Month: January 2009

monetizing music

The music industry is whack.  We all know this, but as a person making DIY punk music it’s always hard to reason about making money from making music.  Working a crappy (and moreover, undignified) job to support making records is something that is respected or revered.  With many folks making music coming from college-educated backgrounds or middle-class economic situations with lots of community and family support, the reality is that people could easily transition from a life where they live at income levels below the poverty line and make music to a life where they work a dignified, or at least lucrative, job to support themselves.  Are you flaunting your privelege by artificially living in poverty or by succumbing to an economic vision that doesn’t allow musicians to support themselves without all the cruft, exploitation, hype and wasteful promotion of the traditional record industry?

I don’t have the answers to this, but in his song Moment of Clarity, Jay-Z seems to have made his decision, at least in his completely different set of experiences in life and with the music industry:

The music business hate me
’cause the industry ain’t make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me
And the music I be making
I dumb down for my audience
And double my dollars
They criticize me for it
Yet they all yell “Holla”
If skills sold
Truth be told
I’d probably be
Lyrically
Talib Kweli
Truthfully
I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
(But I did five Mil)
I ain’t been rhyming like Common since
When your sense got that much in common
And you been hosteling since
Your inception
Fuck perception
Go with what makes sense
Since
I know what I’m up against
We as rappers must decide what’s most important
And I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them
So I got rich and gave back
To me that’s the win, win
The next time you see the homie and his rims spin
Just know my mind is working just like them
(The rims that is)

V Week events I’m stoked about

These are part of the V Week of Events. There’s lots more, but these were the ones that caught my eye.

2/6 Friday — Critical Mass & Speak Out
@ 1pm, SAMPLE GATES
–Take to the streets in a critical mass bike ride to raise awareness of violence against women.

2/11 Wednesday — Film Screening & Teach-In, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo @ 7:30PM
–Join us to view and discuss the documentary film that explores the violence faced daily by the girls and women of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Imapfilter certs

I was having trouble SSHing into my workstation.  It would just hang at the login.  I was worried that I had gotten 0wn3d.  I logged in at the console and ran top and saw that there were a bunch of runaway imapfilter proccesses from my cron runs.

I ran imapfilter from the command line and got the following error:

ATTENTION: SSL/TLS certificate fingerprint mismatch.
Proceed with the connection (y/n)? y

In order to get rid of this error and make it cronable again, I had to delete the contents of ~/.imapfilter/certificates and re-run imapfilter from the command line, telling the program to accept the cert permanently.

This mailing list post was very helpful.

I’m still going to lock down my box anyway.


	


	


					



	


	
After the snows


	

		
After the snows, the American-made sport utility vehicles seem to own the roads, vindicated by nature from recent events.  They swagger through streams of grey slush bellowing, “I am too big to fail!”

	


	


					



	


	
Digital Barn Raising


	

		
I was recently asked to advise on the 2009 Allied Media Conference’s How-To Track (you can check the 2008 track out here) and I’m trying to think how to approach it.  Watching teachers recently and thinking about the community organizing that’s happening here in Bloomington, a lot of the skills I want to know how-to do aren’t neccessarily technical.  Still, my goal for this year’s AMC is to help create a track that not only builds and strengthens community and coalitions around consuming and discussing media but in it’s actual production – from editing videos, to making beats, to loading Linux on a server, to hacking together a Drupal module.  These technical tasks are often done in solitude by a few individuals who have been delegated the task or who hold onto the skills and projects too tightly for more folks to be involved.  I’ve always felt excited and empowered by technology, not just in what it can do, but in using and manipulating it.


Comment here if you have anything you’d like to see in a session at the conference or if you know of folks doing awesome stuff with technology and media to further social justice goals.

	


	


					



	


	
Switcheroo


	

		
I just got a letter from my health insurance company telling me that my primary physician was leaving their network and that I had been assigned to a new doctor.  I wasn’t particularly attached to my first doctor, but I’m still wondering if this switch is “normal” with all healthcare these days, or more frequent because of the state-subsidised, safety-net style health insurance that I have. Should I be happy that the informed me of the switch and that I didn’t have to do anything to find a new doctor, or should I feel tossed around by the system?


On another health care note, I wanted to give a shout out to Ayada who commented, “no dental care = no insurance.”  I completely agree with this.  I can imagine that for a lot of people, their dental health poses more pain and nervousness in their life than other health issues.  This makes me wonder, what should the baseline for healthcare in this country be?  To me, it’s whatever care it takes to make someone feel safe, comfortable, and dignified.

	


	


					



	


	
Family micro-lending in the U.S.?


	

		
The Northwest Airlines in-flight magazine has been a wealth of insight lately.  I read that Berry Gordy started Motown Records in 1959 on an $800 loan from te Ber-berry Co Op, a fund which family members each paid in $10 every month in order to make loans to launch new family business ventures.  With so many projects (and friends) being broke right now, I want to know how people are funding important work from their base.  This seems like one cool model blasting from the past.

	


	


					



	


	
Michael Chabon on entertainment


	

		
I love this statement from The Best American Short Stories 2005 :


Yet entertainment – as I define it, pleasure and all – remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that seperates each of us from everybody else.  The best respone to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, adn the universal hunger for connection.


It helps me deal with the questions/conflicts I have as a performer.

	


	


					



	


	
Roe v. Wade Anniversary Rally in Bloomington


	

		
Event: Roe v. Wade Anniversary Rally

“Celebrating 36 years of reproductive choice!”

What: Rally

Host: Roe supporters

Start Time: Thursday, January 22 at 2:00pm

End Time: Thursday, January 22 at 3:30pm

Where: IU Sample Gates


To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=71448004688

	


	


					



	


	
COMMUNITY MEETING AGAINST JAIL EXPANSION


	

		
INVITATION TO COMMUNITY MEETING AGAINST JAIL EXPANSION


SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 3:00-6:00 p.m.


GREAT HALL, TRINITY CHURCH, 111 S. Grant St.


Childcare will be provided




Decarcerate Monroe County (DMC), with the encouragement of Citizens for Effective Justice, UU Friends of Prisoners Task Force, and New Leaf/New Life, is pleased to invite you to a community update and discussion on Monroe County’s plan to expand incarceration.  Please come to share information and personal stories about incarceration, coordinate efforts to fight the expansion, and begin developing effective, long-term strategies and proposals to reduce incarceration!




BACKGROUND


In the fall of 2008, the Monroe County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (MCCJCC) held a series of meetings ostensibly to solicit public input regarding the proposal to construct new criminal justice facilities, including a new youth lockup, to replace the current jail.  The meetings gave criminal justice personnel opportunities to present their assessment of the current situation and to make their arguments in favor of the County’s plan for expansion.  The final meeting offered a platform for the presentation of construction plans by the Noblesville-based design and construction contractor PMSI, Project Management Solutions Incorporated.  Despite overwhelming opposition expressed in public comments, County officials seem to have emerged from the meetings with continued determination to pursue the expansion plan.




COMMUNITY MEETING


As an alternative and follow-up to this series of meetings, Decarcerate Monroe County has called a genuine public forum for Saturday, January 31st, in the Great Hall of Trinity Church.  This afternoon will offer information, facilitate a broad-ranging public conversation, and plan continued active response.  People should bring their experiences and ideas to contribute to working out practical solutions to the problems the jail purports to solve but actually only worsens.




WHAT IS DMC?


Decarcerate Monroe County is an open coalition that works to challenge the belief that cages, coercion, and confinement keep our community safe.  DMC believes that people are safe when they have their basic needs met and when they feel empowered and free. DMC works to build access to meaningful, non-coercive options for dealing with problems and resolving conflict. We resist expansion of incarceration, including the proposed adult and youth jails; we support shrinking the existing punitive justice system in Monroe County.




While the group calling the meeting is explicitly against jail expansion, the Community Meeting will welcome the broadest array of opinions — please come and let’s all work together to make Monroe County a safer and more just place!