Nothing natural about this disaster

There are at least some places where the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has not passed without comment - and one of the most misleading comments is that New Orleans was struck by a "natural disaster." It was not. New Orleans weathered the hurricane pretty well. The disaster was caused by the flooding and the flooding was as a direct result of substandard levees, and a knock-on effect of degraded wetlands. Both are man-made problems. The term, "natural disaster," carries an inference that no-one is to blame and it couldn't have been avoided.

I have no special insight. Most of what I know, I have learnt from the brilliant Harry Shearer, another satirist who puts the 'serious' media to shame by doing their job better. I can do little more than 're-tweet' some of his comments below.

This isn't to say that Katrina was not a devastating natural disaster. There are whole towns in Mississippi that ain't dere no more because of Katrina. They were completely blown away, with only a few, seemingly incongruous slabs of concrete to suggest there was ever a town there. They are the victims of the natural disaster. What followed in New Orleans was something different.

At the beginning of Mardi Gras 2006, Harry said that New Orleans is back, and it's on its back, and explained how the two statements can both be true. Equally, New Orleans is both the forgotten disaster and the squeaky wheel - because whenever people talk about Hurricane Katrina, they mean New Orleans, even though the disaster they describe had little to do with the Hurricane, and Mississippi is forgotten. Perhaps it's time to stop using the K word when referring to the catastrophe that struck New Orleans in 2005. It makes it too easy to conflate the Hurricane with the levee failure.

Anyone can make a few cheap shots about maintaining a city below sea level, but the reality is that there are 28 states in the US that rely on similar levee systems, with many of those levees in similar states of disrepair. If the old-Europe cheesesmiths in the Netherlands can work out a way to manage things without human tragedy and international embarrassment, one wonders why the World's Only Superpower® finds it such a challenge.

levees.org
Harry Shearer: Does Obama care about New Orleans?
Playing the Inside Game -- A Cautionary Tale

An own-goal on reducing violence?

The violence on Melbourne streets is a major problem and I fully support the efforts to have a higher police presence, but I found an attempt at activism held today rather bizarre. ABC News reported that a number of off-duty police were at today's Hawthorn vs Essendon game at the MCG asking people to sign petitions calling for more police. Nothing wrong with that. The bizarre bit is the fact that were using football fans as an example of how people can go out and have fun without being violent. To me, this is a load of toss.

The only reason football goers aren't violent themselves is because they get all their violent tendencies out by proxy on the ground. Let's be honest - regardless of whether it's on a footy oval or outside a King St nightclub, for every punch that's thrown, there are dozens of others getting their rocks off over the act and egging it all on. Football does nothing to reduce the culture of violence. If anything, it promotes it.

At the very same game that the petitioners were campaigning outside, one player was knocked unconscious, which led to an all-in melee (which is politically correct AFL-speak for brawl). And this is the place they chose as an example of well-behaved crowds? I bet nobody left the game in disgust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm for harm minimisation. People have violent tendencies. We're never going to eradicate that, so we might as well manage it. If it helps people get it out of their systems by going to a stadium and watching a few dozen blokes who chose to be in that situation going at it, then that's fine by me. Better that, then hospitalising some poor bugger who accidentally spilt your drink. Just don't tell me that football crowds are in it for good clean fun, because I don't believe it.


Check out these highlights and lowlights from today's game and see if you think it encourages people to reject violence. Such scenes are not atypical of any AFL match.

Don’t Look Back in Anger

Today is the day that Noel Gallagher announced that he can no longer work with Liam and is therefore quitting Oasis.

Or, as most people call it for short - Saturday.

What are you afraid of?

I don’t understand the notion that Democrats are wimps. Can anyone imagine Dick Cheney hanging around a meeting if he knew there were people outside packing heat?

On Tuesday, The Daily Show did and excellent contrast between the tolerance shown towards people showing up to town hall meetings on health cover reform carrying loaded guns, and the hypersensitivity to criticism shown by Bush administration, who had people removed for wearing critical t-shirts.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Gun Show - Barrel Fever
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

While I maintain that Jon Stewart is the most astute political commentator in America today, I think he is reading this one wrong.

Here's what I take from the contrast:

Republicans are scared of public health insurance and t-shirts,
Democrats aren't scared of crazy people with guns.





A clear and present danger


Exercising a constitutional right

Their Generation

I’m starting to get a bit bored with 40th anniversaries. Last month was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing which is certainly something worth recognising. The year began with the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ rooftop recording session at Apple, which I suppose is significant for being their final public appearance together. Then the week before last, they had the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ Abbey Road crossing. Now, I will champion the Beatles’ importance at every turn, and Abbey Road would probably be my favourite of all their albums, but geez, it was just an album cover. Apparently though, it was still important enough to block off traffic (always a popular move in London) and have a re-enactment, complete with some tribute band standing in for the real thing.

And this week, we’ve had anyone who remembers reminding us that last weekend was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. And that made me think I might post a song I wrote in the 90s as an answer to baby boomers’ constant overstating of their achievements and importance.

The day after I finished writing this, I read that Allen Ginsberg had died. That made me feel a little bit guilty for a moment about some of the things I’d said until I realised that the song really isn’t about people like him. It’s about the ones who sold out their values, if indeed, they ever had any.

The thing that insulted me most about the whole baby-boomer attitude is the way they sneered and looked down upon the next generation as being inferior in just about every way –the exact same thing they moaned about in their parents’ generation. I don’t begrudge them growing up and getting jobs. I begrudge the hypocrisy of not wanting the next generation to have their own voice the way they did. They took the best of everything and whatever they couldn’t blame on the previous generation, they blame on the next.

My general disagreement is mainly to do with selfishness and lack of perspective. And I’ll admit to having a distaste for some attitudes in the younger generation as well. Every time I hear someone under 25 start moaning about the “crippling debt” their generation has been lumbered with in order to drag us out of the GFC™, I want to slap them and say,

Listen, you smarmy little shit, my parents’ generation paid off World War II! They got by. They survived. So what the hell are you worried about?
While debt should be avoided where-ever possible, sometimes you do have to spend your way out of trouble. And if it means you’re going to have to wait a few more months before you get that new iPhone, or a few more years before you build that McMansion in Fountain Lakes, then that’s just tough titties! If that's the biggest sacrifice you're ever called upon to make for your country, then it's a charmed life.

See? I can do “old fart” too.
But I disgress....

So yes, this song is less about people like Allen Ginsberg and more about the ones who went on to be insurance agents. Less about the ones who genuinely changed their minds, and more about the ones who kept taking all the world had to give and more, while still affecting the tone of moral and intellectual superiority to all who came before and after.

By the way, Woodstock was originally supposed to be a charity concert – the Farm Aid of its day – but so many broke in that eventually the organisers gave up and declared it a free show.
Read into that what you will.


YOUR GENERATION

They say if you remember, then you weren’t really there
You danced and sang and made love, you lived without a care
Your generation....
Now your kids are grown up, and living without hope
Still you wonder why they only care about MTV and dope
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold

You tell us of psychedelia, and boast of your free love
Then you tell us we should just say no, and always wear a glove
You fear the carnage on the streets as the cartels ply their trade
But they’re just doing business in a market that you made
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold

By the time we got to Woodstock, Pepsi ruled the world
Our playground was Nintendo, and we went to war for oil
Some values die quicker than others, but the truth doesn’t change
If peace was a good idea back then, well why not so today?
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation sold its soul

What happened to the revolution? Where did you go wrong?
Did you think you’d make it happen just by singing protest songs?
Do you really think that Woodstock made the world a better place?
Just a hundred thousand muddy hippies getting off their face!
And you have the gall to tell us that our music has no worth
Should we let your surrealistic pillow smother all the earth?
Your generation
You still talk about your generation
Well, your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold

So don’t you try to put us down and tell us what to do
As if you wouldn’t do it just the same if it were you
’Cause the selfish generation is still alive and strong
Your ignore it when your children show you how you got it wrong
If you think today’s youth culture is your vision of hell
Then I guess you understand now, just how your parents felt.
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation sold its soul

Your generation
Is gonna fade away
gonna fade away

HWS April 1997

If anyone is interested in hearing the song, I played it on Strawberry Fields Radio last year. You can play or download the show HERE.
If you would like a higher quality, stand-alone copy, then I accept cash, paypal and women’s underwear.

Les Paul - 1915-2009

There is absolutely nothing I can say about this giant of music that hasn’t been said a hundred times better and a thousand times over. Even more so than the Beatles, if anyone thinks they haven’t been influenced by Les Paul, then they just don’t know anything about music.

In the rush to oversimplify things, reports will undoubtedly refer to him as the inventor of the solid-body electric guitar. Leo Fender would take umbrage at such a title, surely as much as Les Paul would if it were given to Leo. I have no interest in Fender vs. Gibson or Les vs. Leo. The truth is that solid-body electrics were pioneered in parallel by several innovators at the same time, not unlike television or the automobile, with no single inventor.

What’s undeniable is that Les Paul was the first guitarist to play a solid-body guitar. His prototype “log” was a Gibson neck bolted to a solid piece of timber. He added guitar bouts for comfort and aesthetics but they contributed nothing to the tone.

The Les Paul “Log”

Although Gibson laughed at him, the Les Paul log would form the basis of the design of the ES 335 which looks like it has a hollow sound chamber but is in fact solid up the middle.

The Gibson ES355

Insane as it may seem now, the Gibson Les Paul Standard was actually discontinued in 1960. It wasn’t until Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page started playing them late in that decade that interest increased enough for Gibson to consider making them again. Still, many guitarists believe that there is something special about the ones made between 1958 and 1960, which is why those models attract valuations that look more like ’phone numbers and many are locked in bank vaults as investments.

While Les Paul himself played a Gibson Les Paul, the instruments he played were vastly different to the production models. The body was familiar but the electronics were all his own design and never available on production models. The production model he played the most was the Les Paul Recording.

Les Paul's Les Paul

However, guitars were only half the story. The multi-layer recording techniques that we have taken for granted since the mid ’60s were pioneered by Les Paul – only he did it the hard way. His early techniques of disabling the erase head and bouncing between tape machines meant that he and Mary Ford had to get every part right first time, otherwise the whole recording would be ruined. There was no multitrack or mixing. The record was mixed as it was being made.

For the 40th Anniversary of Sgt Pepper, the BBC invited a bunch of current bands to try and record Beatles songs using only equipment that was available to the Beatles at the time. Several had to pull out because they just couldn’t do it. But by Les Paul’s standards, the Beatles had it piss easy. Far from being the cheat’s way, Les Paul’s recordings required him to be a master musician. That brilliant musicianship is often overshadowed by his technical innovations.

I expect a majority of those eulogising him don’t even own a Les Paul record. I must confess that I don’t. But that’s not really the point. You don’t have to have ever read or seen Shakespeare’s work to use words and expressions that he created, whether you realise it or not. Similarly, anyone who has had so much as a passing interest in music in the last sixty years, owes something to Les Paul.

The Rules: Hygiene

All men and, by association, most women are familiar with the old rhyme that describes our daily rituals,

No matter how you shake and dance,
The last two drops go down your pants.

The rule?
Gents, we’re allowed to use toilet paper too!

Avoid embarrassing stains with an amazing new invention!