Smooth in Shanghai

You obviously can't tell, but when this picture was taken almost three years ago on Nanjing Road in Shanghai, the smooth sounds of Kenny G were being piped out into the noise and bustle of Shanghai's most vibrant commercial streetscape.

Even in the midst of so much western cultural and commercial influence, I found the music of Kenny G blasting out into the street rather odd (and slightly nauseating, of course). Fortunately, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! explained this phenomenon yesterday in the Not My Job segment of the show. As host Peter Sagal explained:

In China, especially in Shanghai, stores, buses and other public facilities play his beloved song "Going Home" when they want people to go home.

Wikipedia's Kenny G page corroborates this information and has some additional details about Kenny G's campaign to conquer the sonic landscape of modern China.

Enhance Image

I've always joked that designing the software used in movies is my dream job. You get to make software that looks really cool but doesn't actually have to do anything. NPR recently ran an interview with Mark Coleran, a user interface designer who is living the dream. It's a decent interview, but I was disappointed that doesn't discuss the ubiquitous "enhance image" feature that allows a spy to take a low resolution parking lot surveillance photograph and zoom in until he can read the VIN off of a car parked in the lot.

You Have Selected Regicide

If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one.

I heard this story on NPR about a group of French royalists who want to restore the monarchy. They recently held their annual gathering at the Basilica of St. Denis to mark the anniversary of the beheading of King Louis XVI and the end of the French monarchy. I mention this not because I'm a some sort of a crypto-royalist or because I have Bourbon blood coursing through my veins (or perhaps, just bourbon) but because I visited the Basilica while in Paris a couple years ago and I thought it was really interesting. As the story points out, more than 50 French monarchs are interred at St. Denis, including Pépin le Bref (Charlemagne's Dad), Clovis I, and, of course, Louis XVI. It's definitely worth a visit if you're looking for something to do in Paris that's slightly off the beaten path but still touristy.


June 11, 2008 | 3:52 pm | Saint-Denis, France

This DJ

The AV Club recently ran a nice feature entitled Early experiences in pop-culture dorkiness, where the writers sounded off about their earliest known experiences of turning a critical and/or obsessive eye towards the pop-culture landscape. Many of these stories rang true for me, especially the ones about taping songs off of the radio and pretending to be a disc jockey. At the height of my personal imaginary media empire, I ran a radio station with its own call letters, sponsors (with commercials), and multiple on-air personalities (keep in mind that I almost always worked alone). My station was called NRP Shock Radio, a name that I stole from a Doonesbury comic strip. I believe the strip in question featured Mark taking a page out of the so-called shock jocks playbook and rebranding his program as "NPR Shock Radio". At the time, I had no idea what NPR or shock radio were, but I thought the name sounded cool. The NRP isn't a typo, I assume that I misread the comic.

Needless to say, when I first encountered ads for Quickshot's DJ Machine in the back of my comic books and Boy's Life, I knew I needed to have it. In case you've forgotten about the DJ Machine, or, more likely, you never knew what it was in the first place - here's a link you can check out (the only reference to it I could find online). I received this wonderful machine as a Christmas present in either 1988 or 89 and got plenty of use of it. I used the sound effects to create a jingle for NRP Shock Radio (lasers blasting in the background while I stuttered the 's' in shock). Like all good things, NRP Shock Radio eventually came to an end as I left it behind for other equally dorky pursuits. I'm pretty sure my parent's gave my DJ Machine away several years ago.

I finally got the chance to be a "real" DJ when I went to college. As luck would have it, my college radio shows probably had about as many listeners as NRP Shock Radio. My dorm had its own radio station, but it didn't broadcast. Instead, it sent its signal throughout the dorm over coaxial cable. This meant that anyone who wished to tune in from their room needed to forgo the free cable TV coming into their room and plug their stereo antenna into the cable hookup instead. Needless to say, it wasn't a popular choice. Fortunately, major record labels still thought we were a real radio station and sent us all kinds of promotional materials. Our studio was full of CDs and there was a closet full of old LPs across the hall. It was a really great resource. I was just starting to get into jazz and I probably listened to just about every one of the numerous old jazz records in the library.

I don't know if the radio station still exists, though I did come across a (broken) link to the web site that I built for the station (WLAY 90.1 FM - West Lafayette's Get Lucky Radio Station) on this online radio station directory.

Bonus

I liked today's Dilbert. It reminded me of this story NPR did a few months ago.

The story looked into how people in various occupations are compensated and contrasted it with the huge bonus culture on Wall St. that has been all over the news for the past year. Most jobs don't pay out large performance-based bonuses because it would be counter-productive. I'd argue that it's also been quite counter-productive on Wall St., but that's another story. Since most people think that they are above average (I know I am), close to half the of the office would be pretty disappointed if a large percentage of their compensation was tied to individual performance. The other big problem, which this cartoon illustrates perfectly, is that if individual performance is the only thing that is considered when paying bonuses, interoffice cooperation is seriously devalued and employees start behaving like freelancers at best and competitors at worst.

Newport News

More thoughts from the Newport Jazz Festival.

I was disappointed to see that RIPTA has discontinued their seasonal bus service from the Newport Visitors Center for Fort Adams. Even in these times of challenging state budgets, it's an embarrassment for city like Newport that relies so heavily on tourism to lack a public transport option from its downtown to one of its most popular attractions.

That being said, the water taxi that I wound up taking from Perrotti Park to Fort Adams was quite nice.

This was my first visit to Fort Adams, and I was really impressed with it. I'll definitely be going back some weekend when it's not playing host to a music festival to check it out.

There was no shortage of booths selling handicrafts at the festival, but I didn't see any selling recordings. Jazz fans are notorious record collectors so I was surprised to see that there wasn't even a tent selling recordings of the featured musicians.

My favorite show other than the V5 was the Christian McBride trio, which kind of surprised me. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, just really good and straight-ahead jazz. I was looking forward to Vijay Iyer's show, but with the exception of their last number, I couldn't really get into any of their tunes.

NPR music was at the festival and has made many of the concerts available for download (not the V5's set, unfortunately)

The ProJo mentioned the V5's set in their review today:

The Vandermark 5, a group of young Chicagoans, started the process with a mix of wailing horns, cello and bowed acoustic bass, completing the demolition on their final song as the second-stage crowd roared. “Some people probably hated it,” said cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, “and some people have told us it was their favorite thing of the festival so far.”

Ken's take on the V5's set, via twitter.

Here's a link to some pictures that I took of the V5 before their set.

All in the Family

This interview with Jeff Sharlet is a couple weeks old, but it's a really interesting look at a religious right group known as The Family. I consider myself fairly well informed on matter of church/state and culture war issues, but I had never heard of them before. Their secretive, trickle-down prosperity gospel is brazen, even by religious right standards. Sharlet's book about The Family sounds like an excellent read.

New Zealand. Like Lord of the Rings

The Flight of the Conchords season 2 media blitz began in earnest todaty, with this spot on NPR and this interview with the A.V. Club. I'm still working through season 1 on DVD and don't have HBO, so I don't know when and if I'll get a chance to check out season 2. I like the show, but so far, I've liked the acting more than the music. Don't get me wrong, the videos are great and lyrics are hilarious, it's just that parody songs don't reach their full comedic potential until you have a chance to reference them in everyday life, and I haven't reach that point quite yet.

On Average

Here's an interesting state-by-state breakdown of some demographic information and statistics that may or may not be relevant in this year's election. I was kind of surprised to see how average Rhode Island is in a lot of categories (gas price, illegal immigration, poverty, racial distribution, and per capita GDP). I feel like Rhode Island's small physical size throws off a lot of statistics because it has a smaller percentage of its citizens living in rural areas than most states. I was most surprised to see that at 47%, Rhode Island comes in 48th in the percentage of population who are married.

Subprime Time

I heard this story on the way home from work today. It's probably the best summary of the whole subprime mortgage debacle that I've heard or read anywhere. It's a tale of the perverse incentives that drove subprime mortgage brokers to steer clients into risky loans and how borrowers either deceived themselves or were deceived by their brokers (or both) into thinking they could afford the loans that they were taking out. It's a seven-and-a-half minute object lesson in behavior economics.

Not My Job

This week's installment of Not My Job of NPR's news quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me featured NFL quarterback and NPR listener Joey Harrington. Joey definitely cements his reputation as one of the NFL's more cerebral jocks with his appearance on the show. It's actually a pretty fun interview. You should definitely listen to it, if for no other reason than to hear Carl Kassell say "Joey's a winner" at the end of the show. It'll probably be a long time before someone utters those words again in the national media.

Economist Obit Interview

Sorry to keep talking about the Economist, but I heard this piece on the radio yesterday morning and couldn't resist passing it along. It's an interview with Ann Wroe, the Economist's current obituary writer. It can be a real challenge to read an entire issue of the Economist cover-to-cover each week, but I always make sure I at least flip to the back and read the obituary. I find the form and subjects of the Economist's obits much more compelling than obituaries in other publications. They are long, at least by obituary standards, and they always manage to profile people who lived profoundly interesting lives. This week's subject is obviously Benazir Bhutto, but in weeks where no one's death is at the top of international headlines, they usually manage to find people who, to reuse a compliment from the world of art, were much more influential than well-known. Often times, I've either never heard of the person they are remembering or I have heard of the person but had no idea that he or she had passed away. Aviation pioneer Freddie Laker and avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen are two relatively recent examples of the latter. The Economist's obituary page is neither afraid to talk about the flaws of those who have passed away, nor is it afraid to eulogize people whose passing has probably made the world a better place. Non-subscribers can read the past year's worth of obits for free online. Check it out sometime.

Word of the Day

Yesterday, I learned via Deadspin about a list of 100 words that Houghton Mifflin believes all high school graduates should know. Conspicuous by their absence were some of my favorite words, such as the, is, and like. In all seriousness, I love words, especially ones like these that no one ever uses in conversation, and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I don't know every word on the list. It seems like every time I learn a new word or a new historical fact, I come across a reference to this new piece of knowledge the very next day. This has happened to me so many times that I'm sure that it's not a coincidence and it must happen to other people as well. Sure enough, on my way to work this morning, I was listening to Frank Deford's weekly sports rant on NPR. He ended his missive about the twin spectator death marches that are the NBA and NHL playoffs with the top 100 word jejune. This phenomenon makes me wonder how often I encounter words or facts that I'm not familiar with and just ignore without even noticing it.

Beauty is a Rare Thing

NPR did a piece on free jazz legend Ornette Coleman this morning. It's always nice to see someone in the free jazz community get some coverage in the mainstream media. I'm not a huge Ornette fan. In fact, I don't own a single Ornette Coleman recording. I guess that's somewhat shameful for someone who considers himself a free jazz afficianado, but my recording collection is very sparse by jazz collector standards anyway. I'm familliar with some of his work from the 1960s and I like almost all of it. I haven't been too impressed with any of his recent stuff, but I've only heard a small sample.

I've never seen Coleman play live, and I probably never will. From what I understand, he rarely plays live shows anymore. I heard that he played a free show on the Boston Common sometime back in the 1980s. Nowadays, you're probably lucky to hear him play a show in his hometown (New York?), let alone a free show in the middle of a city park. I'm not knocking Coleman by any means, his impact on the world of creative improvised music has been profound. I'm just saying that I can't really consider someone who is not out there making music on a regular basis part of the vanguard of the free jazz movement. Still, it was a nice piece and he is a much more deserving of an in-depth profile than most of the musicians that I hear about on NPR.