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A Son of Maxwell takes on United, airline responds

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

A Nova Scotia-based musician has decided to take on United Airlines over the damage done to a Taylor guitar, allegedly incurred by United’s baggage handlers. Dave Carroll has brought the fight to United using the only means a quirky Canadian musician has – YouTube:

According to an Associated Press story, Carroll, of the indie band Sons of Maxwell, ”has since been fielding calls for appearances around the world, including a call from the Oprah Winfrey show Thursday.”

To be fair, Taylor makes one great, albeit expensive, guitar – Carroll’s instrument required $1,200 to repair, according to the AP. The article states, in part: “The 41-year-old songwriter spent the past year trying to get compensation from United Airlines. When the airline refused to take responsibility, the songwriter made the humorous music video and posted it online. … Carroll initially told United he would write three songs about his broken guitar. He plans to debut the second song soon but hasn’t written the third one yet.”

According to the AP story, United has responded: “Carroll said officials for the airline said they liked the video and want to use it as a textbook case on how to handle customer complaints in the future.”

Read the full story on the Miami Herald website here.

Posted in Editorial, Newsbit | 1 Response »
Tags: Dave Carroll, Sons of Maxwell, Taylor, United Airlines

A lethal, brutal culture: Our own

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I have been struggling to clarrify my thoughts on Michael Jackson’s death. It looks like Andrew Sullivan, in his blog for The Nation, did for me when he wrote that, while he grieved for Jackson, “… I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him.”

Sullivan wrote: “That culture is ours, and it is a lethal and brutal one: With fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out. I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.”

Via the CNN article, Michael Jackson and the ‘extreme’ price of fame.

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Twitter me this …

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

As an aside, I learned about Jackson’s death, like many, through Twitter, which was no doubt suffering from gossip overload. Maybe it’s the limited number of tweets I follow, but my twitter experienced ranged from witnessing the shocked:

To the bizarre:

To the down-right stupefying:

That, of course, was tweets from Barenaked Ladies’ Steven Page, Stephen Colbert, and, for some reason, what appears to be a giant comatose whale being carried by birds.

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Tags: Michael Jackson, Steven Page

A magical gangster powered by shooting stars

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

[Note: Please know I am not making fun of Michael Jackson, here. I am, however, making fun of Wikipedia. In a big way.]

In following the death of Michael Jackson, I found myself reading on Wikipedia some of the films he made to coincide with the promotion of Bad, the 3D flick for Disneyland, Captain Eo, and Moonwalker. Eo seemed straight forward enough, but the Wiki description for Moonwalker resembles out-takes from Trainspotting combined with the type of dreams I had when I was 8 and had a very high fever.

Smoothcriminal7 An excerpt:

” … The film then backtracks to Jackson playing in a field with the children and their dog. The dog runs away, and in their search for it, Jackson and the children uncover the lair of Mr. Big, Frankie Lideo (Joe Pesci), a drug dealing mobster with an army of henchmen who wants to get the entire populace of planet earth addicted to drugs, starting with the children. Mr. Big discovers Jackson and the children, but they escape; Jackson tells the children to meet him at Club 30’s [sic], which turns out to be a haunted nightclub abandoned since the 1930s. The story goes back to the mobsters attack on Jackson, and here it is revealed that Jackson is actually a magical gangster, who draws his power from shooting stars. As one passes by the club, Jackson transforms into a sportscar and mows down several of Mr. Big’s henchmen. The story picks up on the children at Club 30’s, and at first the children are afraid, but when Jackson appears the scary atmosphere of the club transforms and the children find themselves back in the 1930s. The club is now filled with zoot suiters and swing dancers. Jackson participates in a dance-off with the other club members. …”

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Tags: Michael Jackson, Moonwalker

On Jackson

Friday, June 26th, 2009

It didn’t take long for Twitter to get clogged with people (including myself) with news of Michael Jackson’s death by cardiac arrest Thursday afternoon. TMZ, of course, was one of the first to tell and, no doubt, this will be one of the fastest-spreading stories to date. If it’s one thing we love in America even more than a freak show, it’s a high-profile death.

Now we sit back and wait for garish tributes and even worse, conspiracy theories (Jackson faked his death, Jackson was killed by the government). What we don’t do is sit back and give his family a modicum of privacy. For a man who was larger than life, he was still somebody’s son, brother, father. …

I’m not shocked, and I’m not surprised, by news of Jackson’s death. Someone once said shooting stars burn out the quickest.

What I will have a difficult time doing is sorting out my own mixed emotions. Charges against Jackson, amounting to accusations of pedophilia, were leveled against him more than once. In one case, they were settled, in another, he was acquitted. The truth of what really happened has died with Jackson.

The fact that his behavior and appearance seemed to grow more bizarre with every decade fueled an already obsessive tabloid media and audience.

His impact on the music industry is unquestionable. What remains to be seen is what will last longer: The myth of the man, or the music.

—JS

Posted in Editorial | 1 Response »
Tags: Michael Jackson

RIAA burns listeners … again

Friday, June 19th, 2009

riaa

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is questioning whether RIAA’s recent $1.9 million award against a single mother of four will stand up to a constitutional challenge. In a retrial, a jury concluded that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully infringed the copyrights of 24 songs to the tune of $80,000 per recording.

In a statement on its web site RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said: “We appreciate the jury’s service and that they take this as seriously as we do. We are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable. Since day one, we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so.”

However, the EFF says the suit could be dismissed if a higher court finds the damages were grossly excessive. The foundation also says: “recent Supreme Court rulings suggest that a jury may not award statutory damages for the express or implicit purpose of deterring other infringers who are not parties in the case before the court. In other words, the award should be aimed at deterring this defendant, not giving the plaintiff a windfall in order to send a message to others who might be tempted to infringe.”

The Times of London reports that RIAA declared it would stop suing people in December, choosing instead to pressure internet service providers to take action. Given this change in direction, it’s unclear to me as to why RIAA would even consider continuing the suit. The recording association, it seems, has repeatedly given the PR equivalent to poking itself in the eyeball several times over by suing (but usually settling) people with limited means for ridiculous sums of money.

So the question is: Is RIAA at all concerned about its image? Since it started suing people in 2003, the association has more than stepped into the stereotypical image of an evil corporate conglomerate – it’s run right into it.

— JS

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Tags: RIAA

I like it, I love it … well “love” is a strong word (so is “like”)

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Grammy award winning singer, actor, and author Tim McGraw has a new cologne called, originally, “McGraw.” I can only speculate that it smells like a subtle mixture of old Taco Bell wrappers, stale cigarettes, and the oily band of a black cowboy hat.