OK, how stupid do I feel asking another adult to “Tweet Me?

Anyhoo, got something on your mind about that Biden-Palin debate or anything else, hit me up on Twitter.

http://www.twitter.com/ebonyjet

As you might imagine we get all manner of things over the transom at a magazine company, including loads of alarmist, misleading, fear-mngering and just plan weird e-mail about the presidential candidates on both sides of aisle, but of course much more about Barack Obama.

But now comes this one about John McCain, which, if you’re used to getting this stuff, has the air of a clever new way to attack the old gray dude without seeming partisan. In other words, it’s an attack on his personal character based on purported unplanned shared vacation with the McCains.

At first it comes off as real, but then it goes into the truly bizarre.  Bullshit, right?

Well, maybe not, because the person who supposedly penned this is legit. Really legit.

Judge for yourself:

MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN

It was just before John McCain’s last run at the
presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I
vacationed inTurtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy,
and their children, including Bridget (their adopted
Bangladeshi child).

It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be
in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week,
sinceTurtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their
focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there
at the same time to get to know each other intimately.

He arrived at our first group meal and started reading
quotes from a pile of William Faulkner books with a forest
of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature
major myself, my first thought was “if he likes this so
much, why hasn’t he memorized any of this yet?”

I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on
vacation to be a volunteer audience for his “readings”
which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of
politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at
this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people’s
buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day
after day.
Read more after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

if you notice these kinds of things - and I do - it’s been very interesting to see the fairly consistent level of sophisticated design taste that has been used on Obama-inspired campaign material, official and unofficial.

Whether buttons, banners, stickers, t-shirts, posters or unauthorized graffiti, people with high design values and very good style seem to be inspired by or attracted to Obama as their muse of sorts. Smart backdrops colors, modern yet presidential font choices, forward but still tasteful uses of color, it really is amazing to see.

Design sounds like a small thing in politics, but if you have ever driven by a yard sign for a local election and realized that you could not read it until you were two feet from it, that’s a result of poor design. It would not be hyperbole to say that at least by some measure, a number of campaigns may have been lost due to ill conceived visual presentation.

Design communicates all kinds of messages, and in a campaign where you need to show strength, trust, vision and intelligence, these subtleties can be crucial.

Clearly a lot of other people have been thinking about this as well.

Designers for Obama

Chicagoist

Newsweek

NotCot

First person to explain this gets a –um, uh –hell, I don’t have anything to give away. Just explain this.

Chris Rock pretty much said it the other day: After about 4 minutes into an interview you start to feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She’s so incredibly out of her league.

Since we’ve been on the subject of music for the last few posts, it occurs to me that Sarah Palin reminds me of musicians who only play by ear but are suddenly asked to audition with a band that reads music.

People who play by ear can often be incredible musicians. Michael Jackson does not read music. Darryl Jones from the Sting Blue Turtles Band and Rolling Stones - does not read music.  And that ’s a good thing. Their natural instincts as musicians serve them well. What they don’t know, they create - and it comes off as innovation as opposed to the kind of rote imitation and blind faithfulness to the established order that you might get from, say, a classical orchestra player who can play Beethoven but couldn’t improvise a jazz tune if you paid them.

That’s Sarah Palin. Unprepared or not, she was great when she was playing politics by ear, making it up as she went along. Her improvisation was good simply because it was improvisation. She did not know enough to try to stick to a particular way of doing things and it worked for her.

But now that they’ve tried to wash all that political know-how into her brain, she’s useless. She’s lost all her powers of improvisation and she’s looking down at her instrument trying to find the notes. She’s been educated out of her best gifts. It’s a shame, and yes, I do feel sorry for her.

But then she’s the one who agreed to do this.

So more about the band and how it got started. The band consisted of Brian Tate (vocals), Chris Anderson (guitar), Eric Easter (me) on bass, and drummer Jeff Corbett.

Everyone except me knew each other from what is now known as Duke Ellington School of the Arts. They were all trained musicians of a sort, some more trained than others. I was self-taught and the Ringo of the band as the accidental last member.

I met Brian Tate while walking into a vintage clothing store precisely as he was saying to the store clerk that he needed a bass player. I jumped in and said “I play bass”.  I auditioned and that was that.

It was always a weird kind of group musically. Try as anyone might to write a song and have a band translate that vision note for note, a band is always going to come out sounding like the combined influences of its members. You change a bandmember, you change the sound.

That said, we had wildly competing influences. I was fundamentally a funk player heavily influenced by Santana, Mandrill, Bootsy, early Prince and Weather Report. Jeff, the drummer, was a hardcore jazz player who played like Tony Williams, Chris was deep into distorted art rock a la King Crimson, Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp, and Brian was the vocal love child of Jim Morrisson and Johnny Rotten.

When it worked it really worked, but when it didn’t it really really didn’t.

This was early Marion Barry as Mayor days and DC’s downtown was no-man’s land. A couple of fading big stores, porn joints, liquor stores, art lofts and some burgeoning underground live music clubs like Nightclub 9:30, dc space, and 15 Minutes. We rehearsed in any number of abandoned embassies with bootleg electricity, Chris’ Mom’s basement, and the basement of the old Lansburg’s department store.

Once we got a catalog of tunes down, we started hitting the clubs with the rest of the DC punk scene. Bands like Red Sink, 9353, The Slickee Boys, Crippled Pilgrims, Egoslavia (Chris’ old band), Tiny Desk Unit and of course, The Bad Brains.

The average take for one band for a concert was $50 to split between everybody and free beer in the dressing room. But it was college and free beer and groupies was pretty much all you needed.

For me, it was all a blast. Mostly because it took me physically and mentally beyond Howard’s campus, which was decidedly not a bastion of rock enthusiasts. I never talked much about the band at Howard but as my clothing started to reflect the music scene I was in, the “What the Hell is Eric’s malfunction?” comments started flying pretty regularly.

Similarly that was also everybody’s reaction to the young rap kids from New York and Jersey who were starting to wear shell toe Adidas, mock necks and Quarterfield coats with the fur collars. People liked Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash but thought it was a passing fad. But when my roommate (now a VP with Def Jam) and I used to throw parties and put on Kid Creole, AC/DC, the B-52s, Classix Nouveaux or Martha and the Muffins, the party ceased immediately and people looked at us like were idiots. And that was the bubblegum stuff.

Anyhoo..

Pretty soon, Brickhouse Burning became pretty popular in that relatively small scene. And popular means women. And of course, that’s when the trouble began…

More to come - including pictures- in later posts.

So today I spoke at the Chicago New Media Summit, the first major conference-style gathering of Chicago based new media professionals, and an attempt to establish mindshare with the notion that Chicago is the next big hub of new media innovation.

I spoke on legacy magazines and the challenge of translating brands launched within the framework of a particular racial and cultural dynamic into a digital future and an age when many of the social constructs that created the publication have shifted. And particularly how Black publications have had to respond given the globalization of a culture that Black publishers used to own, but now must compete with mainstream publications.

It was interesting, I think, and received well, but that’s not why I’m writing this post.

I’m writing this one because I was amazed at how many people used the phrase “The Long Tail” in describing their products and services or interests. Amazed because the guy known for coining that phrase, Chris Anderson, the exalted editor of WIRED magazine and author of the New York Times bestselling  business book, The Long Tail, used to be the guitar player in the  Washington, DC.-based “art punk” band that I played bass for - inartfully named “Brickhouse Burning.”

And if you’ve ever been in a band, you’ll understand when I tell you that it’s a constant source of amusement and amazement that anybody is quoting my guitar player about anything except for some bad lyrics. But then again, he would be equally amused that anyone was inviting the bass player to speak at a New Media Summit, so I guess we’re even on that score.

I supposed the whole Chris as Wired/tech/science geek thing was predictable back then.

A typical conversation in band practice:

Chris: “So what’s this song about ? Is this rhythm meant to evoke passion or pathos? And should I create more tension by coming in on the anticipation of the “one” or should we build tension through subtle dynamics?”

Us: “It’s about counting to 4 and hitting B flat - and you shutting the fuck up - that’s what the song is about.”

I kid, Chris. I kid. (Not really).

Actually, given what he does now and what I do now, as well as the other members of the band, it turned out to be a pretty interesting band. Though unfortunately more interesting as individuals now than the band ever was.

I’ve always found it interesting what happens to people after their wannabe rock star days, so for the next couple posts, I’ll give you the whole story behind that band, what it was like being a Black punk rock/new wave/art rocket at Howard University, and more of what happened to the rest of the band after the last of several break-ups. It’s actually quite fascinating. Stay tuned…

If you’ve been getting the same e-mail that I have you’ve already seen how attacks from the right are beginning to spill outside of their own networks out into the broader ether. This is latest in a volley of alarmist conservative attacks going viral through the e-mail system - typos and all:

Subject: Michelle, Our Next 1st Lady?: Not So Funny

Okay, be honest. Have you ever, I mean ever seen a live performance by the Black Eyed Peas that didn’t disappoint?  Seriously, do people really, really like this group or do they just look wonderfully diverse and reflective of America’s promise?

Which is not to say they’re not talented producers and studio performers, but..

I just stumbled on to Fashion Rocks and watched the Peas do a cover of the Rolling Stones “Miss You”.

“Meh”. Is that it? A hot tune like that? Throw a rap in and it’s now hip and fresh? I’m still pissed about Wil screwing up my favorite Sergio Mendes tunes. It’s like they’re the default “safe” hip hop choice for network television. They cover all the racial bases and don’t offend your Mama if she’s watching too. Whatever their appeal beyond the clothes and the Fergie visual, I’m missing something, though I’ll spot them at least three pretty fun party tunes.

Last week at the Democratic Convention was the final straw, though, where I saw the Peas perform live at a post-Obama speech party. In an act of supreme confidence, Will.i.Am called none other than Herbie Hancock from the wings to join in some impromptu jamming. But you know, it was Herbie Freakin’ Hancock - not just some piano player. So Herbie jumps in and he starts grooving, but then Herbie starts to do what Herbie does - which is play his ass off and stretch the melody and rhythm while the rest of the band follows along and holds it down - or at least they’re supposed to.

Except, of course, keeping up with Herbie requires people who can really play their instruments, and the Peas could maybe play the songs they were playing,  but only the way they learned them. Hence, the resulting chaos that ensued. Herbie walked and the Peas kept sucking the air out of the room for the next hour, with Wil bragging about how they were feeling the audience and “making up shit”. Yeah, well, emphasis on that last word, bruh…

So much for improvisation.

Ron Reagan from a video on washingtonpost.com

There’s something I’ve always liked about Ron Reagan, probably that healthy skepticism he always seem to have about the public image of his Mom and Dad as well as their politics. Even when I’ve disagreed with him, the guy’s always carried a sense of decency and fairness.

In the pretty amazing video where he comments on McCain’s VP choice, his Mom’s opinion about Obama and his general feelings about Republican shenanigans, he proves my theory correct.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE