Tom Dowd & The Language Of Music

Last week an old friend visited me and he casually asked me if I had ever seen Tom Dowd & The Language Of Music. I said, “Who’s Tom Dowd?”. My friend was flabbergasted, and I must say for myself that I have no excuse. If you haven’t seen the documentary Tom Dowd & The Language Of Music then you need to go here or here or here and find yourself a copy of this film.

I’ve been a sound engineer and mixer for thirty five years in the motion picture industry and have seemingly been so isolated there from the world of music engineering that I never registered the name Tom Dowd until last week. This film was an amazing experience for me. It was like watching myself speak for two hours about all the things I love about mixing sounds together. He put voice to many of the thoughts that have been rattling around in my own mind during my quiet moments for all these years. Here is some of what Mix Magazine had to say about him after his death in 2002.

And we were all lucky that Dowd decided to forego a promising career in physics to pursue his love of music. In New York City in the late ’40s, he worked as a freelance engineer; then, he latched onto the fledgling Atlantic Records label for a quarter-century, working as the company’s technical guru, principal engineer and later a top producer. It was Dowd who introduced Atlantic to stereo in 1952, and who designed the label’s pioneering 8-track studio on West 60th Street in 1960. He built consoles and other equipment from scratch, and single-handedly came up with miking principles in the late ’50s and early ’60s that are still popular today. Though he is perhaps best known for the work he did in New York, he also made extraordinary records in Muscle Shoals and Memphis. From the ’70s on, Dowd worked mostly out of Miami, where he helped put Criteria Studios on the map. His records were noted for their naturalness and their clarity; he was, in a sense, one of music’s great documentarians, capturing the magic in the room but not imposing his own sound on the artists with whom he worked.

And what a collection of musicians benefited from Dowd’s easy-going but conscientious manner! In the jazz world, he engineered multiple projects with such notables as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Hank Crawford, Eddie Harris, Mose Allison, Herbie Mann, Milt Jackson, Charles Mingus, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Bobby Short, Nat Adderly and Freddie Hubbard. He was behind the board for all of The Drifters’ early hits and for early rock-era titans such as The Coasters, The Clovers, Ben E. King and Bobby Darin. He engineered some of the greatest soul records to come out of Atlantic, cutting classics by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and The Bar-Kays. He produced or engineered scores of important rock albums, too, including numerous dates with Cream, the Young Rascals, the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Derek & The Dominos, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wet Willie, Dr. John, Delaney & Bonnie, Black Oak Arkansas, Dusty Springfield and Rod Stewart, to name just a few. If you want your mind blown away by the sheer scope of his career, check out his listing on http://allmusic.com.

Dowd had great ears and a big heart; few figures in our business were so universally loved and respected. Up until his last days, Dowd had a twinkle in his eye and a good story on the tip of his tongue — he was quite the raconteur, his sharp memory overflowing with anecdotes about the business that he loved so much.

Dowd is indeed an amazing raconteur and his stories of the making of the songs that are featured in the film are funny and entertaining, and the interviews with Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Phil Ramone, Gregg Allman, and Dickie Betts are riveting. When I look at the list of artists that he recorded and all the different kinds of music that he mixed I have to conclude that he was the common denominator to all of this musical genius. I am in awe of what he did. He made it possible for all of us to hear the music of our time and he also preserved it for future generations to enjoy. I really wish I had known this man and I just have to say thank you Tom Dowd, not just for giving us all the music, but also linear faders, multitrack recording, and all of the recording and mixing techniques that those of us who followed you now take so much for granted.

Recapitulation

by Stephen Fleischman

On Thursday, May 3rd, the 10 Republican Party candidates for President held their first pre-primary live television campaign debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, moderated by Chris Matthews of NBC.

At one point in the debate, Chris asked the candidates to raise their hands if they did not believe in evolution. Three of the 10 raised their hands, proclaiming their lack of belief in evolution. They were Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That’s a fancy way of saying that the development of the individual of all species fully repeats the evolutionary development of that species. It’s biological theory. Each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history. In eight weeks after fertilization, a single human embryo traces our entire evolutionary past. It’s called the theory of evolution. Do you get that, Mike, Tom and Sam?

In their case, we might say that ignorance recapitulates stupidity. Are any of these the kind of guy we want for President?

Spread The Word

From MyDD:

I’m told there’s an outside shot that House Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will put a restoration of habeas corpus into the Defense Department Authorization Bill being marked up tomorrow and Thursday. Apparently Chairman Skelton has the votes but there are concerns about whether to have this fight now.

Now’s the time to let them know that this is something that we elected them to get done. There’s a bit of fear that this vote could put freshmen members at risk, though I don’t really know why as the data on this isn’t compelling and the attack ads just didn’t work in 2006.

The most important members to contact are Ike Skelton, antiwar freshmen, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Pelosi and Hoyer would be good too. Each link below goes to that member’s email form, and their phone numbers are to the right. I’ve only included Democratic members of the committee since the decision on whether to make a vote will be made within the party – the full list of Armed Service members is here.

Call and ask them to restore habeas corpus and put it in the Defense Department Authorization bill. This is an especially important message to deliver to freshmen members who have the moral credibility of having been in elected in 2006 in the teeth of Republican fear-mongering.

Leadership
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (202) 225-4965
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, (202) 225-4131

Armed Services Committee Democrats
Ike Skelton, Missouri, Chairman, 202-225-2876
John Spratt, South Carolina, 202-225-5501
Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas, (202) 225-7742
Gene Taylor, Mississippi, 202 225-5772
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii, (202) 225-2726
Marty Meehan, Massachusetts, (202) 225-3411
Silvestre Reyes, Texas, (202) 225-4831
Vic Snyder, Arkansas, 202-225-2506
Adam Smith, Washington, (202) 225-8901
Loretta Sanchez, California, 202-225-5859
Mike McIntyre, North Carolina, (202) 225-2731
Ellen O. Tauscher, California, (202) 225-1880
Robert A. Brady, Pennsylvania, (202) 225-4731
Robert Andrews, New Jersey, 202-225-6501
Susan A. Davis, California, (202) 225-2040
Rick Larsen, Washington, (202) 225-2605
Jim Cooper, Tennessee, 202-225-4311
Jim Marshall, Georgia, 202-225-4311
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam, (202) 225-1188
Mark Udall, Colorado, (202) 225-2161
Dan Boren, Oklahoma, (202) 225-2701
Brad Ellsworth, Indiana, (202) 225-4636
Nancy Boyda, Kansas, (202) 225-6601
Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania, (202) 225-4276
Hank Johnson, Georgia, (202) 225-1605
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire,(202) 225-5456
Joe Courtney, Connecticut, (202) 225-2076
David Loebsack, Iowa, 202.225.6576
Kirsten Gillibrand, New York, (202) 225-5614
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania, (202) 225-2011
Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona, (202) 225-2542
Elijah Cummings, Maryland, (202) 225-4741
Kendrick Meek, Florida, 202-225-4506
Kathy Castor, Florida, (202)225-3376

Please rip this list off and spread it far and wide.

Time for action. These people need to hear from us. Write yourself a little script, sit down with your phone and dial it a few times. Each time you dial it, read the script.

Isn’t taking our country back simple?

Conservatives Without Conscience

Over the past twenty five years I’ve watched the Republican right wing grow stronger and move that party further to the right ideologically. I heard a liberal progressive say the other day, after watching the Republican debate, “Gawd, what I wouldn’t give to have Reagan back”. To see a progressive longing for the days of Ronald Reagan is to see how far to the right the political pendulum really has swung. Over the past few years I have been desperately trying to understand how people can think the way today’s so-called conservatives think.

I opened Digby this morning, as I am often wont to do, and I came upon this quote from an essay written in 1820 by William Hazlitt titled “On The Spirit Of Partisanship”. I guess there’s nothing new under the sun. Speaking of the conservatives of his time he wrote:

They beat us in courage and in intellect, because we have nothing but the common good to sharpen our faculties or goad our will; they have no less an alternative in view than to be uncontrolled masters of mankind or to be hurled from high—

“To grinning scorn a sacrifice,
And endless infamy!”

They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as their own: it is with them a more feeling disputation. They never give an inch of ground that they can keep; they keep all that they can get; they make no concessions that can redound to their own discredit; they assume all that makes for them; if they pause it is to gain time; if they offer terms it is to break them: they keep no faith with enemies: if you relax in your exertions, they persevere the more: if you make new efforts, they redouble theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere ceremony. While they are cutting your throat, or putting the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, freedom of inquiry, and douce humanité. Their object is to destroy you, your object is to spare them—to treat them according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense and spirit enough to take all advantages that will further their cause: you have pedantry and pusillanimity enough to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative proposition and a practical interest.

Now Digby’s post is on another topic, but he makes a very moving observaton about the passion of the left and how change won’t come unless we harness our passion and the power of our emotions to get ourselves involved in change.

But passion is more than just reaction. It also provides the opening for ordinary people to involve themselves in politics generally. Whenever I hear people complaining about the unseemly behavior of people who go to peace marches or Cindy Sheehan or the DFH’s who just ruined everything for all of us back in the 1960′s I can’t help but wonder how they expect non-news junkie policy wonks to connect with the world around them? Stirring debates between Peter Beinert and Jonah Goldberg?

Humans need to feel part of something, that they have a stake in the outcome. Emotion is what moves people, whether it is demagoguery, fear, anger or inspiration (and there’s often tension and similarity among those things.) To get people engaged you have to give them something to care about, to feel connected with, to want to devote some of their precious time and resources to something for which there is no direct compensation except a feeling of doing the right thing or righting a great wrong. Change requires energy and energy is one thing that sophisticated intellectual salons and learned political journals, however important they may be, simply do not provide.

Sadly, liberals are far more difficult to draw in to that for the reasons that Hazlitt cited nearly 170 years ago. It’s a temperament thing. We are just more dispassionate as a rule than the rowdy right because they feel they are protecting their prerogatives — and they just get off on the fight. But from time to time liberals simply have to get religion or risk losing it all. There have been certain periods where they were able to mobilize, usually in reaction to a great social upheaval or obvious conservative failure. Over the long run, we have actually progressed. (And you know where we’ll all be in the long run…)

But mostly it’s been as Hazlitt observed:

It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative proposition and a practical interest

[...]

So I think we liberals can afford to take at least a little of what Hazlitt wrote back in the day to heart without fearing that we will turn into mouthbreathing demagogues. If the last few years of modern conservative dominance have proved nothing else it proves that we “betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse.” The best case scenario is that you get left with the ruins of failed conservatism to clean up and straighten out over and over again. The worst case scenario is that someday they may just break the country for good.

Yeah, what Digby said.

The Real Meaning Of Mother’s Day: Peace

This video comes to us from Brave New Foundation:

In the United States, Mother’s Day was originally suggested by poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe. In 1870, after witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote the original Mother’s Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. This “Mother’s Day Proclamation” would plant the seed for what would eventually become a national holiday.

After writing the proclamation, Howe had it translated into many languages and spent the next two years of her life distributing it and speaking to women leaders all over the world. In her book Reminiscences, Howe wrote, “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they along bear and know the cost?” She devoted much of the next two years to this cause, and began holding annual “Mother’s Day” gatherings in Boston, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

In 1907, thirty-seven years after the proclamation was written, women’s rights activist Anna Jarvis began campaigning for the establishment of a nationally observed Mother¹s Day holiday. And in 1914, four years after Howe’s death, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

What Digby said:

I had always heard that Mother’s Day was invented by Hallmark to sell cards. It’s nice to know that it is for real, even if it does promote something as unfashionable as peace.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Blog Quote Of The Week

Rude Pundit wins again.

Nancy Reagan must have loved the sight of all ten of these creepy old men fucking her husband’s skull, passing it around to each other to see who could fuck that skull harder. Of course, it was far better than Reagan’s skull deserved

The Hindenberg

Today is the anniversary of the Hindenberg disaster. 36 people tragically died in this incident. The still photo of Hindenberg in flames is iconic and the crash of Hindenberg is perhaps the most famous disaster event in modern hostory. The cause of the fire has never been determined.

How many hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the Bush mideast policy?

Oh, the humanity.

Send in the Clowns

(with apologies to Stephen Sondheim)

by Stephen Fleischman

In the United States of America, the greatest country in the world, as many as three and a half million people experience homelessness in a given year and of that, about a million and a half (39%) are children under the age of 18.

Isn’t it rich…?

The total number of billionaires in the world is 793 with 371 of them being in the United States of America, that’s about 322 more than there were 20 years ago.

Are we a pair…?

America has developed an underclass of its own that rivals the untouchables of India; except you don’t see them. An elaborate matrix has been constructed to keep them hidden. There are homeless shelters. Some find temporary shelter in church basements or abandoned buildings. They live in cars. They’re put in welfare motels. They double up with relatives. They are children. They are seniors. They are adults with full-time jobs.

Making my entrance again with my usual flair…

When too many of them start showing up soliciting on the streets, cleaning car windshields at traffic stop signs or sleeping on park benches, more shelters are build and they are again removed from sight.

I thought that you’d want what I want.

One American, in eight, lives below the official poverty line.

Me here at last on the ground…

The destruction of the middle class began during the Reagan Administration, in the 1980s, with the breaking of the labor movement and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Those at the lowest end of the ladder fall even lower while there is an explosion of wealth at the top.

You in mid air.

Is that the nature of capitalism? There used to be a system of checks and balances and safety nets.

Don’t you love farce?

Is it the system, Stupid?

There was a time, in this system, when people mattered. When infrastructure mattered. When environment mattered. We had an NRA and a WPA and a Tennessee Valley Authority and a Living Newspaper, a Federal Theatre Project and a Farm Security Administration and ways of putting people to work.

Good riddance, you say. The depression is over. Let the private sector do it. Well, what goes around comes around. We may not be at ’29 but we may be sneaking up on ’28.

There are creeping signs that the capitalist structure is creaking again. Its nature is to boom and bust.

Losing my timing this late in my career?

Something’s got to be done about it! We have to send in somebody! Well, send in the clowns.

Don’t bother, they’re here.

Saturday Cartoons

Go see Bob Geiger.

Thanks Bob!

Karmageddon!

Trex has coined my new favorite colloquialism.

Karmageddon (Kar*ma*ged*don)

1. Of or pertaining to the karmic implosion of rich, smug, heiresses or the principal members of the Bush administration.