Across the Great Divide

Vic Chesnutt: No Sweeter Relief.

Holes in his sweater, fluid in his lungs

The experts say there's things

He should've done better

But instead he's just dying young

– Vic Chesnutt, "Dying Young"

The Christmas Day death of singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, who had been partially paralyzed since a drunk-driving car crash when he was 18, could be spun as a story about chemical abuse, depression or suicide. But at bottom (see his "When the Bottom Fell Out" below), it's a story about health care in America.

If you have a pre-existing condition that requires ongoing treatment, and are a self-employed musician in employer-based system, you're not likely to be enjoying the "greatest health care system in the world."

He spoke at length December 1st on "Fresh Air" about his struggles with the health care system, and in another interview, he said:

I'm not too eloquent talking about these things. I was making payments, but I can't anymore and I really have no idea what I'm going to do. It seems absurd they can charge this much. When I think about all this, it gets me so furious. I could die tomorrow because of other operations I need that I can't afford. I could die any day now, but I don't want to pay them another nickel.

Back in 1996, a Chesnutt Tribute album called "Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation," helped raise money for his medical bills — and was intended to perhaps goose him out of obscurity so he could make a better living. At the time, he was quoted in a Strib story by Jon Bream about medical insurance for musicians.

"A lot of musicians are living supper to supper" and can't pay for insurance. "It's really scary," said Chesnutt, pop's most prominent paraplegic singer-songwriter. "I was lucky enough: I had a job when I crashed. I was working at Hardee's and at a cotton mill, too. So I'd paid in Social Security for a couple of years and I automatically got Medicaid, which is a great thing. If not, my family would've been starved to death. It would've sucked them dry."

Even thirteen years later, a difficult and obscure artists can't go back to the well for another tribute album. So the greatest outpouring comes too late.

The Russians Love Their Lynyrd Skynyrd, too.

I suppose there is life after Afghanistan. The Soviet Union's nine-year stay ended just over 20 years ago.

The war cost the Soviets about 15,000 lives, and messed up the country's relations with China, the Muslim world and the West, including a trade embargo and boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

They left proclaiming their "internationalist duty" finished and washed their hands of further responsibility for advancing national accord or creation of a broadly based coalition government.

From the looks of the Red Army Chorus singers backing up the Finnish band Leningrad Cowboys, some of them were around in the old days. No question where they'd rather be.

Via WINston smITH (h/t Norwegianity)

One of the Newer (Koff) Songs.

My research leads down some strange and rewarding paths.

Back When I was a Word Man.

This is a test of Typepad's audio player, which in my browser doesn't display as a player in my preview mode. It appears to require a right-click on the box to open the link in a new tab/window. But now that it's posted, a play arrow does seem to appear if you hover over the bar with your mouse.

Word Man

New Berlin Wall Gives New Meaning to "Free."

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

The Associated Press reports  that a massive barrier will block Berliners' view of U2's concert celebrating 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Only 10,000 ticket holders will be allowed by MTV organizers to see today's concert in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Those tickets were made available online — for free.

Apparently, MTV will not force the non-free-ticket-holding freeloaders on the other side of the barrier to stick their fingers in their ears and hum.

The Who Screams, I Scream.

LeRoy Stevens complied “Favorite Recorded Scream” as more than a mix tape of throat-shredding howls from popular recordings. He spent six months finding 74 Manhattan record shops, soliciting their nominations and mapping their locations in the city. So it's more fully understood as a conceptual work that

traces his inspiration in “using the city as a sort of playground” to mid-20th century trickster movements like Fluxus and the Situationists. “Equal emphasis is placed on the process as well as the final product,” he said. In that sense the record stores themselves helped create the work and are also now functioning as its gallery.

Mapping the stores adds a dimension to the work because it honors them as a cultural repository and documents their precarious existence. Some of the stores have gone out of business since the project was completed.

And no, I don't have a favorite scream I can name. I tended unconsciously to filter them out. As a singer, I was trained not to abuse my vocal cords, so even as the front man in rock bands, I left the screams to others. 

*****

But one thing does make me scream — lame infographics.

On his packaging, Stevens straightforwardly listed the scream submissions by order received, showing title, artist and nominating shop, then mapped the location of the stores and also listed them alphabetically. That makes it relatively easy to interact with the layers of information.

Here's a case where designers put together a slick online graphic tied to a database, but actually succeeded in being less information friendly than the record cover and its inserted poster.

 

The site devotes most of its real estate to displaying a US map outlining the states — and then repeating 2/3rds of the map as fill in the lower corner. It's logical to use the map to select your state, but if you click on the state whose economic index you want to view, nothing happens. You have to find the state in the ranked list on the left and click there.

Then the state is highlighted and the data appear in the bar below. Too bad if you want to compare states beyond the ordinal rankings. The big map would be an obvious place to show the index colors, but you can only view one at a time.

The Rain Comes.

Well, That Was a Morning Wasted...

From Hal Davis:

Congress ... in 1924 enacted the Johnson-Reed bill that limited European immigration to just over 150,000 per year with nationality quotas based on the origins of the U.S. population, which heavily favored western and northern Europe, especially Britain. The act required entry visas, with photographs -- another facet of control -- and largely excluded Asians. It exempted most of the western hemisphere so that Mexico could continue supplying western farmers with cheap labor.

— Allan J. Lichtman, WHITE PROTESTANT NATION: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement

From MinnPost, a story on Minnesota's "best and brightest" video bloggers includes Melinda Jacobs, whose other stabs at sincerity, authenticity and attention-grabbing included promoting herself as a flirting expert. She got her start in March after devoting:

two years studying the economics and technology of the industry before jumping into the digital era to do long-form celebrity interviews.
 

Even though she hopes to eventually make a living with online video, she refuses to put ads or product placements into her pieces if she doesn't believe in them.

The Craig Show, also featured, does product placement right, with a Taylor guitar slipped into his golf instruction video. (Maybe he's only hilarious if you play golf.)

And in this, via The Daily Glean,  Michele Bachmann proves herself a much better Autotune singer than Sarah Palin.

Say Again?

MinnPost has a short piece about the celebrity-infused gala sponsored by Starkey Hearing Foundation, which raises money to provide hearing aids to children worldwide. Here's more.

The guest list included "stars" such as Buzz Aldrin, "Incredible Hulk" Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Palmer, who was already in town for the 3M Championship golf tourney.

One local celebrity missing this year was philanthropist and disgraced businessman Tom Petters.

The event always features luminary musical guests, including Garth Brooks, John Mellencamp, Tricia Yearwood, Michael Bolton, and Dionne Warwick. This year's acts included Gladys Knight, Tony Bennett and Elton John, who gave an hour-long show.

I heard a few years ago that someone hob-nobbing with one of the bands asked how the event consistently got top names to perform. The expenses must cut into the amount raised, she mused.

"Hell, no," responded a band member. "We love doing this because we all use the products ourselves."

Tempus Fugedaboutit.

Orchestra Hall is coming in for a makeover.

Architecture critic Linda Mack, who served on an advisory committee for this project, once described Orchestra Hall as an example of "1970s let-it-all-hang-out brutalism." New York architect Hugh Hardy's design "was a product of its era," she said Friday. "It was avant-garde in its time and meant to be more accessible, but I don't think people embraced it. It's hard to find someone who says, 'I adore that lobby.'"

Sounds familiar. I myself am a product of my era, and my lobby has fallen into disrepair.

As Tom Waits once wrote, "I'm big in Japan." But stuff changes, and at a certain point, you don't get to change with it.

When the ceiling sound cubes of Orchestra Hall were still being plastered, I was putting the finishing touches on a special section I wrote for the Minneapolis Star that was to accompany the opening of the new building. In those days, I wrote as Charles R. Quimby, because it seemed like newspaper readers might take my criticism a little more seriously than from a guy called Charlie. Charles R. had tickets on the aisle whenever he asked.

As another Tom wrote, "The sky was the limit."

The supplement contained a general orchestra history, plus profiles of all the past conductors and an interview with a violinist who'd served under all of them. I also covered how the construction company was both intrigued and a little disturbed that all the building's mechanical systems were exposed. 

As one of the Star's arts writers, I got passes to the opening concert. We were standing around in our dress-up clothes drinking champagne, which made the let-it-all-hang-out lobby look pretty decent.

But my prevailing memory is of the music critic, who shall remain nameless, who showed up in a powder blue outfit the likes of which we had never seen. In fact, the style was so brand new and avant-garde, he could wear it without irony to this major cultural event and no one would even know until he told them that this groovy new ensemble was called a leisure suit.

If they have an opening ceremony for the updated hall, I would hope there's a curatorial display case for that baby.

 

Looking at the building today, it may not be obvious how much time has passed since it was new and adventurous. But my face over that special-section byline and the powder blue leisure suit make it clear that something was due for a change.