Month: February 2014

D is for the Dixie Chicks

Natalie Maines’ comments caused an almost immediate and massive backlash against the Dixie Chicks in the US in 2003.

When I first bought the 1998 Dixie Chicks album Wide Open Spaces, I knew the group had copped their name from the Little Feat song Dixie Chicken. What I did not realize is that the group had been around since 1989 as a bluegrass quartet, with the sisters Martie and Emily Erwin and two others. When those other two left – one quit, the other apparently forced out – Natalie Maines became the lead singer. The sisters expanded their instrumental repertoire, and their sound became a more contemporary country.

The 1999 album Fly was even more successful. It “debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, selling over 10 million copies and making the Dixie Chicks the only country band and the only female band of any genre to hold the distinction of having two back-to-back RIAA certified diamond albums.” It was not without controversy, though.

“Sin Wagon [LISTEN], from which the term ‘mattress dancing ‘takes on a new twist, and ‘Goodbye Earl’, a song that uses black comedy in telling the story of the unabashed murderer of an abusive husband.” WATCH the video featuring NYPD Blue’s Dennis Franz as Earl.

After a label dispute and some family time, the trio released Home, “independently produced by Lloyd Maines [Natalie’s father] and the Chicks” August 27, 2002. They were performing at a concert in London on March 10, 2003, during what turned out to be the inevitable rollup to the Iraq war, when “Natalie Maines, who along with Robison and Maguire was also a native of Texas, said: ‘Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.'” This caused an almost immediate and massive backlash against the Chicks in the US, and subsequent apologies and clarifications did nothing to tamp it down. That very week, in a buycott action, I bought Home, which I would have likely purchased anyway. I appreciated how the sisters stood by Natalie. (Whereas Simon Cowell bashed her on American Idol, and he was hardly the only one.)

It wasn’t until 2006 before they put out Taking the Long Way, featuring the pointed single Not Ready to Make Nice [LISTEN]. The album went to #1, but the singles were ignored by country radio. I suspect lots of non-country music fans bought it in support of the Dixie Chicks.

Though the group has performed periodically, the sisters have put out two albums as Court Yard Hounds, an eponymous album in May 2010 (which I have), and Amelita in July 2013. Maines released a solo album, Mother in May 2013, which I purchased; it’s much more pop than country.

The Dixie Chicks were touring in Canada in the fall of 2013. Whether they will record together something more than a couple of tracks, only time will tell.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Copyright Week

If any single entity owns a copyright in the law, it can buy, sell or ration the law, and make all sort of rules about when, where, and how we share it. People should never have to pay a fee to review and compare the rules and regulations they must obey, and no private entity should be the gatekeeper to the law.

2007-07-18-drawing-explains-copyright-830x470

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has celebrated Copyright Week last month with articles on these subjects:

Day 1: Transparency

Copyright policy must be set through a participatory, democratic and transparent process. It should not be decided through back room deals or secret international agreements.This includes wanting more information about the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Day 2: Building and Defending a Robust Public Domain

The public domain is our cultural commons and a public trust. Copyright policy should seek to promote, and not diminish, this crucial resource.

For example:

For nearly two centuries it has been a basic precept that the law lives in the public domain. It’s simple: in a democratic society, people must have an unrestricted right to read and speak their own laws. Full stop.

Of course, that principle means the law can never be subject to copyright restrictions. If any single entity owns a copyright in the law, it can buy, sell or ration the law, and make all sort of rules about when, where, and how we share it. People should never have to pay a fee to review and compare the rules and regulations they must obey, and no private entity should be the gatekeeper to the law.

Day 3: Open Access

The results of publicly funded research should be made freely available to the public online, to be fully used by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Day 4: You Bought it, You Own It

Copyright policy should foster the freedom to truly own your stuff: to tinker with it, repair it, reuse it, recycle it, read or watch or launch it on any device, lend it, and then give it away (or re-sell it) when you’re done.

Don’t you just hate “buying” a product that in fact you apparently have only leased?

Day 5: Fair Use Rights

For copyright to achieve its purpose of encouraging creativity and innovation, it must preserve and promote ample breathing space for unexpected and innovative uses.

Admittedly, fair use is an intentionally murky concept, but know that even copyrighted material can be used under the right circumstances, and fortunately so.

Day 6: Getting Copyright Right

A free and open Internet is essential infrastructure, fostering speech, activism, new creativity and new business models for artists, authors, musicians and other creators. It must not be sacrificed in the name of copyright enforcement.

I was reminded that last month marked the 30th anniversary of the Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios decision, also known as the Betamax case, which paved the way for such innovations as your beloved DVR.

Innovation is good; unreasonable copyright laws, and enforcement, are not.

The picture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License – See more at: http://www.erikjheels.com/803.html#sthash.BanTAT14.dpuf

Mom’s grave marker

It seems like yesterday, and a long time ago, that Mom died.


As I have mentioned, my mother is buried at Salisbury National Cemetery in Salisbury, North Carolina; the place has an interesting history. My father had died in August 2000, and it was a great stress for the family to figure out the logistics. But when my mom died three years ago today, the situation was considerably easier; since Dad was cremated, Mom was likewise.

What I did not know is that they don’t just take my father’s marker and add my mom’s information. Instead, they made a new marker altogether, with my dad’s data on one side, and my mom’s on the other.

My sister Marcia, who lives in North Carolina, went to Salisbury on Veterans Day 2013 and took this picture. Since I haven’t actually been to NC since my mother’s funeral, this is the first time I’ve “seen” the headstone.

Mom’s mother was named Gertrude, and she wasn’t too fond of it, though she was not one to complain too much. Her first cousins knew her as Gertie, but all the time I could remember, she preferred Trudy.

My sister Leslie sang Wind Beneath My Wings at my father’s funeral, dedicated to my mother, and reprised it at mom’s funeral.

It seems like yesterday, and a long time ago, that Mom died. I suppose that is irrational, but there it is.

Don’t sell tickets to your 55-inch TV Super Bowl party

Michael Powell admits that he wasn’t terribly outraged by seeing a woman’s breast for 9/16ths of a second,

All you football freaks: the National Football League can be rather fussy about your Super Bowl party. From Now I Know:

Unless you’re a sponsor of the NFL or the Super Bowl, you may want to pass on using the words “Super Bowl.” The NFL and its lawyers don’t take kindly to such commercial use, seeing it as a violation of their copyrights or trademarks… many advertisers simply don’t use the term “Super Bowl.”Typically, the euphemism of choice is the “Big Game,” a term which adequately describes the Super Bowl without likely running afoul of intellectual property law.

But if you’re showing the Super Bowl on your TV to anything but a select group of friends, you may want to make sure the Big Game isn’t too big. That is, if the television is larger than 55 inches — that’s about 1.4 meters… the NFL may not take too kindly to what you’re doing.

Dan Lewis goes on to describe the Indiana church that got jammed up by the NFL in 2007. This reminded me that MY church had an extra-large screen when we had a Super Bowl party in 2004.

I liked Janet Jackson, especially in her Control/Rhythm Nation days, back in the 1980s. Still, fortunately, or unfortunately, I was out of the room for much of the halftime festivities, including Janet with Justin Timberlake, so I missed, on what was more like thrice the diameter of the forbidden size, Janet’s “wardrobe malfunction” that garnered over a half million complaints to the FCC.

Strange too that the TV reporters spoke either not at all about it or in terms so cryptic, I had no idea what had happened until the next day.

Michael Powell, son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time of “Nipplegate…” Today, Powell admits that he wasn’t terribly outraged by seeing a woman’s breast for 9/16ths of a second, but at the time he had to play the part.

There was a fine that matched in dollars the number of complaints, but it was later voided in the courts. Wow, that was a decade ago?

In any case, I’ll watch the game today, but I’ll record it too, just in case something… interesting happens.

MOVIE REVIEW: Saving Mr. Banks

It was Julie Andrew and her husband Tony Dalton Disney personally toured Disneyland with, not Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers.

SavingMrBanks The Wife and I saw Saving Mr. Banks a few weeks ago at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, and it was well-crafted, with Emma Thompson quite good as P. L. Travers, creator of Mary Poppins. Even more impressive was Annie Rose Buckley, in her first film, as the writer as a child. I immediately “recognized” the composing Sherman brothers (played by Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak), and other performers, including Bradley Whitford as a Disney creator and Collin Farrell in the flashbacks as the future writer’s father.

So why has it taken me so long to write about this film? Was it about Meryl Streep lashing out at the memory of the real Walt Disney over his purported sexism, at an event honoring Thompson? Nah, that’s not it.

Was it that Tom Hanks was snubbed for an Oscar? Did not see Saving Captain Phillips (yet), but there were stronger folks in the supporting actor category, where his portrayal of Walt Disney would have been placed.

It’s that, from everything I’ve read, the movie is just too far from the truth for my taste. I expect biopics to combine characters, mess with timelines, and the like. This, though, is what my friend Steve Bissette called “the usual corporate product revamps of reality”, though “far less terrible than projected by many.” Bissette, citing the 1999 book MARY POPPINS, SHE WROTE: THE LIFE OF P.L. TRAVERS by Valerie Lawson:

It was Julie Andrew and her husband Tony Dalton Disney personally toured Disneyland with [not Travers], Disney made no trip to London to seal the deal (contracts were signed before Travers went to L.A. to work with the team, and were revised/renegotiated on fine points afterwards), Julie Andrews kept Travers personally up-to-date on the changes being made and fidelity to her character/books, there were no words between Disney and Travers at the L.A. premiere, the whole relationship with the limo driver is pure confection—and as a Gurdjieff devotee, Travers would have reviled the Freudian conceit of the movie.

Although, he adds:

Much of the film IS reflective of what went down, with far more attention to the actual history than most Hollywood films ever, ever give to their own… It’s clear from Lawson’s bio that Travers profited mightily and knew going in and through the process what was going to be done and was done, and did her utmost to ensure some control. The contract Disney extended and honored was extraordinary in its day and today is even moreso.

But knowing SO much is made up – the driver is the one character who humanized her – made it more disappointing, in retrospect.

Still, it LOOKED right. I bought that this was Disneyland, that these were Walt’s employees who he insisted call him by his first name.

Bottom line: you may very well enjoy Saving Mr. Banks. Indeed, I rather did, in spite of my reservations, though the aforementioned Freudian stuff was a little weird. Just don’t believe everything you see.

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