Community Broadcast Centre

Jam Night Takeover

(Cross-posted to The Hallway)

So last night Sabrina and I dropped by the Jam night at Piazza Joe's just because there was no cover and we're cheapskates, turns out it was the most hopping place in town. The regulars were there for the most part, people I don't know and e.co who has been pestering me to start playing guitar more seriously again who arrived a little later.

They started off with the usual rock stuff, sounding pretty good but without a bass player to keep things rounded up the guitarists were getting a little all over the place, and the drummer seemed a little timid, following the guitarists rather than setting the beat himself and making them stick to it rather than vice versa.

Then the metalheads arrived. They came from Summerside, the apparent hotbed of metal and hardcore punk on the Island. They had the requisite jeans and black metal T-Shirts (the colour, not the subgenre) and they had their gear which was piled into a big old Caddy that they drove to Charlottetown just to play at the jam night.

“Is this as much distortion as I can get?”

Usually metal and jamming are like oil and water. You can bring a stopwatch to a Metallica concert and no one would question the idea that playing a song exactly as it is written is the standard by which most metal performances are judged. Rock and jazz jamming is a completely different philosophy, where players are expected to come up with something new on the fly, and if something sounds practiced it can even sound out of place.

This gave the night a very interesting contrast, where the regulars would jam for a while, then the metalheads would come up and play “Search and Destroy” or “Fade to Black” or “Cowboys from Hell”, which got a great reaction from the crowd, (even Sabrina turns out to have some closet metalhead leanings. Her quote of the night: “My cold's getting better, but perhaps I should have sung along to ‘Master of Puppets’ quite so loudly”)

The players started mixing together, and did a pretty good version of “All Along the Watchtower” with more distorion on the lead part than one normally hears. Then they start into “Crazy Train” and one of the regulars suddenly starts playing all the lead parts, including the flashy bridges and the solo, as good a facsimile of Randy Rhoads I've heard since my guitar teacher who would play old Ozzy and try to explain to me that this solo was ‘really really important’.

The metal fan closet doors were being thrown open that night, to be sure. I'm definitely making time to start playing guitar more seriously again. I was never one to want to play in front of people, I only did it a couple of times and then it was doing classical guitar stuff, but remembering how much fun it is to just play around and find interesting little patterns and riffs and go with the flow of playing with other people really gave me a charge.

Pearl Jam & Wintersleep Concert in St. John's

People seemed to enjoy my review of the Rolling Stones show in Moncton, so here's a link to the post I made after seeing Pearl Jam in St. John's.  Short version: Stoneytastic.

Link: The Hallway: This is a post about a superhero named Stoney.

The Artist's Way

Stealing from a well-known book title "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, I am drawn to the idea of community for the artist(s). One of the ways of the artist, according to my Farmer's Market friends, is the relationship and connections made because of the CBC with the entire country and all of her culture.

I sat, today, with Hugh MacDonald, David Helwig, Judy Gaudet and Joe Sherman, all writers/poets/authors, all hungry and growing impatient with the lack of, what they call their 'lifeline', that being the CBC. They expressed their deep concerns about the future of the CBC and their disappointment with how the negotiations seem to be going. The CBC is a huge part of the 'way' they are included in our vast cultural Canadian community.

When I spoke of how I was already a contracted CBC-er and how I prefer to remain that way, we talked about how I couldn't do my job if it weren't for the non-contracted employees of CBC. This is so true. And this, I think, is at the crux of the issues the management and union are now facing at the negotiation table.

Regardless of CBC's bottom-line, the artist's bottom line has never been about money. It's about the love of what they do and how they share it with those who would listen, read, watch, partake. The 'artist's way' equation seems to be missing from what we are witnessing right now during this lock-out. How much of the talk around the negotiating table is about culture? How much is about saving money? Do we know, anymore, what the mandate of the CBC is? (..."actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression").

It would be a shame if the 'artist's way' became the way of the past.

Long Enough

This from Newfoundland, crossposted at Our Public Airwaves and iridescent spoke:

ST. JOHN'S TELEGRAM
September 10, 2005
EDITORIAL

Some things reach the end of their useful life, run out and get thrown away. The manufacturers of the Bic pen, for example, announced on Thursday that they had manufactured their 100-billionth pen, meaning - when you look at the manufacturing announcement in a different light - an unimaginably-huge pile of thrown-away pens somewhere.

Other things are worth keeping, even though their flaws may be legion. Everyone probably has a battered old kitchen utensil somewhere - a vegetable peeler held together with string, an old pepper mill that perpetually falls off the stove - that just seems to work better than any replacement version you try out.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation certainly fits that mould. With the current CBC lockout, the usual critics are coming out of the woodwork to ask that perpetual CBC question - is the broadcaster worth its huge federal subsidies and, even more, is it worth those subsidies when it is competing so thoroughly with private broadcasters?

As usual, there are other broadcasters who focus on the subsidy and simply say the CBC shouldn't get public money, conveniently forgetting the millions of dollars private broadcasters take out of federal television production funds.

It is an easy target because the subsidy is right there in front of your eyes — not as visible, say, as million-dollar funding from federal business development funds, or free Crown land and tax breaks from provincial governments, or even the defacto government support of EI payments to workers in companies that specialize in seasonal industries.

But the CBC is a more complicated equation than that.

Is the CBC sometimes parochial, occasionally stodgy, and downright unable to decide whether it is a private business or a public broadcaster? Yes.

Are their journalists paid substantially more than their private-sector counterparts in this province? And do they sometimes look down their noses at those private-sector compatriots? Yes, again.

Does the CBC - even locally - have its own particular and sometimes frustratingly aggravating self-righteousness? Absolutely.

But can anybody in their right mind honestly argue that we'd be better off without it? Absolutely not. And especially not in Newfoundland and Labrador.

For weeks now, there has been a decided dearth of local broadcast news and current affairs. While they might not be everyone's cup of tea, CBC radio and television have a crucial place in the broadcasting spectrum, especially in as far as their responsibilities as public broadcasters give them the opportunity and ability to broach topics that private broad-casters have long since quietly given up on.

The continuing lockout is damaging our ability to hear one part of a range of voices and opinions. And the damage could be permanent.

Monday was to have seen the relaunch of a one-hour supper hour Newfoundland and Labrador newscast on CBC Television, an effort to reverse the mistake that cost the province Here and Now.

Now, you have to wonder if that relaunch will even happen.

The CBC isn't perfect, and it never will be. They are not the be-all and end-all of the news business. But they are an important voice in the province, and one we can't afford to have silenced. No matter what anyone says, the CBC is not disposable media.

This lockout has gone on long enough.

© The Telegram

Vorcza Trio in Charlottetown on Wednesday

If you enjoy innovative, modern jazz music, especially with a touch of funk thrown in, don't miss this show. I don't normally post about upcoming shows on here since there are other places you can get that info, like The Buzz, but this deserves special attention.

Post by Dave Mayne on PEILocals: Link.

One of the best bands to hit the Island this year will be at Myron's Wednesday September 14th. Vorcza, a jazz fusion trio from Burlington, Vermont, consists of Gabe Jarrett (piano virtuoso Keith Jarrett's son) on drums, Robinson Morse on electric and upright basses and Ray Paczkowski on Hammond, Rhodes and vocals. Paczkowski has toured with Trey Anastasio (Phish) and Dave Matthews and Friends while not promoting his trio. Last year they played Babas on a Tuesday and by Friday he was in Austin City with Trey. Don't miss this show, this is HUGE talent and they'll be sure to blow you away. La Funk 6 opens. Showtime 10pm.

When: Wednesday, Sept. 14th - 10pm
Where: Myron's on Kent St. in Charlottetown

Link: vorcza.com.

Sample Songs from their website: (audio/mp3)
Elements
Three Car Church
Friendly Galaxy

Nancy Russell Lockout Blog

Nancy is such a thoughtful journalist and a wonderful person - here is the link to her blog - where her compassion and humanity shine out

Canada and Sharia

The controversy is building.

Culturally and legally, under most interpretations of sharia, men have far more rights than women when it comes to inheritance, divorce, child-support payments and child-custody issues.

Canadian legal safeguards and training for imams cannot change this, she says, pointing out that her imam doesn't speak fluent English and has little knowledge of Canadian Charter rights.

For me the issue is simple. The very essence of Canada, of being recognized as a Canadian whatever you look like and whatever your faith is that we share a core common culture. That is all we have. We are not an ethnic tribe. We are all minorities - even WASPs like me.

So what does share a common culture mean? It means to share the Canadian values of tolerance, that might suggest that we accept Sharia, but that we also share the foundation of our values - a legal system that has been developed in response to these values.

This makes it clear for me - our legal system trumps all others. There cannot be any separate system. In particular there cannot be one that essentially violates the values of the Canadian system. Sharia does that.

Rolling Stones - The Backstage View

My pal Cynthia was the dressing room runner for the Stones at their recent smash it show in Moncton
Here is the link to here 3 part diary of what it was like

Meet Beth, the manager of the DR

I arrived on site and reported to Beth, the queen of the RS Compound, my headquarters for the next couple of days. Beth is part of the RS touring company, she's from Tennessee, and she's been around the block a few times. One of the first things she said to me was, "So is there lie a village nearby?" It's odd to think that someone who shares the same continent with us, can actually not know anything about where they are. It was a very odd feeling, almost like she wanted me to know that she thought this place, and I, for that matter, were invisible.

Meet the guys!

Keith Richards has plugged his guitar in and is singing in his dressing room. It's fantastic really. One of the back-up singers is sitting across from me singing harmony. Look who just walked through the door...Mick Jagger! Cool. He looks great! Blue shirt long hair...holding a video camera. He has a tremendously sculpted face...and ass. They've all gone into the WORKOUT room to chat. Together they might weigh 600 pounds...soaking wet.)

See Cyn's amazing picture show

More on the New Media Nexus

The staff of the Times Picayune, the local New Orleans paper - had to evacuate their building. But they still kept up their business of reporting and are relying mainly on a web based version.

Here is the link

As well as reporting they are also becoming the local Nexus - they have set up a template for Forums where for instance students and staff of schools can contact each other. By offering a template, they are enabling a wide variety of forums to emerge that an editor may have missed. But by being the Paper of Record for NOLA, they create the nexus where all are one click away from the information that they can offer or seek.

This is a powerful example of how the old and the new media can come together as a Nexus.

The gripping article about this follows in full as the Times will not keep their links

NPR - A Nexus that links the old and the new media????

This week NPR launched a large Podcast Directory

What we are seeing is the idea of the Long Tail being enacted in Radio. Until now, radio was confined to the "shelf space" of the dial. Now there is there is no limit to the amount of content. Now the more niche the better. Hugh's ideas of Bespoke Radio come into play. With NPR's "Brand" it will be able to become not only a source of great national radio but also will be able to access the "citizen journalist" resources of its over 780 local communities.

Imagine bloggers in Baton Rouge feeding into NPR's local stations there - imagine how this local feed now branded by NPR will work not only nationally but also globally?

Imagine NPR's high quality national newsroom becoming the nexus for a world of bloggers who are on the ground say in Paris today where there has been another fatal fire in an immigrant packed apartment building. Add a feed from blogger in Paris following the hospitalization of President Chirac?

Now NPR has a global news gathering organization that could never be replicated by any conventional broadcaster. The cost? Not a penny more than what it is doing.

Imagine NPR and the BBC and CBC joining forces in the Nexus work? Now the voice of the public can not only match the CNN and the Fox voice but overwhelming beat it in immediacy and quality.

It is now easy to download and to upload a Podcast. What will be increasingly hard as millions of citizen journalists emerge is to make sense of they say. If NPR, CBC and BBC increasingly saw themselves as the Nexus - they would find their new role.

What might happen to the world? Power would be taken from the commercial media. A more inclusive voice and hence a more inclusive culture would emerge.

Rolling Stones Concert Review

Since my dad was the one who got the free tickets to see the stones from a fisherman friend of his, we ended up going just the two of us. I didn't find out until just before the Stones came on that my dad had never been to a rock concert in his life. So of course starting with the biggest one that will ever happen around here makes all kinds of logical sense.

My review of the Stones concert at Magnetic Hill is inside.

Voice - Values - Our country - Radio & TV

Most countries are founded on a tribal reality. Native French people who live in France are held together by a powerful ethnicity. Native Russian feel the same way as do native Italians. Thousands of years of consanguinity, music, literature and history binds the tribe.

But there are few new types of country, like Canada that have only a small tribal base and have become nations because of a set of ideas and values. These new countries have to work very hard to create the belief that all Canadians are Canadians and not just my tribal bit of Canada. If we fail in this supreme national task, we risk the events that we witness in New Orleans. If your media supports the idea of the "other" then anything can happen and there is no future for a nation of differences.

The central mission of a national government in a nation made up of immigrants is to work to ensure that all believe that they are citizens of equal worth who can expect the support of others who look different to them but who also call themselves nationals of that country. How do you do this?

In these immigrant nations, the national values are established by the main norming process of all communities - conversation and story telling. A national set of values is set mainly by a national broadcaster. They tell our national and local stories. They tell us about the world through our eyes. Listen to how a family talk. You will hear what they value by their conversation. The conversation forms the values of the family. So when you travel to a new country, your observation of the local media tells you too what this place values.

So the values of the media are a critical force in the values of a nation or any community. You can lose this glue if you miss this point.

For generations in the US the national news departments acted differently from the rest of the network. They saw themselves as the temple of truth. Americans could rely on CBS, NBC and ABC to make a distinction between news and entertainment and between news and the profits of the network. In the heyday, news was indeed a public service. It does not take a sensitive observer to note that this is no longer the case. Powerful centrifugal forces are now in motion. Why?

News is increasingly trivialized and has become entertainment. Worse, Fox increasingly resembles a tribal network where only a ultra right wing view is tolerated. So the America story becomes the OJ trial or Bill O'Reilly's view of the world. This does not have a trivial effect on the total values of America. The commitment to the state to the citizen is falling as is the commitment of the state to all Americans.

So what has this got to do with the CBC? The CBC is a vital part of the making of Canada as a nation that is all about minorities and that accepts difference as its central norm. By 2017, whites will themselves be a minority in Toronto. In a nation where all need the protection of the state, who will host the conversation that we need to thrive in such an environment?

I worry that our politicians have missed this as has the leadership of the CBC.

If I was the president of CBC, I would work tirelessly to strip out the bureaucracy, but I would also see the strengthening of its role as the voice of our country as my life's work.

I sense that the PMO's office wish that CBC would become more CTV. Mr Harper would prefer Fox. The current leadership certainly want to see CBC cast as a business. If we get Fox, what will Canada be like? Can we survive this type of values?

In a large and diverse country such as Canada, the national government has to pull the right nation building levers or we risk failure. They have to invest in our connective tissue - roads, rails, the air, the internet and the national media are not private goods. They are what makes us a nation. The CBC needs reform but it does not need to be made irrelevant.

Shelagh Back on the Air - Podcasting

Here is her blog site - she plans to travel in a van and meet the stories

Here is her first podcast from Kelowna

Here is her 25th anniversary broadcast back in Vancouver

Katrina - No CBC

Well - it happened - one of the biggest unfolding stories of our time maybe. This feels awfully like the weeks after the murder of the Arch Duke in Sarajevo in the fall of 1914 - an event that sets in train huge forces. My own feeling, is that we are indeed living in one of those turing points in history where having a broad perspective will be vital. And where is our Canadian perspective? Where is the meaning making of all of this for us?

Pathetic! Shame on those at the CBC who are failing to offer anything more than a cursory coverage.

Here is NPR's excellent blog site full of material if you want a comprehensive alternative to what the CBC could have been doing

My Podcast and site

 

I have a personal podcast now.

 Sonia Brock's Audio Biography

and a supporting webpage

http://www.vex.net/%7Ejyd/Podcasts/index.html

I have lived a long and varied life and this  is my Audio Biography

New Orleans and Blogging

As with the Tsunami - I bet that we will find that the best information comes from the sphere
Once again Wikipedia is doing great work - scroll down the page to find the current news

Katrina - Billions of Dollars of Damage and No Plan

Katrina was reported to be cataclysmic. People were predicting the worse. Were the plans good enough? I'm struck by a number of things I have observed - from a distance.

People are waiting to be rescued in their homes, on roof tops, and in trees, but there does not seem to be a lot of help. I know the reporting is sketchy due to the logistics, but I have not seen or heard of any massive rescue efforts. Where are the navy, marines, air force, and army? Why are people being rescued by fishing boats? Why do the fish and wildlife folks seem to be in charge of rescue efforts? Bush promised federal assistance , did he mean from the fish and wildlife department? Why is the media not asking why there is not a massive deployment of the American military or from military other nations as there was in the response to the Asian tsunami? So far the US response to this billion dollar disaster is worse than Sri Lanka's several months ago. No plan whatsoever.

Of course, we all suspect why, but the media is being complacent in not bringing the lack of federal resources to light. Canadians will remember that despite our small military they were mobilized to help Toronto dig out of a snow storm. Americans should be very concerned about the rescue effort - to date.

The American Red Cross has mobilized, in the largest effort ever, according to reports. As has the Environmental Protection Agency (I don't think they are going to rescue anybody), the Coast Guard (that will help), The Agriculture Department and Food and Nutrition Service (among other things they will be handing out food stamps), and the Defense Department dispatched coordinators. Americans should expect more. Where is the aircraft carrier, the helicopters, the marines, the amphibious vehicles....

Couple of other things that strike me. Why was the power and gas not turned off in preparation for this billion dollar tragedy? Was there no plan? And finally, following the tsunami in Asia, photos and videos from citizens were making there way onto TV and flickr.com. Even after Emily, I could go to Flickr and see pics of the devastation in Mexico the very next day. As of today there are only pictures of the Katrina damage from Florida. I wonder if this is an indicator of the great number of people fighting for their lives and not being rescued. I hope it is because nobody in the deep south blogs or uses flickr, but I have got the sense that people are in grave situations and continue to be today.

I hope that there are some spare military resources, people, boats, etc. that are arriving on the scene today to start rescuing people. Then in a couple of weeks, while most will be focusing on death counts and insurance damage. Americans and their media should start asking some hard questions about where the plan was, where the rescue effort was, where were all the military personnel and resources to help feed, save, and comfort Americans when they needed help.

They may also want to ask why this happened in the first place. Is there wisdom in building a city in a fish bowl? Why does the federal government not support action on global warming? I would assume that if everybody knows there will be billions of dollars and hundreds of lives lost in a hurricane (remember the hurricane season is not over) why not spend several billion fixing the pumps and levees that did need to be improved. The money will somehow be there to rebuild after the disaster, but executing a plan to prevent it..... Billions of Dollars Without a Plan.

CBC lowering the grade?

The following is a snipit from my podcast at http://homepage.mac.com/tjmacsindustries. I was looking at how the strike at the CBC can only really lower the overall quality of the CBC both culturally and financially.

- CBC strike. How will if effect our Canadian-ness?
I'm confused about the strike. On one hand it offers new freelancers to get a crack at the steady big-time(ish). This is great on one hand. However as the cycle continues I start to wonder what will happen next time around. The new steady workers, who used to be freelancers are just as able to get caught up in a similar position as the current staffers at the CBC find themselves in. However they might see this as inevitable, and therefore let it go. Chalk it up to a learning experience and treat it a little more like how they used to treat their freelance work of days gone by. After all, they are now new freelancers again. What does this do to the CBC in general? Does it give the bottom liners a true sense of security? They can always hire more freelancers and throw them away. What about the CBC's competitiveness? It seems to be the root of all evil in this strike. The CBC needs to make money to survive, as does CTV and Global et al. but they are already cutting cultural corners that the CBC would never be able to do with it's current mandate...Staying Canadian. It seems like in order to compete with other Canadian networks, they have to loose a little of what it is to be Canadian and become a little more like our neighbours to the south and show their content as well as adopt their business practices. I'm not saying that I would want, or like, this to happen. I'm just saying shame on you CBC, for considering it!
Agree? tjmacsindustries@gmail.com Disagree? tjmacsindustries@gmail.com

Is CBC Canada?

I caught Peter's thoughts and this is how I reacted.

I am reading The Diamond Cutter right now. A remarkable book that offers a Buddhist perspective on business and life. A review follows.

Central to the philosophy is that we create not only our own reality but the universe. Our little thoughts, like acorns, grow into Oak trees. Nothing happens to us - we draw it to us. How we feel about ourselves and life is our life. Everything and every person is neutral. We invest in them and in things and events our meaning.

So

If no CBC - no public thoughts about Canada - do we have a country?

CBC Unplugged 4 on the iTunes Hit parade

This is a thumbnail - click to see larger version

So if CBC Unplugged is #4 in Canada in week one - where would a proper service be? Come on guys go for it!