Fees wrecking film’s distribution

Daughter Number Three spotted an article about The Wrecking Crew, Denny Tedesco’s 2008 documentary about the West Coast session musicians heard on countless 1960s pop and rock records. It’s 2011, and the film still has no distribution. Why? The fees for the 130 songs used in the film total more than $300,000. The filmmaker’s response has been to make the film a non-profit, eligible for funding through the International Documentary Foundation.

Nina Paley’s animated film Sita Sings the Blues (2008) was hit with similarly exorbitant fees for the use of 1920s recordings. The initial price: $220,000.

Somehow I don’t think that’s the way copyright is supposed to work.

More
The Wrecking Crew (the film’s site)
The Wrecking Crew (Wikipedia article)
Sita and copyright (Wikipedia article)

[Denny Tedesco is the son of guitarist and Crew member Tommy Tedesco.]

Vito Perrone Sr. (1933–2011)

Vito Perrone Sr., former director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, opposed standardized testing:

In Dr. Perrone’s view, which he disseminated for 40 years as a professor of education, first at the University of North Dakota and later at Harvard, the excessive use of such tests warped the education process, inhibited children’s natural interest in learning, caused teachers stress and prevented them from carrying out their real jobs: instilling in children a love of learning and teaching them the principles of citizenship in a democracy.

Vito Perrone Sr., Who Fought Standardized Tests, Dies at 78 (New York Times)

In 1998 he posed these questions:

What if our children and young people learn to read and write but don’t like to and don’t? What if they don’t read the newspapers and magazines, or can’t find beauty in a poem or love story? What if they don’t go as adults to artistic events, don’t listen to a broad range of music, aren’t optimistic about the world and their place in it, don’t notice the trees and the sunset, are indifferent to older citizens, don’t participate in politics or community life, and are physically and psychologically abusive to themselves?

And what if they leave us intolerant, lacking in respect for others who come from different racial and social backgrounds, speak another language, have different ideas or aspirations? Should any of this worry us?

Our Continuing Imperative: Education for Peace and Social Justice (Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue)

A little bathroom humor

A good clue in today’s New York Times crossword, 3-Down: “One spending a long time in the bathroom?” The question mark means that the answer involves some cleverness. I think though that my dad would find the answer quite straightforward: TILESETTER.

[No spoilers here. Highlight the empty space above to see the answer. My dad’s work graces bathrooms, kitchens, and entryways throughout northern New Jersey.]

Music for hard times

Last night Elaine and I heard a great recital by baritone Nathan Gunn and pianist Julie Gunn. Elaine heard much more than I did, as she was well acquainted with virtually all the music on the program: Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a wayfarer], Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe [Poet’s love], and songs by Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, and Harold Arlen. Schumann and Ives were the knock-outs. But for me the most arresting moment of the night came in an encore, a song from 1931:

They used to tell me I was building a dream,
and so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream,
with peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line,
just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad. Now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower. Now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum,
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell,
I was the kid with the drum.

Say, don’t you remember? They called me Al,
it was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember? I’m your pal.
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (music by Jay Gorney, words by E.Y. Harburg)

I want to call the Gunns’ performance of the song spellbinding, but that’s not it: rather than call attention to the artistry of the performers, the performance invited the listener to think of the world outside the great hall. It was a solemn and poignant close to a great night of music in our own hard times. I’d like to think that everyone got the point.

[Yes, the Gunns are a married couple. And no, this rendering of the lyrics is not definitive. The punctuation, line breaks, and stanza breaks are my best effort.]

Happy birthday, Orange Crate Art

With a little over an hour left in the day, I just realized that Orange Crate Art turned seven today. Orange Crate Art: now more than halfway to puberty!

I never imagined that this blog, which began as a way to collect items relevant to my teaching, would turn into a daily adventure in writing. Thank you, fambly: Rachel and Ben for giving me a big push to get started, Elaine for reading every word. And you — yes, you, the one in front of that screen there — thank you for reading.

Overheard

By Elaine, in Borders: “I hate books that you have to read from cover to cover.”

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)

[My last Borders purchases: Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, and Tim Page’s Parallel Play.]

Wade Mainer (1907–2011)

Sad news: Wade Mainer, a Pioneer of Bluegrass Banjo, Dies at 104 (New York Times). I’ve become aware of his music via Joe Bussard’s Country Classics.

YouTube has an interview with Wade Mainer in three parts. Bonus: songs and banjo tricks with Wade and Julia Mainer, who were married for seventy-three years.

Taylor Branch on college sports

Taylor Branch’s Atlantic article The Shame of College Sports is a must-read for anyone who cares about education. One detail, concerning a civil suit brought against the University of Georgia by Jan Kemp, an English instructor who was fired after refusing to change students’ grades:

In trying to defend themselves, Georgia officials portrayed Kemp as naive about sports. “We have to compete on a level playing field,” said Fred Davison, the university president. During the Kemp civil trial, in 1986, Hale Almand, Georgia’s defense lawyer, explained the university’s patronizing aspirations for its typical less-than-scholarly athlete. “We may not make a university student out of him,” Almand told the court, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”

Ads on campus

The New York Times reports on corporations using college students as “‘brand ambassadors’ or ‘campus evangelists’”:

Companies from Microsoft on down are increasingly seeking out the big men and women on campus to influence their peers. The students most in demand are those who are popular — ones involved in athletics, music, fraternities or sororities. Thousands of Facebook friends help, too. What companies want are students with inside knowledge of school traditions and campus hotspots. In short, they want students with the cred to make brands seem cool, in ways that a TV or magazine ad never could.

The Times article highlights a move-in-day crew of students wearing American Eagle T-shirts and a Hewlett-Packard student-rep who wears an HP shirt and sits with her HP laptop in a wi-fi spot.

What I find especially irksome about these corporate efforts is the way they exploit the decency and naiveté of young adults, few of whom would be willing to tell a fellow student, any student, to take a hike. The sighing response of a student who received help and merch from the American Eagle crew: “I’ll probably always remember it.”

More troubling to me though are advertising efforts that originate on campus. Electronic signage, mixing advertisements and announcements, is a recent collegiate innovation that threatens to make every sighted member of an academic community a member of a captive audience. Such signage comes with an assurance that alcohol, tobacco, and weapons will — of course — not be advertised. I find nothing reassuring about that assurance, because I conceive of a college campus as something close to a sacred space, set apart, dedicated to purposes above commerce. I would never object to advertising in a stadium (where I never have to set foot if I so choose). But the prospect of quads filled with glittering commercials is intolerable. And there’s no telling a sign to take a hike.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1999 about ads on university websites, former Indiana University president Thomas Ehrlich described his struggles with creeping commercialization. While president, he once “in a moment of weakness” approved a large sign for announcements and ads. It came down when “faculty and others howled.” Ehrlich’s conclusion:

Higher education is a calling, and its mission is to enhance society by teaching, research, and service. Colleges and universities have obligations, as well as opportunities, to strengthen the fabric of our society by stressing essential dimensions of life that are not commercial — in particular, the moral and civic responsibilities of every student, faculty member, and administrator on campus.

Would that everyone in higher education saw it that way.

[The Chronicle piece is behind a paywall. Orange Crate Art, by the way, will always be an ad-free blog.]

Tupperware pencil

If this pencil could talk:

Girls Ladies, I hope that you have you’ve all enjoyed the chance this demonstration opportunity to try see for yourself get acquainted with the latest products from Tupperware. Each Every Tupperware product locks in flavor and preserves keeps your moist foods moist, crisp foods crisp. Yes, Tupperware keeps all your foods airtight fresh. I know that you’ll all want to . . . . Now wrap it up and start taking orders.

[This post is the twelfth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The imaginary script borrows a bit of phrasing — “keeps moist foods moist, crisp foods crisp” — from a 1963 print ad.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27
Eagle Turquoise display case
Eagle Verithin display case
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Moore Metalhed Maptacks
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Stanley carpenter’s rule