"Creating People On Whom Nothing is Lost" - An educator and writer in Colorado offers insight and perspective on education, parenting, politics, pop culture, and contemporary American life.
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My favorite Christmas song is a rather unorthodox one in that it's not one of the traditional songs like "White Christmas" or "Carol of the Bells." It is, instead, an alternative song from a favorite indie rock band -- "2000 Miles" from Chrissie Hynde & The Pretenders.
There is just something so poignantly beautiful about this Christmas song in its sense of pathos -- longing and nostalgia and warmth and hope. The story is actually quite beautiful -- it's a bit of an elegy for a lost friend. And, it reminds me of that, old friends. Whenever I hear this song, it takes me back to working in restaurant in my small town in middle America around the holidays. This was one of several alternative Christmas songs on the mix tape, and I have such memories of cleaning up at closing time and listening to these songs. Anyone who has worked in restaurants knows what I mean.
A few other favorites from that time that always move me, sometimes to nostalgic smiles and even a bit of misty eyes included "Colorado Christmas" from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, "Do They Know It's Christmas" from Band Aid, "Christmastime" by Smashing Pumpkins, and a beautiful play on an old classic, "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" by David Bowie & Bing Crosby.
Well, it's time for the annual debate about what makes a movie a Christmas movie. The quintessential discussion for the past twenty years or so is whether Die Hard, the classic 1988 Bruce Willis thriller, is a Christmas movie. But I won't bother with that one -- I have another suggestion. Five years ago, I posted my own review about a classic Gen X Christmas movie. Less Than Zero, the 1987 Brat Pack film based on the novel from Bret Easton Ellis, is a perfect example of a non-traditional Christmas movie. Here are my thoughts:
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Does anyone really care?
What defines the “Christmas movie”? Does it have to be a feel good story like It’s a Wonderful Life, or can it just take place during the holiday season like Die Hard. Does it have to represent the holiday cheer featured in Hallmark commercials, or can it expose the cold, distant reality of authentic families during less-than-warm Christmas parties?
Thirty years ago, Clay came back to LA for Christmas, and the holiday movie was never the same. For Generation X, a group of people raised on disappointment, the cinematic version of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Less Than Zero is a true Christmas movie exposing the hollow superficial excess of the holiday season and specifically the 1980s. A visually stunning film from cinematographer Edward Lachman, the movie captures and spotlights all the glitz of the holiday season, especially in Beverly Hills, while not looking away from the vacuous lack of substance behind the style, the holiday, and the state of the American family. Director Marek Kanievska created a haunting music video of a Christmas movie with film noir elements amidst the bright lights of holiday decorations.
I've always been a nonfiction geek, and the type of research-based commercial nonfiction that took off in the early 2000s with books like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things can Make a Big Difference has always been like catnip to me. Right at the turn of the century, it seemed like there was a hunger for "ideas" and accessible writing about the latest developments in science, psychology, economics, and other traditionally "dry" reading. Writers like Gladwell, Michael Lewis, Daniel Pink, and more began churning out book length explorations of the kind of stories that used to make great airplane reading in magazines like Wired, Fast Company, Forbes, The Atlantic and countless which took off during the 90s, a true heyday of magazine writing.
I always called the writers of these books the "Ideas Gurus," and their schtick was finding obscure information in research studies and distilling it down into accessible chunks of narrative-based nonfiction writing. And at that time, as the industry grew and publishers where looking for the next big nonfiction bestseller, scholars and academics and researchers who would have never considered themselves best-selling others, much less media personalities, began to crank out some seriously cool books. Stephen Dunbar and Steven Levitt's Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything immediately springs to mind.
Op-ed commentary writers like David Books also got into the game, making a nice living with books like Friedman's must-read blockbuster The World is Flat and Brooks' more niche but quirky cool Bobos in Paradise. And the one writer, other than Gladwell, who has ridden the commercial nonfiction wave to its greatest heights is Michael Lewis, the Princeton-educated English major who became a bond trader and then transitioned to a writing career with the Wall Street tell-all Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. Several of Lewis' books have gone on to Hollywood stardom as well -- notably, The Blind Side, Moneyball, and The Big Short.
So, I shared my blog post about "Bandcamp not Spotify" with some friends who are in high finance and venture capital. And one of them really didn't like it. He is convinced that streaming is much better for all involved parties, especially him as a consumer who gets a nearly endless supply of practically free music on Spotify and AppleMusic. He is basically missing my point that if, as a fan, you really like a singer or band's music, you should support them more authentically by purchasing a digital product or even the physical form, for which the artist receives a much better payout.
Being a finance guy, and also someone under the age of forty, he can't understand why I can't agree that it's much better for the artist to have endless streaming fees for perpetuity, as opposed to the consumer buying the LP one time for $15.99 or the song (via the iTunes/Bandcamp model) for $0.99. He gets into all sort of finance theory terms talking about projection and .... blah, blah, blah. And I am unable to convince him that a band would rather have tens of thousands of fans buy a product and give them a large sum up front than to depend on millions of fans occasionally streaming the song for $0.0028 a listen over several years.
By the way, the artists and musicians I've heard from agree with my take, even as they acknowledge the reality of streaming and concede its benefits -- specifically the extended reach and exposure that wasn't possible before streaming. That said, we all know that while a million streams sounds impressive, that only earns the artist about $3000, and that would be divided among all band members. But, if a million or tens of millions of streams were instead the sale of ten to fifty thousand albums or CDs or digital downloads at $15, the artist would be earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The point is that the finance guys are not creators or producers. They don't make anything, so they can't really appreciate the value of the labor. And they like getting stuff cheap. And my original point is that if you really like an artist, you can support them by buying the product for real dollars, rather than just renting it for microscopic portions of a penny at a time.
The other day I noted that Gen Z's use of the word "bet" is the equivalent of Gen X using "word." When I said that, a colleague asked what the Millennial word was, and I glibly and somewhat sarcastically scoffed that Millennials had no word -- they just copied Gen X. That said, I think "word" remained the word for a while
With that in mind, I've noticed a strange uptick in news, or perhaps better said "commentary" on Generation X lately. Since 2025 began, there's been a steady stream of Gen X stories, features, lists, and more with an ironically heavy bit of nostalgia. The most recent one -- which I passed on to my Millennial colleague and a fellow Gen Xer who, because I work in a library and featured Coupland's pivotal novel Generation X: Tales from an Accelerated Culture, rolled her eyes and said she's never read and doesn't need a book to tell her who she is -- is an extensive and engaging piece from Gen X culture writer Amanda Fortini in the New York Times asking: "Is Generation X the Greatest Generation?"
There’s a collective fascination with Generation X, for both good and ill, as told by numerous think pieces and memes that have begun proliferating like gremlins in recent years. Most of these memes are humblebrags created by Gen X-ers themselves, applauding our toughness and resilience, honed by benign parental neglect (“The official sports drink when I was a kid,” reads a caption over a child drinking from a garden hose), or celebrating our own coolness, an aura cultivated by pretending not to care (“Them: The world is falling apart! Gen X kids: Have you ever had a bologna potato chip sandwich?”). Many express nostalgia for the lost relics of a simpler time, like mixtapes, malls, daytime soap operas, the mentholated burn of Noxzema or the ritual Friday night rental of Blockbuster videos.
According to the articles, Gen X is either the last awesome generation, despite the fact that we keep such a low profile — or maybe precisely for that reason (Vogue: “What if the cool ones are actually those unbothered people that nobody talks about?”) — or the worst, which is not news to us since we’re so self-loathing (The New York Times: “Hate Gen X? Get in Line [Behind a Gen X-er]”). There are denunciations of Gen X for not being progressive enough, or at least not as progressive as millennials (according to Gallup, as of 2022, 44 percent of Gen X-ers identify as independents and tend to vote on candidates or issues rather than by party). And then there are the hand-wringers, who either express retroactive concern about our traumatic childhoods (The Wall Street Journal: “Is Gen X Nostalgia Just Trauma-Bonding?”) or lament our unfitness for jobs, our ill-fated careers and the fact that it seems unlikely we will ever have a true Gen X president — though, by the old measures, Barack Obama, born in 1961, qualifies. If you were to ask Gen X-ers about any of this, most would simply shrug.
As readers of this blog may know, I am obviously Generation X, and I am a Gen X writer, having published my Master's thesis on the novels of Douglas Coupland, and putting together a steady stream of Gen X commentary, including a popular piece on "Gen X Parenting."
If you really like a band, and you appreciate the music - the art - you should consider purchasing a digital download of the music on Bandcamp, rather than endlessly streaming it for free on Spotify. Bandcamp supports artists and enables them to earn money from the appreciation of their creativity, as opposed to Spotify and other streaming services which simply exploit the artists and the system, earning billions in fees while paying next-to-nothing for the product.
Earlier this year, Swedish musician Bjork called out Spotify and streaming services, calling them "probably the worst thing that has happened to musicians." And as a music fan, an artist, a writer, and a consumer, I couldn't agree more. Snoop Dogg made a similar claim two summers ago during a panel at the Milken Institute. The music and culture icon who changed the game of hip-hop in the 90s went off script, and said "Can someone explain to me how you can have a billion streams and not get a million dollars? Cause that shit don't make sense to me."
Snoop and Bjork are, of course, speaking from a time when all musicians could sell an actual product like an album, a cassette, or a CD, and earn a nice living from the deal, even when record companies and producers took a significant cut. The creation of MP3 files and streaming -- beginning with Napster -- changed everything, and not for the better as far as the artist is concerned. However, Napster and streaming didn't ruin the possibility of earning a decent living as a musician at that point, and the visionary artist and businessman Steve Jobs had much to do with that.
iTunes was a brilliant innovation and a real game-changer, enabling music fans to purchase single songs as digital downloads for $.99. That was actually a win-win for the artist and the consumer. For, as anyone over the age of thirty recalls, there were times you liked a song or two from a new release, but didn't want the entire album/CD/cassette for $10-$15. And, a perk of the iTunes was that those of us who had significant CD collections could upload all our albums to the iTunes account and carry our music everywhere on our iPods and later iPhones.
However, the predatory Swedish businessman and "technologist" Daniel Ek basically went and ruined everything, enriching himself to the tune of billions in the process. It's a bit of a complicated story to understand how Ek moved Spotify into such a dominant position, manipulating record companies and the biggest artists into signing lopsided deals for music acquisition in exchange for "access and exposure." And that deal is absurdly slanted to enable the company to earn billions in membership fees while paying microscopic "revenue sharing" with artists of basically $0.0032 per stream. If it were an iTunes model, a million "streams" or downloads would make nice profits for the band, too.
And, of course, as a Gen Xer, I won't claim that in the 70s and 80s I didn't make bootleg copies of cassettes or record songs off the radio. But for all that "theft," we still purchased a helluva lot of music, and honestly the 80s and 90s were the absolute heyday for bands making money on their music, even moderately successful ones. Granted, on the current streaming platforms, the biggest artists are still making huge cash. And I will concede, as will most musicians, that streaming has benefits of extending reach, garnering many listeners who would never know of the band or the song without streaming. But, as a music writer and researcher, I know of far too many excellent musicians who stream a ton of music, but still work and struggle to pay the bills, which wouldn't have been a problem with comparable sales in the pre-streaming era.
So, that is why I don't have a Spotify or AppleMusic account, and that's why I do have a Bandcamp account. While I haven't fully committed to the return to vinyl, I definitely plan to. And I have started purchasing digital downloads of some new favorites on Bandcamp. I will also acknowledge that I do "stream music," having had a Pandora account for years (I am, after all, in my 50s). But I see Pandora more like listening to the radio, which I also do extensively, and unlike radio, Pandora actually pays fees to the artists. Also, I have often pulled up music on YouTube, but I make an effort to listen to the ads so the artists still earn a little something from my appreciation of their art.
Now, I am sure that this post has plenty of inconsistences and even potential hypocrisies which I haven't fully thought through. But I stand by my position that Spotify and its streaming model has not been good for musicians. And, honestly, I think that the heavyweight artists could make a significant impact on the industry if they collectively moved to demand at least the option of buying digital downloads that would be shared with the artist.
By the way, this situation and point of view came on my radar just recently, when Westword, Denver's alt-weekly published a piece about Alternative Streaming Platforms for Denver Artists. And here are a couple other links to aspects of this issue.
Earlier this year, I published a piece on PopMatters about 10 Brilliant Music Books on the Art & Industry. Originally planned for last winter as a sort of 2024 gift guide of the best new releases for the music lover in your life, the piece morphed a bit into just a list of great books about music.
For many music fans, the next best thing to the actual songs is the story “behind the music”. For book lovers who are also music lovers, a well-written and often unexpected music book is a treat that feeds both passions. Music books come in various formats, including band memoirs, music criticism, and pop culture philosophizing. From Lester Bangs’ collection of reviews in Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung to Henry Rollins’ incredible journal-turned-memoir Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, the music book is a valuable part of the art and the industry, providing fans with insight and context on the artists and the music they love.
I can still recall the first music book that grabbed and held my attention from cover to cover – No One Here Gets Out Alive (1981), the seminal biography of legendary Doors frontman Jim Morrison by Danny Sugarman. That book was more than just a memoir; it was a key player in my rock ‘n’ roll coming of age. Over the last few years, I have seen numerous innovative and informative books from various music genres. From rock to hip-hop to country to punk to emo, here’s a list of superb reads to deepen the music education for you or the music lover in your life.
My originally piece was planned for Westword, Denver's Alt-Weekly that I occasionally freelance for, and now the magazine has published a 2025 version of the list I had originally planned. Local writer Adam Perry has assembled a list of the Best Music Books Released in 2025 covering books "from Cameron Crowe's memoir to a deep-dive into queer culture in pop music, these are the perfect gifts for the music lover in your life." I am really excited about the new work from Cameron Crowe, and I would also recommend last year's excellent career study on REM - The Name of the Band is REM.
Every year, we read a lot of new music books, and it’s not only so that music-loving readers have holiday gift ideas for their loved ones, or just themselves; it also saves you time reading the bad or mediocre books that don’t end up on this list. Here, in no particular order, are six great music-related books released in 2025 that would be a blessing to crack open on Christmas morning or really anytime. Head over to your favorite bookstore and grab a copy.
And while I was wandering around a great bookstore in La Jolla recently, I was intrigued by a new book on the indie music scene with the awesome title The Hours are Long, but the Pay is Low. I lived in Chicago in the late '90s, but was unaware of the alt-country-punk scene that gave rise to Bloodshot Records, and I'm sorry I missed it. So, I'm hoping to get some insight and new bands to add to my collection.
“The music business is not a meritocracy: it is a crapshoot taking place in a septic tank balanced on the prow of the Titanic, a venal snake pit where innovation, creativity, and honest business practices are actively discouraged.”
Rob Miller arrived in Chicago wanting to escape the music industry. In short order, he co-founded a trailblazing record label revered for its artist-first approach and punk take on country, roots, and so much else. Miller’s gonzo memoir follows a music fan’s odyssey through a singular account of Bloodshot Records, the Chicago scene, and thirty years as part of a community sustaining independent artists and businesses.
Hilarious and hundred-proof, The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low delivers a warm-hearted yet clear-eyed account of loving and living music on the edge, in the trenches, and without apologies.
There's no hype about duct-taped bananas coming out of south Florida this year, but it's almost Art Basel Miamitime, so there will undoubtedly be something stirring in the art world.
Arguably the biggest and most significant art festival in the United States each year, Art Basel Miami arrives this weekend, December 5-7, and while most of us art geeks will not be attending and rubbing shoulders with the world's elite artists, gallerists, dealers, patrons, and fashionistas, we can still live vicariously through the coming tidal wave of press and social media coverage.
The New York Times has a primer for those interested in attending:
The Miami Beach edition of Art Basel is unique in that it takes place on a single floor, rather than in a multistory location as the other Basel fairs in Hong Kong, Paris and Basel, Switzerland do.
Here, when visitors walk into the Miami Beach Convention Center, all 283 galleries from 43 countries sit adjacent to one another, a sea of paintings and people.
“You can feel that palpable hum of energy, people, art, light, landscapes — the whole cultural convergence — in that moment,” said Bridget Finn, director of Art Basel’s Miami Beach show. Finn, who took on the role just before the fair in 2023, came to Art Basel from the gallery world, having most recently served as a partner and managing director of the Detroit art gallery Reyes Finn.
And, of course, many other arts and culture writers will offer their insights and advice as well. Art Basel Miami is sort of the cornerstone of Miami Art Week, and there will also be plenty of coverage for art events flanking the festival, such as this piece from Casey Brennan for Grazia Magazine: "Everything to Know About Miami Art Week 2025"
Every December, Miami Beach becomes a stage where the worlds of art and fashion intersect under sunlight and spotlights. This year, Art Basel Miami Beach returns the first week of December, marking its twenty-third edition and a clear step forward for the fair’s evolution.
With 285 galleries from 44 countries and more than 40 first-time exhibitors, Basel 2025 feels both expansive and intimate—featuring legacy names while alive with new ideas.
For the first time, Art Basel introduces its global awards program, a new initiative celebrating artists, galleries, and curators shaping the cultural landscape today. The ceremony, set for December 4, is already one of the week’s most anticipated events—more than a gala, it’s a statement about where the art world is heading next. Inside the Convention Center, the works span every scale and medium, while beyond its walls, the city transforms into a living extension of the fair itself.
I can't recall when I first became aware of the festival that has been around since 2002 -- the original event and organization began in 1970. But as I have grown more interested in the art world, both as a general art geek as well as an occasional arts writer, the festival is now on my radar, and someday I may just hop on a plane and take the plunge.
Last year, I was intrigued to see Joe Taveras, an artist I'd been following for a while on Instagram, show up at Art Basel Miami with his new arts organization, the New Renaissance. And I thought that was pretty cool because Joe just started painting in the summer of 2020 during pandemic, and in just five years he was showing artists at a premier international art event. And that just goes to show you, as Joe has said, “It’s incredible what can happen in a year with passion, dedication, and perseverance.”
Roughly ten years ago, a well-educated journalist who is a staff writer for the New Yorker published a scathing hit job on Concord's favorite son, Henry Thoreau, a true American, and one of the most esteemed writers in the history of American letters. The piece was initially published with the crass moniker "Pond Scum," though I have to believe that a naturalist and a saunterer like Thoreau would have chuckled approvingly at being called such a name.
It's a bit of a mystery what prompted Kathryn Schulz -- who is by all accounts a talented, thoughtful writer -- to tee off on Thoreau, but she also appears to hate Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and so she may simply be acting out the frustration so many high school students feel when confronted with "classic literature" that doesn't connect with them. For, while the piece is quite clearly well written, it's presented with all the patience and pondering of a petulant child.
Many Thoreauvians, as well as the general population of well educated readers and, of course, English teachers, were able to quickly discount most of Schulz's complaints and criticisms while also acknowledging that Thoreau can be "a bit prickly" as an individual, as a writer, and as a thinker. We're all going to have issues with someone as prolific on all manner of living as Thoreau was -- a man who, in addition to his incredible output of published writing in a short forty-four year life, also composed a near daily journal of more than two million words.
But most of us don't have such sneering contempt for such an iconic and significant writer, and that's mostly because we have put the time in to actually understanding the writing of the man. In other words, Kathryn Schulz simply doesn't get it, or him. And numerous accomplished writers responded in kind with responses, retorts, rebuttals, and corrections of the many myths about Thoreau and the simple ways he is misunderstood. Some of the best are Jedidiah Purdy's "In Defense of Thoreau" and Rebecca Solnit's "The Thoreau Problem." And perhaps the most astute piece about all the things that Schulz gets wrong is Donovan Hahn's "Everybody Hates Thoreau."
And, as I've been doing my work on "The Punk on Walden Pond," I'd like to add some insight from the esteemed and beloved American writer, E.B. White, who was an ardent Thoreauvian.
“Many think [Walden] is a sermon … an attempt to rearrange society ... an exercise in nature loving … a rather intimidating collection of inspirational puffballs by an eccentric show-off. I think it is none of these … Even as it is, it will continue to annoy the literal mind and all those unable to stomach its caprices and imbibe its themes ... To reject the book because of the immaturity of the author and the bugs in the logic is to throw away a good bottle of wine because it contains bits of cork. … [Thoreau] is a better companion than most, and I would not swap him for a soberer or more reasonable friend, even if I could.”
You see, Ms. Schultz and all those of her ilk who have failed to get the point, not to mention the joke, “Walden is a work of art and philosophy which ponders and argues and wonders in deep thoughtful fascination with life, but it’s also satire and irony as he critiques his society and a new economy that leads people to 'live lives of quiet desperation.'"
Well, Black Friday has come and gone again, but that doesn't mean you can't still make some purchases because it is officially small business Saturday. And what better place to spend some holiday cash than your local indie record store to pick up some new vinyl. Listening to the Colorado Sound as I regularly do, I was reminded that these two shopping celebrations -- small business and records -- are the perfect opportunity to support the local economy. And in Colorado's smokin' hot indie music scene, there are three incredible punk bands with new music to check out.
I've written about all these bands at some point, but there is news about three of my local favorites: Dead Pioneers,Cheap Perfume, and Elway.
First up is the notably named Elway, a veteran Colorado punk band that was once sued by the local football legend. It's been a bit since this classic punk group released new music, but we've waiting for a while now since I first wrote about the band last year when members were in town to record and decided to reunite for its only local show in 2024.
The new album, recorded at the Band Cave Studios in Park Hill is, Browne explains, “basically following up and questioning the nature of Best of All Possible Worlds.” With aggressively blunt new songs such as “Nobody’s Going to Heaven,” the music brings a reversal of the pondering philosophical fence-sitting between pessimism and optimism that characterized the last LP. The song, which Browne suggests might become the album title, “is a stream-of-consciousness wallowing about how demoralizing it is to sit and scroll on the phone watching unspeakable tragedies.”
“If this is where we are as a democratic society,” Browne continues with a sardonic chuckle, “maybe none of us deserve salvation.”
The long-awaited release is now out and available at your local vinyl shop. And the release of the first single is evidence that this LP was worth the wait. Denver Westword followed up with a piece on the new LP, and the band has released a single for "Living Epilogue":
At long last, after eighteen years, Elway put out a politically charged protest record.
But the latest from the Fort Collins-born indie-punk crew — Nobody’s Going To Heaven, released on October 10 via Chicago label Red Scare Industries — isn’t as obviously in-your-face as you’d assume from a genre known for telling Nazi punks to fuck off. It’s a more nuanced approach, with political undertones that highlight the chaos and carnage surrounding the Western world, while still offering an optimistic outlook overall.
Original vocalist-guitarist Tim Browne didn’t necessarily set out to make a record fueled by such fire and fury that went into Nobody’s Going To Heaven initially, and considers it “an indignant dispatch from within the walls of the crumbling empire.” It occurred naturally, he shares; he had no choice but to reflect on what he believes will ultimately lead to a “post-American world.”
“We’ve not really been historically a very political band,” Browne says. “There are some songs about politics, but generally, I’ve tried to avoid it just because I feel like it’s really easy to slide into tropes and platitudes. I’ve always been hesitant about writing about politics and tread lightly when I do.
Secondly, there is a Riot Grrrl Resurgence happening in indie music, and leading the way is an electrifying Colorado "fem-core" band called Cheap Perfume. This band, which is absolutely ferocious live in a small club, has been fiercely political since its inception, and it has never slowed since releasing the scorching single "It's Okay to Punch Nazis." Now the band is back with a new LP that confronts capitalist corruption and the authoritarian presidency and which Westword writes "Pummels Trump."
Punk music remains an important, historic form of protest, so it’s fitting that Denver femme punk outfit Cheap Perfume is set to drop a timely new album later this year.
The band has already released singles “Woke Mind Virus” and “Down to Riot” to tease the forthcoming album, Didn’t Ask. Don’t Care, which drops on October 3 via Snappy Little Numbers. Vocalist Stephanie Byrne, vocalist-guitarist Jane No, bassist Geoff Brent and drummer David Grimm have always worn their anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and pro-women political stances on their sleeves, following in the abrasive tradition of riot grrrl punk bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile.
No and Byrne describe the single “Woke Mind Virus” as emblematic of the album’s themes, with its jabs at capitalism, Elon Musk and right-wingers who attempt to “own the libs” with “anti-woke” agendas, which simply justify hate against the marginalized. They say the song also takes aim at ICE agents, health insurance CEOs and oligarchs who bow to these policies, questioning plainly in the bridge: What kind of person thinks it’s bad to be awake?
“This song, to me, is kind of like the manifesto for the album,” No says. “There have been a lot of radical changes in the world since our last release, so I thought it was important for us to come out with something bold.
“We wrote it in response to the inane ‘war on woke’ and people like Elon Musk demonizing empathy and saying that having compassion is weak,” she continues. “This song is a great gut check for the rest of the album… if you relate to what is being said here, I think you’re going to love the record. If it’s pissing you off? Don’t care, didn’t ask.”
And, finally, the powerful Indigenous punk rock outfit led by acclaimed Native visual artist Gregg Deal, Dead Pioneers, was recently back in the studio -- the iconic Blasting Room in Fort Collins -- to work on its third release for Hassle Records. But while we're waiting for that one, it's worth checking out Post-American,the second LP from the band that is as much a work of art and political manifesto as it is a blistering punk rock explosion which they performed in four shows opening for Pearl Jam last spring, followed by a European tour with Pennywise and Propaghandi.
In some ways, it was a couple of undergrad computer geeks at the University of Illinois that started it all.
Interestingly, I happened to work in the UIUC Engineering computer labs from 1989-92 when Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina were there developing what would become the first successful web browser that kicked off the wild digital economy we've been living in for the past thirty years.
I was thinking about that small but profoundly significant moment in American history yesterday when I read a feature in the New York Times titled The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley by tech writer David Streitfeld. The story unpacks the history of writer and tech geek Paulina Borsook whose book Cyberselfishforesaw the the dark side of the Tech Boys who basically run the economy at this point.
Even Silicon Valley dislikes Silicon Valley. More than two-thirds of residents agreed in a 2024 poll that the tech companies have partially or completely misplaced their moral compass. And that was before so many in tech embraced the Trump administration.
Some of those who believe tech lost its way are finding explanations in a book published a quarter century ago. Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish” saw the seeds of disaster in the late-1990s dot-com boom, which, she argued, transformed a community that was previously sober, civic-minded and egalitarian into something toxic.
Silicon Valley, Ms. Borsook wrote, hated governments, rules and regulations. It believed if you were rich, you were smart. It thought people could be, and indeed should be, programmed just like a computer. “Techno-libertarianism,” as she labeled it, had no time for the messy realities of being human.
It may seem a bit odd or contradictory to criticize the tech revolution on a digital blog, but the problems of our tech-dominated lives are all too real. From the deleterious impact cell phones are having on young people and the education system to the shocking embrace of sports betting in real time during games via digital apps, there is a certain reckoning to be had with the developments that came out of the computer labs in the middle of the Illinois prairie around 1990.
It's a quiet, calm, chilly Thanksgiving morning in Fort Collins, and I'm just home from a delightful trip to San Diego. It's a simple Thanksgiving this year, just the two of us at home with family spread across the country and the world. And, yet, all is well, and I am grateful for a good life.
I've been so blessed to live a fortunate and fulfilling life, and I am trying to live with more grace and compassion these days. Recently, I posted about keeping a gratitude journal in the days running up to the Thanksgiving holiday. And it's worth checking in with that idea once in a while. For many of us, our default setting is not one of compassion, grace, and empathy. It's one of judgment, criticism, and complaints. But each day offers a new chance to recalibrate.
