Another one for the anti-migrant bigot forces

NEW YORK – It’s been a very long time since we did a pro-migrant tune (Week #6, “Weeknights at Six“, about Lou Dobbs) and it’s time for another.

Southern California welcomed me with open arms when I moved there nine years ago from New York City. Unfortunately not everyone gets such a warm welcome upon their arrival. Drive south on I-5 or I-15 to Orange County or the San Diego suburbs and you’ll find a growing anti-migrant resentment that has been sanitized and made acceptable, dressed up as populism and paraded on talk radio and cable news to the point where it’s sunk in as the norm — even among kids we meet at shows who sport Barack Obama pins.

This song, Temecula Girl, is a stab at making an aggregate of conversations I’ve had in my travels outside of Eastern Los Angeles in both The Actual and Max and the Marginalized, at diners after shows, with people that we’ve hung out with after our shows (in this case we’re putting all their words in the mouth of an attractive girl from San Diego boom-burb Temecula) who have been infected with this resentment.

A moment of muso dorkout: this is our third reggae tune. I love our reggae tunes, and before doing this band never imagined I’d write one. Expect more — but this will be the only one in 13/8 time.

Enjoy!

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Temecula Girl

You tell me there’s a look that you pick up on the street
At the car wash in the heat
And it darkens down your day
Pleading on for a metal wire fence
Or some other sad defense that will make them go away

But I’m afraid you don’t get it, no I just can’t see what you mean
You don’t get it, and nor does your father waving his fingers fast the screen
And I can’t connect how this affects the smallest detail of your little world
So forget, because you don’t get it, no you don’t, Temecula Girl

You allege in a hateful thin panache
That there ones who caused the crash, and a removal’s overdue
And exclaim squarely where you place the blame, as you take your aim
A pretty girl with an ugly point of view

But you don’t get it, no I just can’t see what you mean
you don’t get it, and I can’t meet you halfway, halfway between
And I can’t connect, how this affects even the smallest detail of your little world
So forget, because you don’t get it, no you don’t, Temecula Girl

So if you need someone to agree, you can look somewhere else for a nod
Of approval or consolation, just be patient and maybe the things that you ought to get
Just might connect with whatever good is still left in your little world if you let it
Because I don’t get it, no I don’t, Temecula Girl

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Merry X-mas from George

A fine one from our pals at Brave New Films:

Merry Xmas!

Slowing down a bit, but Darkblack is back, so who cares…

Hello hello.

So, we’re at I think the song 60 mark. As you can see, we’ve slowed down a little bit upon making it to a year. We will get back into the swing of things shortly but we are going to be recording an album next month wherein we rerecord the best tracks we’ve done so far with a bit more practice and better fidelity.

Any void we temporarily leave behind should be fulfilled sufficiently by the almighty Darkblack, who is like us if we were 100x awesomer than we are currently, and used Photoshop instead of guitars.

If you doubt me, observe:

We’ll have a new song on Thursday, gonna finish it up tonight.

Newspaper business, welcome to the music business

My colleague in my non-derelict professional life James Boyce has a blog up at HuffPo about the 2 billion dollar quarterly decline in ad revenue that the Newspaper business has found itself in, and (correctly) asserts that it’s the newspapers’ fault.

That, by the way, is a quarterly drop. When you drop from $10 billion to $8 billion in a quarter, you’re headed for oblivion. Just as the Big 3 claimed their troubles have nothing to do with the crap cars they produce and everything to do with the economic crisis, so too will many newspapers try to claim the decline is not their fault.

It is.

Why is newspaper ad revenue plummeting? Two primary reasons. Readership and Clicks. As major dailies across the country report double digit drops in subscriptions and readers every six months, the advertising revenue that is based upon those numbers drops accordingly.

In a remarkably arrogant move, what newspapers have been doing is raising rates in the face of declining readers to keep income even. It sounds stupid but it’s true. Many have also doubled their newstand prices with the same logic. The industry is headed to roadrunner status, speeding along and over the cliff, arrogance and incompetence, full steam ahead.

Newspaper business, welcome to the music business. The decline of record sales had as much to do with Napster as it did with a total pattern shift from developing acts into real, album-worthy artists (once the norm) to machines capable of creating albums with one or two hits and interminable filler in between. Albums like “American Idiot” or the first M.I.A. record still get bought. Each attempt to squeeze a hit out of Britney between treatment centers do not.

Best Buy had the right idea too – making CDs cheaper in the face of consumers finding cheaper ways to get music. HMV, Tower, Warehouse, and any of the other major record retailers that have shut their doors in the past six years can testify to that before they say hello to your favorite newspaper.