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Home » Open thread 10/5/21

Open thread 10/5/21

The New Neo Posted on by

I usually don’t like cover bands. But I’ll make an exception for this one. Here’s their story, which started with a musician and his 15-year-old daughter.

This was their first song at their first concert, leading to YouTube fame:

I binged-watched quite a few of their videos.

Comments

Open thread 10/5/21 — 38 Comments

  2. To be fair, she has some good reasons to be a bit on the sour side:
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/05/its_not_the_top-line_number_–_its_the_bottom-line_goal_146509.html
    H/T Powerline blog.
    Key grafs:
    “…Progressives say they have already conceded too much. They wanted to spend more than $6 trillion on the social bill and “compromised” with the White House for $3.5 trillion. They won’t go any lower, they insist, but nobody really knows if that’s true. Manchin, whose deep red-state gave Biden just 29.7% of the vote, has said he won’t go over $1.5 trillion. This summer, he secretly gave that number in writing to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who never shared it with Pelosi. Now that the number is public, progressives have bitterly rejected it as “far too low” and begun insulting Manchin and Sinema…
    “…These negotiations, and journalists’ focus on top-line costs, are obviously crucial, but they are only part of the story. The other part is what progressives — and the Biden administration — hope to accomplish and what it would mean for the country. Their goal is not simply to spend a lot of money in this one bill. Their goal is not to pay for it, even though they are perfectly happy to “tax the rich.” These bills are so large that taxes will inevitably fall on the middle class. They seem utterly indifferent to the prospect of higher inflation, fueled by more spending and already at its highest levels in three decades. All those costs are bearable if they advance the progressives’ central goal: to install a whole series of cradle-to-grave social programs, including preschool child care, paid family leave, free college, and so on…
    “…Those programs are extremely difficult to rescind once they’ve begun, so the goal is to get them started. Progressives know — and the whole country should understand — that piling on these vast new programs would be a major step in turning the United States into a European-style social democracy, along the lines of France, Germany, Spain, or Italy…”

    But the “grand plan”—what’s a little deception when the goal is nirvana?—may not get off the ground.
    Poor Nancy…

  3. Been watching F&F for a few years now. Glad you discovered them. Here’s one my favorites from them:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35n2Pkm8J90

    I keep telling my daughter who lives in Atlanta, to watch out for them and go see them.

    For a really professional level cover band check out the Lexington Lab Band….really amazing and well done covers.

  4. This, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me
    will likely be of interest to many who comment here, especially current and former educators.

    “MIT Abandons its mission. And me.” – Dorian Abbott

    I have been a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago for the past 10 years…I have never considered myself a political person…But I started to get alarmed about five years ago as I noticed an increasing number of issues and viewpoints become impossible to discuss on campus. I mostly just wanted to do my science and not have anyone yell at me, and I thought that if I kept my mouth shut the problem would eventually go away…But the street violence of the summer of 2020, some of which I witnessed personally in Chicago, and the justifications and dishonesty that accompanied it, convinced me that I could no longer remain silent in good conscience… I started advocating openly for academic freedom and merit-based evaluations. I recorded some short YouTube videos in which I argued for the importance of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect…As a result, I was immediately targeted for cancellation, primarily by a group of graduate students in my department. Whistleblowers later revealed that the attack was partially planned and coordinated on the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program listserv by a graduate student in my department. (Please do not attack this person or any of the people who attacked me.)

    That group of graduate students organized a letter of denunciation. It claimed that I threatened the “safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department,” and it was presented to my department chair. The letter demanded that my teaching and research be restricted in a way that would cripple my ability to function as a scientist. A strong statement in support of faculty free expression by University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer put an end to that, and that is where things stood until the summer of 2021.

    On August 12, a colleague and I wrote an op-ed in Newsweek in which we argued that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as it currently is implemented on campus “violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment” and “treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.” We proposed instead “an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.” We noted that this would mean an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants.

    Shortly thereafter, my detractors developed a new strategy to try to isolate me and intimidate everyone else into silence… this strategy was employed when I was chosen to give the Carlson Lecture at MIT — a major honor in my field. It is an annual public talk given to a large audience and my topic was “climate and the potential for life on other planets.” On September 22, a new Twitter mob, composed of a group of MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni, demanded that I be uninvited.

    It worked. And quickly.

    Lots more at the link.

  5. I just followed the link from the post and read the band’s story. Very cool! This quote, “Much of the slow-rising success of the band is due to Tim’s skill at remote recording…” made sense to me. I was astounded at the quality of the sound in the video. Video recorders are notorious for poor, musical sound quality. I assume Tim is recording on a separate system and matching it to the visuals, or has a feed from a sound board going into the camera’s mic jack.

  6. Rufus T. Firefly–

    I’m appending what I assume is Bari Weiss’s footnote to Dorian Abbot’s post:

    “Thanks to Princeton Professor (and friend of Common Sense) Robby George, Dorian Abbot’s cancelled lecture will be hosted by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions on the day it was scheduled to be given at MIT: October 21 at 4:30 PM EST.

    It will be free to the public via Zoom and you can register at this link:
    https://jmp.princeton.edu/events/climate-and-potential-life-other-planets

    We hope you’ll tune in.”

    I hope some of Neo’s readers will be able to watch/hear Abbot’s lecture.

  8. When I read F & F do a cover of Todd Rundgren’s song, “We Got’ta Get you a Woman*” I searched for it as it is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite composers/musicians. The page for that song had a link to this, https://youtu.be/FIIDYm_odfU a video that attempts to estimate how much F & F earns from their youtube success.

    It’s interesting. The article also had some numbers. And it’s great that the group has gotten notoriety and is reaping financial rewards from their hard work and talent. However, I think the story is the opposite of what the video portrays. F & F has been extremely successful on youtube, in rarified air among musicians who post.

    The estimate is $339,000 annually, before taxes and expenses. You don’t have to divide that by too many people (the band has 7 members) to see how rough it is to make a living as a musician. And, keep in mind, the Dad, (Tim?) was 64 years old before he achieved this level of success.

    Now, when there isn’t a global pandemic the band also earns money playing in public, and now that they are so successful that is likely the lion’s share of their annual earnings.

    Here’s an interesting quote from their website:

    During the summer of 2014, F and F had some higher-paying jobs that were worth asking Maggie who had a summer job as a restaurant hostess in Nashville and an internship on Music Row, to make the drive to Atlanta. Problem was that not all of the jobs were high paying. We had 6 band members and a soundman to pay. Was $50 worth a missed shift and seven hours of driving for Maggie? It just didn’t seem right. After that summer we were giving serious thoughts to putting Foxes and Fossils to bed.

    As a performing musician I can tell you $50 a member/gig is not unusual. I’m happy when my cut of the take covers gas money to get to the job.

    … and this quote

    So that’s kind of where we are right now. We ‘re all getting a little older and the girls are all moving ahead with their lives. We now have members living in five different states…

    implies they aren’t making money from playing gigs, so, Yikes! The moral of the story kids, is, “Ars gratia artis.” Do art for art’s sake and don’t quit your day job.

    I also wonder about royalties. Somebody has to be paying whomever owns the rights to the originals for the income they are making from their videos. Not sure if youtube handles that, or if F & F pay.

  9. I should add the article neo linked to mentions Tim’s wife is a corporate attorney. So that’s a more important lesson. If you want to have a career as a musician marry someone who earns a lot of money!

    And I should add that an important factor my band weighs when accepting gigs is whether the proprietor lets us drink for free. Between gas to and from the gig and the two beers I usually drink per show I barely break even at gigs where we have to buy our own. And that doesn’t begin to include equipment and instrument costs and maintenance. There’s a reason pawn shops are always full of used instruments and sound equipment!

  11. I’ve been binge-watching that band too – loved the “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” cover. It reminded me of how great and how difficult that piece was.

    In general – I’m with you one not watching too many online cover bands – but live… a good cover band can be a lot of fun. There’s a Steely Dan cover band here that is fantastic – they put forth the effort to replicate a unique sound.

  12. A biochemist at Pfizer confirmed my suspicions about the immunity confered by the mRNA vaccines in Project Veritas’s most recent undercover video.

    Nick Karl, a biochemist at Pfizer, said, “When somebody is naturally immune— like they got COVID— they probably have…more antibodies against the virus because what the vaccine is…that protein is just on the outside.” He continued explaining, “It’s just one antibody against one specific part of the virus. When you actually get the virus you’ll start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of virus, not only the outside portion but the inside portion, the actual virus so your antibodies are probably better at that point than the vaccination.”

  13. Gee Thanks Boss…now I’m going to get no damn work done today.
    But…a day filled with good music could be the best gift.
    😉

  14. I heard the real thing by CS&N back in the Pleistocene at one of the Big Sur foke festivals, with Judy herself present. This version is no slouch either.

  15. That tune was well done. It is hard to pick out just one element because they all were so good, but the bass really jumped out at me. He really had the feel for the song and provided just the right sort of swing and drive to the bottom end. I have not compared it to the original, but it worked.

  16. The Ford Foundation fellows are appearing with some regularity now as agitators and agitation-propaganda creators. Are these the stealth footsoldiers of the Woke Wave? The other recent instance was the young student quietly working who was harangued out of the study area by a black woman who is nearly 30, apparently not a full-time student, and working on a PhD – and a Ford Fellow. She badgered him on video, declaring her ‘safe space’ to be off-limits to the White Boy, until he left.

  17. All you principled Sinema-lovers are doubtless aware that she was vehemently opposed to the presidential ambitions of one Joseph Isadore Lieberman back in the day.

    Politics makes for strange bedfellows. As it should. It’s a filthy rotten game at the best of times.

  22. Not everything in this article is correct.

    https://www.unz.com/aanglin/what-about-china-then/

    But it is more correct than anything I’ve read this year from informed mainstream commentary whether on the ‘Right’ or Left in the West.

    You’ve got a serious problem when a big bad cut from whole cloth real deal American Neo Nazi has a clearer understanding of China than all of the Credentialed Good and Great ™.

  24. Foxes and Fossils is a great band, period. My two favorites of their many great cuts are the covers of Todd Rundgren’s “We Gotta You a Woman” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon”. The former is a flat-out fun, a pitch-perfect take on one of Todd’s epic pop songs while the latter is even better than the original. No, really.
    IMHO when Todd Rundgren sat down to write, produce, and perform catchy pop songs, there were few his equal this side of Sir Paul. At his best, he is brilliant.

  25. No horsin’ around at Merck:
    If you want your Ivermectin, you can have your Ivermectin….
    (But you’ll have to pay!)
    xxhttps://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/merck-charging-us-40-times-what-it-costs-make-govt-financed-covid-pill

  26. Typical “…Israeli mafia…”:

    They “…took him from the restaurant…”.
    Then they “…took [him] to [the] restaurant…”

    File under: “Let’s eat!”
    – – – – – – – –

    “…sooner take my chances…”

    Sure. Just check that you have all yer fingertips after the “transaction”…

  28. And another reason for John Kerry to profess “amazement”…
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-sows-confusion-claiming-he-spoke-president-xi-about-taiwan-agreement

    Key graf:
    ‘Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it had sought “clarification” from the US about Biden’s comments, and was reassured that American policy toward Taiwan had not changed, and that the US commitment to them was “rock solid” – including the obligation to help maintain its military defense.’

    IOW it’s time for Taiwan to worry.

  31. Zaphod @ 12:38am,

    “Not everything in this article is correct?!”

    Then of course the coronavirus hoax was launched in China, and consistently used to demonize China.

  32. The dad is Tim Purcell, Davidson ’78. His many talents include much more than music. He was my classmate and teammate at Davidson in both football and baseball. He came to Davidson on a Division I football scholarship having been a successful quarterback in high school. Had the speed to make the move to defensive back at DC.

    Tim was even better as a pitcher in baseball. He had a wicked curveball which was better than any I saw from anyone else while playing in college and as a pro. As I recall, he ranked among the leading pitchers in the Southern Conference in strikeouts as a junior and senior.

    And it is no wonder the kids are so smart. Tim’s wife Teri is also a Davidson grad and a lawyer. She practiced corporate law for Coke in Atlanta.

    Great guy, wonderful family.

  35. stan:

    Wow! A renaissance man.

    He has such a beautiful singing voice himself, is a great pianist (on other videos), and apparently does their wonderful arrangements and makes high-quality recordings in the technical sense, as well.

  36. Thanks for that information, Stan! I honestly wondered if he had been an athlete when looking at his posture and poise at the piano.

  37. Stan @ 5:04pm,

    It’s funny you are the third person here to make note of that Rundgren song. I always thought it was a neat song, but didn’t get the attention it deserves. I guess I was wrong. F & F definitely like it, as do some of the folks here.

    In the video I thought it would be funny if the female vocalists would turn and glare at Tim on the line, “They may be stupid but they sure are fun.”

  38. Rufus @ 5:54,
    I believe the line “they may be stupid but they sure are fun” refers to the “things” in the preceding line “things about that special one” – i.e. those silly little things about that special lady that make you swoon but which you would rather die than have be public knowledge.
    This is a great pop love song about a friend who needs a woman – I don’t think a writer as clever as Rundgren would sully it with a lyric trashing women.

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