Gaper's Blog

Smile! You're on Red Light Camera!

No doubt if you live in or near a metropolitan area, you've seen red light cameras as they're popping up faster than CVS Pharmacies.  They're the boon of municipalities and the bane of civil libertarians but we all know they're here to stay.

There was once a time--at least in Chicago--when stoplights were timed perfectly.  Timed in such a way that if you began at a stoplight that turned green and drove the speed limit (25 MPH in Chicago) you could travel most arterial streets (Madison, Lake, Chicago, Ashland, Western etc) without ever having to stop. It's true. Then the pavement sensor emerged and changed traffic flow.  In some ways it was an improvement because if you approached a red light and no other traffic was travelling on the perpendicular street, the light would change and you could go, saving fuel and time.  Now it seems like a push because a single car activating a sensor can stop the flow of a much greater volume of traffic, just drive by a mall or large retail center late at night and watch as a single car will trigger a red light for just one car to be allowed to exit a parking lot.

Now photo-enforced intersections have turned urban drivers into hair-trigger drivers.  I distinctly remember learning about 'stale green lights' in Driver's Education, any green light which is due to turn yellow and then red.  We were told to approach 'stale greens' with caution, be prepared to stop but once you've reached a certain point, even if the light turns, you can clear the intersection safely (and legally) before opposing traffic is given the green.  The problem with the red light cameras is that it forces the driver to second guess their timing and wonder if they'll 'get caught'.  It used to be you'd roll the dice and hope a cop wasn't nearby in case you were running a red light, now the figure $90 (or more) pops into your head and that heistation causes all manner of reactions.  I've seen people slam on their brakes, end up halfway in the intersection but not setting off the camera only to put the car in reverse and activate the camera in reverse as the cameras sense any movement.  On the other extreme, I've seen drivers approach photo-enforced intersections slower than the speed limit (slowing traffic flow behind them) so as to avoid slamming on the brakes to stop whereas if they had just proceeded normally they would've made it past the intersection with plenty of time to spare.  There are competing studies that speak to the effectiveness of photo-enforced intersections, one says it makes the intersections safer and another says the presence of the cameras actually make the intersections more dangerous.

Not long after Chicago began installing the red light cameras, I got caught but I was driving a vehicle owned by my employer (for the first and only time) and since the owner of the vehicle is the one who's ticketed, I got kind of a freebie.  I even owned up to it the day it happened and told my boss but I never was asked to pay the fine.  I know if you've read this far, you must have an opinion about photo-enforced intersections, please share it with us in the comments.  Ever been nabbed at one?  Are the cameras an affront to our civil liberties or a necessary component of our tech-heavy society?

The Unheard Music (Volume XLIV)

I guess when you take your stage name from a Bob Dylan album but sound more like Elvis Costello people are bound to be confused.  Take the case of John Wesley Harding (nee' Wesley Harding Stace), a British ex-pat who's been making sharp, witty records for almost twenty years with virtually no American mainstream success.  There are outlets in which Harding's profile is significant, just take a listen to XM Radio's Channel "Fred" or listen online to woxy.com and you're bound to hear a JWH tune or three before long. 

After a promising debut and follow up Here Comes The Groom, Harding released The Name Above The Title in 1991, netting several hits on the then nascent Billboard Modern Rock Chart.  Among them "The People's Drug" and and "The Person You Are" two of the alternate universe 'hits' you're likely to hear on the aforementioned outlets. The momentum gained by the minor success of Name Above Title seemed to have Harding poised for greater things.  While not as acerbic as Elvis Costello, Harding did share a keen wit and gift for turning a clever phrase (and he also used two of Costello's Attractions in his early touring band) but outside of the Modern Rock genre he barely made a dent, meanwhile lesser talents were crossing over into the mainstream charts. I won't name names.  A few years later, Harding would turn up amongst his heroes Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello on the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity with the track "I'm Wrong About Everything".  It's probably worth noting that another of Harding's influences--Bruce Springsteen--also had a cameo in High Fidelity. And for true music geeks, the title High Fidelity itself likely comes from the Costello song of the same name. Dude keeps popping up everywhere.

Unlike a lot of musicians/songwriters who rarely have much more than pumping gas or waiting tables to augment their non-rock income, Harding listened to his guidance counselor and had a back-up plan. While continuing to release records periodically, Harding fell back on his academic background (he dropped out of Cambridge just shy of a PhD but did achieve a First in English Literature) and has released two acclaimed novels: Misfortune and By George under his given name, Wesley Stace. And where the rock thing may not have bore the kind of fruit for long-term sustainibility, the author thing seems to be quite promising so far.

I hope you enjoy the music of John Wesley Harding (Stace) and I hope you have a great weekend.  I know there's fewer of you out there reading this in the summertime but please add a comment if you do read this as it's been kinda lonely on Fridays for The Unheard Music, except for a few loyal souls who know who they are.

So, I Have a Tiny, Tiny (Audio) Cameo in a Cool, Little Horror Film.

I was a Broadcasting and Film major in college.  When I got around to taking Film Production courses, we got to make short 8mm or 16mm films. Among my artifacts from college were two 8mm film reels, short films I'd made circa 1989 which since I hadn't seen since then.  It just so happened I was at an estate sale a month ago and bought a pristine Super 8mm projector and screen for $20 which meant I could finally watch those two five minute shorts. Oh, they were so much better in my memory.  In my defense, the 16mm films I made were far superior but a stipulation of the course was that the school retained them and they're probably sitting in a vault somewhere collecting dust, or given the recent flooding in Iowa City, perhaps they fell victim to the floods.  Either way, I wasn't meant to be the next Scorsese.  One of my classmates from Film Production 1 has remained one of my closest college friends and she's made a nice living out in Hollywood as an editor.

Another of my Iowa classmates was a guy named Dave Payne who I played in a band with for a year or so (really bad out of focus picture of us, left).  Despite our modest successes in the band (called Dizzy) Dave was clearly destined to make movies for a living.  He asked me to be in a short horror film he was shooting for an advanced film class, I agreed.  He said they were shooting out at the Coralville Reservoir campground and he'd need me for three or four hours.  I honestly thought it would be the typical student low-budget student production but when I got there, his crew had set up scaffolding three stories high for one of the cameras and had an extensive generator system to power several thousand watts of lighting.  It felt like a real film set and the finished product--a 20 minute film called Squeal--was light years beyond any student film I'd seen.  Since it was the pre-internet era, I lost touch with Dave not long after college but did know he moved out to Hollywood to try and make it there.

Flash-forward to the late 90's and sites like http://imdb.com made it easy to research film personnel, so I looked up some my old friends from film school, including Dave, and saw he'd directed half a dozen films including a few he'd also written.  I found a few of his films at my video rental store and watched them.  None of them were going to be nominated for Oscars but they all had their charms and were infused with Dave's quirky touch, the same whimsy I'd witnessed being in a band with him and seeing all his shorts he'd made in college.  I contacted him through his production company and let him know how much I enjoyed his movies and how happy I was that he'd followed his dream and was doing what he loved and was good at. We kept in touch over the years and about four years ago he sent me an e-mail telling me he was in pre-production on a film he'd written and was directing called Reeker. Knowing I was a DJ and a news and traffic reporter, he asked if I would be interested in a small 'audio cameo' as a radio reporter in Reeker. Of course I said yes and he sent me the script.  I recorded my part at a studio in Chicago, encoded it as an mp3 and e-mailed it to him and frankly forgot about it.  A year or so later, Dave e-mailed me the trailer and told me the film was making the festival rounds.  For whatever reason, it saw only limited screens in Chicago and I didn't get to see it, plus I wasn't even sure if my 'part' even made it past the editing room. Dave was in town last weekend with his wife (who stars in Reeker) and newborn and gave me a call, we tried to get together for a drink but our schedules didn't cooperate.  He did tell me Reeker was now out on DVD and he was pretty sure my 'cameo' made the cut.

We finally got to see Reeker over the weekend and were duly impressed.  Thankfully my cameo was within the first 10 minutes (at around the 10:15 mark listen for the radio report of a road accident) so I wasn't distracted for half the film wondering if I was going to be in it and listening for myself.  The film was well written, gorgeously shot and had some genuinely scary moments and some funny, light-hearted ones as well and clocks in at a taut 90 minutes.  Eric Mabius (Ugly Betty, The O.C.) and Michael Ironside (ER, Smallville) have smaller roles and Dave's wife Tina Illman stars (Dave and Tina, left).  So, if you're a horror film fan, put Reeker on your Netflix queue or pick it up at Blockbuster.  Don't see it because I'm in it, see it despite the fact I'm in it.

Here's a trailer.

The Unheard Music (Volume XLIII)

My brother's getting married on Saturday, so the next 72 hours will be a whirlwind, hence me posting this a  day early.

It was 1986 and Timbuk 3 had just released their debut smash Greetings From Timbuk 3 featuring the single "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades".  They were booked at Cabaret Metro to do an XRT Budget Show for the meager sum of $3 (I still have the ticket somewhere).  While I was certainly interested in seeing the (then) husband and wife team (plus a boom box to play the rhythm tracks) from Madison, WI.,--who merit their own Unheard Music someday--I was primed to see the opener, a band from Marietta, GA with the unwieldy name of Guadalcanal Diary. I owned their second album, a 1986 release called Jamboree.  Despite the paltry cover charge and them being the opening act, they did a nearly hourlong set   which included all of Jamboree and most of their previous album, Walking In The Shadow of the Big Man. As any seasoned band will tell you, open a live set with two or three songs that are throwaways so the sound engineer can get the mix right, even if you did a soundcheck.  Even better, try to open with an instrumental, which Guadalcanal Diary did with the 'grab-you-by-the-throat' "Gilbert Takes The Wheel", which set the tone nicely for the next 55 minutes or so. Another highlight from Walking in the Shadow, "Trail of Tears" also sent me back to my history book to learn more. As often happens in a live setting, songs that lack distinction on LP come to life onstage, which was the case with "Michael Rockefeller". Even more impressive for the drummers who read this is that the sixteenth note hi-hat part on Michael Rockefeller was played one-handed. Sad tale about poor Michael.

After the decent 2X4 album of 1987, GD released one final studio recording Flip Flop which contained the alternate-universe hit "Always Saturday" and a rocker written by drummer John Poe "Pretty Is As Pretty Does".  The band never quite achieved the success of some of their Georgia bretheren but did release four solid LPs of music that still resonate with me to this day.  I never skip a Guadalcanal Diary song on the iPod.

Have a great weekend, enjoy the music.  Wish Kevin and Kate luck on their nuptials.

 

Dave's Not Here, Man (Part II: The Post Script)

Some of you may remember my post of a month or so ago in which Rhett Miller mistook me for his friend Dave and ended up giving me a hug, thinking I was him.  The explanation then was that Rhett used to have a roommate named Dave and I apparently look like him but Dave was nowhere to be found that night, so I wondered just how much I really look like the guy.  The Old 97's were back in town for the XRT Free 4th of July Concert and I ran into Rhett again milling about backstage. I said hello told him their show at Metro last month was great (though super hot inside) and he said he agreed and added,

 "I think I gave you a hug, didn't I?" 

"Why yes you did, I think you thought I was your friend Dave", I said.

"Actually, it was my friend Brad who you do look like a bit." Rhett said correcting me, it was Brad now that I remember it.

"Well, is he here today?" I asked, "I'd really like to see what he looks like."

"Yeah, I was just talking to him about five minutes ago, Murray knows where he is, I'll find him."

I guess Brad used to play in a band with Murray--the bass player for Old 97's--he wasn't Rhett's old roommate as I originally thought. After posing with me and Phillip in the above photo, Rhett went in search of the elusive Brad.  It's funny because earlier in the day, Carla had pointed out the guy who turned out to be Brad and asked me who he was because he looked familiar and I told her I'd never seen him before.  Moments later, Rhett came back with Brad in tow.  While we're certainly not twins, I can definitely see where one might see a resemblance.  Here (right) is a picture of me and Brad (not Dave).  What do you think?  Twins? Cousins? Not even close? Either way, it was nice to able to finally meet the guy.

The Free 4th of July Concert (Alejandro Ecovedo/Old 97's/Gomez) was a blast.  Perfect weather (73 and sunny) and it was about half as crowded as the bedlam last year when Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend played. I'll try and post up some more photos this week.  How was your 4th?

So, About This Whole Independence Thing...

We're just a few days away from Independence Day, cause for great celebration in The United States. With the increased level of patriotism we've been riding since September of 2001, I think the average American has a renewed commitment to what our freedom and independence means.  Sometimes, sadly, it takes a tragedy to make us appreciate something more.  I am however puzzled by a phenomenon I've witnessed over the years in the City of Chicago and that's the celebration of the independence of other countries in this country.

Hear me out, I'm not getting all Lou Dobbs on you and wishing we had draconian immigration policies, I just question the point of commemorating the independence of other nations here in The United States.  I realize we're a nation almost entirely made up of immigrants and that a lot of the countries from which our populace came were once oppressed or governed by some other nation but we're all Americans now and those old battles are done, right?  The independence of say Poland--Chicago has the largest Polish population outside of Poland itself--is crucial to Poles and Polish culture but since America wasn't their oppressor, it seems a bit odd for Belmont Avenue to turn into New Warsaw every May, even if it is a lot of fun to witness.  I certainly don't mean to single out the Polish, as plenty of other immigrants also celebrate their respective nations independence here but again why is this done outside of their homeland? 

Just as Americans wear red, white and blue and proudly celebrate their American heritage here in America on July 4th, the French (who also wear red, white and blue) celebrate French culture on July 14th (Bastille Day) in France but I've never seen a public display of Gallic pride here in the States or anywhere else for that matter nor have a seen or heard of any organized American parades on July 4th beyond our soil.  Ex-pats will have to confirm or deny this for me.  Of course, none of this behaivior bothers or offends me, it merely puzzles me.  Two analogies come to mind to illustrate this behavior.  1) Imagine someone who has been married twice but still publicly celebrates their 1st Wedding Anniversary every year in addition to their current wedding anniversary. Or  2) A White Sox fan who goes to Wrigley Field to watch a Cubs/Dodgers game and cheers loudly when they see the White Sox score posted on the center field scoreboard.

So tell me, have any of you ever been puzzled by this phenomenon? Got any better analogies?  Or, how will you be celebrating our American independence this Friday? We're doing the XRT Free 4th of July Concert in Grant Park. Have a happy, safe 4th! Back next week.

The Unheard Music (Volume XLII)

This post is kind of a double-edged sword in that I know some of the regular visitors are already fans of this band and those who aren't, aren't likely to become fans but I feel they are important enough to merit an Unheard Music. 

Imagine being in a band that single handedly put your town on the musical map, attracted the attention of some of your idols and you managed to put out two records that are still regarded as essential.  Oh and you did all this before graduating from high school.  And then after you broke up, the members of your band would go on to found some of the more influencial bands of the 90's and beyond. From Louisville, KY, meet Squirrel Bait: bad name, remarkable band.

In between algebra tests and driver's ed classes, the members of Squirrel Bait managed to book some studio time and for $400 cut a blistering 17 minute self-titled EP that caught the ear of Grant Hart (Hüsker Dü), who remarked, "It's the best $400 I've ever heard".  While there's certainly plenty of quality material on the EP, "Sun God" is head and shoulders above the rest.  There's a distinct similarity between Peter Searcy's raspy howl and that of Kurt Cobain, it would be fair to suggest Kurt probably heard Squirrel Bait at some point.  What no one bothered to tell these guys was that in a punky rock band, it's all fine and good to have that youthful energy and spirit but that--especially at their age--you're not supposed to be that good at your instruments.  Squirrel Bait were virtuosos, especially drummer Ben Daughtrey, witness Ben's drumming on "Rose Island Road" from the second record, a full-fledged LP called Skag Heaven.

By the time Skag Heaven came out in 1986, the band had not only attracted the respect and admiration of Grant Hart and Bob Mould--who had Squirrel Bait open for Hüsker Dü--but also that of Steve Albini and Evan Dando (Lemonheads), among others.  They were getting reviewed in The New York Times and The Village Voice.  While Skag Heaven may have smoothed out some of the rough edges of the debut, the songs were also more fleshed out and arranged better but "Kid Dynamite" proves they still had power plus better production values.  Hell, there's even a friggin' vibraslap on one song and vibraslaps aren't punk rock.  It's tough to single out a single song on Skag as the best but my personal favorite is "Short Straw Wins" a song that even inspired me to begin a screenplay (also called Short Straw Wins) that made it to the 20-30 page mark before being abandoned. Whether it was the pressure of being so highly regarded (again while still in high school) or that the differeing factions of the band (Jocks vs. Dorks) made things difficult, they broke up.

As often happens post-high school, the 'dorks' got the last laugh, outshining the jocks.  In this case, the dorkier David Grubbs would go on to acclaim in Bastro, Bitch Magnet and Gastr Del Sol and Brian McMahon would found the legendary Slint (with original Squirrel Bait drummer Britt Walford) and The For Carnation. Clark Johnson spent some time in Bastro and is now a litigator in Lousiville. As for the jocks, Ben Daughtrey joined the Lemonheads as a touring drummer and then later joined the loungey Love Jones and Peter Searcy founded Big Wheel who put out three good records but nothing approaching the ground-breaking work he did with Squirrel Bait.  Searcy also records as a solo artist now.

I hope you enjoy the Squirrel Bait stuff here.  I wonder what your familiarity was had before this post? I will take off next Friday for Independence Day (no Unheard Music) but will likely have something new next Monday or Tuesday preceeding the holiday.  Have a great weekend, enjoy the music!

BPA is BAD

This is cetainly not the first place you'd turn for timely information regarding either dangerous products or personal health or to be warned about possible scams.  Someone else probably alerted you to NOT add Richard Peel as a friend on Facebook, as he's a hacker and doing so will make your Facebook page vulnerable to hackers  This is also not the site to remind you that anytime you get an e-mail from someone asking for your help to free up some cash they have in a foreign bank, it's a bad idea.  Recently however, I was made aware of a dangerous situation that while not exactly front-page news, hit home for me and may have some impact on you. Who's heard of BPA?

I drink a lot of water.  In fact, I did a post a few years ago about what a water snob I am.  For the last six years or so, I have always carried a plastic Nalgene bottle nearly everywhere I went.  Having a durable, portable bottle made it easy to cart around my Brita water from home and the Nicolet Bottled water we have at work, I was never without 24 oz. of quality, cold, filtered agua all the time.  I had read about the perils of reusing the clear plastic bottles in which most store-bought water is contained, that chemicals leached into the water after repeated use, so one should always recycle those bottles after one use.  That seemed wasteful, to use that much plastic for what for most consumers is less than an hour's use.  The most simple solution to me was to seek out one those reusable, translucent plastic Nalgene bottles my old rommate used for camping and rehydrating after working out. I found a bottle at REI circa 2002 and I was on my third Nalgene bottle until I had finally reaed enough about the Bisphenol-A risks to seek other means to tote my H2O around.  The thing about BPA is that while you may not use a reusable water bottle, your kids/nieces/nephews might and even worse, infants may be exposed if you use plastic milk bottles. Since this situation has been made public, plastic bottle manufacturers have been quite pro-active about removing the BPA from their products and many now tout this as a selling point.

I recently recycled all my existing plastic water bottles (Nalgene and others containing the #7 recycling symbol) as a precaution.  I found a similar BPA-free bottle at Eddie Bauer made by Camelbak, Which I've found to be even better than the Nalgene bottles.  Who among you are/were Nalgene users?  Had you heard about BPA before and will it make you change your water bottle habits? Or is this just another one of those faux health scares the media seem to enjoy perpetuating?

The Unheard Music (Volume XLI)

I think there might be a law that says if you're a band/artist from Los Angeles, you must write at least one song about Los Angeles.  Think about L.A.-based bands (X, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Concrete Blonde, Minutemen etc) and they all have a signature Los Angeles song, or two or three.  It's such a cliche that Chicago-based band Local H have a ferociously funny song called "No More California Songs".  Consequently, if you were to ask an astute music fan to name two dozen great L.A. bands, the band I'm featuring today probably wouldn't make it onto that list.  I doubt this band would even make it onto a list of 100 Great Los Angeles bands but not for lack of quality, simply because a lot of music fans probably don't even know this band is from L.A. and sadly, few even know this band at all. Who's heard of Grant Lee Buffalo?  Some of you may remember the falsetto minor hit "Mockingbirds" but few could likely recall who did that song back in 1994.

Late the other night, I was watching the first few episodes of Season Four of The Shield, and towards the end of Episode 4, the song "Demon Called Deception" by Grant Lee Buffalo played over the closing montage, which marked only the second time (Los Lobos were the first) that a Los Angeles-based band's (non-rap) music was used on the show.  Now Grant Lee Buffalo have never been far from my mind as I've been a fan since their 1993 debut Fuzzy but I thought it was telling that a quintessentially Los Angeles show would use GLB before going to the more obvious choices like the bands mentioned in the second sentence of this post.  "Demon..." was used quite effectively for the scene and it reintroduced me to that song, which prior to its' use on the show had never stood out to me but now it does, I had overlooked it. 

I immediately thought of a song from the aforementioned Fuzzy record that while not explicitly set in Los Angeles, could be a scene from The Shield, a richly detailed song about a paroled gangbanger and his girlfriend and their doomed relationship.  Behold "Jupiter and Teardrop".  And just to show their millieu wasn't limited to Southern California, Fuzzy contained an equally compelling song from the debut called "The Shining Hour" that goes from California, to D.C., to Chicago and then NYC. A few years after the success of Mighty Joe Moon, which contained the minor hit song "Mockingbirds", GLB released Copperopolis which led off with the driving "Homespun", yet the record failed to do much commercially and would be the last to feature all the founding members.  Lead singer/songwriter Grant Lee Phillips has continued on as a solo artist with moderate success but not the level of recognition he and his semi-namesake band richly deserved. 

Who among you was familiar with Grant Lee Buffalo?  Did you know they were from Los Angeles?  Have a great weekend, enjoy the music.

Summer Hours

Where is everybody?  I know it's summertime but it's not like everyone's on vacation at once.  I checked my visitor stats and corroborated what the small number of comments lately suggests and that is not as many people visit here as they did in say March, which was off the charts. You couldn't get enough of this blog in March.

People still have to work and we all know that blogs are a great diversion from the actual drudgery of work, so what gives?  Too much going on at work?  Vacation? Firewall?

As for me--not that you asked--we've been trying to get our late spring projects out of the way so we can enjoy summer.  We're putting the finishing touches on our newly enclosed back porch, which is now (finally) waterproof. We're also finishing up some yard and landscaping projects.

Since the fallout of the writer's strike extended to summer television shows (Rescue Me, Entourage, Damages, etc) as well, there's precious little new television, except for Swingtown on CBS, which is kitchy fun.  This void has allowed us to get up to speed on the criminally underwatched How I Met Your Mother and we've made a dent in the amazing F/X show The Shield. We're nearing the end of season three on DVD (Thanks Netflix) and I wonder, with three more seasons in the can and another about to begin later this summer, how much more depraved this show can get? I mean that in the best possible way, the show is fantastic but the type of human behaivior depicted thus far in the first three seasons leaves very few taboos left to explore.  I can't wait.

So seriously, what do you have going on this summer?  Vacation plans?  Seen any good movies? What albums are you digging? Catching up on any television? Anyone else watch The Shield ? Again, we're only through the first three seasons of The Shield, so no spoilers, please.