Kris Delmhorst Drives The Cars

KRIS DELMHORST

Cars

Signature Sounds 51-2040

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Were The Cars an influential band, or symbolic of the vacuity of the post-punk, pre-grunge early 1980s? Should tribute albums be sweet-voiced faithful renditions, or raw, radical revamps? I’m a big Kris Delmhorst fan, but whether you’ll like her new album depends entirely upon how you answer those two questions. Delmhorst bounces the beat on “Shake It Up,” is off-kilter on “You Might Think,” and coy on “My Best Friend’s Girl,” though her gorgeous straight-up folk take of “Magic” gets my vote for best of show. She grew up listening to The Cars, which poses another conundrum. Some of the music of our youth is classic; some now embarrasses us like old photos of bad haircuts. So is this album a precious small jewel or the sort of inconsequential tshatshke you’d pick up at a sidewalk sale closeout? It depends.

Waiting for Superman a Kryptonite-Filled Piece of Deception

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (2010)

Directed and written by Davis Guggenheim

111 minutes

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September generally means three things: football games, prides of backpack-laden kids trudging along in formations suggestive of mass mountaineering expeditions, and rightwing rants on how to fix the “broken” educational system. The latter involves force-feeding the following ideas: school vouchers, standardized tests, more charter schools, standardized tests, firing bad teachers, standardized tests, breaking the power of teachers’ unions, standardized tests, privatizing education, standardized tests, school uniforms, standardized tests, local control, and the ever-popular standardized tests.

Enter Davis Guggenheim’s 2010 film Waiting for Superman, which garnered an Oscar nomination for best documentary. I just got around to watching it and am very glad that Oscar spurned this slick piece of propaganda. It’s deception masquerading as reason, replete with emotional appeals that drown out reason: hardworking, caring parents (single moms and married couples), a passionate black teacher (Geoffrey Canada), and cute kids vying to get into charter schools. In a faux attempt at “balance,” Guggenheim gives us a rainbow: black kids, Latino and Hispanic kids, and even a white kid. To show his “fairness,” he picks schools in inner cities and one in suburbia. (Guess which one the white kid attends?) In good American filmmaking style--which is to say the schlock shock method--Guggenheim offers “drama” in the form of a contest: Which students will escape their nightmare schools--though the suburban one hardly qualifies--and win the lottery to attend academically challenging charter schools? And what would the drama be without a villain, which Guggenheim provides in the form of the National Educational Association (NEA).

The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are portrayed as agents of reaction standing in the way of “reform,” another film buzzword. Unions are shown battling District of Columbia School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, one of the candidates for Superman. Rhee wants to fire all the bad teachers, but everyone wants more good teachers, it seems, except the NEA and AFT. It’s clear that Guggenheim thinks that charter schools are the answer. He also makes the incredulous claim that poor student performance and high drop out rates are not linked to money, and believes we could educate students more cheaply if we had less union control and more charter schools. He does admit, though, that great teachers are the difference between success and failure.

No one would dispute the importance of master educators. You’d have to be nuts not to want Geoffrey Canada teaching your kid! But here are some things you won’t learn in Guggenheim’s simplistic screed. In 80% of the cases, charter schools perform no better than public schools, and their success rate plummets even lower when students are chosen via blind rather than competitive lotteries. Social problems appear only incidentally in the film, but they are at the core of why inner-city schools are so bleak. Guggenheim’s lottery drama makes for compelling viewing and we sit on the edge of our seats as kids we get to know and root for face odds of 10-1 or higher to win entry to a charter school. But does Guggneheim ask why it’s only 10:1? Shouldn’t there be thousands of parents vying to get their kid into one of the precious slots? The fact that there are scores rather than thousands has at least as much to do with poor schools as bad teachers.

Guggenheim certainly doesn’t tell you that Michelle Rhee might be the biggest fraud since Piltdown Man. He shows the NEA refusing even to discuss Rhee’s reforms. Well, in 2010 the union caved a bit and gave Rhee more control. She promptly fired 241 teachers, but only 76 of them for suspected cause. She also laid-off 737 other school employees; some of those let go were teachers and administrators in high-performing schools and several were her own hires! Rhee claimed that her get-tough approach led to increases in reading and math scores. She’s not chancellor any more; it turns out that 103 DC schools are being investigated for suspiciously high wrong-to-right erasures on standardized tests (58% in one elementary school). Those looking into her record allege she also exaggerated her own (thin) teaching record and test tampering now appears to be the reason for any “success” experienced by her or DC schools.

But hey, I applaud anyone who exposes the bankruptcy of standardized testing, even if they cheat to do so. Standardized testing is to education what a crocheted cover is to a teapot: it can make the container look more attractive, but it won’t compensate for a rancid brew. Don’t take my word for it. Go to your own Geoffrey Canada. Ask the educator who has been the most important in your life if he or she thinks that standardized tests reveal how well students learn. Then ask that person how he or she knows when a student is learning.

Right after watching the putrid Waiting for Superman I read about Finland, whose schools rank number one in the world. That hasn’t always been the case; in the early 1960s, Finnish schools had very high dropout rates and student achievement was low. So the Finns didn’t just talk about reform; they actually revamped their educational system (with the blessing of unions). The Finns spend less per pupil than in the United States. What did they do?

First, they depoliticized schools by taking away local control. The Finns have a national curriculum and they mandate the same spending in each district. Neighborhoods may be wealthy or poor, but the schools are the same. (No ideological textbooks or urban/suburban biases here.) They also imposed the odd idea that educators ought to run schools, not politicians, accountants, or school boards. Classes are kept small and the job of pedagogy is entrusted to those who actually educate. (Why is that such a radical idea? Don’t we leave the practice of medicine to physicians, and that of house wiring to electricians?) If teachers wish to combine classes when it makes sense, they do so; if a kid is falling behind, a teacher might shadow that kid and act as an individual tutor while others take on some of his classroom duties. All children are mainstreamed; special education is used sparingly. Most kids don’t go to school until age seven, by the way.

There are no standardized tests of any sort and Finnish teachers recoil at the very idea, which they see it as antithetical to teaching students how to learn. (And isn’t how to learn ultimately more useful than what we learn?) About the only thing Finns have in common with Americans is that they share the belief that good teachers are key to good learning. They’ve taken steps to secure master teachers that would make the Texas Board of Education choke. It’s not enough to want to work with kids; if you’re not in the top 10 percent of your college class, you can’t be a teacher in Finland! Why would anyone try? Because the Finns pay teachers rates comparable to doctors and lawyers. Oh yeah; they’re also unionized!

Does it pay off? 93 percent of Finns graduate; 17.5 percent higher than the US. And the Finns kick our butts by every objective standard. Lest you think it’s because Finnish society is so heterogeneous, consider that Norway is more so. Its schools operate akin to those in the US and they’ve obtained American-like results. All of this tells me that school reform isn’t a matter of waiting for Superman; it’s a matter of schools run by educators, not politicians, demagogues, or fluff-peddling documentary filmmakers.

Sweetback Sisters Sassy Brooklyn-Style Country Gems

THE SWEETBACK SISTERS

Looking for a Fight

Signature Sounds 2038

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I did a triple take when I read that The Sweetback Sisters were from Brooklyn. Their sassy, badass take on retro country is more like what you’d expect from good ole’ boys living in the part of Texas where the Pecos meets the Rio Grande, not from back-talking gals living near where Flatbush crosses Atlantic.

Vocalists Zara Bode and Emily Miller, who also play acoustic guitar, front the Sweetback Sisters. The instrumentation is anchored by Jesse Milnes (fiddle, vovals) Stefan Amidon (drums, vocals), Ross Bellenoit (electric guitar), and Peter Bitenc (bass). It’s a solid lineup capable of fancy razzle-dazzle, but The Sweetback Sisters are more interested in having fun than making people admire their hot licks. They take us back to a time in which country music and Western swing were equal parts insouciant and corny, and theirs is a modern-day mash of the sensibilities of Patsy Cline, The Sons of the Pioneers, and Hank Williams, with a little bit of Appalachia and the pop charts thrown in for good measure. The title song is a Milnes original, but it sounds as if it could have been lifted from the repertoire of a 1950s bar West Texas bar band writing from real-life experience.

The Sweetback Sisters do a nice job of mixing retro originals with covers of everyone from Dwight Yokam (“It Won’t Hurt When I Fall Down from This Bar Stool”) to the Traveling Wilburys (“Rattled”). Every song on this CD is a gem, but let me give extra shout outs for their crisp cover of the Hazel Dickens hill country feminist ditty “Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There” and Milnes’s hysterical “Too Many Experts.” The latter says everything you’ve ever thought about when overhearing bar chat but were too timid to vocalize.

The Sweetback Sisters can be favorably compared to Hot Club of Cowtown and, like their material, you’d be hard pressed to find music that ranks higher on the pure fun scale. Brooklyn, eh?

Energy and NIMBY Liberals

The Vatican can go solar, but Amherst won't!

A few years ago a neighborhood group stopped by my house to solicit my signature for a petition. The cause? They wanted to derail a planned housing development a few hundred yards away. I declined to sign. To do so would have been hypocrisy of the highest order. After all, Phoenix and I live in a neighborhood that three decades ago was the howling wilderness. Okay, I exaggerate, but there wasn’t a single house here twenty-five years ago. In fact, there wasn’t even a road--just trails blazed by deer and the occasional hunters who stalked them.

Want to know why liberals get a bad rap? The NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) Syndrome is one of the reasons. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I live in Massachusetts, a (very) blue state with a reputation for being so liberal that rightwing talk shows use us as a synonym for the Anti-Christ. That’s true enough and helps to explain why I live here. (It surely isn’t for the balmy winters!) But when it comes to NIMBY development, Bay Staters can give Southern rednecks a good run for their money in the hypocrisy derby.

Exhibit A: Wealthy Nantucket residents continue to battle plans to develop an offshore wind farm project, though they won few friends by complaining how the aesthetics of it would ruin their view and devalue their multi-million-dollar properties. It looks as if, at long last, they’re going to lose that struggle and the windmills will be built, but one wonders why these folks weren’t leading the effort to build, not stop the project. Shouldn’t people with resources be the ones to pave the alternative energy highway?

Exhibit B: The latest NIMBY protest is unfolding in Amherst, a city allegedly so liberal that it was once dubbed “the only town in America with its own foreign policy.” The University of Massachusetts unveiled a plan to erect a 2-megawatt solar array on university property. This galvanized the liberals across the street (and behind a screen of trees, by the way) into action that some of them haven’t seen since roughly 1968. They accused the university of seeking to ruin their neighborhood, dubbed the project “the dragon,” and succeeded in forcing it to be relocated. (It will go to neighboring Hadley. If there is any justice, it’s that Amherst won’t get any potential revenue from the sale of future energy.)

What a Bunch of NIMBY Numskulls! Look, folks, it’s this simple: the days of cheap energy are over. Oil is going to run out. We need new sources of energy, even if it means you have to look at solar panels when you walk your Pomeranian. Those of us who have been blessed with good fortune simply can’t adopt an “I’ve-got-mine-let’s-stop” attitude. I don’t advocate destruction, but I’d shed no tears if a few Amherst Volvos with “Go Solar” bumper stickers got vandalized. And “Boo! Hiss!” to UMass for caving in. The university should have done what Governor Deval Patrick did on Nantucket: tell the locals to suck it in and adjust.

Vance Gilbert Embarrassment Reveals Farce of Security Check System

Just your average looking "Middle Eastern" kind of guy?

Who knew that Vance Gilbert was a security risk? A recent flight from Boston bound for Washington was aborted when an alarmed passenger spotted folksinger Vance Gilbert reading a book about aircraft that had lots of photos of cockpits. The plane returned to the terminal, Gilbert was taken from the plane, questioned by police and the Transportation Safety Administration, returned to the craft, and allowed to proceed to the Nation’s Capitol, a place where black men such as he were once bought and sold. Apparently, D.C. policymakers still haven’t figured out what to do with people of color.

If you believe a Boston Globe op-ed on this, the incident was regrettable, but understandable. To whatever Globe writer penned this unsigned piece I reply, your logic is flawed, your attempt at taking a middle position is insensitive, and your assertion that all panicked travelers must be taken seriously is brick-headed thick. The Globe admits that Gilbert was “wronged,” but points out that we can’t, on one hand, tell passengers to be on the lookout for suspicious people and, on the other, ignore their tips. Yes we can. We must investigate reasonable concerns, but to surrender to pure panic means that--to pull a 9/11 phrase--the terrorists have won. It’s smackdown time on the Globe’s logic.

Was Vance Gilbert racially profiled? Of this there can be no doubt. The Globe op-ed actually used this phrase: “Gilbert is African-American but can pass for Middle Eastern.” My God! Did someone actually write this? Was that person oblivious to what the term “pass” means in the black community? That sort of language is as offensive as if the writer had come out and said, “All colored people look alike to me.”

Let’s go a bit further. This plane was taxiing down a runway when it reversed course. This means that Mr. Gilbert had (supposedly) already been screened when he bought his ticket, and again when he passed through security. If he was suspicious or dangerous, shouldn’t the TSA have flagged and snagged him before he boarded? The incident is more than regrettable; it exposes what many of us have been saying all along: airport security isn’t real; it’s merely an illusion designed to prop up the airline industry. That same industry, by the way, has balked at the expense of taking measures that would actually increase security, such as x-raying every single bag that goes into the hold and requiring every passenger to submit to a full body scan before boarding. (Note to the overly modest: Stay home if you don’t want TSA personnel to see a scan of your body.) And, if you think that anyone is really doing background checks on ticket purchasers, you’re naïve. There are some names in a computer database that automatically trigger alerts, but no one is checking each name. That would take a lot more TSA personnel, which Congress won’t authorize because, my goodness, they might join a labor union.

Nonetheless, couldn’t the crew have checked out Gilbert without humiliating him in front of the entire plane? I’ve only met Gilbert a few times, but I can tell you what everyone says about him--that he’s seen as one of the gentlest souls in the music business. He’s witty, talented and, above all, kind. Vance Gilbert represents the sort of security risk that one might associate with a monarch butterfly. He was on a plane filled with computers and in constant contact with the flight tower. How hard is it to send a message to the tower the essence of which would have been: “We have a passenger in seat 28G. Can you run a quick check on him?” Even a Google search would have revealed a profile the likes of: Gilbert, Vance, folksinger, benign.

And now the piece de la crétin. The book Gilbert was reading was on vintage aircraft. That’s right--old airplanes…. I’m no pilot, but I’m thinking that maybe a DC-10 or a Boeing 767 is a bit different in makeup, design, and operation than your average Fokker triplane. Couldn’t one of the flight attendants doing pre-takeoff checks have walked by Gilbert’s seat and said, “Hey, whatcha’ reading there? Old planes? Cool!” Let’s not kid ourselves; that’s exactly what would have happened if Gilbert looked like a white salesman from Iowa.

The Globe would have us believe that “the State Police, Transportation Administration, and United Airlines all acted reasonably.” I’d agree if we replace the word “reasonably” with “predictably.” In my view, each owes Gilbert a public apology, and he’s magnanimous enough that he’d likely accept it. As for the rest of us, I’d say that we ought to express our disgust to the TSA, United Airlines, and Congress. Demand an end to the farce that currently passes as airport security. Give us real checks that treat everyone exactly the same way, or just tell us that we’re on our own when we board.

If anyone out there knows Vance, tell him that Rob Weir of the Valley Advocate couldn’t be sadder or more outraged that this happened to him. Peace, bro.

Do Ask and Make Them Tell

I used to think it was rude to shut down politicians. I’ve changed my mind. Now I believe it’s our best chance at reviving American democracy. It may be the only way to get our questions answered.

Contemporary politics is suffering from a dearth of public servants. What we too often get these days are the toadies of private interest groups. The latter pay plenty to airbrush their mouthpieces and train them to stay on message like mimicking parrots. Listening to modern politicians is often like being trapped in a room with a five-year-old piano student has just learned “Chopsticks;” after a while the tedium of repeated notes makes you crazy. It doesn’t seem to matter what the real issues are these days, oily pols just slide out from under them and spout well-rehearsed sound bites.

Somebody needs to remind politicians that they have a duty to answer the question that was asked, not the one they practiced in the seminar room. For heaven’s sake, if I ask one of my students to answer a question about the Civil War and she writes an essay about Vietnam, she fails. So let’s hold politicians to that standard. We must do so, because most journalists will not. To put a point on it, they too have been bought and sold by special interest groups that have wined them, dined them, and convinced them that the only way to be a “player” is to be embedded. In “press conferences” these days even NPR lobs more softballs than you’ll see on a summer Sunday in the park.

There are encouraging signs that disgruntled Americans are taking matters into their own hands. In her recent swing through Iowa, Michele Bachman insisted she only wanted to talk about the economy and declined to take questions. Not good enough for seventeen-year-old Gabe Aderhold, who wanted to ask Bachman about the suicide of gay teens in her own Minneapolis suburb. When she ignored him, he shouted out, “I am a second-class citizen because of you, Michele.” Bachman was forced to backpedal--and what else could one who thinks you can “cure” gays by “praying” do but backpedal?--by jumping into her golf cart and speeding away. Rick Perry didn’t fare any better in New Hampshire. When asked by a child how old he thought the earth was. “You know, I don’t have any idea,” said Perry as he tried to move on, but his answers weren’t much better on Social Security, unemployment, or global warming. I live in Massachusetts, where making fun of New Hampshire is an official sport, but let me offer a bold prediction: Rick Perry won’t fare well in the New Hampshire primary. Folks up that way know horseshit when they smell it, and Perry left so many deposits that Granite Staters will remember in February.

While we’re on the subject of all shine, no substance, let’s give the Cowardly Lion Award to Scott Brown. In an “appearance” in Western Massachusetts last week that was shorter than the senator’s list of accomplishments, Brown came, he waved, and he ran away the moment questions were asked. That’s right, a man who thinks he deserves to be a U.S. Senator didn’t take a single question. Apparently he can’t even hit a lobbed softball or two. Brown can win reelection without Western Massachusetts and that’s his only hope; he didn’t have that many fans here before he came, and he exited with even fewer. Let’s get folks in Eastern Massachusetts to force Brown to talk about the Tea Party baggage he hauls in the back of his famed pickup truck.

To this emerging trend I say, good on you Paul and Paula Plebian. Keep on asking those questions and if the pols don’t answer them to your satisfaction, keep on asking until they go away. Let’s ask Mitt Romney why a guy who doesn’t think the rich should pay higher taxes is tearing down his 3,000 square foot oceanfront home in La Jolla, California, to put up an 11,000 square foot replacement mansion. While we’re at it, let’s ask him what a guy who already has homes on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire; a townhouse in Boston; and a 9,500 square foot home at a ski resort in Utah actually knows about the middle class.

Let’s ask all Republicans why they won’t allow rich people to pay another nickel in taxes, but they do support repealing the current 4.2 percent Social Security payroll tax and letting it rise back to 6.2 percent, its level before President Bush temporarily lowered it. That’s a tax hike that impacts only incomes of under $106,000. (For the record, I support raising it. I also support removing the $106k cap.)

By all means become an equal opportunity question asker. Ask Barack Obama why he caved in on extending tax breaks to the rich when he promised that he wouldn’t. Ask him why we’re still in Iraq when we were supposed to be out by last spring. Make him tell you why a dime of federal money goes to Pakistan and why we should care about Afghanistan. Ask him when the hell he’s going to put forth a health reform package that’s worthy of the name.

Ask those questions, folks, and if the pols won’t answer them, shout ‘em down. If they don’t care what we want to know, why should we care what they think about anything else?

Colin Hay Makes Beauty Out of Tragedy

COLIN HAY

Gathering Mercury

Compass 7-4551-2

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Colin Hay is best known for his work with the Australian pop band Men at Work, though for the past several decades he’s been a solo artist. His latest album contains ten songs that reflect on his father’s death. That may sound maudlin, but the music is not. As the title suggests, Hay has had some trouble coming to grips with his loss; gathering mercury is, of course, a very hard thing to do. But instead of filling his lyrics with gut-wrenching angst, Hay uses gathering mercury as a metaphor for the way in which those who carry on after the death of a loved one seek new directions. The result is a passel of songs that is touching and sometimes sad, but also thoughtful and hopeful.

The album is also musically diverse. Hay mostly plays electric guitar throughout and works with a band, but he carefully crafts each song’s mood. On the opening “Send Somebody” the guitars are soft and ringing, which gives the piece a folk rock feel. He follows with “Family Man,” whose treatment is what you might get if you mashed some string band music with pop-laced music hall, á la The Beatles’ White album. Later on he gives his “Half a Million Angels” a faint Spanish guitar highlights; on “Far From Home” he pushes the envelope the whole way and plays it reggae tempo. But the cool thing about this recording is that Hay doesn’t dwell too long in any one place. “Where the Sky is Blue” sounds like it was adapted from some old time Appalachian composition; and “A Simple Song” is a folk skiffle blend that lives up to its name.

I suppose an armchair psychologist might say that Hay’s musical rambling is a reflection of his psychic turmoil. Perhaps. Or maybe he’s just a clever musician who likes to mix things up and is making the best of a tragic loss. Yeah--let’s go with that.