#comes from an actual real life anecdote about the venue

[seaofreverie]

There should be a Don't Let's Start: A Podcast About They Might Be Giants but for Sparks

[liugeaux]

Thoughts on Strike Force Five

I've always had a respect for late-night talk shows. They're a staple of American culture and are synonymous with classic television. Almost vaudevillian, they're a manicured window into the world of entertainment that for generations has reflected the pulse of the nation.

With the writers' strike lasting all summer, the 5 big late-night hosts, Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, and Oliver jumped on Zoom and made a podcast to support their unemployed staff. It was a noble gesture, whose only flaw was arriving 3 months too late.

They took turns hosting an hour-long podcast where they chatted about their experiences as talk show hosts, how their shows are similar yet differ both in front and behind the cameras, their respective career routes that led them to late night, and even some fun personal life anecdotes.

The stories and convos were fun, hilarious, and often fascinating, but the real meat of the cast was getting to hear their banter. 5 professional funny dudes, gently ribbing each other while clearly maintaining a healthy friendship. The show revealed a lot about each host. Everything from their ability to tell an unscripted story to how quick they are on their feet. Each host has their own strengths and as morbid as this sounds, getting them on a cast together was a unique venue in which to size them up.

Here's what I learned about each host after listening to all 12 episodes of Strike Force Five (insert thunderclap). We'll sort these by Late Night tenure.

Jimmy Kimmel (2003-present: Jimmy Kimmel Live!)

Oddly enough, Kimmel has been on the air longer than any of his peers and despite being the least naturally funny of the group, seems like the most driven. Not to say that Kimmel isn't funny, he's just not comedian-funny. He is great at long-form jokes, and situational pranks, and some of his more absurd stunts border on artistic brilliance. Kimmel is undoubtedly a good hang. He comes from a more awkwardly offensive time, and in this unscripted show you could, at times, hear him wanting to drift towards Man Show style humor. To his credit, he never strayed too far from his Disney-approved late-night persona, which at this point might actually just be his natural self. He's an idea man, and the bigger the idea, the more he wants to do it. He was apparently the brains and engine behind Strike Force Five and those traits track through his surprisingly long and often bizarre career.

Stephen Colbert (2004-2014: The Colbert Report, 2015-present: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)

As the oldest host on the cast, Colbert emerged from the Second City Chicago improv scene and found a home in the John Stewart stable of comedy writers. His journey to network television was weird, primarily because before taking his job at CBS he was famous for reporting news as a fictionalized version of himself on the Colbert Report. On Strike Force Five, Colbert was very much the elder statesman. His storytelling style was a noticeably slower template, leading to his tales being a bit long-winded and meander-y. In another setting that would be fine, but alongside his late-night peers, the difference was much more obvious. Part of this might also be a by-product of his Southern upbringing, but for what it's worth, as of 2023, I think The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is the best "traditional" late-night show on TV. Colbert feels like a writer's comedian, he has a brilliant delivery when given a script and, if needed, he can seamlessly fall back on his improv training.

Jimmy Fallon (2009-2014: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 2014-present, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon)

The most aloof member of the Strive Force is easily Jimmy Fallon. I've long thought of Fallon as the accidental lottery winner of the Leno vs. Conan late-night war of 2010. He was a no-brainer to replace Conan on Late Night, but once Leno's original successor was out of the picture, the big-boy-job of the coveted Tonight Show fell into his lap in 2014. He's turned it into the most modern late-night show with his higher-concept, Youtube-friendly, celebrity bits. Jimmy's energy is what the Tonight Show needs, but when placed among his peers, Fallon seems outclassed. He's inherently more charming than the rest of the Strike Force, and pretty fast on his feet, but for long stretches of the podcast, it almost seemed like he was either on-mute or not paying attention. Maybe he was waiting for his opening and just more polite than the others, but his soft-spoken demeanor got bulldozed through much of the series. With that being said, his willingness to play the buffoon might have turned him into the star of Strike Force Five. The infamous episode 5, in which Fallon created a match-game style quiz for the hosts and their spouses quickly devolved into a confusing train wreck that only got funnier as it spiraled into chaos. The potential for antics like this became one of the reasons to check out the show. Fallon leaning into his sheep-ish oaf routine had him emerging as the comedic battery of many of the episodes. He seems like the kind of comic that can show up half-prepared and still crush a room, just because his quick wit and charm do most of the heavy lifting. The most disappointing thing about Fallon's presence on the podcast was a complete lack of acknowledgment of the Rolling Stone article scandal, which was published a mere week after Strike Force Five's debut.

Seth Meyers (2014-present: Late Night with Seth Meyers)

Meyers is secretly the funniest member of the Strike Force Five. While his career may not be as prestigious as his podcast-mates, (this was hilariously made clear as the crew discussed the sad t-shirt rack of Late Night shirts in the NBC studio store at 30 Rock), Meyers is the most accomplished stand-up comedian of the bunch and that can't be ignored. He's the fastest with a joke, the funniest with that joke, and can craft a long-form story from his life with a careful-comedic-nuance I've never heard from any of the others. His version of Late Night strays from what Letterman, Conan, and Fallon did by being more of a Weekend Update or The Daily Show-style news desk show, but he's comfortable with that format and it works for his humor. A lot of Strike Force Five was 5 funny dudes fighting for air time, and while Kimmel and Colbert did the most talking, Meyer's joke-per-minute rate was off the charts compared to the two more talkative hosts. Like one of his predecessors, Conan, Seth Meyers does not get enough credit for the quality of his work and like Conan, he will likely get screwed out of The Tonight Show job. Conan's was a true screw job, but Seth's will more-than-likely be an age hurdle. Meyers is the same age as Fallon and both of them got their current shows around the age of 40. If Fallon hosts The Tonight Show for 25 years (which is reasonable, Leno finally left the show when he was 64) both him and Meyers will be 65. I don't see NBC giving their premiere late-night franchise to a 65-year-old Meyers. Note: Watch Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby on Netflix and you will understand my love for his stand-up.

John Oliver (2014-present: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

Like Colbert, John Oliver comes from Jon Stewert's stable of Daily Show correspondents. He's carved out a unique place in the Sunday night landscape, where his often outlandish and troll-like dark humor has thrived. He's my personal favorite of the bunch, and his show is the most likely to teach you something genuinely valuable. He's the only non-American-born host on Strike Force Five and the only host without a nightly show. His inclusion is curious, yet welcomed. Juxtaposed with his Strike Force peers, Oliver's bitingly dark wit and chaos-favoring humor stands out. No one enjoyed Fallon's Match-Game going up in flames as much as John Oliver and he seems to genuinely gain his life force from getting under the skin of the subjects on his show. On the podcast, Oliver was one of the more quiet hosts, and that led to his presence feeling more like a courtesy than an obligation. In my mind, I can hear him saying in his most polite British voice, "Oh, I'm aware that I don't exactly belong here, but I'm appreciative of the opportunity." Like Colbert's Southern roots, maybe John's just too British to dominate time on a podcast with so many white American hosts. Oliver is a great stand-up comic too. Like Meyers, if his TV career ended tomorrow, he could easily fall back on his remarkable stand-up talents and find excellent work for the rest of his life. John Oliver is a gem that I think would be dullened by a nightly show, and as a huge fan of both him and his show, I'm super grateful he was asked to be a part of the podcast. Hearing him hold his own with the more mainstream late-night stars was wonderful.

As a whole, the show was really fun. It's a snapshot of a moment in time that will never be captured again. Imagine if, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Tom Snyder, Jay Leno, and Dennis Miller had a radio show in 1997. What would that have sounded like? What would we have learned from it? It's just fascinating. I guess I need to mention the John Stewart and David Letterman episodes of Strike Force Five. It was great getting two legends of the format in on the conversation, but I don't know if it was necessary. Note: Letterman is super old now, but he's still sharp as a tack and maybe the best to ever do the late-night job.

One of the elephants in the room on Strike Force Five is the distinctive lack of any representation of people of color. As it stands, I'm not aware of any current major shows hosted by people of color. Both the Late Late Show and Daily Show's desks are currently vacant with the former likely to not be filled at all. The all-white Strike Force Five panel might just be a by-product of who is still watching these shows. It's probably middle-aged white people who are irreversibly accustomed to watching late-night television, and as the format dies, they will go down with the ship. In turn, the risk-averse networks stick with the white male hosts to not scare their tiny remaining audience away. It's not just, but sadly it's probably true.

Network talk shows might be a dying genre, but while they cling to relevance, Strike Force Five could go down as an important moment in the history of late-night television and I'm thrilled to have been here to experience it in real-time.

[scripttorture]

What would you expect from the public, including minors, when torturing someone in public is done, especially when it's a public spectacle and people actually come to watch. Is liking to watch torture a thing in this case? My story is a medieval/steampunk fantasy by the way.

Well Anon, this does still happen today. It happens in the country I grew up in and consider my home. So… my first suggestion is to throw out the implication that this is a weird historical thing the world doesn’t have to deal with any more. Because it is still very real. And if you get any kind of success with your story there’s a good chance some of your readers will have experience with this.

 It’s also significantly more complicated then ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ so let’s unpack this a bit.

 I’ve never actually seen anyone maimed or executed. But as a kid of around 9-10 I knew kids my age who had. We used it as a sort of… pissing contest basically. Kids would brag about it to show how hard they were, in the same way we’d stuff chilis into our mouths and see who could last longest.

 It’s one of those bizarre kinds of ritualised self-harm that you end up performing in order to cope with awful things.

 Because witnessing this kind of stuff is harmful, to adults and children. It can leave people traumatised and displaying some of the symptoms I write about here.

 But, however old the characters, if they grew up somewhere where this is the norm then I absolutely guarantee they understand showing opposition is dangerous. They know their responses to these displays of brutality and power are used as a proxy for their loyalty and worthiness by the state.

 And boy if you are in any way outside the norm, if you are queer or the ‘wrong’ ethnic group or faith, then the pressure to conform here is so much more intense.

 I lived in Saudi, my home town is Dhahran. My parents are from opposite ends of Europe and they tried to raise me Christian. I still spent a lot of my teenage years unpacking stuff I’d absorbed about public executions, amputations, whippings etc.

 From the kids I knew growing up (anecdotal evidence no matter how empassioned) I’d say the ‘normal’ responses to witnessing this kind of state violence are varied. Kids would get nightmares, start showing signs of mild anxiety disorders or depression. They’d become moody, angry and generally unhappy. Which they’d sometimes take out on other people.

 But I can’t remember anyone ever explicitly linking it to what they witnessed. They’d try to hide this stuff. Some of them would double down on justifications for state violence (seemed pretty common.) They would, above all, deny there was a problem.

 Because admitting to mental illness made you ‘weak’ and admitting to doubts about state violence made you a ‘traitor’. Which is a pretty risky thing to label yourself (even by implication) when you live in a state that publicly mutilates and murders people. (Note the author’s bias as a committed pacifist may be showing.)

 As you may have noticed Anon, I still carry a significant amount of anger on this particular subject. This bottled vitriole is not directed at you or your story idea but at the states and politicians who make sure this brutality continues. It’s about the fact that I can remember a nine year old girl matter of factly talking about beheading at a birthday party.

 Stepping back from the personal side of things for a moment we know from studies of PTSD and trauma survivors generally that witnessing violence can lead to lasting psychological symptoms. Including PTSD.

 PTSD specifically is more likely when an individual is directly effected (ie physically hurt). But repeated exposure to traumatic events, including witnessing violence, makes the manifestation of long term symptoms more likely.

 So a character that has seen dozens of these attacks is more likely to develop a long term mental health problem then a character who has seen only one. Regardless of age.

 We can’t predict which individual symptoms an individual witness will develop or indeed when a witness might develop them. We just don’t know enough about how these things happen yet.

 Having said that, the possible symptoms for witnesses are pretty much identical to the possible symptoms for torture survivors (link above.) I’d advise against using chronic pain for witnesses unless you have a clear idea of an underlying cause; it seems (anecdotally) to be more common in people who directly experienced violence.

 If you decide to use insomnia there’s a masterpost on sleep deprivation here.

 For mental health problems like depression, anxiety etc remember there are physical symptoms as well as symptoms related to mood. Characters who are trying to deny they have a mental health problem might focus overly on physical symptoms. Depression can cause nausea, vomiting and tiredness/lack of energy which might be mistaken for disease. Anxiety can cause chest pain and shakes.

 Circling back let’s talk about some of the phrasing in this question for a moment. Because ‘choose to watch’ misunderstands the way states use these public displays of violence.

 Attendance and witnessing of public executions and torture is often enforced. Sometimes overtly and sometimes more tacitly. Because the point of these displays is to hammer home the power of the state. That doesn’t work if people can easily choose not to go.

 Here’s an example of what that overt and tacit enforcement looked like back home.

 Tacit enforcement came from the timing and placement of executions and amputations. They took place on weekends, when almost everyone was off work. They were carried out in major towns and cities, where the population density was higher. The venue was typically on a main thoroughfare close to important sites. Which ensured a high volume of people would be in the area when the execution took place, whether there was due to be an execution or not.

 So picture the town or city this is taking place in, in your story. When are the public holidays? Where are the markets? Where are the most popular religious venues? At what time will the most people be in these areas?

 All of that will tell you where an execution or public torture is likely to take place. Because if you set this shit up in eye sight of the place most people buy food, at the time when the most people are out, you get witnesses.

 Whether they want to be witnesses or not.

 Overt enforcement, on the low end of the scale, means having officials among the crowd pushing people towards the scaffold. At home this seemed to be targetted towards children and people who were judged as ‘other’. Different races to the majority, people who might have been read as a different religion, people who might have been read as queer etc.

 This is because the message is ‘This could be you.’

 I know practices in other countries have sometimes gone beyond this. Police or armed officials will sometimes go out and gather a crowd of witnesses by just… approaching people on the street and demanding they attend.

 This approach requires quite a bit of man power and is not practical or necessary in every setting. In most cases setting things up in the right place and time is enough to ensure a large number of witnesses.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that a lot of people will see this stuff without having made a conscious choice to do so.

 And making a conscious choice to see it… well it does say something about the character but not in the way you’re thinking.

 Because these displays are all about the power of the state. Witnessing them, responding to them is performance and it’s a performance of state loyalty. You can’t expect someone to give their true opinion on public displays of violence when criticism or voicing ‘dislike’ could lead to them being targets of violence.

 Basically if you’ve got characters going to see this stuff regularly then it’s worth asking why they feel the need to display their loyalty in this way. Sometimes it’s because they really really believe in the state. But often… they’re compensating for something.

 Wrapping up I think it’s important to note there’s often a difference between what people say about this stuff versus what they actually feel. And that’s because these things are explicitly political and explicitly about the power a state has over it’s subjects.

 The way individuals respond to these things in public and what they say about them in public effects how they are treated. Sometimes it comes with obvious legal sanctions. Even if it doesn’t… these displays are entirely about reminding people the state can kill them.

 And it doesn’t actually discourage crime or civil disobedience but it does create a climate of fear and hostility which permeates daily life.

 Think about why the state is insecure about their power. Think about how your characters live with that background radiation and whether it feeds into cultural ideas around things like martyrdom or nobility of suffering.

 Remember that there is a difference between public and private life. Existing in these kinds of brutal states often means having quite a sharp distinction between them. This can create very strong bonds to those the characters trust. It can also create a big difference between private and public personas.

 If you’re writing a world where public torture and executions are happening there’s more going on then just individual character’s reactions. You are saying something about the world, the ruling class and the politics of the area.

 Take the time make sure you know what you want to say.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[scriptlgbt]

I’ve asked this elsewhere, but I want to cover all my bases: Me and another blogger are in the process of writing a story, and one of the main male characters has flashbacks from a recent abusive relationship, which was with another man. Is there any way we can show this without negatively stereotyping all gay relationships? As a note: all but one of the main characters are on the LGBTQ spectrum, and there is a canonical gay relationship that’s the complete opposite of the one I described above.

TW: Intimate partner violence, details relating to it.

This will be under a cut, because my response will involve more details, including describing specific real-life dynamics and experiences related to this.

I would appreciate if this specific post were NOT reblogged, to help protect the safety of those whose stories go into this response.

These are some general things that characterize the way I think about it, and issues I've faced with it that you may want to consider.

It's extremely difficult to come forward about abuse within the community. With some people, they may come forward to police. With people in the communities I'm part of, we have a sort of whisper network. Things like just normal word of mouth, talking with friends, but also private Facebook groups and things like that.

We are significantly more likely to take people for their word on these experiences, because we, more often than the periallocishet community, know what it's like to survive horrific abuses and not be believed. The issue with this, is that abusers who are in our communities and immersed in them, know these dynamics, and some find manipulative means of flipping the script and making their victims out to be abusers.

I have an anecdote from a friend (shared with permission, read over and fact-checked) on this sort of thing. (Put in an indent so folks can skip past it.)

My friend was in an intimate partnership with another queer person and there was a lot of abuse in that relationship. There were witnesses to this abuse (mainly two, also queer -- a roommate and a friend who visited for a little bit, but didn't know a lot of people locally in the community), and things related to it that were easily logged. Things like posts online, texts, social media messages.

Both my friend and their abuser had pretty heavy mental illness, and there were some other factors that made it hard to immediately recognize the relationship as abusive, like boundary communication being assumed to be a language barrier. (Although "no" was the same word in both my friend and their then-partner's native language, these things can feel easy to dismiss when you're right in them.)

A common thing the abuser did was react extremely poorly to boundaries being made. Sometimes my friend would be having a particularly hard time trying to get boundaries communicated to land, so they would eventually decide it was easier to part ways and have time to themself. Trying to make boundaries big enough for their partner to see was basically what this tactic was, and it didn't bode well for them. Because the partner would basically shut down mentally and be a suicide risk (not explicitly threatening, but repeating past patterns of behaviour for this sort of thing) for the next while, sometimes being unresponsive to texts and so on over the course of days. My friend would have no way to check in on them and felt coerced into taking back the boundary (they didn't, and it probably wouldn't have done anything anyway).

I think a lot of people of privilege tend to do things like call cops for "wellness checks" for this kind of thing. This is something a lot of marginalized people can't safely do, for one, and for another, it's not a thing anyone with any morals at all should be doing, anyway. IMO. Both my friend and their then-partner/abuser both had trauma related to the police, especially surrounding mental health. It just wasn't an option. (I wish I could link a transcript if one existed - but I rec looking up the You're Wrong About podcast episode for Kitty Genovese for this. It's graphic, but it does talk about how Kitty Genovese being a lesbian, and there being other gay neighbours in the witnesses, that plays into why people "didn't call the police" --- the police also later used her identity to claim that being a lesbian puts you more at risk for being murdered by a serial killer or whatever.)

Anyway. When my friend finally got out of the shitty relationship, the ex would make up lists of things that they had done to my friend, only, they claimed that my friend did that to them. For a long time, even up to 6 years after the fact, they would stalk my friend and get in contact with people that they interacted with to claim that my friend had done these things. There was one point my friend was convinced into not actually coming forward about anything anymore because their abuser had made a bullshit promise that they would stop spreading lies if only my friend never came forward. It was really gross. It didn't matter in the end that my friend kept a file filled with screenshots from all the sockpuppet accounts and IP addresses matching, it didn't matter that they had texts threatening my friend's pet. Because the abuser "came forward" first, grooming character witnesses.

My friend was further alienated and would find themselves blocked on social media and kicked out of spaces they needed as a survivor of intimate partner violence.

The moral of the story is not that we should *not* immediately believe survivors. We should believe survivors.

But:

- There is a difference between justice, and punishment.

- Transformative Justice, Restorative Justice, and similar, are things that we need to invest in setting up procedure for as communities. Community desire for justice requires actual justice, not just skipping straight to what is sentencing-adjacent. Carceral “solutions” do not actually uproot the sources of injustice nor do they commit to doing anything to facilitate healing in people harmed.

- People are not things to throw away easily, and we need to actually make efforts to understand the needs of survivors.

I may try and fill in an example of how TJ or RJ can happen later, but I advise doing research for this on your own. There is a police abolitionism textbook I’m forgetting the name of which provides examples of how people use community-based solutions for conflict outside of the justice system.

I do need to note that this isn’t a venue for this topic to be explored well. I just wanted to give a glimpse into how these things have come into communities that I am in and alternatives to the justice system, especially as people who are often targeted by police.

- mod nat

[evolsinner]

⊱┊19

“um..twen~twenty~five.”

fuck. what the fuck! i tried to make it as close to sir’s age as possible, but 25 is the first number that pops into my head!

“twenty~five?” the mother repeats with somewhat surprise. “my boy’s what? twel..” she does the math in her head, “thirteen years older than you?”

actually 20, but 13’s fine too.

i’m obviously getting agitated by the tone in her voice and i guess my lovely date notices this because he places his hand on my thigh. it’s not like i was gonna say or do anything, lol. wait, maybe i was… damn, he knows me more than i know myself.

“mum,” sir speaks up, “don’t make it such a big deal.”

“oh, no, no, no, just making small talk, luv. that’s all,” she backpaddles.

“well, then, let’s talk about you guys,” mr killian retorts. “how’s life treating ya, dad?”

“well, son, business is business as per usual,” he replies. “revenue is good. great, actually. still would have been nice to have you back, though.”

“nah, dad, i reckon that ship has already sailed.”

“‘sailed?’, haha haha,” the father laughs mockingly. “well, if it weren’t for me, son, you wouldn’t be able to afford that bottle of champagne you just ordered.”

“you and i both know i worked my ass off at that company of yours,” sir hits back. “i earned it, dad. all of it.”

“boys, behave now, speaking of company, we have company,” the mother nods at me, her trying to be nice isn’t working.

sir sighs, “fine, tell me, how’s life back home, hm?”

whilst they proceed chit~chatting about their lives and jobs, my date proceeds to do something else under the table. something sinful.

hell naw, not in front of his parents. i won’t be able to control myself! what is he thinking?! just nope. not happening.

i grab his hand and place it on his own thigh. he scoffs arrogantly at my disapproval. which results in the parents’ voices fading and intense frowns replacing their expressions.

“oh, no, no,” sir quickly readdresses them. “i wasn’t..that wasn’t..it wasn’t what it looked like. it wasn’t directed at you guys taking that sick dog you ran over to the vet. i definitely wasn’t laughing. forgive me, how is it..she, i mean? is she doing well now?”    

lmao, he’s messing up so bad, it’s hilarious.

after regaining the flow of the conversation pre quick, he latches onto my femur once more, but this time the grip is unyielding. again, i put my fingers between his knuckles to get his leech of a grip off of me. only he hardens it, forcing a pleasurable sensation to trickle up and around my pelvis.

i inhale a long breath of oxygen, so long that the parents pause and wait stiffly for my exhale.

meanwhile, mr killian casually takes a sip from his drink like he’s so interested in what his mum has got to say. his mouth curves into a devilish grin, finding the fact that i can’t express my pleasure openly hella entertaining. this piece of shit!

he softens his hold...

okay, good, great, amazing!

then, he smoothly glides his hand up.

fuck.

i quickly lock my legs together like a venus flytrap.

sir puts his mouth next to my ear, “spread your legs, rosé.”

his voice. that tone. it has the capacity to liquefy the adamantine jewel necklace around my neck. liquefy or maybe tighten it to the point where i am choking by the hands of crystals and a voice too concupiscent for my threshold. slightly, i loosen my legs. not enough. barely enough. i’m fucked. that’s just all there is to it. i am fucked.

“wider,” he whispers in that velvety tone.

i do so an inch more, my face heating up as if i just opened an oven door.

“don’t make a sound,” his libidinous warning just an earshot away from his parents.

how in the hell can they not hear?

his fingers reach the waistband of my panties. this cannot be happening right now. don’t do it. don’t you dare. do not..ohh..damn.. he slides his fingers diagonally under the elastic.

fuck x2.

“so how did you two come to meet?” the mum finds a way to direct the convo back at us, or to me, specifically speaking.

with them talking about the vet earlier, i blurt out, “hospital.”

why am i like this?!!!!!

mr killian’s wayward hand halts and i don’t know if i’m pleased or disappointed.

“yeah, well,” i put more confidence in my voice. i’ll just have to make an elaborate story up. i should be good at this. “i was there with my family. my little brother broke his arm so we were getting an x~ray done.”

“oh, is he doing okay?” they both fake sympathise.

mr killian’s fingers catch rhythm again and i try to finish my fabrication off as quickly as possible so that he doesn’t make me fucking orgasm in the middle of it!

“no, yeah, he’s..he’s perfectly healed now.”

sir’s fingers on their way to their destination brush against my shaved extremities and the strip of hair in the centre. i am stock~still, captivated, embarrassed, red hot frozen. red hot frozen? yeah, fucking red hot frozen!! so are the parents with this storytelling of mine.

my breathing slows as i know what’s about to happen in just a matter of seconds.

“i went to get a snack from the indoor vending machine when~”

without a warning, he inserts a finger right into my vajayjay and i stop talking midsentence. my back is as straight as an iron board. sir shifts his sit a little closer to me so that he can get his finger in the deepest that he can. i clench around him so damn hard as a sign for him to get it the hell out of me, but all he does is clear his throat.

he

clears

his

throat.

that’s all!

“well,” the mother arches a demanding overtweezed eyebrow, “what happened after?”

“babe, you okay?” sir asks me ever so boldly; i could detect the libido hidden in his tone a mile away. “you were getting to the best part.”

“sorry, one moment,” i give the folks a pursed smile before facing my date and pulling him down by the tie to hiss, “fucking quit it right now!”

he finds it amusing.

brah, this bitch.

“not in front of your parents…!”

“did i have a say with that bj at work?” is the only thing he says and brings his head back up to eye level with his parents. “anyways, where were we? after paying, her food got stuck and that’s when i saw her,” he finishes off for me.

so this is what it’s about? to have a one up on the other? to level out the playing field?! i am going to deck him so fucking hard when we get back home!!

“she told me ‘don’t bother, it’s a money~hungry machine that exploits from vulnerable people’,” he continues passionately like it truly happened.

the father cackles.

“so i asked rosé which one she was going for and i paid for the same one which helped push her one out along with mine.”

the father takes the chance to add a little anecdote of his own. this gives sir time to concentrate on his avocation.

he pumps a finger in and out of me. i can feel myself getting wetter and wetter with each pump. i try extremely, terribly hard to maintain a straight face; it’s taking every muscle in my face to do so. i lowkey don’t want him to stop and i’m highkey having trouble remaining casual about it.

“s~sir, please stop,” i croak out.

“‘stop’ what?” he murmurs cockily, curling his finger inside me just to further taunt me. “i don’t see anything happening,” he gestures over the table with his other hand. “do you?”

arghhhhhhhh!!!!!

just when i thought i could manage it, he finds a second pair for his index finger by inserting his middle finger in. he scissors me, pumping in and out more vigorously now to tease the real thing.

he leans into me and whispers, “i want to fuck you so bad on this table right now.”

my eyes pop wide open, “sir...”

“shhh, sweetheart, or i’ll put in a third digit,” he threatens.

his voice stimulates me, his foreshadowing, his fingers and i just cannot keep up with this god slash satan of a man any longer! so forgive me when my control is deteriorating in keeping the extreme ecstasy at bay. my face is getting sweaty and i’m becoming sloppy.

accidentally, i release a deep moan like i just ate the most satisfying cake on planet earth.

fucking.

kill.

me.

now.

sir’s racy fingers become frozen inside of me. he drops his fork and it clanks on the plate. he facepalms so that he can hide his face from his parents’ view. omg, why is he the one embarrassed?! the father chokes on his food, hitting his chest mildly, and the mother immediately stops chewing.

“a~are you okay, dear?” the mum asks unsurely. she needs closure, needs something to rid her of what the both of them do not want to bring their minds to.

“yeah, yeah! stomach pains, aha,” i say with an ‘oh it’s nothing’ giggle.

she doesn’t pressure me on it, instead, “adorable, isn’t it?” she asks the hubby. “except why were you in the hospital, isaac? were you all well?”

dessert is served and sir gradually removes his sticky fingers out of me.

thank the saviour above!

“i was well. my class had an excursion there and i was supervising them,” he replies.

“what does an english literature class have to do with a hospital?” she needles him.

“many things, mum, many things,” he utters, slightly irritated. “perhaps if you took up extra english literature classes, you’d know.”

“isaac!” the father snaps, his accent with the pronunciation of his son’s name ‘i~zack’ makes it sound so very profound. “that is in no way to speak to your mother like that!”

“you’re right,” mr killian puts up no fight and dips two fingers, the fingers into the chocolate sauce poured around the panna cotta. “that was wrong of me. i apologise.”

i watch him bring the chocolate coated fingers inside his mouth before slowly pulling them out as all the sauce smoothly slides off.

i’m pretty sure my man, j.c, has left heaven himself.

“this is delicious,” he tells the waitress above, conceited and all. “what’s in here again?”

[wrightiverse]

Chrysanthemums

When he was drunk and maudlin, Bill Close had a phrase he used to explain why he’d never become a star: timing is everything. If he hadn’t done a certain audition right before lunch, when people were hungry and distracted. If he’d been playing the night the agent was in the bar, instead of at home babysitting. If he’d been five minutes earlier here, two hours later there, a few seconds in either direction, he’d have the life he was actually supposed to have. Bad timing. Good timing. Didn’t quite pull off the timing. Timing is everything. Glenn buys all that as a kid, but he eventually realizes that Bill only had it half right. It’s not just the bad stuff that comes down to being in the right place at the right moment. Sometimes, everything aligns to give you much more than you deserve. (Posted this on AO3 originally but we’re all in sad Close boys hours this week anyway so I may as well bring it over here. Full version below cut has references to a car accident, pregnancy, and a certain canonical death that I’m sure you can guess. It was also written before we realized that Wrightiverse Nick was trans but fuck it, why go back and have Glenn and Morgan misgender baby Nick when I don’t have to. Nick is much younger when Morgan passes in this than in the show’s canon now but canon is optional, free your mind.) 

When he was drunk and maudlin, Bill Close had a phrase he used to explain why he’d never become a star: timing is everything. If he hadn’t done a certain audition right before lunch, when people were hungry and distracted. If he’d been playing the night the agent was in the bar, instead of at home babysitting. If he’d been five minutes earlier here, two hours later there, a few seconds in either direction, he’d have the life he was actually supposed to have. Bad timing. Good timing. Didn’t quite pull off the timing. Timing is everything. Glenn buys all that as a kid, but he eventually realizes that Bill only had it half right. It’s not just the bad stuff that comes down to being in the right place at the right moment. Sometimes, everything aligns to give you much more than you deserve. *** It’s not exactly a fairytale love story. They literally meet in a dumpster.

It’s been most of a year since he told his parents to go shove their advice and their money up their respective asses, three months since the semester ended and he lost access to the dorm room and meal plan, a week since he ran out of cash, and at least 24 hours since he ate anything. Couch-surfing is keeping a roof over his head, and his friends are generous with food and booze and weed when they have any to spare, but that only goes so far. One year of college courses under his belt, no idea how to make a resume, no work history even if he did, no permanent address. The job offers aren’t exactly flooding in.

But to hell with it, Glenn Close isn’t gonna just lay down and die. He’s already cased a bakery a few blocks away and he knows they usually throw out the stuff too stale to sell around 11 p.m. He’d hoped not to have to use that info, but whatever. Someday this will make a great anecdote for his episode of Behind The Music.

Glenn hovers across the street until he sees a silhouetted figure toss a bag into the dumpster in the alley, then casually strolls over once the figure goes back inside. The sides of the dumpster are taller and have fewer handholds than he’d pictured, but he drags over some pallets and manages to climb in. It’s half empty and the bag has landed right on top, safe from the nasty trash juices that are soaking the cuffs of his jeans.

The first thing he sees when he tears the bag open is a plain bagel, and the first bite he takes is so good that he almost passes out. He’s so busy wolfing it down that he doesn’t notice the approaching steps from outside until another bag of trash flies over the top of the dumpster and bounces off his head.  

“Watch it,” he says reflexively. Then he freezes, not even chewing as he strains to listen for movement outside. Nothing. Maybe they just tossed the bag and walked back inside. He might get away with this.

“Yo, Templeton,” a voice says from outside the dumpster. “You gonna quit pretending you’re not in there, or should I close the lid?”

Glenn considers his options for a moment, but now that he comes to think of it… “Yeah, I’m realizing I don’t have anything to stand on in here. Little help?”

That’s the first time he hears her laugh. Even knowing he was the butt of the joke, he wants to hear it again. He gets his chance seconds later, when her head pops above the wall of the dumpster.

“Would you look at that? Somebody threw away a perfectly good dumbass.” Then that laugh rings out for the second time

Even his innate panache can’t overcome being hungry, chest-high in trash bags, and covered with flour. He’s humbled, and she’s amused, and that somehow turns into a connection that surprises both of them with how deep it gets and how fast.

If Glenn meets her at any other moment than that, he blows it by trying to be cool and charming. He lucked out. It’s perfect timing.

Morgan’s too good for him on any level you can name. Too cool for him, too smart, too tough, too beautiful. A better musician than him, both with the actual music and the business side. She’s the one who teaches him how to scrounge and hustle, how to read a contract’s fine print and argue with a booking agent who doesn’t want to pay up. Sometimes it feels like every other living soul on earth is elbow-to-elbow with them, fighting for the same scraps that they are, but it’s clear that Morgan’s the one in a million who’s going to make it. And he’s along for the ride, feeling like the luckiest son of a bitch alive every single damn day.    ***

***

Seven years hearing her laugh every day. Seven years getting to be the one who makes her laugh, sometimes even on purpose.

“I think we should get married,” he says one day, and she laughs in his face.

“You still think it’s more legit if the government knows about it, huh?” But she softens, because she knows what he’s actually trying to say, because of course she does. “I get it, baby. This is the real deal. In sickness and health, for better or for worse, and so forth. I’m not signing any paperwork, but you know we throw a good party. Let’s just do the fun parts. You down?”

It’s a very good party, and afterward she calls him “my husband” and they make plans to get rings. Later, if she’s tipsy and feels like teasing him, she calls him “my first husband,” and she laughs. Then she squeezes his face in her hands and gives him a kiss to make sure he understands that she’s only joking. He always knows she’s joking. He always lets her kiss him anyway.

***

Morgan spends a few days thinking she’s got food poisoning before realizing a stowaway has outwitted their precautions. Glenn’s always counted that as very good timing by Nicholas -  if that tricky little bastard shows up any earlier than he does, there’s no way Glenn even considers becoming a parent. But once they decide to go for it, it’s more fun than they’d have ever imagined. They build a lot of castles in the air together while they’re waiting to meet Nick. Glenn says he wants enough kids for a Partridge Family style band, and Morgan agrees as long as nobody plays the tambourine.

They discuss it endlessly, but finally decide a percussionist is the first priority. The closer the due date gets, the more it seems like their new bandmate agrees. Morgan grabs Glenn’s hand and puts it on her belly so he can feel the urgent kicks. “Check out this sick drum solo.”

Nick inherits his parents’ knack for knowing how to make an entrance. He’s so fashionably late that Morgan decides they should just party without him. It’s like ditching the friend who’s taking too long to get ready, except for the part where they can’t actually leave him behind. She and Glenn hit up their favorite venue that very night. The music thumps through their bodies like a pulse. The energy of the crowd makes them forget how long they’ve been waiting. And if anybody has any concerns about seeing a ridiculously pregnant woman dancing her heart out until her hair sticks to her face with sweat, they’re smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

Fear of missing out is apparently hardwired, and Nick graciously deigns to join them a few days later. Everything changes. Three a.m. feels a lot different when you know you’ll be awake again at 4:30, and 5, and probably 7, and maybe 8 for good measure, and…

“This new guy can’t hang,” Morgan mutters. She’s standing beside the bed, Nick tucked against her shoulder, patting his back and swaying. Glenn’s sitting up in bed, trying to stay awake out of solidarity, losing the battle.

“New guy is a lightweight,” he says. “And he’s pretty nasty. That dude does not know what a toilet is for.”

“Come on, man, get it together,” Morgan says softly to the fussing figure in her arms. “We can’t take you anywhere.” Baby Nick finally burps and spits up a little onto Morgan’s shirt. A few additional angry hiccups are all he can manage before he falls asleep.

“Did you hear that?” Morgan murmurs as she lowers him into the crib. “He said he was gonna fight me. Slow your roll, new guy, you aren’t ready for this heat.”

She collapses back onto the bed next to Glenn. “I’m bluffing. He’s kicking my ass.”

“Me too,” Glenn says, “but at least we outnumber him.” ***

***

Not long after Nick’s second birthday, Morgan notices that she’s a couple of days late. It’s not a big deal, it usually doesn’t mean anything. Glenn makes a joke about the Close Family Quartet, and Morgan says she’ll grab a test when she gets groceries that weekend. But whether their lead guitarist was about to debut or still waiting in the wings, she made an amateur mistake and left things a little too late. The band broke up first. That’s show business for you.

People always want to know what happened. Glenn never gets into details. They must make up their own pictures in their head: a rain-slick curve taken too fast, a semi truck jack-knifing across the highway. It makes more sense for something like that to happen when you already know you’re in danger.

It’s the middle of the day. He’s going maybe five over the speed limit, keeping pace with traffic. He’s not high or drunk or tired or even distracted. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A dog runs into the road, someone swerves to miss it, someone else tries to get out of their way. Barely a fender-bender, except that their car gets just enough of a push to end up in the intersection.

Early on, he thinks a lot about how a few seconds here and there could change things.

The dog runs into the street a little later, and then the oncoming traffic isn't trying to beat a yellow light.

The dog runs into the street a little earlier, and they drive home with a scraped bumper.

But that’s Bill’s half-assed way of thinking about it, and Glenn knows better. It’s true, it could have been different. It could have been much worse.

He drives a split second slower, and the other car meets theirs with a direct hit, crumpling the back seat as well as the front with far more force than Nick’s booster seat can deflect.

He drives a split second faster, and the clipped bumper spins them into the next lane, and he never makes it to the hospital at all, and Nick doesn’t have anybody left.

Glenn knows now what his dad was talking about in those grumbling laments. It’s like trying to put together two tracks that are just slightly out of sync. Where do you snip out a piece to make things fit right again? What if you’re already balanced on that tipping point with the fewest misfortunes and the most lucky breaks? What happens if you start messing with that?

He can’t second-guess. It happened the way it happened, and he’s still here, and Nick’s still here, so he still has a job to do. He’s going to be there for Nick the whole way, along for the ride, feeling like the luckiest son of a bitch alive because he gets to be here at all. It could have gone another way. Timing is everything.

[timespakistan]

The mansion connection | Art & Culture | thenews.com.pk Suleman Khilji. There could be several beginnings. According to the Bible, “In the beginning there was the Word”. To Camille Paglia, “In the beginning there was nature”; Bosnian author, Faruk Sehic writes, “In the beginning there was Eden, whence we were expelled”. But for the 3rd Mansion Artists Residency, in the beginning there was the house, a portion of which was rented by a restaurant. Later, the entire building was taken over by eateries one after the other till, due to constraints added by Covid-19, the premises were abandoned. At this venue, the Mansion residency, organised by Nausheen Saeed, was held from 15thto 30th January. It included six artists of different practices and experiences. During a period of social distancing and fear of other humans, this endeavour not only connected individual artists, but also brought viewers to a meaningful, non-commercial art activity. An artists’ residency, by its very chemistry, is about exchange of ideas, sharing facilities and exploring new options. In South Asia, art organisations such as Khoj, Vasl, Britto, and Theertha facilitated links between artists of a country and the region. Some leading names of contemporary art from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka discovered their voices while away from their studios and normal pursuits. However, the year 2021 (like 2001 in that both altered the entire planet) posed a challenge to the notion of ‘normal’. The ‘normal’ became a threat. In a way, all participating artists and Saeed, the curator of Mansion Residency, defied this fear. While keeping safety measures, they revealed the unlimited frontiers of possibilities. One cannot expect artists to venture out for something revolutionary or shocking in the brief span of two weeks because art has to be slow-acting to be effective and lasting. The work produced at the residency offered diverse responses to our environment: physical, collective, natural, virtual and emotional. To start with, the space seemed a perpetual stimulus, especially its run-down state, for creative individuals who prefer dimness to brightness, misery to happiness, dust to cleanliness and brokenness to functionality. This reading may be a cliché, but ask any artist, and he/she would feel more comfortable with peeling plaster, dilapidated structures, uneven wall paint and withering woodwork as a subject, because it all comes across interesting compared to a boring state-of-the-art freshly furnished construction. The location in Lahore was a point of departure that inspired artists to respond to it. The scale of its interior impressed Suleman Khilji who established his studio in the bare walls and large glass window. This was an ideal place due to its dimensions, informality and atmosphere that he could have never had. Khilji rendered drawings – almost ghost images – of staff living there so that the work was a testimony to their presence. To many the staff may even not have been people with names and specific personalities but merely cooks, electricians, cleaners and guards. The building had once flourished as a high-end restaurant. Khilji made an effort in his work to return ‘the arty area’ to these characters. The past of the place, a food joint, its dysfunctional kitchen and deserted dining rooms, played a significant part in some of the works that emerged during the residency. For instance, Kiran Saleem, who has been appropriating art of the past, addressing the issue of environment, and intervening into familiar settings, responded to the property by placing a section of Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, behind a screen of wooden blinds to create her Bar Behind the Bars. The Parisian bar, from the impressionist’s painting, was translated/transported into another ‘bar’ made of wooden lengths. Fixed behind these stripes, the print of the painting was lit whenever a visitor stepped into that section, alluding to all kinds of bars – prohibitions and pleasures. The location in Lahore was a point of departure that inspired artists to respond to it. The scale of its interior impressed Suleman Khilji, who established his make-shift studio in the bare walls with a large glass window. Her other installation, 45 plastic bags containing fish and water, was suspended like a chandelier from the ceiling. Fish is not an alien entity either at a formerly Chinese restaurant or in polythene bags for a citizen who sees and ignores vendors selling them daily on the city streets. Saleem recognised the luminosity of water through transparent bags and the glistening scales of the fish and turned them into an item of fancy lighting. The work may have provoked critical responses by animal rights advocates who nonetheless enjoyed delicious qeema-paratha offered at another art installation. Some self-appointed art-moral cops routinely denounce any art work that utilises animals and plants, but never protest the cutting of trees to make furniture, or caging and barbequing of birds, or controlling, burdening and slaughtering of other animals. Saleem has been painting images of fish in plastic bags in her canvases too, indicating the fate of the living, and one feels that this installation, Together but Apart, Apart but Together was a natural/logical outcome of that concern/vocabulary. The history of the place, a restaurant, suited Rabbya Naseer. She put a temporary roadside café, a dhaba, in the vacant lot previously available for serving snacks and beverages. She had cups collected from hotels across the world and furniture from some other source. The food was prepared by a number of people, including a few family members, so that it was a commune-like café, where the artist also told a story to those who paid for it, while waiting for food or tea. The tale, about the narrator’s encounter with an Iranian woman having a strange name, had a surrealistic overtone, making the entire episode suspect. But who cares, if the artist had actually met the Iranian in a train or the anecdote was a fabrication, because as the end was without a conclusion, its actual origin can also be contested. Facts always change. Umberto Eco observes that the scientific and historic truths we believe in, such as “the laws of universal gravitations are those established by Newton, or…. Napoléon died on Saint Helena on 5 May 1821” may alter in future with some new discovery/research, but incidents like “Little Red Riding-Hood is eaten by the wolf and then freed by the woodcutters” or “Anna Karenina commits suicides” will remain true for eternity. Stories are more stable and reliable than theories. Rabbya Naseer aimed at re-living the custom of strangers meeting at ordinary cafes and sharing their (life) stories. For a number of other participants, words became a significant tool. In her sound piece, Madyha Leghari employed text to make us realise the brittleness of language. A stuttering woman pronounces her profession: contemporary artist. In her state of confusion and nervousness, she utters several variants of the words. This can be as valid as multiple mis-concepts of contemporary artist. In another installation, the sentence, “This message has no body text,” was split into other words and options – all auto-generated lines that we get from our gadgets. Our senses are tuned to reacting to these mechanised sounds which have replaced human voice/presence. Like “This message is 10 percent real, 90 percent auto-generated/10 percent intended, 90 percent fated”. The sound came from two sides of the room and you heard it while sitting in the middle, almost like attending a sermon on “post-truth”. Truth is a problem for everyone, more so for artists like Mariam Waheed who sought to find out “Who I am” and some related questions in her text pieces that – like a mirror – reciprocated the dialogue of self-discovery. The identity, function and importance of an artist, have been concerns common among artists since the day artists were liberated from conventional patronage only to end up as a commodity in modern times where you don’t hang a canvas by Andy Warhol, but a ��Warhol’. In her installation, a banner announcing “Artist is available for rent”, Waheed commented on the commercialisation of art. The fact that the premises were up for rent, complemented and added to the meaning, intention and complexity of the work. The writer is an art critic based in Lahore https://timespakistan.com/the-mansion-connection-art-culture-thenews-com-pk/10678/

[globalmediaindustries]

Sabaton: The Battle of Identity

Music has always been subject to technological change. When around 1860 the first recording of a music piece was made, it forced music to become a dual-efficient commodity: now both live and recorded music could be sold. With the invention of respectively the vinyl, the cassette and the CD, recorded music became a mass product. These two faces of music, live and recorded, were the two most defining and the most accessible ways of getting to know the musician that you love. Identification with the musician was done via the music itself and the relation was otherwise formed by interviews done by the mass media. The musician could still sustain their artistic lives with this double income.

However, the rising popularity of the internet in the last decade of the twentieth century changed everything. The possibility of endless digitally copying music pushed the musical container into an artificial state and became superfluous. This change introduced the decline of the recording as a source of income. Firstly, the illegal pirating of music killed one of the two revenue streams. The rise of streaming services thereafter compensated this fall-back, but did that too little. Nowadays, recorded music isn’t a huge source of income anymore and musicians are predominantly relying on the commission earned by performing. This last development forced the musician to expand their horizons beyond music. Recorded music is nothing more than a sales pitch for the musicians live shows nowadays. This is where they get their true revenue. To quote musicologist Keith Negus once this matter: Music is a means to another end rather than an end in itself.

In the modern digital age, the musician is relying more and more upon forming an (group)identity. The record companies are now commoditizing an identity via music. Nevertheless, this evolution isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the industry. With the help of the internet, getting close to an artist has never been so effortless. The proliferating use of social media actualizes a closer bond between the musician and their audience. This blog post will focus on a sense of identity contrived by working with YouTube as a storyboard, explaining notes of the artist on their songs and crafts, obtaining both a better connection with existing fans and building bridges to a broader audience with the help of the algorithms of the video service. The case study in this blogpost is built around Swedish metal band Sabaton, highly successful on musical platforms like Spotify, as well as on Youtube as historical storytellers. With this transcendence of the traditional borders of the media, they could be a blueprint for the future of interaction with the musician’s audience.

Through their music, Sabaton aims to tell the stories of historic battles, events, wars and soldiers. Because they do this through the perspective of the people they are singing about, soldiers during WW1 for example, there is very little historical reflections on the subject matter. Because of this, and the subject matter itself, they had to defend themselves from accusations of nazism and rightwing sympathies. Although we will not focus on that, we wanted to mention it, because Sabaton does deal with very sensitive subjects in a way that does not appeal to everyone. For this blog post, however, let us move past this controversy and look at their content and music without moral or ethical judgement, but purely as a case study for the use of YouTube; because Sabaton uses YouTube in a very interesting way.

First of all, they have two channels: one is their regular music channel, the other is The Sabaton History Channel. On that channel they dive deeper into the subject matter of their music, explaining the history behind it as well as some anecdotes about the creation of the song. This ‘show’ is hosted by Indy Neidell, a veteran of historical YouTube channels. The entire channel is a collaboration between TimeGhost, Neidell’s main channel, and Sabaton.

Through this collaboration, the music of Sabaton gets introduced to a whole new audience. An audience that might not be familiar with metal music, but who are interested enough in history to watch Neidell’s other channels, mainly the TimeGhost and World War Two channels. I say that because of how YouTube’s algorithm works: these channels are all linked as ‘Featured Channels’, a list of channels that the original channel wants to highlight. In a few videos of the World War Two channel, Neidell mentions his work for Sabaton History and implores viewers to go and watch that too. For these new viewers the band Sabaton is rooted in historical content, perhaps more than metal music. 

Broadening the audience is not the only thing that the band gets out of their interaction with Youtube, although it is the most interesting. They also have another way to connect to their existing fans, to earn more money through YouTube and Patreon, a crowdfunding platform built to provide artists a stable income. This comes back to something that Negus wrote: “Yet, as the few, ever more oligopolistic, major corporations began to reposition themselves as music companies (seeking profits from multiple rights rather than dwindling income from record sales)”. The use of YouTube can be viewed as one way to supplement the dwindling income from record sales. 

Through the multiple YouTube channels Sabaton has, in theory, they have a global reach. This is hard to investigate since public statistics do not show the background of the viewers, but the comments on the videos can say a lot. One example, the official video for Bismarck, mostly has comments in English, but there are quite some comments using the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though the song is named after a German World War II battleship, it is not weird that most comments are in English, as that is the lingua franca on YouTube. But all of these Cyrillic comments date from two weeks ago or even later, while the video was posted in April 2019, and most of the comments seem to date from then. This could be because a year the Russian band Radio Tapok covered the Sabaton song Attack of the Dead Men, a song about a battle between Russian and German soldiers in Poland, and they also performed it together in May. Apparently, this attracted Russian-speaking fans to the Swedish band, fans they would not otherwise have attracted. The Russian video for this song has next to no English comments, and the English version has a relatively small amount of Russian comments, showing that the glocalised music might be spreading globally, but the audiences have not fully merged yet.

It seems that songs about battles or people from a certain country attract viewers from that same country. In the comments for many of these videos, you can find people praising their national heroes or lamenting that they do not receive enough attention worldwide or even in their home countries. This is visible in the Sabaton History video on war hero Leslie “Bull” Allen. I did not have to watch the video to find out Bull Allen’s nationality, as I could figure it out from the many comments starting with “As an Australian”. Looking at their tour dates, you can also see that they mainly tour the US and Europe, especially western and northern Europe, and these venues are rather large.  Recently, Russia and other countries where Russian is also spoken have also been included in the tour locations. As their last album is solely about the First World War, it is unsurprising that countries that the Great War was fought in and remember it every year are also the countries that the tour was planned in.  The only real outlier is the US, since they did not include other nations that sent soldiers to die on the fronts of the First World War.  

Sabaton has worked very hard to become known for their niche of historical metal music. This identity resonates with a large audience, and their online presence and the topics they discuss seem to be attracting new audiences with every new location they sing about in their songs, and especially when they talk about in their history videos. It is noteworthy that many of the commenters on their YouTube videos seem to be from the country they are discussing in the video, suggesting that their audience is not as global as they might have hoped. This online audience does seem to translate into real life concert attendees, as they are currently focussing on the areas which are featured on their albums. This can be seen as a smart marketing strategy and an easy way to find a niche in a large genre, or as underutilisation of metal music’s demographic. Though Sabaton might not be the only one to blame, as algorithms on platforms such as YouTube try to only suggest videos that they think the user will surely love, so it is not too remarkable that their videos seem to garner most fans in areas that they directly reference in their music. So if they wish to expand their audience, they will have to expand their song topics. With this they could be a prime example of how musicians should interact with their audience in the digital era.

Sources

Cayari, Christopher, ‘’Connecting music education and virtual performance practices from YouTube’’, Music Education Research (2017) 1-17.

Gronow, Pekka, "The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium", Popular Music, Vol. 3 (Cambridge 1983) 53–75.

Hargreaves. Miell & Macdonald, ‘’What are musical identities, and why are they important.’’, in: Macdonald,  Musical Identities (Oxford 2002) 1-18.

Negus, Keith, ‘’From creator to data: the post-record music industry and the digital conglomerates Media’’, Culture & Society 2019, Vol. 41(3) (London 2019) 367– 384.

Rogers, Jim, The death & life of the music industry in the digital age (New York 2013).

Sabaton, https://www.sabaton.net/news/tour-shows/the-great-tour-is-coming-to-europe-early-2020/

Sabaton look back on Nazi Controversy: Sabaton News. Anti-Music https://www.antimusic.com/news/16/August/ts18Sabaton_Look_Back_On_Nazi_Controversy.shtml

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Sims 4 #1

The Sims was never really a franchise I cared much for. They had some good city builders but Cities: Skylines dethroned them as the go-to. I remember watching my brother play the older Sims games and I never liked the idea of playing through the nuances of taking a piss and eating breakfast. I still don’t, so it should be no surprise that the first mod I got was the cheat console that allowed me to basically hack in a couple of those traits where my sims don’t need to sleep, eat, etc. Those are rewards that are typically only acquired when you grind through a few aspiration things, and a fair bit of them to boot. I didn’t take them all. My characters still need to take a piss and sometimes it’s prudent to have them sleep to shake off some negative emotions. So it’s not like I’m not doing any of the survival bits at all - I just got irritated by how quickly it was drained. In some of my early hours of gameplay I wrestled with 2-3 things hitting the red at the same time so my ladies would flail around doing normal survival stuff before leaving for work. Basically, I would only have a few minutes of actual, interesting gameplay. Which to me is typically exploring, meeting new people, grinding up skills, shopping, and with a certain mod... A whole lotta fuckin’.

That was quickly a second mod I got, and discovered I needed to also download a bunch of animation packs so my girls would do more than fondle each other in bed (and literally nothing else). That probably comprises most of my mods, as there’s not much in the way of creator content that I care about. Some neat clothing, but nothing I can’t absolutely live without. Instead, I went on a sort of brief spending spree to get a few of the DLC’s but right now they’re at full price, no sales, so I need to resist the urge to just drop another 200$ and call it a full game. I really need to wait for a sale. Because y’see, the creator gallery is invaluable to me. I can’t really figure out how to build pretty houses on my own, I can only modify what other people give me. However, so much of the good shit is locked behind an alert that says “This uses assets from the following packs: ALMOST ALL OF THEM”. Or rather, all the ones that add building pieces. So eventually I want most, if not all of them, in my possession. So as the lifestyle simulator thing goes, I’ve had a lot of fun recreating characters from my various stories and lore, as sort of alternative versions of themselves. I started with my usual go to but then imported Kiur Kenneth at one point, my Death Knight from WoW. She was a good experiment to have the “Erratic” trait, which suited her.

I later evolved into having actual original characters. Some of their names I don’t fully remember, but the kissing ladies above are original concepts. The gothy, dark skinned babe is Dana I think. A stay at home nerd of sorts, in theory she is living rent free because the girl she’s kidding is a secret agent that apparently gets paid very well. Kind of how I justified cheating in all the money so I can have them live wherever I want. I also tossed up a sort of thrown-together vampire trio. Was fiddling with the nudism thing that the sex mod comes with but I found that it doesn’t carry over when you’re not actively playing them. Every time I visit them, or get visited by them, they’re always wearing their standard stuff. Either way, once I got a few poly-lady households going, I finally settled down my gameplay enough to have a solo Trans girl whom is... basically me, and it’s scratched a fantasy that I’ve never been able to acquire in other games.

I sadly don’t have a frontal shot of her yet except for two things. One, just showing off how a bunch of gnomes really fucked my home up for a whole day.

Second, making out with one of many potential suitors, I’m not even sure which one I want her to properly date yet. The glory that is polyamory helps with this decision, of course.

Other than vampires and magic not being real (that I am yet aware of), this playthrough is basically me. I don’t know where exactly I’d get the 20000$ to have my own starter home at only 400$ rent, but this girl is basically living my life that I wish I could. Thanks to an intersex setting, she still has her penis just as I may in some years when life actually allows me to begin my transition. It’s let to some very fun encounters, and I can appreciate that I barely have to push the sex thing at all. I’m propositioned by the other characters most of the time when my girl is just on her computer programming games. 

I wish I could show some of the actual nudity involved, because it’s fairly impressive for a six year old game and the animators can really make the simplistic skeletons dance in their favor. Sadly, Tumblr has lost its titties so I’ll need to find a different venue for that. I leave this post with one anecdote that I can’t stop giggling about. The sex mod adds peeping toms and tinas, thankfully I mostly just get the tinas (whom are incredibly hard to woo, most conversations put her in the negatives). Well, they do age and die apparently as an elder variant caught the above gal going at it with a different vampire. They had her fun, and she had her fun at the window and then went and dropped dead in the snow. Death came and claimed her, and I have a screenshot of it because it’s so goddamn funny. I made her tombstone read: “Died as she lived. Flickin’ dat bean”.

[haulix]

Overcoming mental blocks in art and business

Anyone trying to make a living with their creativity, from music to marketing, will tell you there are few times in life more frustrating than those moments when you feel as if your inspiration has run dry. You know the feeling. It’s usually something that hits you settle into work on your passion project at night, or perhaps just after you have arrived at the office, and try as you might to get something meaningful accomplished you pretty much just spin your wheels until you feel comfortable excusing yourself in order to spend the rest of the day in a ball of self-loathing introversion on your living room floor, praying to any deity willing to listen that you have enough episode of The West Wing left to avoid you work for one more day. We’ve all been there, or at least those of us who have been working long enough to burn through the first 50 or 100 ideas that we had, and if you feel you’ve yet to reach that point then trust me - It’s on the horizon.

We don’t bring up those uncomfortable times in order to scare. Sd face the same thing on a fairly regular basis, and we like to refer to it as what author Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance.” That is, a universal force that works against human creativity on a daily basis. We all face it in our own ways, much like we all fight our own battles most the world never knows of. There are a million anecdotes and essays on overcoming Resistance, and we’ve offered several here on this blog. Whether or not it works for you can only be learned through application. Yes, good old fashioned trial and error.

The next time you’re confronted with a creative roadblock in your professional life, take time away from your forced search for inspiration and try losing yourself in an alternate path. Develop an alternative path for yourself, your music, your agency, your label, or that secret side business you always hope to one day attempt. These adventures can sometimes be the source of new real life paths, such is the case with many so-called ‘side projects’ in music. Artists from various genres take a break from their day-to-day career to pursue other creative avenues just like anyone else, and sometimes their efforts lead to new financial avenues that certainly don’t hurt their bottom line.

Developing alternative paths to success for yourself can allow your mind to relax and consider options you might not have been able to adequately access when attempting to force creativity. Let’s explore a few examples to better illustrate this point:

Musicians -

Let’s say you’re the lead guitarist and songwriter for an aspiring rock band. Your first demo went over well with local audiences, and the second was good enough to help you secure a few opening slots on national tours when they roll through your region’s bigger venues. You may have even been able to tour, albeit without the benefits of a bus or guaranteed sell out crowds. Still, you’re making progress and you can feel your dreams of stardom starting to come together.

As you find yourself beginning to thinking about your third release, which would probably be your first full length, you discover you have hit a creative wall. Writing riffs and lyrics was never something you found all the difficult before, but for whatever reason everything you’re coming up with at this current point in time is clearly not good enough to help you get you ahead.

To clear your head and relax your thoughts it might be wise to consider an alternative career in, say, top 40 radio pop. Ask yourself, “What would it take to make it in pop music today?” Think about the songs and artists topping the charts, the themes found in their music, and what it is about tracks like Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” or The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face” that keeps people reaching for the repeat button again and again. Some answers will come fast, but others will take time. Think about what these artists do that you do not and ask yourself whether or not their approach to marketing or songwriting could aide your personal efforts. Heck, you may even try penning a song or two. Why not? Trial and error is part of any healthy exploration.

By the time you realize how lost in your pretend career you’ve become enough time should have passed for you to return to your real work with clear eyes and an open mind. Remember the things you learned about yourself and your peers during your brainstorming session and use it to influence your future work.

Industry professionals (label owners, site editors, publicists) -

Maybe you’re a label owner, struggling to keep your costs low while hustling around the clock to not only bring attention to the talent on your roster, but also to sell records. The grind required to keep a small business afloat, let alone build a new music empire, can be devastating on the mind of a creative person. One the one hand, your spirit and soul desire constant exercise and exploration. On the other hand, you need to find what works for your business and stick with it.

On those days when you cannot seem to focus on emails, accounting, marketing, or anything in between, it might be best to allow yourself to unwind with by exploring an alternate professional path. Just like the example for musicians above, you should stay within the realm of what you do (aka - running/building a business), but what it is your fake company does is entirely up to you.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say your secret wish is to start a subscription box company that offers consumers the chance to receive 1 new album in the mail each month, along with an explanation for the record’s selection. The first thing you need for this business is a name. You decide ‘New Music Monthly’ is a good name and from there set to outlining what would be needed in order to get your business off the ground. You need a web host, a logo, and a cost estimate sheet. You know boxes can be bought in bulk, but you will have to contact the labels/artists you wish to work with in order to know if they would be willing to offer you a discount in order for buying X amount of records. You also need startup cash, which can be earned through launching pre-orders for your first box.

After the basic business details are ironed out, you should then turn your focus to understanding the type of customer who would want this product. Assume that your first few music shipments will be products from your own label, then outline what kind of music fan would be interested in whatever release you might choose. Be specific. Narrow down your fans to a specific age group (teens, young adults, adults 25-35, 35+, senior citizens, etc). Do (or did) these people go to secondary school? Do they attend a lot of concerts?

Once you figure this out you can begin to brainstorming how to accomplish the difficult task of targeting these consumers. Do they frequent Facebook? Twitter? Would placement in a magazine be a wise choice? Depending on which method of outreach you choose, how much will it cost? Can you advertise this way regularly, or do you only have the budget for a single campaign? Again, be specific.

Once you iron out your faux business plan you will not only have a potential new path to financial success, but you will have inadvertently developed marketing tools that could also be used for the real problems facing your actual business. The target market for your faux company will likely be the same, or close to the same, as your actual business. The plans you made to reach those made up customers can be applied in one way or another to the customers you are hoping to reach in with your label. You will have more or less done the work you needed to do in a way that tricked your mind into doing work it might not have wanted to do otherwise.

—

There are a million potential paths through life available to all of us, but far too few ever make much, if any, effort to explore their options. We would never advise you to abandon your dream(s), but we do believe that exploring alternative career paths can lead to success in your current field. What matters most is that you keep an open mind and try as much as you are able without jeopardizing your current professional/financial situation. You can use the examples laid out in the post to get you started, but don’t hesitate to make up your own adventure whenever time allows.

[larrymullenband-blog]

U2 in Toronto 06/23/17

aka Elena finally tells you how the concert went!!

You're not surprised, but it was mind-blowing. Transcendent. All that regular U2 stuff. VERY LONG REPORT BELOW.

(All pics by me or my brother. Used with permission. For reference he has the lesser phone camera but I think he did pretty damn well with it considering!)

SO. WHERE TO BEGIN.

The GA line started at four freakin’ thirty, two days before the concert. Thankfully my ticket squad were all down to check in that evening. I was number 87 (like 1987, heyooooo). Our line leaders gave us the option of checking in either the next morning or evening, which was a godsend. We showed up bright and early the day of and got wristbands, then I met Kelseigh @adirondykes which was #blessed. Came back for two, got let in to the stadium for three, sat in a dark rampway til just after four thirty, and then the run of my life. 

Months ago my friend and I had chosen our dream spot - between Larry’s “branch” of the Tree Stage and the main, shall we say, frontal lobe of it, where Bono, Edge and Adam are most of the time during the first set. I had been anxious (as I’m sure some of you saw in my posts) for months leading up to the day of about not getting a good spot, and I had tried to lower my hopes. But as luck would have it, our charge led us right into the corner between Tree Stage Laurence and Tree Stage Central. The dream spot. I owe it to my friend who led the charge, bless him. It was super duper unreal. Forever grateful. 

The Lumineers were actually awesome. Best opening act for U2 I’ve seen. I had wanted to see OneRepublic or Mumford and Sons instead, both of whom I love, but these guys won me over. They came on to The Chain by Fleetwood Mac (Kelseigh and I went hard) and then played a very strong set. They even froze into tableau in one song which was...really weird? But cool. The whole time I remember thinking “If I’m so moved by this...how goddamn moved am I going to be with my favourite band right in front of my face?!” 

There were some very annoying veteran fans behind us who kept talking about how they dislike when U2 play the hits because they’ve seen so many U2 shows (the king of first world problems), and about how the band is winding down. They trashed the shit out of The Lumineers during their set...and also made some muffled comments about how they deserved my friends and I’s spots. Which...no?? I’m sorry people, but having “done your waiting” by being older than my friends and I doesn’t make you entitled to anything. We genuinely love the band. We did our lining up early, and you did not. Suck my diiiiiiiiiiiiiick...

A note on Toronto’s venue: The Skydome (now called the Rogers Centre, but I resist) has a retractable roof. Other artists who play there always have the dome closed, and the dome is usually closed on rainy days, as concert day had been. But every time I’ve seen U2 there the roof has been open, rumoured to be by the band’s special request. The dome was closed when we got in but miraculously, after The Lumineers’ set, it opened to reveal the sunset. Everyone around me had a good cheer and laugh - Bono gets what he wants, dammit! As we watched the GA floor and Red Zone toss a beach ball around, and Dallas, Stuart and Sam get our boys’ instruments ready, my friend smiled and said that every detail of the night so far was perfect.  

AND THEN LARRY CAME ON AND HE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL IN PERSON!!

He smiled when he came out onto Tree Stage, and waved to someone. Larry? Visibly happy? Wow! That really set the tone for the night. Happy U2 were very happy. It was infectious.

Sidenote, I loved seeing Larry take a lil moment before starting. Holding his sticks in his lap, taking a breath. About to set off a rocket of a show, to send an entire stadium into hysterics, but giving himself this one second to prepare, just for himself. 

Back on the topic of Happy U2 Were Very Happy: there was a small mess up in Sunday Bloody Sunday that B+E remedied with a smile and a retry. Seeing such prolific pros mess up a bit and have a laugh about it meant the world to me. Their band dynamic is the strongest and most beautiful thing. 

Adam is the cutest and was so damn happy to come over to our side and hear all of us scream for him. He did so very early on in SBS. His smile is the brightest and I love him.

During Bad Bono talked about our lost countryman Leonard Cohen and sang a long, beautiful snippet of one of his songs. Immediately the stadium went up in lights and Bono said “Oh that’s beautiful, thank you.” Pretty sure I saw Edge give Bono a smile and thumbs up for his snippet once the song ended. 

Also fun fact: Larry and his drum tech have a secret mic channel through which they talk to each other! Sam stands by the side of the stage and speaks to Lurr into a mic as he drums. And the king of drooms speaks back! T’was cool to watch. 

Edge did the solo to Pride right in front of my brother. Pride is my brother’s favourite U2 song and I was so freakin’ happy. When we launched into the “oh oh oh oh” singalong, Edge saw me pumping my fist like hell and gave me a smile. I thought this was a hallucination or something because MY FAVE NOTICED ME but Kelseigh confirms this and I cry. My existence has been validated. This also happened in 2011 so Edge and I have a special connection apparently and I LOVE HIM SO MUCH GAAAAAAAAAH. His smile is the best. I will never be over it.

Their squad poses at the beginning of Streets were the death of me. Seeing them present a proudly united front, I’m just...THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH OKAY!!!!!!!! aaaaaaaaahhhhh

Side 1 of Joshua Tree was a blur. A beautiful blur, and hard to process. Streets was epic, went by like a flash of lightning. Our massive Still Haven’t Found crowd singalong seemed to make happy Bono even happier. I rocked out so hard to Bullet. Bono did them moves on the mic stand and I lost it. The woman on my right and I started singing lyrics to each other, smiling big and getting really into it. We hadn’t talked at all before the show and I only found out her name after! A wonderful unspoken camaraderie. I adored the new version of Red Hill Mining Town. With all of them together in one corner of the stage, Edge and Adam sitting down, it felt very cute and intimate while the song was strong and sweeping. I think it was after that song that Bono turned to Adam and raved, “Great bass! Very lyrical. It takes a real man to be that feminine.” #U2LoveEachOtherSoMuchTour 

Before In God’s Country, Bono talked about only getting to know this album now - how friends, countries, and songs can all surprise you even after knowing them for so long. That struck a chord with me somehow, I don’t know quite why. Bono’s anecdotes, even when they’re not the freshest or most poetic, are powerful. He’s such a compelling storyteller by nature, and he just makes you want to listen to him forever. Basically someone you would invite over to read you the phone book. 

Bono, as usual at Toronto concerts, kept mentioning how much he loves Canada. He thanked us for taking in the Irish after the potato famine (which was before all of us were born I think, but hey, it’s the thought that counts!). He referenced Canada’s cultural mosaic, which sets us apart from countries with melting pot models of integrating newcomers. As we’re turning 150 in a week (damn) he announced something I’d heard rumoured that day - that he and Edge are going to Ottawa to be part of the celebrations! WOOOOO! He called our country a baby, but an old soul compared to our “adolescent” neighbour to the south. He praised our leaders’ approach to AIDS fighting among other things. The Ultraviolet tribute featured our new foreign minister. 

Trip Through Your Wires was so fun live and is now a Gay™ song and no one can tell me otherwise. When Edge went into the solo, dramatically crouched and feeling the music, Bono walked right over into his personal bubble and just stared down at him. Awed. Studying. (...same, man. Same.) Reminded me of that quote about their first practice that I saw on here recently, in which Bono saw Edge magicking the melodies out of his head and basically knew that Edge was his destiny. Of course when Bono turned back to the crowd he gave us the usual “Isn’t this a sexy man?” and everyone went NUTS (yay). And then “Is that the kind of sexy man you want blowing out your birthday candles?” (I swear I heard the slightest pause on “blowing”...but maybe that’s just my dirty mind). 

Also. Edge’s voice. It was on point as ever. So. Pretty. FUCK.

One Tree Hill was the first song to bring me to tears. The “stars fall from the sky” line, plus Bono’s opening banter about losing good people arbitrarily and unjustly...the music sounded beautiful, like every album track did, but there was something more to the song that kept me ugly-sobbing. 

Bono stole the show with Exit. Seeing him in character for the first time live was so cool. I really envy everyone who was around for Zoo TV. Cause DAMN. Eve comes by it honestly, this man is an actor. I almost didn’t laugh at him repeatedly shoving a camera into his crotch cause it nearly looked more poignant than funny! He paused at the top of the tree stage, bit his thumb and ran a hand through his hair...wow. The bravado, irony and elegance all rolled into one...

(And then he slowly took his coat off and Kelseigh yelled “Take it off! Says the lesbian” and I lost it) 

Omaima’s film for Miss Sarajevo/Syria was the second teary moment for me. That shot of her standing, closed eyed and introspective, in the midst of chaos and fear and disorder...some ladies close to me passed me down a tissue and I had that feeling of fan camaraderie once again. I love how U2 choses to speak about things so outright and so beautifully that other artists avoid speaking about. Although I’ll be honest - no idea where to go from here. Issues like these are so massive and it’s hard to know how to start being part of the solution when they’re so complex. 

Beautiful Day had me once again jumping so hard I kept banging my elbow on the rail and it hurts to this day. The song soared. The morphing U2 faces on screen were fun to watch and I’m always down for reminders that Edge is an alien being anyway. My only beef was that some of the messages B sent at the end of the song (”When people define their own identity/when women unite and rewrite history as herstory, that’s a beautiful day,”) though I agree with them all, were a little tired. He is so eloquent that it kinda irks me to see him say very simple things about equality and justice that sound rather generic.

Elevation and Vertigo completely kicked my ass. I was still barely recovered from jumping to SBS, Pride, and Streets, but these ones set the whole place on fire. My friend commented later that these were the songs that made him a U2 fan and that he was so glad to have heard them. These are definitely songs that I tend to think would be favoured by us younger fans, and I feared that some curmudgeons who were there mostly for JT would begrudge us our fun, but no one could resist. Yelling “Unos, dos, tres, catorce!” with a whole stadium in the middle of a jumping floor was the best feeling. There was some wonderful power couple Bedgeness at the top of the catwalk during the bridge. And Bono came over to my brother’s rail to tug away his vest and show us the Jesus around his neck and we all swooned. (Also I’m a total sucker for the It’s Only Rock n’ Roll snippet, sue me!)

One sounded perfect. That woman next to me and I emphatically sang “Here us coming, Lord!” together. A true pair of fangirls. It made perfect emotional sense to me as a show closer, and I started to come to terms with my boys leaving us. But Bono had been whispering to Adam and Edge earlier. I had figured that that had been what had spurred the slight rearrangement of the setlist, but as it turned out, Bono grinned big at the end of One and promised us “One more!” We were ECSTATIC. Dallas gave Edge the Gibson Explorer and we launched into I Will Follow, Bono once more hanging off of his mic stand like a lil monkey. We all had more jumping left in us after all! Not as much bouncy Edge as I would have liked, but other than that it was a fantastic end. The band were still completely glowing, seeming to be having as great a time as they had been at the beginning. Not to mention the Bedge cuddle at the end!!! (In this video - in which you can also hear me yelling from like thirty spots away! What a dork.)  

Sometime around the last two songs was when something really cool happened. My friend nudged me and called out that my younger brother had received Larry’s setlist!! I freaked out, and told my brother to thank the stagehand who had given it to him. Some fans behind us told us that said stagehand was in fact AJ Rankin, Bono’s cousin!! I was completely stunned and my friends laughed very hard at my The Scream-esque reaction. This was my brother’s second U2 concert compared to my fourth, and I had been so excited to bring him back into the world of U2 concerts after having shared our first one together. Not only that, but he had been feeling low self-confident and kinda sad only hours before, and not only did he adore the concert, but he got his own special keepsake. What a total blessing. 

So essentially, that was the highlight of my year. Nothing can top that. Super sad that it’s over but so incredibly grateful for it. As usual after U2 shows, I’m feeling kind of in limbo right now. How can I live normally after that?! What do I do with myself without the night of my life to look forward to? How do I keep the memories alive? Still looking for the answers, but I feel a renewed commitment to life now, which is weird but welcome. I want to do things that would make my boys happy. Getting to share in their happiness was the best feeling I’ve had in a very long time. 

Big shoutout to @adirondykes and her friend for meeting me and sharing this experience with me and generally being awesome; to all of the friends I met in GA, from the girl with the same shirt as me to the biggest Larry fan of them all to my wonderful singalong partner; and to you Tumble people! To @u2canhappentoanyone and @bonos-grindcore-sideproject for the GA advice and to @dismantlinganatomicbomb and @secret-blog-of-secrets for your lovely comments on my posts the day of, and everyone else on here for making me so happy to be in love this band every day. Big hugs to all of you, and long live the greatest band in the world. 

(also if you’re reading this congrats for reading an entire book lol you’re great)

[mrmichaelchadler]

Finding New Neighbors at the Movies: The Ebert Fellows on Ebertfest 2019

Editor’s note:  Last week, the 2018-19 University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellows, Curtis Cook, Pari Apostolakos and Eunice Alpasan, covered their first full Ebertfest experience at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign, Ill. Here are their impressions, from “Amazing Grace” to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and beyond.

CURTIS COOK

An hour before the first screening of Ebertfest 2019, “Amazing Grace” – a long-lost concert film charting the creation of Aretha Franklin’s eponymous 1972 gospel album – longtime festival director Nate Kohn addressed a crowd of festival guests and participants Wednesday in Urbana, Ill., at the home of University of Illinois president Tim Killeen.

Like Roger Ebert himself, Kohn was raised locally, and he noted that one of his favorite activities of the annual April film festival was observing the change of the city, year to year.

Like the city, Ebertfest is an evolving beast. Under the tutelage of Chaz Ebert, Roger’s widow, for the past six years, the festival continues to tinker with its formula. With one foot firmly planted in the festival’s initial focus on overlooked films, the other foot – guided by Chaz’s emphasis on empathy, kindness and compassion – has branched out further, this year focusing heavily on the passage of time.

Throughout the 21 years of the festival’s operation, one of the few constants, alongside Nate and Chaz, has been Champaign’s Virginia Theatre. For anyone who has been to Ebertfest, they know the venue as a bit of an anomaly in its surrounding city. The Virginia features Corinthian-style columns adorned in cerulean hues and gold leaf, where the green and gold of the proscenium complement deep crimson curtains, and rows of red diamond-checked velvet seats and hundreds of feet of ornate trim occupy the auditorium.

This conveys an elegance glaringly absent from modern theaters. But there’s a more down-home flourish out front: a bronze statue of Ebert, seated in a movie theater seat, giving his signature ‘thumbs up’.

From the opening screening of “Amazing Grace,” which was followed by an onstage concert from the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir of Champaign-Urbana, to the show-stealing duo of Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly who spoke after Thursday night’s screening of “Bound,” to several screenings projected in 35mm film – a rarity in 2019 – the Virginia was packed with entertainment for film lovers of all kinds.

A Saturday highlight, director Morgan Neville’s enormously popular Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” came with the presentation of the Ebertfest Humanitarian Award. Neville was the third in the festival’s history to receive the honor.

The film itself is a perfectly nuanced character study of a TV celebrity famous for his compassion and empathy around the world. Neville’s documentary looks beyond the surface of Rogers’ small-screen persona and examines how his kindness manifested itself on a daily basis.

“The question is not ‘What would Mr. Rogers do today?’” remarked Neville in a post-screening talk. “The question is: ‘What are YOU going to do today?’”

The festival named after Ebert means a lot to me personally. Growing up in Urbana, attending Ebert’s high school and then the university where he first made his name, it’s natural to sense his shadow looming over other people’s lives, especially film lovers. Until this year, my only interaction with the festival was a one-movie taste of the 2017 festival: Park Chan-Wook’s “The Handmaiden.”

Visiting the festival this year in full was an eye-opener to say the least. In 2005, Ebert famously declared film to be “a machine that generates empathy.” This festival captures that sentiment perfectly.

To watch hundreds of patrons interacting with each other throughout the week, mingling along the streets of Champaign, walking around West Side Park on a blustery weekday afternoon, perusing records at Exile on Main Street just a few blocks away – all of it was rewarding.

Hearing people converse in the lobby of the theatre, under the marquee, even in the bathroom, after screenings gave the sense that people here were not just paying to see a movie, but deeply invested in what they saw. As one guest put it: “It’s nice to go to a festival where people actually care about movies.”

Even in the short time that the festival runs, the openness and kindness of everyone involved is so inviting that one can’t help but feel the warmth of the community at their feet when they step under the Virginia’s laurel green marquee. For 98 years, the Virginia Theater has stood tall, a local relic amid that ever-evolving cityscape. And with the recent addition of several new luxury high-rises in a downtown area under perpetual renovation, that cityscape continues to evolve.

Whatever the future brings, Ebertfest and its longtime home serve as a testament to longevity and to cultivating a sense of community beyond proximity. In coming years, in this great era of local change, the Virginia’s presence – along with its long-running festival tenant – will be even more appreciated.

PARI APOSTOLAKOS

Ebertfest 2019 was a true learning experience for me, but not in the way I expected.

For example, Alan Elliott, producer of the Aretha Franklin concert documentary “Amazing Grace,” revealed details in Wednesday’s pre-screening discussion not just about the film, but about his life, right down to the story of his family adopting a friend of Elliott’s named Benny. The real-life scenario, improbably enough, went on to inspire the ‘90s TV sitcom “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Elliott received confirmation on that anecdote, from another Ebertfest guest, actress Gina Gershon, Elliott’s cousin. She was there in the Virginia Theatre Wednesday, and from her seat she shouted out: “It’s true!”

Gershon and her “Bound” costar, Jennifer Tilly, delivered one the most entertaining post-screening discussions of the festival after the Thursday night showing of “Bound.” Their chemistry on-screen 23 years ago translated to the 2019 stage with ease.  I wanted to befriend both of them instantly. Between takes of their hot-and-heavy love scenes in “Bound,” they recalled, they’d eat donuts and discuss the shoe sale at Barney’s.

Even more intriguing were one-on-one discussions with festival attendees like Rita Coburn Whack, co-director of the Maya Angelou documentary “And Still I Rise” who strongly recommended I watch “The Crown” on Netflix (apparently Princess Margaret is a mess). On a brief stroll over to the “Bound” screening, Coburn Whack told me she thought Angelou would’ve been a fierce advocate of the #MeToo movement if she had lived to see it. It’s unfortunate the world will never see what that movement might’ve sparked in Angelou’s writing.

If Ebertfest were structured like most festivals, that brief encounter might never have happened. Since only one film is screened at a time, with all attendees watching the same thing at the same time, Ebertfest sparks conversation amongst the festivalgoers. May that aspect of it never change.

Following Saturday’s screening of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Chaz Ebert took the stage in tears, overcome with emotion as she remembered her late husband, whom she described as her own Fred Rogers. “Neighbor” director Morgan Neville took time afterwards to tell the Ebert Fellows a bit more about the film. One of the best moments in the documentary, 1960s archival footage of Rogers convincing, patiently, Sen. John O. Pastore to continue funding national public television, has a larger story behind it.

Neville told us his that his research revealed Pastore did not have much of a childhood of his own. Growing up during the Great Depression, he was put to work in a factory at an extremely young age. Something happened when Rogers candidly shared with Pastore the compassionate message he was sending to children in his television program. Neville speculated that it must’ve touched the inner child of this senator who grew up too fast.

Mr. Rogers was a true embodiment of empathy. It’s that quality that has grown into a central theme of Ebertfest. “If somebody is disabled or of a different race or ethnicity or religion or what have you, kids are just kids,“ Neville said. “Most of the differences we have in our world are taught. And not always for the better.”

EUNICE ALPASAN

After the Saturday screening of Morgan Neville’s 2018 documentary of the life of Fred Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, Ebertfest co-founder and host Chaz Ebert came on stage in tears, mirroring the emotional state of many audience members.

“I had my own Mr. Rogers,” she said of her late husband, Roger, “someone who was so kind, so compassionate. Nobody's perfect — we know that — but the depth of Roger’s compassion and goodness was astounding. It was amazing to be able to peer into somebody's else soul and see how much they cared about other people, and to see the things that they wanted to change to bring goodness into the world.”

Attending the 21st edition of Ebertfest reminded all of us of Roger Ebert’s legacy. Despite his passing, his spirit permeated the four-day film festival and could be found in the people in attendance who knew him, as well as the movies shown on the big screen of the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.

Filmmakers, critics, actors, musicians and movie distributors came from across the country to take part in Ebertfest, a festival that’s unlike any other. Empathy, forgiveness and compassion were major recurring themes found throughout this year’s work. Movies like “Rachel Getting Married” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” stood out for the way they helped fulfill a heartfelt collective yearning. It was personally very much needed.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” tells the story behind the children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and the story of the man whom filmmaker Neville reveals as being more than just a two-dimensional character.

“One of the big questions of this film was — it’s in fact, the fundamental question that I got when making the film – ‘Is he really that guy? Is he really who he seems?’ That’s the most common question I got,” Neville said. “And the answer is, he’s even better.”

Even if you’re too young to have watched “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” the film still finds a way to connect with audiences unfamiliar with the subject. The film doesn’t portray him as a saint, which Mr. Rogers’ widow was insistent on when speaking with Neville about the film.

The kindness of Fred Rogers was refreshing and therapeutic to see on the big screen. But we also saw the vulnerability and internal struggles he faced and shared with the world.

“When I saw this movie in the theater,” Chaz Ebert said Saturday, “it was the men in the audience who were crying. I was asking someone, ‘Why do you think that is?’ And they said, “It’s so much more difficult for men to be able to tell someone that he needs them, to tell them that they love him or that they’re accepted. Or that they’re just fine just the way they are.”

Director Jonathan Demme’s 2008 drama “Rachel Getting Married” starring Anne Hathaway screened two days earlier, on Thursday. The film follows the character of Kym, released from drug rehab so she can attend the wedding of her older sister, played by Rosemarie DeWitt.

Kym finds herself in a tug of war with her family, and screenwriter Jenny Lumet delves into the complicated nature of families. In one sequence, a dishwasher-organizing competition sprouts out of lighthearted fun between Kym’s father, played by Bill Irwin, and Rachel’s fiance, played by Tunde Adebimpe. The scene takes a sudden, stark, poignant turn that sucked all the air out of the room on screen – and out of the Virginia Theatre auditorium.

Another Thursday screening, Jean Epstein’s 1923 French silent film “The Faithful Heart,” made my list of Ebertfest favorites, as well as one of my favorite movie-watching experiences, period. The screening featured a live musical performance of the Alloy Orchestra. As someone who doesn’t often run into the opportunity to watch silent films, I found my jaw dropping thanks to the stunningly restored visuals combined with the seamless music performed live. The Alloy Orchestra included instruments like junk percussion, accordion, clarinet and synths.

The intense close-ups revealed the deathly glisten of the character’s eyes and the detailed texture of their skin. The cinematography was shockingly detailed, even psychedelic with the use of quick cuts, kaleidoscopic and distorted camera shots. The ambiguous ending to this melodramatic love story added a layer of depth that was unexpected and thought-provoking.

Ebertfest recognizes a variety of films differing in genre, time period and representation. I hope in years to come, the festival’s breadth becomes more clearly reflected in who attends the festival. More community members and students of different ages and backgrounds should take the chance to attend.

As a College of Media Roger Ebert Fellow, and first-year college student, it’s incredibly humbling to attend a film festival whose co-founder, Chaz Ebert, provided me this opportunity. To be surrounded by people who do so much to champion filmmaking makes for a celebration of the movies, and stories, we all share.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2GiLLlf

[thegloober]

Dear wedding vendors: photographers don’t owe you images

On episode 65 of The Secret Life of Weddings Podcast (listen on iTunes, Spotify) we chat about a major hot topic amongst wedding photographers these days. We get a little heated, and felt it was important enough to write here as well. There is something happening making wedding photographers very angry. Most photographers are afraid to say anything because we never want to be seen as difficult or egotistical, but it has become such an issue that private Facebook groups of photographers are exploding with frustrations. We’ve all had enough. It’s with tired hearts and 10 years of giving away our work for free that we say this to you:

Dear wedding planners, florists, venues, DJs, limo companies, make-up artists, hair stylists, dress shops, decor designers, cake artists, officiants, musicians, etc. Here is the hard truth:

WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS DO NOT OWE YOU IMAGES.

Just stop #WeddingVendorEntitlement

… this hashtag was inspired by an on-going issue and we as members of the wedding photography community have decided finally speak out.

The sense of entitlement that has been expressed across the wedding scene is in a word – appalling. The attitude of wedding vendors has spiralled out of control and images are too often demanded instead of respectfully requested. Is money offered for the photographer’s time spent preparing and sending these images? No. Is a photo credit offered or given? Maybe. Will that photo credit feed our families? Absolutely not. What are the odds we will receive a new wedding client referral from said vendor? In spite of the best intentions – extremely low.

Therefore we are standing up to join the ranks of the frustrated wedding photographers in hopes that this is not only seen but heard … and heard LOUD!

Long gone are the days of “please”, “thank you” and any respect or any kind gesture to obtain images for use, whether it be a florist, DJ, venue, planner, etc. Instead of “When you have time, may I please use some of your images in my portfolio? I will be sure to link back to your website & provide photo credit” we hear “So how do I get these photos?” Even more rare is an offer of payment to use our work for their own company’s advertising.

A personal anecdote for you from our lives: A popular Toronto wedding venue once approached Lisa asking for a photograph to print in a full page Wedluxe advertisement. She was young but knew at the very least she should receive printed credit on the image and some money, and if the company wanted to remove the credit entirely, she should be paid more. This venue makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in revenue and was easily paying thousands of dollars for this upcoming print ad that repeats monthly in Wedluxe. Lisa quoted usage of her image (dependent on the client’s sign-off first) at $250 with print credit and $500 without the credit. The venue said they had been “burned” by a photographer in the past and therefore were hesitant to offer any sort of credit or payment. She never heard from them again and they are still running the same print ad as years ago. That about summarizes the amount of respect photographers get, even from very financially massive businesses.

“We don’t pay for image usage, that’s not how this works.”

Often these vendors even assume they can pay thousands of dollars for print ads and simply “get the high resolution file” they “need” and don’t expect to pay us for our intellectual property, OR get the sign off from the client who paid them for their work in the first place! Our mutual client may not even be cool with us sending you these photos they paid for of their private event to promote YOUR business. Photographers cover this privately with the client in our contracts, but that photo release doesn’t extend to other vendors.

If it takes so much time then ask for payment, you say? Guess what? We have.

Way too often photographers have heard the reply “We don’t pay for image usage, that’s not how this works.” This is now what we are faced with when we “mistakenly” think we should be financially compensated for our work. Too often photographers spend the time to give other wedding professionals free images and receive nothing in return. No new client referrals. No money. Shockingly, no written credit (if we’re lucky maybe we can get a TAG on Instagram that nobody will SEE unless they tap the photo!) It’s just awful and we are sick of it.

If you’re a wedding vendor reading this – be honest with yourself. Have you treated a photographer with respect and kindness throughout the whole pre-during-post wedding process? Or did you only come up to me at the end of the reception, after not saying a word to me all day, and ask me for free promotional content for your business?

Wedding photographers have been left wondering when courtesy for fellow vendors went completely out the window. When did sharing our work go from a kind favour between wedding vendor friends (or “friendors” as we often call each other) in exchange for promised photo credits (despite a 99% chance of no new business for us) – to instead becoming a default expectation? Taking advantage of photographers’ work has become a wedding industry standard and it’s not okay.

Business gurus often say “If you don’t value yourself and your work, how can you expect others to?” Yet when we DO value ourselves and say we are uncomfortable with the expectation of free images (of our clients’ likenesses no less) we are met with confused faces and snarky remarks about how the industry does not run this way and about how this photographer and that photographer “always sends us photos.” It’s time to recognize that the industry has changed for the worse. There is no longer kindness and courtesy – there is only expectation of free photography for your business. That arrangement is simply unfair to hardworking photographers. We – along with our work – becomes devalued by the sharing of images with fellow vendors without any compensation for our time or talent.

If you’re a vendor who is guilty of only befriending the photographer when it’s time to ‘get images’ – perhaps we can be seen as a valuable part of the industry instead of your personal portfolio builder. Photographers are there for the client. We are there to build OUR portfolios. We are not there to build your brand and get you more business and therefore money in your pocket.

So, let’s put it this way:

Would you would be willing to work 25+ hours per year for free?

No? Because this is what you’re asking us to do every time you as how you can “get the images” for your own advertising. You are literally making money off our work. Not only that, it actually takes a lot more time than you probably realize to edit and make galleries for vendors so they can have free images for their portfolio, advertising & social media posts. Yet we are regularly expected to do this for about 3-6 separate vendors, every single wedding, every year, no questions asked. It takes so much time to select photos, edit, re-size, watermark and publish these galleries for every vendor, not to mention throwing in free commercial usage.

We get it – you didn’t mean to be rude, right?

You just figured since the work is already done, why can’t you just have copies of the images, right? Well it’s not that simple, as outlined above. It’s also simply not fair.

So instead, how can we actively work to change the industry’s attitude toward images for portfolio usage?

It comes down to The Golden Rule: Treat others how you want to be treated. It’s kindergarten, people. If you begin to treat photographers as people and friends and not simply free content machines, you might be pleasantly surprised at what we will gladly share with the sweetheart friendors in our lives. We won’t just do that – we will also be happy to cross-tag you in OUR social media posts because guess what? Photographers are almost always booked long before florists, dress shops, officiants, videographers, DJs, wedding planners & more. If your photographer has a follower who sees your business mentioned, there’s an even higher chance you’ll get business from that. So there’s simply more value in being kind, offering compensation to photographers when reaching out, and maintaining a valuable friendship with us. It’s so much better than ignoring us all day and then cornering us and your first words in my tired face after a full wedding day are basically “so how can I get something from you for free?’

… and to those vendors who are not the majority, we thank you.

We love those vendors who befriend us in a real way and help us to produce the best work we can on the wedding day. You were the one to respectfully ask if it would be possible to please have a quote on licensing the use of our images for your portfolio after they were delivered to the client. WE LOVE YOU. And ironically many photographers will probably end up sharing their images with fellow small business owners in exchange for credit. This isn’t wrong, but it’s a PERSONAL business decision of the photographer, and NOT INDUSTRY STANDARD, because to be honest, that’s complete bullshit.

Want to help be an active participant in ending #WeddingVendorEntitlement?

Step 1. Offer to pay to use our images. It immediately shows the photographer that you respect our work and our time.

Step 2. Ensure our mutual client is comfortable with your intended usage. Some people may not want their images made public. This can often be the case with sensitive professions such as law enforcement.

Step 3. Never ask our mutual client for the files. Going around the photographer to obtain photographs to use is wrong – and illegal! We own the copyright to our images, not the client. You are not allowed to use our images without our express permission.

If a photographer decides share their images with you, here are some thoughtful ways to say thank you:

A heartfelt note of thanks. Do you know how often we have prepared and delivered free images, as requested, to vendors and they NEVER EVEN REPLY?

Send a thank you card with a gift card or drop off a bottle of wine. Show your appreciation in some way.

Offer compensation when you ask for our photographs. You could offer money or even an offer of a floral arrangement from a decor company, or help with a future event from a wedding planner. There are so many ways to trade a skill. What would you like to trade us for our expertise, time and finished photographs?

Actively send us referrals & add us to your preferred vendors list! This is huge! It’s an easy way to show photographers you appreciate and respect us and hope to repay us with actual new business. Unless you’re a venue or a wedding planner, unfortunately having us on a referral list isn’t super effective in actually generating new business for wedding photographers because we are usually booked very early in the wedding planning process, but we appreciate the effort! It shows us respect and that you want to have an on-going vendor friendship with us.

Hire the photographer for your own personal upcoming event / family portrait / baby portraits.

To photographers – if you are actively receiving new business from a vendor, then great. Keep doing what works for you. This blog post is for those of us longtime photographers who aren’t having this result. This post is also for any new wedding photographers who are looking to break into the industry. This is your reminder to value your work and above all, value your time. Time is priceless so be careful who you work for and what you’re actually getting in exchange for that time and effort. Receiving Instagram tags isn’t worth time you could be building your portfolio or spending time with your family.

Don’t forget – photo credits don’t pay the bills.

About the Authors

Lisa Mark and Rebecca Lozer are wedding photographers and co-hosts of Secret Life of Weddings podcast. Check out more of their work on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and their YouTube channel.

If you’d like to hear more on this topic, make sure to listen to Lisa and Rebecca’s podcast, episode 65 here. This article was also published here and shared with permission.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/dear-wedding-vendors-photographers-dont-owe-you-images/

[gaiatheorist]

Plastic straws, and platitudes.

I should be breathing an enormous sigh of relief, having the tribunal panel’s decision that I qualify for a three year period of having an ‘official’ disability on paper. It’s me, though, I’m caught up in a turmoil-Tsunami about what could go wrong next. Not the physical fact that my eyes have been consistently ‘bad’ for four days now, and the third aneurysm is sitting in the part of my brain that controls the blood supply to my retinas, that’s too obvious. I’ll have a scan in September, hopefully I won’t go completely and permanently blind before that. What I’m over-processing is the fact that DWP can still attempt to block or delay the legal overturn of their original ‘decision’, that I’m not-disabled-enough to qualify for support.

DWP’s ‘decision’ wasn’t really a decision at all, it was a copy-pasted nightmare of jumbled-assumptions, in the hope that I’d go “Oh, well, that’s that, I’d better just get on with it on my own.” Like I did the first time, I’ve found my original eloquent-articulate self-doubt post on one of the forums I used at the time of the first application, and, ‘reading for content’, I was a plastic straw person at that point. Not to be confused with a ‘strawman’, like, say “People faking disability to claim benefits.” 

The plastic straw people have been out in force since the government had the bright idea of ‘banning’ single-use plastic straws, in a vain attempt to be seen to be doing something positive, in amongst all the negative, and all the nothing they’re currently doing. Straw-splainers are very fond of the phrase “Can’t you just...?”, because ‘just’ is a very tiny word to them; I can’t ‘just’ do a lot of things, ‘just’ is not a small consideration for me. Plastic straws are not an issue for me, but there’s another wave of insidious not-disabled-enough rhetoric bubbling up amongst sections of the non-disabled public, just what I don’t need after horrible years and a few very stressful months of evidencing that I am disabled-enough. 

Before the brain haemorrhage, I still had a plethora of medical issues, I used to joke that I did my Christmas shopping on the NHS direct website, but I could mostly ‘pass’ for whatever-normal-is. I could ‘just’ say “Can I move seats, I can’t sit in this light?” or “Will you help me with this, please? My left hand has reduced function.” I could ‘just’ keep my office blinds closed to reduce the risk of losing working hours to photo-sensitive hemiplegic migraine, and patiently re-close them every time some other person came in and trilled “Oooh, I don’t know how you see anything in here!” I could ‘just’ wear extra layers of clothing, to ease the impacts of the Raynaud’s and Arthritis, I could ‘just’ say “No, thank you.” to foods that I knew would flare my stomach issues up. I could ‘just’ keep going through the sporadic stretches of poor mental health. That perseverance and pragmatism is hard-wired, even when I really, REALLY want to give up, I don’t, which has put me in mind of Venus DeMileage’s utterly beautiful book ‘The Avenue of Regrettable Farewells: A Tale Untold In The Telling’, but I mustn’t get sidetracked. I was a plastic straw person. I ‘could’ function, despite my veritable telephone-directory of underlying ailments, so I couldn’t see why other people couldn’t. (Another side-rabbit-hole I mustn’t go down is how consistent with Autism some of my beliefs and behaviours are.)

I know what the plastic straw people are doing, because, to a lesser degree, I used to be one of them. Some of them ‘see no ships’ from where they are, and some of them think that a stiff upper lip is a panacea. Some of them, however, are insensitively deluded that everyone has the same level of functionality that they do. The dismissive “Can’t you just...?” crew, lacking in the empathetic department. *I* can do all manner of things that ‘most’ people can’t, but, after the initial tut-and-head-shake that Brenda from accounts can’t un-jam the printer, or Doris can’t lift a five-litre water bottle, or Bob doesn’t know how to gut a fish, I don’t spend hours me-splaining, I ask if they want help. (Part of my undoing was seeing ‘help’ as a four-letter-word, most people learned to be cagey-cautious around offering to do things ‘for’ me. That tenacity was do-able before the brain injuries, less-so afterwards, but the pattern was embedded.) 

What I’m seeing creeping through my internet window on the world is an increase in the not-disabled-enough nonsense, and I know that some of ‘us’, with less-visible disabilities are catching the sharp side of it. Personally, I’ve modified most of my behaviours and activities to ensure that my disability has as little impact on others as possible. I just don’t like inconveniencing people, so anything I ‘need’ to do is done early in the day, while I’m more lucid, and less fatigued. The dread-of-being-caught creeps in here, because I ‘can’ sometimes walk to Tesco, and manage a basket around the shop without incident. Only ever during the early part of the day, and certainly not every week. Process that, plastic straw people, sometimes I’m not physically capable of ‘popping into Tesco for milk.’ (There’s a 25-page document I didn’t present at my tribunal, detailing all the things I could remember having difficulties with, and how I adapted to avoid risk to self or others, I just chose ‘popping to the supermarket for milk’ as an ‘everyday’ example.) Yes, Janet, you DID see me in Tesco three weeks last Tuesday, and no, that doesn’t mean I’m fully functional, and a benefit fraudster. 

In the same way as I ‘can’ do what I need to to survive, thousands, if not millions of other people in the UK are adapting to their limitations, at variable levels of cost to themselves. I don’t drive, so I haven’t been tutted at for parking in a disabled bay, and I consciously try to avoid the need to use public toilets, so I don’t have an argument with any randoms that “That toilet is for disabled people.” I don’t need to use plastic straws to drink, so I haven’t had to justify to anyone why their ‘just’ alternative wouldn’t be viable. ‘Had to’ is my issue, I don’t ‘have to’ explain myself to anyone, BUT I deliberately go out of my way to avoid situations where people might think they were owed justification of why I appear to have stopped to tie the laces on slip-on shoes. (It’s vertigo, I’d had instances of it before the aneurysm ruptured, it’s always there now, at a background level, sometimes it peaks, and I feel like I’m going to fall over, ‘tying my shoes’ puts me closer to the ground when I do actually wobble, and I’ll always make every effort to ‘get out of the way’ when I do squat down.) 

The platitudes. Gods save me from the in-laws, who are due to pick up my son this afternoon. To their minds, I’m ‘better’, in part because I’ve minimised my difficulties for so long, and in part because I avoid them like the plague. They don’t see me shambling about the place half-blind, because I deliberately sit down when they arrive. (In my alcove ‘office’, so they can’t try to touch me.) They don’t believe in mental illness, and they’re ancient, so they know a LOT of people with disabilities and health conditions that they class as ‘worse’ than the level of superficial functionality they see in me. I didn’t have to have speech therapy, like uncle Roger did after his stroke. I don’t have visible scars from cancer surgery like two of my ex brothers-in-law. I don’t have a blue badge in my car. I don’t answer the door to them in food-stained pyjamas, so I’m “Looking well!”

They, and other older people, LOVE to talk about other people’s infirmities, but, with my adaptations that don’t include plastic straws, I appear functional for the narrow windows they see me in, so it’s platitudes-ahoy. “It could have been worse, lass.” “You’re lucky, lass.” I have to be very cautious with that one, because the father-in-law’s first wife died as a result of a brain haemorrhage. That cagey-caution led to one of my dodgy coping strategies, the practice of telling people I was ‘fine’ when they asked, because I simply couldn’t tolerate the platitudes that would pour out of them if I said anything else. Everybody seemed to have a next-door-neighbour’s distant cousin three-times-removed who’d had brain surgery, or a stroke, and were ‘so brave’ about it, putting the increasingly-automatic adaptations I was making just to exist into perspective. I rarely mention in ‘real life’ that I have a constant background headache, that most of the time I feel as if the room is spinning around me, or that I have roaming blind-spots that frequently join up, leaving me ‘legally blind.’ There’s a massive catalogue of constant and fluctuating symptoms that come with my damaged brain that I just don’t mention, because the emotional/psychological side of the brain injuries have reduced my capacity to deal with platitudes. 

Yes, it could have been worse, and yes, it’s lovely that your next door neighbour’s sister-uncle had a stroke, and learned to ride a unicycle afterwards, but it’s not particularly relevant to me, is it? It’s not even just lay-people and random acquaintances, it’s medical-people, too, I wanted to bite my counsellor’s nose off every time he said “Some people wouldn’t have been resilient enough to come through that!”, and every time my (lovely) GP starts one of his rambling “Some people...” anecdotes, it’s really hard not to look at my watch. Even the neuro-psychologist did it, and I’m sure she wasn’t prepared for my ‘Good enough ISN’T enough’ response.

I know it’s social conditioning, that, faced with an unpalatable truth, the vast majority of people will default to ‘look on the bright side’ and ‘it could have been worse’ responses, before starting with the unsolicited advice. For me, no amount of mindfulness, or yoga, or fish-oil, or ANYTHING is going to undo the fact that I have brain damage. My son ‘gets it’, and will occasionally joke “Have you tried just NOT having brain damage?” when he catches me doing something more-odd-than-usual. I am relatively functional for a smaller part of the day than a fully-able person, and I’m only able to sustain that window of functionality through masses of exhausting adaptations. Have I tried not-adapting, to extend my lucid window? No, I haven’t, because the adaptations are what keep me more-safe. Without always knowing where the next thing I can grab, or lean on is, I fall over a lot. Without having sufficient notice to plan any journey, my anxieties about the potential difficulties I could have tip me into a what-if loop that makes me physically ill. There are multiple tedious adaptations to every aspect of my life now, and plastic straw people don’t see what I can’t do. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this any more, I’m in limbo with the disability benefit and the unemployment benefit, and I’m scheduled to meet my work-coach AND be re-assessed by the mental health team next week. The work-coach will give me ‘chin up’ platitudes, and the mental health team will be baffled that I know what I’m doing wrong, but don’t seem able to stop it. What I’m doing wrong is trying to survive as a disabled person in a very able-focused world. The disability and unemployment processes in the UK are hideous, skewed-snapshots of whether I can hold a pen and such, rather than whether I’d be able to hold a pen all day without sticking it up my nose when the cognitive fatigue kicks in. The plastic straws that the government want to ‘take’ are the visible tip of the iceberg, the underlying part being the insidious restructure of support and benefit systems, that the people who don’t need plastic straws aren’t aware of. They’re aware of the bluff and bluster about ‘making work pay’, and ‘more rigorous testing to reduce fraud’, and, of course, they’ve all seen the newspaper reports and TV programmes about benefit cheats. The disabled aren’t just disadvantaged, we’re virtually demonized, then damned if we do/don’t. This ignorant backlash against something as seemingly innocuous as plastic straws is a ripple in a stream that was already turbulent, it’s spreading, while-ever fully able people feel they’re entitled to judge, question, and make assumption about the abilities of people with disabilities.   

To some people, it’s ‘just’ a plastic straw, and, for some of those people a platitude about their great-uncle Bulgaria who lost both legs, and then crawled a marathon is meant to either motivate or shame the disabled person who still has both legs. We’re not looking at life from the same angle, it’s not fair to assume that because ‘you’ can perform action-x, everyone can, that’s how children think, not adults. (With the exception of adults with disabilities consistent with Autism...) It’s not ‘just’ a straw, for some people this guilty-until-proven-innocent society we’re becoming will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.    

[dancewithmeplano]

Dance to the Music of Time

There’s been a lot going on. Leaving the Bad Plus is the largest shift, but various other kind of career and conceptual themes also have been undergoing transformation. I also just turned 45, ” which could be believed midpoint of this journey.

It really all does seem curved. Themes re-occur. The last month nearly felt like a trip of yesteryear.

—

Sarah and I visited Daniel Pinkwater. There is a meme inquiring, “What four pictures are you?” I really don’t have four pictures, but I really do have the collected works of Daniel Pinkwater. Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars; The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death; Lizard Music — these 3 novels “are me”

Sarah stated, let’s give Pinkwater a monster. That monster charge me a small fortune in Tokyo, but she had been right. It had been the great present, a perfect trade.

On the drive we listened to Pinkwater music books in the car. Amazing! I only learned that Mr. Pinkwater himself reads his own books and you can purchase them on iTunes. They are now an essential part of my travel catalog.

—

Rufus Reid turned in the Pat Zimmerli Clockworks concert at Merkin Hall. Rufus is a consecrated jazz bassist, but for me he had been also an important teacher. One afternoon at Banff in 1990, students and faculty were sitting around the coffee shop and Miles Davis’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” came on as background music. Rufus Reid staged together with Coltrane’s solo note for note. I had been impressed and impressed. To understand to perform, was I really going to have to sing Coltrane solos also? That seemed hard — too difficult! It took me decades and some further strict instruction from Lee Konitz, however, in the long run I decided that Reid was perfect. I can not sing any Coltrane yet, but I can sing a lot of Lester Young and Charlie Parker.

Photo by Vinnie Sperrazza

Seeing Reid brought back that memory and from this time next year I guarantee to have the ability to sing Coltrane’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “All of You” from ‘Round About Midnight.

—

I added ” You” to the heap because Billy Hart told me:

The first time I fell in love with John Coltrane was that his solo on ” You” from Miles’ ‘Round Midnight. I have talked to Gary Bartz about this, and he felt exactly the same way–which this solo made us Coltrane fans, forever.

Billy Hart is my most important teacher and we have worked together for over twenty decades. However, I hadn’t ever played with Buster Williams and Billy Hart collectively, despite Buster and Billy being universally considered one of the wonderful bass/drum mixes.

It finally occurred on Tuesday, quartet together with Billy Harper. Everybody agreed that it was incredible to listen to the beat played with that bassist with that drummer.

Billy Hart, Lenny White, Buster Williams

Lenny White was there. He plays with Buster all the time — they have become a traditional contemporary rhythm section — but I think he wished to find a flavor of that other thing Mchezaji has with Jabali. In the dressing room I had been as silent as possible while I listened to them tell stories.

Billy Hart talked about studying Afro Cuban songs from Lenny White! They were playing with Pharoah Sanders. Neither was playing with drum group, they were on cowbells and claves. Afterwards Billy whined to Lenny about how Lenny appeared so much better and Lenny said that he was actually checking out authentic Afro Cuban songs. This anecdote describes in a flash Lenny White was able to walk into and power a lot of the best fusion recordings: The deep background for its “new” method of dealing with the eighth circa 1970 was African American procedures from tens of thousands of years back. Of course.

—

Patrick Zimmerli’s Clockworks  together with Chris Tordini, John Hollenbeck, and me personally is out, and so is — finally — Shores Against Silence, the recording with Kevin Hays, Larry Grenadier, and Tom Rainey from 1991. I had been at that recording session, and discovered “The Paw” for the very first time in the studio. Pat provides me a particular mention in the liner notes to Shores Against Silence, which I think is only fair, as I’ve been telling people that this is an amazing album since…well I figure since 1991.

Vinnie Sperrazza is getting to be a major new collaborator. At the Clockworks position that he appeared in the score and stated, “I can hear Pat had been an effect on you” Without a doubt — Pat will always be a monument in my own entire life, which is elaborated further in our interview.

Vinnie took the photograph of me and Rufus Reid collectively afterwards telling me of a period he played with James Williams and Rufus Reid in Knickerbocker’s. Yeah, Vinnie’s my type of cat, with a swinging cymbal beat that undulates inside the music. We’re working collectively in Pepperland, the extravagant revue created by Mark Morris for the Mark Morris Dance Group.

—

It is just wonderful to be back together with Mark Morris back again. For five years that I had been his musical manager. I watched the dance shows every night, then following the series went to Mark’s hotel room and listened to Handel and Partch. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson would attend rehearsal; I played with Schumann with Yo-Yo Ma. It had been around me to attract conductors in line about tempi and singers around diction.

Pepperland is the Beatles as viewed though the prism of classical music and it really works. It’s been really amazing to expose Vinnie and other buddies Jacob Garchik, Sam Newsome, and Rob Schwimmer to the magic of Morris. In addition, it is just incredible to leave the Bad Plus and also be instantly involved in another hit project.

—

Concerto to Scale reflects Morris, Zimmerli, Jabali, and everything else that I love. It surely reflects Pinkwater. Program notes:

My very first piece for orchestra is blatantly modest in measurement, or “to scale” While composing, I re-read a number of my favourite books from when I was a young adult and tried to catch that kind of joyful emotion. The work is devoted to John Bloomfield.

Allegro. Sonata form in C major with tons of scales. My left hand and the bass drum soloist are the rhythm section offering syncopations in conversation with the orchestra’s standard chain material.

Andante. A 19th-centutry nocturne air meets modern polyrhythms. That is a stunning elaboration of a piece originally written for Mark Turner called “We Come In the Future.”

Rondo. The rate mark is, “Misfit Rag.” Ragtime is how American composers traditionally insert a touch of jazz on the concert stage, and who am I to disagree? The orchestra gets a chance to improvise along with the pianist and percussionist enjoy a double cadenza.

I didn’t really have to re-read Pinkwater for the Concerto — I have these publications memorized — but that I did examine The Toothpaste Millionaire from Jean Merrill (1972) and Alvin’s Secret Code by Clifford B. Hicks (1963). These two are undisputed classics and remain in print. Interestingly, both will also be on race relations, a simple fact I had completely forgotten. They are white writers referring to the midwest in the 1960s, therefore perhaps not every authorial decision will beyond muster now, but they had been in there, trying to swing. They had been about my two favourite novels when I was ten or eleven. I had good taste!

The review by Seth Colter Walls was satisfying (Amanda Ameer said I look just like  Schroeder in the picture, which is ideal) and I have been astonished just how much I enjoy listening to the cassette.

(if you would like to listen to the rough mix of this premiere or examine the score, sign up for Floyd Camembert Reports.)

Between Pepperland and the Concerto, it’s beginning to feel as though my future will involve extended composition.

—

Composition might be part of this future, but additionally, I will always be a jazz pianist who enjoys to play with clubs. Starting tomorrow I am on an extensive UK tour together with Martin Speake.

20/4 Sheffield Jazz Crookes Social Club http://www.sheffieldjazz.org.uk/ 21/4 Brighton Verdict https://verdictjazz.co.uk/ 22/4 Colchester Arts Centre https://www.colchesterartscentre.com/ 23 Cheltenham Jazz http://www.cheltenhamjazz.co.uk/ 24/4 London Pizza Express https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/venues/soho-jazz-club 25/4London Pizza Express https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/venues/soho-jazz-club 26/4 St George’s Bristol https://www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/ 27/4 Reading Progress Theatre http://www.jazzinreading.com/ 29/4 Cinnamon Club Manchester http://www.thecinnamonclub.net/ 1/5 Hastings http://jazzhastings.co.uk/ 3/5 Cambridge https://www.cambridgejazz.org/index.php?name=home 4/5 Poole Lighthouse https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/

Go to Martin’s FB site to get more.

Martin and I go back to Banff in 1990. It was a hell of a lineup there: Faculty included Rufus Reid, Marvin Smitty Smith, Stanley Cowell, Kevin Eubanks, Kenny Wheeler. Abraham Adzenyah taught dance from Ghana — I suppose the very first time I danced with a woman was in that course. (Currently this post is becoming overly personal.) Steve Coleman was the artistic manager.

The students were also amazing. Tony Malaby, Seamus Blake, Ralph Alessi, George Colligan, John Stetch, Andy Milne — Jeez, I know I am forgetting some others that are now renowned…

Particularly important to my artistic growth were Benoît Delbecq and Steve Argüelles, that went on for a real force collectively and big influence. With Noël Akchoté they turned into The Recyclers and released Rhymes in 1994. You want to understand something that I checked out? Rhymes was some thing that I checked out, especially the monitor “Suguxhama” from  Argüelles and Django Bates.

(Later, motivated by David King and Craig Taborn, I’d listen to all the fantabulous Django Bates records together with Martin France on drums. It turns out that France is going to be on several gigs of this Martin Speake tour. Wow! I’m going to have to play with Martin France for the very first time.)

At Banff 2 duo connections had notable resonance. The fantastic Jill Seifers (a wonderful vocalist who ended up dying far too young) and that I did a set in the little Banff club which I listened to repeatedly. Along with Martin Speake and that I created a recording which was enormous fun, he is splendid lyrical participant that sees it from all the angles.

At the Vortex gig earlier this year, Martin told the audience that after we met with Banff, I delivered him (by post from Menomonie, Wisconsin to London, England) a tape of Ornette Coleman’s then-scarce Science Fiction accompanied by a note on Doctor Who stationery. Yes It really does all seem curved. Themes re-occur. I openly admit I can’t wait to get Jodie Whittaker.

—

Writer with George Colligan.

Writer with Benoît Delbecq.

Writer with Django Bates.

Stanley Cowell plays “Carolina Shout” in my James P. Johnson event.

The post <p>Dance to the Music of Time</p> appeared first on dance withme plano.

from dance withme plano http://www.dancewithmeplano.com/dance-to-the-music-of-time/

[pardontheglueman]

Swn Festival

A last minute invite, from the gracious Jayne Rowlands, to attend the BBC Horizons/ Sŵn festival press launch at Clwb Ifor Bach on Saturday meant that I had to desperately bone up on all those artists about to descend on Cardiff over the weekend in order to devise a precise route map for crisscrossing the capital and catching as many of the leading acts as I possibly could. I asterisked the list down to 28 must-see artists and, armed with a downloadable itinerary for each of the festival’s nine venues, set about creating a strategic campaign that would leave Churchill’s detailed invasion plans for the Normandy landings look half-baked by comparison.

First stop was the press bash, which was good fun; there was a chance to mingle with rising stars like Dan Bettridge and Aled Rheon, to grab a complimentary cupcake and even to polish off a glass or two of Prosecco into the bargain. Bethan Elfyn, noticing I was propped up on my crutches, kindly offered to fetch me another glass of wine, before she dashed on to the stage to introduce the first of the day’s formidable Horizon/Gorwelion acts

Any regular readers of kevonhissoapbox will know that Dan Bettridge is mentioned frequently in dispatches, so his set was almost guaranteed to be a festival highlight. Dan kicked off with the unbearably poignant “Letters Home”, a song which shares common ground with Willy Vlautin’s spoken piece “Postcard Written with a Broken Hand”, even down to its use of an unreliable narrator. It’s a song, like so many in his repertoire, that never fails to send a shiver down the spine. Other highlights in a fine performance included his momentous single “Third Eye Blind”, reproduced magically here by his tight-knit band, and a couple of tracks from the 2014 “Darker Days” E.P, “Drive” and “Rosie Darling”. The only disappointment, in an otherwise top-notch set, was the omission of “Darker Days” itself. There may well be 120 acts lined up for this year’s festival, but this is the guy they all have to beat!  

*A strange footnote to Dan’s performance – midway through his set he claimed to have just eaten a cupcake with his face on it. Rock N ‘Roll stars are renowned for their excesses, of course, but I don’t remember reading this particular anecdote in Keith Richard’s notorious autobiography Life. Either BBC Wales is really pushing the boat out or Dan’s showing the first signs of a little-known complaint, hallucinatory narcissism!

It’s a tough ask to follow in the footsteps of Dan Bettridge these days, but Hannah Grace proved herself to be equal to the task. Grace is a singer’s singer, able to switch from demure diva one moment to a jazzed-up Janis Joplin the next. This was a punchy, no holds barred, performance with “Black and White” and “Walk Away”, (its stoned-out scat singing finale nearly took the roof off the place), providing some of the day’s most memorable moments. The festival was off to a sensational start.

* photographic evidence of a Hannah Grace themed cupcake has subsequently come to light, so I’m pleased to confirm that Dan Bettridge has, indeed , outdone the legendary Keith Richards in the category of culinary debauchery!

Bilingual singer-songwriter Aled Rheon is another act who kevonhissoapbox has steadfastly championed this year. His captivating ballad “September” has, quite simply, been one of THE tracks of 2015 so far, and it’s no surprise, therefore, that he opens his set with it today. What is surprising, though, is the appearance of five other people on stage to perform it with him! Aled Rheon and the Gorgeous Charge, making their live debut, included the Climbing Trees pair - Matthew Frederick (keyboards) and James Bennetts (drums) as well as Tender Prey bassist Mark Foley. There’s a poignant moment, too, towards the end of a fine set, when Aled dedicates his wistful ballad “Wrap up Warm” to his newborn son.  

A brief chat with Matthew Frederick, as he was finishing his guest spot, gleaned the unwelcome news that the Climbing Trees’ gig at 10 Feet Tall had been brought forward to 6.30, leading to a direct clash with the much-lauded Hooton Tennis Club. ‘See you later’, I casually remarked, although, even then I sensed the seed of betrayal beginning to bloom in my heart, after all HTC had been tipped up by the NME, no less, as one of the four must-seebands of the festival. And, anyway, I had already bought my ticket for the Trees’ forthcoming hometown Christmas gig, so, what could it hurt, I reasoned, if just this once I stood the Trees up?  My conscience was clear, sort of!

So it was that as the St John the Baptist church bells struck 6.30 I was to be found in the front row of a packed out Jack Rocks stage in Clwb Ifor Bachready to watch the second coming of comedy Indie–Rock (HTC is nothing if not a humorous cross between Supergrass and Space with a sprinkling of Neil Hannon, or indeed fellow Sŵn artist Simon Love (more of whom later), thrown in for good measure. Like a flash, though, the enormity of my actions struck home; sure the more glamorous HTC looked and sounded enticing, but, by the end of the band’s third song I was starting to feel like some sort of squalid adulterer, about to consummate the ultimate act of betrayal. It was Fatal Attraction all over again! Visions of the buoyantly bearded Frederick dutifully soundchecking, still blissfully unaware of my illicit rendezvous, began to dance before my eyes, pangs of guilt come out of nowhere and did a dozen quick laps around my breaking heart. Suddenly I was forcing my way tearfully through the crowd and out into the night air in a desperate attempt to salvage my long-term relationship with Climbing Trees.

I arrived at 10 Feet Tall breathless and panic-stricken and managed to bump straight into, of all people, Matthew Frederick himself, busily working his way back to the stage through a tightly packed crowd, ‘How much have I missed?’ I managed to innocently croak ‘Nothing, it’s running late’. Thank goodness, as the Trees turned in a terrific set, mixing classics from their outstanding debut Hebron (“Aloisi” and “Under the Lindens”) with three spellbinding new tracks that augur well for the band’s upcoming sophomore record.

The set opened with the first of those new songs “Caesar”, a raging fire and brimstone instrumental, impressive enough to overcome the unresolved sound problems that had delayed the gig in the first place, and the forthcoming single “Graves”.  Before introducing the band’s ‘token’ pop song “ Lost”,  a number which really sees the band pump up the volume, Frederick amiably joked that a recent review in the Carmarthen Journal had described the band as ‘successfully climbing the pop ladder’. The Journal is, if anything, underplaying the band’s appeal. For me, the Trees are a truly magical group of musicians, perched nine-tenths of the way to the top of pop’s metaphorical beanstalk and on the verge of making a fairytale dream of world domination come true (well, I have been drinking all day on an empty stomach, complimentary cup-cake aside!)

Between these excellent sets, I managed to catch Canadian garage rocker Michael Rault at the Undertone basement. In all honesty, this was an under-whelming gig that only really came to life with the blunderbuss wig-out that closed the set; that really was something to behold, though, so perhaps I’m doing him something of a disservice and he seemed to go down well enough with the small congregation of punters in attendance.

Next up, in the same un-atmospheric venue, was 16 yr old wunderkind Declan McKenna, winner of this year’s Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Award. His internet smash “Brazil” is an electro-poppy critique of worldwide football corruption and was certainly the stand-out song in an engaging set. He’s an extremely likable and unpretentious performer; kitted out in a Winnie-the-Pooh type t-shirt, he makes no attempt to disguise his tender age, cheerfully admitting, in fact, that his mother is in the crowd tonight monitoring his use of bad language.

I was back in the Undertone basement, following my flirtation with HTC, at 7.30, to see London’s Honey Moon deliver a superlative batch of songs that recalled the very early days of The Servants (think “She’s Always Hiding”) and renowned U.S janglers Real Estate. Before kicking off their set, the band’s front-man Jack Slater-Chandler made a hand on heart declaration that they were ‘gonna play some love songs for the people of Cardiff’. Amen, to that!

They proved to be as good as their word, easing their way through a half-dozen sun-dappled songs, the best of which were the dreamy “Tripping (On the Thought of You) and “Waiting” - both of which were taken from their eponymously titled debut E.P which I will certainly be checking out a.s.a.p.

That was day one over, brought to a brilliantly luminous conclusion by the kind of band Sŵn is so good at unearthing; my plans to leg it across to Abacus to catch the much-hyped Protomartyr abandoned, at the last minute, due to a dietary imbalance – plenty of drink, no food!

I had recovered my equilibrium by Sunday afternoon, however, just in time to catch a quality set by Simon Love at the Buffalo Bar. Love’s acerbic approach may not appeal to everyone, but he definitely has the pop chops to take some of the sting out of his waspish worldview.  His latest single “The New Adam and Eve” is a prime example, a jocular, jangly pop song laced with murderous intent. It’s a fascinating gig that culminates in a bizarre duet, between Simon and his Dad, of the Traveling Wilburys’ classic “Handle with Care”.

From there it was straight past a packed out Peaness gig downstairs at the Clwb Ifor Bach and upstairs to the Jack Rocks Stage for Beach Fatigue (formerly Heavy Petting Zoo) and another chance encounter with Dan Bettridge who’d hot-footed it straight from the Tender Prey gig in the Buffalo Bar. Another large gathering was royally entertained by Amy Zachariah and co’s blistering psych-surf set, which actually threatened to loosen my teeth on a couple of their higher octane numbers. Opening song “Isabelle” was a frenetic slab of garage rock, which, majestically, seemed to go on forever. I, for one, would have been happy if the group had played that track over and over again in a sort of garage rock version of Groundhog Day. Of course, I would have then have been denying myself the pleasure of hearing new single “Drunken Grrrls” and the equally excellent “Cut Throat”.  In singer Zachariah Beach Fatigue definitely have a front-person with real stage presence, whether she’s tightening the microphone lead around her neck, stealing her guitarist’s glasses, or jumping off the stage to boogie with the crowd!

Across the street, at the Moon Club, local boys The Cradles were playing their clever, Kinksian pop, to a smallish crowd. I managed to catch the second half of the gig, meaning that I’d missed out on hearing the superb “Denmark Street”. “Stamp Man”, another of their kitchen-sink character studies, is well crafted enough, though, to suggest that this is a young band set to make their mark in 2016.

My final stop for the weekend is at the Four Bars. I arrive just in time to catch the end of an extremely well received set from Cristobal and the Sea and bag a sofa seat in readiness for Bristol’s Rebecca Clements. I had intended, right until the very last minute, to watch Elle Mary and the Bad Men, simply because anybody putting the poetry of Pablo Neruda to music deserves an audience, so I was really hoping that Clements’ performance would vindicate my choice. Unfortunately, her introspective set didn’t quite come to life. “Coma Boy” was easily the best of her own compositions, while her faithful cover of The Cure’s classic “Boys Don’t Cry” was the obvious highpoint of a somewhat listless gig. The last band to take to the Four Bars’stage was Beach Baby, fresh from a support slot on the Hooton Tennis Club tour. Their short, sharp, six-song set showed rich promise. Whilst summer single “No Mind No Money” is furiously catchy, it’s more than matched by current release “Limousine”, a shimmering slice of surf-rock, and final number “Powderbaby” a gleaming track which quickly escalated into a savage, guitar-thrashing, semi-deranged finale. It was the single most exhilarating moment of my Sŵn festival weekend!

So, Sŵn is over for another year. Of the 28 artists I’d hoped to check out, I managed to see a grand total of fourteen! Missing Protomartyr still rankles, and I regret that Lazy Day and The Big Moon escaped me too. There were still plenty of highlights, though. The Horizons showcase brought together a clutch of brilliant Welsh artists and the festival’s curators certainly did a fine job in casting their net far and wide, attracting genuine contenders in the shape of Hooton Tennis Club alongside proven big hitters like Everything Everything. Sŵn, certainly warms the soul, it’s a feel-good festival that has the capacity to re-invigorate and re-enthuse anyone with a genuine passion for new music.

In a surreal coda to the evening, Mrs kevonhissoapbox and I had arranged to give Matthew Frederick a lift home at the festival’s close. Unfortunately, M.F. was having some difficulty in navigating the long and winding road from Womanby Street to St Mary Street! Six texts later there was still no sign of the Trees’ gregarious pianist. We eventually tracked him down at the entrance to the Millennium Stadium. Just goes to show what Sŵn and a Lucozade too many can do to you!