An Accounting Lesson

At work waiting for my boss again (what else is new?)

Last night I was flying back to New York after attending my sisters college graduation in Nashville. I'm sitting in my seat, reading a book about Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, when I hear two people in back of me talking about the prospects of a Big 3 bailout. Always interested in listening to the informed thoughts of my fellow traveler, my ears perk up, and although I'm still interested in the "honest" graft of George Washington Plunkit, I'm even more interested in eavesdropping on an economic conversation.

I really shouldn't call it a conversation, it was more like a lecture. The gray-haired Southern gentleman with the charming Tennessee accent was doing most of the listening, and the middle-aged Jewish lady from the Upper East Side was doing most of the talking. It was mostly cliches she was spouting, nothing particularly profound, but then again you wouldn't expect any seering revelations in the coach section of a two hour flight. The gray-haired gentleman mostly just nodded, chiming his agreement ("See, that's what I thought") when the lady paused to seek affirmation. He stared at her intently as she talked about the UAW needing to make more concessions, impressed by her incredible wealth of knowledge almost as much as he was impressed by her wrinkle strewn but blemish free face. She wasn't a looker- but then again neither was he. He leaned over the seat in between them, resting his elbow on the armrest.

She continued on, towards reductions in CEO pay (she was much less adamant about that) and then to the start of the entire mess, the sub-prime mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. The lady even provided a useful anecdote- her idiot cousin who made $18,000 a year got herself a $400,000 house at 1% which then reset to some obscene rate after a year.
"I mean there was fault with the banks (she means mortgage lenders) too, don't get me wrong. But you shouldn't take out a $400,000 loan if you only make $18,000 a year. If people would just be honest on their applications. Besides, it's not like the people who get foreclosed are homeless. They just have to rent, that's all. What's so wrong with renting? I rented for the first... 10 years of my life. There's nothing wrong with renting."

"And then you get to the other problem," she said as the plane skidded on the runway. "This whole, mark-to-market accounting thing."
"Yeah, I heard about that," the gray-haired gentleman said. I was beginning to think that he'd forgotten how to talk. By this time he was probably just figuring out how he could propose before we got the gate.
"Yeah, see we have to get rid of this whole thing because it's not fair. These companies, when they buy the securities, they're not allowed to mark them up when they make money. But when they lose money, they have to take these... these huge write-offs and then they need new capital. See, that's what mark-to-market is. And, and we get in this mess."
By this time we were at the gate and walking to get off the plane. I turned around, with a smirk on my face, while the gray-haired man ate up every single word. They ended up walking off the plane together, all the way to the baggage claim. I got in a taxi before them, but I'm pretty sure they probably got in the same cab and had passionate old people sex in his hotel room.

And oh Jesus Christ in heaven was she wrong. She couldn't have been more wrong if she'd said that the capital of France was Vishnu. I wanted to correct her so bad- but it was quite clear she was running some serious "sound real educated" type game and I have a strict no-cock-block platform. Furthermore, I am proud to say that I'm quite ethical when it comes to that rule.

Then again, she was pretty egregious with her error, so to all you readers I'll give you a quick accounting lesson. The lady made the mistake of mixing up "mark-to-market" accounting with "lower of cost or market" accounting. In current accounting standards, "mark-to-market" is used for things like trading securities while "lower of cost or market" is used for things like inventory. "Mark-to-market" is what it sounds like, you write the asset up or down depending on its value in the marketplace, or if there is not a mature marketplace (as in the case of many OTC derivatives) some reasonable estimate of its fair value. "Lower of cost or market" is valuing something at its purchase price until you sell it, unless the price you can reasonably sell it for is less than the price you paid for it, in which case you write it down to the lower price.

It all comes down to a question of the assets purpose and the primary business of the company. The purpose of trading securities is to take advantage of increases in their value, in fluctuations in the market, at which point you sell them. The purpose of your inventory is to also make you money- but not through increases on the stock market, but through sales to your customers. (Not to mention the question of whether or not you'd have to mark it to the primary/supplier market or the secondary/end user market) Accounting is all about painting a realistic picture of your company, so it needs to be able to adjust for different asset purposes.
Let's say you own a grocery store, and you have a bunch of milk. Under the current system for inventory you keep the milk on your books at the price you bought it for, and then when you sell it you put it on your books as net income. If you had to mark it to market, you'd have to mark to the current price of milk in the primary market. You could make or lose money on commodities fluctuations even if that's not the purpose of your inventory, the purpose is to sell to your customers so they can put some liquid on their cereal. The value of trading securities is completely tied to those fluctuations.
The point is that, the companies that owned these mortgage backed securities DID get to participate in the upside, because every time the price of these securities increased they could put it on the books, and, if they were classified as trading securities, the increases flowed through as Net Income. In many cases, they were far too exuberant in pricing these assets, which led them to have to take massive write downs. Using LOCOM, while not painting the real picture, would have made the writedowns much smaller since they would not have marked the securities up as much.
If you have any questions on the different types of accounting treatments... post them on the bottom I guess. I hope this was as fun for you as it was for me.

Cause for Celebration

In a week I'd like to have back (along with a day in September), any good news is cause for celebration. Three of my predictions this week have all been accurate.

First, I predicted that Jesse Jackson Jr. would be Senate Candidate 5 in the FBI Probe/Affadavit. Although, really, that's not too hard a prediction, I mean his father is the ultimate player in "pay-to-play"

Second, I predicted that the reason Blagojevich kept talking about money on the wiretap was because he needed money to pay his lawyers, who is on the hook for more than 500K to. With all the mess he was in even prior to this, he probably needed some good attorneys on permanent retainer.

Finally, I predicted (right here in this very blog) that Frank Langella would need to start clearing mantle space for his slew of upcoming awards. Well, he was just nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor (which I think he will win unless that damn Brad Pitt steals it from him). The Oscars await.

Just sayin.

A Blues Kind of Morning

"Well I'm so worried, I don't know where to go."

Slept on the floor last night, but really I didn't fall asleep until early morning. Just me and a blanket and a bright red feather pillow placed carefully on under my back to keep my company. Well, there's the glass table on my left side too- but I think at this point even it's disappointed in me. I mean, I ran out of Windex and had to use.. pff.. all purpose cleaner to wipe it down when I cleaned this past Sunday. The streaks looked like they were left by a monster truck during a drag race. But no bother- there's always next Sunday.
The curtains are wide open, forgot to shut them last night, there were certainly more pressing concerns that occupied my mind. The dreary sky beamed in through the windows- if a sunny sky wakes you up by gently caressing you on the cheek, a dreary sky backhand slaps you across the mouth, telling you to "wake the fuck up, it's time to live with what you did." Oh how it stings so much more when you wake up in the morning and the first thing on your mind are the tunes you cried to sleep to. And cry I did- something I haven't done since I was 13- since I slept on that shag carpeted floor and fleas use to bite me up and down my arm and I cried like a baby because tomorrow I'd have to go to school with the same mustard-stained pants I wore the day before.
I didn't want to go to work, didn't have the energy to get up and fight through the sting in my stomach, a mix of nausea and that sharp pang, that Bernard Hopkins-style punch that hits you in the gut everytime you... remember? See, because you can forget for a little bit, while you're engrossed in data sets and spreadsheets, while you have conversations with your coworkers and you walk to lunch bunched together like ducks in flight formation. It's easy to forget when you allow something else to crowd into your mind. And then- you see something, hear something maybe, and its right back in that boxing ring and your memory has you in a corner and its pounding away at your lower torso and your chest and your face. And your heart.....
But get up I must, get up I got to. Too late to get there on time, but early enough where I can still be productive. Yeah, you got it, you can get through. Take it one day at a time, shoot one minute- your wounds are raw but they'll heal. Take a shower, iron your clothes, pack up your bag, step outside with some kind of authority, walk proud. And it works, you feel like you can, almost, just about.
And then the hit comes as you're putting on your haphazardly ironed shirt- the corner man inside your head is yelling "You put your guard down, son!" Slowly, you crumple back on to the sticky black leather couch, and all you want to do is take off your clothes, sit in your t-shirt and underwear, drink a case of beer and listenin to Howlin' Wolf, drinking until you can moan in the moonlight, in the daylight, and the twilight too.
Step outside my building, a strange mix of a day. 60 and raining, worried about slipping so I step gingerly, deliberately on to the slick concrete. I've never been this deliberate walking before, staring down intently on the ground, counting steps to myself, listening to the lovely sound of worn-in work shoes purposefully hitting the sidewalk. Anything to keep from getting hit again, occupy your mind, let everyone pass you by. At that moment, I'm probably the slowest person in the history of New York. My walk to the train station takes twice as long- every step I dangle on the precipice of self-induced agony. I step lightly to not fall over the edge.
On the train, no more walking- there to collect my thoughts. What to do, what to do? I pull out a book, "The Soul of Baseball," a most comforting book, just the right mix of upliftment and intellectual engagement. The train ride goes smoothly. At Queensboro Plaza I get up so an older Chinese lady can sit down- I wrap my hand around the pole between the two doors. Just standing and reading- it looks like I won this round.
"There's nothing like New York lonely." Just one of the gems that Buck O'Neill spouts in the first few pages of the book. Doesn't he know the truth. There ain't nothing like being lonely here, although it happens quite often. Movies and plays, sporting events, parks. All there for the taking, but even when they're free it comes at a price, the price of silence. But many times I was deliberate about it- a choice I made rather than one forced upon me. One that I am proud of and only a little bit difficult. Yeah, there's nothing like being lonely in New York.
Ain't nothing to do but sip apple cider at my desk and look over data, letting the soothing calm trickle down in to my stomach. My body warms up and between the spreadsheets, all I can think is that maybe I deserve the next hit that comes my way. The pain only lasts for a moment, maybe this time I'll be ready for it.

Foreign News Round-Up

I'm going to try and do this once a week. Pick three foreign news stories and post them here and try to put in my point of view. Like most Americans, I am sadly under-educated on what's going on inside other countries. I have a long way to go, but hopefully this is a start. The hyperlinked article for the title is something interesting I read a while ago and is connected to the last foreign news article.

*Riots in Greece Over Teen Shooting:

Crazy that youth in Greece would get this worked up over the shooting of one 16 year old by the cops. That sounds a little callous- what I mean is that I guess it's not a common enough occurrence for it to be something to riot over. I'm not up on the latest on Greek crime or Greek police- but I don't know whether the youth outrage over the shooting death of a fellow teen is great (shows they are involved and will not stand for random shootings) or terrible (not all of the facts are known, was it a completely random shooting, was a group of teens really attacking police). I mean, even the Rodney King riots only took place after the police were acquitted.

*Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga says that foreign troops must go into Zimbabwe

The most important part of the article for me is when Odinga rails against other AU leaders for treating Mugabe with "kid gloves." I don't know how other liberals feel, but I always have trouble with reconciling my humanitarian impulses with my thoughts on respecting national sovereignty. On the one hand, I think that humanitarian missions are in our best interests, particularly in the prevention of genocide and mass suffering. On the other hand, national sovereignty counts for something, and it's pretty easy to stuff things like future Iraq wars under the guise of humanitarian efforts rather than self-interested aggression. That's why I think we must act to strengthen global institutions. I don't know if it is within the rights of any STATE to unilaterally disregard national sovereignty without opening up their borders to attack, but what about an international body with real teeth? This isn't a fleshed out idea of course, just a starting point. I actually want to work towards a world where national boundaries are a bit more porous, to a world with more of a European Union, federalist type structure. I think that the East African Union is a great idea, at the very least regionalism is needed to solve to going concerns that our globe faces.

Between Darfur and Somalia the AU's troops are stretched thin, so the troops would either have to be from African nations or some amalgamation with UN or European troops. It seems that the power-sharing is just not going to work- Mugabe needs to go.

*Thai Opposition Set to Form New Government

I must admit that I'm always fascinated by parliamentary governments. Something about a vote of no confidence always gets my juices flowing. I think the US should consider a parliamentary style government, with a President head of state and Prime Minister head of government. Some critics say that we'd never get anything done under a parliamentary style government (especially if we went to some kind of proportional representation). To that I say.. well, we don't really get too much done now. Mostly this is just my grass is greener outlook I guess.

I read somewhere that instead of fostering a greater democracy the growing Thai middle class actually wants more autocracy. Weak democracies mean that the elected official pretty much has the run of things after elections are over. No institution has the power or credibility to stand up to these elected officials who destroy civil liberties and preach nationalism and populism to the poor, so long as they follow their leader uncritically. Well, there is one force that does have the power... the military. To many in the middle class, there's not much difference between military rule and the rule of their corrupt elected officials, both suppress civil liberties, but at least the military officers come from middle class or elite backgrounds and are not as beholden to the votes of rural poor as the elected official is.
And that's part of what it comes down to. I think it's comical to call the people in the middle truly "middle class," simply because they are socioeconomically speaking sandwiched between the super-rich elite and the large number of rural poor. The rural poor makes up a much much much larger percentage of the population, the middle class is not a middle class but a lower elite, and acting as a lower elite, they want a leader who is beholden to them. Not saying that they're not right about their opposition to these corrupt elected leaders. It's just that, I don't think the motives are as pure as we're made to believe.

The President is Our Daddy-King

Just got back from seeing Frost/Nixon. Overall, a very good film, I think that Frank Langella did a masterful job as Nixon. If I were him I'd really start making sure that the mantle above my fireplace had plenty of space and was adequately reinforced, there's gonna be some heavy hardware coming his way during award season. I mean, pretty much everything is lined up for him to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar/Golden Globe/etc. He plays a larger than life figure, a disgraced former President who still captures the American imagination enough to warrant a film more than 30 years after his resignation. There's always danger in playing a famous person in a movie- but you're definitely well compensated for the risk if you play the part well. Then too, the film's director (Ron Howard) is well liked, and the movie was released in December, making it close enough to the ceremony where nominators will remember it, but far enough away that the Academy doesn't look like they're nominating it just because it's fresh in their minds. Like I said, Frank Langella should get some space on his mantle ready.

As I was watching the movie, what I thought about most though was not the acting or the storyline or even about how good a job the casting director did on picking the person who played the young Diane Sawyer, but frankly, about how quaint the entire movie seemed. I obviously was not alive during those fateful years, I had no clue what it feels like to have your naivete about how the federal government and the office of the president and all government worked smashed into a million tiny pieces-tiny saddened and betrayed pieces. It's not that the anger and betrayal that people felt wasn't justified; it was completely justified. It's just that, well, what did they expect out of a president?
I never really thought about how seminal a moment Watergate really was until the start of the movie. I'd studied Watergate to some degree, it had always permeated pop and political culture
I was talking to my girlfriend earlier, about how American society views the office of the President, as some kind of daddy-king figure, only better than a daddy-king because you get to participate in the process to choose him. (Think about how different your life would be if you got to choose your father?) I think that it was true back then and it's true today. Except, before Watergate, the American people at-large saw their daddy-king in the way that a child does. He was a protector, he always acted in our best interest, always on the straight and narrow. He was wise and carried the burden of representing the American people with grace and dignity and a strength that the world admired. As children, the American people may not have been privy to the conversations held in the Oval Office/master bedroom, but rest assured that the coversations our parents (daddy-king plus his trusted advisers) had were only in the best interests of the country. After Watergate, the American people as a collective saw the President the way a teenager would see his father. We recognize that our daddy-king isn't perfect or even particularly good- he might be a jerk, he might drink too much and wiretap his political enemies for his own personal gain. The cynicism the American people developed after Watergate prepared us to expect the worst (or at least the pretty bad) when it came to a presidential administration. What it did not prepare us for (since I still do not think the American people are politically adult yet) is to confront our very views of what a President is. We still see the daddy-king even if we do not use him as our moral North Star. Like a teenager trying and failing to rebel, we secretly still cower in front of him, so to speak. It still highlights the worst of our own Machiavellian impulses, we truly want someone to lie to us because we like the image. The image of Jack Bauer and "24", of our President making those tough decisions that may not be "ethical" or "humanitarian" or even really "legal," but that in the end keep us warm and safe in our beds and the terrorists at bay. Nixon may have been ridiculed when he said that "When the President does it, it's not illegal," but I think he ultimately got the last laugh. Only it was subsequent Presidents who benefited.

Nixon's specific crime that he resigned for was the cover-up of the scandal of Watergate, but he did a lot of other things too. Wiretaps of reporters, trying to destroy the careers of his political enemies, the escalation of the Vietnam War, going in to Cambodia, his strange relationships with mobsters and the Teamsters, the list could go on. But when I say that much of what he did seems quaint, I think it's because of everything that has happened during the Bush administration. The NSA's warrantless domestic wiretapping program that is much larger than Nixon's, the granting of immunity to all of the telecommunications companies that spied on us since before 9/11, the fabrication of evidence in making the case for the Iraq War, the abhorrent use and (more importantly) systemization of a torture regime that violates the Geneva Conventions and completely destroyed any moral authority the US had left, the political firings in the Justice Department, the mind bogglingly incompetent response to Hurrican Katrina, and his utter expansion of the power of the executive branch of our government. The systemization of a torture regime, under the incredibly Orwellian euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques," by itself is worse than anything the Nixon administration did. The fact that our populace has by and large has acquiesed to these actions, acted as if they were legitimate actions instead of the decay of our system of checks and balances; well, the office of the President really did get the last laugh. All them, Reagan, Bush I (who I think has been our most honorable president since Reagan, and he was a former CIA director!), Clinton, Bush, and now Obama should thank Nixon for the power he grabbed for them.

Update* Speaking of executive secrecy, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent (as usual) article on Matt Miller's (from the "liberal" Center for American Progress) bewildering assertion that Obama should have his aides sign confidentiality agreements so that they won't disclose the inner workings of the administration until well after Obama is out of office. What????? This ain't a some criminal enterprise, Obama's not runnin a dope and coke operation out of the Oval Office. He's an elected official, the highest elected official; him and all of his aides are putting taxpayer dollars in their direct deposit checking accounts. The man campaigned on change and one of those changes was a more transparent administration. Those aides damn well better disclose, that's one of the things we're paying them for. Basically Miller wants to run a Stop Snitchin campaign in the district- funny how once the Dems get back in power all the executive abuses suddenly become okay.

Why I Buy Music (From a Record Store)

I walked up 30th Avenue in the bitter cold all the way to Steinway before I saw the hole in the wall they called Sound City, the record store I found on the internet in desperate search of a place where I could buy music. It was a little disappointing, sliding through that door only to see an establishment the size of a living room, holding only a handful of racks of records and cds. VHS and cassette tapes were also present, sitting forlornly on the floor. This isn't a record store, I thought to myself, as the bells on top of the door chimed to signal that the mid November cold had indeed been shut out. Vintage Vinyl (where I worked for more than two years) now that was a record store. It was gigantic, one of the last behemoths from a bygone era, filled to the breaking point with all kinds of music and dvds and music memorabilia. I guess that's the closest I'll ever get to knowing how the last T. Rex must have felt when those furry four-legged live-birthing animals started to take over. After lamenting for a bit about the gradual demise of the neighborhood record stores, I dove right in to the pitiful jazz and blues collection, hoping to find something worth purchasing.

So far New York has been 0-for-2 in the record store department. The first one I visited was in Williamsburg, my first foray into the hipster capital of the planet, gentrified to the point of being a parody (it was also the sight of the biggest burger mishap in my 22 year history, a story for another day). I know it's foolish to expect New York to have a record store even approaching the size of Vintage Vinyl. Space is too valuable in this city, and a record store in todays environment would never sell enough merchandise to justify the square footage used. But still, one of the things I miss about St. Louis is knowing for damn sure that I could walk into Vintage and know that I could find something to buy, something that would catch my interest, an absurdist French film from the Criterion Collection, a hip-hop album from the All Natural label in Chicago, a classic rock album on vinyl that I should have had a long time ago.

It's silly really, because there are so many options for a music lover like me today; in many ways this is the golden age for people who love music. In addition to going to the ever dwindling number of record stores, I can download music at will from Limewire (and don't get it twisted I will download the HELL out of a hot single or any artist that has no business making albums). I can order music on iTunes, I can buy the tangible product on Amazon or eBay. I can create my own personal radio station at Pandora or watch all the mid-90's music videos on Youtube. If people in the 1970's had this plethora of options, I honestly think that they're heads would have spontaneously combusted.
But nothing is 100% good, and the ability to get music from a myraid of sources means that there is less opportunity for interaction with other people in the music buying experience. Don't get me wrong, I revel in the fact that the greedy SonyBMG's of the world are slowly but surely getting their comeuppance. I also understand that in order to get that comeuppance, the record stores which acted as gatekeepers for their collective monopoly had to be considerably scaled down. I shed exactly zero tears for the demise of Sam Goody or Tower Records- and only a few for even the demise of the independent store. Like the man at Sound City told me, "I'm not bitter." How can you be? Times change because technology changes it; people always gravitate to that which is cheaper and easier- the definition of convenient. Music is meant to be heard and any way that helps for the greatest variety of music to be heard by the greatest number of people is fine.

For me though it boils down to being able to fulfill a combination of experiences. Buying music off of the internet satisfies my need for something tangible, satisfies the combination of touch, sight, sound, and smell which helps to create my visceral experience of listening to music. Where it fails is my need for instant gratification- even with expedited shipping it takes time for it to arrive, too much time. Buying from iTunes or downloading off the internet has the opposite problem. The gratification is even more instant, I don't have to brave the New York cold, I only have to make sure that my internet connection is working and that I have the stamina to reach my desktop in the living room. But there's nothing to touch, except sticky keys, headphones, and my rundown yet still sleek, black and silver ipod.

While sight is definitely the most magical of our senses, it's that combination with touch that truly helps to inform reality, and more importantly, physicality. I miss my girlfriend; and when I say that I want to see her, I don't literally just want to see her. What I mean is that I want to experience her physicality, not just sexually, but her very presence in my vicinity. Maybe that's how I can best describe it. Music on iTunes, music that I downloaded off LimeWire, it has no true presence. It's only announcement that it is in fact real, is the computer on which it is stored before I transfer it to my iPod. But a computer does a lot of other things too; music loses its own special place and becomes just one of many functions of my 5year old HP. On the iPod it becomes just a jumbled mass with no differentiation except for the intangible folders that they are stored in.

For better or worse, the music I play on a cd or record has presence. The crates that take up too much space in the back of our kitchen nook constantly remind me. When I want to play I record, true I have to go through a process rather than just pushing a button (and making sure that it has enough battery power). And it's true that I cannot shuffle my records, if I want to hear another artists I have to take the record off, put it back in its sleeve (most of the time), and then put another record on, making sure the stylus is just right. It's the price you pay for physicality of the smooth dust filled vinyl or the glossy liner notes inside the cd case- the feeling you get when you want to put on that Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt record to accompany that dinner you took precious time to make. It's the price you pay for the ability to be mesmerized by the dusky moonlight orange color of the record case and the picture of Rollins and Stitt playing somewhere way far out of their minds. It's almost religious sometimes, when it's done right it's like you're performing a sacrament and it's always gratifying.

After accounting for the ability to touch and my inability to wait, there's finally the ability to interact. The physicality of the actually piece of music extends to the presence of those who can give me information or advice. I mean, there are is an innumerable amount of websites which can give you advice about what type of music you may like; shoot Amazon does a much better job of that then say a random record store clerk. But it's not just strictly about the information, it's also about the interaction no matter how fleeting it is. Let's be real, you don't ever really get to know the clerk who is ringing up your cds (or tomatoes or a large flatscreen tv)- but the ability to make small talk, and the tiny chance that you may in fact make a friend, or at the very least an acquaintance is nice in and of itself. And buying music is just a bit different than buying something like tomatoes or even a flatscreen. Buying music by its nature fosters some kind of connection, because behind each discreet unit there's an interesting reason for the buy- a reason beyond "I'm hungry," or "I want to be able to see the game from the outer edges of the solar system." The opportunities just present themselves so much more readily, because music lends itself to deep opinions and endless comparisons in ways that other buying options do not. From there, the road to other topics is pretty straightforward.
The man from Sound City and I talked about Howlin' Wolf and Miles Davis, our childhood dreams of being musicians, our current jobs, books we were reading, he even let me borrow one before I left. It was pretty lame, one of those simplistic self-help books that try and pass themselves off as deep and end up selling 2 million copies. But it's the thought that counts. And when I walk in, he calls me Mr. Rodriguez (still a weird experience for me) and gives me long-winded explanations for his recommendations or the reason behind why a certain cd hasn't come in. Then he'll go back to yelling at some guy on the phone or telling some aging hip-hop connosseiur that his Ludacris special order hasn't come in yet. The experience is hilarious, the walk is tiring, and Sound City guy can be mildly annoying at times. It's something I come back to every week, and while I'll keep buying music from a record store for as long as they're still open.

**Add-on**: As an ending aside, I think that the record industry should go to a two tier kind of model. Eventually, it might be forced upon them if they want to stay viable. There are plenty of artists who make hot songs that have absolutely no business making an album. None. They just do not have the talent, inclination, or the stable of producers to make an album worth listening to, and so, quite simply, they shouldn't. Only two kinds of artist should make an album: Superstars who the record company is willing to put all kinds of money behind in order for them to succeed, and really talented artists who have the creativity necessary to make varied songs around a central theme. What ends up happening with these other people- the ones who put out a hot single or two and then have to rush back to the studio to make an album- is that their entire album sounds like a crappier version of the single, and nobody wants to buy that. Not on iTunes and definitely not in a store. So instead they should just be singles artists, putting out hot songs when the inspiration comes, until they prove themselves worthy of making an album. There's nothing wrong with singles artists- James Brown was a singles artists for most of his career and he's one of the top 5-10 music artists in modern history.

Live Blogging- Sketches of Spain

I wanted to try something different with this post. I recently bought a bunch of albums from a small record store and decided to record the immediate thoughts I had listening to them, a kind of live-blogging for albums. Because my cd player does not have elapsed time on it, I'm just going to type without any kind of timestamp. I know, it kind of dilutes the experience of live-blogging, but I swear I typed all of this as I was listening. So.. here goes nothing.

Context: Sitting on my bed finishing a presentation for work while drinking Leffe, a smooth blond Belgian Beer.

Some background:

Concierto de Aranjuez (adagio): I have to admit (even though it's blasphemous) that during his Gil Evans period, I find Miles' horn to be, at times, far too piercing. It feels like my ear drum is being punctured with every note. I much prefer him in the lower register, it just feels so much warmer. Right now it just reminds me of a gnat. Towards the middle he makes a seamless transition from sadness to something far more... I guess grand is the right word. This is jazz at its most orchestral, something I tend not to associate with the era of small band jazz. I guess it has to do with the ensemble that Evans put together. Man his arrangements are amazing.

Will O the Wisp: The first thing that comes to my mind- playfully scary. If Miles at the beginning of Concierto is a gnat, right here he's a graceful dragonfly, darting between his backing horns (the french horn in particular is daunting in this piece). The songs called Will O the Wisp and it feels just right, like a reed in the lake moving gently in the wind.

The Pan Piper: The start is Miles at his most annoying living in the upper register and rarely coming back down to earth. But as much as I'm annoyed by some of the sounds, I also find this to be Miles at his most compelling. It sounds like a bad dream out of Fantasia or the playing of the Pied Piper gone horribly wrong. I was introduced to this song from a British compilation, Blues Miles, a mood compilation of sorts as it contains a bunch of songs from different periods in Miles' career. I had just started getting into jazz and it was the first time I'd HEARD Miles Davis. Like Woody Harrelson, I'd listened to Miles a few times, but this time I was Wesley Snipes and I heard him like he heard Jimi. And really, I've only heard Miles more clearly on one other occasion. First week in January, Sunday morning after a night of partying and big swigs of Jim Beam, I went to work with an epic hangover, and the sounds of the 42 minute monster Zimbabwe, from the album Pangaea punctuated every step I took.
But man the smoothness returns, and it takes me back to hot summers in Milwaukee, the kind of hot where the sweat becomes a string of beads across your forehead and upper lip. My mom use to work late nights at JC Penneys, so at night me and my brother, when we weren't fighting or watching crappy shows on the WB, would sit at the kitchen table and talk about life while listening to Miles Davis. My mom use to keep a jug of red wine on the table and we use to get the nice small glasses out of the cabinet and mix the wine with pepsi and ice. Made us feel like two grown men at a smoke filled jazz club. Man were we corny, but it was such a good time in my life, and Pan Piper takes me back there.

Saeta: A march! For some reason, I think of Verdi's Aida when I hear this. Genuinely happy, on an album thats mostly somber and reflective. I feel triumphant just listening to it, if I made a mixtape for my entrance music, this would definitely be the jazz entry.

Solea: And right back to sad, then an even swifter transition to exuberant. Man does the Davis/Evans combo know how to jerk you around. I can't quite call it a musical rollercoaster, because there is never a doubt where the tone lies or where they eventually want to take you. This song loses a bit of steam towards the end, Miles seems to be meandering a bit. Maybe he's a bit tired from all of the work he's put in earlier? The backing band seems to follow him as well; they're solid but that's not saying much on an album that's been so much more than that.

Song of Our Country: Not included on the original, but it's here and I'm grateful. It would have been a shame if the album ended with Solea, because it would not have done Sketches of Spain justice. Miles sounds drunk here, but much more purposeful, like the last few minutes of a workout, he knows the end is coming and he wants the finale to be exciting. He turns in some incredibly fast and skillful runs, with the trombone placing some fills where Miles gives him space. My last impression is that, damn Evans put together a group worthy of playing with Miles. They give him time to shine throughout, and especially on this song, while not completely fading into the background.

The last two songs are replays of Concierto. I've never been much of a completist, so I don't particularly care about the alternate takes on jazz reissues (the alternates on Tiajuana Moods being one of the exceptions). A lot of it has to do with the fact that, though I fancy otherwise, I'm just not as sophisticated a jazz listener as I want to be. Mostly I'm caught in a supreme no man's land- I know just enough to be uninformed. I can appreciate some of the subtleties of the different takes (one of them used a different producer for Concierto) but I'd be lying if I said that I noticed them without listening to each track back to back repeatedly.
Part one is a little more mild, the main theme just a tad slower. Best of all though, Miles is playing exactly where I want him, in the lower and middle registers with only a few forays into piercing gnat territory. Part two is just a replay of Concierto's ending, and I honestly, I have no clue what to say about it.

To me this is the most ambitious of the three Evans/Davis sets, because they try to interpret pieces in a jazz format that do not immediately fit. There's not much of an opportunity to really cook as in more mainstream jazz. Many people have said that this is one of Miles most accessible albums, some calling it "elevated elevator music" but I only think that's partially correct. For someone with an inclination about what jazz is supposed to be, this is nowhere near as accessible as Birth of Cool or Miles Ahead or Kind of Blue. For someone who is looking for a gateway from classical to jazz or something light to chew on before digging into the something like hardbop, then maybe they're right. Out of all the Evans/Davis sets, I think both Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess are easier to listen to, and, in my opinion, they're both better as well. Not to say that SoS isn't great, basically any Miles in this period qualifies as such. Sketches of Spain is definitely still worthy of a buy and repeated listens, especially if you enjoy some of the lighter and yet in some ways more challenging work.

Thanks for reading and tell me what you think!

*Edit- After reading a lot of reviews, it seems that most people love Solea, while it was my least favorite track on the album. I'll have to take another listen to it. But I guess it's worth noting that my favorite songs were all of the short variety, maybe I just don't have the attention span for some of the long-form cuts. Maybe with repeated listens my favorites will switch.