“No one can get a drivers license or fly an airplane without taking a test. Why should marriage be any different? If you want to make marriage more stable, make divorce illegal. If people knew they couldn’t get out of it, they’d be more careful getting into it.”
Category Archives: Media & Culture
Daniel “Slick” Ballinger
Daniel “Slick” Ballinger’s story is literally the stuff of movies. Young white boy travels to the Mississippi Delta to live with –and learn from– aging blues legend. Barb and I drove to Kennett this weekend to hear him play. He and two sidemen (Terry “Harmonica” Bean and drummer Kenny Kimbrough) did two one-hour sets at a local bar called The End Zone. I grew up in Kennett and don’t ever remember paying a ten dollar cover charge but The End Zone was packed. The back story on Slick is worth a read and the best place to start is Tweed’s Blues. Tweed maintains the semi-official Slick Ballinger page there. (Be sure to read the Como Chronicles.)
I won’t waste a lot of words trying to capture the Slick Ballinger Experience. Like all such moments, you had to be there. If you pressed me for a word to describe Slick’s performance, I’d have to go with “intense.” I shot some video under what has to be the worst conditions imaginable. Check back in a couple of days. If I got anything usable, I’ll post it.
I don’t know how Slick learned to play a guitar like that in less than twenty years. And I can’t imagine where that kind of passion comes from in one so young. Uber-fan Viretta says some of the old timers back in Mississippi think Slick is the reincarnation of Robert Johnson (doesn’t the screenplay practically write itself?).
We ran into Slick, Kenney and Terry the next morning at McCormick’s. They were fueling up on biscuits and gravy before hitting the road to Chicago where they’re performing at a Sara Lee corporate function. Slick doesn’t have a record deal and apparently doesn’t want one. Sounds like all of his bookings are word of mouth. After watching him perform, it’s hard not believe I’ll see him again…with a Grammy in his hand. But that won’t make his music any better. And those who know him say it won’t make him any happier. If you’ll give me one more word to describe Daniel “Slick” Ballinger, I’ll go with “authentic.”
[Note to Viretta and Nancy: You were right.]
Doc Searls on TV as an information medium
“Life’s too short. I’m already 56. Time gets more precious every day. Why waste time sitting still consuming thin information on TV when you can hunt the thick stuff down and eat it up at your own pace, on your own personal screen, or in a book, or on headphones while you excercize?”
St. Louis Traffic and Weather.
I finally got around to listening to the new “local weather & traffic” channels on XM Radio. Twenty-one cities to start, including St. Louis. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the content but it sounded like most other weather and traffic reports to me. For that matter, I have no way of knowing –without being in it every day– the accuracy of such reports on local stations. I did like the continuous feeds. If I didn’t want to wait 10 minutes for the next report on KMOX, I could punch up XM 218 and get it almost immediately.
NYTimes editorial on Google
What Google also reflects is our changing sense of the dynamism of the Web. Nothing captures how statically we used to see the Internet as well as “information highway,” an old phrase that embodies pure linearity and the smell of asphalt. That stasis is also captured in the increasingly outmoded notion of an Internet portal like AOL, much of whose dynamism comes from offering a Google search bar. The fact is that many of us have grown comfortable within the amorphousness of the Web. We no longer need a breakwater like AOL when a good search engine promises to make the sea itself our home.
— NY Times editorial
New XM channel?
In a post titled The Death of Broadcast, Jeff Jarvis writes about Howard Stern, broadcast radio and government regulation and where it’s all headed:
– Stern will engineer his firing from Viacom.
– Stern will sign with satellite, giving satellite the boost it needs to become a viable business.
– Buy satellite stock now. Sell radio stock now.
– Broadcast radio will quickly falter, losing attention to MP3s, satellite, and cellular broadcast. Broadcast radio will die. Consolidation won’t kill it. Censorship will.
– Satellite will grow rapidly, getting more consumer revenue and ad revenue.
– Broadcast TV will suffer similar blows.
– Cable and satellite TV will grow.
– The bottom line: Any medium that can be government-regulated will shrink; any medium free of government regulation will grow.
Five more proposed pieces of legislation supported by Mr. Bush (5ives)
1. Protection of Words Fewer than Three Syllables Act
2. Bill to make the “High Five” the US’s official greeting
3. National ‘Everybody Wears Jeans’ Day (March 14th)
4. The “Pretty Girls Shouldn’t Act All Stuck Up” Amendment
5. Presidential proclamation that “California Must Apologize to Jesus (and It Has to Sound Like They Really Mean It)”
Bob London and the Rolling Trolls
I got the impression Bob London is not his real name. He did sound British and mentioned that he was heading back to London soon. In mid-February (2004) he was performing on a street corner in Key West. Duvall Street was jammed and his plastic bucket was filling up with bills. Bob’s shtick seemed to be “One Man Band.”
He has an assortment of instruments and…stuff, strapped to his back. He plays the drum (and rotates the Troll Dolls) with a cord that attaches to one shoe. He’s got a harmonica, pipes, some kind of kazoo instrument. It’s one of those “you have to see it” things. I bought one of his CD’s and hope he doesn’t mind if I share one his songs (AUDIO: All Along the Watchtower mp3).
XM Radio will provide local traffic and weather
On March 1, XM Radio will provide local traffic and weather in 21 metos, including St. Louis. The Weather Channel is doing the weather and a company called TrafficPulse is doing the traffic. You can listen to a sample on the XM site. Since I got my XM Radio, my friends in “traditional” radio have dismissed it as an expensive juke-box service. “Besides,” they pointed out, “they can’t do local stuff like traffic and weather.” Now when I drive in to St. Louis –or before I even start for St. Louis– I can check the traffic situation. Any reason they couldn’t hire some reporters in each market and provide local news?
Scandal: The World’s Greatest Bar Band
The Shilo was a honky-tonk. Like a dozen other in Kennett at the time. But when Don Akers brought his band (Scandal?) back to Kennett and became the “house band,” The Shilo was something more. It was Hot & Nasty and The Disco King. It was Foosball. And when Don and Suzy and the band took the stage… it just rocked.