HUMAN PARACHUTES PRESENTS

Since FSU does a relatively poor job of publicising its own academic events, I’ll try to maintain a rolling list of lectures and other informative/cultural events happening around campus…

September 25: Roger Mudd, “When the News Was the News” @ Claude Pepper Center, 3:30-5:00PM

“Roger Mudd, author of The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News (2008), was the documentary host and correspondent for The History Channel from 1995 until he retired in 2004.

Between 1961 to 1992, he was a Washington correspondent for CBS News, NBC News and the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour on PBS.

He won the George Foster Peabody award for “The Selling of the Pentagon” in 1970 and for “Teddy” in 1979 and the Barone Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting in 1990.”

September 29:  Lukas Ligeti @ Dohnanyi Recital Hall, 8:00PM

“Described as “one of the most interesting compositional voices working today,” Lukas Ligeti is known for combining his talents as a composer with his improvisational fantasy, and highly diverse African-tinged soundscapes.  Steeped in the musical traditions of his father György Ligeti, Lukas embodies reinvention by making his contemporary music crackle with energy.

As a composer, he has been commissioned by Bang on a Can, the Vienna Festwochen, Ensemble Modern, Kronos Quartet, Radio France, and many others.

As a drummer, he has played and/or recorded with artists such as John Zorn, Gary Lucas, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Raoul Björkenheim, Michael Manring, Daniel Carter, Eyal Maoz, John Tchicai, Benoît Delbecq, Pyrolator, Jim O’Rourke, Borah Bergman, Robert Dick, and Rupert Huber.

As band leader, he co-leads Burkina Electric, the first electronica band of the West African country of Burkina Faso.”

September 30: Nancy Soderberg @ FSU Alumni Center, 3:00-5:00PM

“Nancy Soderberg is an American foreign policy strategist who held several senior level positions in the Clinton Administration and authored the book The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might.

With over twenty years of experience in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, Ms. Soderberg has a deep understanding of policy-making and negotiations at the highest levels of government and the United Nations. She has promoted democracy and conflict resolution worldwide.”

Anyone who’s met me know’s I’m from Niceville, FL.  Sometimes I get to wondering why I’m actually proud of it.  By most accounts, Niceville is a pretty average conservative Bible-belt town.  We have K-Mart, a few schools, plenty of churches, and not much else.

The answer is simple, really.  I’m proud of the largely unacknowledged talent that Niceville has bred.  Some of the most ernest and genuinely creative people I’ve ever known are from Niceville.  For a few years, Niceville maintained a fairly steady (if small) culture of creativity with respectably solid output.

This history is not as well documented as I would like, but there are some nuggets that exist, and I’ll try my best to make them available to you.

I met a dear friend, Dan Wiley, after he returned to Niceville around 2005.  He approached me at a hardcore show and asked me if I liked Trail of Dead.  Later I found out that he was trying to put a band together, but I never played with him.  I only saw him once or twice more before he’d put together Letters in the Sea with a few others who became close friends of mine.  While short lived, the band wrote a handful of wonderful pop songs.

After disbanding, Dan continued playing solo sets around the area with increasing popularity.  About a year and a half after we met, Dan was preparing to move to Virginia.  He played a farewell show in Fort Walton Beach, and lucky for us, he recorded it.

Here’s one of the songs:

Dan Wiley - “Runaways” (Live @ the Sound)

So busy with shows lately!  Here’s another featuring Reverse X Rays, Ethan Master of Hawaiian Ukulele, and Continental Divide at the OAF House (621 Conradi St).

Reverse X Rays - “Diet of Textures”

Ethan Master of Hawaiian Ukulele - “Noise Band”

Continental Divide - “Golden Throat”

Edit:

By no means do I fancy myself an art connoisseur.  My approach to visual art is very forward.  I have reasons for liking what I like, but those reasons extend little beyond personal preference.

Every now and then I scour the web for art exhibitions that pique my interest.  I’ll share some highlights with you from time to time.

David Sturgis, Everybody Loves Somebody (2007)

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For anyone who had to miss out on tonight’s Ariel Pink show, you can click to enlarge what you didn’t miss.

As a brief explanation for those who don’t know and weren’t there, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti stopped their show at Café Annapurna this evening after a few ill-fated attempts to play through the soundsystem’s feedback.

During their short set, the noise was never overbearing during the songs, and, if anything, the misfortune of bad sound could have further humanized the already-cozy show.  The band and audience could have shared the trial of a faulty set-up, made the best of it, and come out the other end more satisfied for having shown the dedication and DIY aesthetic that is expected of bands (and audiences!) at that level.

Still, I withhold judgment.  Ariel Pink’s drummer, talking to his bandmates while putting away equipment, expressed regret for the way the evening had turned out.  He didn’t fault the venue or the promoters, he simply recalled some shows he’d been to as a kid, where bands had pounded out ten minutes of pure energy before the system gave out entirely.

Some disgruntled fans gave the band plenty of hell, and I too had some harsh words to share with friends, but as the night came to a close I had a chance to see the human side of Haunted Graffiti.  They could have pounded out those ten minutes and the crowd would have hung on to every last word, but at least they apologized and didn’t ask for payment.  Most of them clearly felt some reserved guilt once the crowd left, and from what I can tell, they were very thankful to Krishna and the Annapurna staff.

Chances are they will come back to Florida.  Ariel said more than once that he wants to return and give us a proper show.

Here’s to forgetting mishaps.

UPDATE (08/04/08):

VENUE CHANGED TO CAFÉ ANNAPURNA (666 TENNESSEE ST., NEXT TO McDONALDS)

Michigan-based Afrobeat octet Nomo return with their third album, Ghost Rock. This album has the already-focused group more on point than ever before. Moving beyond the full-frontal, strong brass afrobeat-funk of their previous effort, New Tones, Ghost Rock sees the group opting for more sparse horn arrangements, allowing the textural subtlety they’ve always excelled at to shine through uninterrupted. The overdriven, feedback-processed electric mbira, sawblade gamelan polyrhythms, and flourishes of Rhodes are especially nice touches.

Other bands–Chicago Afrobeat Project and Antibalas come to mind–try to keep afrobeat alive, but often only meander on old constructs and remind that the genre desperately needs a new voice.  As far as I’m concerned, Nomo is that voice.  Gathering influence from electronic music, modern jazz, the steady pulses and ambient underpinnings of krautrock, and classic funk, the band breathes fresh ideas into a style still largely unexplored.

“All the Stars”

Links:  Nomo Homepage, Myspace, Ubiquity Records

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Watching C-Span is a favorite activity of mine. My old roommates would grimace as I sat in front of the tube, viewing hours of mind numbing senate subcommittee hearings on various esoteric topics, and tossing out unwanted opines based on basic knowledge of the subject at hand. Usually, my rants would come out when congressmen would meander before their colleagues with heart-string stories rather than solution-driven monologues.  “I spoke with a single mother of three who is worried about the rising cost of food,” etc…

These vignettes often fail because they do not create substantive dialogue. We know that food costs too much. We know people are struggling to cope with the weakening economy. Rather than telling sob stories that only serve to tug the heart-strings of your constituents, why not take a step back and think about the businesses and broader picture for a moment, too.  Supply and demand is, as should be painfully obvious, a two-way process.  There’s no fair way to manipulate it.  Either consumers and businesses freely adapt to each others needs as much as possible, or the government unfairly decides to favor one over the other.  This is maximized simplification of a highly complex issue, of course, but it’s basically true.

And like those melodramatic congressmen, it’s something the Student Government Association at FSU can’t seem to understand.  For example, an article in this week’s FSView tells of SGA’s latest unnecessary battle… against tow-truck companies.

The current fee to retrieve an impounded car in Tallahassee is $88.  Because of city council regulations, towing companies cannot raise this rate without permission.  It should be a no-brainer that they need a rate increase, though.  The price of fuel has reached an all-time high, energy prices are rising across the board, and they’re only asking for a $12 increase.  That’s less than 3 gallons of regular unleaded fuel, and these trucks require 3.5 gallons of Diesel per tow.  They’re not even making up the difference on gas costs with this proposal.

But SGA, determined to stick to one of the dumbest consumer advocacy campaigns I’ve ever seen, seem to insist that this slight increase in cost is predatory.  Maybe, given a little more information, they’d also fight Kelloggs for reducing the size of cereal boxes without changing the price.

Cliff Alexander, an SGA member and leader of the ridiculously-named Anti-Tow Truck Task Force (a name that seems to suggest tow trucks are the enemy, not the rising fees), argues that rather than increasing costs, tow companies should “economize like every other American.”  If tow companies are already operating efficient businesses, however, no economizing decisions short of firing employees or taking away their full-time status are going to offset the rising cost of energy.  Jim Patton of Ability Towing in Tallahassee shared with the FSView that fuel has gone from their “fifth or sixth highest expense…to second or even top.”  That’s no small sum.

And why should tow companies have to bear the brunt of poor driver decision-making?  We must keep in mind that students aren’t being exploited by this proposed price increase, they’re just dealing with the changing economic climate, and at any rate, no responsible student will ever have to deal with this cost anyway.  SGA’s position presumably advocates student idiocy.

The only good thing to come out of this massive waste-of-time is a little SGA side-project that outlines how not to get towed, and how to avoid extra fees if towed.  This little afterthought should have been the extent of their entire campaign, but hey, it’s cool to fight the man, right?