Just got back from the final leg of this marathon of a summer. I guess it wouldn’t be called that by everyone, but when it involves three Girls Rock Camps and driving several thousand miles in a noble vehicle whose pushing 300k, well it ends up feeling quite epic.
The most recent stint was Girls Rock Camp Houston. What a week! Probably my most talented and cooperative two bands I’ve coached in the 5 years I’ve been doing these things, although I feel like I short-changed my keyboard class this year. Amazing showcase, and we even had friends and fam travel an hour plus (shout out to the Lufkin contingency) to make it to the showcase. GRC is such a powerful movement and container for so much I believe in, and well worth another week of exhaustion.
While Liz and I were out in Houston, we did manage to squeeze in a couple of Shiz gigs with the fellas. Hidden Village at the Standpipe on Friday night (QUI QUI!!) and the ever so majestic Vinal Edge Saturday, attended by two of the three magnificent Mydolls (good lord I am moved by those women!) Trish said she would’ve made it but she can’t stand the “Whites in the Heights” people. LOL! Can’t say I’m hatin’ over here. But I did get in some quality time with Linda and Dianna, including some blues at the Boom Boom Room complete with a fantastic pesto turkey and avocado pannini!
So that was Houston. Think I’ll have to offer up another entry for what came before that……
This is a response to an interview I recently read given by my University piano professor Richard Zimdars, for Fanfare Magazine. The last question posed is a worthy one:
Q: I am very concerned about the role that classical music will play in America’s future, what with the dwindling of music classes in public schools, and the evident aging of audiences at classical music events. As someone who has enjoyed direct contact with young people for many years, what is your perspective on the future of this art form? What kinds of changes have you witnessed over the years?
A: I share your concern with developing a future audience for classical music in America. Growing up attending the Chicago Symphony’s 10-concert season in Milwaukee was my prime formative classical-music experience, along with my piano and horn lessons. Attendance at those concerts was by no means restricted to the upper classes or elderly in those days, although much German was spoken among the older crowd during intermissions. A Central European ambience was surely in evidence. At home, the music played on our record player was the standard repertoire from Bach to Debussy. This music, and also the sounds of singers like Björling, Milanov, Warren, Albanese, Flagstad, Lotte Lehmann, John Charles Thomas, and Risë Stevens were—fortunately!— the sounds locked into my brain at an early age. Musical memories are involuntary and reflexive. My tastes were formed early by my parents’ choices in recorded music: rock and roll was excluded, but not jazz or American musicals. Alvin and the Chipmunks crept in, too!
The distributors of broadcast and mechanically reproduced music exert tremendous power to form taste, their goal being financial profit. The huge economic organization of music distributors is predatory in the extreme. The vast majority of the distributed product is utterly unimaginative, fostering a worldwide appetite for generic styles directed toward the youth market. This product, marketed to appeal to the concerns of its audience, actually suppresses expression while sending a dumbed-down message of identity to listeners and potential purchasers. The infliction of this narrow musical choice on the public is masked by its seemingly limitless sources of distribution.
How to break the cycle? It cannot be broken, but now and again people do escape from its orbit. I’ve seen this happen often during my academic career. Recently I taught a one-day-a-week one-credit class to about a dozen freshmen at the University of Georgia who were not music majors. I had graduate piano students play Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt for the class. They were entranced by the skills of the young pianists, and peppered them with questions. After one class, a student I’ll call Elberta told me that despite the value that her metropolitan area high school placed on her athletic skills, she had longed to participate in music as well. Shortly thereafter my class was assigned to attend a University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra concert, and I saw Elberta with an athlete friend at intermission. Our orchestra is capable of performing works like the Mahler Fifth and Sixth symphonies, and since Elberta and friend had never been to a live symphony concert, they could not believe how good their fellow university students sounded. They asked, with innocent sincerity, what the purpose of the conductor in front of the orchestra was. This was enough to get us talking for the whole intermission, after which they enthusiastically returned to their seats!
It is never too late for people to expand their interests, and I think live concerts are the best way to do it. The earlier children are exposed to live music of quality, the better. Opportunities to sing or learn an instrument should be available in every U.S. school system, public or private. Until the stupidity of the mantra “No new taxes!” is recognized, I see little hope on the horizon.
Disregarding my experience as a student of Dr. Zimdars, I could not agree more.
Even though the “pop” music of the 80’s is relatively sophisticated compared to what is in heavy rotation on the radio these days, I still managed to find some pretty abysmal music to be obsessed with as a child, including a particular boy-band that shall remain nameless. I thought it was the end of the world when my mother told me I couldn’t attend one of their concerts on the grounds that we couldn’t afford it (single parent, 3 kids, you get the picture). What she could afford was the free concert being offered at UGA by the ASO. NOT the same thing. SO MUCH MORE!! That concert changed my life forever. Opened doors to history, languages, and an entire WORLD of humanity that informs my sense of purpose and compassion even to this day.
How many communities still offer access to these types of experiences for young people? And why are said opportunities for such experiences so often watered down? I am well aware of the arguments in favor of accessibility, but if we continually under-estimate our young audiences, do we not in turn run the risk of devaluating/deflating their inherent sense of what is possible?
It simply is *not possible* to facilitate this experience of wonder, intrigue, and ultimately discipline! without the grants that allow musicians to continue to earn a healthy living while exercising their craft to the fullest of their capability. After all, is not mastery a great deal more inspiring than mediocrity. And are not the principles of ensemble a great deal more useful than the cult of personality? For me the issue lies in the differences between distraction and inspiration, and the quality of fruit born of those seeds.
Produced by The Shiz and TJ Barends
Recorded in Bogalusa, LA by Ben Mumphrey for Studio in the Country and Hammond, LA TJ Barends for Sir-Reel Studios.
Copyright: Elysium House Music 2013, ASCAP
“Meet You in the Morning” co-produced by The Shiz and TJ Barends (Bare Sounds Productions at Sir-Reel Studios, Hammond, LA) is an ambitious 70 minute 14 song opus with a wide ebb and flow reminiscent of Tom Petty (one of the band’s most obvious heroes) from his “Wildflower” days. Singles include “Juggernaut,” “Driftin’, ” and “For the People” from Hogan, and “New Jim Crow” and “Sleep Baby, Slumber” from Lewis. But as with any album conceived project, the songs, diverse as they are, belong to each other, and are held together by the quartet’s “electric chamber music” approach and Barends’ roots based sensibilities, yielding a youthful, transparent authenticity to the relatively mature and nuanced collection. Challenging industry and ideology from the BP Oil Spill to the prison industrial complex, the themes are both topical and existential in nature, and rely on their southern/bluesy roots to keep the much of the most weighted material in a context of light touch confrontation. A notable exception to this, however, is the 7 minute tone poem “Boxcar,” a song written by Lewis and Hogan after experiencing an exhibit of the same name at a Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, FL in 2012.
The deluxe edition of the recording, only available for download at theshiz.bandcamp.com, includes a studio outtake of “Broken Wings, ” the only original love song in the band’s repertoire to date. When asked about the glaring the absence love-based themes in their writing, Lewis mentions that so many of the love songs she knows “don’t seem to be about love of the requited variety.” She says sometimes their most political action is “just showing up as themselves” as they’re Uncle Sam had once put it, and since she and Hogan are currently lucky enough to enjoy a relationship that actually works, they are free to use their music to work on other ideas like personal sovereignty and redemption.
The album features a number of worthy collaborations, most notable are the contributions of violinist Andrew Robin and guitarist Owen Scott, III. Owen Scott, a friend and former band mate of the late B52′s founding member Ricky Wilson, is a fellow Athens, GA native who left the city the same year Lewis was born. Lewis recruited Scott after a coincidental meeting in Baton Rouge, LA, just as the band was going into pre-production on the new album. Owen is featured on “New Jim Crow” and “For the People,” along with the decidedly Athens / REM influenced “The Rapture.”
It’s been weighing heavily on my soul. I am a musician in my heart and in my blood, but I don’t make enough money to build new communities or rid the world of malaria and I’m too far off the radar to be asked to sing for America or sing to solve world hunger or even sing for the 99%. Furthermore, regardless of my intention as an artist to add value to people’s lives through music, and maybe even challenge them from time to time to awaken from the urgent complacency that seems to arise from being overworked (or underworked) underpaid, mis-employed, displaced, squeezed, de-valued, and otherwise under appreciated.
See, I believe we have work to do, and it must be done despite our condition. It seems like we used to have griots, teachers, troubadours, journey-men who used to remind us of this, keep us close to the source so we could ride out the storms with dignity, integrity, and sometimes, dare I say it, ingenuity? But in these times when all this sounds like too much to ask, the griots and the poets are hard to come by, and musicians are finding it harder and harder to keep a roof over head.
I’m one of those. I’m one who chooses art because it feels like a responsibility, but I desperately want to do it in a responsible way.
For example, I believe the power of music is best experienced in a room where the music is happening, where the people-ness of it all connects the dots between the ether, the real, and the ethereal. The extra-sensory information, the vibrating intercourse, the quantum coherence of it all seems to take place most directly in the context of a shared experience of live music. And yet, how do I get from city to city without destroying the environment and exhausting natural resources? Especially with an incredibly limited budget?
Moreover, I live in the great city of New Orleans where most venues for burgeoning bands are struggling to get by themselves and have chosen to compensate the musicians only by offering a small percentage of bar sales on any given night. That means my value to my “client” (the venue) and the financial viability of my endeavor ends up directly related to how much alcohol the audience is able to imbibe while my band busy trying to heal the hole inside of them that took them to the bar in the first place. It just doesn’t seem to add up.
Obviously I don’t know you Neil, but I’m sharing this because you seem to me to be so true. Your music, your heart, your person-ness feeds me in ways true things do. So please Neil, be my Rilke. Isn’t the first principle of healing “do no harm?” Tell me, what’s a girl to do?
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things. Steve Jobs – Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference, 1997
These tests are a big deal, but this tag is no longer supported in HTML5.
Cite Tag
“Code is poetry.” —Automattic
Code Tag
You will learn later on in these tests that word-wrap: break-word; will be your best friend.
Delete Tag
This tag will let you strikeout text, but this tag is no longer supported in HTML5 (use the <strike> instead).
Emphasize Tag
The emphasize tag should italicize text.
Insert Tag
This tag should denote inserted text.
Keyboard Tag
This scarsly known tag emulates keyboard text, which is usually styled like the <code> tag.
Preformatted Tag
This tag styles large blocks of code.
.post-title {
margin: 0 0 5px;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 38px;
line-height: 1.2;
and here's a line of some really, really, really, really long text, just to see how the PRE tag handles it and to find out how it overflows;
}
Welcome to image alignment! The best way to demonstrate the ebb and flow of the various image positioning options is to nestle them snuggly among an ocean of words. Grab a paddle and let’s get started.
On the topic of alignment, it should be noted that users can choose from the options of None, Left, Right, and Center. In addition, they also get the options of Thumbnail, Medium, Large & Fullsize.
The image above happens to be centered.
The rest of this paragraph is filler for the sake of seeing the text wrap around the 150×150 image, which is left aligned.
As you can see the should be some space above, below, and to the right of the image. The text should not be creeping on the image. Creeping is just not right. Images need breathing room too. Let them speak like you words. Let them do their jobs without any hassle from the text. In about one more sentence here, we’ll see that the text moves from the right of the image down below the image in seamless transition. Again, letting the do it’s thang. Mission accomplished!
And now for a massively large image. It also has no alignment.
The image above, though 1200px wide, should not overflow the content area. It should remain contained with no visible disruption to the flow of content.
And now we’re going to shift things to the right align. Again, there should be plenty of room above, below, and to the left of the image. Just look at him there… Hey guy! Way to rock that right side. I don’t care what the left aligned image says, you look great. Don’t let anyone else tell you differently.
In just a bit here, you should see the text start to wrap below the right aligned image and settle in nicely. There should still be plenty of room and everything should be sitting pretty. Yeah… Just like that. It never felt so good to be right.
And just when you thought we were done, we’re going to do them all over again with captions!
The image above happens to be centered. The caption also has a link in it, just to see if it does anything funky.
Itty-bitty caption.
The rest of this paragraph is filler for the sake of seeing the text wrap around the 150×150 image, which is left aligned.
As you can see the should be some space above, below, and to the right of the image. The text should not be creeping on the image. Creeping is just not right. Images need breathing room too. Let them speak like you words. Let them do their jobs without any hassle from the text. In about one more sentence here, we’ll see that the text moves from the right of the image down below the image in seamless transition. Again, letting the do it’s thang. Mission accomplished!
And now for a massively large image. It also has no alignment.
Massive image comment for your eyeballs.
The image above, though 1200px wide, should not overflow the content area. It should remain contained with no visible disruption to the flow of content.
Feels good to be right all the time.
And now we’re going to shift things to the right align. Again, there should be plenty of room above, below, and to the left of the image. Just look at him there… Hey guy! Way to rock that right side. I don’t care what the left aligned image says, you look great. Don’t let anyone else tell you differently.
In just a bit here, you should see the text start to wrap below the right aligned image and settle in nicely. There should still be plenty of room and everything should be sitting pretty. Yeah… Just like that. It never felt so good to be right.
And that’s a wrap, yo! You survived the tumultuous waters of alignment. Image alignment achievement unlocked!
This is a paragraph. It should not have any alignment of any kind. It should just flow like you would normally expect. Nothing fancy. Just straight up text, free flowing, with love. Completely neutral and not picking a side or sitting on the fence. It just is. It just freaking is. It likes where it is. It does not feel compelled to pick a side. Leave him be. It will just be better that way. Trust me.
Left Align
This is a paragraph. It is left aligned. Because of this, it is a bit more liberal in it’s views. It’s favorite color is green. Left align tends to be more eco-friendly, but it provides no concrete evidence that it really is. Even though it likes share the wealth evenly, it leaves the equal distribution up to justified alignment.
Center Align
This is a paragraph. It is center aligned. Center is, but nature, a fence sitter. A flip flopper. It has a difficult time making up its mind. It wants to pick a side. Really, it does. It has the best intentions, but it tends to complicate matters more than help. The best you can do is try to win it over and hope for the best. I hear center align does take bribes.
Right Align
This is a paragraph. It is right aligned. It is a bit more conservative in it’s views. It’s prefers to not be told what to do or how to do it. Right align totally owns a slew of guns and loves to head to the range for some practice. Which is cool and all. I mean, it’s a pretty good shot from at least four or five football fields away. Dead on. So boss.
Justify Align
This is a paragraph. It is justify aligned. It gets really mad when people associate it with Justin Timberlake. Typically, justified is pretty straight laced. It likes everything to be in it’s place and not all cattywampus like the rest of the aligns. I am not saying that makes it better than the rest of the aligns, but it does tend to put off more of an elitist attitude.
Just got back from the final leg of this marathon of a summer. I guess it wouldn’t be called that by everyone, but when it involves three Girls Rock Camps and driving several thousand miles in a noble vehicle whose pushing 300k, well it ends up feeling quite epic.
The rest of this paragraph is filler for the sake of seeing the text wrap around the 150×150 image, which is left aligned. 
