STRANGLEHOLD

posted by James Reel

    Ah, don’t you love the American “free market”? That’s a euphemism for our obsessive anti-regulatory philosophy, whereby the failure to set national standards actually inhibits technological development, and the failure to get serious about antitrust laws allows a few dominant corporations to dig in and resist change at the expense of the American public.
    Why did quadraphonic sound fail in the 1970s? Because the recording industry couldn’t be made to settle on a single technical standard, and the supposedly healthy competition between quad technologies caused those technologies to cancel each other out in the marketplace. How many consumers were going to invest in two completely different playback systems that accomplished the same thing?
    Why did stereo AM radio fail in the 1980s? Because the Federal Communications Commission refused to sanction a single AM-stereo technology, preferring to let five competing and incompatible systems to duke it out in the marketplace. Again, consumers didn’t want to take a chance on equipment that could be obsolete in a couple of years (remember Betamax vs. VHS?), and had completely lost interest by the time the FCC got around to approving a single system in 1993.
    Then there are the cases in which industry professionals actually do everything they can to hinder change. I’m not just talking about big corporations. At the beginning of World War II, the musicians’ union was so irrationally terrified by the rise of the jukebox—which would supposedly kill live music in bars and nightclubs—that it tried to abort the technology by declaring a complete moratorium on making recordings of any kind.
    Fifty years ago, Hollywood bean counters were certain that television would kill the movies; twenty years ago, the threat came from home video. Then it was the video manufacturers who tried, unsuccessfully, to sue video rental stores out of existence. If consumers could rent from a second party, why would they buy from the source?
    Well, consumers continue to go to the source for quality goods. People still see movies in theaters, and stay home only when they tire of the crud that Hollywood has been spewing onto postage-stamp screens (which, rather than DVDs and cable TV, is what caused this past summer's box-office slump). People can rent all sorts of movies from places like Casa Video, but they still buy their own DVDs. (In fact, the remarkably strong sales of the DVD version of an obscure, 13-episode TV series called Firefly persuaded Hollywood moguls to turn the show into the very good film Serenity.)
    The Recording Industry Association of America is dedicated to protecting the special interests of the nation’s fattest record companies. In the 1960s the RIAA howled that the introduction of blank, record-at-home audio cassettes would lead to rampant piracy, killing off legitimate record labels. The sky didn’t fall then, but the RIAA continues to challenge any technological and social change it regards as a threat to its hegemony. For the past couple of years it’s been bullying—with lawsuits—teenagers who dare to share music files on the Internet, a practice not much different from sharing cassette copies of favorite songs. Now the RIAA is yelping about the peril of downloading from high-quality digital radio:

With the digital radio marketplace experiencing a convergence across all platforms—a convergence creating arbitrary advantages for certain services over others at the expense of creators—the music community is making the case to Congress for balance and fair competition.

    Balance? Fair compeition? Now, there are a couple of novel ideas. Here’s another one: Why don’t the RIAA members focus on producing content that people would actually pay a fair price for? And distributing it in a way that’s attractive to consumers, not merely convenient for the luddite troglodytes monopolizing the recording industry?
    As a member of one file-sharing portal has said, “5 corporations selling 95% of what people see, think and hear is not good for a democracy.”

LAFAVE LIVES!

posted by James Reel

    Ever wonder what happened to former Arizona Daily Star music critic Ken LaFave? Well, he's had all sorts of professional adventures hither and yon, but right now he's out on his own, trying to make a living mainly as a composer. (He still writes words, too; he's responsible for the good preview of The Threepenny Opera in today's Star.) If you'd like to hear some of Ken's latest music, and you're inclined to drive up to Tempe to do so, you can catch his concerto for electric guitar and wind ensemble at ASU this weekend, and an opera inspired by the painting American Gothic at ASU next weekend. For details, check my article in the East Valley (formerly Mesa) Tribune.

IN MEMORIAM

posted by James Reel

    The latest Tucson Weekly includes my rather harsh review of Top Hat Theatre Club’s DOA production of Murder at the Vicarage:

James Mitchell Gooden runs the theater; he has directed this production, and plays a major role on stage. Gooden is not directly the problem, except insofar as he may be stretching himself too thin, and unwisely mounting shows too big to be supported by the available talent pool. He's trying to build an ensemble, but he hasn't yet recruited enough seasoned actors to populate a 13-character play, and he shouldn't be charging full admission for us to observe his training program.

    I’d also like to draw your attention to something more serious, a series of little tributes to my friend and colleague Chris Limberis, who died of leukemia last Saturday. Limbo, as we called him, was a tenacious reporter and, despite his modesty, a real character. The finest of the tributes, moving in its heartfelt simplicity and its ability to tell you everything you need to know in just a few words, comes (as expected) from Renée Downing:

    I knew him only by name when I finally got myself introduced to him. Famous Chris Limberis turned out to be lovely company. He was sweet and cheerful and funny, with beautiful, self-effacing manners, an encyclopedic knowledge of everything Tucson and a bottomless, spitting contempt for corruption and stupidity. Chris was proudly Greek, devoutly religious and deeply kind. He was also a fierce, old-school reporter who never let go, even when he felt like hell. That was probably most of the time for the last few years.
    Here's how dear Chris was: He once sent me a thank-you note for a get-well card.
     I will miss him terribly. Tucson will miss him, without ever realizing what it lost.

PREP

posted by James Reel

     For this week's new content in San Francisco Classical Voice, Lisa Hirsch has written an article examining how critics prepare to do their work. She seems to cover all the bases, reporting that preparation ranges from delving into the scores beforehand to ... doing absolutely nothing. I must admit that I fall into the latter camp these days.
     In the music field, I'm already thoroughly familiar with most of the material I'm likely to encounter in concert, except for the newest scores. It's not quite fair to compare the performance at hand to the ideal performance in my head, and it's certainly a bad idea to hold the performers up to the standards and idiosyncracies of whatever CD I may listen to shortly before the concert. For new music, I'll do some background research on the composer, maybe listen to or look at some of the composer's earlier scores, but I usually don't pore over the new score before the concert. I prefer to have an experience as fresh as the audience's, and I'm confident that I can describe what's going on without having my nose in a score, particularly since I'm writing a brief general-interest review, not a detailed analysis.
     The same holds true for my theater criticism; if I do any research, it's after the performance. If my criticism is going to be of much value to a reader, it should first reflect the in-theater experience of the reader, with research and reflection coming afterward.

MARGARET MEAD AT THE SYMPHONY

posted by James Reel

    British journalist Jessica Duchen has posted at her blog an interesting article about the real lives of orchestra musicians. Their lot can be tough, but they’re hardly toiling in a Dickensian poor house. Of course, Duchen’s article draws upon interviews with members of leading British orchestras, but much of what she reports is true for American players as well (although they rarely get film-score gigs here—unionized American orchestras are too expensive).
    Where Duchen talks about salaries, bear in mind that one British pound is worth about $1.75. Compare the salary figures for the top London orchestras to those in the Tucson Symphony, where, according to a musician I was talking to not long ago, rank-and-file contract players make less than $15,000 a year.

RADIO DIVERSITY

posted by James Reel

    Larry Harnisch, the Arizona Daily Star’s classical-music critic back in the early 1980s (who now works for a certain more serious paper covering Los Angeles), has this riff on my post about radio consultants who promulgate a generic sound across the country:

    Bravo ... I think Internet radio is a wonderful thing because it allows—in fact requires—classical stations around the world to compete on an equal footing and to distinguish themselves from one another. A listener can easily switch from one city's classical station to another with no loss in audio quality. From my point of view, it's a great option.
    [I] hate a certain overnight announcer (not on KUAT) who laughs at all her own jokes and has horrible faux foreign pronounciation. The ditsoid female announcer in question is Nimet Habachy, who works the overnight shift on WQXR. She is almost as annoying as empty-headed gab queen Bonnie Grice (formerly of KUSC and now at WDUQ), if such a thing is humanly possible.

    My own feeling is that people are tuning in to hear the music, not me. Announcers are necessary unless we're just presenting aural wallpaper, but really, who at 7:15 a.m. is really paying attention to anything I have to say? If I can do a sufficiently informative break in only 20 seconds, so much the better.