to read Game Change 2016.
The post Requiem for a Dream appeared first on David De Sola.
February 15, 2016
What’s in a Name?
The surviving members of Stone Temple Pilots recently announced their decision to carry on as STP, as well as announcing open auditions to be their new lead singer. Predictably, there are some who :
Responding to a fan who called in and suggested that the band should change its name in the wake of Scott Weiland’s death, Robert said, “There were 3/4 of us that were responsible with Scott, making STP. For instance, you have a company like Coca Cola, and you have someone running Coca Cola. If they’re not there any more, do you change the name of Coca Cola?”
Robert added, “It’s easy for someone to say that, and get on their computer, and write that in, but if you’re in that position in life, that’s the last thing I want to do right now.” He explained that it might be easier to change the name if the band were in their 20s and it was relatively early in their career, but that he now “can’t afford to do it.”
I covered this ground in my Alice in Chains book, when the three surviving members decided to continue with the band a few years after Layne Staley’s death. Here’s Sean Kinney’s take on that issue in a 2010 interview with Seattle Weekly:
There was no thought of using a different name. “It never even crossed our mind to change the name,” says Kinney. “We could call ourselves Leather Snake, go play our songs, and people would go, ‘The guys from Alice in Chains are playing the club down the street!’ They’d never be, like, ‘Hey! Leather Snake kicks ass!'”
Historically, there have been two major precedents for bands that have carried on after the death of their lead singer. After Ian Curtis’s suicide, the surviving members of Joy Division regrouped as New Order, who went on to have an influential career in their own right. In that case, there was an agreement among the four members of Joy Division beforehand that if any of them left, the others would not continue under the Joy Division name. Beyond that, the name change would (arguably) make more sense in this case because the sound of New Order would be very different than the sound of Joy Division.
The second precedent was AC/DC’s decision to carry on with Brian Johnson following the death of Bon Scott. Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains both chose this option. Jerry Cantrell himself has made the explicit comparison of Alice in Chains to AC/DC in terms of both bands’ willingness to carry on with a new singer.
One thing the DeLeo brothers didn’t mention in that interview was that they tried a name change earlier in their career: when STP briefly changed their name to Talk Show for their only release with Dave Coutts as lead singer.
The reality is that aside from a few exceptions (Trent Reznor, Kurt Cobain, Lemmy Kilmister, etc.) in general all the band members make up the band’s sound and trademark. Scott may have been the voice of STP, but it was Dean, Robert and Eric’s band as well, and unless there is some dispute on ownership of the name, I see no reason why they can’t or shouldn’t carry on as STP. Scott had been out of the band for years. The bottom line is that STP is what they are and do, and through no fault of their own the band was hobbled for years by drug addiction and dysfunction. They shouldn’t have to start over from square one for something they have worked so hard for.
The post appeared first on David De Sola.
January 13, 2016
Creative Until the Very End
Rolling Stone interviewed David Bowie producer Tony Visconti, who shed some interesting (and sad) details about Bowie’s final months. The most interesting tidbit is that a week before his death, Bowie called Visconti telling him he had written and demoed five new songs, and wanted to get back to the studio to make another album. Bowie had known since November that his cancer was terminal, but kept working and – according to Visconti – thought he still had several more months left.
Sadly, the disease had other plans. Bowie’s condition presumably deteriorated very quickly after his final conversation with Visconti. The only similar precedent that comes to mind is how Queen dealt with Freddie Mercury’s illness the final years of his life by continuing to write and record new material. Based on this analogy, Blackstar is Bowie’s Innuendo – the final studio album Queen recorded with Mercury during his lifetime. That album is the sound of a band that knows they are running out of time, and the subject of Mercury’s mortality is tackled head on in the lyrics.
The question not asked in the Rolling Stone article: will these final demos see the light of day at some point or another? And another bigger question: how many demos and unreleased recordings did Bowie have in his vault, and what – if anything – will become of them?
The post Creative Until the Very End appeared first on David De Sola.
