Interview with Reggie Scanlan of The Radiators (Part 1)

The New Orleans band The Radiators (www.theradiators.org) epitomize the backbone of rock-and-roll: The working regional band that makes continuously high quality music and that remains true to itself artistically. 2008 marks their 30th year together: Thirty years of rehearsal, of road trips, of gigs before large audiences and small.

The Radiators celebrated the anniversary with the release of Wild & Free, two CDs of mostly live material that they call “Fishhead Music.” Wild & Free dates back as far as their formative year of 1978 and also includes new songs written for the release. Bassist Reggie Scanlan spoke with me about the group, the new release, Fishhead Music, Hurricane Katrina, and the inimitable world of New Orleans music. Here’s part 1 of the interview:

I went to Jazz Festival last year and came back wanting to immerse myself in the music of southern Louisiana. The diversity and depth are such that it’s impossible to say that there is a such thing as one Louisiana Sound or a NOLA Sound.

It’s all delineated. People want to put in a bucket and it’s not like that.

Yet, the first piano notes of Wild & Free pretty much announce that The Radiators are a New Orleans band. What have the Radiators absorbed musically that make them a distinctly New Orleans band?

The stuff we grew up listening to – Earl King, Professor Longhair, The Meters – I heard it in college when white kids first getting turned on to this stuff. You could go see these guys any time you wanted to. For me as a bass player I could watch these guys all night & see what they were doing.

There’s a lot of old influence. The city founded by French and Spanish, and the music has what Jelly Roll Morton called a “Spanish tinge." It’s just a looser feel. Then of course slaves could gather and play music in Congo Square. For them, that was a way of passing down their music. Congo Square might be first place a stringed instrument and drum played together. Growing up here, hearing those rhythms…that stuff was going to effect your music.

We were Earl King’s band for several years. We got to look at the clockwork from the inside. It was a real schooling in how to prepare for a gig: You had to be ready. Those older guys didn’t cut a lot of slack.

So, what is Fishhead Music?

We started out in 1978 doing original songs, which was at the bottom of the list of what people wanted to hear. It wasn’t quite R&B, It wasn’t quite rock...one day [vocalist and songwriter] Ed [Volker] said “it’s fishhead music!” Fans started calling themselves Fishheads.

In some ways the name underscored the problem of what we were doing. Any night, we had no preconceived notion of what we wanted to do. The rule of band is, you can play whatever you want as long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes. 

Tell me about Wild & Free. It’s not a typical anniversary celebration CD. The sequencing of the cuts is not chronological. What was thinking behind that?

We taped everything from the beginning, We tried to arrange Wild & Free more like a set and mix it up with different time frames. We wanted to include stuff that had never been played live and include different versions of previously released songs. We weren’t interested in greatest hits; it’s an overview audio scrapbook of thirty years of songs and gigs.

An amazing guy named Bruce Barielle did the mastering. He retrieved stuff lost in floodwater and still made whole project have an overall compatible sound.

Hurricane Katrina appears to have had a profound affect on the New Orleans music community, but maybe not in the way one would expect. During my visit, I came away astounded by the quality of the music. The funk scene, for example, is amazing. It’s as if musicians have collectively made the statement, “This is our city and we’re not giving it up.”

That’s exactly what happened. I was home by last week in September [Note: One month after the flooding.] The owner of the Maple Leaf Bar was determined that nothing was going to close his club. He put out a call to musicians to play and whoever showed up could play.

We all has the attitude of “the government has abandoned us, but this is our city and we’re taking it back.” People turned gas themselves, made street signs that are still up, cleaned up. You didn’t go anywhere without a weapon. The National Guard would shut down club right at 1 [a.m.] and somehow you had to get home after curfew.

How has Katrina affected your music?

Well, the first gig at Tipitina’s after the storm was extremely emotional. Our Katrina project was Dreaming Out Loud. We had to do something to get it out of our system.

You are also a photographer…

As photographer, I set out to document what happened and what didn’t happen. It was almost surreal…block upon block of houses sitting on cars, houses in the middle of streets…Except for Uptown and the Sliver By The River [Note: Most of the French Quarter], everywhere you went looked like Dresden.  

What we’ve accomplished is amazing because it happened in spite of federal, state, and city government. Katrina really gave people a bad taste for anything to do with bureaucracy. People are still fighting for insurance monry and medical bills. Despite it all, the population that came back is super determined to maintain the culture and not lose any of it.

(End of Part 1. Part 2 of Citizen K.'s interview with Reggie Scanlan appears Thursday.)

The Radiators perform "Doctor Doctor" in 1991:

What Is The Employee Free Choice Act?

What is the Employee Free Choice Act? Conservatives would have us believe that is the end of democracy as we know it -- the first peals of the death knell of the secret ballot. Along with the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, they set themselves up as the champions of working people under the thumb of so-called "union bosses." According to the entry in Wikipedia (which happens to be accurate):

Under current U.S. labor law, the National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of bargaining unit employees by card check process or secret ballot election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. If enacted, EFCA would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.

Note: Under current labor law, a secret ballot election is held only when employers request. If passed, EFCA will also allow employees to request a secret ballot election.

But the rub, or at least the rub as the right wing would have it, comes with the card check process, which is not held in secret:

Card check, commonly known as majority sign-up, is a method for employees to organize into a labor union when a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards," stating they wish to be represented by the union. Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, majority sign-up has been an alternative for workers to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process and has been approved and endorsed by the NLRB, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, most workers organize their union through a majority sign-up. It has gained increasing support as evidence has mounted of anti-union employers controlling and manipulating NLRB elections.

In other words, card checking is a long-established process upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. However, as things stand, employers do not have to recognize the results of a card check and can instead request a secret ballot election. Their claim is that only with a secret ballot can workers indicate their true position, which presumably is against forming a union.

As you might think, there's more to this than meets the eye. I am routinely skeptical any time the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big business claim to have workers' best interests at heart, simply because I can't think of a single instance in which this was true. And it turns out that the intimidation of union organizers is so routine that the Human Rights watch has concluded that

A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. Any employer intent on resisting workers' self-organization can drag out legal proceedings for years, fearing little more than a requirement to post a written notice in the workplace promising not to repeat unlawful conduct. Many employers have come to view remedies like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business—well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers' organizing efforts."

(The complete report is here.)

Moreover, businesses routinely force employees to attend anti-union meetings; the firing of employees who dare attempt to organize a union has also become routine. So while big business raises the spectre of union organizers intimidating workers into signing cards, it's really they who are the intimidators. What's more, it's working: Union membership is at its lowest level in history. Not uncoincidentally, the size of the middle class has shrunk relentlessly at the same time.

One way of looking at this is to compare card checking to voter registration. We register to vote publicly, and in some states voters are even required to declare a party affiliation. But this doesn't affect the secret ballot at all, where you can vote for anyone you want to regardless of party. The card check is no different: A worker signs a card indicating that he or she wants union representation. Who the representatives are remains subject to a secret ballot.

President Obama, an original sponsor of the bill in the Senate, puts it this way:

I support this bill because in order to restore a sense of shared prosperity and security, we need to help working Americans exercise their right to organize under a fair and free process and bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates. The current process for organizing a workplace denies too many workers the ability to do so. The Employee Free Choice Act offers to make binding an alternative process under which a majority of employees can sign up to join a union. Currently, employers can choose to accept—but are not bound by law to accept—the signed decision of a majority of workers. That choice should be left up to workers and workers alone.

Aero Mechanic, the excellent monthly newsletter of the International Association of Machinists Lodge 751 here in the Puget Sound Area, has published a guide to the Employee Free Choice Act. I'm reproducing it here:

Big business is determined to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which is labor’s top priority at the federal level. “This will be Armageddon,” Randel Johnson, the Chamber’s vice president for labor policy told the New York Times in November. The Chamber’s hugely funded anti-union ad campaign has left millions of Americans confused about what EFCA is and why it’s so badly needed. We want to provide facts to help you set the record straight the next time a friend asks, “What’s this about unions trying to take away the secret ballot?”

CLAIM: EFCA will take away workers’ right to a secret ballot election.

TRUTH: EFCA protects the right to a secret ballot union recognition election. Any group of workers can still opt for a secret ballot election under EFCA using the same process currently in place. EFCA provides workers the option of forming a union by majority sign up (50% plus one) – currently allowed under federal law, but almost never honored by employers who demand an election in order to gain months to use fear tactics, threats & even firings to persuade workers to vote against unions. 

CLAIM: EFCA isn’t needed; federal and state laws already protect workers’ rights.

TRUTH: In the early decades of the 1935 National Labor Relations Board Act, the law worked the way it was intended. Workers organized unions and the result created America’s middle class. Employers routinely recognized majority sign up until the 1960’s. Since then, employers regularly demand an election to intimidate and persuade workers through fear tactics to vote against a Union.

CK Note: The "it's not needed" argument is a favorite right-wing strategem and one that always amuses me. If it's really not needed, then why get so worked up about it?

CLAIM: Unions will pressure work-ers to sign cards for union representation.

TRUTH: It’s employers, not unions, that have the coercive power to intimidate, fire and demote workers or threaten to close up shop.

CLAIM: Arbitration, in the event that first contract talks are stalled for 120 days, gives unions no incentive to bargain.

TRUTH: Arbitration cuts both ways. However, the possibility of arbitration is important because so many employers refuse to bargain in good faith to reach a first contract agreement. In effect, employers can negate a successful union representation election simply by refusing to bargaining in good faith. EFCA would ensure that newly organized workers get a contract. 

Set the record straight when others are confused by the misleading ads that big business will spend millions on to try to defeat this important bill...

Make no mistake about: Passing EFCA is not only an important step for unions and employees who want to unionize, it's an important step for anyone with a job. Even if you are not in a union, the benefits you have -- annual raises, sick leave, workplace safety requirements, paid vacation, health insurance, pensions, 401-K's -- are all the result of the growth of unions after World War II. As these became common features of union contracts, they moved by osmosis into white collar and non-union workplaces looking to forestall unionization. And it's no accident that as union membership has declined, non-union employees find themselves paying more and more for health insurance...

Scenes from New Orleans by Linda Langhorst...

Birds return to New Orleans...

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge. For more Boondocks, Tony Auth, Mother Goose and Grimm, Tom the Dancing Bug, Tom Toles, Zippy the Pinhead, and Ben Sargent, click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...

Leonard Cohen has a new poem in The New Yorker here...

Hate movie night at the Capitol...

Mouse Medicine reviews Joan Baez...

Life in New Orleans: St. Rita's Catholic Church...

Nuthatchery...

Cardinals...

And last but certainly not least, Happy International Women's Day...

Sunday Gospel Hour: Billy Preston sings "That's The Way God Planned It" at the Concert for Bangla Desh:

Weekly Address: Toward A Better Day

WTUL New Orleans has been on the air for fifty years...

The New Orleans Women In Music (NOWIM) showcase is this afternoon at the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park in the French Quarter...

Chico once more, this time with an apple:

Sign o' the Times

On Tuesday, March 3, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a new emblem to identify Recovery projects. "We're going to make it easier for Americans to see what projects are being funded with their money as part of our recovery. So in the weeks to come, the signs denoting these projects are going to bear the new emblem of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," said President Obama. More at recovery.gov...

Don't miss this incredible pan-and-zoom photo of the inauguration...

David Frum's blog entry comparing the public perception of President Obama and Rush Limbaugh caused a firestorm within conservative ranks. The money quote:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Frum's point is that regardless of whether you personally think this is accurate, it is the impression gained by millions of independent voters and that this is not good for the Republican party. The comments that follow the post almost uniformly take the position that Frum is a false conservative making personal attacks on Rush Limbaugh for reasons of his own. Then consider this subsequent "exchange" between Frum and conservative talk radio host Mark Levin here.

What you are reading and listening to are the opening shots in what will be a four-year war between the conservative intelligentsia and the know-nothing base. The Republican elected establishment will attempt desperately to walk a line between the two while the presidential candidates court the base. Unless something transformative happens, it will be a one-sided battle in favor of the know-nothings. They have the media, the commitment, and the emotion on their side. What will be left of the Republican party and the conservative movement after the coming purge is anyone's guess...

Bob Cesca of Huffington Post has more on the wingnut revolution here...

The Army Corps of Engineering has released a Category 5 hurricane study with lots of alternatives for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast but no actual plan:

"The lack of specific recommendations violates the law in at least two places, " said Garret Graves, director of the state's Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration.

Graves said the corps' New Orleans district office was ordered by the Bush administration to abandon the idea of recommending specific projects soon after the study was begun in October 2006.

"The authors of the report had one arm and two legs tied behind their back in writing this thing, and that results from the policy guidance they were given, " he said. "From late 2005 until about May 2006, we had a good partnership with the corps, and that's when it ceased, when the corps got new direction from Washington and blew $23 million on this study."

Graves said the Obama administration can salvage the research that went into the report by asking Congress to authorize the corps to choose projects from the alternatives and start construction quickly -- which would eliminate the need to get congressional approval for each individual project.

Friday's Choice: Chico Marx tickles the ivories.

Sitting Here In Limbaugh

Conservatives draw psychological strength from feeling persecuted. Persecution justifies their anger and offers a convenient means of circling the wagons. When -- as is almost always the case -- there's no reason to feel of persecuted, they invent one. Because of the faith and emotion that they pour into their arguments and practices, it's vitally important to them that they be right. They can sweep some mistakes under the rug, but a failure of the dimension of the Iraq war won't fit under any rug anywhere. So,

•  They argue that the war was "won," attempting to stay away from the reality that the solution in Iraq -- if there is one -- is political and not military; and

• To the extent that the war was "lost," it's because of the constant criticism and doom-saying from liberals and the left.

They are psychologically unable to accept their own failings. When someone points out these failings, conservatives accuse that person of desiring failure for America, in the same sense that opposing Bush's Iraq policy equates to not supporting the troops. Thus, agreeing with conservatives equates to patriotism; to disagree is to virtually commit treason.

The domestic and international failures of conservatism are so complete that they must look to their political enemies as the cause. Add to this the fact that they are out of power and you see why Rush Limbaugh -- dressed like an extra from The Sporanos -- screeches so loudly and why his audience cheers him on so enthusiastically: By loudly and flagrantly accusing Democrats of wanting Bush to fail, he diverts conservatives from self-examination. It's a survival technique, really; a huge part of what remains of the conservative movement is faith-based. What can you do when your faith is misplaced other than blame its failings on others? The alternative as they see it -- that they have not had America's best interests in mind and that liberals have -- is too hideous to contemplate.

Jon Stewart vivisects Limbaugh here:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

A Party in Limbaugh

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Notice the chanting and the fist shaking. And yet they claim that Barack Obama leads a cult of personality!  Which leads me to another conservative trait: Whatever they accuse liberals of is usually something they are doing themselves...

The NOLA Indie Rock Fest is this weekend...

David Broder Is Not An Antiabecedarian

David "Dean" Broder, the Washington Post columnist widely regarded as the senior MSM American political analyst, published a column over the weekend that typifies the myopia and general cluelessness of the journalistic political establishment. In the column (here), Broder responds to President Obama's brilliant budget speech by calling the president a "gambler" "putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington."

"Is he naive?" wondered the Dean. "Does he not understand the political challenge he is inviting?" After all, the

House chamber was filled with veteran legislators who have spent decades wrestling with those issues. They know how maddeningly difficult it has been to cobble together a coalition large enough to pass a significant education, health care or energy bill.

"When we elected Obama," Broder concluded, "[W]e didn't know what a gambler we were getting."

Where to start? The Dean writes as if the country does not already face a dangerous future. Isn't Broder the naive one here? Articles openly speculate whether or not the country is in a depression. We are in a situation that calls for bold action, not timidity over the difficulty of passing legislation.

If there's one word that does not characterize Barack Obama, it is "naive." You don't come out of nowhere to defeat the Clinton and Rove machines in the same election without being able to tell a hawk from a handsaw. What Dean Broder characterizes as naivete is instead a capacity to grasp the historic quality of the moment we're in and the courage and smarts to act on it.

Beyond this, what has Obama done that surprises anyone outside of Dean Broder's claustrophobic office? He's acting on the campaign promises he made. He wants to settle the issues that people have worried over for years but that no one has done anything about: Obama is right to argue that we can't have a healthy economy without health care reform and energy independence.

Barack Obama is the right man at the right time. Without a leader of his boldness and intellect to guide the nation there, the future well-being of the country is at risk. It is anyway, but Obama is less of a gamble than a cautious Beltway politician who passes on the future to "cobble together" short-sighted legislation...

Paul Krugman thinks Obama's proposed budget is exactly right:

President Barack Obama's new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course...

Frank Rich disagrees, citing public anger over continued bank bailouts:

As Obama said, we can't move forward without a functioning financial system. But voters of both parties will demand that their congressmen reject another costly rescue of it. Americans still don't understand why many Wall Street malefactors remain in place or why the administration's dithering banking policy lacks the boldness and clarity of Obama's rhetoric...

Mothers and others: The evolutionary origin of mutual understanding...

Dark Roasted Blend explores the phantasmagorical art of New Orleans, focusing on the Antiabecedarian Movement:

Considering how surreal New Orlean's environment can be, is it any wonder that this "almost-reborn" city hosts some of the most absurd and interesting art scene to be found in the US...

What is an Antiabecedarian?

"Antiabecedarians" is a word from the Anna Livia passage of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Although Mr. Joyce's precise intent as to the definition of "antiabecedarian" is debated, we intend that Antiabecedarians imply those who are familiar with the rudiments and rules enough to turn them on their heads.

Here are a couple of the very impressive entries in this show, starting with this setup photo by Dana Sherwood:



Paint on wood by Taylor Lee Shepherd:


Note that the current first line is from Sir Walter Scott's Lochinvar, a poem every English schoolboy was once required to memorize. Today, it's proof that a compelling first line does not a great poem make...