10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free - Op-Ed by Jonathan Turley in the Washington Post, 1/13/12

This op-ed is a list of the questionable ways our government can currently deprive people of their rights.

It is easy to be afraid of terrorist attacks and subsequently pass laws that give the security bureaucracies more power. It will be slow, tedious, and difficult to reign these powers back in. I would suggest that a Ron Paul candidacy would be good in the sense that it would get more people talking about these issues, but I had the same thought in 2006 – that an Obama candidacy would be good because he spoke to the aspirations of the levelheaded middle. Presidents and presidential candidates do not solve problems. A lengthy application of political pressure on lots of representatives and the president does. We’ll see if that happens…

How Obama should talk to Iran – Op-Ed by Trita Parsi in the Washington Post, 1/13/12

Parsi outlines a more comprehensive, sensible, and courteous approach the U.S. could take to its decades-long standoff with Iran which has been particularly rankled for the last half-decade on the issue of nukes.

It exasperates me TO NO END that the leaders of countries act like ten-year-olds. I even wrote one of the short essays in my college application five years ago about how stupid the U.S.-Iran escalation was. The fact that this problem has continued and then heated up to threats over the Strait of Hormuz is irritating beyond words. There is no good reason why the U.S. should dislike Iran. Sure, Iran and Israel might have disagreements, but the India-Pakistan (they both have nukes!!) disagreements are clearly just as worrisome. The U.S. and Iran don’t get along purely because they don’t get along. It is THAT stupid. This article is the adult in the room (along with, apparently, Turkey and Brazil).

Libertarian Illusions – by Jeffrey Sachs in the Huffington Post, 1/15/12

In this post, Sachs argues that libertarians (and Ron Paul) ignore other vital societal values, like civic responsibility and compassion.

It was tempting to insert quotes from this post, but the whole thing practically needed quotes – so go read it. I have my own private theory about some of the large strains in philosophical thought which I will outline briefly here but elaborate on more another time. It goes like this… Liberty, equality, and utility are all important ideals worth striving for. But any one of them taken to the extreme at the complete expense of the others creates a society that nobody wants. So beware extremists, like pure libertarians. For instance, imagine an equalitarian party (everyone gets the same salary!) or a utilitarian party (well these rich people are SUPER rich and happy, but hey, it’s a net plus for society, right?). Preposterous. Get over yourselves, libertarians.

It spans the decade of 1954-1963 and tells the epic tale of Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights struggles. It is not your snapshot version: clocking in at over 900 pages, you get the real meat of the story. You live through that decade as you read.

This means you get all the nitty gritty details of each 1950′s-era news cycle. An altercation occurs! King comments on it… People disparage him! He feels stuck… But just weeks later, the comments are forgotten and the next battle is at hand. It gives you great a perspective on all of today’s political controversies, and it exposes their silliness.

Amazingly, you don’t get lost in the details. The book is truly an American Epic – the struggle of a people for their rights and freedom with some fascinating larger-than-life leaders grappling with each other publicly and privately. Lord of the Rings is good and all, but this is an astounding tale of the grandest scale, and real at that.

The story starts when Republicans were still the most favorable party to blacks, a vestige of Lincoln’s emancipation. But both parties include civil rights elements in the presidential election of 1960 – blacks are a demographic worth courting. Then Kennedy’s win is aided partly because he and RFK made two phone calls about King being in jail (it wasn’t just Daley in Chicago delivering votes!), which the black community responds to with a drastic shift in support. But! Kennedy heads a party full of viscously ardent segregationists in the south. That tension permeates the interactions between the racist southern governors and RFK at the Justice Department as the movement’s confrontations with segregated institutions ignite in conflict.

J. Edgar Hoover doesn’t make anything easier, since he is always hunting for some (nonexistent and absurd) communist threat and influence. His dirt on JFK’s affairs secures his power at the FBI, and he insists that a couple of King’s friends are such a threat that he gets RFK to approve wiretaps. (For historians, I imagine those wiretaps are a treasure.) Exasperatingly, Hoover does not enthusiastically commit his FBI resources to investigating crimes in the south, more because of his own bureaucratic motives than segregationist ones. It certainly does not help King, the movement, or the poor people who were persecuted to have an unhelpful FBI.

Then there is the baptist church! One fascinating angle I had not heard before is how King wished to have the national baptist church organization help lead his civil rights efforts. But doing so meant the church’s national leadership needed to change. The stories of the National Baptist Conventions are as full of conflict as any events that decade, with a large swatch of preachers trying to unseat the president of the organization, J.H. Jackson, who tyrannically outmaneuvers them and holds onto power. He even dramatically rebukes King, demoting him within the organization and accusing him of something close to murder. Don’t forget, these are preachers doing a bunch of fighting!

Plus you have the global conflict of the US vs the USSR. Some of the civil rights stories make it into the international press, casting a bad light on the US, which pressures Kennedy from another side.

For flavor, peppered throughout are little mentions of celebrities like Frank Sinatra, who had gangster friends which caused issues for Kennedy at one point, plus Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis Jr.

And the whole struggle (the point of it all, really) is this radically nonviolent movement against a very deeply rooted and violent racism in the south, with all kinds of enablers, intimidation, habits, and fears. It is not a war where the other side surrenders and it is over. It is a whole swath of institutions that King and the movement must continuously chip away, from segregation laws and business practices to intimidations against blacks registering to vote, all across several states.

Most perplexing is that the book ends before many policies really change. Brown v. Board of Ed and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 are ruled and passed in the book, true, but their implementation was not easy nor immediate: two big stories of the movement are when James Meredith tries to register at the University of Mississippi and all of Robert Moses’s efforts with voting registration in Mississippi. The results of Civil Rights Act of 1964 are not in the scope of the book. Plus, even if policies had changed immediately, it would not drive racism out of peoples’ hearts.

Because essentially, that is the long-tail ending of the story, and it has not even ended yet. Sure we have elected a black president and ended blatant lawful segregation, but there is definitely still a distinct community of black americans who are not respected or understood by much of white america. Political struggles have concrete endpoints. But social struggles exist in hearts and minds, and cannot be changed quickly by policy. But that’s a discussion left to several more essays…

Anyway, my summaries do little justice to the book. It is truly an experience to immerse yourself in the story. Thankfully, the terrors are mostly history so the reader can excitedly see how the events play out and be spared the emotional damage. The violence at times is utterly terrifying and Branch, an excellent storyteller, turns some of the famous photographs into real life on the page. After reading it, you very much appreciate the struggles our nation has gone through to overcome its original sin.

I highly highly recommend this book. It is incredibly well written and the story is a supremely important part of our nation’s history.

—–

On a much more personal note, the book intrigued me also because I was interested in learning about this era that my dad’s side of the family was a part of, albeit in the periphery:

My dad and my pacifist grandfather had lunch with King in (I think) 1959 at some church event somewhere. My dad remembers King appearing very tired (and when Branch spoke at my church a few years ago, my dad mentioned this memory to him, to which Branch said it was probably because King was traveling all the time, giving speeches). My grandfather was a Democratic congressman from Colorado for one term, 1959-1961, and he attended the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles. And my grandmother was somehow friends with Harry Belafonte, who she had a crush on (we still have his records – also, he’s still alive?!). Plus, they were living in DC during the march on washington, and attended it. And, my parents have a poster of Bayard Rustin hanging in their office.

So as I read, all of these family stories gained another dimension of clarity.

My enthusiasm about the book also brought something out of my dad that I did not expect. He started college in 1960 when he was seventeen and soon wound up in radical student politics, joining an early version of SDS. So he came of age during the whole national upheaval chronicled so eloquently by Branch.

Anyways, there I am, sitting in my parents’ study, gushing to my dad about how good the book is, having just read the fascinating account of the Montgomery bus boycott. “There were other people who had gotten into altercations on the buses! But some organizers knew they wouldn’t be good examples to use if they wanted to make a statement out of it! But then Rosa Parks got arrested! And SHE was this really sweet, upstanding citizen, so they instantly rallied around her and then-”

As I’m raving on about Rosa Parks, to my prodigious surprise, my dad starts tearing up a little bit.

He remarks huskily, while he blinks at his computer screen, “to think, that she would then lie in state at the US capitol… simply amazing…”

Now, I’ve sat in that study and talked to my father about all sorts of things – politics, economics, policy, family, the neighbor’s dog, whatever.

But I’ve never before in my life, in that study or elsewhere, seen my father come close to crying.

The plan for the next three days:

record the rest of the parts on the last song (i.e. everything but drums, which are done), record a couple little missing parts on a couple other songs, mix them all, find/create albumlet art, release Stick Figures

accomplishing all of this in that time span means I can then spend two weeks creating “song-a-day” ‘s before I go visit the folks for Christmas

So get ready for some LWJ MUSIC (Does anyone even read this blog anyway? I guess my stats tell me…)

And a teaser for the two or three of you who read this and might go listen once they are available…

Stick Figures probable song order:

7 Billion Universes
Do Something Unexpected
Fuck The STRAW Man
The Great Zombie Switcheroo

It could be a drastically different job within the company, or a position in an entirely different sector. There could be a very simple craigslist-like service that does a little lottery apportioning out of who-goes-where-when, making sure to spread the days out over the year so that it doesn’t cause a larger economic hiccup. Similarly, each worker should only be allowed to have someone follow them around for a couple days each year, to avoid excessive distraction.

But think about it. We might be vaguely aware of what kinds of work others do, but to actually follow them around for a day would really show you the kinds of issues other people might have. If you wind up in your client’s (or supplier’s) industry, it might give you some insights into their side of the deal.

It would also be a refreshing little educational vacation from your own daily routine. And if everyone does it a couple days a year, you would get used to the mild awkwardness of intruding upon someone else’s life.

Perhaps the more exciting and persuasive aspect would also be the potential for innovation. When people with wildly different perspectives run into each other, it can lead to insights you might not otherwise have come up with.

Think of the stories. From the mundane and annoyed, “Oh god that one time I had to go sit at an insurance agent’s desk all day…” to the fascinating, “I had no idea that’s how much coal the plant burned in a single day!” With everyone doing this, the stories of coworker’s experiences would help create even more links to other parts of the economy.

Sure some people would treat it like a chore and just fiddle around on their iphones all day, but I think a lot of people would generally get at least a little bit of the spirit of the endeavor.

Just one way to help build more connections and empathy in society.

“I put myself in the position of making my first record as much as I can. You’re slightly off balance but you’re excited about what’s gonna come out. It’s nice to do it and be able to stand sort of at the speakers and go, “Listen to that. Listen to what we just did. I can’t believe that’s come out. THAT WORKED!” [...] You make five records and you do what you did before and before and before. You’re gonna stand at the speakers and go, “Yep, that’s what I expected. That’s pretty good… or it’s not, whatever.” But doing things where you can jump up and down a little bit. A little bit of fear before you press play and hear it is good.”

(By the way, this is a very familiar feeling. However…)

While watching a band the other night, a person at the show said the group had “really developed their sound” since she last saw them.

“Sound.” It is not just the tonal quality of all the instruments and recording equipment used by some musicians on an album (though that is probably the most significant part). It is also the musical motifs they use repeatedly in different ways: fast tempos on a punk album, the jilt of a certain rapper’s lyric delivery, the voicings used by a particular jazz pianist, or the frequently loud and precise brass parts that define Mahler.

As a musician, is “developing a sound” inevitable? You have a personality and some preferences, such that even if you try to do different things, it will sound a bit like you.

But if everybody’s out there doing it, developing their own “sound,” isn’t it actually unique  to avoid it, and always switch up your music?

Well, maybe it’s like breathing. You can’t be unique by not breathing. Just dead.

Ben is helpful. In the interview, the quote is referring to the results of his collaborations with people. Even though you have your sound, you can find new exciting sounds by combining with different artists. Sure it’ll sound a bit like you (along with whoever you accompany), but the sum will be different from its parts.

Ultimately, Ben has had a successful career, and is able to collaborate with other great artists. He got there by developing a sound (and/or a schtick) and playing it consistently, which takes years and lots of sweat. So the real lesson is: experiment a lot until you find something, then work your ass off to hone it and sell it. Then maybe you can get back to experimenting in a way that people might actually listen.

The “albumlet.” After recording a couple songs right when I moved to Austin, I realized that I could easily wind up making music that’s all over the place if I kept recording song after song. So I decided to start doing songs in chunks, where I would take some ideas and work with them over multiple songs. That way, I could get deeper into ideas and refine them, coming up with better music as a result.

Fermenting started with these ideas: use held organ chords, busy drums, parallel 7ths or 9ths in a melody, and bottle blow. I then came up with four topics for the songs’ lyrics to be about. Halfway through recording everything I realized I had two songs that prominently featured sleep, so I changed one of them from sleep and friends to food and friends.

I had just read about the idea of a “concept” for an album, and liked the idea of having a unifying idea. The songs I had come up with seemed to fit together well in as songs about sitting and stewing in some emotion. Either that, or literally stewing (as in: food). Using bottles as instruments led me to the word “Fermenting.”

Nothing Better

This song began by fiddling with half-diminished chords, and once I tried to sing with it, I realized it was more blues than jazz. I tried to arrange the instruments so they would come in and out more, to vary the texture of the verses somewhat, and make the song feel like it progresses more organically. The words appeal to socializing in a way that’s more genuine than friday night bar hopping. Also, I am surprised there are not more songs written about food. As the last song written, I deviated from some of the musical seeds of the other songs (no parallel 7ths, no bottles). The result? What I think is the best song on the albumlet.

Keep It Asleep

I originally wanted to write a song, in response to so many songs that express feelings, that deliberately said “I’m not going to express any feelings right now.” But I moved away from the “joke” song to the more interesting (and real) difficulty of navigating when to tell someone you love them. This song started with the words and the music came after to support them. I struggled with the verse instrumentation and still think it’s pretty weak.

ImPatient

A sort-of pun like “I’m patient” and “I am a patient” and just being antsy and impatient. When I was younger and had one of my annual runny-nose colds that kept me home from school for a day, I wanted to write a song about being sick. But a cough and a runny nose isn’t that compelling. Instead, years later, I have now come up with this song, which is a bit more intense than any experience I’ve ever had, but being sick or constrained to a healing process is frustrating no matter what. Also, if bottles were easier to tune and play in tune, I would have used them a bit to double the verse organ part. I had partly resolved to not use distorted electric guitar on any of the songs, partly to let the organ have a greater role but also because so many people play electric guitar and know the sounds in such detail that my half-assed approach could wind up sounding lame. But there was no other way to get the punch of that descending line without it. I think this is the second-best song on the albumlet.

Stuck

This was the first song written and recorded, and was very true to the original ideas of the albumlet. After writing the words, I heard on Gospel 1060 (AM radio) a preacher use the phrase “kids having kids” and was glad there really was someone out there saying literally the same thing. Also, as I was brainstorming lyrics, they were originally going to be very policy-oriented and logical. These fit better.

Overall Performance

I spent extra time recording this albumlet than originally intended because I realized I needed to actually start practicing my singing if I want people I don’t know to give my music a chance. The singing is still nowhere near perfect, but I needed to move on, so I settled with these final takes. I’m also focusing a lot more on timing and the groove between instruments that I play, which is not easy, but that’s a good challenge.

The cover art is a photo of a part of my backyard with a bottle sitting in it. I photoshopped an image of a paper with FERMENTING written on it for the title. Since this is the first albumlet, I had to do all the background setup to make bandcamp work as a host for the music, which was a bit of a pain. But now it’s done and the next uploads will be way easier.

In general, releasing any kind of album makes you feel like an official musician. You spent the time, listened to every note and every measure at least fifty times, scrutinized the mix, thought long and hard about how each word is phrased, on and on and on. And then you package it all together and set it out into the world (only to have the compression algorithm on bandcamp seem to make it distort weird at times, argh). Am I 100% satisfied with it? Definitely not. But everything you do is practice until suddenly it’s not anymore, and people want you to do what you’ve been doing.

The coolest part though is that you can’t unmake recordings. Once you finish, they will always have been made. For the rest of your life. It’s kind of an incentive to make more. After a while you’re like, “whoa, I made all that?”

Finally, a teaser: the next one will be titled “Stick Figures.”

Whatever the future holds, musical or nonmusical, I am very glad I am doing what I am doing. Living a life where my only obligation besides self-maintenance is music means I can move through things quicker. I can learn more details about instrumental technique in a day than I normally would in a month; I can expand my harmonic and arranging toolkit faster.

But most of all, I can work through the emotional steps. This last week featured a battle with my addiction to news and the internet, some “god that really sucks!” moments of depression as I listened to my singing trying to figure out what I (want to) sound like. Then it swung back the other way with a discovery that I was focusing on the wrong thing (my computer) instead of the right thing (having fun playing music) and realizing that the singing isn’t thaaat bad (I think).

I am nearly 3/4 done with this first albumlet, and with a friend visiting late this next week I have motivation to finish recording it asap. Plan to release it for download via bandcamp, followed by videos as I get around to editing them. There are some tropes I am trying out, but this will also very much be a chunk of music that I spent time crafting.

In some readings and watchings recently, I have honed in on three words to look to. Grit. Greatness. Fun.

Stick with it. Strive to make it really awesome. Most of all, don’t forget that this is what you enjoy doing and have a good time with it.

In practice, this means to just sit down and start practicing/recording those songs/parts/exercises each day, remembering that things happen over months and years, not minutes. It means to keep pushing for new ways to put the music together that are interesting and new. And it means that if you spend the whole day worrying about how much time you’re going to spend on the computer, you’re approaching it all wrong – it’s actually radbox to rock out, so rock out, damnit.

Here’s a teaser:

Albumlet title: Fermenting

Track listing:

Nothing Better
Keep It Asleep
ImPatient
Stuck

These people do not seem to have taken a class on elections when they were in college, because if they had they would understand that any efforts at creating third party would probably hurt their true interests.

This is because we have a largest-vote-getter, winner-take-all system. It pressures people to divide into two camps. Think of a political spectrum as a line.

like soylent green, the line is people

Any point on the line agrees mostly with the points closest to it, but disagrees a lot with the points farthest away.

the faces are your feelings

Yes, that seems simplistic since there are so many topics on which opinions can vary, but in this kind of system that has no bearing. We don’t elect a hundred presidents each to deal with an exclusive issue, we elect one.  Some opinions shake out into groups and divide themselves along the line, like the common “liberal” groupings of supporting environmental regulations and abortion rights (issues which have basically nothing in common) to the “conservative” preference for lax environmental regulations and restricted abortions.

trees and women vs money and babies, what a contest!

Some people will have different collections of views that won’t really fit into these kinds of groupings and probably just sit out the elections. (This is part, only part, of the reason why voter turnout is low – in 2008, a very exciting election for the country that lasted two years, almost 40% of eligible voters did not vote.) If there was some kind of second dimension of voting, a few more people might show up.

the women and money party is accused by all sides of killing baby trees

But you won’t get higher turnout for that reason unless we have multi-member congressional districts where we divide up seats by proportional vote counts. That way, if you don’t like the two parties you can vote for a third, but your vote isn’t wasted because your district can have three different seats! However that does not necessarily make your government easier – the representatives have to create coalitions of all the smaller groups in order to pass legislation (because you still need 51% of the representative body to agree). Go ask Israel how happy this system makes them.

Anyways, back to the spectrum. Let’s say you start with two parties dominating the left and right sides of the spectrum.

is there alcohol at either party?

Life goes on a certain way such that a lot of people, who have been involved in the past, get pissed off at their party/ies, and, thinking they are brilliant, decide to create a third party. Normally it will gain very little support and pretty much be invisible on the spectrum, because most people either don’t vote or are very invested in their party.

their nominee was always willy wonka

However, let’s say a third party gets some traction. People start affiliating with it. It grows. The key point here is it exists at a spot on the political spectrum. A spot where a big party already sits. Therefore, all those people who sit in the areas right around the third party will leave the big party. This doesn’t necessarily just go for one party either, it can peel from both.

instead of a donkey or an elephant, tinky winky

Now remember, we have a “biggest-vote-getter-wins” system. So when candidates plop down, the one that can control more of the spectrum than the others will win. A BLUE candidate will win the biggest slice of this electorate, no matter where he, the PURPLE, or the RED candidates are. This is because the people just under halfway between the candidates can go against their party and pick the candidate who better represents their views.

are they, ahem, red or purple faced at their loss?

So even though the third party gained people from both sides, one of the original BIG parties essentially got divided into two pieces that are each smaller than the other BIG party. This will make it mad and lead to a consolidation back into two big parties.

ahhh, all better now

This is why this country has had two dominant parties pretty much during its entire existence. When the third party grows and becomes the new dominant big party, it can take a while and involve lots of turmoil (ask the Whigs). But there are a couple good recent examples of a third party candidate messing it up for people with similar interests (ahem, Ralph Nader and Ross Perot).

Now, for those of you who protest and say, “but we each have our own vote, and if the third party candidate represents me more, I should choose it!” Well, I can relate. I turned 18 in November 2006, just after the elections, and my first vote was not in the 2008 presidential but in a small special election at the local level. There was a Democrat and a Republican, establishment types, and a young Green Party candidate. My dad made the above case to me (the green will just take away from the dems and we’ll end up with the republican!), but would I listen? No. “The green candidate is much better on the environment!” I voted green. The republican won.

My little individual solace was in the fact that the republican didn’t win by one vote. So it wasn’t all my fault. It was the couple hundred others who broke Dem for Green with me.

The lesson here is: if you generally agree with one party but want to create a third party, DON’T!!! People WILL vote FOR YOU. But you will NOT win. Instead, the side you DISAGREE WITH MORE will win.

This is why the Republicans have tried hard to fold the Tea Party factionalizing into their umbrella. Otherwise, the red half would divide for at least one election, handing a win to the blue half. This is also why the two parties fight so hard over “the center” or “the independent voter.” The two big parties control almost half of the board, so the difference is right at the edge in grabbing those middle voters.

Really, this is basic PoliSci. You learn about the political spectrum and the median voter theorem and all that in the introductory courses to political science. It is not the parties that cause this situation of two dominant parties, it is our electoral system. You want robust third, fourth, and fifth parties? Change the system to proportional voting. But it still won’t make you happy – you have build a coalition at some point, either in the party or in the legislature. Unless, that is, we decide that bills [don't] become law when only 40% of those voting [dis]approve (HA! HAHOhohohohoh oh the US Senate).

So what if there’s some issue that neither party is addressing effectively? Well then start organizing around that issue and inundate everyone with it somehow until it gets addressed. Which you would have to do anyways, because there will always be some issue that’s not being addressed, no matter who’s in power. It’s just that, in this case, it’s an issue you happen to care about. So if you are really really really into fishery regulations, then by golly start raising awareness about how we’re going to run out of fish because they’re being overfished, until you can’t go anywhere without seeing fish!

you just got SCHOOLED

As for the problem that the two big parties squabble like siblings in the backseat (“MOM HE POKED ME!” “SHE POKED ME FIRST!”), I don’t have an answer in this post. But I can say that a third party is definitely not going to solve it.

Frank Rich makes a similar argument to mine but with fewer Paint images, and addressing a specific group of people trying noobishly to form a third party.

First, some brief music festival observations – I had only been to one before today. It’s exhausting, mostly because you stand and walk around for most of the day, and it’s hot. Also, the practice of bringing long poles with goofy items on the end to hold up in the crowd, presumably to be spotted by friends. means that you start blocking people’s view if enough people do that, especially with flags.

Now, a litany of my reactions to the musical groups I saw. There were a lot.

1. MilkDrive. Apparently they are from Austin. They were at the beginning on the small BMI stage (btw, did you know that technically I am a BMI artist? I signed up with them in high school to be eligible for some money to a songwriting workshop at Berklee. I need to go find out if this means they own any parts of my work…). A great bluegrass band. All the virtuosity you want in that type of music. Delicious. I found my bearings and slathered on sunscreen while I caught the last bit of their set.

2. Yellow Ostrich. They are a fairly new band that enjoys the “let’s use the loop pedal for vocals” strategy, and does it well. It was a trio that felt like it was the singer’s solo project but with a couple people helping fill things out, though the loop-vox and some guitar motif dominated the sound (which isn’t a bad thing). Fun listening.

3. Mariachi El Bronx. Oh man. So good. To be fair, they hit two of my main pleasure buttons: fun south-of-the-border rhythms and unusual instrumentation (as in, mariachi bands aren’t usually at rock festivals). They are a punk band’s side project, so they have some of the edge of a punk band. They wore black mariachi suits, the front man was great at talking and relating to the audience, and the music was high-energy the whole set. Grin on my face.

4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Yes, two “juniors.” They gave the impression that it would be a fun show – silly multicolored checkered jackets matching the bass drum head, plus four big cutout letters (“J” and “R”) with lights on them as stage deco. The music was that type of contemporary rock with electronic manipulation thrown in occasionally: one of the two singers used an old telephone rigged up like a microphone, along with the sets of knobs to alter sounds here and there. Maybe it was because El Bronx had been so linked in with the audience while these guys felt more intense and removed, though they did the usual rock-concert-stage-cavorting, but I tired of it and left halfway through. Or I just wasn’t as into their music. They did a good cover of God Only Knows though.

5. The Greencards. More stellar bluegrass. I caught about five minutes of their set on my way between stages, but it sounded awesome and worth looking into more later.

6. The Durdens. Gospel. It was unfortunately a little out of place; the male lead singer asked who else was a believer in the tent, and didn’t get much response. They were solid at gospel. Personally, I just want the most up-tempo gospel possible all the time, and they did more of the slow, I-will-tell-my-story-which-relates-to-Jesus gospel, so I didn’t stay forever. Still good though, and good for variety’s sake too.

7. Airborne Toxic Event. I had to look up this band again to even remember who they were, and they even played on the biggest stage. Unmemorable contemporary rock. Now that I think back, the most interesting part was when the female in the group took a running leap over the gap from the stage to the audience to crowd surf, eliciting a “whoa!” from the audience and a “what happened?” from the inattentive me.

8. The Lee Boys. Robert Randolph, except not Robert Randolph. And not quite as showy, though the music was basically the same, albeit less short-song style than Randolph and more long  musical sections with brief bits of lyrics. Excellent musicians.

9. AWOLNATION. This was one of the couple acts that acted like it was a rock concert and put on a rock concert show. Awesome, energetic, somewhat angry rock music with a standard band setup plus synth/keyboard. Sweaty, hard-hitting drummer flailing around angrily. Front man with weird hair. Guitarist who crowdsurfed. Front man who got out a boogie board and literally crowdsurfed. Drum solo (sort of). Good buildups and transitions so it wasn’t just a performance of their album, but a concert version. When I listen back to their songs, they feel slightly more poppy and simple but still catchy. Their show was great. The one dissonance was when they had some song against corporatism while playing on the stage sponsored by Honda.

10. Bomba Estereo. They performed on the tent stage, which was good in that they were like a club/dance group. From Colombia, so I couldn’t understand the lyrics, they had a very energetic rapping female singer along with a couple instrument players. The drummer definitely used some kind of sample or bass drum trigger to get that huge 4-on-the-floor bass drum sound for dancing. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as close as I wanted, but they were good.

11. Elbow. From Manchester, they had a good frontman who, when I finally got to their stage, was leading the crowd in some improvised singing about praying for rain, which then led into having everyone sing the vocal hook from one of their songs. This initial promise was the only real distinguishing factor about this band. Otherwise, they seemed like a fairly ordinary rock band, but with a singer who could connect well with the crowd.

12. Manu Chao La Ventura. Wow what energy. One song definitely lasted 15 minutes because they kept repeating parts, but they did it so well – each repeat just got the audience into it more, and they mixed in a couple of their other hit songs (songs I recognized and hadn’t realized were Manu Chao), sort of like a little medley. Chao thumped the microphone against his chest so much on that song you could see he drew blood when the camera zoomed in. The backup vocalist had an echo on and liked making a high-to-low “bewww!” sound, which got tiresome, and every song ended with Chao pointing his guitar back and forth while they did fast hits, like a gun. Overall though, this was the other set that felt like a rock concert performance.

13. Fleet Foxes. These are some great musicians. The couple songs I saw sounded just like their recordings and videos of other live shows. I personally don’t connect much with their music for whatever reason, so I didn’t try to catch much more than the end of their set.

14. Empire of the Sun. What the fuck? This band exists? I was on my way to watch Randy Newman but this band was out-80sing the 80s with their costumes, fog machines, backup-dancers-in-weird-costumes, light show, and electronic-ish music. One woman I was standing next to asked if I had heard of them before (they were practically a headliner, playing at the end of the day) and we determined that pretty much nobody had. Their presence was confusing and their performance was so unexpected and out of place that it was entertaining, but their music wasn’t interesting enough. So I left to see Mr. Newman.

15. Randy Newman. I don’t need to review him, he’s Randy Newman. Such a distinct voice. Great, clever lyrics. He had written a song about getting old and not having anything to say where he had the audience sing “He’s dead” during the choruses. And I don’t know about the rest of the audience, but during the “Friend in Me” encore, I definitely got all nostalgic and a little teary-eyed. I was surprised actually that fewer people were watching his set, though the bass from the Empire of the Sun stage nearby made it more like Randy Newman Dubstep version.

16. Arcade Fire. I spent the entire half hour I spent watching them trying to figure out why so many people like this band (they were the headliner). They were/are so boring! Their performance was fine – they play tight with each other and move around enough on stage, but how can a band with such a variety of instruments manage to make such bland music? Formula: pick a slow tempo, pick a couple chords and play them as eighth notes, have a simple melody that you might sing falsetto, plus lyrics and a drum part. But it wasn’t inspiring or dance-y, or even epicawesomeohmygod rock-concert-y with some instrumentalist shredding all over the place. Just mournful and tedious. Their songwriting is absolutely nowhere near the caliber of a Stevie Wonder. The next generation of music listeners won’t have a reason to listen to them. Maybe they’re just not my style and I’m being harsh. Whatever it was, I was so bored that I left.

One final festival observation: phasing. There were multiple stages where I got annoyed at how the sound setup kept phasing the high frequencies in and out. I presume this was because of where I was standing and that the two monster sets of speakers were spaced a certain way relative to me that would mess up parts of the sound. Also, they put the video on a slight delay to match up with when the sound reaches the people farther back, which can also be disorienting.

Verdict: superb day. Wide variety of music and everyone performed well, plus there was free water and the food, though expensive, was not absurdly overpriced.. I have some new music I will start listening to a lot, and several groups that I will now be more aware of. The only regret is that I didn’t apply more sunscreen.

Which got me to thinking about how people are brought up into their country’s and community’s civic traditions and systems.

School is mandatory and, at least for me, that meant we learned “how a bill becomes a law” in fifth grade and that ninth grade social studies was all about the US government. And there was some US history scattered throughout the years. So we learn how it works, presuming we, you know, paid attention, and that every school has some amount of the same curriculum as mine did.

But there is little to no regular way that has us learn to participate. Except for the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, which we recite every day in school or sing before every sports game.

This seems to not be enough. Sure, some people grow up in more civic-minded families where finally registering to vote feels like one of those adult rites of passage. But for a lot of people, 18 is just another year, while 21 is the real milestone, since you can finally buy alcohol legally.

Churches get it. At my presbyterian church, we went through a confirmation class once we were in ninth grade, where we learned the purpose of a lot of church traditions and then at the end chose whether or not we would join the church. There was a ceremony one sunday where the community welcomed us as adults. Jews, as we all know, do it with a lot more pomp (and studying, and gifts).

But wouldn’t it be much cooler if there were a comparable “welcome to being a part of society” kind of process and celebration once you become old enough to vote? If done well and done thoroughly in all communities across the country, we would have a much more engaged citizenry. Sure, we would still have a winner-take-all system that would discourage having more than two dominant parties, but civil society would generally be more robust.

In some ways, the induction ceremony for new citizens is enviable. They also have to pass a test, which none of us born-within-the-boundries have to do. Should we all have to pass a test to vote? I think that would probably discourage more people from voting, and it’s not like people could be stopped from using public goods and free riding while not participatin.

But it would be better to have something. Therefore, I resolve, here and now, when my children turn 18, I will make it a big fucking deal. I will invite all sorts of friends and family and we will make it their biggest birthday party, and the high point will be them signing their registration form and putting it in the mailbox. I ask that you do the same or come up with another way to bring the people you know into the process of paying attention, probing for answers, thinking critically, and weighing in. Of course, it won’t just be a celebration of being old enough to vote, but the end of several years of whatever initial lessons I, school, etc could teach him to that point and to the beginning of the exploration on their own.

And if a lot of people start doing that and it catches on? Awesome. Spread de word.