01.30.11
Posted in Phlogiston, Rock 'n' Roll, Stumble and Fail at 10:55 am by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! Uh… never mind.
From the Guardian:
Top executives at Goldman Sachs collected a bumper increase in pay and bonuses last year in defiance of public opinion, and despite a 38% slump in the bank’s profits …
Regulatory filings also reveal the bank’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is in line for an astonishing 233% increase in his basic pay in 2011, which rises from $600,000 to $2m.
Blankfein last year was paid free shares worth nearly $13m, up from $9m in 2009, indicating that City and Wall Street remuneration is rising despite pleas by international regulators and politicians for financiers to show restraint.
From my apartment, in honor of such achievement, the tune Let’s Lynch Lloyd Blankfein.
Intro hacked and chopped from Charlie Rose interview with Mr. Blankfein.
He’s doing God’s work. And how to rhyme “He is so great, he works late on money and capitalism …”
Permalink
01.26.11
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll, Ted Nugent at 10:13 am by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! I heard Ted just landed the role of ‘Howard’ in the remake of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Based upon Ted’s well known misadventure with a chainsaw , DD provides for your entertainment this Yankovic-ization of Cat Scratch Fever — Chainsaw Rally.
“It bit in my foot with a stroke of my hand …”
Intro copped from FZ and the Mothers of Invention.
Keywords: Ted Nugent, Love is Like a Chainsaw
Permalink
01.19.11
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Phlogiston, Rock 'n' Roll at 8:31 am by George Smith
From yesterday:
Long ago I used to be a rock critic. Then I was downsized, expired for oldness and not having the same tastes and attitudes as the more mentally limber.
Proven by science, in this data crunch done every year by one of the contributors to the Voice’s Pazz & Jop Critics poll.
Conformity with the tastes of others is defined by “centricity” here.
DD ranks 706 out of 711. Readers will notice that contributors can share rankings, so the total in the list doesn’t equal the full number of music critics contributing to the music poll.
Joe McCombs achieved a perfect zero “centricity.” Someone named Julia Simon is the most conformist in the lot.
The 2010 Pazz & Jop statistical analysis, in its entirety, is here.
Permalink
01.18.11
Posted in Phlogiston, Rock 'n' Roll at 4:35 pm by George Smith
Long ago I used to be a rock critic. Then I was downsized, expired for oldness and not having the same tastes and attitudes as the more mentally limber.
However, I still get to vote in the annual Pazz & Jop Village Voice Critic’s Poll.
My list is here.
Of course, technically, I had a lot more favorites in the player this year. But you can read about them on Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2011.
Where the discriminating past expiry hard rock fans go for all their tips.
Permalink
12.21.10
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 9:39 am by George Smith
Almost twenty years, I think. From Artscape in Pasadena, on Dec. 12.
Of course, the original is in color and the big Hiwatt is cropped out. But I like the old newspaper tint. It fits.
Permalink
12.20.10
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 12:45 pm by George Smith
For the recent gig at Artscape in Pasadena, DD redid “Highway Patrol” from the first Highway Kings album, back in 1985.
Highway Patrol!
And in the immortal worlds of Broderick Crawford from the original series, Highway Patrol: “See the Highway Patrol again in action next week. Until then, remember, leave blood at the Red Cross, not on the highway.”
Permalink
12.14.10
Posted in Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 11:37 am by George Smith
Having riffed on the fact that iconic rock music instrument makers in the US have turned themselves into artisan businesses for the plutonomy, news of Fender’s gold leaf guitar for Prince fits right in.
From today’s paper edition of the LA Times (no link):
“Prince told his friends at Fender that he’d had a dream in which he played a gold Stratocaster … he wanted something special and asked if such a guitar could be made. Fender execs turned to their Custom Shop in Corona, where master guitar builders specialize in delivering unique instruments, for superstar musicians, as well as bankers, lawyers, employees of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street men who helicopter in from the Hamptons amateurs with the desire and the money for something out of the ordinary.
In this case, Fender execs gave the assignment to Yurly Shishlov, a Russian born guitar maker. Coincidentally, only about a week earlier during a tour of the Custom Shop, Fender execs stopped at Shishkov’s work station and asked about the gold-leafing process he was working on for another customer’s order.
For the plutocrats, there’s gold-leafing. For everyone else, including you, there’s China.
The rest of the article is filled with twaddle about how allegedly difficult it is to exquisitely finish a Stratocaster in gilt.
The Times reports Prince’s gold-leafed Strat will be played on his East Coast tour, then auctioned off for charity.
That’s nice.
Permalink
12.09.10
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 1:20 pm by George Smith
DD and friends will be holding an early holiday party on Sunday, starting at 5 pm. On the outside chance that a few readers are actually near and interested in attending, here are the details.
At Artscape, we’ll have drinks and eats. Plus rock ‘n’ roll by yours truly. It’s free.
Directions are here.
Some music, tunes I’ll actually be playing, here.
The latest video is here.
Permalink
12.07.10
Posted in Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 4:33 pm by George Smith
Continuing with the posts on how US electric guitar manufacturers outsourced their production for middle class pieces for the sake of concentrating on custom business for the non-playing wealthy, I have a few items of interest.
The first dates from a year before the economic crash. At the time you could still read stories on what a jolly good business it was to be able to buy Chinese-made US branded guitars displayed in cardboard boxes at Target, Wal-Mart and BestBuy.
From the Newhouse News Service, in 2007:
“Rock has gotten so mainstream that you see or hear guitars in just about every movie and commercial,” says Dana Clarke, manager of Guitar Center in North Olmsted, Ohio. “Combine that with guitars being made overseas, cheaply, and it’s no surprise you see them everywhere.”
Everywhere, as in the aisles of Target, Wal-Mart, even Costco. They come packaged as “rock kits.” In brown boxes. Stacked up like stairways to heaven.
And they’re cheap.
The outsourcing of production to Mexico, China and South Korea has dropped electric-guitar prices to levels that have made them competitive with electronic toys and gadgets.
One penny shy of $70 for an ax at Target. Less than $87 for a “guitar pack,” amp included, at Wal-Mart.
At the same time, prices skyrocketed for domestically-made guitars, made for the collector crowd:
[The Guitar Center man] has witnessed an explosion in price appreciation, even for unloved guitars that would hang on the wall for months.
“In the 1980s and ’90s, guitars became a collectible with a Blue Book value,” he says.
Guitar Center, the article went on to state, “pioneered the guitar-for-masses concept.”
Fender’s new CEO, Larry Thomas, was formerly chairman of Guitar Center.
And while things were heady in 2007, Guitar Center is now stuck in the doldrums. When the middle class was beggared by the economic crash, GC suffered.
“Moody’s downgrades Guitar Center debt,” reads a news story from November 12:
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded private equity-backed Guitar Center Holdings Inc., parent of Guitar Center, to Caa2, from Caa1, citing increased interest expenses when it begins paying down its senior unsecured pay-in-kind notes starting in April 2011. Until last month the business, owned by Boston buyout firm Bain Capital LLC, has deferred paying cash interest on its $375 million senior notes held at the holding company level. Moody’s said Friday, Nov. 12, that, while sales have improved, its earnings are not expected to recover sufficiently during 2011 to fully cover its interest expense through internally generated cash flow. The agency said the Westlake Village, Calif.-based music store chain, the largest in the U.S., “could voluntarily pursue a debt restructuring or an amendment to its debt facilities” at terms it would deem to be equivalent to a default.
Caa2 means holdings are of “poor standing.” Guitar Center, in other words, is a substantially risky business not far away from falling into default.
Fender, for its part, has had a great deal of trouble controlling who uses its designs. It’s a consequence of other companies fabricating them uncontested and the company’s own mass outsourcing to China. The temptation to capitalize on the brand name and look is very strong.
Paradoxically, in a news item from the Arizona Republic in 2009 (Fender is based in Scottsdale), one reads:
Fender filed for the trademarks as part of its global strategy to fight counterfeiters and protect its intellectual property, he said. The problem has gotten worse as copycats have guitars made in China, ship them to warehouses in the United States and sell them over the Internet …
Over the years, again prior to the current troubles, domestic guitar production as investment pieces for the wealthy was generally hailed.
For example, this from 2003, on a guitar show:
Things took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s as Boomers with increasing disposable income started buying the axes preferred by their musical heroes. Most of those were built in the 1950s and 1960s, the first two decades for mass-marketed electrics. Suddenly, certain models and years, mostly Gibsons and Fenders, started commanding seriously crazy cash — $10,000-$40,000.
And this news piece from 2006 on Gibson’s peddling of premium models to the stupid rich in Japan is also revealing:
Gibson makes a range of guitars solely for the Japanese market, including rocker Tak Matsumoto’s signature Les Paul in such special guitar shades as canary yellow.
“It is so cool,” says Yuki Yamaguchi, a 19-year-old student who bought a $5,400 Tak Matsumoto Gibson on three-month credit. “I open the case and look at in and go: ‘It is so cool.'”
Amateur musicians such as Yamaguchi, who acknowledges he hardly has time to play his guitar and spends more time admiring it, may be just buying a dream.
But they make for serious business.
“Some of these consumers own five, 10, 20 guitars because they’re collecting … They’re collecting for the love of collecting,” a Gibson sales exec told the newspaper reporter.
“The Japan-only Les Paul with the beat-up look costs about $3,000 …” added the piece.
Ironically, flooding in Tennessee stalled Gibson’s domestic production for a couple months earlier this year.
The Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean, reported on the matter:
Widespread flooding two weeks ago pushed many of the city’s rivers and streams well beyond their banks, including Mill Creek, which flows just behind Gibson USA’s sprawling factory complex near Nashville International Airport.
The plant churns out 2,500 guitars a day. It is one of several mass production facilities the company operates around the globe – including in Memphis; Bozeman, Mont.; and at least five factories in China.
Gibson guitars manufactured in the flooded plant cost between $700 and $3000. Paradoxically, the custom shop — which produces Gibson’s really idiotically priced pieces for the plutonomy or Nashville recording artist with a label deal — was not impacted.
Permalink
12.06.10
Posted in Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 1:36 pm by George Smith
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, DD and drummer went to Guitar Center to pick up some things in preparation for the big show this Sunday.
It rammed home again how the US business model has converted to plutonomy.
And not for the betterment of any regular workers like the poor guys and gals jobbing the registers for minimal payment at Guitar Center.
At Guitar Center you have a place where everything for sale in it was either invented by Americans or the British. All of the history in hardware of classic rock is on sale. The sound heard round the world.
And virtually everything classic rock in the front of the store — all the stuff being peddled for the holiday season and not behind the glass doors in the back of the place, or hung up so high on the wall you have to get a sales associate to look at it … is made in China.
Not just a few things. Everything.
Everybody took their manufacturing business to China. US firms mercilessly downsized their labor, in the process transforming domestic ‘factories,’ what’s left of them, to small artisan shops making guitars and amplifiers for bankers, lawyers, doctors and other rich people who want to hang Stratocasters and Les Pauls on their walls as investments/sops to impress repulsive friends.
So the real American-made stuff is back in the glass room. Where the more senior employees can carefully watch over it and the unwealthy riffraff discouraged from handling the merchandise.
This, of course, includes most of the employees, too. Since their wages have been kept stagnant they can neither afford the US stuff nor the rate of interest on any credit that might be extended to them.
Like so many businesses, Guitar Center has collaborated in the beggaring of the American consumer. As a consequence, like the rock instrumentation industry, it has split in half — one section for catering to the wealthy, the other — where the vast weight of materiele is — to the vanishing middle class. And, of course, parents looking for something for junior’s annoying hobby this holiday.
One of these front of the store great gift idea, seen right by the cash register, on Black Friday was the Made-In-China authentic “Piedmont Blues” harmonica set!
Twenty bucks for seven harmonicas and a case, shipped from China.
Here’s a rhetorical question.
Since the amount of energy needed to make harmonicas is the same wherever you are in the world, due to the laws of thermodynamics as they apply to manufacturing, what possible benefit is their to make them in China — in terms of a green policy — and then to mass ship them across the Pacific? As opposed to making them closer to home?
As said — rhetorical.
The Piedmont Blues set is ostensibly a Hohner product, the famous German company, also forced to make a relatively cheap instrument even cheaper.
You can, for instance, have Hohner Pro or Marine Band harps which were always acceptable and are still relatively inexpensive
Or if you’ve really been beggared, as so many have, there’s the Piedmont Blues set. You could give up two or three lunches in a week for it.
I mentioned the name “Piedmont Blues” as applied to a Chinese-made instrument with my friend Don, over an afternoon of football the same weekend.
We both had a good laugh. Almost as good as the one reserved for the ludicrous nature of the old Mojo Deluxe Blues & Rock Harmonica. Which was probably made in the same plant and with the same machines as the ‘Piedmont Blues’ harmonicas.
Replaced by the Piedmont Blues.
Over the weekend, the absentee president hailed a trade deal with South Korea.
South Korea is where the American rock instrument industry took some manufacturing for items somewhat less pricey that its domestically made product. It filled the niche Japan used to about twenty years ago, before labor in that country made its rock instruments into premium buys.
It is where DD’s Epiphone Les Paul Ultra II was made, a mid-priced instrument which I would have been able to buy, at some point, in the US when I was in the Highway Kings. Now most Gibsons are prohibitively expensive artisan plutonomy pieces.
So jobs were outsourced to South Korea. Whose people, incidentally, now enjoy a better tech infrastructure than the United States.
Krugman assessed Obama’s treaty this way:
One thing I’m hearing, now that all hope of useful fiscal policy is gone, is the idea that trade can be a driver of recovery — that stuff like the South Korea trade agreement can serve as a form of macro policy.
Um, no.
Our macro problem is insufficient spending on U.S.-produced goods and services; this spending is defined by
Y = C + I + G + X – M
where C is consumer spending, I investment spending, G government purchases of goods and services, X is exports, and M is imports. Trade agreements raise X — but they also lead to higher M. On average, they’re a wash.
“And there’s even an argument to the effect that increased trade reduces US employment in the current context; if the jobs we gain are higher value-added per worker, while those we lose are lower value-added, and spending stays the same, that means the same GDP but fewer jobs,” he adds.
South Korea, as it pertained to Epiphone, the low-price brand Gibson subsidiary, meant lost jobs in the US. For less value added jobs at places like Guitar Center here.
Since then, Gibson took a lot of Epiphone manufacturing to China downsizing South Korean labor for cheaper sources. Well, now some of them have probably been working at the national equivalent of Guitar Center, too.
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »