She’s Just Being Miley

Seems like a good day to republish this. Back in the summer of 2011, Joe Coscarelli profiled the morphing career of Miley Cyrus and explained why her cover of Nirvana's ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was more appropriate than she was given credit for. 

Originally Appears in Issue 7: The Pop Issue

Of all the post-shotgun blast bastardisation guaranteed to be disrupting the stillness of Kurt Cobain’s eternal slumber – if we were to categorise such on something of a sell-out Richter scale – Miley Cyrus covering ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ live in concert should not even register.

In fact, she killed it – but in the good way.

The nineties anthem, released when Cyrus was minus-thirteen-and-a-half months old, made its way into the teen star’s setlist during her Gypsy Heart Tour through much of Latin America, Australia and the Philippines. Though Cyrus has three studio albums, she also led her backing band through karaoke classics like the Poison power ballad ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’, and a Joan Jett medley of ‘Bad Reputation’, ‘Cherry Bomb’ and ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’, the latter of which is not even known to most of Cyrus’s audience as the soundtrack to Britney Spears straddling a motorcycle, but rather as a ‘Smash Hit’ in Guitar Hero.

‘Teen Spirit’ is the most inspired in selection and performance, but also the most reviled, as evidenced online, where the most-viewed video version of the cover on YouTube has gathered only 598 ‘likes’ to a caustic 4,788 ‘dislikes’, summed up in top-rated comments like, “OMG my ears are bleeding! Kurt I feel fucking sorry for you! Please dont [sic] listen! And if you heard it, I hope you can still Rest in Peace!”

Though she only plays air guitar during her version, Miley does justice to the song musically through her too-deep and too-sexy whiskey-and-cigarettes rasp, as puzzling when she speaks as when she sings and adding as much to her age-inappropriateness as any stiletto boots she’s ever donned. And yet, as she crouches in studded leather and bellows, it is – if you allow it to be – an enjoyable spin on the fragility of Cobain’s own dead cat cries.

And then there’s the ‘fuck you’ aspect of a pre-packaged would-be pop playmate belting the words of a man who killed himself rather than keep singing to people he hated.

In the liner notes for Incesticide, Cobain wrote, “Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song ‘Polly’. I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience.” This was a sentiment he carried into his suicide note while turning the blame inward: “The fact is, I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.” He continued, “On our last 3 tours, I’ve had a much better appreciation for all the people I’ve known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can’t get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone.”

Yet enter Miley, who was put on stage before cognisance to fool everyone into fooling their parents into spending money, and who, as she ages in public, probably understands Cobain’s frustrations better than most disciples of the Nirvana songbook. Perhaps her choice of covers are a nod to the parents or chaperones in the audience, the very ones she’s been made to dupe. Even if – and it’s totally plausible, even likely – her setlists have been dictated by her management, or by her father Billy Ray, Miley’s song selection need not be a complete function of her own agency to be punk in its own way. It’s still a propped-up princess mimicking a fallen countercultural idol and thus raising complicated questions, both for her audience – made broader by the clip’s proliferation online, even if it’s being spread by hate – and likely within herself. These are the songs she grew up on, she would still doubtlessly tell anyone who asked, and she probably wouldn’t be lying, but she’s likely developed a whole new appreciation for Cobain’s words. Even if through control or brainwashing, it’s part of what makes the performance subversive – plus educational for the tweens in attendance – with the source material taking on additional subtext because of its flawed messenger.

Here we are now, entertain us.

Born Destiny Hope Cyrus, the daughter of the man who showed the world his ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ found fame first on the Disney Channel as both Miley Stewart and the show’s eponymous Hannah Montana, the Clark Kent and Superman, respectively, of a show about a teenage pop star. Her real-life father co-starred as her Disney Channel father, and Billy Ray’s role, partnered with his daughter’s marketability, served as a lifejacket in the waters of one-hit-wonder-domand led to something of a career renaissance for him, culminating in a (losing) turn on the reality show Dancing With the Stars.

Meanwhile, Hannah Montana ended and Miley’s parents skittered toward (and then retreated from) a divorce as their now 18-year-old daughter scored more notice for underage drinking, tattoos and a TMZ-published video of her smoking a legal hallucinatory herb from a bong than for her music or acting. A rift predictably grew between father and the daughter he reared and also rode upward. And so, like any good stage parent, Billy Ray furthers his own attention by using the press to express worries for his now-estranged little girl’s future, lest she turn out like Anna Nicole Smith, Lindsay Lohan or Michael Jackson.

Another figure Billy Ray namedrops in a recent GQ profile is that of – who else – Kurt Cobain, whose premature death likely allows the elder Cyrus to engage in a bit of revisionist history, painting the two singers as “unlikely friends” at their early-nineties peaks. Misunderstood, the pair of ’em. Cobain’s death “really had an impact” on Cyrus, he says, plus, the Nirvana singer’s daughter Frances Bean was born just three months before Miley. Billy Ray even wrote a poem about Cobain’s death, which hangs on the wall of his home and ends thusly: “But after all was said and done/And the big top now came down/No one could ever doubt the fact/The circus came to town.”

The sins of her father – a lack of self-awareness chief among them – are both Miley’s burden and her ammunition as an aspiring radical or, at least, wild child. Last summer, she was photographed wearing a $70 dress from Topshop emblazoned with a photograph of Cobain on stage; Daddy taught her well, or at least he taught her. Miley was making a gesture, if an over-determined one.

While her own music has suffered as a result of the system that owns her – oscillating wildly between the Disney-backed formula of ‘See You Again’, the playfully boy-crazy pop punk of ‘Seven Things’ and the MOR-overdose of ‘The Climb’, to the sloppy rebellion of the Spearsified ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ and Dr. Luke perfection of ‘Party in the U.S.A.’ – the only constant has been a lack of identity. Put less cynically, it’s a search for one.

The artsy piano prodigy misfit she plays in the 2010 coming-of-age film The Last Song, as adapted from the book by schmaltz king Nicholas Sparks, showcases nothing so much as her failure as a leading lady, or even as a ‘lady’ at all. Long before she can buy a beer in America, Cyrus has been dubbed “sexy” by men’s magazines like Maxim and FHM, but appears equally ungraceful in awards show dresses and overstated leather get-ups. Her goofy laugh, oversized teeth and cheeks giving away her constantly pecked-at youthfulness.

But Cyrus shined in the rambunctious rap video she composed the first time she deleted her Twitter account, as she does in her ‘Teen Spirit’ version – almost un-self-conscious, if only for a moment. She’s still hyper-aware she’s being watched, but like a teenager, ever insecure, not a celebrity.

It’s the same peek of personality she gives in the giddy bong video, yapping almost incomprehensibly about boys and bumbling Nicki Minaj lyrics amid a swirl of peer pressure. Of course it’s complicated by the fact that she’s being videotaped, perhaps not quite surreptitiously, but by a friend who seems overeager to watch the starlet break the rules. In some ways, it’s a microcosm of her life so far. Whether or not this registers with Cyrus on a conscious level as she gets high, she behaves with naturalness she can’t contain as well as an undercurrent of uneasiness: getting older, breaking rules, looking over her shoulder.

Thankfully for her future as someone famous, Miley lacks the darkness of fellow Disney teen star Demi Lovato, whose rehab stints for cutting and eating disorders make Cyrus look like Taylor Swift. Rebellion is subtler, and so far less dangerous, for Cyrus, who is testing waters not just at the behest of her business team – by posing in bedsheets, showing more thigh and dancing in cages – but also in more traditional baby steps: tiny tattoos, legal drugs, and listening to Nirvana.

And those who still wonder, ‘How dare she?’ Nevermind.

Trayvon Martin and the Quest for Justice

On the back of this weekend's controversial acquittal of George Zimmerman, we're republishing this article by poet, playwright and political commentator Charlie Braxton that originally appeared in issue 10 - written during the aftermath of the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.
  
The senseless slaying of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old unarmed African-American male, sent shockwaves throughout the America’s black community and the world. Many people were outraged that George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic male who has a history of calling the Sanford Florida Police (SPD) to report ‘suspicious males’ in his exclusive gated community, could shoot and kill a child and not instantly be arrested and charged with murder. But in the State of Florida, as well as many other States in the US that have so-called ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws, it proved entirely possible.

According to the law, a person has the right to use deadly force if they ‘reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to him or herself or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony’.

On the surface the law seems reasonable. After all, everybody has the right to defend themselves and their loved ones.

But according to reports this is not the case with George Zimmerman, the self-appointed Captain of his community’s neighborhood watch. When Zimmerman first saw Martin, he was armed with a gun loaded with hollow point bullets and sitting in the safe confines of his car following Martin, who was unarmed and on foot. Zimmerman disregarded authorities request not to pursue Martin. Instead, the insurance underwriter got out of his car and pursued Martin on foot, not vice versa. Exactly what happened in the few minute between Zimmerman confronting Martin up until the time of the teenager’s death nobody knows except Zimmerman.

Zimmerman claims that Martin was the aggressor in the situation; that Martin wrestled him to the ground, straddled him and slammed his face into the concrete, breaking his nose and leaving a laceration on the back of his head. Fearing for his life, Zimmerman told police that he reached for his concealed weapon, which he was licensed to carry, and shot Martin. To the authorities it appeared an open and shut case based solely on Zimmerman’s account.

But if the police would have taken the time to look at it from Martin’s point of view then perhaps the outcome would’ve been much different. Think about it.

Here’s Martin, an unarmed minor who is a good 100 pounds lighter than the burly Zimmerman, walking to his father’s apartment in the rain. He’s talking on the phone to his girlfriend, minding his own business when he spots a stranger in an unmarked vehicle following him. According to his girlfriend, Martin walks faster hoping to avoid contact with the stranger, but his effort was to no avail. Within minutes the stranger gets out of his car and pursues Martin on foot. At this point, if you were Martin wouldn’t you perceive that person as a potential threat to your life?

Unfortunately, the police in Sanford Florida elected not see the incident from Martin’s point of view and apply the law accordingly. If they had, Zimmerman would have been arrested and charged with shooting Martin in the incident’s immediate aftermath. Instead, it appears the Sanford Police viewed the case solely through the eyes of Zimmerman. And all they saw in the man whom Zimmerman shot was ‘black male’; a potential threat who couldn’t possibly be innocent.

What is even more outrageous is how the SPD initially treated the entire investigation so cavalierly. And though the SPD police chief temporarily stepped down amidst the controversy, there are still some issues with how the SPD handled this incident that continue to raise some suspicion.

According to law enforcement expert Rod Wheeler, Zimmerman’s speech on the 911 call was slurred, which is an indication that he may have been intoxicated. Anytime a person involved in a crime shows signs of intoxication, an alcohol and drug test is standard police procedure. According to The Guardian, the SPD failed to check Zimmerman for drug and/or alcohol use, yet they tested Martin corpse for traces of drugs and alcohol. The test came up negative. 

Speaking of test, Zimmerman claims that he called out for help while Marin was allegedly assaulting him. He claims that he can be heard on one of the taped 911 phone calls. But two top expert have examine the tape and concluded that the voices heard on the tape isn’t Zimmerman’s. One of those experts is Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence. Owen used voice identification software to rule out Zimmerman, with the result being a 48 per cent match for Zimmerman’s voice. That’s way less than the 90 per cent needed to declare it a positive match. “As a result of that, you can say with reasonable scientific certainty that it’s not Zimmerman,” said Owen. Unfortunately, Owen could not confirm that the voice on the tape was Martin’s either. In order to do that he would need a sample of the deceased voice to compare against the taped voice, which he did not have.

Also, the police failed to contact Martin’s girlfriend in Miami. She was the last person Martin talked to minutes prior to his demise. According to her, the last word she heard Martin say was, “Why are you following me?” This contradicts Zimmerman’s claim that Martin approached him.

The SPD also failed to notice Zimmerman’s possible use of a racial epitaph to describe Martin. This would’ve been a possible motive for Zimmerman to kill Martin and potential grounds to arrest Zimmerman for a hate crime. Again, this is a crucial piece of evidence for a trained police investigator to ‘overlook’.

There are some very disturbing reports alleging that when some witnesses tried to tell the police they heard Martin scream (one witness told CNN that she saw Zimmerman straddling Martin moments before she heard a shot), the SPD either ignored or disregarded their assertions altogether. Later, two audio experts have confirmed that the voice screaming for help on the 911 tapes is not Zimmerman’s. Again, this is enough to raise any good detective suspicion. It would certainly merit questioning if not arresting and charging him with a crime.

It should be noted that Trayvon Martin’s isn’t the only controversial death of an African-American by police and/or security personnel. This year there have been 30 (29 males and one female) such killings in the US with 17 of these killings taking place after the death of Martin, at time of writing. According to published reports, 18 of the 30 people killed were definitely unarmed. 11 of them were innocent of any crimes or wrong-doing that involved hurting anyone, yet they were deemed ‘suspicious’ by the person who killed them. In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a national organisation that tracks racist groups, reports that there has been a serious spike in racist hate groups who seemed to have found psychological discomfort in the election of Barack Obama, the ailing economy and the ever-changing racial demographic of America. The centre also notes that the State of Florida is among those with the largest number of hate groups.

On April 11th, after a massive nationwide outcry that saw peaceful, marches and protests rallies in support of the Martin’s family’s quest for justice. George Zimmerman was finally arrested and charged with the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin. As of this writing, Zimmerman is free on a $150,000 bond and is in seclusion as he awaits trial, but the potential damage done to the case by the SPD’s initial mishandling remains to be seen.

Meanwhile racial tension remains high. Rumours abound that a heavily armed Neo-Nazi group is preparing to patrol the streets of Sanford in order to protect white in case of a ‘race riot’. But according the SPD there is absolutely no truth to those rumours.

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The Future of 'Geek': Interview with Rob Salkowitz

Author Rob Salkowitz has closely observed how Comic-Con and the geek world it embodies influence global pop culture.

By Elaine Burke

Originally Appears in Issue 11

‘Futurist’ sounds like the profession of a character from a comic book but, in these days of fast-moving trends and companies trying to keep up with them, it’s a genuine job title; one that belongs to Rob Salkowitz, author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture. Salkowitz has been attending Comic-Con with his wife since 1997, not just as a fan but as a business analyst trying to find out how cultural trends are transforming old business models.

There are many comic book conventions, but we’re talking about the big one here: Comic-Con International, held every year in San Diego. Over time, Salkowitz has seen it grow into a giant pop culture singularity swallowing up comic books, Hollywood, TV, video games and everything in between.

If there’s any doubt that comic book heroes have become a cornerstone of pop culture, a glance at the summer box office takings puts paid to that. But we don’t need proof. This is nothing out of the ordinary. “It’s sort of part of the cultural furniture, the idea that The Avengers movie makes a billion and a half dollars worldwide, and The Dark Knight Rises – that these are routinely the highest grossing movies doesn’t move the needle. People expect that,” says Salkowitz.

But there are questions; the concerns of the purists. “Is that a permanent, sustainable part of our culture now? Has that bridge been crossed and has geek culture become irreversibly mainstream?” Salkowtiz wonders. “Or is this a sort of an oscillation that in a few years, maybe – for reasons that nobody can predict or entirely control – it goes back to being a subculture and people sort of look at it in the rear-view mirror as they would with disco or the Spice Girls or something like that and say, ‘What were we thinking? And why were we dressed like that?’”

It has happened before, and it could happen again.

Revenge of the Nerds
In Salkowitz’s crystal ball, the scenario where geek culture comes back to the geeks could be more challenging for business, but also more artistically and culturally rewarding. In fact, he sees this happening already with the success of independent production and distribution coming from surprising sources.

“You hear these stories every day,” he says and then asks me if I’ve heard of Axe Cop. I’m ignorant but intrigued. “So, this guy is a professional comics artist and he has a much younger brother who’s like five years old,” Salkowitz begins. “He was home for Christmas playing with his brother, and his brother was telling these stories about this character he invented called Axe Cop who was a highway patrolman who kills monsters with an axe. The [illustrator] was looking for new work to do in his portfolio and he said, ‘You know, this is a better script than I’ve gotten from most of my writer friends. I’m just gonna draw this’.”

And so, Ethan Nicolle, the illustrator, captured his little brother Malachai’s imagination in a web comic that he posted to Facebook. “In the time between when he got on the aeroplane to leave the family gathering and when he landed, this had gone viral,” continues Salkowitz. “‘Axe Cop’ became a top 100 Google search term and it became one of the most popular web comics overnight.”

As quickly as the popularity surge that brought it to public attention, Axe Cop was picked up by Dark Horse Comics and a graphic novel and animated series are already in the works. “It went from literally the mind of a five-year-old kid into the mass media machine that quickly,” says Salkowitz with a mix of awe and admiration.

Salkowitz also remembers when everyone got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and went online to download some comics to read on their shiny new toy. “They went to the Amazon store and the No 1-selling digital download graphic novel over the holiday season was called How to be a Super Villain. It wasn’t Watchmen, it wasn’t The Walking Dead, it wasn’t The Avengers – it wasn’t any of the usual suspects. It was this book called How to be a Super Villain, which was self-published by a person named Rachel Yu who is 14 years old. And this was her third book.”

When a teenage girl is outselling powerhouses like DC Comics and Marvel, and veteran creators like Robert Kirkman, you know that something terribly exciting is occurring. “It’s a whole new world,” says Salkowitz. “It’s not only gonna be Rachel Yu in the United States, or Ethan Nicolle, or any of these people. It could be somebody in India, or in Latin America, or in Ireland, or wherever. The barriers to access are gone.”

From Geek to Chic
Just like the creators are changing, so too is the fanbase. It’s not like the typified ‘geek’ – a myopic male with bad skin that hardly leaves his bedroom – is the only fan we associate with comic book culture, but, like all stereotypes, the image is persistent. To break down these assumptions, we see events such as GeekGirlCon, which recently took place in Salkowitz’s hometown of Seattle.

Even for a forward-thinker with his finger on the pulse, this event was an eye-opener. “This is the future of fandom,” he announces. “As a futurist putting on my business analyst hat and looking: the audience for this stuff is not the 40-year-old geek sitting in his basement any more; it’s not male-oriented nerd culture. It’s much broader, it’s much more international, it’s much more diverse in the things to be nerdish about, and it’s much more plugged into knowledge economy and engineering and science and those sorts of things.”

GeekGirlCon 2012 celebrated everything there was to nerd culture, beyond the confines of comic books and sci-fi movies. There were rocket scientists, roller derby girls, software designers and Quidditch players. (Yes, that’s right, with broomsticks and everything.) And, despite the title, the event wasn’t ‘girls only’, merely a geek-centred programme that completely defied the notion that all participants would be pasty-faced boys in Star Wars T-shirts.

In the Hands of the Fans
New voices – teenage girls and five-year-old boys – are coming to the fore, but at the same time that this is happening, we’re also seeing unprecedented consolidation of media channels at the top end. “Certainly one future of pop culture involves letting a thousand flowers bloom from all over the place, and letting all of these dissident voices and crazy, wacky new ideas get heard; but another future is that this is all being decided in committee rooms by brand managers and by teams of transmedia producers that are engineering this experience in a very top-down way and trying to consolidate all of these audiences around their product, around their channels,” opines Salkowitz.
So what’s it going to be? There’s billions of dollars backing the big guys, but the little guys are still making an impact thanks to the democratisation of distribution heralded by the Internet. Which will define the flavour of global pop culture in the next 10 years?

More than likely, it will be whoever has the fans on their side as even the big-shot Hollywood execs are out courting the fans at Comic-Con hoping for a thumbs up. “And that’s what makes fans different from consumers,” declares Salkowitz. “Fans are educated and engaged and passionate, and they feel themselves to be the co-owners of these properties along with the creators and to have an equal say in how they’re gonna be developed and how they’re gonna be brought to market.”

But while a thumbs down from Hall H (the largest room at Comic-Con with a massive 6,500 seats) can be a death knell for a project, that doesn’t mean a positive reaction guarantees success. “It’s a complicated relationship between what the fans like and what the mainstream audience likes. Not everybody has the deft touch to get that right,” explains Salkowitz.

“It, among other things, proves the extraordinary talent of somebody like Joss Whedon,” he adds, referring to Whedon’s work writing and directing The Avengers – a production that Salkowitz believed to be “fraught with peril”.

“It looked to me like it could very easily have been a ridiculous fiasco – just an embarrassment. And the script is not gonna win any awards,” he remarks. “Yet [Whedon] managed to get just enough of the nerd cred for everybody to be cheering at all the little Easter eggs that he put in there, and also have the mass audience not rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Ugh, I’ve had it with these superhero movies.’”

Very few people have this kind of skill, and pleasing the hardcore geeks and general public simultaneously is never going to be easy. “As long as Hollywood and the mass media is in marriage with the fan community, as demonstrated at Comic-Con, it’s always gonna be tricky, and that’s good. Because if it ever becomes a simple formula, then all of what is great about comics and everything that we love about them – as quirky and individual and personal as those creative visions are – starts to go away and it starts to become engineered, and it becomes a money machine,” says Salkowitz, who wants the geeks to continue making it hard for the mainstream media. 

“Even as big as Comic-Con has gotten, and as well exposed and as sophisticated as the brand people have gotten about managing that, they still can’t quite get it right. And I hope they never do.”

An Evening With One More Robot

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One More Robot - Issue 11

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Interviews

Chuck D (Legendary rapper and primary voice of political rap group Public Enemy)
By David Ma

Beth Jeans Houghton (Singer, songwriter, and leader of Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny)
By Trisha Doyle

Ken Bruen (Irish noir novelist. His works include The Guards and Priest)
By Michael A. Gonzales

Le Galaxie (Irish dance music group)
By Karen Lawler

Adrian Tomine (cartoonist and illustrator for The New Yorker and his own comic series, Optic Nerve)
By Sam Weiss

Akintola Hanif (Photojournalist, filmmaker and editor-in-chief of groundbreaking culture magazine Hycide)
By Colm Gorey

Cry Monster Cry (Folk duo)
By Jonathan Keane

RawDeal (Rapper and head of the record label Raw's House)
By Dean Van Nguyen

The Sanctuaries (New York-based indie band)
By Nadene Ryan

Rob Salkowitz (author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture)
By Elaine Burke

Pablo Nouvelle (Swiss musician and filmmaker)
By Simon Mee

Rick James (Funk icon who sadly passed away in 2004. This in-depth interview is previously unpublished)
By Charlie Braxton

Also Includes

Back to Fashion The 2009 film The September Issue took viewers behind the scenes at Vogue’s New York office, documenting the creation of their largest-ever issue and leaving many to wonder where the hype surrounding the all-important September issue of the magazine originates. By Niamh Hynes

I Was a Teenage Prog Nerd One music obsessive outlines his long-standing love affair with progressive rock. By Joe Tangari

and more

Issue 11 Preview: The Interview Issue

The new issue of One More Robot compiles interview features with a wide variety of musicians, authors, filmmakers, artists and many other noteworthy people. The 11th edition features conversations with...

Chuck D Rapper and primary voice of legendary political rap group Public Enemy


 
Beth Jeans Houghton Singer, songwriter and freak-folk artist (Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose)


 
Rob Salkowitz Author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture


 
RawDeal Rapper and head of the record label Raw's House


 
David Stern Frontman of New York band The Sanctuaries


 
Akintola Hanif Photojournalist and filmmaker



Michael Le Galaxie Member of Irish dance music group Le Galaxie ( Laserdisc Nights 2)


 
Ken Bruen Irish crime-noir author (The Guards, Priest)


 
Adrian Tomine Cartoonist and illustrator for The New Yorker and his own comic series, Optic Nerve


 
Rick James Deceased funk music pioneer (interview previously unpublished)


 
And loads more interviews besides. Also includes our look at the September fashion craze, prog rock and regular album reviews, including new releases by Jessie Ware and Joe McKee.

New issue out later this month. For the latest news please 'like' us on Facebook.

Hal David 1921-2012

Years ago, while preparing to write an essay on Burt Bacharach, my good friend and mentor, the late writer Tom Terrell, said, "Everybody is always talking about Bacharach, but nobody ever talks about the great lyrical contributions of Hal David".

Up until that time, I hadn’t thought about Hal David one way or other. Burt, of course, was the cool symbol of the sixties, much like an American version of James Bond, while Hal was "just the writer". Yet, as singer Dionne Warwick once told me, "If it wasn’t for Hal David, people would just be humming".

Listening closely to lyrics, with "Windows of the World" and "Message to Michael" being favorites, I realized just how powerful a pop lyricist Hal David really was.--Michael A. Gonzales

The Master Clan

Originally Appears in Issue 11

The world of online gaming is fast becoming one of the largest entertainment movements of the modern age and there are communities taking full advantage. Colm Gorey delves into the world of online battle clans.

Illustration by Louise Butler Sherlock.

The realms of the Internet are often assumed to house a number of sinister groups who either intend on hacking world governments or socially inept psychopaths looking for their next thrill. In reality, online gaming is in the midst of one of the biggest booms in entertainment, culturally and financially, and is fast out-growing the traditional money-spinners of cinema and music. Millions of people across the world are online at any given time playing each other on a variety of different games from the Hollywood-esque shoot em’ ups like Call of Duty to the far removed world of resource gathering and friendliness found in Minecraft.

Despite playing with millions of people, online gaming can be a relatively lonely existence. You drift from one game to the next playing with people who are, in most cases, unidentifiable except for their chosen character name. Games like Battlefield 3 often require teamwork to succeed and the actions of your online teammates can be the difference in whether you win or not. That is why gaming clans developed across the globe for gamers who may be new to a title but want to experience it with a group of similar minded people. Through online forums and getting to talk to people online, clans turn virtual strangers into friendsh through gaming. One gamer I spoke to, Seán Callaghan, is one of 23 full members of one of the largest battle clans in the UK and Ireland: Dogs of War.

Dogs of War
“I got into it about eight years ago,” says Seán, “I had just gotten one of the biggest games at the time, Medal of Honor, and decided to join a server called ‘Newcomers Only’ since I was jumping into the game having never played online before. After a while we got to know each other better after talking and decided that we should join a league for a bit of competitve fun. Sadly, this fell apart after a while and another clan I joined just got too involved in the competitive side of things which is how I ended up at Dogs of War and I’ve been with them for seven years now.”

So what makes a clan identifiable? Similar to a soccer team wearing a particular pattern of colours, a clan will have their own tag. Whether you are playing on an Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or PC, an identifiable tag before a person’s name identifies them as a clan member; in Seán’s case ‘DoW UK’. The average clan has around 20 members who, in most cases, have gotten to know each other personally over a number of years. DoW have regular voice-chats through Ventrilo, a chat application that the members pay for so that they can communicate on a regular basis from all across Europe including the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and Slovenia. This raises an interesting question: is it possible to form a close relationship with someone in a clan if you very rarely, if at all, meet? Seán explains: “The friendship between everyone in the clan is akin to talking to a friend that has moved to another country yet you talk to them everyday on Skype. When I’m not playing games I’ll go on to Ventrilo and find the rest of the clan doing a range of things whether one person is gaming, I’m browsing the web and another is watching TV. For me, it’s always been about making it a shared experience.”

The make up of a gaming clan member is far removed from the cringeworthy stereotypes of spotty teenagers taking out their social frustrations on virtual characters. For PC gamers in particular, the average age is about 35 but can range from people in their mid-twenties to late fifties. In comparison to the relatively inexpensive costs of the leading consoles, a PC gamer has to put a significant amount of money into a PC set-up. Graphics cards, sound systems and plasma screens are just some of the expenses needed to make a dedicated gaming set up which will likely set a person back a couple of thousand euros.

Can’t Teach an Old Dog
DoW are one of many clans that live and breath first person shooters. Call of Duty, Battlefield and Counter Strike are their bread and butter when it comes to gaming. Whether you’re running around Rambo-style blasting away your friends on a clan server, or teaming up to take on another clan, these games are the grand daddies of the gaming scene, raking in millions of dollars in game sales, merchandise and expansion packs each year. And yet, as each new installment in the franchise comes out, the older stalwarts of the DoW clan are resistant to change. As one of the younger members of the group, Seán has found that the older members are prone to sticking to what they know by playing the older games like Call of Duty 4 and Counter Strike, while younger players, including Seán, have expanded into playing newer games like Battlefield 3.

What is important to know is that membership is not exclusive. If you were looking to join a clan, one of Ireland’s most popular forums, Boards.ie, has a subsection dedicated to a whole variety of games. Similar to Seán starting out with Medal of Honor, a new player to a game can visit one of these subsections and join a number of servers that can cater to their playing style or limitations. One example you can find on Boards.ie is a Battlefield 3 community known as Craggy Island (no prizes on where the inspiration for this name came from). An online community made up of hundreds of members, Craggy Island is a go-to source for all Irish Battlefield 3 PC players whether they want to find clans to enjoy a more competitive side of gaming, or share YouTube videos of their thoughts and ideas on the game, or recorded clips ranging from bloopers to strategy guides and weapon loadouts. Much in the same way that Seán moved towards clans through a Medal of Honor server, I decided to jump right in and try my hand at putting on my warpaint and joining one.

Diving In
I must admit, I am what many would call a ‘casual gamer’ in that I play maybe three times in a week for an hour or two despite the fact I do follow the current gaming news. I own an Xbox 360 and only usually buy a handful of games in a year that I sometimes play online with a friend; possibly the least fearsome duo the internet has ever seen. As a regular member of a particular UK soccer forum that caters to people from all walks of life, I began posting on a thread for a dedicated Xbox Battlefield 3 clan ‘Awooga 365’, which consists of people from both the UK and Ireland. Much like being the only stranger at a party, a shyness came over me as I introduced myself. What struck me first, and what Seán had spoken to me about earlier, the friendliness of total strangers takes you aback. After a bit of back and forth chat, the first game was arranged and I jumped in to their rented server.

In the first few matches I sheepishly tried to talk to my new teammates through my microphone but gradually I found myself laughing and making fun of virtual strangers, for want of a better word. As a teamwork-orientated game, having a larger group of people to play with was a far more enjoyable experience but also as a place to mess around with the almost never-ending possibilities that can be found when playing such a vast game like Battlefield 3. Once we finish up, it’s back to the forum where we laugh or moan about the battle.

Looking at the other end of the scale, there are hundreds of clans who take gaming that bit more seriously and wage war virtually for a lot of money. When I spoke with Seán, he explained to me a world that is simply beyond my comprehension. Throughout the United States and South Korea (and, to a lesser extent, Europe) clans come to events to compete for prizes that can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. Started in 2002, E-sports website Major League Gaming (MLG) is to gaming what the Premier League is to soccer. Clans of any skill can go onto the MLG website and challenge one another to a battle in a variety of games including Call of Duty and FIFA.

In Game Battles, prestige and boasting rights are the prizes on offer as hundreds of matches are scheduled between teams of all sizes on a daily basis. “It’s great entertainment to watch,” says Seán. “I pay $20 a month and with that I can watch all of the matches on MLG in live high-definition.” This watching of clans and computer games in general has started, what might be considered by some, to be a strange experience. With increasing regularity, bars like Captain America’s are taking part in a new scene called Barcraft. In a similar way to soccer fans coming to bars to watch soccer, gaming enthusiasts can come to the bar and watch some of their favourite players and teams compete in one of the biggest and most lucrative games in terms of cash prizes, called Starcraft 2. A real-time strategy game based in a far-future conflict between different races, alien and human, players try to out-skill their opponents by building a better army using a variety of tactics. Similar, in almost every way to watching a popular sport, people in their hundreds turn up to Barcraft events, cheer on their players and teams while eating and drinking to their hearts content.

Understandably, many people unfamiliar with the game can be taken aback by the sights of a large group of people cheering and shouting at a computer game. Indeed, people like Seán do not see a day when Ireland or the rest of Europe will reach the mainstream heights experienced by the professional players in South Korea or North America: “In the past, there were attempts to create an E-sports community here in Ireland but it just hasn’t reached the same levels as in other countries. This is mostly down to a number of reasons including broadband infrastructure which is weaker compared to other countries.”

The Future
So what does the future hold for clan gaming? DoW has continued in the same manner for a number of years now and it would appear any major changes to what games are being played will be unlikely. The Irish scene has much further room to expand, but ideas like Barcraft are pushing the boundaries of how being a gamer is perceived in popular culture. No longer are games played solely by spotty teenagers, but people of all ages, men and women, who see the fun Internet gaming can provide given the increasing power and speed of modern broadband.

As we spend more and more of our time logged on to the Internet, the huge growth of social communities and groups online are inevitable or already with us. Through gaming, people like Seán found a way of making new friends across a number of countries with like-minded people without having to leave his computer at home. And yet, this summer DoW will be putting down their mouse and keyboard and raising a drink during their annual meet-up in the UK and continue where they left off, except this time in person.

Crack and the Conspiracy to Destroy Urban America?

by fayemi shakur, photo by Akintola Hanif

One month before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo outlining his then secret Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). After decades of speculation, the goals of the program were made public under the Freedom of Information Act revealing Hoover’s plan “to prevent the rise of a black messiah, who could unify and electrify the black militant movement, to publically discredit and embarrass black leaders, and to prevent the long-range growth of militant black organisations, especially among youth”. The public documents confirm the FBI successfully infiltrated black nationalists groups and caused major disruptions within the civil rights and black power movements which indirectly and directly led to the assassinations of Dr King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton Jr and numerous others.

The FBI’s tactics also included the introduction of drugs like heroin and LSD, and the manipulation of communications to cause dissention, chaos and confusion. Hoover’s memo explained the purpose of the endeavor ­–  “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralise the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations”.

What does any of this have to do with crack?

If you think about it, crack was another effective way to ‘neutralise’ would-be leaders in America’s urban cities. Didn’t crack also prevent long-range growth of black youth and fulfill the goals of COINTELPRO?

In the early eighties LA based drug trafficker ‘Freeway’ Rick Ross (not the rapper, the real Rick Ross) hooked up with CIA agent Danilo Blandon and his partner Norwin Meneses Cantarero, two Nicaraguan exiles, who supplied him with cocaine. The government was well aware of the activities and didn’t try to stop it. Blandon supplied access to the drugs and used profits to fund the Contras, a nasty guerilla army he was connected to in Nicaragua also connected to the Iran-Contra scandal. It was a mess. 

By 1982, Ross was allegedly selling over $3 million worth of cocaine a day and buying 455 kilos a week. He sold it to street organisations like the Bloods and Crips who turned it into cheaper, potent crack cocaine. Eventually he had thousands of employees who helped distribute it all over America’s urban cities. A documentary film, Bastards of the Party directed by Cle Shaheed Sloan, portrays how efforts of the Bloods and Crips to unify their communities were undermined early during their formation particularly once drugs and turf wars broke out. Ultimately, both street organisations were criminalised and overcome by criminal behavior. 

In 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published a three-part article, ‘Dark Alliance’, by journalist Gary Webb which laid out the Ross, Blandon, Contra connection in full detail. Congresswoman Maxine Waters called for hearings on the matter but the CIA connection was never proven and nothing ever came of any of it. America’s ‘War on Drugs’ campaign first coined by the Nixon Administration was a sad joke. Ross was incarcerated for seven years and Blandon went on to work for the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

While Ross was in prison he created a socially conscious website, Freewayenterprise.com, with a simple agenda: education, not incarceration.

“You can't get rid of the dope dealer and solve the problems. They'll find themselves another dealer. This is not a problem you can incarcerate your way out of,” explains Ross.

And how can anyone explain declining crime rates and exploding prison budgets?

Mandatory minimum drug sentencing in the US gave offenders three times more prison time for crack cocaine arrests than powdered cocaine arrests. This led to racial disparities in sentencing filling America’s profit based prisons with thousands of black and brown non-violent drug offenders.

In her book, The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness, author Michelle Alexander explains how the criminal “caste system”, as she calls it, affects not just the 2.3 million people behind bars, but also the 4.8 million others on probation or parole (predominately for nonviolent offenses), and says nothing of the millions more whose criminal records stigmatize them for life.

Apparently, those who control America’s criminal justice system see it another way and though the crack epidemic has faded, America’s addiction to drugs and lies has not. It’s hard to think of the full arc of possibilities that could have existed without this type of institutionalised and internalised racism, without COINTELPRO, without crack.

fayemi shakur is a freelance writer and a Managing Editor of HYCIDE, a photojournalism and art publication based in Newark, N.J., USA. www.hycide.com