As promised, i am posting below some ideas sent to me by one of my most truly conservative friends who also happens to be in the healthcare industry. I always appreciate my conversations with this individual as he is very thoughtful and respectful in our political discussions. That's hard to find regardless of party affiliation.
He would like to remain anonymous at this point and i will respect his desire. Again, some of his ideas are very provocative and i don't necessarily agree with all of them, but they should be considered and debated. If nothing else, it's good to hear real ideas coming from the other side of the political spectrum instead of lies and negativity.
Also, please make sure to read my first healthcare post from last week just below this one. It's good! Thanks again as always for reading, y'all and God speed.
oslo
Start of anonymous friend's memo:
Sorry for the delay in getting this to you. It’s not the perfect organization, but it lays out most of what we discussed via phone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Health Insurance Reform
a. Create National Marketplace, not state licensed.
1. Blue Cross has 60% Market Share in TN, 80% in AL – How is that competitive?
2. Auto Accidents are expensive (Property Damage $10k-$20k+, Medical Bills, $5k-$25k+, Pain & Suffering,etc. Where is the national Auto Insurance crisis?
3. Premiums based on individual factors, not “group” buys (like employer based). Auto insurance is individual and vehicle specific. Why should 30 year old, non smoking, marathon runner pay the same as 50 year old, 400 pound chain smoker?
b. No ban on Pre-Existing conditions. Create pool that payors contribute to for Pre-Existing Conditions like banks do with FDIC insurance. Make federal proceeds available to supplement and support this population.
c. Set retention limits (i.e. 80% of every dollar collected must be paid in care). Insurers must control overhead to make a profit from the 20% they retain. Blue Cross is “non-profit” and has approximately 3.5 times the legal requirement for reserves (1+ Billion $). Shouldn’t those extra funds go back to members as premium refunds AND/OR be sent to providers for care?
2. Tort Reform
d. Malpractice suit damage estimates range from $60B to $200B annually. Do Trial Lawyers really deserve 1/3 of that?
e. Insurance premiums can cost Physicians 6 figures annually. Those costs are passed on to patients/payors as part of doing business.
f. How many unnecessary diagnostic tests (that patients and payors pay for) are done as CYA for potential litigation?
3. Portability of Health Insurance (Decoupling from Employment)
g. If you make $50k in Salary and your employer pays $10k for Health Insurance, pass laws to keep compensation whole (make Salaries $60k and employee buys own insurance).
h. Give tax breaks to individuals/families of $1.25 dollars for every $1 spent on health insurance
i. Make tax penalties of $1.5 dollars for every $1 not spent on health insurance that should have been (therefore not illegal to not have, but not smart financially)
4. Raise Medicare Age Limit
j. Age 65 established in 1960s when average life expectancy was less than 65. Eligibility age should be indexed to national life expectancy rates (currently 75+)
5. Government Oversight and Regulation
k. Government should be a referee in the game, not a referee AND a player.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Allow me to chime in...
Here is an op-ed written by my very close friend Alexis Williams's dad, Don Williams. I have posted one of his op-eds before and really like his writings. Regardless of which side you agree with on the health care debate, it's hard to argue with several of the points he makes. Please feel free to comment or copy and paste this into an e-mail to send out.
I also have a good friend who works in the health care industry who has some very provocative health care alternatives to consider in this debate. I will get them up on the blog in the next few days.
Before i post Don's piece, i want to share one quote with you all to ponder as you go about your days and hear more about the health care debate than you probably want to. It is a quote from Edmund Burke. If you don't know who he is, he is worth researching. Here's the quote:
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
Thanks for reading and God speed, everyone!
oslo
On 'death panels,' 'socialized medicine' and other red herrings
by Don Williams
Ain't it a shame our so-called liberal media is obsessed with "death panels" of fevered imaginations rather than death panels that exist in the real world, notably in our present health-care system?
Such "death panels" are comprised of CEOs, accountants and actuarial analysts at those insurance companies that--sight unseen--deny benefits to people most desperate for help. Such panels trot out an amazing array of phony reasons to deny or sandbag claims, according to patients, insurance executives, physicians and others who testified before Congress recently. Several outlined how some companies entrap insurance applicants into providing false information on confusing forms just so they can later deny benefits based on "false information." Others reported how "pre-existing conditions" and delayed treatments resulted in denial of life-saving treatments by some companies. Not all, but some.
Yet, while real people are suffering and dying, talking heads spend hours covering antics of those profiting from such misery. As an industry insider emailed, "You and I know the 'liberal media' has more to gain by showing the hot emotional shouting by ignorant peasants willing, once again, to fight the battles of the rich and powerful rather than broadcast intelligent discussions."
Here's an intelligent discussion worth having. Why is it the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. healthcare system 37th in the world, based on several standards and that 42 countries have longer life-expectancy, according to the Washington Post, most of them with "socialized medicine" or at least a "public option."
And here's one. With all the talk going down about "socialized medicine," shouldn't we acknowledge that all insurance programs are based on "socialist" or "collectivist" ideas, with their emphasis on shared risks and costs? The difference between corporate collectivism and public collectivism is that private insurance corporations, like all corporations, are in business to provide ever-increasing profits to shareholders, directors and CEOs, some of whom bring home salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of millions?
This is a built-in motivation to short-change the paying customer, to cheat, lie and steal from those who need help the most. These are the true death panels that media mostly ignore. Teddy Roosevelt knew that tyranny and serfdom exist as a result of unbridled power. That's why he sought a balance, by busting monopolies and setting aside parks (a "public option" for entertainment and preservation you could say). The practice of CEOs stacking one another's boards to create artificial wealth, fix prices, dampen true competition, vote each other exorbitant salaries and hire lobbyists to help create oligopolies is a way around trust-busting and private competition, but I digress. To get back to the subject at hand, just ponder that number... 42nd.
We rank 42nd. No amount of dogma or rhetoric should make that a comfortable number for a country that prides itself on being #1 in everything from athletics to space travel. Nor should we be comfortable with spending 15 percent or some such of our gnp on healthcare administration. That's a crime, especially when some 45 million have no healthcare coverage. You see them lineup, many laughing or crying, when free healthcare clinics come to town and set up for the weekend.
Yet still you hear, "No socialized medicine," even from Medicare recipients, as well as from those who embrace public interstates, schools, public energy options, entertainment, military, fire prevention, cops, media, utilities, social security, the G.I. Bill and much else. Why not a public health option? Viewing the world as a laboratory, experiments in dozens of nations have shown that a single-payer system is more rational and provides the truest freedom and equality in a mixed economy. We won't get there soon, but a public option should be part of the mix at least. Think of the true freedom that could emerge, the human potential unleashed in energy, ambition and talent if we freed people from enslavement to ill-suited jobs they often hate but don't dare leave--for fear of their lives and lives of loved ones--due to an irrational and antiquated employer-based system of healthcare.
Too bad we can't have civil discussions-absent guns, yelling and pushing-when it comes to an increasingly expensive and exploitative system that most of us are going to fall prey to at some point in our lives. I suspect most of us already have. How often do you find yourself filing claim after claim for, say, dental reimbursements, and following up with phone calls due to sandbagging on the company's part? How often do premiums rise? You know you're one of the lucky ones. It's a shame our so-called "liberal media" refuse to take cameras inside emergency rooms to show how the poor are receiving expensive and belated "healthcare" and just who's paying for it.
Finally, ain't it a shame that we seldom hear on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS about the millions of dollars quietly ponied up in "campaign contributions" from the medical and insurance establishments to congressmen and lobbyists feverishly drumming up opposition to meaningful reform in order to cover their bought and paid-for backsides?
Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, "Oracle of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com.
http://www.mach2.com/williams/
I also have a good friend who works in the health care industry who has some very provocative health care alternatives to consider in this debate. I will get them up on the blog in the next few days.
Before i post Don's piece, i want to share one quote with you all to ponder as you go about your days and hear more about the health care debate than you probably want to. It is a quote from Edmund Burke. If you don't know who he is, he is worth researching. Here's the quote:
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
Thanks for reading and God speed, everyone!
oslo
On 'death panels,' 'socialized medicine' and other red herrings
by Don Williams
Ain't it a shame our so-called liberal media is obsessed with "death panels" of fevered imaginations rather than death panels that exist in the real world, notably in our present health-care system?
Such "death panels" are comprised of CEOs, accountants and actuarial analysts at those insurance companies that--sight unseen--deny benefits to people most desperate for help. Such panels trot out an amazing array of phony reasons to deny or sandbag claims, according to patients, insurance executives, physicians and others who testified before Congress recently. Several outlined how some companies entrap insurance applicants into providing false information on confusing forms just so they can later deny benefits based on "false information." Others reported how "pre-existing conditions" and delayed treatments resulted in denial of life-saving treatments by some companies. Not all, but some.
Yet, while real people are suffering and dying, talking heads spend hours covering antics of those profiting from such misery. As an industry insider emailed, "You and I know the 'liberal media' has more to gain by showing the hot emotional shouting by ignorant peasants willing, once again, to fight the battles of the rich and powerful rather than broadcast intelligent discussions."
Here's an intelligent discussion worth having. Why is it the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. healthcare system 37th in the world, based on several standards and that 42 countries have longer life-expectancy, according to the Washington Post, most of them with "socialized medicine" or at least a "public option."
And here's one. With all the talk going down about "socialized medicine," shouldn't we acknowledge that all insurance programs are based on "socialist" or "collectivist" ideas, with their emphasis on shared risks and costs? The difference between corporate collectivism and public collectivism is that private insurance corporations, like all corporations, are in business to provide ever-increasing profits to shareholders, directors and CEOs, some of whom bring home salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of millions?
This is a built-in motivation to short-change the paying customer, to cheat, lie and steal from those who need help the most. These are the true death panels that media mostly ignore. Teddy Roosevelt knew that tyranny and serfdom exist as a result of unbridled power. That's why he sought a balance, by busting monopolies and setting aside parks (a "public option" for entertainment and preservation you could say). The practice of CEOs stacking one another's boards to create artificial wealth, fix prices, dampen true competition, vote each other exorbitant salaries and hire lobbyists to help create oligopolies is a way around trust-busting and private competition, but I digress. To get back to the subject at hand, just ponder that number... 42nd.
We rank 42nd. No amount of dogma or rhetoric should make that a comfortable number for a country that prides itself on being #1 in everything from athletics to space travel. Nor should we be comfortable with spending 15 percent or some such of our gnp on healthcare administration. That's a crime, especially when some 45 million have no healthcare coverage. You see them lineup, many laughing or crying, when free healthcare clinics come to town and set up for the weekend.
Yet still you hear, "No socialized medicine," even from Medicare recipients, as well as from those who embrace public interstates, schools, public energy options, entertainment, military, fire prevention, cops, media, utilities, social security, the G.I. Bill and much else. Why not a public health option? Viewing the world as a laboratory, experiments in dozens of nations have shown that a single-payer system is more rational and provides the truest freedom and equality in a mixed economy. We won't get there soon, but a public option should be part of the mix at least. Think of the true freedom that could emerge, the human potential unleashed in energy, ambition and talent if we freed people from enslavement to ill-suited jobs they often hate but don't dare leave--for fear of their lives and lives of loved ones--due to an irrational and antiquated employer-based system of healthcare.
Too bad we can't have civil discussions-absent guns, yelling and pushing-when it comes to an increasingly expensive and exploitative system that most of us are going to fall prey to at some point in our lives. I suspect most of us already have. How often do you find yourself filing claim after claim for, say, dental reimbursements, and following up with phone calls due to sandbagging on the company's part? How often do premiums rise? You know you're one of the lucky ones. It's a shame our so-called "liberal media" refuse to take cameras inside emergency rooms to show how the poor are receiving expensive and belated "healthcare" and just who's paying for it.
Finally, ain't it a shame that we seldom hear on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS about the millions of dollars quietly ponied up in "campaign contributions" from the medical and insurance establishments to congressmen and lobbyists feverishly drumming up opposition to meaningful reform in order to cover their bought and paid-for backsides?
Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, "Oracle of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com.
http://www.mach2.com/williams/
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A year later...
It has been a full year since i first made the public announcement about my sexuality. It's hard to believe! So you might be wondering what's changed. I was talking to a friend about that very question earlier today and it's funny to me how little has... at least in my microcosm that is. A lot has changed in the grand scheme of things, but as for me, i'm still single w/ no real prospects; i still work for the same company and still have the same friends. I guess that's good, right?
Maybe so, but i'm not so sure. Part of me would like to be telling a thrilling story of triumph and disaster. Some sort of harrowing tale about how i've over come adversity and been able to defy the odds. Unfortunately it's been pretty d@mn boring.
That being said, i do feel like i've changed in a lot of intangible ways. My mentality is different. I'm a lot more at ease with myself and a lot less annoyed by the stupid sh!t other people do. I also am not making the mistake of falling head over heals for someone who isn't interested or who just doesn't get it. Overall, i'm pretty satisfied with my situation.
Obviously there's always room for improvement and i'm working on that everyday. I hope you are, too.
Thanks for reading and thanks to all of my friends for being so supportive of me and my decisions. You all have been the best friends a guy could ask for! Now it's time for a celebration b!tches! Not really. Just gonna have a couple of brews. I have to work in the morning!
God speed, y'all,
oSLo
Maybe so, but i'm not so sure. Part of me would like to be telling a thrilling story of triumph and disaster. Some sort of harrowing tale about how i've over come adversity and been able to defy the odds. Unfortunately it's been pretty d@mn boring.
That being said, i do feel like i've changed in a lot of intangible ways. My mentality is different. I'm a lot more at ease with myself and a lot less annoyed by the stupid sh!t other people do. I also am not making the mistake of falling head over heals for someone who isn't interested or who just doesn't get it. Overall, i'm pretty satisfied with my situation.
Obviously there's always room for improvement and i'm working on that everyday. I hope you are, too.
Thanks for reading and thanks to all of my friends for being so supportive of me and my decisions. You all have been the best friends a guy could ask for! Now it's time for a celebration b!tches! Not really. Just gonna have a couple of brews. I have to work in the morning!
God speed, y'all,
oSLo
Monday, June 8, 2009
Did someone say threesome?
I was having a tough time deciding between three very intriguing topics for this blog entry and then i thought screw it, i'll just blog about all three. Fortunately for you though, i plan all in short order to save myself and you time... you're welcome!
1st- Dave Matthews Band is back on the radar!
I bought the new DMB album, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King and i must say i am quite pleased with it overall. It sounds aggressive and progressive for the band that cut it's teeth playing frat parties and smoke-filled bars and venues. In many ways it doesn't really remind me at all of the DMB i was reared on, but i'm not complaining. There is one key exception though... the lyrics. Dave is singing about weird sh!t again and it's awesome! The only two tracks that disappoint in both lyrically and musically are the last two. They sound like they should be on the more unctuous Everday or Stand Up albums. But i've only listened to the album once though so there is time for those tracks to grow on me. There is also time for the others to sour... but i'm pretty confident that won't happen. If i were rating the album, i'd give it a very solid B and i assure you that isn't a generous rating. I think it's right on the money!
2nd- Can you say vasectomy?!
Did y'all hear about the guy here in Knox County who has fathered at least 21 kids by at least 11 different women?! This is the most ridiculous thing i've heard in a long, LONG time. I know it's probably pretty trendy to bash this guy, but seriously, has the whole world gone crazy?! It gets better though. This guy has a minimum wage job and one of the mothers is only receiving $2 a month in child support. I've said time and time again that nothing surprises me, but this is pushing my limits. A buddy of mine told me this quote and i think it sums up the situation quite nicely: "God is great, beer is good and people are crazy." I'm starting wonder though if i'm the crazy one!
3rd- Cadillac dreams...
Do you remember the days when the Cadillac was the gold standard of the automobile industry? If you owned a Cadillac, no one could tell you nothin' to quote the Kanye West song "Wait til I get my money right." Well apparently GM didn't get it's money right and had to file Chapter 11 last week. Michael Moore says it best:
"It is with sad irony that the company which invented 'planned obsolescence' -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to 'improve' the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors."
Has the final bell rung for the former heavy-weight champion of the automotive world? Can the Cadillac reclaim it's place as the gold standard for the car industry of the future? Who knows, but one thing is for certain, nothing will ever be the same.
I appreciate your time and attention. Take good care, all of you until next time.
God speed,
-oSLo
1st- Dave Matthews Band is back on the radar!
I bought the new DMB album, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King and i must say i am quite pleased with it overall. It sounds aggressive and progressive for the band that cut it's teeth playing frat parties and smoke-filled bars and venues. In many ways it doesn't really remind me at all of the DMB i was reared on, but i'm not complaining. There is one key exception though... the lyrics. Dave is singing about weird sh!t again and it's awesome! The only two tracks that disappoint in both lyrically and musically are the last two. They sound like they should be on the more unctuous Everday or Stand Up albums. But i've only listened to the album once though so there is time for those tracks to grow on me. There is also time for the others to sour... but i'm pretty confident that won't happen. If i were rating the album, i'd give it a very solid B and i assure you that isn't a generous rating. I think it's right on the money!
2nd- Can you say vasectomy?!
Did y'all hear about the guy here in Knox County who has fathered at least 21 kids by at least 11 different women?! This is the most ridiculous thing i've heard in a long, LONG time. I know it's probably pretty trendy to bash this guy, but seriously, has the whole world gone crazy?! It gets better though. This guy has a minimum wage job and one of the mothers is only receiving $2 a month in child support. I've said time and time again that nothing surprises me, but this is pushing my limits. A buddy of mine told me this quote and i think it sums up the situation quite nicely: "God is great, beer is good and people are crazy." I'm starting wonder though if i'm the crazy one!
3rd- Cadillac dreams...
Do you remember the days when the Cadillac was the gold standard of the automobile industry? If you owned a Cadillac, no one could tell you nothin' to quote the Kanye West song "Wait til I get my money right." Well apparently GM didn't get it's money right and had to file Chapter 11 last week. Michael Moore says it best:
"It is with sad irony that the company which invented 'planned obsolescence' -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to 'improve' the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors."
Has the final bell rung for the former heavy-weight champion of the automotive world? Can the Cadillac reclaim it's place as the gold standard for the car industry of the future? Who knows, but one thing is for certain, nothing will ever be the same.
I appreciate your time and attention. Take good care, all of you until next time.
God speed,
-oSLo
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Citizen Cope
If you aren't familiar with Clarence Greenwood aka Citizen Cope or even if you are, i encourage you to take another listen to his music. His best album (in my opinion and by far) is the Clarence Greenwood Recordings.
What makes his music so good? To the musically inclined it sounds simplistic and remedial. To the not so musically inclined, it sounds simplistic and remedial. How does he make it work? The answer is simple. Sincerity. He believes in the music he's making and that translates into great music.
Now don't get me wrong. I think there are plenty of artists out there who are sincere in the music they write and play, but Citizen Cope is special. Why? Because he's able to hone in on the emotional content of his music like a laser and doesn't get distracted by the influences that exist when creating music. A lot of musicians have a tendency to veer off course when writing a song or performing music. It's hard to stay focused. You want to impress people with your grasp of music theory or your mastery of a musical instrument that you forget why you should be making music in the first place. Citizen Cope and others like him don't make this mistake.
I get a little irritated with people who think that music has to be complex to be good. Who made up that rule? It's not the complexity of the music that's important. It is the complexity of emotion being conveyed. Without an emotional connection, you're just making noise.
That being said, i encourage you to listen to Citizen Cope with different ears especially if you're someone who thinks that his music is too "simple" to be good. It doesn't have to be hard, my friends. It just has to be real, it has to be sincere and it has to have meaning. Citizen Cope's Clarence Greenwood Recordings meet all of those requirements.
This is the first in a series of posts i'm planning to do on the topic of music so stay tuned.
Below, you will find an entry from Citizen Cope's Bio page on his website. I think the writer captures a lot of my own personal feeling about Citizen Cope and for those unfamiliar may provide some insight as to why people love his music so much.
Thanks for reading, y'all and as the cliche goes, "keep it real."
oSLo
"Something is great about this one." The phrase buzzed around in my head, mixing with the endorphins that cracked and snapped about their different relays, telling me that I liked this music. This music is good. The beer in your hand is good.* You are loving this, aren't you? Aren't you?
Singer/Song Writer, Citizen Cope recently headlined in Towson's Recher Theatre, a large dimly lit room washed in blood red drapes. Two bars, bouncers at the door who think they're funny, an entrance covered in music posters: enough ambiance to make you dream of owning rooms filled with nothing but silk pillows and feathery boas. Brilliance -- all of it.
His music is simple to the point of being stripped down, as if bearing it all was the only way to get our attention. The Spartan band behind him was made up of a drummer, a bassist, two keyboardists, and Cope on guitar. A mix of hip-hop, folk, and blues his songs are mostly beats - mix bass drum, high hat, snare, clap track and repeat - buffed smooth by a haggard, road-weary voice. Uncommon chords for texture and keyboards for lift.
I was there in the middle of a crowd that hung on Mr. Cope's every word. You have probably been in a situation like this one before. If you have seen a favorite artist live, you know the procedure. Stand elbow to elbow with lovers in varied states of decay - high school to golden years - and you reach clumsily into your bag of lyrics, struggling to throw them out in time with everybody else. Nevertheless, you dance, sway back and forth and put your chin to your chest to feel that beat and buzz in your rib cage. Somebody screams, "You're melting my face!" Artist finishes up a song and you try to guess what's coming next. You are loving this, aren't you?
But even as I enjoyed myself like everyone else, the experience unsettled me. Cope is an intensely powerful lyricist. Without useless contemplation or pretension, you sense a plain type of grief laced in his words. A grief at once deeply personal, but one that managed to untether me from the scene, causing me to think about what I was listening to. His song topics range from a laundry list of tragedy in "Let the Drummer Kick That" to exploration of danger of American jingoism in "Bullet and a Target." One of my favorites, his song "Penitentiary" taps into fears for a culture growing more trapped by fear and war: "Well I'm waiting on a time when people walk free to see/From the penitentiary in our mind/When there's no need to bleed/For your father/Or your son."
One Rolling Stone critic called him "a modern day bluesman who paints a plaintive portrait of the human condition." Another, not-so-friendly critic from music and culture website, SoundtheSirens said: "I'm sure there's some soulful guy with a guitar who can write better songs sitting in some coffee shop somewhere who deserves the exposure more than he does." This may be warranted, I just happen to disagree.
As a balding-twenty-something tapped his toe to the beat of "Sideways" against my heal, I was reminded of a perplexing moment a few months prior. I had created a Citizen Cope "station" on an Internet radio website called Pandora. If you have not used Pandora before, its program takes an artist that you give it and plays the music of similar artists based on style and genre.Normally, Pandora is right on, accurate as anyone could hope for. But the artists that Pandora surrounded Cope with -- Damien Rice, Jack Johnson, Ryan Adams, Howie Day, Beck -- sound nothing like him, perhaps Beck being the closest. I won't say that no one sounds like Citizen Cope -- that cannot be justified. However, one has serious trouble placing him in any sort of context. This frustrates me, because I need musical landmarks, but at the same time I don't want them. All the qualifiers, folk, hip-hop, blues, singer/song writer, suddenly seem vapid -- a lame attempt to conjure context out of thin air.
Good artists can recreate the high people get from good music -- that electricity that makes the crowd sway. After all, that heightened sense, so amazingly replicable across cultures, is what makes music a universal human constant. But the excitement that surrounds great artists -- painters, musicians, writers, and doers alike -- is that you as if you are in the presence of someone who is saying what no else is able to or willing to say. I felt the unsettling electricity in Cope's performance -- the feeling that I could not do this, nor would I ever want to. Who could bear being the only one for long? There's something great about this one.
This line of thinking is flawed. I argue that Citizen Cope is great, but that just makes him great to me. To you he could be anything or nothing. But he got a reaction out of me, a departure from normalcy that left me buzzing afterwards, and it's hard to find words that aren't useless contemplation. Words that avoid shameless worship to someone who does not want to be worshipped. But I knew I was doomed to fail when I started this.
Written by: Joseph Johns
Published February 12, 2008 · The Loyola Grayhound
What makes his music so good? To the musically inclined it sounds simplistic and remedial. To the not so musically inclined, it sounds simplistic and remedial. How does he make it work? The answer is simple. Sincerity. He believes in the music he's making and that translates into great music.
Now don't get me wrong. I think there are plenty of artists out there who are sincere in the music they write and play, but Citizen Cope is special. Why? Because he's able to hone in on the emotional content of his music like a laser and doesn't get distracted by the influences that exist when creating music. A lot of musicians have a tendency to veer off course when writing a song or performing music. It's hard to stay focused. You want to impress people with your grasp of music theory or your mastery of a musical instrument that you forget why you should be making music in the first place. Citizen Cope and others like him don't make this mistake.
I get a little irritated with people who think that music has to be complex to be good. Who made up that rule? It's not the complexity of the music that's important. It is the complexity of emotion being conveyed. Without an emotional connection, you're just making noise.
That being said, i encourage you to listen to Citizen Cope with different ears especially if you're someone who thinks that his music is too "simple" to be good. It doesn't have to be hard, my friends. It just has to be real, it has to be sincere and it has to have meaning. Citizen Cope's Clarence Greenwood Recordings meet all of those requirements.
This is the first in a series of posts i'm planning to do on the topic of music so stay tuned.
Below, you will find an entry from Citizen Cope's Bio page on his website. I think the writer captures a lot of my own personal feeling about Citizen Cope and for those unfamiliar may provide some insight as to why people love his music so much.
Thanks for reading, y'all and as the cliche goes, "keep it real."
oSLo
"Something is great about this one." The phrase buzzed around in my head, mixing with the endorphins that cracked and snapped about their different relays, telling me that I liked this music. This music is good. The beer in your hand is good.* You are loving this, aren't you? Aren't you?
Singer/Song Writer, Citizen Cope recently headlined in Towson's Recher Theatre, a large dimly lit room washed in blood red drapes. Two bars, bouncers at the door who think they're funny, an entrance covered in music posters: enough ambiance to make you dream of owning rooms filled with nothing but silk pillows and feathery boas. Brilliance -- all of it.
His music is simple to the point of being stripped down, as if bearing it all was the only way to get our attention. The Spartan band behind him was made up of a drummer, a bassist, two keyboardists, and Cope on guitar. A mix of hip-hop, folk, and blues his songs are mostly beats - mix bass drum, high hat, snare, clap track and repeat - buffed smooth by a haggard, road-weary voice. Uncommon chords for texture and keyboards for lift.
I was there in the middle of a crowd that hung on Mr. Cope's every word. You have probably been in a situation like this one before. If you have seen a favorite artist live, you know the procedure. Stand elbow to elbow with lovers in varied states of decay - high school to golden years - and you reach clumsily into your bag of lyrics, struggling to throw them out in time with everybody else. Nevertheless, you dance, sway back and forth and put your chin to your chest to feel that beat and buzz in your rib cage. Somebody screams, "You're melting my face!" Artist finishes up a song and you try to guess what's coming next. You are loving this, aren't you?
But even as I enjoyed myself like everyone else, the experience unsettled me. Cope is an intensely powerful lyricist. Without useless contemplation or pretension, you sense a plain type of grief laced in his words. A grief at once deeply personal, but one that managed to untether me from the scene, causing me to think about what I was listening to. His song topics range from a laundry list of tragedy in "Let the Drummer Kick That" to exploration of danger of American jingoism in "Bullet and a Target." One of my favorites, his song "Penitentiary" taps into fears for a culture growing more trapped by fear and war: "Well I'm waiting on a time when people walk free to see/From the penitentiary in our mind/When there's no need to bleed/For your father/Or your son."
One Rolling Stone critic called him "a modern day bluesman who paints a plaintive portrait of the human condition." Another, not-so-friendly critic from music and culture website, SoundtheSirens said: "I'm sure there's some soulful guy with a guitar who can write better songs sitting in some coffee shop somewhere who deserves the exposure more than he does." This may be warranted, I just happen to disagree.
As a balding-twenty-something tapped his toe to the beat of "Sideways" against my heal, I was reminded of a perplexing moment a few months prior. I had created a Citizen Cope "station" on an Internet radio website called Pandora. If you have not used Pandora before, its program takes an artist that you give it and plays the music of similar artists based on style and genre.Normally, Pandora is right on, accurate as anyone could hope for. But the artists that Pandora surrounded Cope with -- Damien Rice, Jack Johnson, Ryan Adams, Howie Day, Beck -- sound nothing like him, perhaps Beck being the closest. I won't say that no one sounds like Citizen Cope -- that cannot be justified. However, one has serious trouble placing him in any sort of context. This frustrates me, because I need musical landmarks, but at the same time I don't want them. All the qualifiers, folk, hip-hop, blues, singer/song writer, suddenly seem vapid -- a lame attempt to conjure context out of thin air.
Good artists can recreate the high people get from good music -- that electricity that makes the crowd sway. After all, that heightened sense, so amazingly replicable across cultures, is what makes music a universal human constant. But the excitement that surrounds great artists -- painters, musicians, writers, and doers alike -- is that you as if you are in the presence of someone who is saying what no else is able to or willing to say. I felt the unsettling electricity in Cope's performance -- the feeling that I could not do this, nor would I ever want to. Who could bear being the only one for long? There's something great about this one.
This line of thinking is flawed. I argue that Citizen Cope is great, but that just makes him great to me. To you he could be anything or nothing. But he got a reaction out of me, a departure from normalcy that left me buzzing afterwards, and it's hard to find words that aren't useless contemplation. Words that avoid shameless worship to someone who does not want to be worshipped. But I knew I was doomed to fail when I started this.
Written by: Joseph Johns
Published February 12, 2008 · The Loyola Grayhound
Monday, May 4, 2009
Happy Cinco!
I know it's been a while, folks. I've been busy out here in the "real world" trying to make moves. It's a poor excuse for ignoring you for so long so my apologies. This isn't even a real post which is the worst of it.
Here's a little history behind the holiday we celebrate alongside our Mexican friends. In light of the recent outbreak of so-called "swine flu," a welcome celebration of Mexican history is definitely in order. Here is the history of this joyous holiday we celebrate on the 5th of May each and every year (Thanks to Jennifer B. for passing along the info.):
Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York.
This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York. The ship hit an iceberg and sank, and the cargo was forever lost.
The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise, and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, which they still observe to this day.
The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.
So now you know.
Happy holidays, folks!
oSLo
Here's a little history behind the holiday we celebrate alongside our Mexican friends. In light of the recent outbreak of so-called "swine flu," a welcome celebration of Mexican history is definitely in order. Here is the history of this joyous holiday we celebrate on the 5th of May each and every year (Thanks to Jennifer B. for passing along the info.):
Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York.
This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York. The ship hit an iceberg and sank, and the cargo was forever lost.
The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise, and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, which they still observe to this day.
The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.
So now you know.
Happy holidays, folks!
oSLo
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
"Oh one holy day!"
Hello folks! Hope the world is good right now to you. I'm feeling just fine myself in case you were wondering.
It's amazing how quickly things change, isn't it? We've experienced nothing short of a complete and total paradigm shift. It's like cognitive dissonance you could hear coming from miles away. The funny thing is that it happens all the time. Every minute and every second of the day the world changes by that much. The time might seem miniscule "in the grand scheme of things," but the thing is that it isn't. Need further explanation? Join the club!
So we elected Barack Hussein Obama to lead this nation? Might i say an excellent choice! I think he's going to do a fantastic job for us, but here's the rub. He can't do it all by himself, now can he? We have some responsibilities of our own to tend to, do we not? I know i sure do. Jeff Cinnamon always finds the best quotes and here's one of them from Harry Truman "All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." Let's not make Barack work too hard, eh?
And finally, the good news. We have a lot of living left to do and a lot to live for, too! Now doesn't that feel nice?
See y'all next time,
oSLo
It's amazing how quickly things change, isn't it? We've experienced nothing short of a complete and total paradigm shift. It's like cognitive dissonance you could hear coming from miles away. The funny thing is that it happens all the time. Every minute and every second of the day the world changes by that much. The time might seem miniscule "in the grand scheme of things," but the thing is that it isn't. Need further explanation? Join the club!
So we elected Barack Hussein Obama to lead this nation? Might i say an excellent choice! I think he's going to do a fantastic job for us, but here's the rub. He can't do it all by himself, now can he? We have some responsibilities of our own to tend to, do we not? I know i sure do. Jeff Cinnamon always finds the best quotes and here's one of them from Harry Truman "All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." Let's not make Barack work too hard, eh?
And finally, the good news. We have a lot of living left to do and a lot to live for, too! Now doesn't that feel nice?
See y'all next time,
oSLo
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