A Great Good Place: The Third Place, a coffeehouse - Article on June 21, 2000

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http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2000-06-21/ae3.html

A Great Good Place: The Third Place, a coffeehouse
Steve Goldsmith
June 21, 2000

A slide projector flashed images on the unfinished walls of a narrow storefront in Five Points, some weeks before the formal opening of The Third Place, a coffeehouse. Dean Sauls, painter and pizza slinger from Lilly's, next door, had approached Rich Futrell and Ty Beddingfield during the build-out of the store. He asked if they were interested in showing artwork, and arranged a viewing of his paintings.

When the coffeehouse opened on Nov. 11, 1994, Sauls' work became its first public display. Since then, the walls, ceiling, floor, bathrooms and patio of The Third Place have been adorned with the expressive works of local artists and artisans. Much of the art has been offered for sale, with the coffeehouse acting as the location for closing the transaction between artist and collector, but there has never been a commission collected for providing this service.

The arts world can appear somewhat remote to everyman; many of us do not have the jargon or perspective to feel comfortable visiting a "high-end" gallery, nor are we assured of a warm reception. Yet countless Third Place clients have been introduced to the arts as an accessible thing, via informal artists' lectures, casual reviews from the ever-present artist-comment book and by simply eavesdropping on spirited discussions of the current work. Each first-time buyer represents a special victory for The Third Place in its role as icebreaker for a sometimes chilly arena.

Futrell credits Ray Oldenburg, author of The Great Good Place, with planting the seeds that sprouted to become this charming venue. Oldenburg, a sociologist with a longing for lost community, explores the various psycho-social reasons for the attraction people have for the "third place," most often represented in the bars, coffeehouses, and other places where people go to find camaraderie. But the concept, as described by Oldenburg, can only be made manifest by the right mix of personalities and location. Futrell and Beddingfield were dedicated to the notion that a locally owned, locally focused "third place" could be fielded at Five Points. They thrive on the mix of blue-collar, white-collar, priest-collar and dog-collar (check out the Enloe students who debate outside on weeknights) personalities who make up their clientele. Bringing all of these diverse entities together, The Third Place becomes a nightly tapestry, in which each element complements the others.

It did not take long for Futrell and Beddingfield to recognize the rich body of talent that stood across the counter from them day-to-day. That pool of personalities and ideas engaged with the highly creative bunch behind the counter, and arts projects were launched, in a low-key fashion, but at a dizzying pace. The space is used to display artwork, of course. It also provides a community bulletin board, wall space for posters announcing community service and arts-oriented events and a business card exchange table.

More than 100 local artists have had their work featured at 1811 Glenwood Ave. over the last six years. This Hayes-Barton neighborhood establishment is a one-stop shop for visual stimulation, intelligent company and conversation, news of the local arts scene and happenings at the Rialto up the street. Some of the work acts as a fixture in the conduct of the business: The Bean Bar is a one-of-a-kind creation from artist Jason Seale, and metal artists David Benson and Ben Galata have blended their works into the counters and back-bar. The Third Place logo, a stylized arrangement of comfortable chair and table, was the product of ceramic artist Meredith Brickell, who traded it for four years of weekly lunches.

The confluence of talents and interests, on both sides of the bar, has also launched a unique musical project in late 1997. The Third Place produced a CD, Local Honey, a collection of works from two dozen local artists. The music of Semicolon, Hobex, Milagro Saints, The Boy Wonder Jinx, VROOM, Dear Enemy, The Slackmates, and many others were laid down, with recorded coffeehouse chatter between tracks. Original artwork from Jason Seale, Chad Burnette and Corkey Goldsmith graced the covers, front and back. There were 1,000 pressed, and the same number sold throughout the area.

Other collaborations that have germinated in The Third Place's social petri dish are too numerous to recount in detail. They are as varied as pulling together a drumming circle to celebrate an international festival at Wiley International Magnet School, and partnering with the Rialto to screen the work of an area filmmaker, with artist discussion at the coffeehouse after the showing. Local musicians set up most weekends, providing background music to enhance the conversations. Not a day goes by without some number of meetings held, by clientele and staff, to plan a fundraiser or plot an approach to the city council. It is a comfortable, engaging place where good energy can be harnessed and expressed.

The Third Place Alumni Association does not yet exist as a formal entity, but the informal connections between and among former employees represents another aspect of community. You can find alumni at Antfarm, Penland, the N.C. Museum of Art, at universities around the world and spreading the spirit in many large American cities. The energy and sense of community that marked their time at the coffeehouse is radiating out in all directions. Beddingfield and Futrell admit to being somewhat overwhelmed at the success of their joint venture, but their alternative to the chains has struck a chord with people and points to the living truth of the "third place" concept.

Oldenburg is crafting a follow-up work, Third Place Victories, intended to give anecdotal evidence of the importance of the "third place" in communities. Futrell has been asked to provide a chapter, describing The Third Place experience in Raleigh. His reaction to this honor is characteristically humble--with a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders, he marvels at the full circle of his own "great good place" experience.

Concertgoers Experience Phish Far Beyond the Stage

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/technolo...nted=print&position=

Concertgoers Experience Phish Far Beyond the Stage
By SETH SCHIESEL
August 07, 2003

LIMESTONE, Me., Aug. 4 - At 1:30 a.m. on Friday, the Bunny looked a bit ill.

Outside the gates of what was once Loring Air Force Base, thousands of fans were lined up in their vehicles, ready to enter It, a weekend-long music festival featuring Phish, the popular improvisational rock band. A big part of the festival plan was the Bunny, Phish's name for the 100,000-watt FM radio station that the band had leased for the weekend. At 6 a.m., the Bunny was to go on the air with a mix of music and public safety information for the tens of thousands of fans who were expected to arrive by Saturday.

But the Bunny wasn't hopping.

The troupe of seven D.J.'s were ready, graffiti-covered trucker hats and all. The pink shag carpeting and red party lights were in place in the trailer behind the stage that served as the Bunny's temporary studio. The problem was that the high-speed T-1 data line that was meant to convey the audio signal from the trailer to a radio transmission tower about 15 miles away still wasn't working. The line had been struck by lightning earlier in the week, and although local technicians had given assurances that the line was functioning, the signal to the tower was still garbled.

That was why Jeffrey Rosenberg, the station's 36-year-old chief engineer, was madly plugging, unplugging and ripping open cables in the middle of the night in search of a backup plan. Maybe, just maybe, he could stream the station's signal through his laptop computer's Wi-Fi wireless card over a microwave link to Houlton, Me., about 55 miles away, then over the Internet, through a Web page and over the cable modem at the transmission tower to get the Bunny on the air. Not quite textbook radio engineering, that.

At 2:45 a.m., Mr. Rosenberg was still making frantic adjustments, and air time had been moved up from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. "We have thousands of kids out on the road, and we have to advise them that we have filled the entire holding area,'' said David J. Werlin, president of Great Northeast Productions, Phish's partner in the festival. "We cannot open the gates until 8 a.m., and we have to tell them that they should pull over wherever they can - a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot - and they won't be hassled.''

Fifteen minutes later, with fingers crossed, the Bunny finally stood up, shook itself off, and went on the air to the beat of T-Rex.

"Jeff truly MacGyvered what was meant to be a fairly straightforward system, and he did it at a critical moment, when we really needed the Bunny to go on the air,'' Jason Colton, a longtime member of Phish's management team, said the next day. "In some ways, that was the touch-and-go moment for the whole festival, and he made it happen.''

In some ways, advanced digital technologies made the entire festival happen. While the record industry frets about the financial impact of music trading over the Internet, innovative bands like Phish are embracing the latest technologies to create spectacular live concerts and phantasmagoric festival experiences that are more like computer-controlled theme parks than like the rock festivals of yesteryear.

Digital systems may have been the farthest thing from the minds of most of the roughly 60,000 fans at the weekend festival, who paid $137.50 each to attend. But they were all served by advanced technology, whether they were listening to the crystalline sound system, gazing at the intense light shows, exploring the participatory art installations tucked into a forest grove, listening to the Bunny or burning custom CD's. Many bands use technology in their stage shows; Phish may be the leader in employing technology beyond the stage.

"Before the Phish events, festivals in the U.S. didn't really have much else in terms of ancillary events, and Phish really stepped it up in terms of the décor and the decoration and the other activities,'' said Richard Goodstone, a partner at Superfly Productions, a music festival production company based in New Orleans that was not involved with the festival. "The real difference between your normal rock festival like Lollapalooza and Ozzfest is that there's a lot of music, but now we're trying to make it a complete experience in terms of the activities that really interact with the patrons out there, so it's not just a one-element kind of event.''

In this remote corner of the country a 400-mile drive north from Boston, a place where ornery moose are a leading road hazard, technology allowed Phish to create a wonderland in the wilderness.

Walkie-Talkies and Wi-Fi

"This never could have happened without all of these experienced people,'' Trey Anastasio, Phish's guitarist, said on Saturday morning. "It's all unbelievable what they pull together for all of us, even down to the plumbing, which, when you think about it, is pretty amazing.''

Like plumbing, much of the technology used to produce the festival was not visible to most people. Much of it was not flashy or glamorous, either. But when a staff of 1,000 people is working with a budget of millions of dollars to create a temporary environment that is going to be as populous as the largest city in Maine, flashy doesn't get the job done. Reliable does.

"From the point of view of logistics, safety and coordination, all of this technology has been essential,'' Mr. Colton said. "We have to bring in everything for 1,000 people who need to be communicating all the time to make this work.''

There seemed to be two essential logistical ingredients: walkie-talkies and Wi-Fi Internet access.

Walkie-talkies, generally from Motorola, have become so ubiquitous at concert sites around the world that they would be conspicuous now only if they disappeared. The festival staff here used at least 400 of them.

"The technology only helps me in that it allows me to have four conversations at once,'' said Kristina A. Birkmayer, the logistical guru of the festival's visual design team and one of its leaders. "I normally have the walkie-talkie button pushed on, a normal phone in each ear, and I'm doing something on the computer and also dealing with however many people are hovering around.''

Wireless Internet access, though of more recent vintage, is becoming no less essential. By allowing production companies to dispense with cumbersome wiring, Wi-Fi allows more computers to be connected. The production staff here took over the base's old control tower and its offices to serve as a nerve center. In almost every room was a computer.

"In my industry, it first happened with fax machines, then cellphones and maybe laptops, and now the epiphany is, 'How did we live without Wi-Fi?' '' said Mr. Werlin of Great Northeast Productions. "From an operational standpoint, it enables us to communicate more effectively with each other, with sourcing gear, with researching information.'' The concert producers hired a local Internet company, Pioneer Wireless, to bring in two separate connections providing high-speed Internet access (5 megabits per second) over advanced microwave links.

Those circuits were then distributed to various locations by long-distance wireless connections to individual Wi-Fi base stations. A reporter's Wi-Fi-enabled hand-held device confirmed that most of the heavily trafficked backstage areas had wireless Internet access.

Dean Budnick, editor in chief of the online magazine Jambands.com and editor of the festival newspaper, All About It, which published 7,500 copies on Saturday and Sunday, used those wireless connections to communicate with the paper's designer in Boulder, Colo.

"It's pretty extraordinary that I never met him and we were just sending big files back and forth all night, and at 8 a.m. our time I went to the local printer here to look at the proofs,'' he said Saturday afternoon.

For Marji A. Blea, the festival's administrative coordinator, Internet access can even let her reassure a nervous parent.

"I had a mother calling this morning and she was so concerned about her son and that he wouldn't be able to get home from the show,'' she said. "While we were on the line I was able to get on the Internet, get the bus schedule, and let her know her son would be O.K.''

Bright Lights, Old Gadgets

At midnight Friday, Cavan Meese was in some deep stuff.

Heavy rain plus heavy construction had combined to create mud that crept up around Mr. Meese's ankles as he unpacked long spools of blue computer cable onto a makeshift sawhorse in the middle of a place called Sunk City. That was the name concert organizers came up with for the collaborative art and performance space that took over a pine grove in a corner of the concert grounds.

The name was apt. All around Mr. Meese, a 25-year-old lighting designer from West Glover, Vt., trenches snaked through the quagmire that glistened under the harsh industrial lights. Mr. Meese's job was to lay the cables in the trenches so they could be used to control the advanced light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.'s, inside the streetlamps that lined Sunk City's byways. Newer L.E.D.'s can emit an eerie glow and can be controlled and manipulated by centralized computer systems.

"I've got to see this thing working before dawn,'' Mr. Meese said, his cowboy hat sheltering him from the last remaining raindrops.

One of the centerpieces of Sunk City was Oddzilla, an installation that married old televisions displaying Godzilla movies to a three-piece band anchored by the Noise Monster.

An imposing rack of antiquated electronics, the Noise Monster is "an amalgamated instrument that I built 10 years ago and have constantly evolved,'' explained its creator, Steve Tremblay, 34, an artist from Burlington, Vt.

At the festival, the Noise Monster included an old Fisher VCR, a Soundesign receiver, an Atari 2600 game console, a Yamaha noise generator from the mid-1970's, an ancient cassette player, a synthesizer from the mid-1980's, an eight-track player and a turntable with a built-in disco light. Mr. Tremblay's band, which also included a live drummer and bass player, produced a hypnotic sound that seemed like a cross between Captain Nemo's Orchestra and the Captain Kirk All-Stars.

Not far from Oddzilla, John B. Bisbee ran a very different sort of installation. A lecturer in art at Bowdoin College, Mr. Bisbee had requisitioned 10,000 rolls of masking tape that he handed out to concertgoers in the deepest part of Sunk City's forest. Spontaneously and collectively, the fans created an evolving maze of corridors and cul-de-sacs.

"I think what's so cool is that this whole thing is a beautiful cocktail of high and low technology,'' Mr. Bisbee said of the event. "It's a permeable membrane that they've created to allow these various forms of experience to co-exist. Hey, I've got 10,000 rolls of masking tape. What could be lower-tech than that?''

Making Music to Go

The House of Live Phish, by contrast, was certainly not low-tech.

Early this year, Phish and nugs.net, an Internet music company based in Los Angeles, collaborated to open www.livephish .com, a Web site that allows users to download audio files of Phish concerts within 48 hours after they occur. The site typically charges $9.95 to download an entire show in MP3 format, and a higher price - usually $12.95 - for a higher-quality format.

The concert organizers collaborated with Apple to open the House of Live Phish, a sort of next-generation Internet cafe. Using one of 20 iMacs, concertgoers could not only surf the Web and send e-mail, they could also burn free custom CD's from the 154 live Phish tracks that were loaded on each computer.

Although they waited to use the iMacs in lines that began at 30 minutes on Friday and stretched to two and a half hours by late Saturday afternoon, fans seemed unperturbed. Referring to the remote location and the horrendous traffic jams outside the site, Andrew Grabel, 28, said, "I spent 27 hours in the line to get here, so two hours here is nothing.''

Jason Pinsky, a 30-year-old technology consultant from Brooklyn who was running the House of Live Phish, said visitors burned almost 2,000 CD's over the weekend.

The fans are not the only ones who seem to be enjoying new forms of digital music. Brad Sands, 33, Phish's road manager, said that portable MP3 players were allowing the band to mine its own musical heritage more deeply.

"All the members of the band have these little Sony speakers and iPods,'' Mr. Sands said. "They have like 300 original songs, and traditionally, there was no way for them to just pull something up. Now Trey will sit in his hotel and scan songs and say, 'Hey, that's a cool song and we haven't played it in 10 years or 5 years. Let's play that.' ''

Masters of the Airwaves

"Let's play that'' was heard fairly often at the Bunny, and although the D.J.'s had carted hundreds of LP's with them, that refrain usually meant turning to one of two iMacs with iTunes software.

While Mr. Rosenberg's Windows laptop and Microsoft's Windows Media software were crucial in getting the station on the air, the Apple hardware and software let the D.J.'s serve up an eclectic mix of funk, rock, jazz, folk and electronic music.

The station also simultaneously broadcast Phish's live sets. But its primary mission was public safety.

"First of all it's informational,'' said Neil L. Cleary, a 31-year-old musician from Burlington who, as Tad Cautious, was the station's head D.J. "When you're creating a huge city, it's vital to have a mass communication system, because you can't talk to fans on the P.A. system saying things like, 'Please do not ride on top of your vehicle.' "

But while Tad Cautious and the other D.J.'s - Rubes, D.J. Cooley, D.J. Rickshaw, Pistol Stamen, Gary Turismo and D.J. Sleepyturtle - spent most of their time in the studio, Rosey the Roving Reporter spent much of the show out in the field. At previous Phish festivals he used a tape recorder. Here, however, he was equipped with a cigarette-lighter-size MP3 recorder from which he would later transfer his interviews to a PC for editing.

"I want to talk to people who have worked, are working, or people who bring something unique to the show," said Rosey, otherwise known as David Rosenstein, a 30-year-old renovator and musician from Brooklyn. "The key is to put them completely at ease and still elicit some kind of spontaneity. The MP3 unit just makes it easier for me.''

The Main Event

Of all of the technical systems at the festival, by far the most obvious to the fans were the expansive lighting and sound systems. In some ways, however, Chris Kuroda, the band's lighting guru, and Paul Languedoc, Phish's main sound engineer, take radically different approaches to the technical tools of their trades.

While digital mixing boards are becoming more widely available, Mr. Languedoc, like many music lovers, is sticking with analog technologies.

"People are coming out with digital consoles now, but I'm not convinced that's the way to go for me, at least right now,'' said Mr. Languedoc, a reserved, almost professorial 43-year-old. "Digital is better for some things. It's more flexible. But I think analog still sounds better. Analog is generally more equipment, and you have to be more careful with your signal integrity, but if you get it right it just sounds better.''

Mr. Languedoc took 50 separate audio feeds from the stage and mixed them down to two channels, which were fed into the band's massive speaker system. Separately, that two-channel mix was leavened with some additional crowd noise and provided to the team at LivePhish.com. Kevin Shapiro, the band's archivist, said the band also retains a 40-channel digital tape recording of each concert.

But while Mr. Languedoc is proceeding cautiously with new technologies, Mr. Kuroda, 37, is enthusiastically embracing the cutting edge while trying to avoid getting sliced.

"These are new light consoles for us, and we can set them up whatever way you want," he said before Saturday's concert, stroking two $30,000 digital consoles from MA Lighting, a German company. "This button can run a cue or run a chase or turn something red or do whatever else you want. It gives us complete flexibility.''

Mr. Kuroda said that until recently he had been wary of new digital systems because they can crash, potentially ruining a show. His new consoles, however, can be networked to each other so that if one crashes, the other can take over.

He said that the technical flexibility of the new systems allowed him to focus even more on improvising with light.

"The technology allows you to not focus on the technology,'' Mr. Kuroda said. "At 99.9 percent of the shows out there, all the lights are pre-scripted. You just hit the button and say 'Go.' But for us, we have to find the right thing for that particular moment.'' The fact that a high-definition film crew was recording the performances added complexity to the lighting requirements. (A separate documentary crew from Wiggle Puppy Productions in Chicago roved through the crowd using lightweight hand-held digital cameras.)

In the end, It was all about the music, but technology allowed the artistic experience to bloom far beyond the stage and, more important, allowed the logistics behind the festival to come together. Hadden Hippsley, Phish's production manager, may have best captured the festival's overall approach to technology.

"You always have three backup plans instead of one,'' he said. "You always focus on what will fail rather than what will work. If you look at every situation from the light of what could possibly fail, what you're left with is solutions.''

The hills may be alive with music - WCPE in Kinston .

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http://www.kinston.com/Details.cfm?StoryID=13239

The hills may be alive with music - WCPE in Kinston
By Joe A. Figueroa
Joe Figueroa can be reached at (252) 527-3191, Ext. 232, or at Joe_Figueroa@link.freedom.com
August 18, 2003

Sounds of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach could soon fill Kinston airwaves, if a suitable site can be found.

Classical radio station WCPE (89.1 FM) is looking for a location to place a broadcast repeater here by Aug. 29. The Federal Communications Commission recently agreed to allow the station to expand.

"The FCC open and close their windows on a whim," station manager Deborah Proctor said. "Right now, we are looking for someone to say that we are contemplating allowing the station to build the antenna."

The 100,000-watt radio station is based in Wake Forest and wants to have a stronger signal in Lenoir County for radio listeners. The equipment would provide a clear signal over a broadcast radius of 5 miles. To be effective, it would be ideal to place the repeater at the center of the population.

At a minimum, a 10-foot by 20-foot area for a receiver and transceiver antenna is needed. The best places for the equipment are existing radio or television towers, a water tower or a tall building.

"An office building or hospital would be ideal," Proctor said. "We're a kind and friendly tenant."

Another requirement would be a room for a 50-pound, two-file-drawer sized power supply. The unit would take up to 3 square feet of floor space and use 250 watts in electricity, which is the equivalent of about two light strong bulbs. Station officials estimate the monthly electric bill would be about $18.

"If anyone lets us use the space we need, we would be thrilled in paying the electricity bill," Proctor said.

Station officials have also stated that if the person wants compensation for use of their property, a discussion would be a possibility in order to reach an agreement.

"Usually, most people let us set up for free," engineer John Proctor said.

The listener-supported non-profit station plays classical music 24 hours a day. It is the only station in central North Carolina to broadcast the Metropolitan Opera.

The FCC application must include the location of where the equipment will be placed and a statement from the property owner agreeing to the placement. Proctor estimates the whole process from approval to construction could take from 18 months to two years.

David Byrne's Alternate PowerPoint Universe - Musician Using powerpoint for Art

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/arts/design/17VIEN.html

David Byrne's Alternate PowerPoint Universe - Musician Using powerpoint for Art
By VERONIQUE VIENNE
Vernique Vienne is the author of several books about design.
August 17, 2003

POWERPOINT, the ubiquitous Microsoft business application, is not meant to be looked at too closely. People aren't supposed to notice its simplified graphics, ready-made templates, pie charts, arrows and icons; they're only supposed to notice the ideas that these features help organize. What's not hard to notice, however, is that in addition to organizing ideas, the software has a tendency to homogenize them, translating a Babel of voices into a single, droning voice of corporate culture. The experience of watching a PowerPoint presentation is meant to be the same in a San Francisco conference room as it is in a Chang Mai Internet cafe. And in either setting, PowerPoint's graphic identity might not literally be invisible, but like the buzzing fluorescent light that office workers eventually tune out, after a while you just don't see it.

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With his newest project, David Byrne has tried not only to see it anew, but also to use it in the least likely of all applications: a medium for creative expression. "Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information" (Steidl and PaceMcGill Gallery, 2003) is a boxed set containing a 96-page book and a DVD featuring 20 minutes of animation. In both mediums, Mr. Byrne, who is best known as a musician but who was trained as an artist, subjects PowerPoint's characterless graphic templates to a radical metamorphosis. Arrows that curve out of their trajectory and into psychedelic rainbow-colored curlicues, surreal charts that satirize postmodern posturing, typographical compositions that present absurd abstractions with straight-faced conviction and deadpan photographs of the most humdrum of everyday objects all morph into one another with the steady pacing of a corporate sales conference.

You can feel the medium resisting the invisible hand of the artist. Designed for easy digestion when projected on a screen, PowerPoint reveals its true identity when forced to perform without its well-rehearsed scripts. On the pages of the book, what you see is brute force, elemental verve, joyful savagery. Viewed on DVD, however, with the addition of music and movement, the same layouts become less threatening, less ruthless, even soothing at times.

The juxtaposition of book and disc, then, produces a kind of cognitive dissonance: is the slip-cased volume just a deluxe package for a short art film, or is it the other way around? Is the book an antiquated cultural artifact? Or is the digitalized version just a trailer you can watch on your television?

Also disconcerting is the project's unwieldy title. For insiders, it's a tongue-in-cheek reference to "Envisioning Information," Edward Tufte's celebrated book about the various ways that people through the ages have visually displayed quantitative data. But it's also a preview of the strange, decontextualized language that pervades the book and DVD, something between impenetrable academic discourse and self-important trade jargon, with a bit of official government study thrown in for good measure. Mr. Byrne uses it as a joke, perhaps, but also as a kind of meta-commentary on how language can alienate us from our emotions. One poignant photograph bears the legend "The Beginning of Identity," dry words that seem like the title of a graduate dissertation. Below that, two take-out soup containers are labeled, by hand, ME and YOU. The two containers sit side by side, separated by a few, seemingly unbridgeable inches.

One of Mr. Tufte's more recent publications is a critical pamphlet titled "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint." He is among the most eloquent critics of the technology, but over the 16 years in use, even some technicians have joined the chorus. "It's very reductionist," says Nancy Halpern, a PowerPoint specialist at the Strickland Group, an executive development firm in New York. "There is a crude linearity to the way the program works. Unlike a book or a Web site, you can't flip around the pages. It's more like a teleprompter."

So what inspired Mr. Byrne to reroute a corporate tool into an avant-garde project? To take something designed to simplify meaning, and turn it into an elusive, playful cipher? To transform a project synonymous with bland corporatespeak into a challenging, entertaining surprise? It started as a parody. "I was doing mock sell presentations, using mock PowerPoint slides as visual aids," he says. "That's how I learned the program originally. But then it evolved into something else. It was no longer enough to make fun of the corporate stuff. I realized that PowerPoint was a limited but a valid medium."

To view the medium creatively, he says, "You have to try to think like the guy in Redmond or Silicon Valley. You feel that your mind is suddenly molded by the thinking of some unknown programmer. It's a collaboration, but it's not reciprocal."

Starting with parody, he adds, even incompetent imitations, is a legitimate first step. Eventually, if you persevere, the obsessive nature of the process yields unexpectedly beautiful results. For him, then, the challenge became "taking a form that's purportedly logic and rational and making it poetic."

Yet one suspects that there is another agenda behind his attempt to subvert the global uniformity of PowerPoint. "Corporate culture," he says wistfully. "What if I could set it free?"

"The End of Reason," a four-minute, continuous PowerPoint presentation with original music by David Byrne, will be on display at 4 Times Square from Sept. 10 through Sept. 17.

Fiddling With the Reception - Creation of a new Show at CNN - Paula Zahn

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine...nted=print&position=

Fiddling With the Reception -- Creation of a new Show at CNN - Paula Zahn
By JASON ZENGERLE
Jason Zengerle is an associate editor for The New Republic. He last wrote for The Times Magazine about the business of Nascar.
August 17, 2003

In developing a new program for 8 p.m., Walton was working on the biggest assignment he'd ever handled. The program Walton developed for 8 p.m. would set the tone for the entire network. In recent years, CNN has endured a series of identity crises -- flirting with the tabloid and the glitzy and the opinionated -- as it has tried to respond to the challenge posed by Fox. But sitting in his office that April morning, Walton essentially declared CNN's period of confusion over. CNN, he said, ''We're doing a certain type of journalism, and there's a value in that,'' he said. ''The value is that it's a nice environment for advertisers to put their products in. For that they pay a premium.''

With two other 24-hour news networks (MSNBC as well as Fox) competing with CNN for eyeballs, Walton said, his network needed to pay attention to its presentation of the news -- particularly to the matter of who was presenting it. ''I think people watch people,'' Walton told me. ''I do believe it matters who a viewer allows into their homes. It's not just the news.'' That meant that CNN, for the first time, needed to hire stars, most of whom were based in New York.

on April 21, with the war fading from the headlines and CNN returning to its normal lineup, the network rushed Zahn's program onto the air in the newly created 7-to-9 slot. It didn't have a permanent title -- it was, for the moment, called ''Live From the Headlines'' -- or an executive producer (the network was searching for one), but Walton, Ryan and Zahn were eager to capitalize on the increased ratings CNN was experiencing because of the war. ''The strategy is classic,'' Ryan explained. ''In times when you have higher viewership, you make your programming bets.'' Without an executive producer, Zahn's show lacked any semblance of structure or rhythm, lurching from one story to the next. Worse, without much big news, the stories were often things like Laci Peterson or the Illinois high-school-girls hazing incident -- precisely the junk Walton wanted CNN to get away from. Worst of all, viewers were hitting their remotes. Whereas Chung, in her last weeks on air, had averaged close to one million viewers, Zahn was drawing only an average of 785,000 in the 8 p.m. hour. Now some of the very same CNN staff members who had celebrated Walton's canning of Chung were griping that he bungled her replacement.

They dubbed Zahn's program the ''Paula-thon'' or, less cleverly, ''a confused mess,'' and questioned Walton's programming judgment. ''Giving someone two hours on cable news in prime time is insane,'' one CNN on-air personality complained to me. ''Nobody can carry that, not even Peter Jennings. It's just dumb.'' In late May he hired Jim Miller, a television veteran who most recently was a consultant on ABC's ''Good Morning America,'' to give some direction to Zahn's prime-time effort. But that didn't solve the nettlesome problem of finding a way for Zahn to fill two hours, which is an eternity in television programming. The CNN brain trust considered having Zahn moderate extended debates; they contemplated adding a newscaster to deliver news updates at the top and bottom of both hours. Miller even flirted with the notion of booking live musical performances and hiring Neil Young as a roving reporter. ''What became clear to all of us was that we were trying to put a square peg in a round hole,'' Walton told me. In prime time, he said, ''there just aren't any two-hour programs, five days a week.''

Fox has solved the same problem by essentially transporting the talk-radio format to television, building its prime-time programs around opinionated, idiosyncratic hosts like O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and then giving them license to voice their opinions and flaunt their idiosyncrasies. Jim Walton, in contrast, has decreed that CNN's programs -- and their star hosts -- stick to the news. But there are only so many ways to make a one-hour news program distinct. And as Miller, the executive producer now responsible for developing Zahn's program, got down to the nuts and bolts, he settled on familiar tropes. Zahn, sitting behind a desk and in front of a nighttime skyline backdrop, would generally spend the first 20 minutes of her program focusing on the day's big stories, mostly through live interviews with newsmakers. At 20 minutes past the hour, the program would run a segment featuring a well-produced taped piece. At 8:30, there would be a debate segment. And then the last 20 minutes of the hour would be devoted to softer news -- movies, music, medicine or sports -- and would often include a celebrity interview; if the celeb was in-studio, Zahn would conduct the interview on a couch. On Fridays Zahn would close the program with her own personal essay. Miller proposed that for Zahn's hour CNN scrap the bottom-of-the-screen ''crawl,'' a cable-news staple since 9/11. ''The cluttered screen makes me carsick,'' he said. But Walton and Ryan said no: research showed 70 percent of viewers liked the feature.

One day in mid-July I visited the Time-Life building to check on the Zahn program's progress. On June 23, after six weeks away, Zahn returned in her new, one-hour time slot. And on the morning I dropped by, Miller and his staff were gathered in a bunkerlike conference room plotting how to fill the 8 p.m. hour that night. Miller green-lighted a story on North Korean nukes and another on presidential campaign spending. But he shot down a number of story ideas -- a child molester in a Wal-Mart; a lawsuit over naked pictures of Cameron Diaz -- that he deemed too tabloid. ''We could fill up a half-hour with stuff like this,'' he told his staff at one point. ''We need to be careful.''

Chess Gear for Opponents of All Sizes

I am sure Greg would love this about Chess ....

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/21/technolo...nted=print&position=

Chess Gear for Opponents of All Sizes
By JAMES GORMAN
August 21, 2003


MY son and I started playing chess in earnest this spring, around the time he turned 12. He knew the rules and some elementary bits of strategy: control the center, get your knights and bishops working, castle to protect the king. That was about all I could teach him. I'm a dabbler by nature, and chess is just one of many pursuits I've flirted with.

I have, however, taught all three of my children the basics. My daughters, the two oldest, passed through the game quickly, although the elder one, now starting her junior year in college, has started playing again occasionally. My son had more interest, but the game didn't really grab hold of him until this year.

We began playing regularly. I helped him out like a good father, letting him know when he made a disastrous move, pointing out how he might gain an advantage. He started to improve more quickly than he had before, and soon I had to stop alerting him to bad moves in order to save myself.

To brush up, I started practicing on my Palm while I was commuting. Inevitably, he started beating me fair and square - not every time, but often enough. He insisted that I give him no quarter, and sometimes he really took me by surprise.

This was not a remake of "Searching for Bobby Fischer"; you don't have to be a prodigy to beat me. It was more in the vein of "Taras Bulba," a 1962 movie about the Don Cossacks starring Yul Brynner, in which the sons wrestle the father (Brynner) to demonstrate when their strength has surpassed his.

I don't want to overemphasize the competitive father-son dynamic, but he did show an almost Cossack-like glee when I would topple the king to capitulate. In fact he insisted that the monarch physically fall when he won. One day, however, I was rolling over him like a bulldozer. His pieces were falling like wheat before the giant, merciless combine of agribusiness. I was up several pieces. He was going down. (I myself am not the least bit competitive.) Somehow, the tide turned. He beat me.

I was stunned. I said: "Dan, I had the numbers. I can't believe you beat me." He smiled indulgently and tapped his index finger on his temple. "It's not about the numbers, Dad," he said. "It's about the brain."

That's when I started shopping, not only to improve my chess, but because, since I control his allowance, he can't beat me at shopping. First I started looking for some new chess software for my Palm. I added Chess 2.2 ($9.95) and Pocket-

Chess Deluxe 2.5 ($19.99), both at palmgear.com, to ChessGenius, which was already on my old Palm V.

Then I had to buy a new, inexpensive Clié ($99 after rebate at the Best Buy store at a nearby mall), because I needed a backlighted screen to play chess on the commuter bus. For my desktop PC I bought Chess School for beginners ($29, including shipping) and Chess Rally (a $19.95 download), both at chesscentral.com.

I tried out several online gaming sites, including Yahoo games (http://games.yahoo.com), the Microsoft Network gaming site (http://zone.msn.com), the Chess Rally site (http://www.chessrally.com; you must own the software) and the Internet Chess club (http://www.chessclub.com), my favorite. It costs about $49 a year to join, although you can play as a guest or get a free trial membership. Two particularly useful sites were http://www.chesscentral.com and http://www.uschess.org (the Web home of the United States Chess Federation), both of which have quite a few links.

As if all this wasn't enough, I turned to nonvirtual chess - the boards and pieces.

As a dabbler with a shopping habit, I have acquired more stuff over the course of my life than I am willing to admit. Some of it I love; some sits in the closet. I think, however, that my Drueke (http://www.drueke.com) wooden chess board ($113.85 at http://www.chesstopia.com) will last. Mind you, I didn't rush into this purchase. First I bought a washable, floppy board - something like a giant mouse pad - for traveling ($13.74 with shipping). When I made this purchase, Pete (pete@chesstopia.com) sent me a confirmation e-mail that suggested I get some pieces to go with the board. Well, why not? The pieces I had seemed a bit small for the floppy board, so I picked a heavy plastic Staunton set, tournament size, made by Drueke, the king 3.75 inches high ($43.64 with shipping).

Pete's e-mail was quite friendly (Pete is Peter C. Surace, a professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland who has been an adviser to the chess club there for 30 years) and his site was easy to navigate. And nothing sucks me in like encountering a real person during Web shopping. So I asked him about boards.

He recommended a a Drueke 82800 with 2.25-inch squares. "That would be the perfect match," he wrote. "It is a beautiful board." And so it is, with deliciously rich wood, both as simple and elegant as a chess board could be. I expect it to last me forever, and I'm determined to keep it out of the closet. It now sits in the living room with an old chess clock I bought on eBay (about $25) and the Drueke chessmen.

Chesstopia is, of course, just one online chess store. I like it because its prices are good and it has a lot of boards and pieces from Drueke, a Michigan company that makes the classic Staunton pieces in a variety of forms as well as boards of walnut and other hardwoods. Their sets are not the most expensive, but they are solid, classic, and - to judge from my surfing - clearly valued by chess shoppers, if not chess players.

Some other sites I ran across, a necessarily incomplete sampling, include http://www.thechessstore.com, http://www.chess-shops.com, http://www.chessforum.com, http://www.chessexpress.com, http://www.chesscafe.com and http://www.houseofstaunton.com. Any Internet search will turn up more, as will following the links from one of the many chess playing sites.

Although I have spent a fair amount of money so far on chess, I think I have actually been quite frugal. You can spend real money on chess sets if you are inclined. For instance, I could have bought the Millennium Edition Jacques Chess set made in England ($1,595 at houseofstaunton.com) or turned to antique and collectible pieces and boards.

Furthermore, my chess playing has improved. Along my shopping path I actually learned some things about chess. In fact, I now have a string of several quite impressive victories against my son. I admit that he is spending most of his game energy now on Magic, the card game. Still, my progress (I can also beat the low levels of some of the Palm programs) has emboldened me to play a few games against other adults.

I haven't won any of those games yet, and some of the losses have been dismal. But just the other day I had a moral victory. I lost a five-minute game because my time on the clock ran out, not because I was immediately checkmated. I had just lost track of what was going on.

And so far, not one other opponent has tapped his temple and said, "It's about the brain."

Edited by author 08-23-2003 08:32 AM
At Long Last, the Salarymen Are Given Their Due

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/21/international/asia/21TOKY.html

At Long Last, the Salarymen Are Given Their Due
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
August 21, 2003

TOKYO ? Every Tuesday evening, millions of Japanese are moved, often to tears, by the series "Project X: Challengers," which documents successful projects undertaken by Every Salaryman.

An improbable television hit and cultural phenomenon, the show explains in sometimes numbing detail such things as how Japanese engineers after World War II succeeded in pumping crude out of a particularly difficult oil field, building a bridge in western Japan, inventing the electric rice- cooker or coming up with the VHS standard. The heroes tend to be salarymen, aging and unsung, who make for stiff studio guests.

The program has spun off books, comics and DVD's, allowing viewers to savor especially memorable episodes, say, on plasma television or the rotary engine.

Each technological innovation ? invariably the fruit of forbearance and selflessness, single-minded devotion to work and company ? recalls an age when values went unquestioned. In a country groping its way out of a long economic malaise, the program illuminates a recent past when all seemed possible, inspiring feelings of validation and nostalgia among older Japanese, envy and desire among some younger ones.

the program pushes all the right emotional buttons. A typical 45- minute episode might start with a look back at the suffering endured during World War II. Against big odds ? say, American occupying forces who sneered at Japanese efforts to look for oil in the Middle East, or American supermarkets that waved away a soya sauce company's product as "bug juice" ? the salarymen gain a toehold.

After the inevitable disaster or setback, the project succeeds, after which a mixture of historical film and dramatic re-creation gives way to brief studio interviews with the protagonists, or, if they are dead, with their colleagues or relatives. The camera shows the aging salarymen walking slowly into the studio and bowing. As the camera zooms in on a wrinkly face, capturing the slightest hint of a watery eye at a critical moment, many viewers like Ms. Sakamoto just lose it.

After a slow start, "Project X" has continued to grow in popularity, once scoring a 20 percent share of the audience. It also has turned many middle- aged men, who rarely watch television, into fanatics..

Lost in the Music - Jon Brion - The Process of Producing Music ...

There is a little about Fiona Apple here ....

There is a little about Rufus Wainwright here ...

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine...nted=print&position=

Lost in the Music - Jon Brion
By STEPHEN RODRICK
Stephen Rodrick is a frequent contributor to the magazine. He last wrote about Dennis Rodman.
August 17, 2003

few moments before his regular Friday-night show at Largo, a club in Los Angeles, Jon Brion tries to conjure a catchy name for the music he loves. As a producer, Brion has collaborated with Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann and Rufus Wainwright, constructing eccentric albums that evoke the Beatles, Aaron Copland and a pawnshop band. ''If it had a label, it could help,'' Brion says. He is almost 40, mop-toppish and currently without a permanent address. ''Look what 'alt-country' did for Lucinda Williams and Wilco.'' Sipping a Guinness, Brion comes up with one. ''How about 'unpopular pop'?'' he asks. He takes another sip of his beer and turns glum. ''God, that's too depressing.''

Unpopular pop is a new name but not a new genre. Even when Motown and the Beatles ruled the charts, perfect pop songs -- defined by liner-note-reading geeks as intricate rhymed verse accompanied by a melody that emotionally underscores the words -- often didn't match the sales of, say, ''Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.'' The Beach Boys' ''Pet Sounds'' took 34 years to go platinum. Big Star, the most influential unpopular pop band in America, couldn't get its records distributed. Except for the novelty hits ''Short People'' and ''I Love L.A.,'' Randy Newman, lauded as one of the country's treasured songwriters, released a half-dozen ''pop'' albums in the 60's and 70's that barely earned back their advances.

Like Newman, Brion comes from a family of musicians who share a reverential appreciation for Americana music. His songs evoke images of a bygone era: a carnival organ on one track, a melancholy woodwind section on another. And like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brion has a savantlike ability to process melodies and turn them inside out. Sam Jones, who directed the Wilco documentary ''I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,'' and is raising money for a Brion film, plays a musical game with Brion. He leaves a stretch of music by Glenn Gould on Brion's answering machine. Brion calls right back playing the piece note for note. It is talent like this that has helped make Brion a Phil Spector of unpopular pop.

Occasionally, like Newman, Wilson or Big Star's Alex Chilton, Brion has managed to make popular pop. Using a screwdriver instead of a slide, Brion created the distorted guitar lead on the Wallflowers' ''One Headlight,'' a single that propelled the band to multiplatinum success in 1997. The session lasted less than an hour, and Brion nailed it on the first take. Normally, he declines lengthier commercial commitments. His manager fields calls from industry heavyweights like Clive Davis requesting Brion to produce his latest ingenue. Brion always says no.

''If the songs aren't great, I can't do it,'' Brion explains. ''I live with these songs. They're moving through my head constantly, even when I don't want them to. If they're bad, I'm throwing myself out a window after 48 hours.''

ecording studios are dreary places: bunkers filled with wires, smudged glass partitions and ashtrays. The Paramour, where Brion is at work, is not like that. Nestled in the Los Angeles hills, the grounds resemble Norma Desmond's spread. There is an ominous iron gate, an ancient lap pool illuminated by torches at night and a garishly decorated ballroom.

Down one dark hallway, music can be heard. There are red walls, a fireplace, a Scrabble board and left-over Cuban pastries gnawed by Charlie, the Paramour's half-wolf, half-German shepherd. A Hawaiian guitar rests against some Chinese gongs. In front of a Beatles-era E.M.I. console, an Apple computer displays a screen saver of David Bowie, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp at Bowie's ''Low'' sessions.

It's 1 p.m., and Jon Brion is still in his pajamas and slippers. For the past three months, Brion, Tom Biller, an engineer, and the singer Fiona Apple have been living at the Paramour. Right now, Brion is noodling at a Casio keyboard, playing along to a mix of Apple's ''Oh Well.'' ''I cried the first time I heard her play this,'' Brion says. ''We were at Ocean Way, Sinatra's old studio, and I just put my head down on the table and cried.''

As ''Oh Well'' plays repeatedly, Brion tries to conceive an arrangement that won't disturb the power of Apple's vocals. He says he thinks her delivery on the current version might be too slow for the anger of the words. To help, Brion has written out the lyrics in color-coded fashion on two giant pieces of white paper. Blue represents sad passages, red anger and green the resignation of Apple's whispering ''Oh, well'' in the last line.

''There's a space between this line and that line, and it's this continual sort of push and pull,'' Brion says. ''If she's not singing, I offer something to carry the listener through to the next moment where she returns.''

Apple's first release, fueled by her ethereal vocals and a video with her in her underwear, sold three million copies. Brion played on it, and they became close friends. After a rambling acceptance speech at the MTV awards, Apple absorbed a media assault. In 1999, she recorded the follow-up, ''When the Pawn . . . '' -- the full title stretches to 90 words -- which Brion produced and played most of the instruments on. It featured a hybrid of hip-hop beats and Brion's skewed instrumentation. Like most Brion-produced projects, it was hailed by critics. And like most Brion-produced projects, it was a commercial disappointment, selling fewer than a million copies.

Apple contemplated never recording another album. Then, in the spring of 2002, Brion and Apple met for their weekly lunch. Brion had recently been ejected from a five-year relationship with the comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub. Making matters worse, the breakup occurred while he was scoring Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Punch-Drunk Love.'' Rajskub had a large role in the film, and Brion spent hours watching his ex on celluloid. Now finished with the score, he was at loose ends.

''Please, please make another album,'' Brion begged Apple. ''I need work that can save me.''

Apple agreed, and Brion went to Apple's label, Sony Music, with strict stipulations. There would be no deadline. If a Sony rep wanted to check on progress, he would have to fly to Los Angeles. Brion requested renting a wing of the Paramour rather than recording at a conventional studio. The label agreed.

In an era of industry bloodletting, Sony's acquiescence to Brion's demands demonstrates how highly respected Brion is in the industry. In addition to his production work, Brion scored Anderson's last two films, ''Magnolia'' (for which he also produced some of Aimee Mann's career-making tracks) and ''Punch-Drunk Love.'' For the latter, he helped the filmmaker in unusual ways. In an early scene, Anderson was having difficulty communicating the emotion he wanted Adam Sandler to bring to his role. He asked Brion to come down to the set. The next morning, Brion returned with a 10-minute percussion track that captured the manic anger of Barry Egan, Sandler's character. Anderson had his star listen to the track repeatedly through headphones. Sandler got it, and filming resumed.

At the Paramour, the days effortlessly merge like the unchanging Southern California weather. Nine months after Apple played the first five songs for Brion, the album is maybe half-done. In the morning, Brion draws or works on his own songs. In the afternoon, he fiddles with backing tracks. Maybe around midnight, Apple will appear in sweats and bunny-rabbit slippers and record vocals for an hour.

''Jon's put in hundreds of more hours,'' Apple said one sunny afternoon on the lawn. ''If I could, I'd release this as a Jon Brion-Fiona Apple record. I keep borrowing his socks. He thinks it's because I don't have my own socks. It's because I want to be Jon Brion.''

Brion is contemplating the abandonment of all his ancillary projects so he can concentrate on his own material. Which is either brave or quixotic. Brion's only solo record was rejected by an Atlantic Records subsidiary and sold just a few thousand copies. Still, songs he has written with Mann, Evan Dando and Eels are the equal to anything they've done on their own. Every Friday night, Brion plays a sold-out show at Largo, whose guests vary from Rickie Lee Jones to Pink. He mixes Kinks and Costello songs with his own compositions. Regular attendees argue that Brion's songs compare favorably.

''Jon has at least 10 albums' worth of material,'' says Mann, a longtime collaborator and a former girlfriend. ''He blends the mood of the melody and the mood of the words in a way that no one else can do.'' She sighs. ''And he writes them so quickly.''

And yet Brion has released only one new song in the past four years, a track called ''Here We Go,'' a wedding song for a second marriage, on the ''Punch-Drunk Love'' soundtrack. If the song hadn't been dropped from the film, it might have earned an Academy Award nomination. ''Why finish a song when you can start a new one?'' Brion says with a laugh. ''I picked the hardest art form with the least amount of respect. The economy of language you need to get emotion across is so hard. You have to find rhymed verse, then match it with a melody. And then it's dismissed just as 'a pop song.' It is so sad.''

Brion can't let go of his songs. Or the songs of his disciples. For more than a week, Brion toyed with Apple's ''Oh Well.'' He spent one night moving equipment to his study at the Paramour to record a guitar part. ''The acoustics will pick up the reverb differently,'' he explains. The next day, Brion discarded the guitar. Then he laid down another basic track with himself on drums. He wasn't happy with the result. ''It sounded like a metal ballad,'' Brion says. ''I fired myself.'' A call was placed to the legendary session drummer Jim Keltner.

''The song is missing 'it,''' Brion says. ''Right now, I don't know what 'it' is. When you find it, everyone's physiology in the room changes. 'It' is a real, ephemeral thing.''


It's not uncommon to hear ''it'' on a Jon Brion-produced song many years after buying the album. More than a decade has passed since I first listened to Aimee Mann's ''I've Had It,'' from her 1993 album, ''Whatever,'' Brion's first major production. The subject of the song, as is often the case with Mann, is the music industry. The troops gather for a pointless New York gig as Mann muses that her chance at the brass ring may have passed. On perhaps the 400th listen, I pick up a ticking clock that moves from left to right in your headphones and underscores the fatalism of the lyrics. When Mann sings ''And Dan came in from Jersey,'' Brion plays the opening bars to Springsteen's ''Born to Run'' on a glockenspiel.

When he was 5, Brion wrote ''I am Jon Brion. I am a musician'' on a piece of paper. A few years later, his mother, LaRue, a club singer while in college, bought him his first Fats Waller record. Brion's father, Keith, was director of Yale University's concert and marching bands, and his parents introduced their son at age 13 to the jazz musicians Willie Ruff and Dwike Mitchell, who were known equally for their playing and for their jazz evangelism tours to China and Russia.

As he grew older, Brion refused to do any schoolwork other than music. The school district placed him in special-education classes with mildly retarded and emotionally disturbed teenagers. ''I was in with a kid who had seen both her parents killed in front of her,'' Brion recalls. On Brion's 17th birthday, his father signed the release papers, and Brion dropped out of high school.

At a recent Largo show, Brion began by laying down a drum track and looping it. He did the same with a jaunty piano part. He then picked up an electric guitar. He closed his eyes and resembled the kid from ''Tommy'' as he played a crunchy guitar part. Finally, he performed ''I Was Happy With You,'' a new song, picking through a melody that captures the post-anger wistful stage of heartbreak.

The next day, Brion told me that he has written a dozen new songs about his breakup. ''I'm trying to approach them from a realistic point of view,'' he said. ''I want songs that suggest, O.K., maybe it was 60 percent your fault, but I was there, too. Those songs aren't being written.''

Another day, I heard ''Citgo Sign,'' which was recorded in 1991 and would not be out of place in a musical. ''That may be my best album's worth of material,'' Brion said. He also has notions of turning a batch of songs written since 1995 into ''an Internet-only EP.'' When I mentioned this to Mark Flanagan, his manager, he laughed: ''You realize, that's not going to happen.''

Brion's inability to release his own songs is a hushed subject of conversation among his friends and musicians. When I asked Mann, she began: ''I think he has a hard time saying anything is finished whether he's producing or doing his own songs. Jon's a perfectionist.'' She hesitated and stopped. ''I'm not going to say any more.''

Part of Brion's procrastination is an inability to say no. ''Whenever I get a message from another musician, I know it's because they want something,'' Brion says. ''They want me to play on a track or produce. It's never just to say hi.''

His point was made when Grant Lee Phillips stopped by the Paramour for advice on his next album. They talked for an hour, and Brion grew increasingly animated. ''You must have a great drummer -- he captures the mood of the song,'' Brion advised. ''You have a bad drummer, you're going to be spending days trying to find that mood.'' Then, Phillips sheepishly asked, ''Hey, do you want to captain this ship?'' Brion said yes (though Phillips later proceeded without him).

''There's a thing called a heat sink,'' Brion says. ''It's a piece of metal attached to a machine. It draws heat away and keeps it from blowing up. That's what I do as a producer. It's up to me to let the artist know things are O.K. I'm the one who has to go home with the stomachache.''

Brion plays the role well. Last year, while he was producing an album for an alt-country songwriter named Rhett Miller, a real-estate agent showed up at the studio. He needed a signature finalizing the sale of the house Brion and Rajskub jointly owned. Brion excused himself, went to the bathroom and cried. Five minutes later, he was singing backing vocals on one of Miller's love songs.

Sessions with Rufus Wainwright, a talented and flamboyant piano pop singer, were turbulent. It was only the pleading of DreamWorks Records' co-chairman Lenny Waronker that kept Brion from leaving. ''Rufus had all these beautiful songs, but every time the vocals would kick in, he'd write some complicated keyboard part so you couldn't hear them,'' Brion says. ''He wasn't interested in listening to ideas about simplifying the arrangement.''

In 2000, Brion collaborated with David Byrne. Those who heard the Brion-produced songs said they were the best Byrne had done since the Talking Heads. Byrne rejected them by fax.

I ask Brion if he has considered hiring a producer for his own work. He answers in a sad voice. ''I don't have a heat sink for myself,'' he says. ''I don't have anyone who can tell me, 'This is good, this is a great song, let it go.' With my songs, I go home with the stomachache.''


A month later, I met up with Brion at Abbey Road Studios in London, where he was recording orchestration for Apple. He was exhausted from testing every microphone in its storied collection, cataloguing each of their shortcomings. ''If I reach a point where I want a voice to sound a little fuzzy, I'll know which microphone to use,'' Brion said.

In Studio 2, Brion sat behind an old piano and doodled a section from ''Here We Go,'' which was recorded there. ''I just had the major chords, and I knew I wanted to write a song that said, Even though my heart had just been broken, I'm not going to be cynical about love,'' Brion said. I remarked that the piano sounded like the one from ''Fool on the Hill.'' His eyes lighted up. ''Because it is!'' he said.

The next day, a full orchestra arrived, with ''Oh Well'' first up. Brion had Apple do another vocal take on which she almost growled the lyrics. He asked the violinist, Eric Gorfain, to add an arrangement. After listening to a rough mix, he offered only a little criticism. ''Don't place too much activity around her voice,'' Brion said. ''There's nice tension in the second verse, but tension is activity that draws away from her voice, so we have to lose it.''

The next day, Brion led the orchestra through ''Oh Well'' for two hours. Midway through, Apple arrived. Painfully shy, she sat on the floor, covering her eyes and peeking through fingers as Brion conducted. Eyes closed, he entered a blissful state. When the music stopped, he flashed a beatific grin. ''I don't think I have ever seen a human being look happier,'' Apple said.

Later that night, Brion, trying to relax with a beer, was still frustrated with the song. ''I can't figure it out,'' he said. ''It just isn't all there. Every album has a problem child. Maybe I want it to be a lawyer, when it wants to be a painter.''

Eventually, Apple's release date was pushed back from September to February. If that date holds, it will be 20 months from the time Apple played the first songs for Brion, or roughly 60 days per song. A month after the Abbey Road session, Brion told me he was done producing for the foreseeable future and will concentrate on his own songs. He even bought a powder blue van for touring. Of course, this means that songs will have to be released. For three months, Brion promised to send me demos of his new songs. They never arrived. In a final effort, I made an impromptu trip to Los Angeles. At Largo, Brion handed me a CD of seven demos. He looked miserable. The next day, I told him how much I liked them. He still seemed morose. ''When the album comes out, these songs are going to be ruined for you,'' Brion said. ''You're not going to be able to really hear the final versions.'' He grinned. ''If there ever are final versions.''

25 Greatest Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

Those were the days ....

Story location
http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/feature...ectronicalbums.html

25 Greatest Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

Slant Magazine asked 300 music journalists, DJs and record label-folk to tell us what they thought were the most important electronic albums of the 20th Century. Any sub-genre was fair game (Disco, House, Drum n' Bass, Trance, Ambient, Trip-Hop, Techno, etc.). Close to 200 different albums were mentioned and, since no list could possibly be entirely inclusive, we've whittled the raw data down to 25 key releases from the last 25 years.

1. Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
2. Massive Attack - Blue Lines
3. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
4. The Orb - Adventures beyond the Ultraworld.
5. Portishead - Dummy
6. Brian Eno - Ambient Music for Airports
7. DJ Shadow - Entroducing
8 & 9 The Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust and dig Your Own Hole
10. Bjork - Homogenic
11. Orbital - Orbial 2
12. New Order - Substance
13. Underworld dubnobasswithmyheadman
14. Derrick May - Innovator
15 Global Communication 7614
16 The Art of Noise - Who's afraid Of?
17. 888_State - Utd_State_90
18. Daft Punk - Homework
19. Leftfield Leftism
20. Depche Mode - Music for the Masses
21 - Tricky - Maxinquaye
22. Boards of Canada - Music has the right to children
23. Black Dog Production - Bytes
24. Moby - Everything is Wrong
25. The KLF - The White Room.

Edited by author 09-02-2003 07:38 AM
Trouble in Counterculture Utopia - Burning Man - Using the Land

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/01/arts/mus...nted=print&position=
  
Trouble in Counterculture Utopia
By BILL WERDE
September 01, 2003

BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev., Aug. 31 — From all across the desert they came, with luminescent wires in their hair or war paint on their faces. As drum circles pounded out tribal rhythms and roving sound systems blasted techno beats, they walked in their elaborate homemade costumes or drove in bizarre vehicles. They hooted and they cheered, and most of all they came to burn the Man.

The 77-foot-high, skeletal neon-colored Man towers above the center of the Burning Man festival. Every year this weeklong event creates Nevada's fifth largest city in population (about 30,000) before culminating on Labor Day. This year's Burning Man has largely been business as usual. Burners, as festivalgoers are known, can wander five square miles of theme camps, art installations, music, performance pieces and other Burners, expressing themselves in wildly free-spirited ways.

"Burn the Man!" hundreds cried, their faces aglow with the yellow-orange light of flame. "Burn him!" Others voiced compassion; a chain of 15 or 20 people snaked through the crowd with signs that read "Free the Man." At 9:40 p.m. a barrage of fireworks and explosives lighted the Saturday night sky and the Man disappeared beneath a pyre that swirled more than 150 feet into the dusty desert air.

The corporation that organizes the event, the Black Rock City L.L.C., has held the festival here, about 120 miles north of Reno, almost every year since moving it from San Francisco in 1990. But even as this year's desert dramas — imagined or certifiable — unfolded, most of the artists and revelers have been blissfully unaware of another set of Burning Man theatrics centering on about 200 acres a half-hour drive away.

Black Rock Desert may be synonymous with Burning Man to the thousands who come here each year, but it is another swath of desert in Washoe County, those acres owned by Black Rock City in the adjacent Hualapai Valley, that may determine the future of the event and the $10 million or so a year that it pumps into the hard-pressed local economy.

Festival officials call that land the ranch, and they say it is essential to the future of Burning Man. The acreage is a staging ground where the organizers prepare for the festival and store its considerable infrastructure. It is covered with piles of mechanical and structural debris from previous festivals; a Quonset hut housing woodworking and metalworking shops; fuel tanks; and remnants from dozens of past art installations. But to the site's neighbors and a powerful local businessman, the land is an eyesore and a fire hazard; to county officials it is a splitting headache because it is at the heart of a dispute that after a year of legal and political wrangling has arrived at a stalemate.

Black Rock City bought the land for $70,000 in 2001 because its use of the festival grounds was limited to a month or so a year, under a permit from the federal Bureau of Land Management. That purchase quickly roused opponents. One complaint — its source has not been revealed by the authorities — prompted a three-month investigation by Washoe County officials. The county's planning commission ultimately approved three special-use permits for things like storing vehicles, custom manufacturing and salvage operations. The commission also attached more than 90 conditions that had to be met to bring the property up to health, safety and fire codes.

The commission's approval drew an appeal by five residents, who cited insufficient water supplies, potential fire hazards and leftover debris. Among those residents are Michael B. Stewart, whose businesses in the area includes Orient Farms, where he grows garlic; and High Rock Holding L.L.C., a geothermal power company. On May 13 Washoe County commissioners sided with them, reversing the planning commission's approval by a 3-to-2 vote and denying Black Rock City the special-use permits. The company's director, Larry Harvey, likened the ruling to a vote to shut down the Burning Man operation.

Fewer than four weeks later Black Rock City filed a lawsuit seeking $40 million in damages from the county if it were forced to cancel its festival; this year's event was allowed to proceed while a compromise with the county was being negotiated.

Whether the parties can reach an agreement is far from certain. Sitting at their kitchen table, Lou and Sylvia Fascio, who were among the residents who signed the appeal, show photos to support their claim that the Burning Man operation is a hazard. One shows a 110-foot-long bus converted to look like a dragon, which they say was driving without a permit on a local highway. Others show what appear to be piles of junk and Burning Man workers idly watching a substantial blaze on the property.

"Let them move to Mustang," Mrs. Fascio said, referring to a nearby town. "None of us here in the valley want them here."

Festival organizers say they are bringing their fire preparedness up to code, installing fire breaks around the property and keeping 40,000 gallons of water on hand. They also say they have removed 30 truckloads of debris and 20 abandoned cars.

Mr. Harvey, the chain-smoking, Stetson-wearing impresario of the festival, acknowledges that some complaints about the property's appearance are legitimate, but he contends that Mr. Stewart wants the land for water.

"Three underground rivers intersect below the property," Mr. Harvey said. "And Fly Geyser is right next door. Mike Stewart owns a geothermal plant and has made an offer on the property. So what is this really about?"

Mr. Stewart declined to comment. But Donna Potter, the environmental coordinator for Mr. Stewart's companies, said the idea that Mr. Stewart wanted the land for geothermal development was ridiculous.

With a $40 million suit hanging over them, Washoe County officials are working on potential zoning solutions and establishing new deadlines for complying with county codes. A meeting has been set for Thursday involving county commissioners, Burning Man representatives and their local opponents.

"We're hoping to educate the commissioners about the issues," said Marion Goodell, Burning Man's communications director. "We're determined. Worst-case scenario: we'll spend a lot of money, and we'll be on that property. Best- case scenario: we'll work with our neighbors and the county and be on that property."

Mr. Fascio is equally resolute. "I don't know why they want a meeting," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, the county commissioners said no. What's left to discuss? Let them have their day in court."

No court date has been set, but Black Rock City officials said they had begun to entertain offers to relocate their event. One possibility is a Paiute reservation at Pyramid Lake in Nevada; another, in southern Nevada, is in Esmeralda County, whose officials have been courting the event, Burning Man organizers say.

Neither is a perfect fit. Esmeralda is closer to Los Angeles than to San Francisco, home to more Burners than any other city. And while moving the event to a reservation would keep some government regulators at bay, the Paiute are intolerant of nudity, drugs and alcohol, all of which are common at the festival.

"We need five miles of perfect playa just like this,' said Will Roger, Burning Man's public works director, referring to desert and waving his hand toward the bustling festival grounds. "That's not so easy to find."

Mr. Roger gazed at his art car, a 1986 Chevy Sprint converted to resemble a giant carp and customized with 30-foot flame throwers. "This is a matter of perspective," he said. "What our opposition calls rubbish, I call art materials. What they call a salvage yard, I call a recycling center."

Beekeepers Struggle to Keep Craft Alive

Hey Bobby, Here's something you might find interesting ....

Story location
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...13&u=/ap/farm_scene

Beekeepers Struggle to Keep Craft Alive
y JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press Writer
September 07, 2003

PIEDMONT, S.C. - J. Milton King has racks of beekeeping supplies on his screen porch ready to sell cheap or even give away if he can find the right young person to take up the craft. So far, King, who at 86 has been hobbled in recent months by a blood clot in his leg, has had no takers. "The old people like him are dying out," said 73-year-old Ernest Kastner, who learned beekeeping from King a few years ago after the mentor left a jar of fresh honey at his house. "And there just aren't enough young people to take over."

Beekeeping is a hard, sweaty and sometimes painful job that yields a small, sweet reward. Swarms of beekeepers have quit during the past few decades, frustrated by long hours and made broke by new pests invading hives. It's not easy to find young apprentices eager to don the stifling protective overalls, helmet and mesh and spend hours coaxing bees out of their honey. "It's a day's job, and it's hot," Kastner said. "You know how young people today are."

Beekeeping can be a lucrative hobby. Honey prices are up this year — King is selling a quart for $7 — but it's too much work to be big business. Of the 2,000 or so beekeepers in South Carolina, just a dozen make their living exclusively off bees, said Mike Hood, a bee specialist with Clemson University. "Most of them do it for pleasure," he said. "To make a little bit of honey for themselves and their friends and maybe sell a little on the side."

It's getting harder to turn a profit because pests such as mites and wax moths can wipe out whole hives, destroying years of work in just a few days, Hood said. "We've lost a lot of good beekeepers because it is expensive to fight them off," he said. But bees are more than just honey-producers. By transferring pollen from one plant to another, bees help increase the size and yields of fruits. The University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Science estimates pollination adds $9 billion to the farming industry in the United States each year. Everyone down to the home gardener benefits from bees," Hood said. Realizing the benefits of bees drew Charles Holden, 64, into beekeeping about a decade ago. The first year he worked the land, his fruit trees had a terrible yield. Then, inspiration stung him on the arm. "I noticed I hadn't seen any honey or other bees on my property, so I went and got a couple of hives and put them out," Holden said. "Next season, I had so much fruit the branches were breaking under all the weight."

And the same pests that have hurt beekeepers have destroyed wild bee populations. Holden said he almost never sees bees outside of colonized hives. Holden is passing his knowledge down to one of his co-workers, 24- year-old John Cranmer. Cranmer's choice of hobbies seems odd. He used to be allergic to bee stings and remembers a trip to the hospital when he was 9 after several bees stung him while he played in an abandoned house.

Right after he started beekeeping, one sting might cause him to swell up for days. Cranmer now says he has gained an immunity and is confident enough to work with the bees without the protective clothing. "Most people are scared of the stings," said Cranmer. "But it isn't much, once you get used to it."

Beekeeping requires patience. On a recent afternoon, King and Kastner took about 10 minutes in the 90-degree heat to slip into their protective suits. Then came the slow process of blowing smoke on the bees to calm them. Finally, the men peeled off the wooden top of a hive and took out a frame about the size of a shoe box lid. That's where the bees make their honey, protected by a thin wax coating to keep it from flowing away. When the bees started buzzing and swarming closer, the pair blew more smoke and worked more slowly. They checked just a couple of the frames, called supers, before calling it a day. A beekeeper might check several dozen frames when harvesting honey in the late spring or early fall, King said. His daughter and son have helped him before, and he's trying to get his grandson to pick up the hobby, too.

"I try to help everyone I can," King said. "Because we need more beekeepers."

Forensic Botanists Find the Lethal Weapon of a Killer Weed

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/science/...nted=print&position=

Forensic Botanists Find the Lethal Weapon of a Killer Weed
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
September 9, 2003

For over a century, spotted knapweed has been a growing scourge on the North American landscape, spreading across millions of acres of prairies, hillsides, roadsides and rangeland — pretty much anywhere it can get a root in the dirt. Everywhere it spreads, it replaces native grasses and other plant species to the consternation of conservationists as well as ranchers, whose cows refuse to eat it. The weed, which sprouts pink and purple flowers and can grow a spindly three feet tall, is a European import, thought to have been introduced in North America as a contaminant in crop seeds or in dirt used as ship's ballast and then dumped. But scientists have long been baffled by the plant's appalling effectiveness at driving out other plants. Scientists often assume that invasive exotic species are able to thrive in new environments because they have escaped from their predators and other enemies at home. But scientists say the new study suggests that such troublesome imports may also succeed by using potent but unrecognized methods, like chemical warfare.

Now in the current issue of the journal Science, researchers say they have found spotted knapweed's deadly secret: a potent and previously unknown poison that it releases through its roots into the soil to kill off neighboring plants. By eliminating its neighbors, the weed can appropriate all the water and nutrients that the other plants would have taken, and it has plenty of new space to spread out in. So far, the researchers have found no native plants that can withstand the poison. Dr. Jorge M. Vivanco, a plant biologist at Colorado State University and an author of the study, says the toxin acts so quickly that within 10 seconds of contact the neighboring plants' roots begin producing chemicals that set off a cascade of events that will ultimately kill their own cells. "In one hour the roots die," he said. "The whole plant dies in a matter of days." The substance is such an effective herbicide that, Dr. Vivanco said, his university had already taken out a patent on it. "One plant arrives in a field where there are a lot of native plants," Dr. Vivanco said. "The next year you see not one, but actually a patch of spotted knapweed where the natives were. And if there are still native plants near it, they don't look so healthy."Around Missoula, Mont., home of the University of Montana, for example, a diversity of native species once bloomed. Now after several decades of this subtle underground warfare, the hills have become a vast monoculture of spotted knapweed, Dr. Vivanco said, as have millions of acres in that particularly hard-hit state.


"This is a really nice demonstration that other factors come into play," said Dr. Sarah Reichard, an invasion biologist at the University of Washington. "This paper shows that the interactions can be very subtle, things happening below ground that we really haven't had any knowledge about." The notion that plants use poisons to suppress or kill their neighbors — a phenomenon known as allelopathy — has been around for decades. But until now, few scientists have had much use for it. "People have been rather dismissive of the whole subject," said Dr. Alastair Fitter, an ecologist at the University of York who was not involved in the study. Part of the problem was that much of the earliest work was poorly done, he said in a telephone interview. But as Dr. Fitter wrote in an accompanying commentary in Science, he believes the new study is so convincing that it will "now place allelopathy firmly back on center stage."

The researchers found that the roots of the spotted knapweed released two forms of a chemical known as catechin (pronounced KAT-uh-kin) identical in all respects except that their molecular structures were mirror images of each other.

1. One form, known as +catechin, is also found in green tea and was already known as an antioxidant, able to neutralize the harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species that are thought to speed the aging process.
2. The toxin turned out to be the second form, -catechin, which had essentially the opposite effect of its mirror image. It induced the production of harmful reactive oxygen species in neighboring plant roots, setting off the process that led to cell death.
3. The scientists found that the grasses that grow alongside spotted knapweed in Europe are much better able to resist its toxins than native North American grasses. Scientists say this suggests that the European grasses have evolved a resistance to this potent toxin, one that North American grasses lack.
   

The finding helps explain the failure of many efforts to fight the onslaught of spotted knapweed by burning it and then seeding the area with desired plants. "What they've seen is that 99 percent of the seeds died, and now we know why," said Dr. Vivanco. With -catechin soaked into the soil, he said, susceptible seeds have no chance of making it. But even though the poison is very powerful, it remained unknown to researchers because everything was happening below ground.

Since spotted knapweed landed in North America, a century or so ago, it has spread to nearly every state and has caused a variety of problems. Eric Lane, the state weed coordinator for Colorado, said the loss of native plant species curtailed the food supply not only for cattle but for wild species like elk, many birds and insects. In some states, he said, the spread of spotted knapweed is so severe that elk herds have altered migration pathways to avoid vast inedible swaths of it. The weed has also led to erosion because it does not hold soil as well as native grasses.

In the search for solutions to this green plague, researchers were excited to discover that the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, whose entire genome has already been sequenced, is susceptible to -catechin. As a result, they can see in detail how a plant's genome reacts when its roots are hit with the toxin. The scientists found 10 genes that appear to shift into high gear immediately. Scientists say they hope that by identifying what those genes are doing, presumably mounting the beginnings of a defense, they can genetically engineer plants that can more effectively resist the spotted knapweed's attacks. Researchers are also testing to see what native plants are resistant to the -catechin. They hope to develop a list of species that can be used to revegetate an area after spotted knapweed has been burned.

Blaine Begins Starvation Stunt in London in Search for his Truths

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...u=/ap/people_blaine

Blaine Begins Starvation Stunt in London in Search for his Truths
By JACK GARLAND, Associated Press Writer
September 05, 2003

Blaine has said that the latest stunt will give him the chance to search for his "truths." "This is worth it for my art, even if I drop dead," he said.

David Blaine, the American illusionist and street magician, began his latest feat of endurance in a blaze of publicity Friday night, entering a plastic box where he will attempt to live without food for more than six weeks. The New Yorker insists he won't eat, and said he has fattened himself up to over 205 pounds so he can survive on his own body fat. Blaine has said he expects to lose at least 45 pounds.

This is Blaine's first major stunt outside the United States. The street- magician-turned-endurance performer has already spent 35 hours standing on top of a 100-foot-high pole, and three days encased in ice — both stunts in New York.

The 30-year-old New Yorker entered the cramped see-through box at 9:30 p.m., watched by television cameras and thousands of cheering fans. In a live TV show, Blaine was checked over by medical personnel and searched by a security guard before waving goodbye, hugging his friends and climbing into the top of the box in a small park near Tower Bridge overlooking the River Thames. A crane lifted the box up 40 feet, where it was to remain suspended while Blaine pursues his goal of spending 44 days and 44 nights alone with only a supply of water, a quilt, a pillow, a journal, a change of clothes and a photo of his mother.

When Weird Works: Outkast and Erykah Badu

Hey Bobby, something about Outcast here ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/arts/mus...nted=print&position=

When Weird Works: Outkast and Erykah Badu
By KELEFA SANNEH
October 5, 2003

 FEW weeks ago, the Atlanta-based hip-hop duo Outkast did something that seemed suicidal. On Sept. 23, the duo released "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" — two solo albums, side by side. "Speakerboxxx" is propelled by Big Boi's precise, sticky rhymes, and "The Love Below" floats along on André 3000's not-quite-angelic falsetto singing. Listeners have to make sense of almost two and a half hours of music, figuring out for themselves how it all fits together.

This could have been a recipe for disaster, but "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" (Arista/BMG) has earned an enthusiastic reception so far. Entertainment Weekly graded the album an "A," and the double-album's twin videos — "Hey Ya!," by André 3000, and "The Way You Move," by Big Boi — have been playing on MTV and BET. Having released the riskiest album of their decade-long career, the members of Outkast are more visible than ever.

Weirdness sells. Or does it? A week before Outkast, a different Southern-bred, hip-hop-influenced star released an equally daring new album. The star is the soul singer Erykah Badu, who has collaborated with Outkast in the past: the fruits of their labor include a couple great songs and a baby. On "The Love Below," André 3000, long separated from Ms. Badu, explains what happened: "We young in love — in short, we had fun/ No regrets, no abortion, had a son/ By the name of Seven, and he's 5, by the time I do this mix/ He'll probably be 6.")

Ms. Badu's new album, "Worldwide Underground" (Motown/Universal), sneaked into stores on Sept. 16. The high-profile guest list includes Queen Latifah and Lenny Kravitz, and the disc is full of the sort of sleepy-eyed funk that made D'Angelo's "Voodoo" so popular.

And yet "Worldwide Underground" has hardly made an impact. Reviews have been lukewarm (Rolling Stone awarded it two stars out of five), and it seems likely that some of Ms. Badu's fans aren't even aware that she has a new album in stores. Like Outkast, Ms. Badu is taking an idiosyncratic path, but the results are different. She's out in space, too, but she seems less like a star than ever.

Big Boi (Antwan Patton, 28) and André 3000 (André Benjamin, 28) made their debut in 1994 with "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik," which combined slow-rolling beats with smooth refrains and astonishingly eloquent rhymes. Over the next few years, the group got better and bolder.

By 1998, when the group released its third album, "Aquemini," there were more musical surprises (the single "Rosa Parks" included a harmonica solo) and more ambitious narratives. In one song, André 3000 tenderly evoked a childhood memory: "I remember her number like the summer/ When her and Suzie, yeah, they threw a slumber/ Party — but you cannot call it that 'cause it was slummer/ Well, it was more like spend-the- night/ Three in the morning, yawning, dancing under street lights." It was starting to seem clear that Outkast was the greatest hip-hop group of all time — more versatile than Run-DMC, more unpredictable than Public Enemy, more resilient than N.W.A., more consistent than the Wu-Tang Clan.

In 2000, Outkast released "Stankonia," the group's least consistent album so far, but also the wildest and funniest. It was a crossover hit, thanks to "Ms. Jackson," a conflicted ode to baby-mamas, and "So Fresh, So Clean," a silky celebration of Southern style. The same things that set the group apart from other hip-hop acts — moaning vocals, wailing guitars, synthesizers fit for a Prince — helped attract listeners who wouldn't otherwise have been interested in a couple of rappers from Atlanta.

The new double-album follows this trend to two different logical conclusions. Big Boi is often described as the regular guy of the group, but he is also the group's resident virtuoso, sometimes slowing down his delivery to emphasize an internal rhyme and sometimes speeding it up so that the syllables rush past. "Speakerboxxx" covers a lot of ground, from the murder of Daniel Pearl to the scandalous goings-on at a local strip club, and he seems particularly interested in the sometimes contradictory demands of lust and life. In his own pithy words, "from T&A to DNA, feelings turn to chilluns," and he doesn't pick sides: he realizes that far from being incompatible, the two impulses are inseparable.

"Speakerboxxx" doesn't stray far from the hip-hop mainstream: many of the songs stick to beats-and-rhymes basics, and there are typically entertaining appearances from Ludacris and Jay-Z. But Big Boi knows that a club-friendly hit can be just as innovative as an album-only obscurity, so he packs his disc full of unusual arrangements. "The Way You Move" struts along on a fast track and a slow trumpet line, "Flip Flop Rock" lays glimmering guitar notes over melancholy piano and "Ghetto Musick" (produced by André 3000) switches back and forth between frantic electro beats and hazy slow-jam atmospherics.

"The Love Below" goes in a different direction: André 3000 seems to have given up on the possibilities of hip-hop, at least for the time being; instead, he croons and makes beats and goofs off. Not surprisingly, there are more lowpoints here than on "Speakerboxxx," including a tedious drum-n-bass version of John Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things," and "She Lives in My Lap," a tuneless duet with the actress Rosario Dawson.

But André 3000 also has a knack for turning self-indulgent digressions into hummable pop songs. His current single, "Hey Ya!," is a punky soul anthem that sounds like nothing you've ever heard; the video, starring a rock band made up of grinning André 3000's, is even better. There's also a deliriously smutty song called "Spread," which joins a skittering beat to a tinkling piano. (Suffice it to say that any description of the chorus would render the title unfit to print.) One skit, "Where Are My Panties?," chronicles morning-after befuddlement; here, as elsewhere, André 3000 is irresistible, every bit as lascivious as you expect him to be, but twice as generous. As the title suggests, "The Love Below" is both a high-minded romantic treatise and one long dirty joke.

Outkast's divided album has some fans scared that the two halves will never reunite, but these two discs offer plenty of proof that the partnership makes sense. André 3000's flightier compositions could use a bit of Big Boi's earthy patter, and some of Big Boi's dense raps would benefit from André 3000's gleeful singing. In any case, the discs succeed because of the duo's shared sensibility, at once playful and thoughtful; they deflate their own pretensions by insisting that they are just having fun.

You'd never use a word like fun to describe the eccentric approach of Ms. Badu, who was raised in Dallas. When she released "Baduizm," in 1997, she was celebrated as the first lady of neo-soul, although her voice, as sharp and light as a pocketknife, made even the most languorous grooves seem somehow menacing. From the start, her reputation for new-age tranquility didn't quite fit with her feisty hits: "Next Lifetime" was sung by a woman contemplating infidelity; "On & On" borrowed the language of the 5 Percent Nation of Islam; "Tyrone" told a good-for- nothing lover to get lost.

In 2000 she released "Mama's Gun," a quiet, jazzy album that spawned one hit (the sublime "Bag Lady," based on a clever Dr. Dre sample) but failed to match the success of "Baduizm." Then, nothing: Ms. Badu has acknowledged that, after "Mama's Gun," she was "frustrated" by a case of writer's block. So she went on tour, spent time with her production group Freakquency — consisting of Ms. Badu, James Poyser, Rashad (Ringo) Smith and RC Williams — and returned from hibernation with "Worldwide Underground," which her record company is marketing, rather apologetically, as a 50-minute EP.

Ms. Badu prints her new manifesto on the cover. "Freakquency is born and neo-soul is dead," it reads."Are you afraid of change? Well, change makes dollars. Follow the leader." That's precisely the kind of defensive attitude that Outkast has spent a decade avoiding, but it seems to fit Ms. Badu's current mood.

Her new album uses subtle funk grooves to conjure up a murky, paranoid feeling; if André 3000 and Big Boi have figured out that love can be fun, Ms. Badu seems just as convinced that love can be terrifying, and her album suggests that desire is a form of spirit possession.

The disc's centerpiece is "I Want You," nine minutes of tension followed by two minutes of glorious release. It starts off with a one-chord keyboard riff in the pattern of a heartbeat — it could almost be a minimal techno track — and Ms. Badu describes her attempts at exorcism: "Tried to turn the sauna up to hotter/ Drank a whole glass of holy water

/ But it won't let go." The band stretches out the groove, adding and improvising until the shuddering heartbeat returns, slows and stops, replaced by a synthesizer solo that sounds a bit like an electrified harp. It ends with Ms. Badu's voice, almost inaudible: "Just 'cause I tell you I love you, don't mean that I do."

She finds a different way to explore the same theme on the single "Danger," which mimics the trebly, synthetic sound of Southern hip-hop. The lyrics tells the story of a drug dealer's girlfriend, at once desperate and defiantly proud, as she waits for her man to come home. The chorus is a mesmerizing collision of similar-sounding syllables: "I got the block on lock, the trunk stay locked/ Glock on cock, the block stay hot." Ms. Badu turns a familiar hip-hop crime narrative into a lovesick fugue of fear and loyalty.

It's not hard to understand why some Erykah Badu fans are disappointed by "Worldwide Underground." The album is essentially one long groove, with plenty of ambience but not a lot of songwriting. And the spooky mood never dissipates. Even on the good-natured posse cut "Love of My Life Worldwide," Ms. Badu suggests that love is sorcery: when she intones, "I got the hazel eyes/ To make your nature rise," she seems to be casting a spell.

It's clear that Ms. Badu doesn't share Outkast's knack for popularization, for making the strange seem familiar. In fact, she seems to be blessed — or maybe cursed — with the opposite skill. She's a first-rate depopularizer, able to make even the familiar sounds of 1970's jazz and funk seem strange.

This is a perverse sort of talent — in fact, most singers would probably see it as a liability. But there's a lot to be said for Ms. Badu's mysterious approach. It may never inspire the kind of contagious excitement generated by "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," but "Worldwide Underground" has its own charms — the album evokes an unsettling feeling that's hard to figure out and even harder to shake. While Outkast delights in unearthing new sounds, Ms. Badu does something just as valuable. She turns every song into a burial rite, gathering up her favorite grooves and putting them back underground.

Selling you a new past - Zaltman and Memory Morphing

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=455650

You've eaten a chocolate bar and you didn't really like it. Can a commercial afterwards persuade you that you did? 'Memory morphing' could be a powerful weapon for advertisers. But, asks David Benady, will they dare use it?

Selling you a new past - Zaltman and Memory Morphing
October 21, 2003

Is your memory playing tricks on you, or did you find shopping at your over-priced supermarket last week a wonderful experience? Did you have a great time on that lacklustre package holiday a couple of years ago? And are you quite sure whether you enjoyed that cold, tasteless meal the other day?

Advertisers have found a new way to mess with your mind.

A group of US marketing researchers claim that brand owners can make their customers believe they had a better experience of a product or service than they really did by bombarding them with positive messages after the event. Advocates of the technique, known as "memory morphing", claim it can be used to improve customers' perceptions of products and encourage them to repeat their purchases and recommend brands to friends.

Its chief cheerleader is Professor Jerry Zaltman, a psychologist attached to Harvard Business School. He claims that advertising - "if properly constructed" - can lead to the creation of false memories.

"When asked, many consumers insist that they rely primarily on their own first-hand experience with products - not advertising - in making purchasing decisions. Yet, clearly, advertising can strongly alter what consumers remember about their past, and thus influence their behaviours," he writes in his book, How Customers Think. He says that memories are malleable, changing every time they come to mind, and that brands can use this to their advantage. "What consumers recall about prior product or shopping experiences will differ from their actual experiences if marketers refer to those past experiences in positive ways," he continues.

Zaltman has worked in the past with many big brand owners, such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Reebok and General Motors, though it is not known whether his advice covered memory morphing.

But Coca-Cola's UK president, Tom Long, speaking at a marketing conference earlier this year, seemed to get close to giving his seal of approval to the technique. He said that memory morphing "is something Coca-Cola was pleased to learn [about]." And he went on to advise marketers: "Try to morph the memory of your consumers."

British advertising agencies say Zaltman has contacted them offering advice on how to use memory morphing techniques. But none of the agencies contacted by The Independent has admitted taking up the offer.

Zaltman's extraordinary claims are based on experiments carried out by memory researchers in the US, most notably the work carried out by Elizabeth Loftus, a former professor of psychology at the University of Washington. She singled out a campaign by Disney - "Remember the magic" - which, she claimed, was used to invoke real or imaginary childhood memories in consumers.

She reported an experiment in which people were shown an advert suggesting that children who visited Disneyland had the opportunity to shake hands with Bugs Bunny. Later, many of those who had seen the advert "remembered" meeting Bugs on childhood visits to the theme park, a feat that would have been impossible, given that the cartoon is a Warner Brothers character. Loftus said: "This brings forth ethical considerations. Is it OK for marketers to knowingly manipulate consumers' pasts?"

Earlier this year, other American psychologists announced research findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, showing the ease with which false memories can be implanted in people's minds. In a test by the cognitive psychologist Kathryn Braun- LaTour, a colleague of Zaltman's, participants were served an unpleasant-tasting orange drink spiked with salt and vinegar. They were then shown adverts suggesting the drink was refreshing. Sure enough, many of the participants later reported that they had found the drink refreshing.

While most experts deny that brands actively use memory morphing in their advertising, some believe it may be an inadvertent consequence. Erik du Plessis, chief executive of the South African arm of the world's leading advertising research firm, Millward Brown, has just written his own book on the psychological effects of advertising called The Advertised Mind.

He says: "There is evidence that memory morphing might happen, though I don't think anyone has actively tried to use it. Certainly some advertisements I have seen have a very good chance of doing it. There is advertising I can see that reminds me of good times I have had. I will probably remember the brand as having been there, although it might not have been." But he believes morphing can only take place in a "credible" way. If consumers have had a bad experience, it will be impossible to turn that into a positive memory.

Mark Earls, planning director of the advertising agency Ogilvy London, says Zaltman is promoting memory morphing as a research tool to help brand owners decide which adverts will be successful. If an ad can be shown to change people's memories of past experiences, this indicates it is very powerful. But he is sceptical about Zaltman's methods.

"The advance they are claiming to have made is in being able to monitor the brain as opposed to the mind, and measure the ways our brain changes when exposed to advertising. But this is old-fashioned.

"What is important these days is not what advertising does to consumers, so much as how consumers use advertising to make statements about themselves to other people," concludes Earls.

Zaltman may be portrayed as a maverick whose ideas are irrelevant to modern advertising. But he argues that significant advances have been made in neuroscience over the past 10 years, and he believes that the unconscious mind is a great unexplored area for marketers.

But will he persuade an industry that knows it would face a public outcry if consumers found out advertisers were using his technique? Perhaps not.

Richard Huntington, head of planning at the agency HHCL/Red Cell, says: "It is the last refuge of the scoundrel to say that there's bugger all we can tell you about this product, so we'll pretend that you all had great Christmases."

Jesus actor struck by lightning

Greg, thought you might find this interesting ... I still remember the time when you saw the Michelin men and also scenes of the cross ... And how come your image page is down ... http://www.clark.net/pub/webbge/jesus.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3209223.stm

Jesus actor struck by lightning
October 23, 2003

Actor Jim Caviezel has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ.
The lightning bolt hit Caviezel and the film's assistant director Jan Michelini while they were filming in a remote location a few hours from Rome.

It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.

Neither of them was badly hurt, according to the film's producer Steve McEveety.

Michelini had previously been struck during filming in Matera, Italy, when he suffered light burns to his fingers after lightning hit his umbrella.

Describing the second lightning strike, McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: "I'm about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel's ears."

The Passion Of Christ, which was filmed in the ancient languages of Latin and Aramaic, is directed and co-written by actor Mel Gibson and focuses on the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus.

Although it is not due for release until early next year, it has already hit headlines after Jewish figures in the United States slated it for being "dangerous" and portraying Jews in a negative way.

Originally titled The Passion, the film changed its title last week after Miramax claimed the rights to the title for one of its own projects, a historical epic based on a Jeanette Winterson novel.

The film now looks set to be released in the States by independent distributors Newmarket Films, who released Memento and Whale Rider in the US.