It is by coincidence perhaps, that the closing of one of our favourite coffee shops on Edmonton Trail, Blends, brings with it our our introduction to two smaller coffee concerns, Cochrane Coffee Traders, and Molise Coffee, of Vancouver's Falesca Importing. That Blends roasted and sold its own coffee beans was not unusual, though it was one of our favourites, and its demise has led us to go looking elsewhere for fresh beans.
In an economic age that is increasingly putting a premium on product information and individuality, the rise of what we might call "micro-roasters" might be seen as inevitable. Like micro-brewing, the creation of small scale coffee companies, set to sell and distribute their own coffee within a limited geographic area is an evolution of a consumer market dominated by large scale chains. As coffee drinkers look to carve out their own personal, local, and regional identities, companies like the Cochrane Coffee Traders will emerge to serve the high-end, socially consciencious crowd (our East Timor dark roast promised not only to be Fair Trade, but also bird-friendly).
If the CCT represents an emerging coffee company, then the Molise brand of Falesca can be seen to be a more mature offering. Having started roasting their own beans in 1983, Falesca's products can now be found throughout Western Canada, whereas one can only find the CCT in a limited number of coffee shops. For our part, we enjoyed the CCT dark roast to the Molise Medium Roast Super Bar Espresso.
We've provided a link to an article on fair trade coffee and the Cochrane Coffee Traders from Fast Forward Weekly, as we were especially pleased to see the closing comments about attempts to develop consumer awareness of the geographic taste and characteristics of different beans.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Ghosts That Haunt Us (Richard Nixon Lives)
One of our favourite historical eras is the French Revolution. We're always up for a good book, essay, or even movie (really, we're afraid to admit that we'll even find time for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette) on that tumultous period. In fact, one could almost say that we find it inspiring, as it has proved to be a fertile ground for historical analysis.
This time around, the cause for review came from Charles Savage's book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency, examining political efforts by post-Richard Nixon administrations to expand presidential power in the United States. Savage's treatment of this phenomena reminded us of a similar experience in Revolutionary historiography.
One of the enduring problems of studying the French Revolution has been attempting to fix an end date to the Revolution. Napoleon himself once declared the Revolution over, while some historians speak of French Revolutions in the plural. For our purposes here, the problem is the revolutionary/counter-revolutionary ebb and flow that French society experienced as conservative and liberal elements traded power over three decades, each attempting to undo some of the work of the other. Some sort of concilliation and consensus did not occur until the reign of Louis Philippe, the so-called Citizen-King, which attempted to merge the interests of the surviving Bonapartists, Jacobins, Girondins, Bourbon Monarchists, and Phillipe's own Orleanist groups. Louis Phillipe marked the final consolidation of the revolution, and the end of his reign, could effectively be said to mark the conclusion of the Revolution. Unfortunately, this unity came at the expense of his own popularity, as his government was overthrown in favour of Louis Bonaparte in 1848, some sixty years after the original Revolution.
Similarly, Hunter S. Thompson once described Richard Nixon as a unifier, on the same grounds that Americans were all united in their anger towards him. Perhaps it would be wrong to blame Nixon entirely for the sheer depth of illegality surrounding White House corruption, in the same sense that Louis XVI cannot be blamed entirely for the long-running structural weaknesses that plagued France on the eve of the Revolution. As Savage explains, virtually every Cold War president since Truman had sought to expand the ability of the president to act without having to refer to Congress, chief of amongst these, revolved around conducting war and declaring war, in response to perceived communist threats. The Constitution of the United States clearly separated these powers between the President and Congress, and events like the Korean War, Bay of Pigs, and especially Vietnam, would see different administrations employ all kinds of tactics to evade congressional oversight, ultimately leading to the so-called "secret wars" conducted by Nixon in Laos and Cambodia. In the aftermath of Watergate however, it was revealed that Nixon had been deceiving Congress in domestic matters as well, involving domestic intelligence gathering and the undermining of liberal-minded government insitutions, giving full scope to the term, "imperial presidency".
So what does this have to do with the French Revolution? As much as the Revolution was a specific response to conditions in France, it was also an ideological manifestation, and much of the turmoil experienced during the later decades stems from the tug-of-war between different ideological factions, a contest that would dominate French politics in one way or another for almost half a century. In the same way then, the Nixon presidency also had its fair share of ideologues who supported a president free from Congressional intervention. The Unitary Executive Theory, as it was called, held that the separation of powers articulated in the U.S. Constitution made it unlawful for Congress to create agencies capable of interfering with the President's ability to execute law. Following Nixon, the Supreme Court found that this theory was an improper interpretation of the Constitution, giving Congress an open hand at reigning in Presidential perogatives.
As with the French Revolution however, rival idealogical factions did not disappear the moment they were out of power. Supporters of Unitary Executive Theory from the Nixon administration continued careers in and out of politics, many finding homes in the Reagan-Bush administrations, where they often worked to scale back the restrictions to presidential powers. Chief among these was Dick Cheney, who served under Nixon, Ford, Reagen and Bush, before becoming vice-president under the current Bush. Unlike the Revolution, where we can clearly see the ebb and flow of these sides before they come to some sort of consesus, Charles Savage's book documents the extent that the Bush-Cheney administration have been able to return to Nixon-like levels of presidential control. In fact, Bush's signing statements, closed-door meetings, undisclosed foreign prisons, have all gone beyond Nixon.
This time around, the cause for review came from Charles Savage's book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency, examining political efforts by post-Richard Nixon administrations to expand presidential power in the United States. Savage's treatment of this phenomena reminded us of a similar experience in Revolutionary historiography.
One of the enduring problems of studying the French Revolution has been attempting to fix an end date to the Revolution. Napoleon himself once declared the Revolution over, while some historians speak of French Revolutions in the plural. For our purposes here, the problem is the revolutionary/counter-revolutionary ebb and flow that French society experienced as conservative and liberal elements traded power over three decades, each attempting to undo some of the work of the other. Some sort of concilliation and consensus did not occur until the reign of Louis Philippe, the so-called Citizen-King, which attempted to merge the interests of the surviving Bonapartists, Jacobins, Girondins, Bourbon Monarchists, and Phillipe's own Orleanist groups. Louis Phillipe marked the final consolidation of the revolution, and the end of his reign, could effectively be said to mark the conclusion of the Revolution. Unfortunately, this unity came at the expense of his own popularity, as his government was overthrown in favour of Louis Bonaparte in 1848, some sixty years after the original Revolution.
Similarly, Hunter S. Thompson once described Richard Nixon as a unifier, on the same grounds that Americans were all united in their anger towards him. Perhaps it would be wrong to blame Nixon entirely for the sheer depth of illegality surrounding White House corruption, in the same sense that Louis XVI cannot be blamed entirely for the long-running structural weaknesses that plagued France on the eve of the Revolution. As Savage explains, virtually every Cold War president since Truman had sought to expand the ability of the president to act without having to refer to Congress, chief of amongst these, revolved around conducting war and declaring war, in response to perceived communist threats. The Constitution of the United States clearly separated these powers between the President and Congress, and events like the Korean War, Bay of Pigs, and especially Vietnam, would see different administrations employ all kinds of tactics to evade congressional oversight, ultimately leading to the so-called "secret wars" conducted by Nixon in Laos and Cambodia. In the aftermath of Watergate however, it was revealed that Nixon had been deceiving Congress in domestic matters as well, involving domestic intelligence gathering and the undermining of liberal-minded government insitutions, giving full scope to the term, "imperial presidency".
So what does this have to do with the French Revolution? As much as the Revolution was a specific response to conditions in France, it was also an ideological manifestation, and much of the turmoil experienced during the later decades stems from the tug-of-war between different ideological factions, a contest that would dominate French politics in one way or another for almost half a century. In the same way then, the Nixon presidency also had its fair share of ideologues who supported a president free from Congressional intervention. The Unitary Executive Theory, as it was called, held that the separation of powers articulated in the U.S. Constitution made it unlawful for Congress to create agencies capable of interfering with the President's ability to execute law. Following Nixon, the Supreme Court found that this theory was an improper interpretation of the Constitution, giving Congress an open hand at reigning in Presidential perogatives.
As with the French Revolution however, rival idealogical factions did not disappear the moment they were out of power. Supporters of Unitary Executive Theory from the Nixon administration continued careers in and out of politics, many finding homes in the Reagan-Bush administrations, where they often worked to scale back the restrictions to presidential powers. Chief among these was Dick Cheney, who served under Nixon, Ford, Reagen and Bush, before becoming vice-president under the current Bush. Unlike the Revolution, where we can clearly see the ebb and flow of these sides before they come to some sort of consesus, Charles Savage's book documents the extent that the Bush-Cheney administration have been able to return to Nixon-like levels of presidential control. In fact, Bush's signing statements, closed-door meetings, undisclosed foreign prisons, have all gone beyond Nixon.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Electioneering
It's been awhile since we posted, but that's not to say we haven' t been busy. In fact, the office of The Daily Wenzel has been awash in new music, and our afternoon kino series has been as productive as ever, with a viewing of Nick Cave's screenwriting debut, The Proposition. However, what has kept us from posting has actually been the results of the recent Alberta Provincial election. We had hoped to offer some sort of insghtful commentary on the meaning of the election, but have recently come to grips with the fact that such a thing will take months, if not years to analyze properly.
One of the things that we would like to examine is the electoral boundaries. Calgary and Edmonton each have roughly 1/3 of the electoral ridings. With approximately a million people in each city, this means that the remaining 1/3 of predominantly rural ridings (Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat, the next largest urban populations, each have two ridings) have a combined total of one million people? Have we really grown so much outside of the cities?
What is clear is that at the moment, the province is caught up in all sorts of demographic trends. Our earlier prediction that recent immigration to Calgary and changes in housing prices, has caused Liberal support to increase, and more importantly disperse throughout the city. We have yet to see exactly how this is playing out provincially though.
However, one needs to be very careful when talking about Liberal or Conservative support, since voter turnout was at its lowest point ever, something that is especially troublesome when the media was perhaps the most inclined as it has ever been to change. Earlier we made the comment that the Calgary civic election, with its faux David Bronconnier (returning mayor) vs. Ed Stelmach (unresponsive premier) battle for responsibility over the mismanagement of Calgary's growth. At the time, we said that Bronconnier's re-election could either be viewed as Calgarians blaming Stelmach for the city's problems, or else, the voting population of Calgary (again an election featuring a record-low voter turnout) being quite content with whatever regime is in power so long as the money keeps coming in, leading us to wonder what $110 oil will bring.
What worries us most though about the low voter turnout is that there is not much discussion over who is not voting. Generally speaking, it is assumed that the poor and the young do not vote. However, in Calgary (and we suppose Edmonton, or any other Albertan area experiencing an influx of people), the question really needs to be asked, to what extent do the new arrivals participate in the political process? How many Albertans failed to vote because they could not provide proof of the residency requirements - remember, Calgary shamefully has thousands of working homeless. Also, remembering the stories of the increasing outflow of workers from Calgary and Alberta this summer, workers and families selling their now doubled or tripled in value homes and moving back to Saskatchewan or further east where the housing prices have yet skyrocket, or else never really could establish themselves with Calgary's new cost of living.
To extrapolate, to what extent is the low voter indicative of a growing population that does not consider Calgary (or Alberta) home? a population that does not, or cannot, engage with the social fabric of the community around it? a community within a community? Such a thing would be disasterous for a city and a province that already has a lacklustre record in dealing with disadvantaged communities.
One of the things that we would like to examine is the electoral boundaries. Calgary and Edmonton each have roughly 1/3 of the electoral ridings. With approximately a million people in each city, this means that the remaining 1/3 of predominantly rural ridings (Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat, the next largest urban populations, each have two ridings) have a combined total of one million people? Have we really grown so much outside of the cities?
What is clear is that at the moment, the province is caught up in all sorts of demographic trends. Our earlier prediction that recent immigration to Calgary and changes in housing prices, has caused Liberal support to increase, and more importantly disperse throughout the city. We have yet to see exactly how this is playing out provincially though.
However, one needs to be very careful when talking about Liberal or Conservative support, since voter turnout was at its lowest point ever, something that is especially troublesome when the media was perhaps the most inclined as it has ever been to change. Earlier we made the comment that the Calgary civic election, with its faux David Bronconnier (returning mayor) vs. Ed Stelmach (unresponsive premier) battle for responsibility over the mismanagement of Calgary's growth. At the time, we said that Bronconnier's re-election could either be viewed as Calgarians blaming Stelmach for the city's problems, or else, the voting population of Calgary (again an election featuring a record-low voter turnout) being quite content with whatever regime is in power so long as the money keeps coming in, leading us to wonder what $110 oil will bring.
What worries us most though about the low voter turnout is that there is not much discussion over who is not voting. Generally speaking, it is assumed that the poor and the young do not vote. However, in Calgary (and we suppose Edmonton, or any other Albertan area experiencing an influx of people), the question really needs to be asked, to what extent do the new arrivals participate in the political process? How many Albertans failed to vote because they could not provide proof of the residency requirements - remember, Calgary shamefully has thousands of working homeless. Also, remembering the stories of the increasing outflow of workers from Calgary and Alberta this summer, workers and families selling their now doubled or tripled in value homes and moving back to Saskatchewan or further east where the housing prices have yet skyrocket, or else never really could establish themselves with Calgary's new cost of living.
To extrapolate, to what extent is the low voter indicative of a growing population that does not consider Calgary (or Alberta) home? a population that does not, or cannot, engage with the social fabric of the community around it? a community within a community? Such a thing would be disasterous for a city and a province that already has a lacklustre record in dealing with disadvantaged communities.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
A Piece On Criticism
We saw this piece on the role of criticism in the form of gaming journalism and were surprised by the nature of both the article and the discussion that followed it. Note how one of the respondents even brings in the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz in terms of the work and function of the critic.
In general, we feel there is a difference between the focus of a critic and a reviewer, and agree with the author Costik in terms of the difference between these two activities (even though some of the respondents disagree on terminology). Too often our media, and because of it, our more media dependent citizens, operate ahistorically. Costik's article, we feel, is a good introduction for all would be critics.
In general, we feel there is a difference between the focus of a critic and a reviewer, and agree with the author Costik in terms of the difference between these two activities (even though some of the respondents disagree on terminology). Too often our media, and because of it, our more media dependent citizens, operate ahistorically. Costik's article, we feel, is a good introduction for all would be critics.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Espressin' It?
We once heard a particular cup of Kimbo referred to as "robust and sexy, like something down near dockyards," a questionable description at best, however we did wonder what sort of comment the drinker would have had for the following:
Monday, February 18, 2008
Education Leaves It's Mark
Some recent postings by our friends over at Exploding Beakers has left us wondering. The current posts centre around notions of play and "unsupervised spaces" in schools. One of the sources of inspiration for the posts was an earlier one of our own, referencing a childhood game called "Murderball", as part of our own interest in what children do when adults are not around, and just how omnipresent parents are starting to become.
However, what is interesting is the choice of "unsupervised spaces" and the knowledge that Exploding Beakers main contributor, Sean Marchetto (a frequent contributor here too), has like us, read Hakim Bey's lengthy poem The Temporary Autonomous Zone, an influential underground piece based around pirate utopias (to read an online version, or something else by Bey click here). In The T.A.Z. Bey searches for areas of the world where the run of the mill rules governing day-to-day living are suspended in favour of more spontaneous, exuberant forms - one would be forgiven for thinking of the Burning Man festival in a way, a place where traditional leaders and rule-enforcers are noticably absent or weakened.
While Marchetto was still a CJSW DJ hosting The Twelth Ave Paylot in the mid-1990s, he would often reference Bey, but we are very surprised to see some of theses ideas creeping back around in Marchetto's work with educational structures. To us, it illustrates just how deep and easily assimilated certain ideas are, that they can sink to the bottom of our consciousness and lie dormant for over a decade, only to resurface in completely different contexts and attached to different companion structures.
Fascinating.
However, what is interesting is the choice of "unsupervised spaces" and the knowledge that Exploding Beakers main contributor, Sean Marchetto (a frequent contributor here too), has like us, read Hakim Bey's lengthy poem The Temporary Autonomous Zone, an influential underground piece based around pirate utopias (to read an online version, or something else by Bey click here). In The T.A.Z. Bey searches for areas of the world where the run of the mill rules governing day-to-day living are suspended in favour of more spontaneous, exuberant forms - one would be forgiven for thinking of the Burning Man festival in a way, a place where traditional leaders and rule-enforcers are noticably absent or weakened.
While Marchetto was still a CJSW DJ hosting The Twelth Ave Paylot in the mid-1990s, he would often reference Bey, but we are very surprised to see some of theses ideas creeping back around in Marchetto's work with educational structures. To us, it illustrates just how deep and easily assimilated certain ideas are, that they can sink to the bottom of our consciousness and lie dormant for over a decade, only to resurface in completely different contexts and attached to different companion structures.
Fascinating.
Fly to London for a Party?
In response to our earlier gushing about the series of DJ podcasts being released by London nightclub Fabric, there was a suggestion that perhaps the strong Canadian dollar, coupled with upcoming cheap spring charter flights, might make a weekend trip to the UK feasible.
While we were intrigued by the idea, in the same way that we were interested in the logistics of summer shopping trips to nearby American cities like Seattle or Las Vegas that purported to take advantage of the exchange differentials between US and Canadian currencies and prices. We were reminded of a recent interview with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, where he discusses the ecological impact of air travel. It's a theme that we heard last fall from George Monbiot as well.
However, the good folks at Dopplr have shown that there doesn't seem to be any real fear at present. The social network is geared towards travellers and their blog has several different interesting (and colourful) charts showing membership travel patterns.
While we were intrigued by the idea, in the same way that we were interested in the logistics of summer shopping trips to nearby American cities like Seattle or Las Vegas that purported to take advantage of the exchange differentials between US and Canadian currencies and prices. We were reminded of a recent interview with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, where he discusses the ecological impact of air travel. It's a theme that we heard last fall from George Monbiot as well.
However, the good folks at Dopplr have shown that there doesn't seem to be any real fear at present. The social network is geared towards travellers and their blog has several different interesting (and colourful) charts showing membership travel patterns.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
If Charity Begins At Home, Can Sanctions Too?
Federal Liberal hopeful and former astronaut Marc Garneau, floated the idea today that Canada should impose trade sanctions on countries that refuse to reduce their greenhouse emissions. This made us wonder, can the sanctions begin with Alberta?
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Alberta Election
As the Alberta provincial election unfolds, it will be very interesting to see what happens in Calgary. Traditionally, Calgary is a very conservative city - the two members of the Liberal Party elected in the last provincial election were the first Liberals elected here in decades. The booming job market, coupled with sky-high real estate prices have wreaked havoc with the city's demographics. While areas of Liberal support used to congregate in predictable pockets, it remains to be seen just how diffuse that support has become owning to housing prices. There were quite a few ridings in the last election that went Conservative by their narrowest margins in years. Has the housing market shifted more Liberal support into these areas?
Added to this has been the failure of the Stelmach government to deal with the needs of Edmonton and Calgary. As we mentioned last week, Calgary mayor David Bronconnier portrayed Stelmach as the villain in the city's inability to manage the infrastructure problems associated with a booming population. Now, Liberal leader Kevin Taft is offering more power to the major cities to do just that. Clearly, the Liberals feel that there are seats to be won in this once Conservative stronghold.
Added to this has been the failure of the Stelmach government to deal with the needs of Edmonton and Calgary. As we mentioned last week, Calgary mayor David Bronconnier portrayed Stelmach as the villain in the city's inability to manage the infrastructure problems associated with a booming population. Now, Liberal leader Kevin Taft is offering more power to the major cities to do just that. Clearly, the Liberals feel that there are seats to be won in this once Conservative stronghold.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Fabric
The famous London night club, Fabric, first crossed our radar a few years back when the Herbaliser recorded a set under the club's FabricLive imprint. Lately, we've been enamoured of their podcasts, with the two part Jonny Trunk set exploring forgotten and offbeat music being the best of the bunch.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Off to the Polls
As predicted by many, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach made his election call yesterday, announcing the beginning of perhaps the most anticipated provincial campaign since former Premier Ralph Klein made his inaugural run against Liberal leader Laurence Ducore. Unlike Klein, Stelmach has been unable to form a balanced relationship between the rural communities and the four major urban centres, who have found themselves (relatively) shut out of high profile positions. However, Stelmach has managed to safeguard the precious oil industry from any serious attempts at environmental reform, so the question for this election is essentially just how dissatisfied are Albertans
There have already been several negative ad campaigns, echoed in the newspapers, about Stelmach's failure to provide a clear vision for what to do with a post-debt Alberta. His recent 2020 Vision plan did not to much to generate excite, especially with communities like Calgary already starting to reel from lack of infrastructure and unfilled jobs (perhaps one of the worst Calgary statistics is that 1 in 4 Calgarians to do not have a family doctor). The re-election of Calgary Mayor, Dave Bronconnier offers conflicting interpretations though: either the vast majority of Calgarians do not blame Bronconnier (whose campaign blamed Stelmach) or else they are content to put up with the current problems so long as the oil money keeps rolling in. If the provincial Liberals hope to win their first election in recent memory, they need to somehow mobilize the discontent of Calgary and other similarly stressed communities.
There have already been several negative ad campaigns, echoed in the newspapers, about Stelmach's failure to provide a clear vision for what to do with a post-debt Alberta. His recent 2020 Vision plan did not to much to generate excite, especially with communities like Calgary already starting to reel from lack of infrastructure and unfilled jobs (perhaps one of the worst Calgary statistics is that 1 in 4 Calgarians to do not have a family doctor). The re-election of Calgary Mayor, Dave Bronconnier offers conflicting interpretations though: either the vast majority of Calgarians do not blame Bronconnier (whose campaign blamed Stelmach) or else they are content to put up with the current problems so long as the oil money keeps rolling in. If the provincial Liberals hope to win their first election in recent memory, they need to somehow mobilize the discontent of Calgary and other similarly stressed communities.
Friday, January 18, 2008
2000 hits!
It was a busy day today, with several lengthy discussions on institutional change and ideas of "cultural sensitivity" that did not equate "culture" with ethnicity, sandwiched between exciting tennis from the Australian Open.
Amidst all this then, we almost didn't notice that The Daily Wenzel crossed the 2000 hit threshold earlier today. For some, with much broader appeal, and a large blogger network of cross-advertisers, two thousand hits may come a lot faster, but we are absolutely thrilled.
Feel free to tell your friends about us!
Amidst all this then, we almost didn't notice that The Daily Wenzel crossed the 2000 hit threshold earlier today. For some, with much broader appeal, and a large blogger network of cross-advertisers, two thousand hits may come a lot faster, but we are absolutely thrilled.
Feel free to tell your friends about us!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
In the Thicke of It!
We were a little hesitant after the CBC aired the first episode of Douglas Coupland's TV adaptation of Jpod, but the return of Alan Thicke to primetime television has completely won us over. Perhaps things are made easier by the fact that he is playing an aging actor aspiring to be . . . Alan Thicke. Brilliant.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
What the World Needs Now, Is Songs, Sweet Songs
Someone brought in violinist Sarah Chang's recording of Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and a comment about her dress sparked an interesting exchange.
The comment was related to an observation about the marketing of young classical musicians in the mid-1990s, with women often dressed in "sexy" evening wear, or in a few cases, nothing at all. Part of this was the attempt to make these artists appear as "edgy" as their rock n' roll counterparts.
The exchange then centred around the different expectations audiences have for classical vs. rock musicians. In the classical musical idiom, the emphasis is on technique and conveying emotion, not songwriting. There is little expectation that a musician as talented as say, Chang, would be equally talented as a songwriter, and Chang can comfortably expect to make a living essentially by playing covers. In rock however, a musician who played primarily covers would be scoffed at, especially early in their career (please note this expectation is different in pop music), or at least would rarely be considered "elite". The expectation for rock n'roll artists is clearly that they write their own material, with the subtext being that the music somehow reflect the "spirit of the age". This was articulated by famous rock critic Lester Bangs in his reaction to early 1970s "prog rock" (perhaps not so ironically the moment when rock stars started to consider themselves the equal of classical musicians, such as with Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra) in large part perhaps because rock emerged during periods of social change and has often served as the soundtrack to that era in our collective consciousness.
Few us quiver in our aristocratic boots at the playing of Figaro these days.
The comment was related to an observation about the marketing of young classical musicians in the mid-1990s, with women often dressed in "sexy" evening wear, or in a few cases, nothing at all. Part of this was the attempt to make these artists appear as "edgy" as their rock n' roll counterparts.
The exchange then centred around the different expectations audiences have for classical vs. rock musicians. In the classical musical idiom, the emphasis is on technique and conveying emotion, not songwriting. There is little expectation that a musician as talented as say, Chang, would be equally talented as a songwriter, and Chang can comfortably expect to make a living essentially by playing covers. In rock however, a musician who played primarily covers would be scoffed at, especially early in their career (please note this expectation is different in pop music), or at least would rarely be considered "elite". The expectation for rock n'roll artists is clearly that they write their own material, with the subtext being that the music somehow reflect the "spirit of the age". This was articulated by famous rock critic Lester Bangs in his reaction to early 1970s "prog rock" (perhaps not so ironically the moment when rock stars started to consider themselves the equal of classical musicians, such as with Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra) in large part perhaps because rock emerged during periods of social change and has often served as the soundtrack to that era in our collective consciousness.
Few us quiver in our aristocratic boots at the playing of Figaro these days.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Top Ten Lists
We recently jibed fellow Daily Wenzel stalwart Sean Marchetto for his Top Ten Albums of 2007 list in Fast Forward Weekly as being perhaps the most mainstream of the bunch, with his inclusion of Feist, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, etc. While Marchetto shrugged off our good-natured ribbing, what followed was a good discussion of such "lists", as one of our favourite past times (or time-wasters, really) is comparing "All Time Best" lists from different years and trying to tease out social and political reasons as to why particular cultural artefacts appear at specific points. In defense of his own 2007 Top Ten list however, Marchetto pointed out that he listened to over 70 new albums this year - number we find logistically staggering. Essentially one and a half albums per week. Now, it's no secret that Marchetto's journalistic activities are a side-line to his education day job (We don't call him Il Professore for nothing), but it's easy to imagine that he can't sit around all day listening to music, making his actual music-listening time rather valuable. The decision to re-listen to a particular album then means sacrificing time that could be spent listening to an incoming album and requires making a committment to make up for that time at the expense of some other activity.
"After listening to two dozen middle of the road albums," Marchetto explains, "You really want to listen to something that stands out. It makes it really easy to appreciate something like Peter, Bjorn, and John, even if everybody else is listening to it."
On another note, here is our own 2007 Top Ten list, but of our most frequently read postings. Chances are you dedicated readers have already seen them, but maybe something flew under your radar the first time around:
1. Paul Virillo vs. Facebook
2. New Days for the Old Republik
3. Adios! Heidi and Howdy
4. A Good Cup of Kimbo
5. Vancouver, City on the Edge of Tomorrow
6. Federer Wins Again
7. Woodpigeon CD Release Party
8. Nights of the New Republik
9. Brain Heart Guitar; Dudes Bringing It All Back Home
10. We Are In Spooky Country
"After listening to two dozen middle of the road albums," Marchetto explains, "You really want to listen to something that stands out. It makes it really easy to appreciate something like Peter, Bjorn, and John, even if everybody else is listening to it."
On another note, here is our own 2007 Top Ten list, but of our most frequently read postings. Chances are you dedicated readers have already seen them, but maybe something flew under your radar the first time around:
1. Paul Virillo vs. Facebook
2. New Days for the Old Republik
3. Adios! Heidi and Howdy
4. A Good Cup of Kimbo
5. Vancouver, City on the Edge of Tomorrow
6. Federer Wins Again
7. Woodpigeon CD Release Party
8. Nights of the New Republik
9. Brain Heart Guitar; Dudes Bringing It All Back Home
10. We Are In Spooky Country
Saturday, January 05, 2008
The Speed of the Age
There are books one reads that contain messages so profound, they force into the brain new visions of how the world might be, others present messages that must be decipher and considered, but ultimately yield dramatic insights. Then, there are books whose message is mainly banal, but contain perhaps a chance phrase or random association of words that spark entirely unintended lines of thought.
For us, Vince Poscente's The Age of Speed, was this sort of book. Aimed primarily at the business set, it functions as a basic time-management primer for the 21st century. Readers are encouraged to adopt new technologies and strategies to minimize time spent "at work" and to maximize time spent "at leisure". Poscente makes the most of the fact that mobile technologies have caused the work/home, labour/leisure divide to become porous. If I answer emails at home, am I working? If a client contacts me for consultation while I'm on a weekend getaway, am I working? Does it have to be one or the other?
Aside from urging readers to reflect on the nature of their work, hoping that individuals find themselves doing work they love to do, Poscente also strongly recommends businesses move to a task-based, instead of a time-based system. This was something we used to argue back when we worked in the parking lots. Our employer paid us to park cars and direct traffic, if no cars or traffic appeared, then we were free to spend our time as we liked, provided we were available should a car or traffic appear. Thus parking truly did blur the leisure/labour divide, as most of our "work" hours were spent in various forms of leisure (working as we did in rarely frequented parking lots). Within a more professional context, a task-based system would appear to encourage decentralized decision making, as individuals made choices about their time. Clearly spending eight hours at a desk with very little to do is not anyone's best use of time.
Our main benefit from The Age of Speed however, was a confirmation about the the importance of time. It might be cliche to refer to time as the new wealth, but the fact remains that this is where the culture appears to be headed. In the pre-modern era, wealth was based on land, during the transition to capitalism, the accumulation of cash was often spent on acquiring the trappings of aristocratic wealth (ie. land, Thorstein Veblen has written much here), but at some point things changed, "the edges of the map were filled in" (to quote our favourite volume of The Pirates of the Caribbean), and there was no more unclaimed land to possess. Perhaps this explains the mid-century fascination with space travel with its promise of new sources of land. At any rate, the emphasis shifted from land to time, and cash was used to shortcut the consumption of time, where possible, via faster travel, personal chefs and personal telecommunications, etc.
This is an idea that Poscente attempts to evoke, and fails, but a chance encounter for us that saw Paul Virillo follow Poscente helped organize these ideas somewhat better.
Oddly, this is not a 21st century idea, but rather a more 19th one, prior to the onset of mechanization where the assembly-line required precise timing of labour. ,
For us, Vince Poscente's The Age of Speed, was this sort of book. Aimed primarily at the business set, it functions as a basic time-management primer for the 21st century. Readers are encouraged to adopt new technologies and strategies to minimize time spent "at work" and to maximize time spent "at leisure". Poscente makes the most of the fact that mobile technologies have caused the work/home, labour/leisure divide to become porous. If I answer emails at home, am I working? If a client contacts me for consultation while I'm on a weekend getaway, am I working? Does it have to be one or the other?
Aside from urging readers to reflect on the nature of their work, hoping that individuals find themselves doing work they love to do, Poscente also strongly recommends businesses move to a task-based, instead of a time-based system. This was something we used to argue back when we worked in the parking lots. Our employer paid us to park cars and direct traffic, if no cars or traffic appeared, then we were free to spend our time as we liked, provided we were available should a car or traffic appear. Thus parking truly did blur the leisure/labour divide, as most of our "work" hours were spent in various forms of leisure (working as we did in rarely frequented parking lots). Within a more professional context, a task-based system would appear to encourage decentralized decision making, as individuals made choices about their time. Clearly spending eight hours at a desk with very little to do is not anyone's best use of time.
Our main benefit from The Age of Speed however, was a confirmation about the the importance of time. It might be cliche to refer to time as the new wealth, but the fact remains that this is where the culture appears to be headed. In the pre-modern era, wealth was based on land, during the transition to capitalism, the accumulation of cash was often spent on acquiring the trappings of aristocratic wealth (ie. land, Thorstein Veblen has written much here), but at some point things changed, "the edges of the map were filled in" (to quote our favourite volume of The Pirates of the Caribbean), and there was no more unclaimed land to possess. Perhaps this explains the mid-century fascination with space travel with its promise of new sources of land. At any rate, the emphasis shifted from land to time, and cash was used to shortcut the consumption of time, where possible, via faster travel, personal chefs and personal telecommunications, etc.
This is an idea that Poscente attempts to evoke, and fails, but a chance encounter for us that saw Paul Virillo follow Poscente helped organize these ideas somewhat better.
Oddly, this is not a 21st century idea, but rather a more 19th one, prior to the onset of mechanization where the assembly-line required precise timing of labour. ,
Friday, January 04, 2008
Imagine a better city
It is hard to picture the amount of change necessary in the attitudes of Calgarians for the following to become an eventuality, but it is easy to see how the benefits might play out. As traffic becomes more and more of an issue in major urban centres, the talk of "congestion charges" surfaces more and more frequently. A congestion charge, like that recently adopted by the city of Milan, is essentially a tax on driving downtown during business hours. In some cities, it is enforced at parking meters based on license plate numbers or special stickers. Here in Calgary, despite some progress being made towards carpooling, and increases in transit ridership, the average car occupancy rate is still considerably less than two people per vehicle.
In Milan, the congestion charge is $14 a day, the monetary equivalent of adding over three round-trip passengers to the transit services, as well as encouraging an increase in actual passengers. While the city actually does as fairly efficient job of moving people from the periphery to downtown, especially in peak hours, travel across the city, from east to west without stopping downtown, is rather poor and could benefit from expanded services, helping to alleviate congestion on major arteries like Glenmore Trail or McKnight Boulevard.
Of course, many Calgarians will argue that perhaps we already pay too many taxes, or that we should simply increase parking rates, allowing the market to decide. But the fact remains that Calgary has the largest carbon footprint of any Canadian city and we tend to be spoilt by the luxury of our lifestyle.
In Milan, the congestion charge is $14 a day, the monetary equivalent of adding over three round-trip passengers to the transit services, as well as encouraging an increase in actual passengers. While the city actually does as fairly efficient job of moving people from the periphery to downtown, especially in peak hours, travel across the city, from east to west without stopping downtown, is rather poor and could benefit from expanded services, helping to alleviate congestion on major arteries like Glenmore Trail or McKnight Boulevard.
Of course, many Calgarians will argue that perhaps we already pay too many taxes, or that we should simply increase parking rates, allowing the market to decide. But the fact remains that Calgary has the largest carbon footprint of any Canadian city and we tend to be spoilt by the luxury of our lifestyle.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Christmas Wish Fulfilled!
It looks like Lucy, over at Good Grief Lucy was listening to our appeal for fiction and has forwarded a copy of David Liss' The Coffee Trader to us. Set in seventeenth century Amsterdam, Liss tells the tale of the birth of the coffee industry, mixing in elements of the burgeoning stock futures market as well as the city's Portguese Jewish diaspora. A fascinating introduction for us to Liss, who's debut novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and makes us thirsty for his next book, due in September 2008, entitled, The Whiskey Rebels.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Kino
There's nothing like gathering around the ol'yule log the day before Christmas with a group of friends, all the hectic Christmas shopping and baking done, to enjoy a lazy afternoon of classic Christmas cinema, like Tony Jaa's heartwarming tale of a boy and his elephant, Tom Yum Goong.
Alright, yes, we're being a wee facetious here, but The Protector (as it was known here) offers stunning martial arts sequences, brought to you by the same people who helped choreograph Ong-Bak, as well as elements of District B13 and Casino Royale. Granted the following is a bit like admitting one buys Playboy for the articles, but one of the things that we rather enjoyed about The Protector, was the way it built a theme established in Ong-Bak, namely the modernization of Thailand. While we don't mean to suggest that director Prachya Pinkaew has his finger on the pulse of a Thai generation, but he nevertheless appears to be building up slowly a body of work documenting some of the transition problems Thailand is going through.
In Ong-Bak, who's plot we found rather confusing, these elements are limited to rural vs. urban, with Tony Jaa's character trying to adjust to life in the city after leaving his rural home to find his village's religious relic. Here, "modern" urban life is presented with all of its vices, gambling, drugs, prostitution, and the abandonment of religious values. In The Protector, this theme of decadence is taken one step further, as Jaa's character travels from "pre-modern" Thai village, to "modern" Thai city, and then to the global ("post-modern?) city of Sydeny, Australia featuring a transexual crime lord.
Alright, yes, we're being a wee facetious here, but The Protector (as it was known here) offers stunning martial arts sequences, brought to you by the same people who helped choreograph Ong-Bak, as well as elements of District B13 and Casino Royale. Granted the following is a bit like admitting one buys Playboy for the articles, but one of the things that we rather enjoyed about The Protector, was the way it built a theme established in Ong-Bak, namely the modernization of Thailand. While we don't mean to suggest that director Prachya Pinkaew has his finger on the pulse of a Thai generation, but he nevertheless appears to be building up slowly a body of work documenting some of the transition problems Thailand is going through.
In Ong-Bak, who's plot we found rather confusing, these elements are limited to rural vs. urban, with Tony Jaa's character trying to adjust to life in the city after leaving his rural home to find his village's religious relic. Here, "modern" urban life is presented with all of its vices, gambling, drugs, prostitution, and the abandonment of religious values. In The Protector, this theme of decadence is taken one step further, as Jaa's character travels from "pre-modern" Thai village, to "modern" Thai city, and then to the global ("post-modern?) city of Sydeny, Australia featuring a transexual crime lord.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Nights of the New Republik
We're living in the past while the kids step into a brand new era.
The Republik hosted one of its first events last night, a Junior Boys DJ set.
Our friend Mike Bell has a story about the nightclub sitting at a generational crossroads as he talks to club owner Victor Choy.
The Republik hosted one of its first events last night, a Junior Boys DJ set.
Our friend Mike Bell has a story about the nightclub sitting at a generational crossroads as he talks to club owner Victor Choy.
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