The Decemberists - A Rough Guide

   From Wikipedia:
   "The Decemberists are a rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States.
    The band's songs range from upbeat pop to instrumentally lush ballads,
    and often employ instruments like the accordion, Hammond organ,
    Wurlitzer organ, and upright bass. In its lyrics, the band eschews the
    angst and introspection common to modern rock, instead favoring a
    storytelling approach, ... and often invoke historical events and
    themes from around the world."
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decemberists>

   The band's work has been "recommended" to me by Amazon for a while.  By
   coincidence, in December last year, I noticed a copy of the band's
   latest album, "The Hazards of Love", at the library.  I wasn't expecting
   much, since not many Amazon suggestions work for me.  It didn't take
   long to realise that the whole album was telling a single story.  The
   dreaded "rock opera" stigma came to mind, but in my opinion, the band
   may have actually pulled it off.  The story is simple yet compelling:
   timeless, yet original enough to sustain my interest the whole way
   through.  It's still too early for me to call it a classic, but I have
   to give the band high marks for having the audacity to release such an
   album in an age where attention spans appear to be approaching zero.

   The links in the guide below are to YouTube movies.  If the links are
   blocked, you can try watching clips at the band's official site:
     <http://www.decemberists.com/av-room.html>

   Also, here's a link to a full concert, from Sydney's Metro Theatre,
   January 2010:
     <http://moshcam.com/the-decemberists/metro-theatre-751.aspx>

   The "rough guide" ...

   1. "July, July!"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tfajUhpFE0>
   This is an upbeat ode to summer (in the northern hemisphere of course).
   It's from the band's debut album, "Castaways and Cutouts" (May 2003).

   2. "Leslie Anne Levine"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml0VI8VZO2U>
   This is the opening track from "Castaways and Cutouts".  The song
   tells a tragic story.

   3. "As I Rise"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xeoXw4FhA4>
   This is the closing track from the band's second album, "Her Majesty the
   Decemberists" (September 2003).  It's a laid-back, country-tinged tune.

   4. "16 Military Wives"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3Ce9md96g>
   On "Picaresque", the band's third album (2005), the band tries its hand
   at political commentary.  This is one of the few songs with an official
   music video, wherein members of the band play parts in a school-room UN,
   critiquing US foreign policy of the time.

   5. "The Engine Driver"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG1FlsgLQQY>
   Another melodic track from "Picaresque".

   6. "O Valencia!"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbsHwuyfnnw>
   This is the official clip for a single from the band's fourth album,
   "The Crane Wife" (2006).

   7. "The Crane Wife 3"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmhVY2PLc-c>
   By now the band's story-telling was becoming quite elaborate.  The
   fourth album's title track, which was inspired by a Japanese folk tale,
   is told in three parts.  Paradoxically, the third part opens the album.
   This song was recently covered by Marianne Faithfull, duetting with
   Nick Cave.

   8. "Summersong"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3np9rcdFvsE>
   Another summer-inspired ditty, this one from "The Crane Wife".

   By 2009 the band pushed its story-telling mission to the ultimate level,
   and released a whole album based on a single over-arching narrative.  In
   a nutshell, Margaret gets involved with William, she gets pregnant, and
   his jealous and over-protective mother (the Queen) is not pleased.  To
   complicate things, a villainous Rake kidnaps Margaret.  Our hero will
   risk anything to get her back.  The use of folklore and fantasy help
   make the story intriguing and timeless.  The music is great too.

   To avoid spoilers, the selections focus on the early part of the album
   which set the scene.  Note that on the album the tracks all lead into
   each other seemlessly.  Apologies for the ads (alas, that it seems
   Google's reason for being).

   9. "The Hazards of Love 1"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_MVc3abXU>
   The track has a great subtitle, which forms part of the chorus: "the
   prettiest whistles won't wrestle the thistles undone".  Colin Meloy has
   an interesting way with words.

   10. "A Bower Scene"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns6ghNpzmDY>
   A more rocking track continues the story, where we find out Margaret
   is pregnant.  Guest vocalists are used to play the female roles.

   11. "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=881qFziuGG8>
   Separated from William, Margaret tells us that she "may swoon from
   all this swelling, but I won't want for love".

   12. "The Rake's Song"
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htSKgxy6woE>
   A sort of "murder ballad", this song introduces us to the villain of
   the piece, a not-to-disappointed recent widower who tells us how he
   coolly disposed of his unwanted offspring.

   It looks like someone has posted all the songs on YouTube, so if you
   like what you've heard so far, you can check out the rest.  Make sure
   you play them in the proper order though.

Odds and Ends, Sun 21 February 2010

   Some blasts from the past, the Renaissance to be more precise...

   1. "Five Centuries of Board Games"
     <http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/11/board-games.html>

   2. "A Big Map That Shrank the World"
     <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/arts/design/20map.html?pagewanted=all>
   "Created by a visiting Italian-born Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, and
    apparently commissioned by the court of Emperor Wanli in 1602 — the
    year after Ricci became the first Westerner admitted to Peking and then
    the Forbidden City — this map is indeed partly a tribute to the land in
    which Ricci had lived since 1582, and in which he would die in 1610."

   3. "The Medici Meltdown"
     <http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/10/30/medici-banks-meltdown-
        oped-cx_ms_1031simonetta.html>
   "In these times of financial woe, some journalists have been timidly
    exploring the past for precedents, pushing the horizon as far as the
    1929 Great Depression. Very few have looked beyond that traumatic
    event, assuming that capitalism in its current form has no earlier
    historical roots."

   4. "Leonardo da Vinci's Resume"
     <http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2010/01/leonardo_da_vincis_
        resume.html>
   "Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last
    Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most
    famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da
    Vinci was an artificer, an armorer, a maker of things that go 'boom'"

   5. "Student finds art treasure in old couch"
     <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/31/2076602.htm>
   "A Berlin student who bought a second-hand sofa bed at a flea market
    learned she had been sitting on a small fortune when she found a 17th
    century baroque painting hidden inside the couch."

The Gervais Principle

   Late last year I started seeing references to an interesting essay
   series by Venkatesh Rao, in which he proposes the "Gervais Principle".
   This principle of organisational behaviour has been distilled from the
   TV series "The Office".  It's a devastating critique of behaviour in
   the workplace, and is quite different to what is usually taught in
   management courses.

   The essays are quite detailed, and additional parts in the Gervais
   Principle series may be published later this year.  In the meantime,
   here are the first three parts:
   * The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office"
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
        the-office-according-to-the-office/>
   * The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and
     Gametalk
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii-
        posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/>
   * The Genealogy of the Gervais Principle
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/02/04/the-genealogy-of-the-gervais-
        principle/>

   If you don't have the time to read through the essays right now, I'll
   try to give a very brief introduction to the basic principle.  The
   principle assumes that any reasonably-sized organisation is comprised
   of three broad classes of people: sociopaths, the clueless, and losers.
   Here's a simple diagram of the hierarchy, by Hugh MacLeod:
     <http://gapingvoid.com/2004/06/27/company-hierarchy/>

   The Gervais Principle is this:
   "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-
    performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing
    losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort
    losers to fend for themselves."
   The essays then go on to back this up with many examples from "The
   Office".

   I've held off posting about the Gervais Principle for several reasons:
   * until recently I'd only skim-read the essays;
   * the essays contained spoilers for fans of The Office outside the
     United States;
   * the principle can be quite confronting (especially when you try to
     see where you would fit into the hierarchy);
   * I had other things to write about.

   I still haven't read the essays fully, but from what I have read I'm
   impressed with the arguments.  The principle very neatly underpins
   the dysfunctional organisation portrayed in The Office.  Fortunately
   I've never had to work in such an organisation, but judging from the
   comments, it appears such places do exist.  Australian viewers have
   finally caught up with the material mentioned in the essays, hence
   this post.

   To wrap things up, here's a quote from the first essay in the series
   that leads in nicely to an amusing job ad from Microsoft.  The quote:
   "sociopaths use buzzspeak as a coded language with which to
    simultaneously sustain the (necessary) delusions of the clueless
    and communicate with each other."
   A blog post about the job ad ("Secret language"):
     <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/30.html>