We wondered where such ridiculous and wildly fluctuating numbers could possibly be coming from, and as it turns out, we weren’t the first to do so. Researcher Julian Sanchez tracked them down:

The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the US economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods.

The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000″ jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from.

These figures, produced from thin air as far as anyone can tell, persisted in talking points through 2008, and even through this year were occasionally cited by supporters of SOPA. This despite the fact that in 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report stating that the figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology.”

So the new number became $58 billion annually, and 19 million American jobs, according to Mark Elliot, an executive from the US Chamber of Commerce.

Sanchez tracked this new number down, to a paper released by the Institute for Policy Innovation, and authored by one Stephen Siwek, an MBA and principal of a consulting firm called Economists Incorporated that produces economic analysis for hire on behalf of (among others) businesses seeking to influence policy makers.

This only means that it was not an impartial academic study. This fact alone doesn’t invalidate the figure. What invalidates the figure is the method by which a much smaller, relatively less dubious estimate was multiplied; doubled and tripled, through troll logic. As Sanchez put it, Siwek used a method that’s useful for analyzing where in the economy we will likely see the effects of demand shifts, and pretending that it somehow reflects aggregate economic losses.

In other words, Siwek implied that the value of a stolen DVD is equal to the cumulative total of every dollar exchanged on its behalf, all along the way, from pressing plant to consumer. Sanchez’ colleague Tim Lee explains the fallacy in plain terms:

[I]n IPI-land, when a movie studio makes $10 selling a DVD to a Canadian, and then gives $7 to the company that manufactured the DVD and $2 to the guy who shipped it to Canada, society has benefited by $10+$7+$2=$19. Yet some simple math shows that this is nonsense: The studio is $1 richer, the trucker is $2, and the manufacturer is $7. Shockingly enough, that adds up to $10. What each participant cares about is his profits, not his revenues.

So Siwek took an estimate of $6.1 billion in net losses to piracy for the movie industry, and by piling on the cumulative total of every single transaction in between manufacture and sale, came up with a more impressive sounding $20.5 billion in damages to the American economy. Further, Sanchez notes:

The original $6.1 billion figure, by the way, was produced by a study commissioned from LEK Consulting by the Motion Picture Association of America. Since even the GAO was unable to get at the underlying research or evaluate its methodology, it’s impossible to know how reliable that figure is, but given that MPAA has already had to admit significant errors in the numbers LEK generated, I’d take it with a grain of salt.

But we’re only scratching the surface. Even if that $6.1 billion estimate was accurate, it was an estimate of global movie piracy. In other words, it includes cases where, say, a Bollywood movie is pirated in China. Obviously, this has little to no impact on the American economy.

They took the impact of global piracy, exaggerated it by lumping in every associated transaction all along the way, and then that grand total was bandied about as damage to the United States economy. So at this point, Sanchez has dug through all of the layers of exaggeration to find a flat-out lie at the heart of the so-called “research.”

Despite having no access to the full text of the LEK study, Sanchez  managed to find a paper of Siwek’s that reproduced some of its PowerPoint slides, which break down the figures: Of the total $6.1 billion in annual losses estimated to MPAA studios, the amount attributable to online piracy by users in the United States was $446 million.

So now we’re down to $446 million in damages to the US economy from movie piracy. Remember, according to a report commissioned by the MPAA, the research for which has been kept secret, the proven inaccuracy of which the MPAA has already had to apologize for. Surely still a grossly exaggerated figure, which Sanchez devilishly points out is roughly equivalent to the global gross from the latest Alvin And The Chipmunks movie.

And yet even if the research behind the figure was sound, the context it’s put into is disingenuous at best. A common-sense economic principle called the “broken window” fallacy comes into play. To update the analogy for the 21st century, if your car window is broken, it may cost you $60 to fix. But that loss is not the economy’s. Had you not have to have fixed that window, would you have… eaten the $60? No, you would have spent it on a video game, or clothes, or groceries. Or maybe a night out at the movies.

An expert in the GAO report asserts this in saying that the “effects of piracy within the United States are mainly redistributions within the economy for other purposes and that they should not be considered as a loss to the overall economy.”

But are they even quantifiable losses for the movie industry? Sanchez dismisses all but a small fraction of these fantasy damages:

In many cases – I’ve seen research suggesting it’s about 80 percent for music – a US consumer would not have otherwise purchased an illicitly downloaded song or movie if piracy were not an option. Here, the result is actually pure consumer surplus: The downloader enjoys the benefit, and the producer loses nothing.

Sanchez doesn’t link to said research, and in fact it would be extremely difficult to accurately determine where illegal downloaders’ money would be going otherwise, but it was easy for us to find even more extreme (credible) estimates than Sanchez’ 80% spent elsewhere in the economy. Frances Moore of The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a non-profit advocacy group for the global recording industry, estimated that only one out of every ten downloads represents a lost sale. But even then, the “loss” is not physical merchandise disappearing from a truck or warehouse. It’s simply money that the industry would have gotten, in a perfectly honest world.

But at this point, the entertainment industry’s so-called “research” should indisputably prove that the world that we live in is anything but honest. This industry, determined to preserve the problems that it solves by criminalizing others’ solutions, will continue to lie to gullible and/or technologically ignorant lawmakers to get their way. But only for as long as we continue to allow it.

Wikipedia, Reddit, Google and others all “went black” in various ways, to raise awareness. And in that sense, they definitely succeeded. Far away from the blogosphere, throughout the day I heard many people talking about the bills, most of whom knew nothing of them yesterday.

Last month, we this covered these acts, commonly known as SOPA and PIPA, in detail. Here is the core of our beef; these bills were designed and pushed forward by corporations interested only in criminalizing any competitive activity they can’t control, who face no repercussions when they bribe legislators not only with exorbitant campaign contributions, but often with executive titles and massive salaries, all in exchange for their co-conspiracy:

Several of the country’s largest companies are fighting this; Politico reveals that Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google have spent $29.3 million in lobbying between 2010 and 2011, all a part of the so-called NetCoalition that opposes the bills. Yet the entertainment industry’s lobbying budgets over the same time period dwarf that figure nearly ten-fold, with $279.5 million spent. Over the weekend, TechDirt broke the “shockingly unshocking” story that two of the congressional staffers that helped write SOPA & PIPA, Lauren Pastarnack and Allison Halataei, have been offered cushy, high paying jobs with the MPAA and NMPA, respectively. It may be legal, but it ain’t right. It reeks of 1999, when congressional staffer Mitch Glazier, who snuck a tweak into some legislation that stripped all recording artists of their copyrights, found himself the Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA a few months later, with a $500,000 salary. You scratch my failing business model’s back, I’ll give you a shitload of money.

Several congressmen have withdrawn their support for these bills, yet they all echo the same parting word: “Something” needs to be done about piracy, maybe just not this. Even the lobbyists are hedging their bets as their bullshit cookie crumbles, daring the protesters to “stop the hyperbole and PR stunts,” and “engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy,” as MPAA CEO Chris Dodd put it. That’s Senator and MPAA CEO Chris Dodd. Senator and CEO.

They’re all saying, ‘well OK, you got us, but we do need to do something.’ And we agree. But the responsibility lies not among legislators. Piracy is not an enforcement issue. As TechDirt put it:

Multiple studies have shown that “piracy” is almost always a “service” issue – in that people resort to infringing options when no good options exist. A detailed four-year study on this issue around the globe found, consistently, that infringement was never an “enforcement” issue – but exclusively a business model issue.

With that said, not only will we protest SOPA and PIPA, but we will oppose any legislation that attempts to simply criminalize the natural behavior of consumers when officially sanctioned options fall far short of practical expectations. As The Oatmeal so eloquently put it in their protest message, attacking this problem with legislation like this is like dealing with some escaped lions by setting kittens on fire.

Put as simply as possible, this is the entertainment industry’s problem. It is a problem that they have created, and it is a problem that won’t go away if their best plan is throwing more lawyers and money at it. It will of course, inevitably be solved, but by innovators. And SOPA and PIPA are further proof that the industry still hasn’t figured out that time and time again, after all the histrionics and lobbying dollars burned, its enemy always comes to its rescue in the end. From radio, to movie theater de-monopolization, to cable TV, to VCRs, to DVRs, to MP3 players, to iTunes, to Spotify. Every new technology that was supposed to kill the industry only strengthened it. We’re out of sympathy.

Music won’t be free. Artists will get paid. Piracy is temporary. Innovation, not legislation, is the way out.

SOPA and PIPA aren’t dead. As Hollywood moguls like Rupert Murdoch threaten to boycott campaign contributions, we’re going uphill against powerful money. So we must continue to fight, and we must help our congressmen to understand that they’re being bought, used, and/or misled, that we know better, and that we don’t vote for sellouts.

Here is the entirety of the message that all traffic to Antiquiet was directed to for the duration of January 18th:

HR 3261 [SOPA] was referred to the sub-committee on intellectual property, competition and the internet on November 2. On November 16, committee hearings took place. No further action has taken place.

S 968 [PROTECT IP]: The last legislative action was when Senator Leahy filed a report with the committee on 7/22.

What does all this mean, and why do I begin with the status of these bills? In determining how likely a bill is to proceed through Congress, much depends on the committees and subcommittees that review it. A bill won’t go to the floor for a vote until a recommendation comes out of committee. And often the committee relies on the subcommittees. So, right now, the competing senate and house bills are still stuck in committee. But, it appears the House Bill is moving faster than the Senate bills. No surprise there – the Senate is usually slower than the House.

I understand that a new bill called the OPEN Act is being introduced in the House today. This is to move away from the judicial remedy for copyright holders and move the issue into the jurisdiction of the International Trade Commission, which already has authority (albeit limited) and power to address foreign commerce issues. Essentially, the Courts are simply ill-equipped to handle the issue of online infringement.

HR 3261 has been revised to bring the language more in line with the Senate bill, 968. It is set for Judiciary Committee markup tomorrow.

So, let us look at the statutory language of HR 3261. Most of the provisions of the two bills relate to civil actions against sites posting infringing material. Section 102(b)(5) gives authority to the Attorney General to seek court orders for temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions and injunctions against sites and related entities. The newly revised language brings the bill into line with the Senate bill by making the target internet sites “dedicated to infringing activities.” Section 102(a)(3) makes such sites subject to seizure by the federal government.

The criminal penalties are addressed in Section 201 by amending 17 U.S.C. 506(a) to add the “public performance by means of digital transmission” language, thereby broadening the scope of conduct that would violate the statute. Section 201(a)(3)(A) adds language defining “work being prepared for” commercial dissemination (note: dissemination is different from the current language of “distribution”). Essentially, anything that is protected as copyrighted material could be argued to fall under this definition. My opinion is that this definition is overly broad and subject to constitutional challenge. The bill also amends 18 U.S.C. 2319 broadening the criminal liability to include the “public performance by means of digital transmission” as additional offense conduct. The five-year statutory maximum provision of §2319(b)(1) simply adds the public performance offense conduct. Subsection (c)(1), the three-year statutory maximum provision, is amended to add the restriction that the infringement must occur within 180 days. Currently, there is no time period restriction for that subsection. The one-year (misdemeanor) provision of subsection (c)(3) removes the restriction on value. Now, any copyrighted work, even if it has no economic value whatsoever, falls under the misdemeanor provision.

The ten-year statutory maximum provision of subsection (d)(4) adds the requirement that the infringement be for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain. And (f)(2) is amended to add the public performance language.

The bill also adds, significantly, a new subsection (g) that sets out the type of evidence that may be used to prove “total retail value.” This is very broad. It includes evidence of “what the public would have paid” if the work was purchased legally. As with the current problem of valuation in infringement cases, this type of evidence is often too imprecise to provide any meaningful guide to determine value. The new provision also allows evidence of the value to the infringer or the copyright owner to be introduced as a basis for determining the “total retail value.” Again, this does not provide much relevant information on the actual economic value of the work. The third type of evidence – evidence of the total fair market value of a license for the work – is as vague as the other definitions under this section.

Interestingly, the bill provides a defense of “good faith reasonable basis in law” that the infringer believed the conduct was lawful. This is a defense to the requirement that the infringement be willful.

It appears, as currently written, there are some constitutional arguments that might be raised against the bill. There are areas of vagueness, overly broad provision, and possible First Amendment “chilling” arguments to be made.

Even with the recent changes to HR 3261, the problems have not been addressed adequately. The bill, both the Senate and House versions, gives the Justice Department broad new powers to police the internet as a whole, not just authority to investigate and prosecute conduct violative of US law. It still allows non-governmental entities (the copyright holder) to attack sites and related internet service providers and advertisers if that entity merely has a good faith belief that infringing material is on the site. The recent change simply makes as a requirement that the entity get a court order. This is, in practice, little protection, because of the nature of the Temporary Restraining Order procedure. The bill still places significant and often unfeasible technological mandates on internet service providers – as ordered by a court (which will have very little real-world experience with these issues) – to prevent their services from being used to post infringing material. The chilling effect comes from the mere threat of litigation, not the litigation itself. Fighting a TRO or preliminary injunction is a very costly matter. The easier, faster, and cheaper way for the internet company to respond to such a threat is to simply shut down uploading and file sharing capability for its subscribers.

Finally, as we well know [sorry, inside joke], the government can’t tell whether something is an infringement. It relies on the copyright holder to provide information that material is an infringement. The government simply takes the word of the copyright owner at face value. Non-governmental entities then secure information and evidence that the government might not have been able to get because of those little pestering rules of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment. The most significant danger these bills (and others like them) pose is the threat to innovation and competition. Without having legitimate access to other information, copyrighted material, competition and speech can be easily curtailed by a copyright holder who simply doesn’t want to have to deal with anyone else trying to build a better mousetrap.

We will have to see what the final bill looks like.

David has been doing his part to keep Antiquiet out of further legal trouble since August of 2008. His website is at federalcrimesdefender.com. Bookmark it for a rainy day.

We’re going to tell you why they suck, and we’re going to reveal the real reasons they were written.

To say that these bills have some flaws would be… sarcastic. If these bills become law, uploading just one of Michael Jackson’s songs to the internet could put you in jail for longer than the guy who killed him. They essentially authorize nuclear strikes against any internet domain that appears to be hosting anything that any entertainment company thinks it might own and possibly not have authorized, and/or just doesn’t like, without any of that annoying “proving it in court” hassle. According to Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain, if SOPA was law three years ago, Justin Bieber might still be serving his sentence for covering pop songs on YouTube, as he told Stephen Colbert:

Supporters of the nuclear option dismiss such what if scenarios as paranoia, but if you read the bills, you’ll find no invitation for due process to provide checks and balances in the interest of preventing mistakes or preventing such ludicrous scenarios from becoming a reality. A copyright holder could shut down an entire website indefinitely simply by accusing it of infringing. These are poorly written, unconstitutional bills, written by lobbyists, that would establish a policy of guilt until proven innocent, and deprive US citizens of liberty and property without due process of law.

And if you’re inclined to believe the supporters that promise this law won’t be abused, understand that less aggressive existing laws are already allowing rights holders to turn our justice system into extensions of their disorganized carnival funhouses of ineptitude.

TechDirt broke a story on Thursday involving a Hip Hop blog called Dajaz1 that was seized by the US government’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement division after a “technologically inept recent college grad” did nothing more than file an affidavit. Out of just four songs that were named as evidence of infringement in this affidavit, three had in fact been sent to the blog by authorized representatives of RIAA labels (even a “major music label” VP in one case), and the fourth came from an artist not represented by RIAA at all. Carlos Linares, VP of Anti-Piracy Legal Affairs for the RIAA, signed off on this “evidence,” never having bothered to check whether the songs were in fact posted illegitimately, or with proper authorization, or even if RIAA had any right to file any sort of claim at all.

Yet a judge read the affidavit, said “seems legit,” taking RIAA’s word for it all, and approved the seizure of the domain.

Now, US seizure laws, in a nutshell, say that when the government seizes property, it has 60 days to notify the owner, who then has 35 days to appeal for its return, at which point the government has 90 days to either file for a forfeiture ruling, or return the seized property to the owner. However, it would be more than a full year before Dajaz1 was returned, at which point the government finally admitted there had been no probable cause to begin with. TechDirt has all of the infuriating details on how this was possible; Essentially the court granted the government mysterious extension upon mysterious extension, all filed under seal, with the US attorney refusing to provide the site’s lawyer with any proof that such extensions even existed, let alone any sort of justification for them.

Another story starts with the claim by supporters of SOPA & PIPA that it’s only evil “rogue sites” that will be in the crosshairs of these bills, rather than honest bloggers and future Justin Biebers singing covers on YouTube. Yet in October, the MPAA submitted a list of such “rogue” sites, and they included legitimate services such as MegaUpload and the Google-owned Xunlei, alongside more qualified troublemakers such as The Pirate Bay and Demonoid.

MegaUpload’s hilariously audacious response was a 4 minute original “Mega Song” featuring the likes of P. Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game, Mary J. Blige, Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, Jamie Foxx, and others, all singing about how great MegaUpload is.

Despite the fact that Mega paid for and owned every byte of this 100% original production, UMG filed a copyright claim against YouTube to have the video removed, despite having absolutely no legal right to do so; an abuse of the system that moved Mega to oh so wittily refer to UMG as a “rogue label.”

Are we really expected to believe the MPAA and RIAA and their studios and labels when they insist that these sites need to be shut down “for the artists,” as the artists speak up in support of them, only to then be silenced through blatant abuses of the laws… that we’re being told need to be expanded?

Let’s take a look at how SOPA and PIPA define, or rather neglect to define, exactly what a “rogue site” is. SOPA is so broad that for a site to be considered “dedicated to the theft of US property” all that needs to be shown is that it “enables or facilitates” infringement. That’s as specific as it gets. Any website that allows users to upload content could be found to be dedicated to crime in a court of law.

PIPA attempts to target only foreign sites, but it does so by expecting extraordinary cooperation from US service providers such as ISPs and search engines, who could face liability for being unable to effectively assist the government in censoring the internet as fast as such demands are made, mind you without any process of diligence. PIPA uses the same, broad “enabling or facilitating” language as SOPA.

Defenders of the bills claim that they are only trying to deal with the “worst” offenders, but the reality is that neither bill addresses what that actually means in any specific terms.

Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube continues, in which Viacom’s portrayal of YouTube as a “rogue enabler” bears quite a resemblance to the descriptions of the targets of these bills. Meanwhile, Universal Music, Warner Brothers, and Paramount were three providers of a list of “sites dedicated to infringement” requested by advertising giant GroupM, and that list included SoundCloud and Vimeo, as well as such indisputably constructive good guys as the Internet Archive, Quincy Jones’ Vibe Magazine, Complex (one of the most valuable startups in New York City), and even Universal Music recording artist 50 Cent’s own personal website (which just so happens to be a little more popular than Universal’s own “official” 50 Cent site).

Audio cable manufacturer Monster Cable put together a list of rogue “counterfeit dealers” as well, in support of PIPA, which included eBay, Craigslist, Costco, and Sears, along with search engines like PriceGrabber and consumer rights sites that investigated the real value of Monster Cable’s premium products and compared them against alternatives.

So who are the “worst” offenders? Apparently, everybody. Here’s the criteria: Would the entertainment industry be able to make more money if you didn’t exist? If the answer is yes, or even maybe, you are stealing from them. You evil terrorist.

Then, throughout the nineties, these essential gems were co-opted by the big box retailers – countless generic CD Warehouse and Sam Goody sorts of stores which cropped up in every town with a population over ten. The romance dissolved, the magic suffocated by bright florescence and life-size cardboard Britney Spears cutouts. Eventually, the time-honored ritual of going out to pick up new music became a venture into enemy territory, rather than an immersion into enrichment. It meant having to deal with the corporate interpretation of “cool,” according to the market-tested demographic in which you fit.

It was cheap & compromising. To a music maniac who lived & breathed this shit, who remembered the value of the spirited, always enlightening and often lengthy conversations with both the customers and the guy behind the counter at those endangered shops, this new reality was heartbreaking.

Then the people regained leverage. The MP3 arrived and caught fire. iPods. Filesharing. iTunes. Access to sounds without having to make the trek out to one of the dreaded, monstrous Top 40-pushing Walmarts of music. Finally, a way to explore new music once again, and connect with others just as passionate about it!

But of course, there was a price. With the rise of the internet came the great (and largely celebrated) die-off of all the Sam Goodys. Unfortunately, we also not only lost the one big-box store that did it right – Tower Records – but a crushing majority of the special little record shops we loved so much as well. (Speaking of Tower Records, check out info on a documentaryactor/filmmaker Colin Hanks is putting together on the rise, demise and legacy of the landmark music store franchise.)

The economy’s belly-up, unemployment’s higher than it’s been in our lifetimes, and the corruption of representation has gotten so bad that the people who are actually paying attention to the meteoric descent of our socioeconomic architecture have taken to camping in the streets as the only way to get any serious attention. Wallets & purse strings are tightening across the board, yet some of us are undeterred in our love for music, and our willingness to shell out for the best, most meaningful sounds we can find. Those are the people I spent the morning with Friday at Record Store Day’s Black Friday event.

The Record Store Day initiative, aimed at supporting independent record stores, was founded in 2007 and has generated increased sales and attention toward participating retailers in the years since its inception. It’s getting harder and harder these days to find the local record stores we grew up with- the ones where show posters line the walls, beautifully alien sounds blare from the speakers and spiked & tatted employees with encyclopedic knowledge of the most abstract musical history imaginable mock your every anti-cool move. Record Store Day’s nationwide goal of raising support for independent record stores in their local communities was a celebratory affair over the past three years, with over 1000 stores and countless of musicians taking part.

Now, Black Friday brings a bit of a halftime offering in the year for Record Store Day enthusiasts, mirroring the April deals of the original event. A barrage of releases are underway from independent music retailers, with special edition and first-time vinyl and CD offerings hitting shelves from an impressive lineup of musicians including The Black Keys, Soundgarden, The Beatles, Nirvana, Tom Petty, The Doors and many more.

I’ve no desire whatsoever to camp out overnight for the big-box madness deals on Black Friday, but when I hear that some of my favorite bands are dropping some limited edition wax on one of my only days off this year, you can consider my day planned. I slammed a few too many cups of coffee, charged up on some high-powered sativa (California legal, of course) and made my way over to the always-awesome CD Trader in Tarzana before bouncing over to Freakbeat Records in Sherman Oaks and then down to Amoeba in Hollywood. Lines at all three stores stretched surprisingly far out the door, with pre-opening Amoeba Records crowds reportedly two blocks long in downtown Los Angeles.

The excitement was palpable among those in line, all out for a common good that usually only finds us congregating in darkness as we try to find our seat at shows. One man was joking that they don’t make a fast enough record speed for Yngwie Malmsteen, while others discussed their excitement for the new Nirvana singles collection, John Lennon’s Imagine 40th Anniversary box set, a Miles Davis release and so on.

People were passionately discussing music, releases, shows and various artists, sharing thoughts, ideas & laughter in the daylight. Where else does this happen anymore?

Once doors opened, I bee-lined it for the specials section and grabbed Red Hot Chili Peppers’Blood Sugar Sex Magic on red vinyl, the new Black Keys 12″ single and Soundgarden’s Before The Doors release – as well as Nivana’s Nevermind singles set (which I now wish I’d resisted – if you want to take it off my hands hit me up). The flow was strong, and spirits were high on both sides of the counter on a day usually considered the retail equivalent of a fiberglass enema. I returned to my first stop to sell a few used discs after making my rounds, and was pleasantly surprised to find business still going strong, the parking lot full and smiles still wide. Christmas shopping season is underway, sure, but the RSD Black Friday promotion was a truly wise and well-timed way to remind buyers that the survivors are still plugging away, bringing you the goods.

Getting out there this morning and seeing the excitement return was thrilling. Record Store Day and RSD Black Friday are great, but two token days just aren’t enough for those special few spots that remain. We – the music fans who remember the rush of holding the record in your hands, of dropping the needle down oh-so-slowly and truly experiencing the music – need to kickstart this movement a little more. Quarterly events, with artist participations, can reestablish the few that are left as the gems of cultural accent that they are. They can still exist, even sandwiched between Starbucks and Walmart, if the understanding of value returns to those that can help them pay the rent.

I’ve been stuck trying to write this piece for a while now. Like a lot of you, I’m sure, I’m overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on since Occupy Wall Street started. The last 4 years went by really quickly. I’m hardly sure what happened. I only know it hasn’t turned out well for our country. Truthfully, I’ve only really started to pay attention over these last two months. I have the Occupy/99% movement to thank for that. Whatever else becomes of it, I’m forever grateful. I’m happy we’re gathering in public spaces, hanging out, talking with each other, yelling at each other, arguing on Facebook, finally using this social networking tech to actually spread information beyond what we ate for breakfast or the latest celeb breakup. All of this, already, is a victory. My favorite slogan-y thing these days is, ‘You Can’t Evict An Idea Whose Time Has Come.’ That and, ‘I hate drum circles, but I hate corporate greed more.’

By the way, since people are still asking about this, here are three simple things that Occupy/99% is about:

1. Close tax loopholes for mega-rich people and corporations.
2. Repeal Citizens United.
3. Reinstate Glass-Steagall or something like it.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay – this is for you. More on all that later. For now, this is personal.

The Occupy/99% movement lit up for me when I stumbled onto the We Are The 99% Tumblr page. It immediately personalized the financial collapse for me. Story after story. Actual people. As I instinctively went to write and post my personal story & pic, I realized I felt some shame. I wasn’t nearly as fucked as so many people on there. I have a little money, I haven’t had some health nightmare, been laid off, gone underwater on a mortgage, been crushed by college loans. Maybe I was just being whiny and entitled thinking my story was worth telling. Maybe I shouldn’t bother getting involved, maybe it’s more complex than… All these thoughts raced. Before I knew it, I was ready to blow it off. But I didn’t. I wrote:

I’m 42. I make art for a living. I have a 17-year old daughter. We live in a small apartment. We live simply. I’m worried that we won’t be able to afford college. I’m worried that she won’t  be able to find a job or afford health care. I’m worried that when I get older,  there won’t be help for me.

I am the 99% and so is she.

When I followed through and posted my story in various places, I felt my stress and worry about all this in a way I never had.
Simultaneously, I felt more alive, more connected to all the worried, confused, angry people around me than I ever have. If you do nothing else with the Occupy/99% movement, at least write your story simply and directly. Whatever it is. See how it feels to share it with the people you call your friends, with your co-workers. I’ll bet it’ll scare you, and I bet it’ll open you up.

I’m someone that’s pretty skeptical of movements or groups of any sort; they mostly tend to feel just like scenes or trends to me, with exclusive language, fashion, ideas, all that shit. Occupy/99% immediately struck me as different. I loved how vague it was, and I loved the idea of just acknowledging that we’re part of a much greater whole, despite all our splintered beliefs and lifestyles that are given so much airtime in our media. After visiting several encampments personally and researching countless others, I continue to love it for those same reasons. Even if you still have confusion or straight-up disdain for this movement, you really are part of the 99%. It requires no belief or opinion. It’s just a fact. And by the way, if you’re part of the 1%, you’re just as big a part of all this. You’re not the enemy. The enemy is us forgetting we’re in this together. It’s ripping our society apart and wrecking anything that was ever cool about this amazing country.

I’m not going to drown you in numbers (this time, at least). Just trust me when I say that the level of wealth very few of us have
compared to the level of poverty so many of us live in is disgusting and beyond your wildest nightmares. The problems facing us – our wealth disparity, our dying middle class, our individual and collective debt, our failing schools, our rising unemployment, our skyrocketing health care costs – aren’t by accident. There are specific policies and choices that have led to this place. We can fix this. That’s what this is about.

To that end, I’ll just leave you with some simple ideas and some links to things that tell a straight story and give more simple, great ideas. Please use them in discussions with people wanting to spread more lies to divide us and blur our focus. I want to make this as easy as possible for us to get educated and involved in one way or another.

Okay, three things. Just try these. If you do this stuff, and you still think Occupy/99% is ridiculous and whatever else, well… just
try this stuff and we’ll talk.

1. Tell your story. Talk with your friends.

How are you doing, really? Do you have money? Do you have a job? Do you think things are going well for you and your family? For other families? What are you worried, angry or scared about? What would you rather see? Post it publicly. No opinions needed, no charts. Just how you’re doing. Really. See what conversations come from that. See how it feels.

2. Educate yourself.

Watch Inside Job and/or Capitalism: A Love Story. They’re both direct, entertaining and very well-researched. They are the quickest way I’ve found to get real about what has happened to our economy (and therefore our country) in the last 30 years. Inside Job gets pretty heavy and dark. Capitalism gets a little Michael Moore goofy. Both of them drive home so clearly and poignantly the truth; that so many of us (just about all of us) really have been ripped off over the past few years, over the last few decades.

Watch and share the YouTube clips made by The Story Of Stuff folks. Brief and brilliant.

Read any or all of these short, fact-based articles:
http://inequality.org/census-and-capital-gains/
http://www.occupydemocracy.org/thebanks
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505

There is so much more, but these are all a great, simple start.

After those first two steps, I can almost guarantee that you’ll want to…

3. Do something, anything, whether for yourself or someone else.

This is my favorite list of stuff you can do to Support The Occupy Movement, in both content and tone. None of the items on the list are too big a deal. They don’t involve drum circles.

Consider this: Beyond whatever problems you may or may not be experiencing, whatever you think of all this, 30 million of us are in households that exist on less than ten thousand dollars per year. Consider how much your voice, when joined with others, could help people living lives you will thankfully never have to. Of course personal responsibility is always worth discussing… and it’s an easy wedge used by the mega-rich and the politicians they pay, used to upset, distract and divide the middle and upper-middle class. It plays on and exacerbates our selfishness and lack of compassion. Don’t fall for it.

Finally, while we’re here, a coupla personal rants that have been bouncing around in my head:

To President Obama and the Democrats: There’s a seriously fun party going on, being attended in large part by people that were really excited about you in and about 2008. You’re late. President Obama, I wrote a song for you, sent more money than I could afford, made phone calls, hassled my friends, defended you from Right and Left extremists alike. Here is the inspired electorate you requested. You need to stand with us now. Now.

To Occupy folks that don’t vote and/or rant about revolution: That’s silly. Voting isn’t the be-all end-all, but when the Left didn’t turn out in Wisconsin, Wisconsin ended up with Scott Walker and workers got fucked. Hopefully that’ll get fixed, but I guarantee you if voters had just shown up for the Democratic candidate, all that awful stuff wouldn’t have happened. I’m still annoyed at people that say Gore or Kerry or Obama were/are just like Bush, etc. I have big problems with the Dems too, but it’s just irrational and apathy-producing to say they’re all the same (they’re all fucked, and therefore so am I, so why bother). I’m similarly annoyed when people say that capitalism is inherently broken and awful, and the only way to fix this is to tear the whole system down and start fresh. That’s silly. We humans have been pretty great at screwing up any number of ideologies. Mostly, your exclusivity and extremism sound just like Glenn Beck to me.

That’s all for now. It’s a start. It’s a mess. It’s nowhere near finished. It’s fun. Just like Occupy/99%. Let’s do this.

Keep up with Jonah Matranga at his official site.

You may have noticed that we don’t miss much when it comes to Pearl Jam coverage, but after reading this love letter to the power of music we decided to shelf our own review of PJ20. What Jonah shares below isn’t directly about the film, but to the impact a band can have on one man, one fan, one true believer that there are passions worth devoting yourself entirely to. His summation hits the nerve directly on the feelings we had after seeing the film, the reflections and recollections, and while someday we’ll go deeper into a few incidents that made the film so great (here’s lookin’ at you, drunk & enraged Vedder at the Singles premiere party), Jonah more than sufficiently captures the mood here.

We’re proud to have Jonah’s blessing to share his story with you. Enjoy.

Pearl Jam and Me (and Tsotsi?)

In anticipation of the new Pearl Jam documentary by Cameron Crowe (one of my favorite directors making a movie about one of my favorite bands, and I just found is his favorite song of theirs is my favorite song too?!?), I realize it’s time to finish this ridiculous ramble about my memories of this oddly iconic band that’s meant so much to me. A necessary disclaimer before this gets going, though: There is pretty much no way to talk about my love for Pearl Jam without talking about my own zig-zags through making money making music. It’s their 20th anniversary of being a band, and it’s my 20th of trying to make music for a living. So, apologies in advance for all the self-referential stuff. Overall, it’s also important (to me) to emphasize that I don’t feel at all ‘cool’ telling you about this stuff — in fact, I feel a little embarrassed. It’s the kind of shame, though, that I’ve always taken as a sign to keep going in that direction, to try not to worry about being perceived as an overly enthusiastic schmuck, to just be my dorky self, and let that be as close to ‘cool’ as I ever get…

I’d moved to Sacramento in 1991 to start talking about forming the band that we eventually called Far. We’d played a handful of shows and made a demo tape. That February, when they were still listed on the flyers as Mookie Blaylock, they played their 14th show at the Cattle Club in Sacramento, where all the local bands would play (touring bands, too). They were opening for Alice In Chains. Drop Acid was on the bill, too. The singer for that band was Kevin, who is also the singer for 7 Seconds, a band that Ed likes, so I’ve always figured that was how that happened.

Anyway, there they were. And there I wasn’t. I was in Claremont, finishing school. When I next came up to Sac for a show or something, someone gave me a cassette. It was in a tan cardboard sleeve, with a little scribble of a character, arms wide open, and all this completely unnecessary information scrawled on it. I loved that they covered a Beatles tune (I’ve Got A Feeling) with weird, maniacal intensity. I loved the other rock punk (as opposed to punk rock) songs on the tape. Mostly, though, I was fascinated by the storytelling in the printed handwriting. It was the same kind of gesture that I’d come to love in artists from Zeppelin to Prince to Rickie Lee Jones to U2, pretty much any artist I really loved… Artists that seemed in their art and promotion to enjoy a conspiratorial, intimate relationship with anyone that liked the music; an invitation to a community. I got Ten (Pearl Jam’s first album) soon after, and it quickly joined my late-night, lights-dimmed, lyric-reading rotation. Release, the last song on the album, was my first deep connection to them. It’s still my most intense. Here was this guy, singing so simply, singing such obtuse lyrics, then so painfully direct. Singing about his father, about holding pain, about opening up. I remember the room so well.

So at some point, they were officially called Pearl Jam. Ten was out, they kept on touring, the secret started to spread. But not really. There were plenty of people that didn’t feel the same pull that I did; just about all of my friends thought they were overblown, not punk, not cool, whatever it was. The people that did like them really loved them, though. They were mostly geeky little music zealots like me; people not real interested in the latest hits, but also a little confused and turned off by indie elitism that seemed to revere bands for being distant, ironic, abrasive. The early fans that I met were hyper-idealistic and romantic about music that reached and yearned, melodies that stuck with you, sincerity that seemed to be for real. The word about the live show was good. They were coming to the Troubadour. I’m not sure who I went with. I do remember all the promo stuff stapled up around the club, being a bit put off by it, the band being put off by it too. Ed biting the hand that fed the whole set, climbing all over the place, the band leaving the stage seemingly grumpy about the whole industry-tinged affair. It didn’t look like they were coming out for an encore. Then after a while, Ed came out onstage alone. I had the feeling he’d wanted to do the encore, but the rest of the band didn’t. I forget what sticker he’d had on his shirt the whole show, some old punk band I think. He peeled it off, and under the sticker, it was a U2 shirt. That juxtaposition still defines them for me, and further endeared them to me in that moment. Then Ed sang an a cappella version of Suggestion, a song about sexual harassment and assault by Fugazi, and walked off the stage for good. Weeks later, I would take that sparse, combative arrangement and paraphrase it at a benefit show for House Of Ruth.

From that Troubadour show forward, I went into ultra-geek mode. A woman that worked at Tower Records with me, Kari Necker, was similarly hooked, so we became PJ buddies. Two women from Seattle called Tracey and Melissa were in our little gang too. We all followed them around so much that when Ed went out to the field where the first Drop In The Park (a free show) was to have been (on May 20 at Gas Works Park), to apologize to the stragglers disappointed by the sudden cancellation due to some city council screwup, he asked someone somethin like, “um, you aren’t with, um, Jonah, are you?” Bless Tracey’s preserving heart, there’s actually a YouTube vid of a muffled VHS tape documenting this surreal moment:

(Right at the beginning, then around 2:30ish again.)

When the show was rescheduled, of course we drove 14 hours to get there and I nearly killed us all trying to learn to use cruise control.

Ridiculous fan-boy that I’d become by this point, of course I decided to write Ed a letter. I’d always loved mix tapes (still do), so I wanted to make him one. I wanted it to be full of stuff that he may not have heard, but that if he really was the kindred spirit I was imagining, he’d love as much as I did. I remember putting a few tunes by this wacky, thoughtful, noisy punk band called Victim’s Family, and a lot of stuff by this brilliant, mercurial songwriter called Rickie Lee Jones. The letter talked about all the different bands and songs, along with who-knows-what else. The first song on the tape, I think, was also the first song on my favorite record of hers. It was called We Belong Together. It’s a truly incredible song, full of indelible images and phrases (“…the only angels who see us now watch us through each other’s eyes”).

In the weeks and months after I sent the letter, PJ really did start to blow up, along with that whole Seattle scene. They still seemed to be the misfits of the scene; not punk enough for Nirvana-lovers, not spooky-glammy enough for Alice In Chains folks, not rock enough for Soundgarden heshers, still just a bit too vulnerable and ballad-y. Perfect for me, though, and perfect for more and more people. I pretty much figured that my letter was long-lost in the mounting deluge of fan mail. I was okay with it, if a little crestfallen.

Then came MTV Unplugged. For gazillions of people, it was the lightswitch that Release had been for me. The band playing with such abandon and passion, the setting perfect for showcasing their particular songs, sentiment and style. There were two moments that came out of the TV and nailed me to the couch. One was Ed scrawling ‘Pro-Choice’ on his arm during that epic take on Porch. The other was near the end of Black, the lovelorn, instant-classic anthem that would play such a part in their attempt to retreat from fame when they famously refused to make a video for it a few months later. As Ed howled the ‘I know someday…’ bit (one of so many bits near the end of songs that became as important and memorable as any chorus) and the energy built, he started singing, “We… we… we belong together! Together!”

For so many people, this was the moment they found out about and/or gave in to Pearl Jam. It would have been incredible no matter what, but after the letter and the tape and all, I was literally frozen in my friend’s living room thinking, “Either he loves Rickie Lee Jones as much as me, which means we really are long-lost brothers, or he got the mix and the letter and loved it and that song so much that it made it into that moment and…” at which point my brain pretty much short-circuited. All I knew was that I had to figure this out.

The next step up for them was places like the Warfield, a 2,000 set venue in San Francisco. But by the time they were getting to the venues on that tour, they had outgrown them, so it was very, very sold out. The opening band, by the way (along with a weird South African trio called Tribe After Tribe), was Rage Against The Machine. Rage’s first album wasn’t out, most people there hadn’t heard them or even heard them. They utterly decimated that place, absolutely conquered it, more than any opening band I’ve ever seen, by a longshot. In their 30 minutes onstage, Zack (RATM’s singer) raised dramatically my aspirations as a rock singer and frontperson, forever. Anyway, before that, back outside, way before the show started, I was wandering the streets around the Warfield in a Drop Acid shirt. I found the Pearl Jam bus, asked Jeff Ament (PJ’s bassist) if anyone in the band liked Rickie Lee Jones (“yea, she’s great!”)… but no Eddie. Then, walking away, there he was, walking with his girlfriend Beth, right towards me. I showed him my Drop Acid shirt as a would-be icebreaker.

“Oh cool,” he said, “I lost mine in Detroit.”

“Wanna trade?” (He was wearing a DRI shirt).

“No, that’s cool, thanks.”

At which point I tumbled into some ramble trying to let him know that I’d sent a letter, with a tape, and what about that moment at the end of Black, and did he…

Somewhere in my incomprehensible mess, he stopped me by saying, “Oh my god, that was you” and giving me a big hug and a tough, tender kiss on the neck. He said some stuff about how much it meant to him or something, but for all the other details that are still so clear up to that point, I honestly don’t remember much. In those moments, my most goofy and romantic of ideas had actually made sense to someone else. Someone doing exactly what I was trying to do, doing it so well. Anyway, at some point, he and Beth ambled off, and I collected myself enough to get inside the show. I immediately bought a PJ shirt, took off my shirt, balled it up as well as I could, and right as they walked onstage, I hurled it towards them. It flew right past Ed and slid under the drum riser. Tons of stuff followed as the set went on, all sorts of would-be gifts, band demos, who knows. The roadies would cross the stage periodically, cleaning it all up. My shirt lay hidden, though. It stayed that way for the whole show. At first, I was really happy about this, thinking that someone in the band would find it. Then, as the show neared ending, I started to realize that no one at all might find it til well after the band was gone. During the last tune, Ed jumped into the crowd as just about always, and came up out of the crowd with his shirt half-ripped off, as just about always. The band went offstage before the inevitable encore, and finally, during the last stage-sweep, a roadie saw and grabbed my shirt. I was kinda dejected, but still glowing from the day and the show. Then, when the band sauntered back out to play some more for us, Ed was wearing the Drop Acid shirt. The perfection of that moment is right up there with anything before or since for me.

So, while there are so many other stories and memories… Them opening for Nirvana and RHCP New Year’s 1991, Kari and me flying to New York on New Year’s Eve 1992 with no tickets to a relatively tiny show and having a pair given to us by the singer from (I can’t for the life of me remember!!!!) then, once inside, somehow scaling up to the booth where Ed & Beth were watching Keith Richards, giving them a Far t-shirt and CD… After their first Bridge School Benefit show, where they played Daughter live for the first time, just after Vs. had sold a million in its first week, hangin’ out with Dave (their drummer at the time) in his hotel room at The Phoenix, talking to him about their burgeoning fame, having him play us that first Christmas single tune… Far being on a compilation with Henry Rollins, knowing Ed loved him, giving Ed the comp with a letter at their Warfield show that Rollins was the opening act at, bawling when they opened that show with Release straight into Animal, having Ed reference the letter onstage before singing Blood… Ed recognizing me (“hey, Jonah from Far”) while walking around in the crowd at Lollapalooza 1992… Far getting signed by Immortal/Epic (Pearl Jam’s label) at the height of PJ’s popularity and wanting nothing more than all the PJ promo stuff they could find, cherishing my basketball picture-disc of Ten… saying hi at the Grammy afterparty in 1997, thinking Ed seemed pretty sad… Hearing Given To Fly way before Yield came out in someone’s office at Epic, laughing about how much it sounded like Going To California… 2002 in London, backstage only because my friend Scott worked for Epic (Far had broken up, I was touring solo by then), purposely not booking a show because he could get me into theirs.

We ran into Ed walking through the halls under the venue. After years of not seeing him or anything, he recognized me immediately and I had to awkwardly introduce him to his own label rep. Then, later that night, everyone was standing around after the show. Ed was giving Mark Arm (singer for Mudhoney) shit about his microphone coming off the cable when he was swinging it around. I mentioned that I’d hear a great story about that same thing happening to Eddie Money. All of a sudden, Ed’s eyes lit up and he launched into a story about Eddie Money. He grabbed me and stood me in front of him, saying, “Okay, you’re Eddie Money and I’m Eddie Money’s bodyguard, telling you about all the people you’re meeting at the record label party…” I just stood there, smiling and shaking my head, not even trying to be cool, just soaking up the fan-boy moment.

All those indelible memories aside, though, that Warfield day & night is still the one.

Again, I really don’t feel ‘cool’ telling you about any of this. Quite the opposite really, feelin pretty self-conscious reading through it and trying to edit typos — it’s just fun to share this with anyone that’s ever loved a band this much; my particular tales of how much one band meant to me as an artist, as a person. I think of the people who have sheepishly said sweet things to me over the years, how I’ve thanked them profusely, assuring them that I’m as big a geek as they ever were. Here’s the proof.

They’re pretty much the last band that I really loved in that teenager way. My arc through making a living making music is now seemingly waning, in a way that feels complete and healthy. I let my Ten Club (Pearl Jam’s fan club) membership lapse, rejoined, let it lapse again. I’m not particularly into much of theirs after Yield, though The Fixer and some other very recent softer stuff has gotten me pretty good. I don’t even listen to any of their stuff particularly actively. When my last band Gratitude was looking for a drummer and I got to play music with Dave Krusen (PJ’s first drummer) for a couple hours, my head didn’t explode (but it was really neat). I haven’t gotten jaded or anything, I’m still a total geek for them and music and life, but I guess they’re more just a part of me now, rather than some entity I’m goofily obsessed with.

The last time I saw them live says it perfectly. I didn’t try to get backstage or anything else. I just went to some shows. They were at the Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco for a few nights. Yea, I went to all three. On the last night, near the end of the show, when they were deep into a great extended freakout in Crazy Mary, I found myself welling up with pure love of the band, the music, the moment, as I so often have at their shows. At that instant, I looked to my right and there, up in the cheap seats with me, was my original PJ fan-friend Kari, who I hadn’t seen for who knows how many years, similarly lost in the moment. Our eyes met and we both completely lost it, just reveling in the serendipitous PJ world we’d both grown up in. We hardly spoke, and hardly have since. Didn’t have to. The music did it for us.

Speaking of the music, how cool is this? A database of every song they ever played, how many times they played it, the lyrics… So ambitious, so complete, so neat.

======

An epilogue to the preface. So glad I wrote what I wrote before seeing the movie. Won’t even try to articulate that further. Yea, just sitting here not typing. What’s left out of what’s written after this is all the inarticulable stuff, stuff I felt listening, seeing, reading. A me that’s gone, and so still here.

Here’s some broken lines from just now:

Riding my bike back from seeing PJ20
After seeing Tsotsi hours earlier
Lost young men
Surrender
I’m probably the only idiot seeing parallels
Putting myself in the middle of them
Crying and laughing about it all
Two lives I didn’t lead
That both make me yearn to know theirs
And so happy to have mine
Both films perfect
For me, at least
PJ20 makes me hate video so much
Those moments deserved film
But maybe that’s just nostalgia
I don’t think so, though
And all of a sudden I’m thinking of Boogie Nights
Another lost young man story
All absent fathers
My family tree

Keep up with Jonah Matranga at his official site.

Recently, on the Electrical Audio message board he curates, a poll was opened to gauge collective opinion on the buzz-tastic hip-hop group Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (or whatever). Steve chimed in with a brief stab:

I spent about 40 minutes with these little pricks at the end of May and I haven’t wanted to strangle anybody that much in a real long time.

Upon being asked for an elaboration, Albini laid out his experience. We are overwhelmingly compelled to present it here, uncut, with full context and obligatory disclaimers from the relatively humble Albini:

My band shared an airport shuttle with them in Barcelona. They piled onto the shuttle late, after finally getting corralled by their minder, who was nursing a head wound with an ice bag wrapped in a towel. They piled in, niggering everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a faggot. Then one of them lit a joint (or a pipe, I didn’t look) and told the driver to shut the fuck up nigger and smoked it anyway. A female passenger tried to engage one of them in conversation, but he just stared at her with a dead-to-me stare while his seatmate flipped double birds in her face.

The whole trip they complained about not being at a McDonald’s and repeatedly shouted for the motherfucker to pull over so they could get some fucking McDonald’s nigger. Interspersed with the McDonald’s requests were shouted boasts about how often they masturbated and fucked bitches nigger and got paid like a motherfucker fifty grand like a motherfucker. They continued complaining that the trip was taking too long and insisted they be fed immediately all the way to the airport, where their minder presumably fed them.

I am quite happy none of them engaged me directly, because at least one of us would have regretted it.

I am well aware, thanks, that good people can make ugly art and that ugly people can make good art. Ultimately the function of art is to express something and move an idea from one person to another, and the tools of that can include revulsion and discomfort. Having been in a few bands myself, thanks, I know that the uninitiated can mistake these devices as windows into the soul of the creator. Ultimately they are, of course, but not necessarily in the crude autobiographical way they are often interpreted.

I know all that, so I am never quick to judge a person based on a superficial reading of creative output. Peter Sotos is a lovely fellow whom I trust implicitly, despite his writing evoking a truly primal disgust in me, to use another rapey example. Michael Gerald from Killdozer said it best in an interview, when the journalist remarked that he seemed like a nice fellow, which was unexpected given that the characters in his songs are often repellent. “Oh, that’s not us,” he said, “that’s the crazy people we sing about.” In that light, I am one hundred percent behind Odd Future’s right to rap about what they wanna rap about, and if she don’t like it fuck her.

And also fuck me. It’s none of my business what they wanna. I’m not part of the audience for hip hop, and as a non-dilettante I don’t generally respond to it when I hear it, so I can’t make any critical assessment of Odd Future’s music on its own terms, but they go out of their way to make it clear that this is not a case of regular people making music about assholes, but assholes making music about being assholes. I have no time for that. I don’t respond kindly to it when Ted Nugent does it either.

If the whole thing is a put-on, a bit of Vincent Gallo life-as-theater for the benefit of whoever happens to be sitting next to them, that’s no excuse. It’s being an asshole about being an asshole.

Hat tip to Consequence Of Sound for noticing the initial quote.

The flipside personas to Los Angeles hardcore demons The Bronx were kind enough to break off a crash course in their own history of mariachi for Antiquiet, on the eve of release of their hotly anticipated sophomore album, Mariachi El Bronx (II).

After getting caught up on Antiquiet’s extensive coverage of Mariachi El Bronx/The Bronx, read below as drummer and percussive chameleon Jorma Vik explains the band’s personal influence in their approach to mariachi music.

From Jorma:

Let me start by saying that in no way am I qualified to write this. My ethnicity is Scandinavian. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. everything I knew about mexican music up until the inception of Mariachi El Bronx I learned from living the past 15 years of my life in Los Angeles, having heard it leak out of passing cars and neighbors houses or hearing it played in restaurants and bars. That’s my disclaimer for all of the misinformation to follow.

We use the word “mariachi” very loosely in Mariachi El Bronx. Traditionally the word refers to an ensemble of musicians using specific instruments and playing a specific style of music, all of which we take certain liberties with. I’m pretty sure we got the outfits right though, so we’ve got that going for us. Traditional Mexican music has many classifications depending on region, form and instrumentation.

We’re certainly not the first band to venture outside of our comfort zone and delve into mariachi music. The most popular american artist to do so being Linda Ronstadt when she put out a record in 1987 entitled Canciones De Mi Padre thats sold over 2 million copies in the US alone.

Don’t let what you may know about the music she’s typically known for fool ya, she is extremely legit in the mariachi genre:

Vincent Hidalgo, our guitarrone (bass) player and son of David Hidalgo of the legendary Los Angeles band Los Lobos, is a huge asset to the band, teaching us the proper techniques and rhythms to play and giving us what little street cred we have. He’s also the only member with any hispanic heritage. Los Lobos is a huge inspiration to our band and is the common ground we all had when starting out as we all grew up listening to their music.

Not only was David Hidalgo cool enough to grace our first record with some of his incredible accordion and guitar stylings, he also taught us that you can reheat burritos in a hotel room using the clothes iron!

Here’s a clip of Los Lobos playing a style of song called a “son jarocho” on Sesame Street making it look all too easy:

In April of 2010 we were invited to play “La Linea,” a latin music festival in London, England at the Barbican concert hall. Also playing with us was a traditional 10 piece all female mariachi band from Jalisco, Mexico (where mariachi music originates) called Mariachi Feminil Nuevo Tecalitlan. We were to perform two songs together for the show and had a day of rehearsals to sort them out. Suffering from a language barrier we essentially had to talk to each other through our instruments. The experience was unreal, the band was absolutely incredible and taught us, among many other things, that we need to practice. A lot.

Mariachi Feminil Nuevo Tacalitlan performing a waltz or “vals” song Clown Powder with us:

One style of song you’ll hear us play is called a “bolero” which is a love song. These will often be played by the bands you see at mexican restaurants where white people like to request that they play “that ‘tequila’ song” followed by a high five. This is a very popular style that many of the traditional mariachi songs are written in.

If you play guitar and this doesn’t chub you up you need to check your pulse:

Another style we flirted with on El Bronx II is norteno (also called “banda” when played with brass instruments), originating in the northern territories of Mexico just south of the US border. Those of you who live in Southern California are most likely very aware of this music whether you know it or not. Often you can distinguish it by its “oom-pah, oom-pah” bass line sounding something similar to polka, which is actually where its roots come from.

Theres a sub-genre of norteno that has recently gained attention called a “narcocorrido.” The music is generally the same but the lyrical subject matter is that of drug smuggling and murder, often containing praise of a specific drug kingpin. There’s been many instances of these musicians being murdered by rival drug cartels.

R.I.P. Valentin Elizalde 1979 – 2006:

One last style i’ll talk about that you’ll also hear on Mariachi El Bronx (II) that has become very popular lately in the hispanic community is called “cumbia.” Cumbia is dance music that originated in Colombia, made its way over to Mexico and has evolved into what is now a club phenomenon. There’s all kinds of beef about cumbia between columbians and mexicans – who plays it better and what not.

We put our spin on it. These dudes took a whole different route. enjoy:

So there you have it fellow gringos. A very brief and misinformed guide to traditional Mexican music. But let me tell you, this was only a friendly game of “just the tip.” It gets far more involved the further down the wormhole you go.

- Jorma Vik

Order Mariachi El Bronx (II) here, and check out their extensive tour dates with Foo Fighters this Summer/Fall.

So does Apple. And Amazon. And Google. And Rdio. And MOG.

They all will deliver on that promise, more or less. But each service has its own pros and cons, and everyone has their own sets of preferences and needs. Everyone’s raving about Spotify, but that doesn’t mean Spotify is for everyone. We’ve been playing with all of the different options available for a few months now, mostly because we haven’t yet found one that’s 100% perfect, but also because you deserve a thorough review from someone who cares as much about music as you do.

Some of them have killer features, all of them have flaws ranging from minor annoyances or bugs to enraging oversights. There are essentially two different kinds of service on the table: Paid subscription (Spotify, Rdio, MOG, etc.), and Free (or mostly free) cloud “lockers” (Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, Apple iCloud, etc.).

For some of you, the strength and cost of the mobile app will be a huge deal. For others, it will all be about selection, or interface, or flexibility.

We have tried to ignore our own personal preferences in judging the strengths and weaknesses of the six most compelling services currently on the table: Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, and Apple iCloud. The following reviews are informed solely by actual real-world use, not by any marketing, press releases, or previously published reviews.

We test-drove all of these services on Mac laptops and desktops, and Android-based Droid 2 mobile phones. Your mileage may vary.

Let’s start with Spotify…