Goodbye, Ari

Cover of Ari Up
Sad news to report: Arianne Foster, better known as Ari Up, lead singer of The Slits, passed away yesterday at the all-too-young age of 48.

Ari was also step-daughter to Johnny Rotten, who, along with Ari's mother Nora, posted the following brief message on his website yesterday:

Arianna RIP

John and Nora have asked us to let everyone know that Nora's daughter Arianna (aka Ari-Up) died today (Wednesday, October 20th) after a serious illness. She will be sadly missed.

Everyone at JohnLydon.com and PiLofficial.Com would like to pass on their heartfelt condolences to John, Nora and family.

Rest in Peace.

The Slits were featured in the NW4NW series this past February; you can read more about Ari and her band there.   In her honor, here is the video for The Slits' "Instant Hit" (for some reason, mistitled as "So Tough" on this clip).

R.I.P. Ari.

The Knack's Doug Fieger Passes Away (August 21, 1952 - February 14, 2010)

Sad news to report: Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, passed away yesterday at age 57 after a lengthy battle with brain and lung cancers.

The Knack were best known for their debut single, "My Sharona," which spent six weeks at #1 in 1979 and was the biggest-selling single of that year according to Billboard Magazine. There really was a Sharona - Fieger wrote the song about an ex-girlfriend, Sharona Alpern, who is now a real estate agent in California. It's choppy start-stop rhythms and anthemic sound made "My Sharona" a classic that continues to turn up on film soundtracks and in various commercials. In addition to kick-starting The Knack's career, the song indirectly also began the career of "Weird Al" Yankovic who parodied it as "My Bologna."

The Knack's label, Capitol Records, hoped to position the band as the New Wave version of The Beatles, even resurrecting the old orange-swirl label design they used back in The Beatles heyday specifically for Knack releases. The follow-up single, "Good Girls Don't," just missed the Top Ten, peaking at #11 later that same year. The following year "Baby Talks Dirty," a "Sharona" soundalike, hit the lower reaches of the Top 40, and would be The Knack's last charting single.

Fieger, however, continued to be a hot commodity in the New Wave/Power Pop world, writing or co-writing songs for many other artists, doing production work, and adding guest vocals or session work on other artists' records.

Fieger had been battling cancer for several years. He was at his home in Woodland Hills, CA when he passed. The Knack's Official Website currently bears the message, "Our hearts are broken, we will miss you Doug."

In his honor, here are all three of The Knack's Top 40 hits:


The Knack - My Sharona

Rab | MySpace Video

My Own "Special Comment"

Image by Travelin' Librarian via Flickr

Let me start here: I don't like Keith Olbermann. Nothing personal against the man; I have never met him. He may be a great guy if you get to know him. But as far as his current role as host of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I find him to be bombastic, overbearing, self-obsessed and hypocritical.

At the same time, a part of me wants to like Olbermann. In his days across the ESPN desk from Dan Patrick many moons ago, he and Dan were easily the most entertaining, most knowledgeable sports commentators on the air; I never missed their show. He is obviously a bright man, quick-witted and, at times, honestly very funny. He is an outstanding speaker, able to use the language almost as a musical instrument.

Yet his skills are used, sadly, to perpetuate the ongoing partisan divide in this country. He is nothing more than the Left's version of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, constantly stirring the pot and fomenting anger and disdain among his audience against the Right. I dislike Olbermann for the same reasons that I dislike Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, et al.: they each contribute mightily to the "us against them" mindset that we find ourselves in nowadays - a mindset that does our country far more harm than good.

But, in Olbermann's case, there's something more. It's the fact that he refuses to admit his role, that he does not see himself that way, but rather as some sort of messianic second coming of Edward R. Murrow, that causes me to want to kick my television in any time I watch his program. His pomposity is simply unmatched, and simply unbearable.

Yet I watch, partly because I keep hoping I'll find redeeming quality in his presentation, partly out of the "train wreck" factor ("What kind of idiocy is he going to spew tonight?"). I watch for as long as I can, until I can take no more and must turn the channel.

So it was that I found myself watching last night. I tuned in at about the halfway mark, and so was able to grit it out to the end of the program, and I'm sorry I did. Last night, Olbermann delivered another of his histrionic "Special Comments," extended editorials he prepares when something particularly goads him. You can read the transcript of last night's Special Comment here.

Again, I want to enjoy Olbermann's work. From a strictly linguistic angle, his Special Comments in particular are damn near poetic in their rhythm, structure, and evocative use of his extensive vocabulary. In content, however, their disingenuous, often factually inaccurate assertions and questionable leaps in logic drive me right up the wall!

If Olbermann is able to use his widely viewed soapbox to wax linguistic against those who get his dander up, then I hope he (and you, my readers) don't mind if I step up on my considerably smaller soapbox and, in the style of the self-appointed Master, vent my Olbermann-induced dander.

As promised, my own "Special Comment":

Mr. Olbermann, if this is, as you suggested in the opening lines of your Special Comment Monday evening, a "terrible time in American history," rest assured that you, sir, are culpable as surely as those folks you chose to call on the carpet.

Yes, you, Mr. Olbermann. You wield your Special Comment as though it were King Arthur's sword, a weapon so powerful and mighty as to only be employed in times of dire need, when the skies are bleakest with despair, and you the only one who can remove it from the stone in order to wield it. Armed, obviously, with your intelligence, skill in speaking, and penchant for the overly dramatic; armed, obviously, with your knowledge of cultural and literary touchstones; and armed, obviously, with Roget's Thesaurus, you drive your verbally acrobatic blade through the heart - what you must believe is the very black heart - of those you demonize. Indeed, you are so driven to rid the land of your enemies that you are nearly brought to tears as you speak of their heinous misdeeds, nearly brought to alarm as you consider where the roads they pave may lead, nearly brought to frenzy by your anger so strong that you spit out their names rather than speak them civilly. It is so convincing an act that those who blindly follow you, sir, are pulled into the visceral maelstrom even if they don't quite understand all the big words.

It is an act, isn't it Mr. Olbermann? Your outrage, your fervor, your nearly bursting into stage tears; it must all be done to drive home the seriousness of your message. You know just as well as Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Beck that you can't rally your troops through factual reporting and thoughtful critique alone. You've got to let them hear the sizzle before they'll buy the steak, right Mr. Olbermann? You've got to make them FEEL it, you've got to find their hot buttons, you've got to sell it. And, just like Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the movie Network, you've got to convince them to "go to the window, open it, stick [their heads] out and yell 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"

You do it in small ways night in and night out, don't you Mr. Olbermann? By demeaning those who represent opposing views; by giving them diminunizing nicknames such as "Comedian" Rush Limbaugh, "Billo the Clown," and "Coultergeist;" by smugly sitting in judgment of those you declare "Best" and "Worst" Persons in the World (and how telling that your Bests are really nothing more than another round of Worsts). In doing so, you imply that you, sir, and by default, your followers, are somehow better, more civilized people. You imply that you, sir, and by default your followers, take the higher, more thoughtful road than these obvious heathens.

But, sadly, the opposite is true. You are no better, sir; no more civilized, no more thoughtful; you do not take a higher road. Instead, you hypocritically wallow in the same muck, employing the same tactics of fear-mongering, alarm-sounding hyperbole to whip your supporters into a frenzy as the tactics you decry the targets of your venom for using. Perhaps you veil it less thinly, but not by much. You shame Limbaugh for comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler, yet you freely compare Sarah Palin with the participants in a racist lynch mob, somehow making the leap from her unfortunate "Death Panel" Facebook comment to that comparison - a comparison not based in any logical thought progression but based merely in the need to make sure your followers get mad as hell! You mock Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs for not being able to "let go" of their arguments with you on their programs, yet you remind us with excruciating clockwork-like regularity of how many days it has been since President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." You, sir, are no better than they.

You are correct about one thing, Mr. Olbermann. This is a terrible time in American history. It is a time when I find myself fearing the road we as a nation are traveling. It is a time of some the sharpest, deepest divisions in values, morals, and beliefs that I have ever seen in my 42 years. It is a time when I see the country I love being torn asunder; a time when it seems we can accomplish nothing because the partisan rift has become so deep and wide as to seem incapable of being bridged; a time when the mantra on either side seems to be that of the Hatfields and McCoys: "If'n ye ain't fer us, ye must be agin us!"

And you are also correct, sir, when you call the names of the Palins, the Becks, the Limbaughs, and others as those who should be held accountable, at least in part, for the bile that is ever eroding that partisan rift further. Though it may not seem like it based on what I have said so far, I am no apologist for the Right. I do find their tactics of fear-mongering and panic-inducing hyperbole as distasteful as you claim to.

But, Mr. Olbermann, I suggest that you take a good long look in the mirror, for you too, sir, are partially to blame. You too, sir, use many of those very same tactics while simultaneously decrying them. And, to paraphrase your own words, if someone is hurt at one of these Town Halls, pro-Reform, anti-Reform, or, most likely, as these things tend to play out in real life, sir - if the hurt befalls an innocent bystander - you will have contributed to the harm.

If you truly wish to bring about a change, a healing, in this country, I beseech you, Mr. Olbermann, to reconsider the way in which you are doing it. Sadly, however, I suspect that is not your goal. After all, you have your job to do, and that job is to get ratings. Because, sir, ratings equal dollars for that parent company you work for, don't they? And therein lies another similarity between you and those you demean, another measure of your hypocrisy: at the end of the day you too, sir, are beholden to a corporate boss, just as those you call out for serving their corporate bosses over serving the greater good.

And the "You've Made A Poor Choice" Award Goes To...

Kimberley Vlaminck wins the "You've Made A Poor Choice" Award for...well...just look:



According to the article on the UK's Daily Mail website, Vlaminck told the Romanian tattoo artist in both French and English that she wanted three small stars tattooed near her left eye. She then claims to have fallen asleep during the tattooing process, and when she awoke, she found that the tattoo artist had confused "three" with "fifty-six" and "near my left eye" with "all over the side of my face."

Ahem.

SHE SLEPT WHILE SOMEONE TATTOOED HER FACE?!? How is that even possible? Come on, if someone is using a tattoo needle on the side of my head, I'm not dozing off. Are you?

Of course, the assertion that there was no real issue until she got home and her father and boyfriend simultaneously hit the roof tends to lead one to believe that perhaps she's reaching for a cover story for what is surely one of the poorest choices possible.

But let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she's on the level with her story. It's still the winner of the poor choice award on several counts:

1. Wanting to a get a tattoo is fine. Tattoos have become pretty much accepted and somewhat celebrated by mainstream culture. Wanting to get a tattoo, no matter how small, ON YOUR FACE is simply a poor choice. Who has a tattoo on their face? Mike Tyson. Charles Manson. People in mug shots. These are the role models you're choosing? POOR CHOICE.

2. If it takes trying to explain what you want in more than one language, you've probably made a poor choice of tattoo artists to patronize. Clearly this tattoo artist understood the "stars" concept. How difficult is it to get across the concept of "three"? If it requires speaking another language, you've made a POOR CHOICE.

3. Deciding that it was a good time to take a nap while the tattoo artist does his work after it has taken two languages to try describe the tattoo you want on your face? POOR CHOICE.

Congratulations, Kimberly. You win this one hands-down!

Your Friendly RIAA

News broke today that the RIAA is ending its five-year campaign to wipe out peer-to-peer file sharing through vigorous, if highly questionable, lawsuits against its own customers. Of course, they are not giving up the fight. No, now they are appealing to the major ISPs to help them root out the evil file sharers and take away their Internet service. They've gone from treating the public as guilty-until-proven-innocent criminals to treating the public as kindergartners who will have their toys taken away if they don't learn to play with them nicely.

On the one hand, this news is positive: it only took five years for the RIAA to figure out that their approach not only wasn't effective, it was counterproductive! In 2003, when the RIAA began the lawsuit campaign, there were estimated to be somewhere around 3,000,000 people in the US using P2P networks to share music. By 2007, there were closer to 9,500,000 - better than a 300% increase in P2P network population. This with the highly publicized monitoring of those P2P networks in full force.

Overall CD, vinyl and cassette sales during that same have famously plunged, from about $11 billion in 2003 to $7.5 billion in 2007. (To paraphrase Jello Biafra, could it be they've put out too many lousy records?) Tellingly, during the same period the RIAA's own sales numbers for "legal downloads" has grown dramatically, from $184,000,000 in 2004 (the first year for such reporting) to $1,250,000,000 in 2007 -- better than a 675% increase! (source)

On the other hand, is the new remedy the RIAA is choosing worse yet? After all, they are still going to identify "likely" violators with the same questionable methods they've always used. Now, they've conveniently eliminated the need for any due process whatsoever - or even the need to identify the owner of a given IP address! Now, they just go to the ISP and say "This IP address may have been sharing music files - cut their Internet service!" Just like that, your grandma in Tucson is bumped offline.

When will the RIAA learn? The marketplace isn't out to do them in, yet they seem always to have felt this way. Remember the "home taping is killing the music industry" campaigns in the '80s? Heck, if it weren't for hearing artists on tapes my friends made for me back then, I wouldn't have purchased half the albums in my collection!

What better way to market a band than through word-of-mouth? Aren't you more willing to give an unknown artist a listen when one of your buddies tells you, "Oh man, you've gotta hear this!" than you are even based on review you might read online or in a magazine? This is why P2P networks are so popular.

Would it be so difficult to create the RIAA's own "legitimate" P2P network? JR Raphael, in an article for PCWorld, suggests this very solution.

I think it's an outstanding idea. How about you?