Jess Hemerly: Writing Portfolio

Q+A with me on Razorfish's ScatterGather blog

2011-02-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'll be on a panel at SXSW Interactive with Jason Schultz and Larisa Mann called Music & Metadata: Do Songs Remain the Same?. Super excited! Razorfish's Scatter/Gather blog did a Q&A with me about the panel: SXSW 2011 Q&A: Jess Hemerly

Aura you experienced? "Paranormal" portraiture [Boing Boing]

2010-01-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

Original post at Boing Boing

In 1992, a man named Guy Coggins combined Kirlian photography with biofeedback and introduced Aura Imaging photography. He began selling cameras through his Redwood City company, Progen, and according to the company's FAQ, there are only about 250 owners of these in the US. One of the owners is in San Francisco's Japantown. You'd miss it if you didn't know what to look for. It's a small gift shop called Sharaku across from the plaza, filled with Japanese textiles, figurines, and replica instruments. The only clue that something else goes on in this shop are yellowed, letter-sized, photocopied signs on the window advertising aura photography. But for $15 (plus tax) the old lady who runs the shop will reluctantly take you into the back, set up her Biofeedback Imaging Color Spectrometer 3000, and photograph your aura. And yes, that is quite a profit margin. According to the camera company's site, the cost per photo is about $3.30 (including film and "functional warranty replacement" charge).

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine decided that getting his aura photographed would be the perfect way to say goodbye to 2009 and invited my husband-to-be and I to join.
There were a couple tourists in the claustrophobic shop, browsing the racks and shelves of knickknacks, but when we asked to have our auras photographed she took us straight to the shop's back room. This is where the camera lives along with a microwave on a table, a heater, some boxes, and a bookshelf lined with what look like old Japanese serial novels.

In front of a white background screen is a bench on which she set the biofeedback boxes and motioned for me to sit down. The camera she uses is a big rectangular box with a window on the front in which I could can see my reflection pretty clearly. I placed my hands on the metal finger guides and sat as still as possible. I made no effort to think anything other than trying not to look like I had a double chin -- my biggest fear in photographs. She made some adjustments with the camera and I half expected to feel something coming out of the metal under my hands, but after about 10 seconds she told me I was done.

As she pulled the Fuji instant film out of the camera and set it next to the microwave, a dot matrix printer began to print an ASCII diagram of my aura and I - with @'s for eyes and letters representing the colors - and explanations of the dominant colors representing future (left side), experience (above), and expression (right). The blue above my head means I am best described by "depth-of-feeling," while the blue to my right means I "put calm into the world". My orange left side means I am coming into a period of creativity and sensuality. Not bad!

After a few more minutes, she tore the plastic off the film and handed my aura photograph to me. The first thing I noticed was how colorful the image was. Then I noticed that the colors of my aura matched the colors of the hoodie I had on. Coincidence? Joe Nickell, Research Fellow at the Center for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote a piece for the Skeptical Inquirer in 2000 about his experience with aura photography, titled "Aura Photography: A Candid Shot." After having his first photo taken, Joe stepped away from the booth to talk to some students and decided to return and see if the photo came out the same. It didn't. In fact, far from it. The photographer suggested that he'd been "teaching" students between photos and that changed his aura. Joe was unconvinced, as I am not completely convinced that my aura wasn't based on my clothing.

Real aura or not, the pictures are far cooler than anything your mom made you have taken at Olan Mills.

Future of Video: Authorship, Appropriation, and Control

2009-05-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

I created this video as my presentation for my final conference with Institute for the Future on the Future of Video. I used interviews with Tiffany Shlain, Jason Schultz, and Pat Aufderheide, conducted over Skype; remixes pulled or captured from YouTube; a short presentation created and captured from Prezi; a song from the Internet Archive; and put the whole thing together in iMovie. This was my first *real* experiment with making my own video.

The Future of Video: Authorship, Appropriation, and Control from Institute for the Future on Vimeo.

7x7 Clamour Blog

2009-04-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

Since mid-April, I've been blogging about San Francisco arts & entertainment twice a week for 7x7 magazine's Clamour blog. All posts are available here.

Q&A with Thao Nguyen [Noise Pop]

2009-01-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

Noise Pop Festival Program & website, 2009 [Link]

NP: I hear you’re looking for a fourth member, now’s your chance.

T: Yeah, and I would love if it was a woman. Mostly they have to be cool, but think I need that balance. Sometimes after three weeks or two weeks with these two dudes I haven't talked about my feelings in forever.

Thao Nguyen fronts the trio Thao with the Get Down Stay Down with Adam Thompson on bass and Willis Thompson on drums (no relation) whose second album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, came out on Kill Rock Stars in 2008. With Thao’s airy, animated voice dancing over jangly guitars and light, poppy rhythms, you can’t help but feel a little happier when you listen to them. Thao headlines solo at the Swedish American Hall on February 26 and promises to find out what puts the “Swedish” in Swedish American Hall.

Noise Pop: Are you excited to headline Noise Pop?

Thao: Am I headlining?

NP: Yes.

T: Really? Holy shit! No one tells me anything, I swear. I better be better than I thought I would have to be.

NP: So you’re excited.

T: Yes, totally. Sorry, it's just funny. If you knew the amount of things I don't know about what I'm doing for my job it would crack you up.

NP: Did opening for Rilo Kiley and Xiu Xiu in the beginning of 2008 pay off when you went out on your own later in the year?

T: When we released [We Brave Bee Stings and All], if we had gone on our own headlining tour it would have been just a string of shitboxes. But when we did that headlining tour a lot of people showed up who would not have had they not seen us otherwise with these other bands. There's no way that we had any sort of footing or clout. We used to play so many places with "tavern" in the name and it's just not that cool.

NP: Taverns can be tough. Any artists you’d love to play with?

T: I have a very deep affection for Andrew Bird, but I feel like if we shared the same bill I would be paralyzed because I'd feel too inadequate to play. And Mirah, I've always been a really big fan of her.

NP: How much songwriting does the rest of the band do?

T: I would say that I write all the songs. It's weird, I'm not really into control but definitely with songwriting I want it, so I prefer that the guys in the band not even hear the song until I feel like it is complete. And they write their own parts because they're much better at drums and bass than I am. I love that collaborative energy, it's just that the song—I need it to be my own.

NP: How did you find each other?

T: Willis and I went to college together and he was pretty much the first drummer I've ever played with. He's like my first rhythmic love and I think he's amazing. I know that he's irreplaceable because I've tried before and it didn't work out.

NP: And Adam?

T: We dated for a minute a long time ago. They are the best musicians that I have had the pleasure of working with. At the same time, we gel enough personality-wise, and we're of the same ethos and the same goals so it works, for the most part, really well.

NP: Working and traveling with these two guys all the time, do you sometimes crave the company of women?

T: I swear, for every 14,000 men there's one woman. Other bands you play with, the people in crews, the staff at venues—everyone is a dude. I know a lot of great female musicians but for whatever reason there's just less. When you do meet a woman that plays music—a touring musician, which is kind of a weird lifestyle—the camaraderie is almost immediate because we have so much to talk about, grievances and triumphs.

NP: I hear you’re looking for a fourth member, now’s your chance.

T: Yeah, and I would love if it was a woman. Mostly they have to be cool, but think I need that balance. Sometimes after three weeks or two weeks with these two dudes I haven't talked about my feelings in forever.

NP: Speaking of feelings, what music do you love?

T: Motown, late 50s and 60s soul and some pop, rock, and folk. That era and into the early 70s is primarily what I listen to, which is why it's such a disability for me to talk about new music that I might be interested in. I also listen to a lot of hip-hop and R&B and want to incorporate that more into the next album (not in an embarrassing way).

NP: No freestyling.

T: I’m not cool enough to do that.

NP: Are you glad you game out to the West Coast?

T: I'll say this about San Francisco: I think I've been to a lot of cities now—actually I'm pretty sure that they all blur together—but I only want to live here.

- JESS HEMERLY

The Art of Frame [Make:]

2008-11-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

Make: Volume 16, November 2008 [Link]

Akio Tanabe makes some of the world's most sought-after bicycle frames.

Shortly after World War II, the Japanese created a new form of track cycling: keirin (pronounced kay-rin). In a keirin race, a bicycle, motorbike, or moped sets pace for six to nine bike riders, gradually increasing speed on each lap. When the pacer drops off, the race becomes a sprint as riders jockey for the front position.

People across Japan trek to velodromes to watch and bet on keirin racing the way Americans bet on horse racing — except the stakes are much higher.

With significant sums of money at stake, a governing body, Nihon Jitensha Shinkokai (NJS), regulates keirin racing. NJS has exceptionally high standards for bike geometry, weight, and materials, to ensure that a rider’s equipment never provides an advantage or results in catastrophic failure. This fiercely regulated system of quality standards comes from a tradition of quality and integrity. Many keirin bikes are hand-built by a single frame builder.

Urbanites worldwide have caught keirin fever, and frames branded with some of Japan’s most notable names, from 3Rensho to Watanabe to Makino, roll through city streets. And while NJS-stamped frames and parts are sought by fixed-gear fans for street riding, the NJS stamp of approval is the only thing that will allow a frame or part on the keirin track.

On a recent trip to Tokyo, we were lucky enough to hook up with a Flickr contact, a bicycle aficionado named Yohei Morita. On Christmas Day, Morita picked us up at our hotel and offered to take us around to some of his favorite bike shops in the city. After the first shop in the Shibuya ward, we considered where to go next. I blurted out, “Kalavinka!”

“Sure, it’s a short drive,” our host answered.

For 35 years, Tsukumo Cycle Sports, a small community bicycle shop located in Meguro ward, Tokyo, has serviced all kinds of bicycles, from domestic mama-chari to professional keirin bikes. But it’s what lies in the back of the shop that makes Tsukumo a destination for bicycle aficionados. It’s in this tiny workshop, the size of a large closet, where Akio Tanabe creates some of the most sought-after
bicycle frames under the name Kalavinka.

There’s nothing particularly new about the technology Tanabe-san uses to hand-build his frames. His workshop is filled with sketches, bottom bracket shells, lugs, and bottles of chemicals. There’s no automated assembly line, no shiny new tools, and, until recently, no space-age carbon fiber. Kalavinka has been working on a carbon track frame for some time, but Tanabe-san is best known for frames
produced with steel tubing and welding machines.

Before opening Tsukumo and starting his own line of bikes, Tanabe-san worked as a test rider and racer. He builds 80 to 90 frames a year, half of which are for professional keirin racers. Despite Kalavinka’s prestige, Tanabe-san is incredibly humble. He greeted us warmheartedly, showed us his workshop, and even posed for a picture. But when we began lumping on the praise, he deflected it by pulling a metal Kalavinka head
badge from underneath the workbench, meticulously hand-painted by his wife.

The art of frame building is enjoying new interest in the United States. The United Bicycle Institute in Ashland, Ore., offers two-week programs for aspiring frame builders. And it’s partly because of Japanese legends like Tanabe-san.

—Jess Hemerly, 2008

How I Had 15 Minutes of Internet Fame (Without Really Trying) [IFTF]

2008-10-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

Institute for the Future, October 15, 2008 [Link]

In 1968, Andy Warhol declared, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Maybe everyone being famous for 15 minutes is still part of a future we haven't achieved yet, but we're getting closer to something like it thanks largely to the Internet.

In 1968, Andy Warhol declared, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Maybe everyone being famous for 15 minutes is still part of a future we haven't achieved yet, but we're getting closer to something like it thanks largely to the Internet. We've seen fame coming to a variety of unlikely corners of the net, from a book deal for the guy who writes about stuff white people like to a MySpace celebrity getting her own dating reality show on VH1. But for many of the things that become "Internet famous," the creators behind the phenomenon remain out of the spotlight while their blogs get all the fame. It's not about lack of recognition; it's about a blog or a website becoming viral and achieving a kind of fame that transcends the people who made it.

Last week, in the wake of one of the worst few days for Wall Street ever, a friend Chris made his Facebook status message read something about it being a bad year for Wall Street but a banner year for pictures of sad guys on trading floors. I pinged him and within 15 minutes of my IM he'd set up a blog for us on Tumblr: http://sadguysontradingfloors.tumblr.com. We immediately started to curate and caption photos of traders accompanying stories about the stock market's decline. There were lots of them. The inclusion of a sad-looking trader with an article about the end of the financial world as we know it was an instant Internet meme.

I sent the Sad Guys on Trading Floors link to my IFTF colleague, friend, and blogger extraordinaire David Pescovitz. David posted our blog to his, BoingBoing, which is one of the most widely read blogs on the web. From there, it took off like a highly contagious virus. Some of the blogs mentioned Chris and I by name, but once we started to get into the bigger publications' blogs like New York Times: Economix and Wall Street Journal: The Wallet, the bloggers talked about the site and its content but never about us. But the blog was linked on social sites like MetaFilter (who railed on the lameness of our comments, sorry MeFi!); on magazine blogs like Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish on TheAtlantic.com; Twittered by what seem to be a lot of people (and they're still Twittering us); and mentioned on CNBC.

On the first full day our blog was up on Tumblr, we had 259,390 page views. In Internet numbers, that's huge.

Chris and I were, and quite frankly still are, dumbfounded. All we did was agree on a noticeable phenomenon that we thought was funny (photos of distressed-looking traders accompanying stock market articles), open an account on Tumblr (Chris did that part), scour the web for pictures of sad traders (not hard to find; news site slideshows were a godsend), save the pics to our desktops, upload, write some captions that we at least found mildly amusing, and post. Our friends know we were behind it, but to most people, "we" are just some nameless people behind monitors who compiled a blog of pictures and captions. The blog kind of speaks for itself and became an entity unto itself. A few people took the time to find our email addresses and send us some "fan mail" and people on Tumblr reposted us. Some really good friends actually IMed me the link without knowing that I was a co-blogger until I told them.

On other sites some comments praised us, some made fun of our captions, and some comments pointed out that it was unfair to "blame the traders," since they were only at the behest of the big guys on top of Corruption Mountain. But that's not even what we were doing. We just thought it was funny that every single news article about the stock market was accompanied by a picture of a sad trader making a sad face, whether the expression was one of genuine dismay snapped during a time of actual crisis or had nothing to do with the declining stock market.

So does this count as my 15 minutes of fame? Who knows. A blog a friend and I made on a whim certainly got its 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not sure he and I personally did. But maybe this is what Warhol meant by 15 minutes of fame, that one day ideas and creations would take off—but only the people behind the ideas and their friends really know or care about who's behind the creation or creations. It's as if Warhol forecasted Internet fame before the Internet existed.

Somebody made a mashup with the images!

— Jess Hemerly, October 2008

Sad Guys On Trading Floors [Blog]

2008-10-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sad Guys On Trading Floors

Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes.

My friend Chris Riebschlager in Kansas City and I created this blog to commemorate the media's portrayal of the recent stock market crash. It took off to the point where I almost can't believe who covered it. We had no idea this would turn into a 15-min-of-fame thing on the Internet. Just proof that viral memes are, well, exceptionally viral.

Media mentions:
BoingBoing (started it all)

CNBC

New York Times: Economix
The Atlantic: Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish
TIME
LA Times: Funny Pages 2.0
New York Magazine: Daily Intel
Wall Street Journal: The Wallet
Wall Street Journal: Marketbeat
MSNBC: Clicked
Boston Globe: Brainiac
Telegraph Daily
Times Online (UK)
Sydney Morning Herald
The Independent: IndyBlogs
Dallas Morning News: Technology Blog
The American Prospect: Ezra Klein
Riverfront TImes (St. Louis)
Spectator: Trading Floor
MetaFilter (predictably mean)
Gawker
Silicon Alley Insider
D: All Things Digital
Media Watchdog: Sad Brokers Provide Plenty of Material, Pop & Politics (Interview with Chris Riebschlager)
ClusterStock
HamptonRoads.com
reddit
Blogs.com
The Big Picture
meme.ca
FARK
Mashable
YouTube Mashup: The Facepalm Song

SF Jukebox [Blog]

2008-10-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

SF Jukebox

This is an attempt to evaluate and document the jukeboxes of San Francisco's bar world, and the shows that occur at our venues. Consider it a study in San Francisco music appreciation.

Selected as one of Blogger's "Blogs of Note" in October, SF Jukebox is a combination of my writing and Jonathan Koshi's photos. A number of these reviews are also posted at The Owl Mag.

Of Montreal [Chord]

2008-09-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Of Montreal, Chord, Fall 2008

Yes, Of Montreal is a pop band, but it's one that's innovative as hell. Whether it's the sound, the lyrics, or even the live performances, frontman—or maybe more appropriately "conductor"—Kevin Barnes strives to find new ways to combine, remix, and interpret styles and influences to keep of Montreal fresh and evolving. While of Montreal's last album, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, was a collection of upbeat pop songs designed to pull Barnes out of a gloomy funk, the inspiration for the new album, Skeletal Lamping, lacks a single narrative.

And that's how Barnes wanted it.

"Everything is very fractured and fragmented and I’m constantly contradicting myself in my thoughts and my concept of the world," he reflects. "I wanted to just make a record that represented that state of being. It’s important for you to feel totally free to contradict yourself and just be whoever you happen to be at the moment."

In a word, the album is best described as human. A multifaceted approach lends each song its own unpredictable personality in composition, style, and lyrics. "Nonpareil of Favor" starts off as a peppy indie pop song and ends in a lyricless drone, far from where the track began. "Touching Something's Hollow" is a wistful interlude with vocals and piano that explodes into "An Eluardian Instance," a texturally varied track about young love. The album is also not shy about sexuality, exploring everything from trans-gender relationships to prostitution.

A variety of musical styles pop out on this album, but Barnes specifically aimed to harness the bravado and energy of 70s funk. "You can draw parallels to all sorts of artists but I’m definitely pulling a lot from Prince, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield and people like that. And I’m also trying to incorporate more dissonance and tension, which is not really something you find in funk music."

But there is more to Skeletal Lamping than just fifteen tracks about kinky sex and wayward lovers. Barnes and the band felt they wanted to do something new with this release, something beyond a jewel case and booklet or a digipack. Taking advantage of the talented people in his life, Barnes teamed up with his brother, David (who has designed the band's album covers since 1997), and wife, Nina (who has done much of the band's merch), to create a set of seven objects that accompany the album. From a giant foldout monster poster with the CD to a Chinese lantern with a digital download, fans get a piece of art—and a reason to invest in the album even if they download it for free through other means.

"All the items we created we wanted to be integrated into people’s lifestyles. So it’s always gonna be an inspiring piece or a provocative piece or conversation piece, or something that has value just like any art piece does. The Chinese lantern and the wall decals—basically if you bought everything you could redesign your room."

For the upcoming tour, the band has replaced the electronic drum machine with a dedicated drummer who will play live on all tracks. Barnes hopes the addition will allow the band more freedom to improvise during the shows. of Montreal also plans a stage show that should impress even the most loyal fans accustomed to the band's theatrical style of glitter, glitz, and sensory overload. Using a separate room on wheels, the band will create a second environment on stage that can be turned around, re-staged, and then turned back to face the audience.

"What we’d love to do is transform each venue and create an other-world environment that you are not expecting at all," says Barnes.

Through their multifaceted approach to distribution and performance, of Montreal hopes to create new experiences for their fans that they hope will not only engage fans, but inspire them to participate and become a part of something larger. For Barnes, it's not just about the music, it's also about the spirit.

"I want the audience to feel like they’re part of the community, the sort of art collective that Of Montreal is," he says. "I really hope that people will dress up and feel like they’re part of the performance as well."

Obama "First to Know" Text: Success or Sham? [IFTF]

2008-08-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

Institute for the Future, August 25, 2008 [Link]

For some people, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. For me, it's presidential election season. There is no such thing as too much information or oversaturation. Given my obsession, it was only natural for me to sign up for Barack Obama's "First to Know" text message campaign.

I kept my phone out all day Friday anxiously awaiting the text between refreshes of Inkling's Obama-VP prediction markets. (I wasn't the only one.) But by the end of the work day, the text hadn't come, and word from the Internets said that the text would come Saturday.
At 1:53a on Saturday morning as I was putting shoes on and getting ready to leave a friend's house, I got the text:

There has been some criticism that it was a sham, that people didn't find out before the media and were disappointed, that it was a waste of time and anticipation. I strongly disagree.

First of all, anybody who thought that a large-scale SMS like this could be pulled off without a hitch is foolish. Different carriers have different delays. I frequently get text messages 4 hours after they are originally sent to me. That's just how it is right now. The Obama text was deployed just after 3am EST, midnight here in San Francisco. I didn't get it until 1:53a my time, just before last call. And not only were the networks flooded with the messages coming out from the Obama campaign, they were flooded with people immediately forwarding the message onto their friends and subsequent SMS exchanges. I sent and received at least 20 text messages within a half hour of receiving my text. I do think it's a bummer that some people never got the SMS but I hardly think that's grounds to call it a scam.

Second, while the New York Times and other major papers put the news online immediately, thus before many people had received their texts, the announcement was absent from some of the print editions of major papers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Why? Because the text was sent after most of the Saturday editions had long been put to bed and were peeling off the presses. Sending this kind of information after the major papers have gone to press has traditionally been considered political suicide, but the Obama campaign knew what they were doing. The information was disseminated digitally, not via newsstands. Some critics think the 3am timing was a last dig on Hillary, but I think it was less a dig and more recognizing the importance of that 3am response.

According to some complaints from people who never received the text, I was lucky to get mine at all. But I can honestly say that I've never been so excited to receive a text message. I was nowhere near a computer when the text came, and hadn't received any tips from friends elsewhere in the country, so it was nice to be able to go out, have fun, and receive news like this via 2am SMS. My only real disappointment is that the text didn't start with "Hi, this is Barry!"

It's important to keep in mind that this was an experiment and it was not executed perfectly, but it does serve as a proof of concept. But what other politician has tried something like this on such a large scale? It was a great way for the Obama campaign to harvest phone numbers and build quite a buzz, but it was also a bold use of mobile technology—and great practice for November. As a friend put it, "The blogosphere can't quite yet eclipse the major news media. Heck, twitterverse was convinced it was bloomberg before the runup that day."

Of course, Biden's support of the DMCA and his friendliness with the RIAA are whole different issues...

— Jess Hemerly, August 2008

Citay [The Onion AV Club]

2008-07-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

The Onion AV Club, San Francisco Edition, July 10 – 16, 2008

Interview with Ezra Feinberg, Citay frontman, for the Onion AV Club (San Francisco Print Edition only)

Citay began as a solo project, with onetime Piano Magic drummer Ezra Feinberg laying down tracks in his San Francisco apartment. But with the help of Tim Green (The Nation Of Ulysses, The Fucking Champs), Citay became a two-man studio project, and now, two albums later--the most recent is last year's Little Kingdom—the band has grown into a six-member juggernaut. Feinberg plays "friendly dictator" to his bandmates—which include new entries Josh Pollock and Sean Smith—composing mellow, airy tracks that approach psychedelia with repetitive melodies, breathy vocals, and sometimes surprising electric guitars. The A.V. Club talked with the band's founder and frontman about transitions, the future, and where he got that silly name.

The A.V. Club: How has Citay changed now that it's a full band?

Ezra Feinberg: Citay wasn't done with a band in mind, it was done thinking it might just be a recording project. For the second record, Little Kingdom, I knew once the songs were finished I would show them to the band and they'd reinterpret them live. The only thing that's changed is that I've gone from not really thinking about it in terms of a live show to having faith that the live show would work with the songs.

AVC: You're going through a lineup change right now. Has it been a smooth transition?

EF: It's proving to be a very smooth transition—smoother than I could have ever imagined. The electric guitars are the centerpieces of Citay, and Adria [Otte] and Jesse [Reiner] both have gotten really into their other projects and had to leave. I found two people who are close friends of the band, Josh Pollock and Sean Smith, who are both really excited and amazing guitar players. I couldn't be happier. It's been a transition that was necessary and a step forward in the development of our sound live.

AVC: With your bandmates involved in various projects, are you open to the idea of a revolving-door band?

EF: I have to be. Ideally it's a stable lineup, but I think it's going to continue to be good. When you have a singular vision, that's what you have to deal with: a revolving door.

AVC: Your highest-profile gig before Citay was playing drums with Piano Magic—what inspired you to become a frontman?

EF: Before Citay, I felt like I was always the principal songwriter and I was always a leader in the bands, but felt as though there needed to be someone else who had more character or personality or stage presence—more flash or bite or something—than me. But Citay has actually represented me: I can do that, and I want to do that and work it out in my own way.

AVC: At your last San Francisco show, a drunk guy at the bar yelled "Citay!" like he was channeling Steve Perry. Does that happen a lot?

EF: I don't remember the drunk guy, but it certainly happens. The idea [behind the band name] is a word that only exists in songs, taken out and used as a band name. "Citay" is not a word, but it's sung all the time.

AVC: You've described Citay's sound as "bridging the gap between 'Diamonds And Rust' by Joan Baez and 'Diamonds And Rust' by Judas Priest," which is a hell of a gap. What made you think you could do that?

EF: I really love a lot of really heavy guitar music and I really love a lot of very sweet-sounding music, but I've never wanted to be in something that was just sweet and I've never wanted to be in something that was just heavy. There wasn't much premeditation for this project--what came out was some heavy stuff and some sweet stuff together, often in the same song.

AVC: What's next?

EF: We're playing a bunch of local shows in the summer just to get the new guitar players all together. I think that the lineup change pushed back work on a new album a little bit, but it'll happen. —Jess Hemerly

Citay performs as part of the Rough And Tumble theater company benefit with Tall Firs, Sleepy Sun, Corvette Summer, and DJ Andy Cabic on July 15 at Café Du Nord at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10-$20 and the show is 21+. Citay also performs with Tall Firs, Brian Glaze, and Meridians on July 16 at 21 Grand at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 and the show is all-ages.

US Air Guitar SF Regional: The Recap [The Owl Mag]

2008-07-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

First published at The Owl Mag in July, 2008, SF Jukebox with pictures available here.

Thanks to the madmen behind US Air Guitar, a show consisting entirely of performers playing invisible guitars can sell out the Independent. For those unfamiliar with the magic and mystery of air guitar, it is an annual collection of freaks, wannabes, amateur comedians, and rock lovers who literally "play" air guitar on stage. Sometimes a contestant seems to be completely disconnected from both his body and the music. Other times, a contestant is so good that it's as if a guitar will materialize in his hands any second.

The spectacle's inventors have designed a rubric for measuring this skill, employing three judges—think The Muppet Show's Statler and Waldorf with unlimited drinks and a third, equally critical sidekick—to drink heavily and rate the contestants on technical merit, stage presence, and airness. Airness is that certain je ne sais quois that launches an air guitarist from novice to virtuoso. Although no scientific studies have been done on the subject, it's likely that alcohol plays a role in one's airness (or lack thereof). Alcohol also enhances one's ability to be a fair and critical judge. Like the last two years, judges Marc Hawthorne (Onion AV Club), Jennifer Maerz (SF Weekly), and John Trippe (FecalFace.com) were completely hammered by the end of the night.

The event is decided in two rounds. In Round 1, each contestant performs to 60 seconds of the song (or medley) of his or her choosing. Round 2 brings the highest scorers from Round 1 back on stage for the compulsory round, where each contestant has to perform to the same clip of the same song. The audience has the honor, or horror, of hearing that song (in this case "I'll Stick Around" by the Foo Fighters) ad nauseum. Judges' scores range from 4.0 to 6.0, a system inspired by Olympic Figure Skating. The highest-scoring contestant from Round 1 has a significant advantage going into Round 2. The contestant with the highest combined Round 1 and Round 2 score wins the Regional Championship and moves on to compete in the US Finals, which will be held at the Grand Ballroom in San Francisco this year. Asked in the pre-show press conference why San Francisco was chosen to host the finals, Another Planet Entertainment's Bryan Duquette responded, "People in San Francisco like to dress up in costume."

Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. Reflecting on his victory at the press conference, the 2006 San Francisco Regional champ Hot Lixx Hulahan remembered asking himself, "Do I tell people I won air guitar?" But with sponsors like Cuervo Black (who failed to sponsor any kind tequila special at the bar), a documentary called "Air Guitar Nation," and a pre-show press conference, it's sometimes hard to tell if this is all in the name of irony or if the organizers and contestants actually take the whole thing at least a little seriously. Regardless, this year's San Francisco Regional Championship attracted a perverse and often baffling selection of the Bay Area's, um, talent making for another fun night.

The evening began with the ceremonial air-ing of "War Pigs," where master-of-air-emonies and retired contestant Bjorn Turoque invited audience members to join him on stage and play air bass and air drums as he sang (really sang, not air sang) and aired lead guitar. Turoque's career includes five second-place finishes, with the exception of a win at the New York Regional in 2005. Despite never having won the national title, Turoque has become the face and voice of US Air Guitar. Turoque's bandmates were both women, and the drummer out-shined the bassist, who probably thinks Black Sabbath is a holiday for Satanists.

With that out of way, the competition was underway. The Independent's own Ricky Stinkfingers, last year's Regional Champion, was up first. Clad in pink lyrca, Stinkfingers sported a much larger bulge in his pants than last year, either an indication that he's been taking performance-enhancing substances or that he brought his pet armadillo to the contest. His spirited performance fell short for the sober judges, who are unfortunately always hardest on the first performers of the night. Fortunately, Stinkfingers already secured a spot in the national finals with a first-place finish in the Portland regional.

A chain of mediocrity followed Stinkfingers. Plaid-pants-wearing Stoney Iommi may have been the Black Sabbath guitarist's namesake, but this Iommi's "Iron Man" was tedious, albeit accurate. Lieutenant Castille's followed with an inspired but horrific version of the theme from Miami Vice. Aside from the white Members Only jacket, the only thing remotely Don Johnson about it was the cheese factor. Dan the Man's rendition was more Bill Nye the Science Guy than Freddie Mercury, and a hirsute Bad Ass Blondini, sporting a black vest with no shirt, tight black and white pants, and the world's worst mullet wig, just didn't have what it takes to impress the judges, who were starting to get tipsy.

Mediocre turned to abysmal with David "Air Guitar" Freeberg, nearly booed off the stage when his performance of "Bad to the Bone" proved to be just bad. Another crowd disappointment, Tiger Claw, failed to come close to the greatness of his appearance last year but still had some of the best technical skills of anyone that night. Taxi-Driver-t-shirt wearing Gobo didn't so much air guitar as half-breakdance to Dead Kennedys with a stiff arm. Torque called the performance a "psychotic punk rock ballet." It could only get better, right?

Wrong. Daddy's Little Smashing Pumpkin came out next in a pink lace baby dress, blond Annie wig with a pink bow, and an overloaded diaper, performed miserably to some kind of death metal song, and responded to the judges' low scores by pulling cooked spaghetti out of his diaper and throwing it at the audience. Another repeat contestant, Downright Dirty Diamond, basically did air guitar warmups, earning himself the most disappointing score of the round, 4.8. Then came the first female contestant, Gloria Stun 'Em, whose rendition of a bizarre metal version of "Kung Fu Fighting" resulted in the best judge comment of the night, from Marc Hawthorne: "It reminded me of the third hand job I ever got in junior high."

A disheartened crowd finally started to get their money's worth with Jammin' J-Bone. Yet another repeat contestant, J-Bone punctuated his performance of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" with a well-executed—perhaps even graceful—stage dive. Shred Nugent, also a returning contestant and last year's San Jose champion, strapped on another contestant's discarded black bra and aired it out, earning the second highest score of the night. The good streak continued with Eleven, whose Doobie Brothers-esque appearance concealed an awesome air guitar hero within.

Things slowed down again with Captain Nowhere, who, in unmistakable hipster attire, went the medley route and earned mixed reactions from the crowd. Then came Madame Deathface, the night's second female contestant, whose blasting vornado and funereal shtick wasn't enough to make up for her awful spastic style.

The lull came to an aburpt end with Shred Begley Junior. Donning black-rimmed plastic glasses with flip-up kanye-style plastic shades, an afro, and a shirt bearing the word "AWESOME," Shred Begley Jr. did just that: shred. Well, shred air. He earned the highest score of the night and inspired the crowd to chant "Awe-some! Awe-some!" as he left the stage. Stringbean made a spirited effort to follow a tough act, choosing a song I think was Avenged Sevenfold. The final two acts in round 1, Dr. Wankenstein (I-Roq Z from 2007) and Sister Lixx simply could not compete.

During the break, while judges tallied up their beverages and the top five were corralled backstage, hometown hero Hotlixx Hulahan performed to an odd medley but showed his chops to the audience's adoration. With that interlude over, it was time for the compulsory round. In 2006 and 2007, the organizers made great picks for the compulsory round: "California Uber Alles" (Dead Kennedys) and "Youth Gone Wild" (Skid Row), respectively. This year, however, I have to question their pick. "I'll Stick Around" (Foo Fighters) may be catchy as hell, but it's hardly a guitar anthem. If we're going to choose the best of the best at this made-up talent show, at least pick something with a little grit. As judge Marc Hawthorne demonstrated for those that could see him in the balcony, "I'll Stick Around" makes a great air drumming song but not so much a good air guitar track. The contestants seemed to have an easier time with this song than previous ones, however, probably because this one was more familiar. (Apparently there are still a few people in California who have never heard "California Uber Alles.")

The first top-five contestant was Captain Nowhere, whose enthusiastic windmills and good technique weren't enough to overcome his on-stage stiffness. Stringbean gave a mediocre and fidgety performance, and couldn't convince the judges that he would be able to win the national championship. Eleven seemed oddly natural with good rhythm, but showed his age with some crazy dance best suited for Golden Gate Park. Unfortunately, all but one judge, Mr. Hawthorne, gave Eleven a score lower than 5. Shred Nugent was great, channeling Dave Grohl to display his unrivaled technical skills.

But the man to beat this night was Shred Begley Jr. Punctuating his awesome performance with a stage dive, Begley received a 10 from John Trippe, another round of "Awesome!" chanting, and was crowned San Francisco US Air Guitar Regional Champion. An elated Begley picked up Bjorn Toroque as the crowd prepared for the free on-stage jam to "Freebird." After a few attempts to lift Begley, the contestants and audience members gathered on stage for air guitar jam managed to get him up off the ground.

Shred Begley, Jr. will now move on to the 2008 Cuervo Black US Air Guitar National Finals, Presented By TouchTunes on August 8 at San Francisco's Grand Ballroom.

Rethinking Free Speech Online [IFTF]

2008-07-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Institute for the Future, July 7, 2008 [Link]

We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web.

We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace are private companies with payrolls, investors, and ultimate ownership over the spaces we use to share and collect information. Are they limiting free speech? Or are we foolish to think of our speech as something that should be "free" in spaces that depend on subscriptions or advertising to stay alive?

Every community and service has its own terms of service, its own set of community guidelines. And for as much as people feel they are being wrongly censored and that their First Amendment rights are violated, community guidelines online are really the equivalent of "No shirt, no shoes, no service": if you don't like these rules, find another place to post.

Photo by jkoshi

For example, at a gathering at a local San Francisco bar a few months ago, I met a Flickr employee whose role is, in part, to field complaints about inappropriate behavior on Flickr. He follows Flickr's set of guidelines in determining what should be made private and what is appropriate for the Flickr public. When it comes to nudity, he must adhere to the "south of the border" rule, where any below-the-belt nudity is stricken from public access. Whether it is art or pornography doesn't matter—Flickr has decided to avoid that debate altogether and draw its own line.

On a much smaller scale, privately hosted community forums frequently develop strict rules of conduct for members and appoint moderators to delete incendiary posts and, in extreme cases, ban frequent offenders from the forum altogether. Even blogs have moderators who remove incendiary comments that they deem irrelevant to the dialog. Banned users frequently complain about their rights to free speech, but in the end, the site's rules reign.

The AP's Anick Jesdanun considers this matter in his July 3rd article, "'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights":

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.

[...]

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.

The implications become severe when you consider the accusations against Yahoo of working with the Chinese government to identify dissidents using the Internet to speak out against the government. That sort of activity may mar the company's image, but that doesn't undo the fact that users thought they were speaking anonymously in a worldwide forum, beyond the the scrutiny of the Chinese government. These companies know what you are doing online, and the recent Viacom v. YouTube ruling brings into question not only matters of free speech, but also privacy.

Jesdanun's article is an interesting read, and weighs the pros and cons of government intervention in assuring free speech rights online. But until those issues are worked out, as bottom-up as many of these services seem, there is always a ceiling: the company's bottom line.

— Jess Hemerly, July 2007

Maker's Mark [The Onion AV Club]

2008-05-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

The Onion AV Club, May 1-7, 2008

Design a box while thinking outside of it at the Maker Faire

Make and Craft magazines' Maker Faire is part world's fair, part science project, and part Burning Man (minus the drugs, sand, and naked people), with entertainment and inspiration found in DIY crafts, robotics, technology, mad science, art, and everything in between. This year's event promises to once again be the most exciting thing to happen in San Mateo all year, and will probably even impress your friends who claim to be too cool for a fair spelled with an "e." What follows is a guide to some things worth checking out at the third annual Maker Faire.

Green days
With global warming going full blast, "green" is turning into an overused marketing buzzword, but the movement is also offering new opportunities for invention and innovation. This year's Maker Faire is spotlighting the concept of green living by bringing in people who recycle old clothes into new wardrobes and costumes, teach container composting, and demonstrate using alcohol for fuel. There's also going to be a father and his teenaged son converting a gas-powered motorcycle into a plug-in vehicle (no, it's not Robert Pirsig), and The Neverwas Haul--a steampunk art car modeled after a three-story Victorian house and created from 75 percent recyclable materials--is making its second appearance and will host the first-ever Maker Faire wedding. Elsewhere, you can pedal around in Cyclecide's rodeo of completely impractical bicycles, or help keep DJ Fossil Fool's pedal-powered generator running as he performs live at the Rock The Bike area.

Heroic guitarists
Last year's ukulele performance of Ziggy Stardust promises to be challenged by the Electronic Music Fest, with a program that includes the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, which pushes computer-generated avant-garde music to scientific extremes, and The Guitar Zeros, a group of software geeks who turned Guitar Hero controllers into real instruments capable of producing a variety of synth sounds. Attendees can also learn how to build guitars from a kit, mandolins from a template, and electronic drums from supplies found at The Home Depot, and there will be several pirate-radio tutors teaching aspiring Hard Harrys basic broadcasting technology.

Extreme crafting
The crafts found at Maker Faire don't resemble the ugly socks your friend made after she got dumped and started knitting. Crude Awakening's welding workshop offers a shot at making weird steel sculptures, while The Crucible will let you do everything from blacksmithing to glassblowing. For the slightly less adventurous, GalaxyGoo will demonstrate how to use clay to make replicas of cells, while "Zen paintball painting" gives you license to make your own Abstract Expressionist work. Those with young ones will have fun hanging out with crafters offering hands-on opportunities, including The Sawdust Shop's woodworking demo area (which includes a place for kids to make their own ping-pong shooters) and award-winning paper-airplane designer John Collins.

Explosions in the sky
The robots at the Maker Faire rarely disappoint, and tend to be some of the weirdest and most fun projects at the event. Put aside robot holocaust fears and check out Sparky 2.0—built from trash and designed for roving video chat—and Roboexotica's MindReadingMartiniMaker, which specializes in perfecting the classic cocktail. The Life-Sized Mousetrap is back this year, hopefully with a platform and less mechanical glitches, and EepyBird—the creators of that Diet Coke and Mentos explosion made famous via YouTube—will be performing a live junk-food imitation of the Bellagio fountains. After getting nice and sticky, swing by Institute For The Future's Make The Future Pavilion to learn about forecasting the future (no crystal ball required).

It's getting hot in here
For those who are into fire and art cars but don't want to drop $300 and have their cavities filled with sand at Burning Man, Maker Faire's Saturday Evening Fire Spectacular provides an alternative that isn't as expensive or annoying. After the main portion of the event shuts down at 6 p.m., the nighttime fun begins with live music, lots of fire, and power-tool drag races.

Note that the concession lines can get crazy, which means you may wait half an hour for a corndog, and tall cans of Tecate go for $10, so plan accordingly. Do yourself a favor and make friends with the martini-making robot. — Jess Hemerly

Maker Faire takes place May 3-4 at the San Mateo County Event Center from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $10-$25 and are available at makerfairetickets.com or at the door.

Songbird: Future of the Free Media Web [IFTF]

2008-04-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Institute for the Future, April 4, 2008 [Link]

Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things.

Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things. Songbird recently released its 0.5 version, and while not quite ready for consumers yet, it is building a strong community of developers and users.

From their website:

Play music. Play the Web.

Songbird is a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web. Songbird is committed to playing the music you want, from the sites you want, on the devices you want, challenging the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.

Songbird is a player and a platform. Like Firefox, Songbird is an open source, Open Web project built on the Mozilla platform. Songbird provides a public playground for Web media mash-ups by providing developers with both desktop and Web APIs, developer resources and fostering Open Web media standards, to wit, an Open Media Web.

Built on Mozilla's XUL, Songbird is both a media player and web browser. By mashing up these applications, Songbird features a few interesting innovations. When surfing to an MP3 blog page, Songbird automatically sniffs out any media on the page and pops up a playlist of those tracks. Instead of having to download or play in a separate tab to test out the track, users can double click the song in the pop-up playlist to sample it. If you like it, you can simply click "Download" to save the song to your library. Once in your library, you can drag the track to a playlist or transfer it to a portable device. Songbird also lets you view your library in tag clouds and filter your library by metadata categories iTunes doesn't support.

Since it's open source, Songbird leverages an add-on platform for developers to create their own extensions and themes called "Feathers." There are already a good number of add-ons for Songbird, including a few that contextualize your music listening with metadata from all over the Web. My favorite thus far is an eMusic plugin that allows you to surf and download from eMusic directly through the player, bypassing eMusic's downloader, making the overall user experience much friendlier for eMusic users. Developers have also created device support for nearly every portable music device under the sun, including the iPod.

For audiophiles who scour the Internet for free media, Songbird is a great all-inclusive tool—a window to an Internet teeming with free media. The Internet provides the content, but Songbird helps your harvest, use, and make sense of it. As the community grows, it will be interesting to see what extensions people create and what kind of user base Songbird will foster. This recent release has brought them some good press, including MacLife and Wired. For more detailed information, check out the Songbird blog.

— Jess Hemerly,

Citay: Bridging the Gap Between Joan Baez and Judas Priest [The Owl Mag]

2008-03-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

The Owl Mag, March 2008 [Link]

Former Piano Magic drummer Ezra Feinberg and Tim Green of the Fucking Champs never really formed the San Francisco–based, psychedelic folk/rock band Citay, at least not in an earnest "We're starting a band!" kind of way. The two met in New York when Green flew out to record Feinberg's band at the time, Feast, and hit it off instantly thanks in part to their "alarmingly similar" musical tastes and approaches. "It's uncannily specific: we like the same specific parts of the same specific songs," muses Feinberg. "We literally found ourselves spontaneously air guitaring to the same sections of the same Heart songs. It was love."

Curious about life on the west coast and eager to get out of—and away from—Brooklyn, the Cambridge, Massachusetts native packed up and headed for San Francisco in 2004. He crashed at Green's studio, Louder Studios, for a month until finding an apartment in the city. Once settled, he began making demos with an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, his Casio keyboard, and a computer. "When I felt like I had some good materials, I went to Tim's and would re-record it from scratch at his studio, then he'd kind of add his own stuff on top of it," says Feinberg. "The skeletons of the songs I worked out on my own, and a lot of the embellishments and decorations—which is sort of what makes a lot of it—are stuff that I did with Tim in his studio."

Their collaborative efforts secured Citay a deal with Important Records, who released the self-titled first album in 2006. Feinberg never envisioned it as a live act when he started making demos in his apartment, but with the deal signed and a tour inevitable, he faced the daunting task of finding all of the instrumentalists needed to recreate Citay's multi-instrumental sound on stage. After a determined effort and a "revolving door" period, Feinberg pulled together a lineup that has remained consistent for the last two years. Now, Citay is ready to embark on their second national tour. They're also headed for their second appearance at SXSW and have even caught the attention of NPR: "Eye on the Dollar" from Little Kingdom was NPR Music's "Song of the Day" on February 26.

Citay's vocals are a little Spiritualized, and the influence of everything from Yes to The Zombies to Sonic Youth poke through the band's melting instrumental melodies. As Feinberg puts it, Citay's sound is "pop music that tries to bridge the gap between 'Diamonds and Rust' by Joan Baez, and 'Diamonds and Rust by Judas Priest." Last year's Little Kingdom (Dead Oceans), pays homage to 70s psychedelia with a fresh interpretation of old trippy sounds. And while Citay was exclusively created and recorded by Feinberg and Green (with a little help from Green's Champs bandmate, Tim Soete), Little Kingdom features all members of the band at least somewhere on the album. "I think Little Kingdom is officially a better record than the first record, but I can still hear the breeziness of the first record," he reflects. "It has an ease that maybe I only hear because I made it, but it is an ease that I appreciate and long for."

Because Citay's music is fundamentally Feinberg's vision, the creative process doesn't operate like other similar-sounding, multi-instrumental bands that work as collectives. "I think of a collective more as a democratic thing, where Citay is more of a fascist state," says Feinberg. "I'm a friendly dictator." No doubt Feinberg took a few cues from another friendly dictator, Piano Magic's Glen Johnson. Piano Magic is known for its ever-changing lineup, with Johnson remaining the only constant member of the band. At the age of 20, Feinberg spent six months playing with Piano Magic and found in Johnson a musical mentor. "It was an inspiring thing to be a part of," he says. "Musically, Glen is coming from a totally different place than me but I think that he is always working, is always a part of a community and he's obsessed with music—that's what gets him up in the morning."

Even the band's name, inspired by a mix tape Feinberg made, reflects his creative control. The mix consisted entirely of songs where the vocalists sing "SIH-tay" instead of pronouncing city the normal way—think Stevie Wonder, Journey, Foghat, etc. "When I named it 'Citay,' I never thought it would go anywhere," admits Feinberg. "Had I known that it was going to reach anyone beyond my friends, I may not have named it that, but I don't regret naming my band Citay. That's the name, love it or leave it."

As for his adopted home, Feinberg finds it easy to fit into the San Francisco music community, especially compared to fragmented music communities in vast cities like New York and London. In addition to bands like Vetiver and Six Organs of Admittance (they've toured with both), Feinberg is a fan of all of his bandmates' other projects, which include 3 Leafs, The Dry Spells, Meridians, and, of course, The Fucking Champs. He tells me, "The music scene here is really special because it's so diverse and people really know what's going on in the world of music of all kinds, and yet it manages to be small and kind of intimate and cozy."

For now, the band looks forward to their upcoming national tour, which will bring them to bigger venues and more cities than their last. Citay's future will almost certainly include a third album, but Feinberg doesn't know when or exactly how it will be made. "I always have ideas floating around, but I'm not like one of these songwriters that has 5,000 songs written and recorded and can sort of select forever," confesses Feinberg. "I write and record as I go and when a record comes out, that's everything I have from that time."

Citay will open for Oakland favorites Heavenly States at the latter's album release show at the Independent on 3/7.

For more information on Citay visit http://www.myspace.com/citay07

—Jess Hemerly, 2008

IDFTF: Institute for Doing the Future [IFTF]

2007-09-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Institute for the Future, September 23, 2007 [Link]

David Pescovitz, Mike Love and I joined Bob Johansen at SQUID Labs today, where Bob talked about IFTF, our foresight/insight/action mantra, and his book, Get There Early. SQUID Labs is a unique breeding ground for innovation with a social bent.

David Pescovitz, Mike Love and I joined Bob Johansen at SQUID Labs today, where Bob talked about IFTF, our foresight/insight/action mantra, and his book, Get There Early. SQUID Labs is a unique breeding ground for innovation with a social bent. From their website:

At SQUID Labs we develop breakthrough technologies and find solutions to unique engineering problems. Our exceptional team has expertise in a wide range of technical fields: from chip design and electronics to robotics, materials, embedded systems and manufacturing. We have created a highly dynamic and creative work environment which helps to inspire our consulting and contract research efforts.

In the course of our work (and play) we have developed novel and diverse technologies for a wide range of applications including printed electronics, lens molding, and high performance kites.

SQUID Labs is characterized by our multidisciplinary skill set and our ability to combine those diverse skills to create novel solutions.

"We're not a think tank, we're a do tank"

While we at IFTF spend most of our time thinking about the future, the guys over at SQUID Labs are doing the future. IFTF is about foresight; SQUID Labs is about action. As one of the SQUID guys said today, you might think of them as the Institute for Doing the Future.

A great example of something to come out of their work is a SQUID spinoff company, Potenco. SQUID Labs co-founder Colin Bulthaup is the company's CEO. Their product is a pull-cord generator, intended for use with the XO Laptop (One Laptop Per Child Project). Check out their website for the specs. It's a great solution to the problem of providing electricity to places that lack an energy infrastructure.

One of the most interesting things that came out of today was an understanding of how the two organizations could really work together. We would be able to provide an idea of what areas or technology or engineering will present problems or dilemmas potentially needing solutions, and the SQUID Labs team could take cues from our forecasts to start working on these solutions before the problems really become problems.

They also happen to have a very cool location, in the control tower on the Alameda Naval Air Station.

— Jess Hemerly, September 2007

Real World GarageBand [MacTribe]

2007-06-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

MacTribe, June 2007

DIY finds some help.

Studio time, marketing, promotion, pressing, packaging, distribution... all of these things require money and inside connections for up-and-coming musicians. But as technology advances and the phrase "famous on the Internet" begins to translate to dollars, do-it-yourself (DIY) musicians find more ways to work effectively outside of the music industry's traditional system. Enter Apple's GarageBand. This application has become a creative catalyst for everyone from the average tinkerer to the signed artist. From full album production to long-distance collaboration to sketching new songs on the road, Apple's music editing application has given new meaning to the term "garage band," allowing the company to further entrench itself in the music industry.

A perfect example of the DIY band, Los Angeles-based Bastard Fairies put their entire album together in one week using GarageBand. The band picked up Fisher Price toys from thrift stores to add texture to the music, threw in some socially conscious lyrics, stitched everything together in GarageBand, and offer the album as a free download. Band member Robin Davey loves the simplicity of the program and believes it served as an enabler for the band. "It's the quickest way to get your ideas down," he says. "Once you actually open it up and realize how quickly you can build a track it definitely enables that creative process and takes away the need for expensive studios and things like that. Everything is there in one package."

The Fairies advertised their free album on YouTube with videos assembled in Final Cut Pro. One of the videos, a "commercial" for the album, featured an eight-year old girl talking about the perils of religion and the failures of an educational system that pushes religion instead of empathy. The video quickly became popular on YouTube, and criticism from Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly unexpectedly boosted the DIY band's exposure. "People grabbed hold of [the video] and, because it was tagged at the end with the Bastard Fairies website, they discovered the album there," says Davey. "That led to it being most subscribed on YouTube."

Despite the popularity, the Bastard Fairies chose to keep with the DIY spirit and not profit off of the album in the wake of their celebrity status. They will offer a special version with five extra tracks and a bonus DVD for purchase, but the original album will always be free for download. "Because the album was done on a budget of about $10 there's no reason why we can't give it away," he says. "There's no one to tell us that we can't and also if we do that, people are going to download it. We're going to generate fans." Thanks to Apple's technology, they were able to successfully retain full control over the entire process, from recording to distribution and promotion.

Like cassette culture of the '80s, GarageBand is a way for new artists to record a demo, but unlike the '80s cassette culture, social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube allow artists to self-release and build a fan base before finding their way to the airwaves. An existing fan base gives them an advantage when it's time to shop for a label. "We're in this stage where you can do so much more by yourself and I think it's very empowering to be able to record yourself," says singer/songwriter Ari Heist. "As a musician, it's such a key thing because otherwise you'd be spending a whole lot of money to get other people to do it for you." Heist produced and recorded his 2006 EP, "The Green Room Sessions," in his Brooklyn apartment. He played every single instrument on the album—a feat in itself—and assembled the pieces with GarageBand. Unlike the Fairies, however, Heist has been signed to a major label, Columbia, for a few years. "I'm not the first to do this, but I'm really excited about it," he says, taking a break after performing at SXSW. "I use it all the time."

Even artists who don't record entire albums with the software find it a useful part of the creative process. Singer/songwriter Jann Klose uses GarageBand in conjunction with ProTools and Logic to collaborate on songs with his keyboardist. "When there’s a new song idea I usually dump it right into GarageBand," he says. Unlike Logic and Pro Tools, which consist of folders within a file, GarageBand creates a single all-inclusive file, making it easier for artists at different locations to collaborate. And since GarageBand files can be opened in Logic without needing conversion, Jann will open it up there in order to generate and print the arrangements for other parts of the ensemble. "My keyboardist and I go back and forth with the file and we can work on adding strings in MIDI thanks to the new MIDI capability in GarageBand."

GarageBand's ease of use combined with the portability of Mac laptops make it a great application for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they happen. For a touring musician, this is often the bus, the bar, or backstage. Adam Merrin of The 88 depended on GarageBand for the drums on his solo album, but his band, recently featured on the popular television show "The OC," also uses the application when they're on tour. "I remember being on the road and using it to record ideas while we were in the car," he says. "We can just open up the laptop and start creating melody ideas on it."

Apple's recent forays into music have proven incredibly successfully, and GarageBand is no exception. The program has already become popular with average Mac users who just like to geek out and play. Many companies also offer loops for users to download and manipulate. Communities on the Internet like MacJams and iCompositions provide forums for fans of the GarageBand to upload loops and tracks and share them with other members of the community. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has even gotten into the GarageBand spirit. He periodically releases tracks as GarageBand files and encourages user remixes. Since GarageBand is so easy to use, theoretically anyone can make music.

But could GarageBand make it too easy for anyone with a Mac and a mouse to have delusions of rock star grandeur? "No," says Adam Merrin. "The song is still the most important thing. It’s very easy and inexpensive for people to put out their own records but the best stuff is always well written." Robin Davey agrees there's no hope without some idea of what a song is all about. "That's the essential thing: the song that you start with," he says. "Without that you're not going to get anywhere."

As a viable option to expensive studio time, GarageBand will help good do-it-yourself artists emerge on little to no budgets. But unlike "American Idol," which offers the hope of three minutes of fame even if you sing like a jackal, some semblance of musical talent and a sense of creativity is a prerequisite for getting anywhere with the music you create, even in GarageBand. Still, the consensus is that it's worth digging into and exploring what GarageBand has to offer. "I couldn’t recommend it more," says Merrin. "The fact that it comes installed with all the Mac computers is the coolest thing of all." Robin Davey sees it as part of a trend in technology making artists more self-reliant. "I think that the more and more computers evolve, the easier it gets for artists to put their creativity down."

But while GarageBand won't replace the studio any time soon its rise is certainly not good news for everyone. Heist believes an easy and affordable program like GarageBand negatively impacts smaller independent studios who rely on the business of small up-and-coming bands. "You see a lot of studios going out of business, a lot of studios that were once very sought-after and had really nice stuff to offer, but you can create something that's as good or almost as good in your own home," he says. "It's a no brainer. You won't want to spend that much money everyday to go to a studio."

Jan Klose sees its accessibility as nothing but positive. "If you’re creative there’s a lot of things you can do with it right off the bat. The main thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get it since it comes with iLife and new Macs. The fact that it’s so fun and easy to use makes it an obvious choice."

Time will tell whether or not GarageBand will have a lasting impact on the music industry, but it's clear for now that Apple fortifies its place in the music scene with this DIY-inspired application. Combined with the ability to build a following on the Internet, GarageBand has the potential to revolutionize an entire segment of the digital music industry.

— Jess Hemerly, 2007

Book Review: Revolution on Canvas [Chord]

2007-06-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Chord, Issue 43, June 2007

The second installment of Revolution on Canvas may amount to Chicken Soup for the Tortured Soul, but in the end, reading is better than cutting.

Revolution on Canvas, Volume 2: Poetry from the Indie Music Scene
Edited by Richard Balling
Warner Books

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby suffers the disillusionment of realizing the American Dream only to find himself feeling more hollow and empty than ever before. Jay largely suffers this experience silently and even the denouement-shattering epiphany of his last scene is wordless. Presumably, the emotions of Bobby Darling of Gatsbys [sic] American Dream are more finely wrought and therefore explicable in print. Unfortunately, like the rest of the writing in Revolutions on Canvas Volume 2, Darling's poem is mercilessly melodramatic, with a banal metaphor that warrants expulsion from any serious poetry workshop. The collection of poetry and fiction from various names in the indie music scene takes itself entirely too seriously. I didn't laugh or cry or feel anything deep down in my soul, but I did roll my eyes. A lot. I also found myself cursing Charles Bukowski and E.E. Cummings until I remembered that it's not their fault they spawned a generation of imitators who think anything with random line breaks, misused punctuation, and sensory language constitutes "poetry."

There's no shortage of irony in this anthology, starting with the editor's stated intent to make poetry accessible to the apathetic. It calls itself a survey of indie music, but some of the best indie lyricists of today—Dave Berman, Mark Kozelek, Colin Meloy, to name a few—are nowhere to be found. Instead, with work from people like Fall Out Boy's Peter Wentz and A Static Lullaby's Joe Brown, this book gives hope to kids scribbling bad poetry in notebooks that one day they, too, will be published poets. That said, people love this sort of stuff—it's how the emo corner of the indie rock world became popular in the first place. The second installment of Revolution on Canvas may amount to Chicken Soup for the Tortured Soul, but in the end, reading is better than cutting.

Interview with David Pescovitz [MacTribe]

2007-04-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

MacTribe, March 2007 [Links to Part 1 and Part 2]

David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this first of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his work at the Institute for the Future and MAKE: magazine.

MacTribe: Tell me about the Institute for the Future.

David Pescovitz: It's a non-profit think tank in Palo Alto that's been around since the late 60s. It spun out of RAND Corporation where some computer scientists and researchers were doing forecasting work but it was classified. They wanted to take the methodologies they were using and apply them in a more public way. So they formed the Institute. We help companies, governments, foundations, and other organizations think about the long-term future, often five to ten years out, and how developments in technology and culture may impact people's lives. Then based on that foresight they can hopefully make better decisions today.

MT: So there's some corporate responsibility stuff?

DP: We don't have a specific agenda that we're pushing. I'm part of the Technology Horizons Program where we look at everything from info tech all the way to synthetic biology, nanotech, neuro-prosthetics and brain implants, smart drugs, advanced simulations, these kind of things. The Institute also has a Ten-Year Forecast Program Program that focuses on discontinuities not just in tech but also in economics, health, and many other areas. Then we have a Health Horizons Program that focuses on the global health economy, medical technologies, and related societal forces.

MT: How do you come up with your forecasts?

DP: Nobody can predict the future, and we always tell people, "Don't believe anyone who says they can, especially if they're from California." The good news is that you don't have to predict the future. We look for what we call "weak signals." A weak signal could be a business deal; it could be a scientific paper that was published, or some kind of innovation or scientific breakthrough. When you look at these weak signals and combine them together as a complex ecology of interesting points, it's possible to find patterns and intersections and get a sense of where things may be headed. The future is a cone of uncertainty. The close you are, the clearer things are. But the further out you look, the foggier, the more uncertain, the future becomes. So using a variety of methodologies, we try to narrow that cone of uncertainty. So we do interviews, we do expert workshops where we bring in smart people from different fields to think about the future with us—scientists and journalists and researchers—and we read a lot of papers, we do ethnography. Several of my colleagues have spent time in Russia and South America and China hanging out with families and seeing how they use technology and how they live. So if you synthesize all of that together, it's possible to create a forecast, which we define as an "internally consistent, plausible view of what could happen."

MT: So in a strange way it's like informed science fiction?

DP: Science fiction is more like scenario planning, where you make up a very specific story of what could happen. That's one of the things we do but not the only thing. For example, one of my colleagues, Jason Tester, makes artifacts from the future, which are like physical objects that don't yet exist but embody some kind of technological trend. It helps people understand how the technology of the future might impact their lives. The idea really is to get people thinking systematically about the long-range future. I want people to participate in the conversation about the future so that they can help create the future that they want.

MT: Are a lot of corporations your partners?

DP: We have many large companies as our clients, and also governments, and other institutions. Last year, I contributed to a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Innovation where we took a broad look at how science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. A half-century is a very long time, so that was incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. One of the outcomes is an online forum of 100 outlook pages exploring a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies, from dark energy to climate change to technologies of cooperation to ecosystem modeling to programmable materials. In December, the forecast forum was opened to the public.

MT: And how have IFTF's predictions held up?

DP: We don't make predictions. We make forecasts.

MT: Right, forecasts.

DP: So we're the only futures organization that actually outlived its forecasts. We've done reasonably well. Some of the founders were actually involved in the ARPANET project that led to the Internet, and developed pioneering teleconferencing systems, and so we were spot on in terms of things like teleconferencing and groupware, which isn't unlike a wiki. One trend we missed was the popularity of SUVs.

MT: Oh really?

DP: We expected that by now people would have been driving much more fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead the pendulum swung the other way. Maybe it's swinging back.

MT: How long have you been working with the Institute?

DP: I've been working with the Institute in various ways—as an affiliate researcher and now as a part-time research director—for about a year and a half.

MT: That sounds very cool.

DP: It's an amazing job and I feel very fortunate to work with the people I do. It's also similar to journalism in a way. The reason I became a journalist was because there were too many things that interested me to pick one field. And at the Institute, if I'm curious about something or spot an unusual signal of some kind, I can research it and ask the experts to help me understand it. Then I get to do the synthesis to try and figure out what I might mean.

MT: That is fun.

DP: It's sort of like grad school but you get paid for it.

MT: And you don't really have to answer to anybody.

DP: Well we answer to the clients but a lot of the time our forecasts may not necessarily be pleasing to them either. And that's okay. Our aim is to provoke.

MT: So how did you get into working with MAKE: magazine?

DP: MAKE: is a DIY tech projects magazine published by O'Reilly Media. The Editor-in-Chief is Mark Frauenfelder, who is my best friend and my co-editor at BoingBoing. He was involved very early on and then me into the fold. I've been having a great time. And again, the work at MAKE: really is a natural fit with the main thing I've always been interested in, how people can use technology to empower themselves. MAKE: also has threads that lead back to the Whole Earth Review and the 60s counterculture and the personal computer revolution and hacking. It's people taking control of the tools that are around them and making those tools work they way they want. The founder and publisher of MAKE:, Dale Dougherty and I, have become close friends in part because we share this sense of wonder about how the world works. The satisfaction comes from knowing and learning and, of course, doing.

MT: Do you ever try to make some of the stuff?

DP: [laughs] You'd have to ask my wife if I ever succeed. Sadly, I don't have as much time as I would like to make things. My excuse is that I make words. I just have such a huge appreciation for the people who actually are making things.

MT: What are some of the coolest projects you've seen?

DP: Last year in April, we held a big Maker Faire where 20,000 people came to the San Mateo Fairgrounds and more than 150 makers presented their projects. It was really a celebration of DIY and the maker mindset. There were so many projects there that I liked. There was a great one where this recycling group made a supercomputer by networking together a bunch of outdated old PCs and powered the whole thing on a vegetable oil generator they made [EcoGeek link]. We're having another Bay Area Maker Faire in May this year and then one in Austin in November.

MT: That's cool.

DP: Yeah, the Maker Faire is pretty incredible. I have a secret love for robots, and there were a lot of interesting robots attending the Faire. I like it when people convert old junk into robots. We had a project in MAKE: on how to make Mousey the Junkbot, a little mobile robot built from an old computer mouse. [MAKE: editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder recently appeared on The Colbert Report and he brought Mousey the Junkbot to show Stephen Colbert. Video here.]

MT: Did you try that one?

DP: No but I plan to when my son's a little older. The fact is that a lot of people who read MAKE: may not necessarily make the projects in it. Many do, but a lot probably don't. I think that reading about how people do things and what astounding projects they've made is inspiring for anything that you do. It's really exciting to see what people are capable of making.

Part 2

David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this second of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his interest in technology, Boing Boing, and the success of Apple.

MacTribe: Where did your interest in technology and its potential to empower people begin?

DP: I was always very interested in science and understanding how the world works. In the very early '80s I got involved in personal computers. I'm sure your audience will appreciate that my first computer—well actually my first computer was a Texas Instruments, they probably don't appreciate that—but for my Bar Mitzvah I got an Apple II. And it didn't do anything interesting when you turned it on; there was just this blinking cursor. So one option was to buy software like games or other programs on a floppy, but those were expensive. Instead, we learned to program in BASIC and made our own games. I think that that something is lost today now that the computers have a curtain hiding the secret codes that make them work.

MT: When did you first go online?

DP: Once I got a modem in 1983, I became active on computer bulletin board systems and the weird information I could find there, mostly silly pirate and anarchist cookbook type stuff. In high school, I was also involved in 'zines and the punk scene. Then in college, I began writing about music and the counterculture. Around the time that I graduated, I became aware of a movement in San Francisco emerging at the intersection of counterculture and personal computers and drugs and music and young people empowering themselves with technology. I was already fascinated with San Francisco's history of avant garde art and industrial culture, so news of the emerging cyberculture was like a magnet and it brought me out here.

MT: Is that what you envisioned getting into as a kid?

DP: When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an engineer and go to MIT. For whatever reason, I blew off math in high school and my interests shifted. But I don't really have any regrets. Engineers often spend five or ten years on one or two problems and I think that would drive me crazy. I get to hop from one thing to the next at a moment's notice, following my curiosity wherever it takes me.

MT: I feel like the intellectuals in the Bay Area here are really the technology geeks and thinkers, whereas on the east coast the intellectuals are all about more “traditional” intellectual interests.

DP: There's definitely a culture of technological creativity, innovation, and experimentation in San Francisco. I think it survives whether the technology economy is bubbling or not. Money comes, money goes, but people continue to do “strange things with electricity," as the Dorkbot slogan goes. So the Bay Area is a fantastic place for someone like me who is constantly seeking novelty.

MT: That's why I like writing. You also don't have to commit to something for five years and see it fail but you do get to be a sort of participatory observer.

DP: Honestly, I don't even really like to write. I think I'm okay at it, but I much prefer to go out and meet people and learn interesting things from them. Of course, at some point I have to sit down and actually write about what I've learned. But I suppose that's also a good thing to do because if people hopefully read what I've written then I've done my part in sharing the knowledge too.

MT: Since you've been an Apple fan since the very beginning, how do you feel Apple's sudden success in the last couple years?

DP: I've been using an Apple since '82 so I literally grew up with them. In fact, when I still had my Texas Instruments computer, I drew an Apple logo on an index card and taped it to the top. I think it's amazing how successful Apple has become by paying attention to things like design and aesthetics, which other companies didn't seem to be caring much about. My friend Doug Rushkoff talks about the fact that advertising in the traditional sense doesn't work anymore because we're all clued in on the ways that companies try to coerce us. The only way you can really advertise a product is by making the product itself an advertisement for itself. I think that Apple does that extremely well.

MT: Are you going to get an iPhone?

DP: My Treo screen just cracked and June can't get here soon enough for me.

MT: What makes people so insanely passionate about their Macs?

DP: I wouldn't say I'm insanely passionate about Apple, but I do like most of their products. For me, the computer is just a tool, and the tool that I happen to like is made by this particular company. But I don't identify myself by the brand of computer that I use. I think that the Apple fan, literally someone who is fanatical about the company, really isn't that different from someone who is incredibly passionate about the car she drives or the brand of clothes that he wears. The brand becomes part of their identity. It embodies their lifestyle. What's more interesting to me is what people make with their tools, and Macs allow you to make a lot of very interesting things. That’s not to say that Apple isn’t without its problems,
particularly around their copy protection strategy in iTunes. However I was delighted to hear that Steve Jobs recently seems to be changing his, er, tune on DRM.

MT: I think the difference between somebody who's really fanatical about a brand of car and someone who's really fanatical about a brand of computer is that it's actually the thing that they're fanatical about that connects them to the place where they can be fanatical.

DP: That's a great insight. Is there a comparable fanaticism surrounding Windows?

MT: I haven't seen it but people claim it exists.

DP: You'd have to look at our stats, but I think around a quarter of our readers use Macintosh. [He's right about the stats, 23.8% of Boing Boing's visitors are on Macs.]

MT: Speaking of Boing Boing… how did it come about?

DP: Boing Boing is the blog that I co-edit with Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and Cory Doctorow. John Battelle is our band manager. Mark and his wife Carla Sinclair started bOING bOING as a print zine in the late 1980s. It was a photocopied zine about fringe culture, underground art, pranks, and that sort of thing. When I was in college, I absolutely loved bOING bOING. Then, shortly after I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to attend grad school at Berkeley, I started writing for Wired. That was around the third or fourth issue of Wired, I think. Mark was working at Wired and I introduced myself to him right away, bOING bOING had an office downstairs from Wired that it shared with a couple of other magazines. Mark brought me down to meet Carla and we became fast friends. They assigned me an article about the revival of Goth for the next issue of bOING bOING and then I became a contributing editor. Mark also created a Boing Boing Web site where we posted some archived articles and other random stuff. I worked on a few issues after that but it had become such a hassle to deal with distributors who owed you like $10 or whatever that Mark and Carla decided not to do the print edition any longer. So we started posting articles online that we wanted to write but couldn't find a home for anywhere else. For example, I wrote an article about people who drilled holes in their heads to achieve enlightenment.

MT: How did it become a proper blog?

DP: When Blogger was first developed, Mark tried it out for an article he was writing and converted Boing Boing to a blog. This was in January of 2000 and he started blogging pretty regularly, just very short descriptions of links he found interesting. When Mark went on vacation, he asked Cory Doctorow, whose science fiction he liked, to be the guest blogger. Cory stayed on and then I started blogging too but not nearly as often as those guys. We also had guest bloggers, including Xeni. Our readers liked her posts so much that we just asked her to be a permanent fixture. What's amazing is that at its biggest, bOING bOING the print 'zine was probably read by maybe 20,000 people, and now more than a million folks read the site every day. So Boing Boing is the overnight success that took almost twenty years. I like to imagine what it would be like if all the Boing Boing readers lived in one place. It'd probably be a very surreal city.

MT: And a little scary, for sure.

DP: But we all have our different reasons and mindsets about posting. For me, Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosities. Those were the predecessors to modern day museums. In the Victorian era, people would have these cabinets or even entire rooms devoted to unusual, natural, and man-made artifacts that they collected—strange coral formations, two-headed animals in jars, exotic weapons, weird plants, scientific specimens, that sort of thing. I love that whole mindset because it's really about appreciating the wonder of the world. So Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosity for me. I put things in it that I come across or that our readers are kind enough to share with me. I collect them there, on Boing Boing.

MT: Do you guys all sort through the submissions yourselves?

DP: Yes, the submissions go to all of us. And we get hundreds every day.

MT: Do you talk about who's going to post what?

DP: This surprises some people but we almost never talk about what we're going to post. In fact, we almost never have meetings of any kind. I think we've all been in the same room maybe five times. Ever. And we've probably been on the phone all together less than a dozen times. So the conversations between us on email are very rarely about editorial. They're more about formatting issues, technical glitches, or whether we want to accept a particular advertiser, but never about editorial plans.

MT: And you've never blogged the same thing?

DP: Oh yeah, we've blogged the same things many times. And then one person will notice it and say, "Hey, so and so already blogged that an hour ago," and then you just take it down.

MT: But you all do sort of have your own beats, right?

DP: Again, beats have never ever been discussed. We just have our own interests that we pursue and you can watch them change over time by looking at what we post. Of course, there are some obvious themes that are ongoing like Cory's copy-fight activism and Disney, Mark's interest in mid-century illustration and animation, Xeni's interest in technology in developing nations and alternative sex practices, and I'm obviously deep into weird science and strange phenomenon. And, um, Bigfoot. What I think is amazing is that there are so many people who share at least some of those interests with us. Not very long ago, it was tough if you didn't live in a huge metropolitan city to find people who shared some of the strange or obscure interests that you might have. A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." Boing Boing helps me do that.

— Jess Hemerly, 2007

Low: Delight Us With Silence [Chord]

2007-04-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

Chord [site is down], Issue 42, April 2007

The band's dirge-like percussion, grinding, minimal guitars, long harmonic vocal phrases, and emotional lyrics resulted in a sound so different that it prompted a friend of Sparhawk to coin the term that has followed them throughout their career. "We played our first shows here in Duluth and this friend of ours who worked in a record store was always joking around about the intricacies of the music scene and he said ‘I got it! You should call it Slowcore!’" Sparhawk reminisces.

When Alan Sparhawk started Low, he had no idea that nearly fourteen years later they would still be making records. "We were just kind of fiddling around and we had no ambitions at all," says the frontman. "The next thought was that we’d do a show and see what kind of adverse reaction we’d get out of people. It was very much dictated that we’re gonna play really slow music that’s barely there and see how little we can get away with." But they began to realize the possibilities of the style and it caught on with fans. Now, on the brink of their fourteenth year of playing haunting, minimalist music with his wife Mimi Parker, they're set to release a new album on SubPop, Drums and Guns.

The band's dirge-like percussion, grinding, minimal guitars, long harmonic vocal phrases, and emotional lyrics resulted in a sound so different that it prompted a friend of Sparhawk to coin the term that has followed them throughout their career. "We played our first shows here in Duluth and this friend of ours who worked in a record store was always joking around about the intricacies of the music scene and he said ‘I got it! You should call it Slowcore!’" Sparhawk reminisces. "It was a total joke and I think I mentioned it at one of our interviews." The tag stuck. They don't hate it but they do find it amusing. "You gotta have those tags I guess. I think that there are worse things to be called."

Their style has deeper roots than trying to shake things up in Duluth. Like many musicians, Sparhawk learned more about music in church than anywhere else. "Anyone who’s grown up going to church regularly with their family ends up singing those hymns and for some kids that’s the only singing you do throughout the week except for maybe some singing in school during the week." Alan was raised as a Mormon and his father, a jazz musician, often enlisted him up to sing for the congregation. "We’d loathe doing it but I look back and I realize that here were some semi-sophisticated things we learned from doing that," he says. "Harmony, breathing, holding notes, enunciation… those songs move slowly and there’s very long phrasing." That style has come to define Low's vocals.

The trio teamed up again with the producer of their 2005 rock-and-reverb infused album, The Great Destroyer, but Drums and Guns is nothing like their last outing with the David Friddman, the producer known as "the Fifth Flaming Lip." "David is a good producer," says Sparhawk. "He lets the band breathe and helps you push yourself. There was a lot of conversation homework, a lot of phone calls before we went in to record, just kind of me rambling and mumbling about whatever my concerns were and by the time we got to the studio he at least had me figured out a little bit and help us get on the right track and find what we were looking for."

Low is back from their adventure in rock with the new album, but this time they took a different approach in the studio than they have in the past. "You can hear drum machines and loops and there’s more dabbling in mechanical things," says Sparhawk. "We kind of assembled the record like a hip hop record." It's a departure from their usual method of sitting down in the studio, playing the songs as if playing for an audience, and fleshing them out as they go along. "After all these years I just sort of know all the patterns we’d fall into if we just do that so we decided to not do it that way," he says.

Sparhawk and Parker will tour this spring in support of the new album with current bassist Matt Livingston (also the bassist in a Sparhawk side project, Retribution Gospel Choir), but with one of their two children now in school, the future calls for changes. Sparhawk admits, "It’s getting more and more difficult to work out scheduling for touring." Regardless of whether or not they decide to really settle down, they will never give up music altogether. "It seems like music is just part of us," he says. "It’s kind of what our family has become and I think we’ll always have something that we’re doing in that realm."

For now, Low fans can relish Drums and Guns as a study of what has kept this band unique throughout the years. "There’s definitely a couple songs that, as far as recordings and stuff," says Sparhawk, "I definitely think are the strongest things that we've done."

— Jess Hemerly, April 2007

Readers Write: Can Apple and the Tech Industry Be 'Green'? [AlterNet]

2007-02-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

AlterNet, February 3, 2007 [Link]
Response to "Apple Computers: Fun For You, Toxic for the Environment", by AlterNet staff, with my response at the end.

Our readers questioned whether Apple deserved its low environmental rating from Greenpeace and what can be done to green the tech industry.

These days technology is so much a part of our lives that we sometimes forget to think about where it comes from -- and importantly, where it goes when we are done with it. This week we published a story by Jess Hemerly about Apple computers, which was recently ranked by Greenpeace at the bottom of the list of eco-friendly tech companies.

The story elicited a number of passionate responses from readers, some of whom felt the folks at Mac were unfairly targeted considering the rest of the industry's track record.

Greenman wrote:

Apple is certainly no worse than its peers, and is better than some, regarding the environment. Seriously, the idea that any computer is good for the environment is pretty crazy. There's nine times as many PC's as there are Apples in the trash heaps of the world, and there's not a nickel's worth of difference between an Apple carcass and a Dell carcass, I'd wager, in terms of harm to the environment.

As other posters have pointed out, what is needed for electronics and computers -- especially -- and for all products in general, is a pricing system that would include "cradle to grave" provisions for mitigating harm to the environment for the entire life of the product. Everything would quickly become of much higher quality, would last longer, and would be more expensive, too. That's the kind of carrot-and-stick regulation that government could impose, but doesn't for all the grubby reasons we are all too familiar with these days.

Other people also mentioned the issue of durability and thought that Apple's lifespan should be taken into consideration -- arguing that people go through their PCs quicker than their Macs.

In her article, Hemerly compared Apple's environmental policy to that of Dell, citing Dell's recent commitments to providing free recycling to their customers worldwide and their recent "Plant a Tree for Me" campaign that allows consumers to pay an extra $2 for their computer purchase to go towards reforestation.

But one reader said that that Dell's efforts were more symbolism than actually productive environmental efforts. Thoughtcriminal wrote:

Just because Dell allows you to make a $2 donation to a 'plant a tree campaign..." -- that makes them a responsible greenwashed company? What's needed is a generalized government-regulated e-waste recycling industry that provides safe working conditions; you could simply place a small tax on all computer and electronics gear sold in the U.S. to help fund such a program.

I mean, go down to your nursery, buy some trees, and plant them yourself -- your $2 feel-good donation to Dell is nothing but green marketing (that you get to pay for!)

Several other readers also thought that since Apple was abiding by the laws, they shouldn't be singled out for punishment, but did suggest that this is a problem that should be addressed with federal regulation.

TheGrunger wrote:

Dell may be marginally better than Apple -- but neither one is going to bend over backwards to do what is right if it cuts too far into their bottom line.

While I think it is valuable to point out things like this, unless they are actually breaking the law I don't see any value in singling out Apple or any other company. We cannot expect corporations to do the right thing (in any situation, environmental or otherwise) if there are not strict regulations in place to punish them harshly for doing the wrong thing.

The problem is the entire corporate system and the weak regulatory laws of our government -- that is where we should focus our efforts. That is the only way to force companies like Apple to pay attention.

While some people felt that it was the government's job to legislate change, others found the article helpful in letting consumers know that they can begin demanding that Apple and other companies, start doing more to protect the environment.

Ghoulman, a Mac user, wrote: "I think all the right points are put out in this article. Computers, and electronics in general, are a dirty little landfill secret ... I'm glad someone is upping the environmental anti."

Likewise LarryGroff wrote:

I am also a long time Mac and PC user who is very concerned about the environmental impact of my computers. I would agree with those who take Jess Hemerly to task for not investigating thoroughly enough about Apple's environmental record and the superficiality and grandstanding of Greenpeace's Green my Apple campaign.

However, Apple is a large corporation whose business goals are far ahead of any other concern, to think otherwise is naive. Apple is not a movement regardless of how we might wish it so. But it is good that Apple is getting the green lights blasted on its facade as it may prod them to indeed move ahead and make their environmental decisions even more carefully and boldly if they fear that their reputation and popularity are at risk.

Hemerly herself, responded to our readers' comments and asked that we see the bigger picture intended in her piece.

She wrote:

First, I can assure you that I did very thorough research that included conversations with both Apple and Greenpeace. The Apple spokesperson I talked to was very friendly but there was little room for discussion because that's simply how the company operates. She walked me through their site and I read everything. I wrote my piece based on the information I was provided. If Steve Jobs wants to sit down with me and talk about environmental policy and the Greenpeace campaign, I will jump at the chance. As it stands, that hasn't been presented as an option. The spokesperson from Apple directed me to the Roughly Drafted site, which is a great spin on things but it is, like my own piece, one writer's conclusions. As the reader, you are your own filter and it's up to you to choose what you want to accept or dismiss.

I do not envision Steve Jobs as some evil king looking down on a polluted world from his gleaming white polymer spire. I do envision Apple as a company of innovation and one that has in its own words asked people to "Think Different." And now that Greenpeace has decided to turn it around and ask them to do the same, everyone is up in arms. Is it because Greenpeace is the organization doing the asking? Greenpeace is not hurting Apple. Apple continues to gain market share and turn in record profits as a result of the Halo Effect the iPod spawned. Greenpeace is simply asking a company that champions innovation to pitch in and be as innovative when it comes to the environment.

Michael Dell and his company were used in this piece to contrast Apple's tight-lipped attitude toward environmental policy. Dell is not perfect and neither is Apple, or Nokia, or Fujitsu, or any of the companies who make the devices we take for granted everyday. They all have serious faults and questionable practices when it comes to various aspects of business. But is Dell bringing green ideas to the table? Absolutely. And a table full of ideas is where change begins.

Yes, better regulations should exist, and so should a litany of regulations that require all companies, technology and otherwise, to do more to help the environment. But given the political climate of the United States right now, it's unlikely that any progress will be made here anytime soon. Thus, Greenpeace has been forced to turn its efforts toward something that can produce results. Have we become so jaded that we are willing to give any company a bye just because it's "business as usual"?

Of course, Apple is not the only company contributing to the e-waste mess. But they are the only company that makes beautiful machines that people are willing to shell out extra money to carry with them for reasons ranging from cool factor to basic operation. Is it really so crazy to ask them to make their beautiful machines cleaner than the rest, to really go out and set the standard? They are not the "little guy" anymore. They're a serious contender and that becomes more evident every time they gain a percentage of the PC market share.

You ask me, "Why Apple?" I ask you, "Why NOT Apple?"

In the end, there is no doubt that the technology we use is toxic -- and that more can and should be done to ensure that it is made and disposed of as safely as possible. It is always easier to point to someone else to take the responsibility for making that happen -- but whether we want the government to regulate it or companies to prioritize it -- it is still up to us to make that happen.

Apple Computers: Fun for You, Toxic for the Environment [AlterNet]

2007-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

AlterNet, January 30, 2007 [Link]

Apple positions itself as the technological haven for the hip, the progressive and the revolutionary. But when it comes to the environment, Apple is quite out of touch.

Before an audience of tech lovers, developers, and Mac enthusiasts, Steve Jobs unveiled the creation everyone has been speculating about for years: the iPhone. Fans hung on every word as the Apple CEO stood onstage during his keynote address at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Dressed in a black mock turtleneck, he told the rapt crowd about patents for polymers, innovative user interfaces and corporate partnerships.

Jobs went on for nearly two hours about how amazing and revolutionary his gadget will be. But he did not mention the company's environmental policy once.

Then again, who talks about environmental policy at an electronics fair? Michael Dell does. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas during the second week of January, the head of struggling Dell Computers raised the stakes for the entire PC industry: "I challenge every PC maker to join us in providing free recycling for every customer in every country ... all the time -- no exceptions," he said.

Jobs and the PR wizards at Apple have done a fantastic job of positioning the company as the technological haven for the hip, the progressive and the revolutionary. But when it comes to the environment, Apple is out of touch.

In December of 2006, Greenpeace released a report ranking the overall environmental policy of major technology companies. Dell was at the top but Apple found itself at the bottom. While top companies like Dell and Nokia have made great strides to eliminate the most toxic chemicals from their products and offer strong recycling programs, Apple has not.

"Today you can't recycle most of these products because you're recycling toxic waste," says Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxic Campaign. "We're looking at it from a complete life cycle approach, from where we make these to where they end up. Twenty to 50 million tons of e-waste a year end up in China; that [e-waste] is endangering to migrant families trying to remove a very small percentage of the materials for recycling."

Following the release of the report, Greenpeace launched "GreenMyApple," a full-force PR campaign complete with an informational website that impressively mimics Apple's website. Activists distributed flyers outside of the Moscone Center during the full week of Macworld Expo. The group also altered the video of the famous Steve Jobs keynote address, creating their fantasy version of the keynote in which Jobs would announce that Apple plans not only to step up their environmental policies but will make environmental responsibility a part of the company's identity.

To date, Apple has done only what is legally required. They are in compliance with RoHS standards ("the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment"), which were put in place in the European Union in July 2006. Pressure from environmental groups like the Computer Take Back Campaign combined with changing legal standards forced Apple to come up with a recycling program that at least looked like it was green -- but that's about it.

Apple refuses to make "green" part of their image. Just finding the environmental section on its website requires either a search of the site or knowing that "apple.com/environment" will get you there. Among all of the tabs in the navigation bar at the top of the pages, "Environment" is nowhere to be found. "As their website shows, green can be turned into greenwash," says Hind. "What we're talking about is measuring them based on toxics and recycling that is a serious physical problem."

Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet provided the official Apple response to the Greenpeace ranking and campaign: "We disagree with Greenpeace's rating and the criteria they chose. Apple has a strong environmental track record and has led the industry in restricting and banning toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium, hexavelent chromium, as well as many brominated flame retardants. We have also completely eliminated CRT monitors, which contain lead, from our product line. Apple desktops, notebooks, and displays, each score best in class in the new EPA ranking system EPEAT, which uses new international standards set by IEEE."

Apple contends that it is as green as it needs to be and supports that contention with the Silver medal it earned from the EPA's U.S. Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) back in July of 2006. But the sets of criteria used by Greenpeace and the EPA are very different.

For one, the EPA criteria apply to specific products and apply only to stateside programs. Greenpeace's criteria evaluate the company as a whole and are more critical. In a Jan. 12 article on IT Week's Green Business News, Scot Case, marketing director at EPEAT, said, "My initial reaction was that comparing the two systems was like comparing apples and oranges, but on closer inspection it is more like comparing apples and cows."

Yet Apple uses the EPEAT results to refute the Greenpeace grade. Obvious disparities aside, even though Apple did well by EPEAT standards, it still didn't earn a Gold medal. Shouldn't an industry leader strive to achieve the highest possible grade?

Through its "Think Different" campaign a few years ago, Apple positioned itself as the "alternative" computer manufacturer using pictures of idols ranging from Einstein to Gandhi. It targeted a particular segment of the consumer computer market, and to this day, many of its users remain loyal. Many of those users also happen to be socially, politically and environmentally conscious. Yet, Apple has been resistant to take the lead, and Jobs himself has been, at times, downright indignant.

In 2005, in the wake of criticism from environmental organization Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition, Jobs commented on Apple's being "singled out" and called it "bullshit." Barbara Kyle at the Computer Take Back Campaign, a group instrumental in the first push for Apple to establish a recycling program, says, "They're the company that 'thinks different.' We were puzzled all the way along with Apple's behavior."

Since Apple has only gone as far as it needs to, the company already has a lot of catching up to do in order to keep up with other companies in the market who make green policy a priority.

On Jan. 10, 2007, Dell announced that it had teamed up with the Conservation Fund and carbonfund.org to offer a program called "Plant a Tree for Me." When a new Dell computer is purchased, the consumer can opt to add an extra $2 to the cost of the computer. That money will be turned over by Dell to its environmental partners and be dedicated to reforestation. Dell also already offers free recycling of all of its old systems as well as other brands' systems to new Dell customers. Those not buying new Dell systems or recycling old ones can send their e-waste to Dell to be recycled for less than the California sales tax on a new MacBook: $10 per box under 50 lbs.

Compare Dell's program to that of Apple. Before 2005, Apple's recycling programs were virtually nonexistent. Recycling an old Mac meant finding other uses, like turning them into MacQuariums, iMacquariums, or, for G4 Cube owners, Cubequariums.

It has since developed recycling programs in the continental United States and only in foreign countries where mandated by law. It accepts computers only when you buy a new Mac from an Apple retail store or through Apple's online store, and the box you click before checkout is not easy to find.

"It's one thing to say that we're going to have another take-back program, but it's another to say that we're really going to try to make people use it," says Kyle. In addition to the poorly publicized recycling program, Apple is no longer making products to last. "Recycling should be the second thing you do after reusing and extending the life span," says Hind. "That is not an environmental obstacle, it's an intentional obsolescence designed to sell more products."

While Bill Gates publicizes his dedication to philanthropy and Michael Dell rolls out environmentally conscious policy after policy, Steve Jobs is prank-calling Starbucks with the iPhone. And now Greenpeace is calling Apple out on its hypocrisy.

"It's a great irony that the company that markets itself as revolutionary is actually the most reactionary on these policies compared to all of the other major companies," comments Hind. "If once a big user says 'I want it toxic-free,' the engineers and other suppliers are going to scramble to make that; they want that customer. It is crucial that the corporate policies of these companies take the lead."

It is the contradiction between image and action, though, that gives Greenpeace hope that Apple will eventually come around. "That kind of contradiction can't be sustained if you continue with that kind of marketing profile," says Hind. "They have a lot of customers who are critical thinkers, and they have a lot of future customers who are critical thinkers. Don't try to look green, be green."

Barbara Kyle is also hopeful. "If Apple is really willing to make the commitment and actually follow through with it on a number of things -- on takeback, on green design, on any number of things -- they have a chance to shape people's consumer behavior in a way that I think other companies are really challenged to do," says Kyle. "Apple can make this stuff cool."

— Jess Hemerly, 2007

MySpace Virtual Demo [MacTribe]

2007-01-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

MacTribe, January 2007 [Link Part 1 & Part 2], also appeared in MacTribe's first print edition.

How MySpace Connects Artists, Labels, and Fans

Teenagers adore it. Young adults use it to pass the time at lame desk jobs and track down people from their past. Predators use it to zero in on potential victims. Parents fear it more than any parent feared the Beatles and Elvis's gyrating hips combined, and other people just think it's a stupid waste of time and energy. So what could possibly make MySpace useful beyond worldwide Internet distraction?

Music, that's what.

Before the dawn of the Internet age, when everybody suddenly fancied themselves an expert in web site design, musicians looking to promote their work had to do so through analog means: demo tapes, flyers, performances at artist showcases, etc. And just because they got a gig or found an A&R exec who’d bite doesn’t mean they’d have the one thing that can keep a musician’s career going for a long time: fans.

The digital revolution made it easy to upload tracks to a server and put them on the Internet, where everybody has access to them. But band web pages required at least rudimentary HTML skills, and not everyone broke down and bought a copy of HTML for Dummies. Now, anybody with a few tracks, a computer, and an Internet connection can create a self-promotion music page thanks to the controversial juggernaut of a social networking site, MySpace.

A few months ago, I received a MySpace message from Karl Miles, a former high school classmate who I’ve been out of touch with for 7 years, asking me to go to his MySpace Music page and check out his tracks. He's starting a career as a solo folk artist and found me through the magic of MySpace. He wanted to know what I thought of his music so I went to his profile and listened to his tracks, played through the built-in mini player. Since he made them available for free I was also able to download them, save them to my computer, and play them for my friends.

Karl admits that part of the attraction to MySpace was its ease of use, having put off setting up a "real" site for far too long. And he doesn't subscribe to the delusion that MySpace will make him famous. "I find an open mic will generate more attention," he says. "It is more likely a person will hear about me some where else and check if I'm on MySpace." He certainly doesn't believe that MySpace is an easy way out of a musician's traditional struggle to be heard. "You still have to do leg work, play gigs," he says. "If you get a buzz outside MySpace maybe you can get one on MySpace. But I don't think MySpace will create one for you on its own."

Ezra Caraeff, owner of Portland-based indie label Slowdance Records, sees many bands are not as realistic as Miles. Instead they believe that a MySpace page and 400,000 friends is a quick ticket to Mick Jagger status. "I think a lot of bands think friends equal sales," he explains. "But those are the same bands who think emailing me to 'check them out' or 'you should sign us, we RoCk' [sic] is a good idea as well."

The problem with MySpace for many hopeful musicians is that the "adding friends" feature creates a false sense of audience, and with that false sense comes an inflated perception of fame. There are actually programs that crawl MySpace on a band’s behalf and add friends at random, an act equivalent to email spamming. "Since it's so lawless," says Caraeff, "it's a chance for these unknown bands to be on an even plane with known artists. Like, we don't have a record or play shows, but we have as many friends as Hoobastank." Caraeff also worries that the meaning of the word “friend” will be forever corrupted by the MySpace “friend” system.

Yet despite this grand delusion factor, Ezra's label insists that all of their artists have MySpace pages, most of which are maintained by interns. Even his label itself has a page, and Slowdance has used the bulletin feature to reach bands' audiences—although Ezra still thinks email blasts are more direct and consequently much more effective. A blog post on the profile—which touts the label as the "Best. Label. Ever."—begs musicians not to spam them with requests to listen to their tracks.

As the head of a label, Caraeff sees the proliferation of bands with little talent but a lot of friends as just another stage in the evolution of the music industry. "My brother used to work at Capitol Records and I remember going there when I was in like 10th grade and seeing crates of demos in this dumpster," he reminisces. "It's a very sobering thing. MySpace reminds me of that on a daily basis… so much delusion."

But not every band that’s active on MySpace is mired in delusion. One band that has found success via the Internet is Saosin, a post-hardcore band who got their start by posting tracks to a variety of Internet music forums. Their tracks caught on, and their first show was jammed with kids clamoring to see the band they'd heard on the Internet. They now have a deal Capitol Records and just finished their third Warped Tour.

Saosin maintains a MySpace page. In an interview with bassist Chris Sorensen he made it clear that the guys in the band actually use it. Part of the fun for Chris is the ability to listen to a band’s tracks on one page and then “go check out some hot babe’s page.” The band’s page boasts over 178,000 friends and actual band members answer messages.

Another up-and-coming band that actively uses MySpace is Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective, an Americana group from the San Diego area that tours widely all over California. Recently nominated for the title of Best American Band for the San Diego Music Awards, band member Louis Caverly says they use it for at least an hour every day when they’re not on the road. “MySpace is a community and for any community to work you have to talk to the people,” says Caverly. “It is pretty rad to talk directly with folks, be it potential fans or possibly a personal hero that you stumble upon.”

At first it just seemed like an easy place to upload tracks but Caverly now believes that it is a great tool to have in the arsenal as they build their career. They will solicit potential fans but not by using a “friend adder.” Instead, they take the time to surf the site for people with tastes that match their style and for bands that play a similar kind of music. For them, it’s really about logging on and making it work. “MySpace will help us to increase our audience because if you use it, it works.”

Shawn Hatfield, an experimental electronic musician in San Francisco, has a similar philosophy when it comes to reaching out through MySpace. "I already had a personal page and figured it would be a good place to give my fans access to information on upcoming projects and also a way for them to feel like they've had a personal connection with me that goes beyond just owning the CD or record," he says. Hatfield has had offers to play gigs overseas through MySpace and believes that MySpace has the potential to help him gain enough attention to score larger gigs.

But how realistic is it that the music industry sees these band pages as anything more than must-have novelties for their artists? Well, if an artist catches the eye of an active MySpace user who happens to work in A&R (artist and repertoire, in case you have always wondered what it stood for), it’s very realistic. And such A&R reps do exist. Tony Kiewel, head of A&R for indie label SubPop, is one active user who believes that MySpace is something more than just a project for interns or a collective unheard cry for attention. "I definitely look at it to hear new stuff both as a fan of music and as an A&R guy," he says. "If I like a band I'll look at their page and often times end up listening to their friends’ bands that they have in the top 10 or whatever that little list is." So there's no algorithm that converts MySpace friends to record sales but who a musician is connected to and how may lead to an important discovery by the right person.

Kiewell also relies on the site as a research tool and a quick way to zero in on what people are listening to. "You can't Google 'The Books' and find anything helpful about the band without some serious digging," Kiewell explains. “If I go to MySpace and do a band name search I can find them in seconds." And it's not just a band bio that you'll find; it’s an interactive page full of information. "I can hear them. I can see where they're from. I can see who they're fans of," says Kiewell.

And for musicians, the ability to check out who other musicians are into makes it an extremely useful networking tool. Solo artist Lia Rose experienced this first hand when one of her favorite indie musicians, Damien Jurado, left a comment on her MySpace music page. “I could hardly believe it, and of course returned the sentiment with a comment on his page,” she says. That comment led to an interesting chain of events for Rose. A member of a band in Holland, Winterbirds, found Rose’s comment on Jurado’s page and they added each other as friends. “After about a year of corresponding,” she tells me, “he gives me an internet music challenge by sending a song with just guitar and inviting me to write lyrics and melody and send some vocals back.” This correspondence turned into a project called Weatherkingdom that, naturally, has its own MySpace page too.

MySpace is more than just another venue for Internet voyeurism—it is actually a fantastic tool for labels, fans, and artists alike. “The real take-a-ways include finding other artists to play shows with, Internet radio stations to spin our songs, industry contacts, far away friends and folks that can help our career grow,” believes Louis Caverly. And the recent announcement that MySpace has teamed up with Snocap to allow artists to sell their tracks directly through MySpace pages will only make things more interesting. “I think it will be the great equalizer for those bands that hoard ‘friends,’” Caraeff contends. “They will soon find out the sobering results of 40,000 friends and $6.00 in total downloads.”

But will the day come when a label “discovers” a band through their MySpace page? "It's totally possible," Kiewell of SubPop predicts. "It hasn't happened yet but I bet it will soon.”

— Jess Hemerly 2007

The Dears: Critics of Cool [Chord]

2006-11-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

Chord [site currently down], Issue 40, November 2006

Gang of Losers is about the nerds, the individuals, the ones who are only uncool because they don't follow the herd. Aptly titled, it captures the experience of feeling like a loser, something even the cool kids can grasp.

If you ask The Dears' frontman Murray Lightburn what he thinks about the Canadian indie scene, he'll answer, "Why wasn't anyone asking about it ten years ago?" Maybe it's because a large chunk of the audience following today's surge of Canadian imports was still playing on jungle gyms ten years ago. "Canada is just a place," says Lightburn, but he adds, "The Dears have Canadian passports, for which we are truly grateful." It's no wonder, though, that Lightburn brushes the question off. His band is an aberration from saccharin-sweet pop embraced by today's popular Canadian indie bands. The Dears craft a unique sound from contemplative and dark lyrics layered over rich, orchestral compositions—and happen to hail from Montreal.

The sextet has also been at it for a lot longer than some of the other Canadian bands now popular in the United States and worldwide, but The Dears have remained largely under the radar. The core members of the band—Muray Lightburn, Natalia Yanchak, George Donoso, and Martin Pelland—have been working together for six years, when it first started as a sort of singer/songwriter vehicle for Lightburn. After a series of additional instrumentalists and guitarists who didn't quite fit, the complete lineup, which includes Valerie Jodoin-Keaton on keyboard and flute and Patrick Krief on guitar, has been together for two years. "The lineup we have now kind of feels like a 'forever' line up, very thick and thin," says Lightburn. "This lineup has been through the most shit together and even our road crew is like family. We would probably kill for each other."

While The Dears have been compared to Britpop bands like Blur and their frontman himself to Morrissey, the similarity is far from uncanny. He's not trying to emulate. He has taken something away from everything he's listened to, even the string and horn arrangements of Isaac Hayes tracks. "I think that in my case, music chose me—us, for that matter," says Lightburn. "Sometimes it's a blessing; other times, a curse." Like many musicians, Lightburn's relationship with music started at an early age. "The first song I remember barely singing was 'Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,'" he reminisces. "Apparently I made people cry. I was, like, five."

The impact he had on that church congregation may have been accidental, but the impact of his work today is not. Lightburn looked to achieve something that feels much more organic than the usual studio album that results from tweaking and splicing takes. Recorded in Lightburn's home, Gang of Losers is much more bare than No Cities Left, their acclaimed 2004 release, and 2000's End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story. Every song on the album is a single, continuous take of that track without edits or punch-ins. The texture on Losers comes partly from the intricate compositions, but also from the raw simplicity of the production process. It opens with "Sinthro," which sounds like the breakdown in an M83 track, and turns into a strong rock/pop album from track two on. The album is cohesive and successfully achieves Lightburn's goal.

Gang of Losers is about the nerds, the individuals, the ones who are only uncool because they don't follow the herd. Aptly titled, it captures the experience of feeling like a loser, something even the cool kids can grasp. He's frustrated by today's obsession with hip, a frustration succinctly captured by this bit from "Bandwagoneers": Heaven knows that I'm a freak / Heaven knows that we're all faking it. In the narrative "Ballad of Humankindness," Lightburn laments about the depressing state of nightly news and makes an appeal to humanity, crooning "I think it's time that we all learned forgiveness." Lightburn explains, "I write from a microscopically personal point of view because it's all I know. I vent because if I don't, my hands may wind up around some person's throat." The lyrics on Losers are poignant and sung beautifully in Lightburn's polished voice.

The music industry and the various scenes spawned from the way it functions seem to fuel his writing. His view of the industry is, in fact, rather grim. "Everyone is confused and no one knows what to like or what's any good. Majors, Indies, doesn't matter," he says. "The whole concept of the music industry is completely fucked. It's like a giant web that's been spun for a thousand years and we're all trapped. God help us." Could more bands like The Dears help break the industry's grim traditions? Let's hope.

— Jess Hemerly, November 2006

Portfolio Index

2006-11-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

[To be added]

Saosin [Chord]

2006-06-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Chord [site currently down], Issue 39A (Warped Tour Special Issue), June 2006

Saosin began with a grassroots Internet campaign where band members posted MP3s to music message boards. "We didn't whore ourselves out," says Sorensen. "We just made it so people heard the music and didn't even necessarily know who the band was." Their viral strategy worked. Their first show, part of a local showcase, sold out. Kids lined the front of the stage, mouthing the words to the songs.

If you're not sure how to pronounce Saosin, you're not alone. Even the band's five members fluctuate between pronunciations—sometimes it's "say ocean," sometimes "say oh sin." But according to bassist Chris Sorensen, knowing their music is more important than properly pronouncing the name, which former lead singer Anthony Green adapted from the Chinese word for "be careful," xiaoxin (the literal English translation is "small heart"). One thing is for certain, though: while the recording industry struggles to compete with technology, these SoCal-based rockers used it to launch a career.

Saosin began with a grassroots Internet campaign where band members posted MP3s to music message boards. "We didn't whore ourselves out," says Sorensen. "We just made it so people heard the music and didn't even necessarily know who the band was." Their viral strategy worked. Their first show, part of a local showcase, sold out. Kids lined the front of the stage, mouthing the words to the songs.

Now with a Capitol Records deal and a spot at Warped Tour for the second year in a row, Saosin is in the studio working on their first full-length album to complement their two existing EPs. "The only expectations they have are that we have a good record," says Chris. "They really work with what we have instead of coming to us with some cookie cutter 'this works' type scheme."

Even as they gain momentum, they haven't forgotten their cyber beginnings. Saosin's MySpace page boasts nearly 140,000 friends. "The coolest thing about MySpace is that you can listen to that band and then go check out some hot babe's page," Chris chuckles. They also want to see other talented bands succeed. Their web-based "Open for Saosin" contest put unknown bands on the bill with them. "It's cool that they earned that show," says Chris. "The bands that worked really hard to do it are the ones that are going to try and make it." They'd love to do it again in the future.

Between an unexpected spot on the main stage and managing the merch table, driving, and setup, Saosin was overwhelmed at Warped in 2005. But despite surviving on little sleep, Chris considers it a pivotal moment in their career. "I think that tour was, financially and as far as gaining fans and exposure, our biggest moment so far." This year they plan to hire some people and appreciate Warped. You might even see drummer Alex and lead singer Cove swinging at pitches in the MLB batting cage, but not Chris. His skills behind the plate pale in comparison to his skills on bass, and he's hostile to America's pastime. "I'm an anti-baseball fan, and you can tell that to the Major League guys."

- Jess Hemerly, June 2006

Tour Essentials: Moneen [Chord]

2006-06-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

Chord [site is down], Issue 39A (Warped Tour Special Issue, 2006)

The guys of Moneen are no strangers to the road. Fresh off the release of their second full-length album, The Red Tree, those in the know have flocked to Moneen's remarkable live performances for years. Moneen brings their emotionally loaded lyrics and the colossal dreads and potent sound of guitarist Chris "Hippy" Hughes—think My Bloody Valentine meets Minor Threat—to the MLB/Vagrant stage at this year's Warped Tour. Lead singer Kenny Bridges talks about three things you won't find the band without.

An arsenal of socks and underwear. With all of their experience on stage, you won't find the guys getting cold feet—or tolerating wet ones. "Soggy feet equal grumpy moods," says Kenny, "so socks are essential." Kenny admits, though, that rocking out commando is okay once in a while.

A butter knife. Forget the Swiss Army knife. The dull old butter knife is a necessity that you might need when you least expect it. And they're serious about it. "If we screw ourselves by not bringing a butter knife on tour again," Kenny threatens, "I swear I will quit the band." Just what they use it for remains a mystery, but apparently it's for more than just cheese and butter.

Something to pass the time. Kenny suggests a string. "Hours of fun. Tie knots, tie friends, tie shoes... endless possibilities," he says. Even a band on Warped Tour can find pleasure in the simple things, right? Maybe not... "What am I talking about, string sucks." Perhaps they help Chris take care of his dreads instead.

- Jess Hemerly

Thursday: Emo Boys Don't Cry [Noise Pop]

2006-02-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

Noise Pop 2006 Festival Program

Perhaps it's their connection to home that's enabled the long-time friends to create such intensely personal music, going all the way back to Thursday's first release, Waiting, on Eyeball Records in 1999. Whatever the cause, the group's tightly-woven melodies—driven by the dynamic guitars of Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, the haunting bass of Tim Payne, and the thundering drums of Tucker Rule—bind with Rickly's soul-baring lyrics to make songs that connect.

Starting out as a bunch of 19-year old boys from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Thursday quickly grew from gigging in VFW halls and basements to playing on the main stage at 2002's Warped Tour. But despite the success of the post-hardcore group, its members are still small town boys at heart. "Now, being on a major label and spending so much time on the road, we still feel that need for connection to our home more than ever," says frontman Geoff Rickly. "The truth is it's still quite shocking to have done so much so early on."

Perhaps it's their connection to home that's enabled the long-time friends to create such intensely personal music, going all the way back to Thursday's first release, Waiting, on Eyeball Records in 1999. Whatever the cause, the group's tightly-woven melodies—driven by the dynamic guitars of Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, the haunting bass of Tim Payne, and the thundering drums of Tucker Rule—bind with Rickly's soul-baring lyrics to make songs that connect.

While the Cure is an obvious inspiration of the band, Rickly credits a '60s legend with encouraging him to get behind the mic. "Touring with The Cure was an unbelievable honor, and they surely are a huge influence on us, but the truth is that seeing footage of Janis Joplin when I was young really made me want to sing more than anything else in the whole world. It was the first time that I saw pure unrestrained passion that wasn't connected directly to masculinity like it was with Led Zeppelin or even the Who." With a little help from his punk vocal coach, CBGB punk diva Melissa Cross of Bibi Wa Moto, Rickly found a way to sing as expressively as the lyrics he wrote.

Thursday just finished its fifth major album, A City By the Light Divided, with producer Dave Fridmann (known as "the fifth Flaming Lip" for his legendary work with that band). "I believe it's the most beautiful and intense thing that I've ever been a part of," says Rickly.

Rickly is also excited to bring the "Shirts for a Cure" tour to this year's Noise Pop. The jaunt is helping raise money and awareness for the Syrentha J. Savio Endowment, which provides financial assistance to underprivileged women with need of breast cancer treatment and therapy. Just another example of small town boys making good. JESS HEMERLY

The Walkmen: A Fire Inside [Noise Pop]

2005-02-01T22:55:00.000-08:00

Noise Pop Festival Program, February 2005

Following the breakup of underground favorites Jonathan Fire*Eater, organist Walter Martin, drummer Matt Barrick and guitarist Paul Maroon teamed up with singer/guitarist Hamilton Leithauser (Martin's cousin) and bassist Peter Bauer—who had been playing together as The Recoys—to form The Walkmen. Though the New York outfit has only been together since 1999, the guys have known each other since childhood. Leithauser met Barrick at summer camp back in fourth grade; he met Bauer in a DC park in ninth grade; and he was introduced to Maroon in high school when Maroon became the new guitarist in Martin's band.

"I called Walt on the phone when I realized that [The Recoys] weren’t gonna survive," explains Leithauser. "I said, 'Your singer is wack. I can do a better job.' He bought it, and a few months later we were in what became our studio, trying to get the ball rolling.

"This is what we have always wanted to do," continues Leithauser. "We've all been in bands since middle school, so we all knew that no one was going to out and out quit."

Armed with the remainder of their DreamWorks funding and backing from hopeful investors, the former Fire*Eaters bought a 600-foot space in what was once a Nash Rambler car factory in Harlem and converted it into Marcata Recording, which has been used by everyone from French Kicks to The Kills to, of course, The Walkmen.

"A lot of Harlem is really great," says Leithauser. "If you go north or south of Marcata you can find these fantastic old houses that are mainly on run-down, out of the way streets. It's right where Royal Tenenbaums was filmed."

As evidenced on both of their full-lengths, 2002's Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone and last year's Bows + Arrows (Record Collection), The Walkmen vary their emphasis on guitar, drums and keys to create a sound that continues to move away from their previous bands' garagey tendencies. While they're often compared to early U2, their influences range from The Velvet Underground to Fugazi and The Make-Up. The Walkmen's sonic diversity was driven home by the first single off of Bows + Arrows, "The Rat," which is markedly different than the rest of the album.

"We try to keep our stuff as varied as possible," says Leithauser, "because inevitably it always ends up sounding like us."

In addition to a recent appearance on The O.C., the band has been in Marcata working on its next album.

"We have a bunch of groovy songs that are just gonna knock your socks off," promises Leithauser. "I hope it's very different from the last one, but we'll have to wait and see."

Leithauser says The Walkmen are looking forward to closing Noise Pop this year and enjoying everything that the Bay Area has to offer.

"San Francisco's one of the only places," he says, "along with Chicago and Miami, that I could see myself living outside of New York." JESS HEMERLY

The Walkmen headline Bimbo's 365 Club on Sunday, February 27th.

Berkeley Commission Honors Fourteen ‘Outstanding Women’

2004-04-02T22:38:00.000-08:00

Berkeley Daily Planet, April 02, 2004 [Link]

Berkeley’s Commission on the Status of Women (COSOW) honored fourteen Outstanding Berkeley Women at a public awards ceremony Wednesday evening at the North Berkeley Senior Center. The honorees were recognized before friends and family for their contributions to the Berkeley community in various fields of interest.

“These women certainly deserve this honor,” said Mayor Tom Bates in comments beginning the ceremony. “We’re so much better off and it’s so great to have them here.”

The Fifteenth Annual awards are part of the COSOW’s commemoration of National Women’s History Month.

For the last 15 years, the commission has chosen the Outstanding Berkeley Woman honor from a pool of women nominated by their peers for extraordinary devotion to their respective causes. This year’s honorees received certificates from both the commission and the California State Legislature. The 2004 winners work in fields ranging from public health to neighborhood organization and were presented at the ceremony by the people who nominated them.

Commissioner Rivka Polatnick said she believes that recognizing the “unsung heroines” of the community is an excellent way to celebrate women’s history.

This year’s award winners include long-time Berkeley community leaders like Sylvia McLaughlin, co-founder of Save the Bay, as well as a women from a new generation of community leaders like Brianna Georgi. A Berkeley High School senior, Georgi heads the Venture Crew 24, a coed, inclusive adventure program modeled after the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America.

Also honored was Margi Adam, a singer/songwriter known for her contributions to the women’s rights movement through her exploration and development of women’s music as a political force. Adam spoke about coming to Berkeley at the age of sixteen seeking acceptance in a diverse community, and emphasized the uniqueness and reputation of the city. “There are ideas grown from root in this town,” she said, “and ideas put to the test in this town.”

Ethel Gomez, 19 year boardmember of the Berkeley Boosters Police Athletics League, reflected on her motivation in helping the city’s youth. “I love Berkeley,” mused Gomez. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and as long as I can I’ll be out there.”

Environmental activist Sylvia McLaughlin explained her reason for continuing her long career of activism. “We may be activist visionaries, but there’s still work to do.”

Another young leader, tobacco prevention advocate Salita Mitchell, reminded the audience, “Us teenagers are the future.”

— "Jessica Hemerly Special to the Planet"

Do Not Call list will cause unemployment [The Morning Call]

2003-10-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Morning Call, October 8, 2003

My roommate is not the only one who depends on telemarketing to make a living. In college, I held several phone-based positions. I sold subscriptions to the New Jersey Symphony, collected money from graduates of New York University for the Alumni Fund, and solicited office space and sublets from residents of New York City's Chelsea neighborhood. I took these jobs not because I enjoyed interrupting people's dinners or favorite television shows, or because I got some odd satisfaction from being cursed at and hung up on, but because I could work part-time and not worry about it interfering with my schoolwork. Telemarketing companies recruit college students, offering them lucrative sales-based commission on top of a minimum wage salary. The hours are flexible and can easily be designed to fit a student's class schedule. Without telemarketing, the market for part-time student jobs diminishes drastically. And, contrary to popular belief, not all of America's university students are trust fund babies who survive on allowance checks from mommy and daddy. Some of us worked our way through school.

The implications of the Do Not Call list are larger than they seem. Since she graduated from college, my roommate has made her living selling knives. Much of her job depends on a list of phone numbers obtained from customers, recommendations of people who may also be interested in purchasing a set of knives. She spends at least two hours on the phone every night cold-calling potential customers and contacting former ones. She hopes to make enough money to pay for graduate school. Up until now, she has been incredibly successful, ranked highly in the nation for sales.

However, with the national Do Not Call list looming, her job security has been shattered. She will no longer be able to contact customers who purchased knives more than 18 months ago, nor can she cold-call the numbers of friends provided by current clients. She can only have customers dial their friends and ask permission for her to call while she is sitting in their houses, shifting the responsibility from her to her customer. A quick search of her old customers in the Do Not Call Database showed that most of them had, in fact, registered. Her dilemma now? Continue to call and potentially face a hefty fine, or comply with the new regulations and watch her sales drop significantly and worry about paying the rent.

My roommate is not the only one who depends on telemarketing to make a living. In college, I held several phone-based positions. I sold subscriptions to the New Jersey Symphony, collected money from graduates of New York University for the Alumni Fund, and solicited office space and sublets from residents of New York City's Chelsea neighborhood. I took these jobs not because I enjoyed interrupting people's dinners or favorite television shows, or because I got some odd satisfaction from being cursed at and hung up on, but because I could work part-time and not worry about it interfering with my schoolwork. Telemarketing companies recruit college students, offering them lucrative sales-based commission on top of a minimum wage salary. The hours are flexible and can easily be designed to fit a student's class schedule. Without telemarketing, the market for part-time student jobs diminishes drastically. And, contrary to popular belief, not all of America's university students are trust fund babies who survive on allowance checks from mommy and daddy. Some of us worked our way through school.

And it's not just college students who are affected. Anyone who needs a job with flexible hours, from single moms to people with full-time day employment, will now have to look elsewhere. In a time when unemployment has risen sharply, eliminating a section of the U.S. job market with a superfluous Do Not Call list in order to improve the quality of life for people who feel compelled to answer the phone every time it rings is certainly not the best investment of government energy, nor is it a way to upturn the unemployment rate.

Sure, telemarketers are annoying and can, at times, be tenacious. We have all received three to seven calls between the hours of 6 and 9 p.m., and it's frustrating, particularly when we're hoping the voice on the other end is a friendly and familiar one. But how difficult is it to say, "No thank you, I'm not interested," or even simply hang up? Is this really a pressing problem or one of those annoying things that America is just sick of being bothered with? Have we really become too lazy to say, "Please take me off your list?"

If the phone rings during dinner, don't answer it. Let the machine pick up. If it was important, call back. If you're afraid of missing a pressing call, get caller ID and answer only those calls you recognize. Many phone service providers even offer a service where callers from blocked numbers must identify themselves before the phone rings in the house. Homeowners can choose whether to accept the call, much like denying and accepting collect calls. And the government could create limits on the hours during which phone solicitation can occur instead of pulling the telemarketing industry's cord out of the jack.

The Do Not Call list does not just prevent long distance service providers from offering you an alternative to your current service, it eliminates thousands of jobs for a section of the population unqualified for most jobs but overqualified for many. It will cause people who are already overworked and underpaid to become even more overworked, and push college students out of jobs with flexible hours that teach them people skills and—from someone who has been on the dialing end of telemarketing calls—patience. Perhaps it's time to look at the bigger picture and think about not just who will benefit from this, but who will be adversely affected when the phones no longer ring. Telemarketers are a nuisance, but not cause for a national uproar. Until, of course, the list takes effect and the unemployment rate inches higher.

Jessica Hemerly of New Tripoli is a recent graduate of New York University. She works at the National Journal in Washington, D.C.

Recording industry wears the black hat in MP3 fight [The Morning Call]

2003-09-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

The Morning Call, September 14, 2003

The girl, who resides in a housing project with her family, reportedly settled with the RIAA for $2,000. The RIAA offered "amnesty" to those who turn themselves in for intellectual property law violation, agreeing that a notarized, signed contract and a promise of deleted MP3s will protect them from future subpoenas. They do not, however, guarantee protection from lawsuits brought by individual artists who may seek to recoup losses, nor do they promise to keep the amnesty list from angry songwriters, artists and labels. In other words, the amnesty offer may be little more than an attempt to bait more file-sharers into paying for the music they have downloaded for free.

To make up for years of ignorance to burgeoning technology, the Recording Industry Association of America has subpoenaed everyone—major universities, individual users with "too many" files ... and a 12-year-old girl in New York City. It says they are violating intellectual property laws.

The girl, who resides in a housing project with her family, reportedly settled with the RIAA for $2,000. The RIAA offered "amnesty" to those who turn themselves in for intellectual property law violation, agreeing that a notarized, signed contract and a promise of deleted MP3s will protect them from future subpoenas. They do not, however, guarantee protection from lawsuits brought by individual artists who may seek to recoup losses, nor do they promise to keep the amnesty list from angry songwriters, artists and labels. In other words, the amnesty offer may be little more than an attempt to bait more file-sharers into paying for the music they have downloaded for free.

Internet-savvy teenagers have been trading music online since the early 1990s through FTP servers, a system that allows users to grant permission to other users to log directly into their files. It wasn't until Napster became the vogue in 1999, (a user-friendly file- sharing program that helped users unfamiliar with the technology of the FTP server), that file sharing became an epidemic. Why head to the mall and pay $15 for a CD when you can type "Britney Spears" into a box and see every track on her latest album and previous albums fill the screen before you?

A CD-R, the blank CD onto which file-sharers burn their music, costs about 34 cents. The music comes free. With this popular new network and user-friendly search capabilities, the allowances of America's teenagers suddenly went a lot further when it came to music. You didn't need to know anything about the technology -- you just needed a computer, a keyboard, a mouse and free space on your hard drive.

It took the RIAA years to realize that people were getting their major label artists for free via the information superhighway. In 2001, after a long legal battle, Napster fell to the giant, shut down its network and agreed to pay damages to labels and songwriters. But as strikes against Napster increased and its downfall became clearly inevitable, other peer-to-peer (or P2P) programs developed. Kazaa, Morpheus and Audiogalaxy allowed users to access music directories of any user willing to share and download files directly from another user. P2P filled Napster's place. But the RIAA made no attempt to stop it, and now, two years later, they seek to recoup their losses with a vengeance.

The subpoenas, the threats and the promises of amnesty are little more than heavy-handed tactics commissioned by an organization seeking to protect the financial interests of major labels, not in the interest of musicians. They want to fine offenders anywhere from $7,000 to $150,000 per song. Yes, file sharing is a violation of copyright law, making users digital music pirates. They are, in effect, stealing. But the punishments for intellectual theft are not simply excessive; they are preposterous. "Last time I stole a CD from a music store," one user remarks, "I didn't need to pay a $1.5 million fine for getting caught."

The RIAA rests on the assumption that it is losing money because of file sharing. But the money-losing argument rests on the assumption that musical pirates would have bought the CD in the first place. At $17 apiece from most major labels, this is simply not the case. Only one label so far, Universal, has realized that exorbitant pricing of plastic and CDs may have something to do with the decline in sales. They have lower their CD prices to $13. But their efforts to assuage a dissatisfied public may have come too late.

File sharing is not unique to the United States. However, not a single association in another part of the world has acted with the same fervor as the RIAA. Of course, no nation has as stringent copyright laws as does the United States. While RIAA scare tactics may put an end to the free music phenomenon on the mainstream, it will not end in the bigger picture. As the industry goes after P2P users, it doesn't realize that those in the know are going underground in rebellion and will continue to do so every time the RIAA catches on to a new technology.

Until the American recording industry embraces the technology, they will always be a few megabytes behind the pioneers of the digital frontier. And as long as the RIAA attempts to make examples of college students and 12-year-old girls, they—not the file-sharers—will seem like the criminals to the American public.

Jessica Hemerly of New Tripoli is a recent graduate of New York University and is working for the National Review.

Counterpoint: ...While Dean appeal feels like 1972 to youth [The Morning Call]

2003-08-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Morning Call, August 17, 2003

I envisioned a grass roots campaign similar to that of McGovern, where the youth vote and youth participation would lift him from underdog to front-runner during the primaries and carry him to the convention in Boston to cinch the nomination. McGovern went wrong in selecting as vice president the moderate Thomas Eagleton to placate the Chicago political machine. (And it didn't help that Eagleton's past mental-health treatment became an issue.) Dean must not make a similar error. If he does, the Democratic Party's fears will come true and history will repeat the Republican victory of 1972. A good running mate might be Gen. Wesley Clark, who would give Dean an opportunity to show that he's not anti-military, just anti- senseless war on foreign soil.

By now, everyone has heard of the once-unknown former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean. When I picked him as my horse for the race to 2004 in January, few agreed, but all assured me he didn't stand a chance against the big boys. Those people were wrong.

I was a student of politics at the time and am a registered Democrat, so it wasn't really too premature for me to start checking out the possibilities for the presidential election. I found a fantastic Web site recently created and maintained by students at George Washington University. The students had compiled a preliminary list of potential candidates for the Democratic nomination. On the list were those now in contention, or at least in media-speculated contention, including John Edwards, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Dr. Howard Dean. The site contained links to speeches made by each, as well as general information about their political alignments.

A half-ream of printer paper and hours of reading later, I had my favorite. He seemed to have the purest motives, a liberal with a fiscally conservative streak, and I liked what the man had to say. As governor of Vermont, he has managed to create the best state health-care system in the nation. And although the United States is obviously far larger than Vermont, success on a smaller scale shows at least an ability to organize, react, and provide for constituents. The only part of his platform I found troubling was his opposition to gun control, but there is, after all, no such thing as perfect in politics. Betting against the odds, I decided that I'd like to see Howard Dean win the Democratic nomination.

I immediately realized the similarities between Dean and Richard Nixon's Democratic challenger in 1972, George McGovern. Like McGovern in 1972, Dean of 2004 comes off as a progressive candidate who has great ideas and would bring a refreshing change to the White House. The difference with Dean is that while he's liberal on social issues, he knows how to handle money.

Although Vermont has no statute requiring a balanced budget, Dean did it consistently. Dean managed an economy on a microcosmic level of the nation. When he was a candidate, Sen. McGovern had accomplished nothing even remotely close to what Dean has done in Vermont.

I envisioned a grass roots campaign similar to that of McGovern, where the youth vote and youth participation would lift him from underdog to front-runner during the primaries and carry him to the convention in Boston to cinch the nomination. McGovern went wrong in selecting as vice president the moderate Thomas Eagleton to placate the Chicago political machine. (And it didn't help that Eagleton's past mental-health treatment became an issue.) Dean must not make a similar error. If he does, the Democratic Party's fears will come true and history will repeat the Republican victory of 1972. A good running mate might be Gen. Wesley Clark, who would give Dean an opportunity to show that he's not anti-military, just anti- senseless war on foreign soil.

McGovern's success was vested in the loyalty of a bloc of voters, the baby boomers who had just ripened to voting age. They had been watching their friends go to Vietnam for nearly a decade and wanted the war to end. McGovern was the person to end it. Beginning with Iowa, McGovern proved how powerful the nation's disenchanted youth could be when they leveraged their voices in the political arena. His campaign staff consisted of kids. The times were a-changin' and America's youth were ready.

Dean's campaign has looked much like that of McGovern from the start. He charged out of the gates with a way to compete on the same ground as the big money machine of the Bush camp. He has unlocked a resource previously untapped, the Internet, and continues to make it work for him. He has used communications technology to reach disaffected voters, who now feel they have something to be excited about.

In an arena where big money generally determines the victor, Dean is giving the boys, both Democratic and Republican, a run for their big money. But he is not yet playing the politician game; right now, he's playing the money game, and he's playing it well. His weakness is his image. Dean needs to convince people that while he's tough on the issues, he would also be a great guy to have over for dinner.

Dean's ability to come from virtual unknown to media darling by circumventing the fundraising circuit via virtual campaigning should be proof enough that the self-proclaimed "Birkenstock" candidate from Vermont is no joke. In him, young people see a savvy, intelligent man ready to push in a new direction. He convinces young people that government is in their hands. He even makes us believe that the end of American Corporate Democracy is closer than we think.

Jessica Hemerly of New Tripoli is working in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Biden's anti-rave bill is generational war on youth [The Morning Call]

2003-08-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Morning Call, August 1, 2003

The amendment has nothing to do with missing children and is, in fact, an expansion of the Controlled Substance Act, affectionately known as the "crack house statute." The word RAVE in the 2001 draft is an acronym for the bill as well as the name for a kind of party where, according to [Joseph Biden], people are vulnerable to Ecstasy. A rave is a large electronic music party held in space leased to promoters. The promoters and organizers book a list of DJs who will draw a crowd and provide music. A rave generally lasts all night and often well into the early morning, and kids spend the time dancing and socializing. Some attendees do use drugs, but owners do not support the circulation of drugs. Under this act, any property owner who hosts a party at which attendees buy, sell, or consume illegal drugs, regardless of measures taken by the owner to prevent such behavior, stands to face a hefty fine—and nine years in prison.

In American culture, history repeats itself and youth culture remains perpetually under fire. Rock and roll has been a threat to the moral fabric of American society for almost 50 years. Yet the baby boomers are in control and seem to have turned out okay, despite Haight-Ashbury and Elvis's gyrating hips. Older generations fear what the youth embrace.

Youth culture is under fire once again and this time electronic music is the culprit. Kids, electronic music, and the drug Ecstasy have become synonymous in the eyes of the law.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware used the PROTECT Act, a piece of necessary legislation that expanded the Amber Alert, as a Trojan horse for a completely unrelated amendment to the federal drug code. Formerly known as the RAVE (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act, the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003 failed to successfully pass through any Congressional committees. Undeterred, Sen. Biden managed to tack a watered-down version of the RAVE Act onto the PROTECT Act on April 30.

The amendment has nothing to do with missing children and is, in fact, an expansion of the Controlled Substance Act, affectionately known as the "crack house statute." The word RAVE in the 2001 draft is an acronym for the bill as well as the name for a kind of party where, according to Biden, people are vulnerable to Ecstasy. A rave is a large electronic music party held in space leased to promoters. The promoters and organizers book a list of DJs who will draw a crowd and provide music. A rave generally lasts all night and often well into the early morning, and kids spend the time dancing and socializing. Some attendees do use drugs, but owners do not support the circulation of drugs. Under this act, any property owner who hosts a party at which attendees buy, sell, or consume illegal drugs, regardless of measures taken by the owner to prevent such behavior, stands to face a hefty fine -- and nine years in prison.

I do not condone the use of Ecstasy. But to prosecute property owners who provide their space for a rave under the same law that we use to lock up crack house owners is a gross injustice. Every rave I have been to in the last four years has taken every possible step to make sure that illicit substances do not enter. The organizers hire bouncers who conduct reasonably thorough searches at the door to ensure that attendees are not transporting drugs and they circulate bouncers throughout the party to watch out for illicit substance exchanges. The door searches are so thorough that I've had the contents of my bag dumped out, been asked to take my hair down, and even had to remove my shoes and socks. Drug use is not supported and property owners should not be held responsible for kids who sneak Ecstasy in behind their ears.

The original bill outlined its findings in greater detail than the one passed with the PROTECT Act of this year, but the target is still the same. The Congressional Record includes Sen. Biden's introduction of the law in which he makes it abundantly clear that raves are the target. Biden makes promoters out to be evil corruptors of our nation's youth, stating, "Some supplement their profits from the $10 to $50 cover charge to enter the club by selling popular Ecstasy paraphernalia such as baby pacifiers, glow sticks, or mentholated inhalers. And predatory party organizers know that Ecstasy raises the core body temperature and makes the user extremely thirsty, so they sell bottles of water for $5 or $10 apiece."

Drinking water is now indicative of drug use? Who doesn't need to drink water when they dance? Adults drink alcohol; kids under the age of 21 drink water. Glow sticks, too, indicate drug use? I guess parking lot staffs will have to find another way to direct traffic so as not to look like "rogue rave organizers."

There is a kind of energy that fuels these parties, the same sort of energy that allowed the Rolling Stones and Elvis to grip the youth of generations before us. It's new, it's vibrant, and it makes us want to dance. Most people enjoy raves without the aid of Ecstasy for these reasons. Apparently, the proponents of such fun- absconding legislation either missed out on being young or have gone to extreme lengths to forget.

Unlike the "acid tests" held in San Francisco in the 1960s, where buckets of Kool-Aid laced with LSD were served up to both unsuspecting guests and those there for the "electric Kool-Aid," people who own property where raves are held do not push drugs onto their patrons. But now, those who wish to support the culture of my generation and provide a place where we can party with our peers stand to be persecuted by a government fearful of its own youth.

If we can't change the way our leaders think about our culture, the best we can do is remember. This will someday be our nation, and we have the power to break the cycle of war on youth culture.

Jessica Hemerly of New Tripoli is working in Washington, D.C., at the National Journal.

College grads tread water in post-9/11 economy [The Morning Call]

2003-06-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

The Morning Call, June 9, 2003

Most people thought it odd that a girl from New Tripoli, born and reared among the cows and cornfields of rural Pennsylvania would choose chaotic life in the Big Apple over the simplicity of our small town. To me, however, it made perfect sense. I never felt comfortable here, ostracized for my voracious reading habit and my love of "old people" music like jazz and opera. Like the Europeans who immigrated to New York in the 19th and early 20th centuries, I yearned to break free from everything I knew and embark on a quest for culture, excitement, and opportunity.

It will be four years ago next weekend that I stood outside Stabler Arena and shed tears with classmates after our graduation from Northwestern Lehigh High School. The tears were not of sadness, however; they were tears of joy. As we snapped our post-graduation family photographs, the one thought in my head was, "Freedom, at last!"

Everything was set: At the end of August, I would leave the sheltered Lehigh Valley and head to New York University in the heart of New York City's Greenwich Village. It was a childhood dream come true.

Most people thought it odd that a girl from New Tripoli, born and reared among the cows and cornfields of rural Pennsylvania would choose chaotic life in the Big Apple over the simplicity of our small town. To me, however, it made perfect sense. I never felt comfortable here, ostracized for my voracious reading habit and my love of "old people" music like jazz and opera. Like the Europeans who immigrated to New York in the 19th and early 20th centuries, I yearned to break free from everything I knew and embark on a quest for culture, excitement, and opportunity.

I easily found all three. I interned for a former president of the United States, abandoned car culture for the subway and comfortable shoes, danced in clubs until 11 a.m., and shared wine and cheese with strangers at free performances of the Metropolitan Opera in Central Park. I also got mugged and had nasty confrontations with lots of bizarre characters—villains even—but those things come with the territory. I fell in love with the city, unconditionally.

So, why come back? Simple. When I entered college, the yen had nothing on the dollar, some of my peers made more money than their parents, thanks to the dot-com industry, and the nation was oblivious to corporate America's creative bookkeeping. In short, the economy was booming. I had no doubts that I'd get my bachelor's degree in politics and begin my dream job after a post-graduation backpacking trip across Europe. I had it all figured out, down to the part where said dream job paid for both graduate school and a duplex apartment in swanky Tribeca.

The day that I stood on the roof of my Lower East Side tenement and watched the World Trade Center crumble to the ground was the day my vision of post-collegiate utopia became unachievable. In the days following the disaster, New York underwent a metamorphosis. Morale and the stock market fell as quickly as the twin giants that sunny September morning. Suddenly, a gigantic crater replaced the financial epicenter of New York City and the nation went to war seeking revenge. But the damage had already been done. With the shattering of national security, financial anxiety and monetary uncertainty replaced economic prosperity and fiscal confidence.

Over the next two years, I watched anxiously as the economy fell apart. There would be no guarantee of a dream job, let alone any job willing to pay a recent college graduate enough money to feed herself in the most expensive city in the nation. With each slight decline of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the idea of returning home to my parents' house seemed less a sign of failure and more a logical action.

As the end of my lease quickly approached and my massive outpouring of resumes remained unanswered, I decided the wisest thing would be to head home to a place where rent is free and beer is insanely cheap—at least until I devise a new plan.

Returning to the Lehigh Valley has been more of a culture shock than moving to New York. Political opportunities are non-existent, everyone drives a car and neglects the sidewalks, clubs close early, and to most, opera is considered an annoying form of music sung by obese women in Viking hats. But I have come home, and there's much to be said for that.

Home is a warm house in a quiet, peaceful locale and a never-ending supply of food. Home is where I watch the cataclysmic state of world affairs from the comfort of my La-Z-Boy while searching for a job in Washington, D.C., the only place where "degree in politics" appears under "Qualifications" in job listings. Home is where I can enjoy the company of friends in a similar situation, treading water until someone throws us employment lifesavers so we can begin our lives.

Jessica Hemerly lives in New Tripoli.

Allentown's noisy car stereo ordinance goes too far [The Morning Call]

2003-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Morning Call, June 24, 2003

Allentown's proposed ordinance contends that "excessive sound amplification" is a threat to public safety. Now, I doubt anyone would disagree that drunken drivers are a far greater threat to public safety than booming bass from a car stereo in the middle of the night. Yet, after a call to the Allentown police I discovered that drunken driving results in impoundment of the vehicle at the discretion of the police officer on the call "nine chances out of 10." The loud music ordinance calls for impoundment of the vehicle 10 out of 10.

"Wait ... So I'd be better off getting drunk and driving around than playing my stereo really loud?"

Sadly, if Allentown City Council passes the bill prohibiting "excessive sound amplification," the answer to my puzzled friend's question will be "yes." The volume will be permanently turned down on hi-tech stereo systems on city streets. If your car stereo can be heard 75 feet away, you will be stopped. But the punishment for violating the ordinance is not a warning, fine or even a summons. Adapted from a 2001 law in the city of Elgin, Ill., "This amendment provides for the impoundment of the vehicle if amplified sound is heard at a distance of 75 feet or more, a fine of $250, and towing and storage fees." And, according to an April 7 article in the local Elgin newspaper, they don't give warnings.

Allentown's proposed ordinance contends that "excessive sound amplification" is a threat to public safety. Now, I doubt anyone would disagree that drunken drivers are a far greater threat to public safety than booming bass from a car stereo in the middle of the night. Yet, after a call to the Allentown police I discovered that drunken driving results in impoundment of the vehicle at the discretion of the police officer on the call "nine chances out of 10." The loud music ordinance calls for impoundment of the vehicle 10 out of 10.

So what, then, is the real issue here? The ordinance would be an amendment to the General Offenses Code, entitled "Public Safety/ Traffic Hazards." The bill was drafted May 7, 2003. But in a memo to Councilman Tom Burke dated March 26, 2003, City Solicitor Robert Brown writes that the purpose of the ordinance is "improving the quality of life for Allentown residents by reducing loud stereo music emanating from motor vehicles onto Allentown streets particularly in the summer months."

This is an attempt by the city of Allentown to deny the phenomenon of the burgeoning, living city. It is an urban community of approximately 106,600 people attempting to maintain the feel of small town America. My contention is that the so-called "excessive sound amplification" poses no safety threat -- it is simply a nuisance. Therefore, the zero-tolerance policy is overzealous in its call for instantaneous impoundment of offending vehicles.

The impoundment clause is not only too stringent, I don't think it could withstand a legal challenge. According to an overarching Pennsylvania statute, impoundment is lawful only when a clear and present threat to safety is evident. In order to defend this piece of legislation, the city would have to present concrete evidence showing that drivers with their stereos cranked up truly are a public safety or traffic hazard. The evidence would have to convince a judge. The goal of simply quelling angry nuisance calls every time a loud stereo flies down the street isn't enough.

Generally, relishing the conveniences of the city also means sacrificing a modicum of peace and quiet. I just spent four years in the largest city in the United States, and I can sympathize. Certainly, there were times I wanted to chase down cars sharing their music at 3 a.m. (not to mention the ice cream truck at 10 a.m) with flamethrowers. But I chose to live in an urban environment, so I dealt with it.

Loud house parties fall into the category of nuisances, but offenders get a fine and possible summons when a neighbor calls to complain about music rattling the pictures on their walls. Laws governing car stereo volume laws exist across the nation in cities such as Albuquerque, N.M., and Nashville, Tenn. In fact, one already exists in Allentown, under the City of Allentown Noise Control Ordinance. But unlike the proposed vehicle ordinance, these bills make it clear that the issue is noise pollution. The punishment for blaring music is not seizure of your house, but fines.

If this ordinance passes, noise polluters will have no chance of keeping their cars. On the other hand, the "officer's discretion" will continue to provide drunken drivers at least a chance of not having to make a trip to the impound lot the next day. If city council wants to truly help cut down on "boom cars" while not causing car owners to throw away thousands of dollars they spent on systems for their vehicles in the midst of a strangling recession, they should consider enforcement of existing laws. And, if they want to show their concern for traffic safety, perhaps the zero- tolerance standard could be applied to drunken drivers instead of annoying music lovers.

Jessica Hemerly lives in New Tripoli.

CBS plays politics with Super Bowl ad critical of Bush [The Morning Call]

2003-01-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

The Morning Call, February 1, 2004

CBS says the ad was rejected because it has a policy against accepting advocacy ads, except for ads from political candidates. However, while the network refused MoveOn.org, it did not turn down ads from the like of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, the same office that produced sensationalist ads in the past years equating drug use with terrorism. (CBS says it accepted those ads because it does not know of anyone advocating use of illegal drugs, and therefore the message doesn't count as controversy.) This year, the Kaiser Family Foundation has placed an ad during the Super Bowl on the theme of "Know HIV/AIDS." Of course, there also will be tobacco giant Phillip Morris and major pharmaceutical companies—corporate friends of the Republican Party.

While millions of Americans cozy up in front of the television at this time each year to watch the Super Bowl, not all of them are there to watch just football. The Super Bowl also is famous for its commercials, and viewers often watch just to see what their favorite manufacturers and product-peddlers have to offer in terms of creative advertising. We've seen Britney Spears take her clothes off in the extended version of a Pepsi ad, the introduction of Anheuser- Busch's frogs croaking "Bud-weis-errrrr," and Apple's Orwellian commercial featuring Big Brother, all during the breaks of Super Bowls past.

Because so many people watch specifically for the commercials, the Super Bowl is the perfect means to deliver a message or sell a product. According to SuperBowl-ads.com, the average cost of a 30 second spot this year is $2.25 million. And that is all you need to buy a slot, right?

Wrong. At the end of last year, MoveOn.org, the online political forum, sponsored a contest, allowing creative people to submit a 30- second spot about the Bush administration or national policy. The ads ranged from fake infomercials to Bush quotes to Hitler comparisons. Some of the ads were professionally produced; others were clearly the brainchild of one guy with a camcorder. MoveOn.org had a panel of judges, including documentary filmmaker Michael Moore ("Bowling for Columbine") select winners. MoveOn.org planned to purchase time and show the winning ad during the Super Bowl. This year, CBS, which will broadcast Super Bowl XXXVIII, has refused to air the commercial.

The reason for the denial is that the ad is too controversial. It shows children performing working-world tasks such as washing dishes, collecting garbage and on an assembly line, and ends with the rhetorical question, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

CBS says the ad was rejected because it has a policy against accepting advocacy ads, except for ads from political candidates. However, while the network refused MoveOn.org, it did not turn down ads from the like of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, the same office that produced sensationalist ads in the past years equating drug use with terrorism. (CBS says it accepted those ads because it does not know of anyone advocating use of illegal drugs, and therefore the message doesn't count as controversy.) This year, the Kaiser Family Foundation has placed an ad during the Super Bowl on the theme of "Know HIV/AIDS." Of course, there also will be tobacco giant Phillip Morris and major pharmaceutical companies—corporate friends of the Republican Party.

The only controversy here is CBS's action. The MoveOn.org ad is not a slander ad. It uses facts to expose inequity, contradiction, and inconsistency of the Bush administration. The broadcast airwaves are supposed to be public domain, and to forbid a message solely on its viewpoint is abusive. The Web site of CBS contains a "Diversity Message" from Chairman and CEO Les Moonves that states, "As broadcasters, we aim to ensure that our national viewing audience is reflected in our programming and our peoplewe continue to be steadfast in our goal to become more diverse and more representative of the public we serve."

Refusing to accept the MoveOn.org ad is a clear violation of CBS's own ethical statement, a contradiction to its self-proclaimed public mission. Clearly, this is an example not of diversity or impartiality, but of an attempt to cultivate homogeny within the media.

Why would CBS contradict its own "diverse" public mission? MoveOn.org contends that CBS, whose parent is the corporate conglomerate Viacom, is returning a favor to the White House and the Republican Party. The GOP and friends lobbied hard for new federal rules that allow networks like CBS to own more television and radio stations. The MoveOn.org team claims the White House and Congressional Republicans have custom-tailored new Federal Communications Commission rules that will allow the networks to grow much bigger.

So, while you giggle as beer bottles face off on the gridiron in the annual "Bud Bowl," think about what you're not seeing: a well- researched and factually-supported ad detailing the faults of the White House, because CBS deems the truth about Bush's tax policies too controversial for his football fan constituency

Jessica Hemerly, a native of New Tripoli, is a freelance writer living in San Francisco.

I Want To Be Miss America [Published Essay]

1999-12-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

Appears in:
Spandel, Vicki. "Creating Writers, 3rd Edition." New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 2001, pp. 114-5. Also appears in the recently released 4th Edition.

I want to be Miss America

I want to be Miss America.

For the last four years of my existence, realistic ideologies have gradually replaced visions of virtuous grandeur I once had. But a suppressed childhood fantasy has suddenly resurfaced. Maybe the resurgence of the beauty queen within results from repeatedly smashing my head against the corn-gilded cage of my ultra-conservative rural Pennsylvania home. Or maybe the little girl locked inside of me has raised her voice again and I really would like to parade around a stage, a mortal Venus, angelic blonde hair garnished with a silver tiara. I will have to dye my hair.

I want to stand center stage in Atlantic City and stun the audience with my rendition of Rossini’s “Una Pocco Voce” from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and, if only for a moment, become Rosina, the object of America’s adoration. Or perhaps I would become Lady Macbeth (although Ophelia would be apropos for this occasion), sleepwalking to the stage’s proscenium, candle in hand, watching admirers gaze upon me in awe. As long as I flash my Vaseline-greased, toothpaste-ad smile and wear a tight-fitting, flashy dress from the most exclusive designer I can afford, no one will notice that my G’s are excessively flat or that the elegance of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan tongue has been reduced to base English. Only aesthetic beauty matters anyway.

During the interview segment, I will curb my liberal political views and respond to every superficial question with strategically planned outpourings of conservative sentiment. Any feminist-inspired views will be quelled in order to maintain an untarnished “feminine” image. My voice will waver with contrived emotion as I enumerate the problems of the world and offer hollow, menial solutions with a fixed, ethereal grin. I will speak about suffering and conflict but never mention my interest in Tibetan Buddhism; that would be considered eccentric. Conformity is essential to victory.

I will use my title to change the world, flashing my All-American smile from nation to nation, making guest appearances on “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.” I will sacrifice all of my political and philosophical beliefs to uphold a meaningless platform of neo-conservative morality, concurrent with established societal trends. People will listen to me because I am Miss America.

I can always cling to the hope that a glimmer of myself will survive.

Maybe the world will just have to settle for me without the crown.

— Jess Hemerly, 1999