Commie Curmudgeon

There is now a Commie Curmudgeon (II): http://commiecurmudgeon.wordpress.com. That's where I'm writing posts now.

If you've got a link to Commie Curmudgeon (aka No More Big Wheels), and you want to keep linking to Commie Curmudgeon, please change your link to the new address.

Thanks...

I'm starting to post things at the WordPress blog. I've still got things to learn there, but I like it much more over there now, so unless something goes really wrong, that's probably where I'll be posting. So, people might want to start thinking about changing their links to Commie Curmudgeon if they have time.

These are two recent posts at the WordPress blog:

A Welcome Victory for Jeff Luers

Political Compass Score

No, I don’t want to talk about the recent scare in England or that
depressing book by Mike Davis. I want to talk about the new song from M.I.A.! With my antique computer, I actually managed to view a choppy copy of the video… The song is very good, no surprise there. It goes much more to her South Asian roots than much of her other material – the closest that M.I.A. has come so far to sounding like Transglobal Underground. Of the three songs that she’s put on the Internet so far, this is actually my least favorite. (My favorite is that extremely short mystery song being referred to (probably just tentatively) as "Talk About Moi." And I think "XR2" also has an edge over "Bird Flu" - though I might be the only one who thinks that.) Still, it’s damn good and damn danceable. And the video is certainly fun to watch…

These are a couple of other things I’ve been listening to this week:

Dubstep Allstars, Volume IV – For a long time I had no desire to hear this and then, tonight, for some reason, I was just in the right mood. The music is like drum and bass and bass and bass and bass. It is quite different, and sometimes even musical, but I also think, at least in this compilation, that the dubstep can be very funny too. In fact, sometimes it’s a Skream!

Sister Nancy – One, Two... - I don’t like the way people overuse this word, but once again, I have to use it… I can’t begin to describe how COOL this music is. Sister Nancy is the true queen of the dancehall. (Oops, there goes another cliche. But be assured that Sister Nancy is not a cliche!)

DJ /Rupture and now Thievery Corporation have mixed, featured, and sampled Nancy's stuff. But this is one case when it’s definitely worthwhile to go right to the source.

Just a technical note. Blogger forced me to switch to New Blogger, which meant opening up a Google account. Earlier, it had given me the option to do this another time, but this time it gave me no choice. Or maybe I couldn't find the choice this time because I was about to go to sleep. (And now I'm up much longer than I'd planned to be. I was simply planning to make a couple of changes in my profile, just for fun...and then I was bothered with all this crap.) I'm not crazy about being forced to open a Google account, and I didn't want to do this right now. (I didn't feel like making any changes - for various reasons - until I get another compuer, which I'm hoping to do within the next month or two.) That makes me wonder about whether I want to continue with Blogger, especially now that there's no escaping the fact that Blogger is Google. Open to other options now...

Looking for the best blog to visit on Bob Marley's birthday and, not surprisingly, I found that it was Wayne&Wax. Very nice post there... I love the song that Wayne quoted, too. I should add that I'm not exactly a proponent of Rastafarianism, but I think that Bob's criticisms of "Babylon" always held a lot of truth. The Babylon that Bob Marley spoke of is not just a religious idea; it's a scathing (and so true) picture of capitalism, of empire, of a world ruled through social injustice and oppression. I love these lyrics that Wayne quoted:

Babylon system is the vampire, yeah (vampire)
Suckin the children day by day, yeah
Me say, the Babylon system is the vampire, falling empire,
Suckin the blood of the sufferahs, yea-ea-ea-ea-e-ah!
Building church and university, wo-o-ooh, yeah! –
Deceiving the people continually, yea-ea!
Me say them graduatin thieves and murderers
Look out now: they suckin the blood of the sufferahs (sufferahs)
Yea-ea-ea! (sufferahs)

Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth right now!
Come on and tell the children the truth...

I originally wrote a post that attempted to describe some of my impressions of a few commercial radio stations on the FM dial, before getting into the noncommercial stations. But then I realized that I might have gotten some of the stations confused. For instance, was the "underground" hip-hop show that I actually kind of liked on Friday night Hot 97 or Z-100? It's all a blur to me. In general, I can say just a few things about commercial radio on the FM dial:

First of all, I don't even listen to the commercial FM rock stations anymore, because they're so conservative and so dreary. Sometimes, I listen to the dance stations, because they're not quite as bad, but I can't get too excited about them. When I do hear music that I like on commercial radio, usually, these days, it's hip-hop. That's not to say I like most of the hip-hop on commercial radio; most of it is bad. But some of it is kind of good, and at least I find this music a little more fresh (no pun intended) than all the same old fucking rock music.

For a while, I was enjoying the reggaeton station, La Kalle, at 105.9, but I really got tired of it... Not because I got tired of reggaeton, but because La Kalle was playing the same few tunes over and over again, like any commercial radio station, and there simply wasn't enough variety. Plus, as with much commercial radio, the commercials really stank. So, that's the end of my honeymoon with La Kalle...

Radio has always been, and remains, a rewarding medium for me, but for the most part, it's noncommercial radio. I can't do a comprehensive post on radio in general, because the only stations I really pay attention to are the noncommercial ones. So, scrap the more general post about New York radio here; let's just say I'd like to mention a few shows and stations that I've been listening to. (And then, sometime later, maybe, I'll mention some more...)

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For well over 20 years, I have gotten a great deal of pleasure and muscial education from WFMU (91.1). In fact, most of the people I know feel the same way. If the general public at all resembled my own set of acquaintances throughout the years, then WFMU would be, by far, the most popular and most famous radio station in the whole New York metropolitan area, if not the nation. Of course, this is not the case. As far as I know, it is just a little college station (although, from what I understand, it severed ties with the college that it once belonged to, though I don’t completely know all the details). I suppose that WFMU is popular among my acquaintances because it is popular among struggling musicians and radical left political people, two sets of people whom I’ve been acquainted with quite a lot over the years (that is, relatively speaking – because, as everyone knows, I don’t exactly hang out with a lot of people in general). Also, strangely enough, I’ve been proofreading fairly often with someone who was once a WFMU DJ. But, then, that shouldn’t be surprising if you know anything about night shift proofreaders (i.e., rather unusual characters much of the time)...

If anyone were to ask me what kind of music, exactly, WFMU plays, it would be difficult to name all the genres, because the station goes all over the place, especially along the edges of popular music. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot from WFMU about rockabilly and psychedelic music as well as hearing a lot of the best, edgiest stuff being played in the rock clubs. I used to love a show on WFMU that focused almost exclusively on guitar-heavy girl pop. At the same time, I’ve also found WFMU to be a very good source for hip-hop, and I’ve been listening a lot lately to the Wednesday (late) night hip-hop show. I also like the world music show on Saturday afternoons. (And, by the way, I’m not going to name and link to all this stuff (although I have linked to the hip-hop show before). Go to the main site and you’ll find it – it’s all very easy to navigate.)

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Last night, I listened to the Saturday night reggae shows on WHCR (90.3). I don't know much about this station except that it is a small station connected to City College (CUNY) and that it bills itself as "The Voice of Harlem." I don't think I would have gotten it in Staten Island or even Brooklyn, but it comes in nice and clear here in the South Bronx. I've found some hip-hop on this station and some jazz. But mainly, I tune in for the reggae, especially the Saturday night reggae (though there are also a couple of other reggaae shows, on Thursday and Friday); this has been a sort of staple for me.

The first show, from midnight to 3am, covers a wide variety of reggae music, most of it good, some of it a little difficult to listen to. Although, of course, “difficult to listen to” is a subjective matter. A lot of people I’ve spoken to find dancehall music to be the most difficult to listen to, but this is actually my favorite kind of reggae music. Admittedly, the social content of dancehall sometimes leaves something to be desired (although sometimes it has been quite good, especially in recent years); however, I appreciate the heavy beat, much of the MC’ing and the stripped-down quality. I also like the old DJ-toasting music that I hear on this station, and I do like the classic reggae, especially for the social content. (I do find Rastafarianism as unbelievable as any other religion, but the old Rastas also have conveyed the best egalitarian and revolutionary social messages.) The only thing in reggae that I really find difficult to listen to is the slow, quasi-soul-like love-ballad singing that can creep into any of the sub-genres. Frankly, I just don't like that “romantic” kind crooning. But overall, it is very nice to hear such an eclectic reggae show.

From 3 am to 6 am, there’s a show that often starts off with a few different singers of classic reggae (unless that's just the prior show running late sometimes) but always moves into a long stretch of Bob Marley, mostly concerts recorded way-back-when. Come to think of it, it seems that the DJ here plays the same exact lengthy tape of live Bob Marley music every weekend while he goes off and sleeps somewhere. (I don’t want to make any unfair accusations here; I’m just saying, this is what it seems like to me.) Sometimes, it’s very nice to hear old Bob the Rastaman for a long stretch of time; sometimes, I’m not in the mood for it, especially if it’s the same stuff every time. But I've got to say, it does set the right mellow tone for me for those Saturday nights when I'm lucky enough to be going to sleep by 6 am, and in that situation, the repetition doesn't bother me so much.

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I heard some different Bob Marley recordings on the reggae show over on WBAI (99.5 - Pacifica radio) late on Friday night, while I was proofreading. This reggae show was pretty good, and it also contained some interesting, socially conscious chatter (mostly centered on Black History Month and, well, black history). This was also the station that reminded me that Tuesday is Bob Marley’s birthday, an event that’s apparently being celebrated in a lot of places. (Happy birthday, Bob! Wish you were still with us...)

WBAI probably requires a post all by itself sometime. Though it would be a chore to write it... I’ve heard people lament that BAI is playing more music than it should these days and not enough talk. But most of my best memories of WBAI are of the music. Back in 1998 through 2000, I regularly listened to a DJ there named Delphine Blue, whose tastes I really appreciated. On her show, I got to hear a lot of the latest stuff coming out of the Asian Underground. But I think she left at some point during the fateful year of 2001. (She did move on to other stations and other projects, and I did hear her elsewhere, though not very often. But more on that another time - I should write another whole post just on Delphine Blue.)

Then sometime in 2002, I completely stopped listening to WBAI. They'd had some really nasty internal political shakeups there. At first it seemed as though there was a sort of evil group completely taking the station over at the expense of the good people, but then I realized that the “good” people were for the most part just as annoying and authoritarian as the "evil" group. (Which isn’t that unusual where internal leftist disputes are concerned...) The battles involving WBAI - as well as the overseeing network, Pacifica - were also a point of obsession for some people in the New York City activist “community.” Some people talked about WBAI as though it was the most important subject in the world – especially when they got to their ambitious ideas about somehow making WBAI more democratic and responsive to the listeners... Which talk, now that I think about it, I probably should have walked away from much more quickly.

So, by sometime in 2002, I got so sick of hearing about WBAI, I blocked most of that information out of my head and didn't tune into the station for a very long time. Now, I tune in once in a while, but I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. Nonetheless, I am still glad that there are a few noncommercial stations like WBAI on the radio dial. I'm sure that noncommercial leftist stations can become disappointing too, but I can't imagine them getting as dreary as regular commercial stations. With all the crap out there, it becomes difficult to love this medium called radio. But I still do, I think...

Thanks to Wood’s Lot for pointing me to this very interesting article in Eurozine, The art of not becoming accustomed to anything - Precarious employment in flexible capitalism. The first paragraph certainly drew me in:

Interns, temporary agency workers, people on job creation schemes, and pseudo-freelances make up the vast reserve army of workers in precarious employment. For the majority, standards such as productivity or flexibility have become second nature. In this respect, they are the avant-garde of post-Fordism, constantly opening up new avenues of self-exploitation.

It's nice to know that I belong to an avant-garde that is "constantly opening up new avenues of self-exploitation." Actually, I don't know if that is nice, really. But it's always satisfying to read these critiques from Europe that recognize the existence of the (sub-)class and class struggle to which I personally belong. Of course, in the U.S., where this situation is far worse than in most of Western Europe, there is a real dearth of awareness about these developments.

Anyway, there are a few excellent passages worth quoting here. I particularly like the following:

According to Dorre, the existence of workers in precarious employment also creates a "zone of vulnerability." In contrast to the long-term unemployed, people in precarious employment work in the immediate vicinity of the core staff. The "integrated" always see, before their very eyes, the reality of the world of work as experienced by temporary agency workers or the self-employed, which at the same time means they are also constantly confronted with their own potential substitutability. A secure full-time job thus becomes a threatened privilege.

In somewhat less academic language, I like this old joke by George Carlin: "The poor are there to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs."

Only now, another group of people whose function is scaring the shit out of the middle class are also showing up at those jobs, at least for the day, or a few hours.

But do we count as "the poor"? For many of us, the answer is, well, sometimes. And sometimes, we can just be frightened by being right on the edge of poverty. We can be doubly frightened every time we become ill and realize that there isn't any health coverage – a worry that most of the Western Europeans really don't have, not at least in the same way. But they are the ones having all this dialogue about precarity, while we're generally not.

The article delves a little into some interesting thoughts while discussing the "cultural sector." This is a point that I actually have seen discussed for a number of years by some people in the U.S., in zines such as The Baffler:

Values such as autonomy and self-realisation, along with feelings, experiences, creativity, which once were deployed to counter capitalist commoditisation, have now become significant raw material salvaged for economic ends.

The emphasis should probably be placed on that term "raw material," because it means that these "values" and "feelings" are really reprocessed into something else, a fake sort of autonomy and self-realization – which is, of course, the major basis for self-exploitation.

The closing lines of the paragraph couldn't be sharper; they sum it up well:

However, whilst management literature now lauds non-conformism as the key to professional success - almost as a glamour model for obedience to the imperatives of flexibilisation - the Berlin band Britta ask in the light of their increasingly precarious situation: "Is that bohemian or underclass?"