But is it still live music?

Back when I was in high school and college, I played the guitar and sang backup for my band. We called ourselves "Ego," and described ourselves as a "jazz-rock" band. There were eight of us, including a brass section--this splits the take rather painfully--but it was intensely satisfying for 18 and 19-year-olds to earn paychecks playing tunes by Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears. I only sang a couple songs lead—I hid behind two incredibly talented singers who did most of the vocal work. The attached photo is Ego performing back in 1974. ego Since then, we've all gone on to pursue careers as such things as an engineer, teacher, letter carrier and lawyer (though our percussionist/lead singer, Charles Glenn, continues to make a living as a singer in the St. Louis area). Fast forward to 2009. I would love to play music with other musicians again, but I have a day job and a family (and a blog). It would be extremely difficult to arrange for rehearsals that didn't interfere with my many other obligations. I've recently started picking up my guitar to play and sing. It’s not sounding all that bad, and I’m starting to consider performing for others again. [BTW--I had a scary episode where my left hand became numb cause by a pinched nerve in my neck. After surgery, the feeling in my hand is returning nicely, which probably explains my renewed interest in playing music again.] I've never thought of myself as a singer, but I thought that I would have a much better chance of getting a solo gig if I learned to sing rather than just playing the guitar. Therefore, I recently took a singing lesson from Leslie Sanazaro, from whom I learned that my breathing was all wrong, a condition that can reportedly be remedied by doing exercises that would look and sound rather silly to anyone other than a singing teacher. Leslie advised me that my pitch is okay but that I need to get out there and get some confidence. She said that the best way to get confidence is to go out and sing in public, over and over. That's easy to say, of course. If you are not enamored with your voice, though, it is a daunting task. It brings back memories when, in the second grade, every student was required to stand up in front of the class and sing a song (my voice trembled and my knees knocked as I sang “Ooey Gooey Was a Worm"). And even when I can sing a couple short songs that sound half-decent, I've noticed that in extended sessions, my voice grates on me. The fears that I'm experiencing are common, according to Leslie. She sent me this caveat by email: "Don't get too burned out on your own voice, it's the only one there is!" My quest is thus to go out with a guitar and sing songs. It's something that I intend to do within the next month or two at an open mic session at a local bar or coffee shop. Not a big deal, perhaps. But my voice and my guitar make for such a tiny band, nothing like that eight-piece jazz rock ensemble that I surrounded myself with when I was a young musician. Are there other ways to spruce up my little band without collaborating with other musicians? Yes, indeed, there are many reasonably-priced options, but these options raise issues about the authenticity of one's "live" performance. For purists, there is no substitute for an acoustic guitar and an un-amplified voice. That's how I often practice at home. Over the years, however, various devices have been offered to musicians which make performances less pure, acoustically speaking. We are all now familiar with electronic amplifiers for voices and guitars. Those of us who like the acoustic sound can amplify it by sticking high-tech pickups into our acoustic guitars. I use a Fishman brand "Blend" pickup in my guitar, which combines a piezo microphone with a tiny acoustic microphone, giving you impressive control over the sound. Even when it is amplified substantially, the guitar still sounds "acoustic." So what else can you do to enhance the sound of a guitarist/singer?

Continue ReadingBut is it still live music?

Fat Tire’s first prize: an obsolete bike. The rationality of costly signaling.

Fat Tire Beer is holding a contest, and first prize is an old-fashioned bicycle. It is a cumbersome and heavy one-speed bike that lacks most of the useful features found on modern bicycles. What does it have going for it? Nothing much worth my while. I buy my bicycles for performance, features and functionality, not looks. Others would say that the Fat Tire bicycle has an unique style worth coveting. I know a woman who recently paid a large amount of money for a "retro" bicycle much like the one in the photo. She bragged about her bicycle only in terms of what it looked like, and seemed to get irritated when I asked her whether she would miss some of the useful features found in most modern bicycles, features such as multiple gears, high-tech gear-shifting, feather-light frame, and front or rear suspension. It appears that Fat Tire Beer is looking for customers like the woman I just described, people who are obsessed with the looks of a bicycle rather than its functionality. I recently posted on Geoffrey Miller's terrific new book, Spent. At page 97, Miller discusses the "signaling value" of many modern products. Miller points out that modern corporations work hard to avoid competition based upon objective features that can be compared. Fat Tire Beer, for example, did not choose to offer a modern bicycle that could easily be compared to the many other bicycles currently being sold. Instead, the company chose to offer an old-fashioned bike that would signal a certain trait for the owner and his/her friends/acquaintances. Modern corporations

Use advertising to create signaling systems--psychological links between brands and the aspirational traits that consumers would like to display. Although these signaling links must be commonly understood by the consumer's socially relevant peer group, they need not involve the actual product at all. The typical Vogue magazine ad shows just two things: a brand name and an attractive person . . . there is a hidden rationality at work--the rationality of costly signaling. What matters in most advertising is the learned association between the consumer's aspirational traits and the company's trademarked brand name--the fountainhead of all profitability.
Therefore, don't waste your time trying to figure out what obsolete styles of bicycles have to do with beer. The bicycle featured on the label of Fat Tire Beer has nothing to do with the taste or quality of the liquid in the bottle. Rather, buying Fat Tire Beer is an opportunity for a consumer to display to others that the consumer can afford a premium beer. The bicycle on the label gives consumers a further opportunity to suggest that tradition is more important than functionality. Those who buy Fat Tire Beer let the beer do their talking for them: "I'm a person who values tradition over functionality." That's my guess. I wouldn't accept that cumbersome and sparsely-featured contest bicycle even if someone offered it to me for free, because I know less-costly, less wasteful and more effective ways of convincing others that I often value tradition. It involves hard work and no gimmicks. It requires that you willingly put your life under a microscope, that you repeatedly show rather than tell, and that you show your values in ways other than through conspicuous consumption.

Continue ReadingFat Tire’s first prize: an obsolete bike. The rationality of costly signaling.

Anniversary of a New Land

Today marks the 40th anniversary of "...one giant leap for mankind." On July 20, 1969 a human first stepped onto the moon. Oddly, there is a significant minority of people who don't believe this. The Moon Landing Deniers (on whom I reported here 3 years ago) now have to increase the complexity of that conspiracy theory because of some recent news. Here are some new pictures taken from lunar orbit in the last few weeks of some of the Apollo landing sites. The point of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter wasn't to prove the doubters wrong, but rather to gather an accurate survey of the moon to aid the Chinese (and maybe ourselves) in future exploration. You may recall that Apollo 11 almost crash landed on a rock pile, and Armstrong had to manually hover the lander over to a smooth area, landing with scant seconds of fuel to spare. They don't want to repeat that experience. Also, the orbiter should map out interesting mineral and erosion features that merit closer investigation. As one who watched the first landing live, I like to think that we'll be back.

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Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

I've repeatedly written about Geoffrey Miller based on the many provocative ideas presented in his earlier book, The Mating Mind. (e.g., see my earlier post, "Killer High Heels"). A gifted and entertaining writer, Miller is also an evolutionary psychologist. His forte is hauling his scientific theories out into the real world in order to persuade us that we didn't really understand some of the things that seemed most familiar to us. In his new book, Spent, Miller asks why we continuously buy all that stuff that we don't really need? Miller's answer is twofold. Yes, human animals have been physically and psychologically honed over the eons this to crave certain types of things over others to further their chances at survival and reproduction. That's only half the answer, however. We must also consider "marketing," which is

The most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. . . . it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.

Is the modern version of marketing a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes.

On the upside it promises a golden age in which social institutions and markets are systematically organized on the basis of strong purple research to maximize human happiness. What science did for perception, marketing promises to do for production: it tests intuition and insight against empirical fact area market research uses mostly the same empirical tools as experimental psychology, but with larger research budgets, better-defined questions, more representative samples of people, and more social impact.

Here is a July 2009 interview of Geoffrey Miller by Geraldyne Doogue of the Australian Broadcast Network: Most of us are quite familiar with the downside of marketing. It encourages us to buy things we don't really need. But marketing doesn't merely clutter up our houses and garages; it corrupts our souls:

Continue ReadingGeoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

Planning one’s death at the end of a long illustrious life

Conductor Edward Downes and his wife Joan decided to end their lives on their own terms:

He spent his life conducting world-renowned orchestras, but was almost blind and growing deaf – the music he loved increasingly out of reach. His wife of 54 years had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So Edward and Joan Downes decided to die together.

Downes – Sir Edward since he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 – and his wife ended their lives last week at a Zurich clinic run by the assisted suicide group Dignitas. They drank a small amount of clear liquid and died hand-in-hand, their two adult children by their side. He was 85 and she was 74.

Many people feel that suicide necessarily cheapens one's life. In many cases, I don't agree. I do think that the choice of when and how to die belongs to each person individually, as long as the decision was not made impulsively or under the influence. If the day comes when I decide that I can't bear the pain, or that I no longer find joy in my life, I would hope that I wouldn't need to travel all the way to Switzerland because inter-meddlers think they know better than me about the meaning of my own life.

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