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OK, the Corona Virus Isn't Going Away. Now What?


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There are DJ's who spin records for 10000+ people. They are entertainers. If they play an instrument (singing counts) then they are musicians as well.

If you ever saw a DJ with really good at turntable technique, I'm almost certain you'd think they do play instruments. Also, many of them don't just play records, they do real-time improvisation using multiple sound sources - pre-recorded tracks, samples, keyboards, etc. It's basically "electronic music" in the classic sense of the term. I think it takes musical skill, or at least a highly developed musical sensibility, to do that. We've come a long way, though. At one point, people said those who used synthesizers weren't musicians.

 

However, getting back to the virus...as I said, it's the event that draws people, and DJs are a part of that. I guess you could say the phenomenon is similar to how people saw Grateful Dead concerts, or festivals. Those are going to be the last to resume. With increasing evidence that the virus can spread through talking and even breathing, not just coughing and sneezing, the idea of a concert with sufficient social distancing seems well nigh impossible to me.

 

So far I like the idea of drive-in concerts to hold us over. Weird, but doable, even on a local level.

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Had to take a call while I was writing this and missed these latest posts. You're absolutely right Craig, I've seen that too. Old guys love to disparage DJ's and there have been threads on KC about them not being musicians. They most certainly are musicians and several years ago I posted some vids where top DJ's were showing how they put their shows together and what the were doing during a performance. It's not just spinning records at a 50's sock hop. Just look at the Forbes Top 100 entertainers lists and how much they make. Some of these DJ's are earning every bit as much as the biggest stars out there like 30 to 70 MILLION a year doing shows in front of 100,000 people or more. I may be an old guy but I like keeping current with the music biz as much as I can. I'll talk to my musician friends about this who are all around my age and they have no idea AT ALL what's going on out there. Not the faintest clue. They still talk about how Woodstock was the biggest live music show ever. There are equivalent Woodstocks going on all over the world every year. Hundreds of thousands of people showing up at music festivals every summer. None of it has any relevance to people over 50.

 

Bob

 

I didn't expect to see this from you, but that's part of the fun of gradually getting to know people.

 

Much respect to you sir.

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We're not holding our breath here in Houston for Abbott to do the right thing. Or, maybe that should be that we ARE holding our breath because he isn't? :D

 

Whoa, that didn't take long:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/25/883311877/texas-governor-hits-pause-on-further-reopening-amid-covid-19-surge

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I agree with Markyboard. IMO a DJ act has to involve someone playing an instrument, at least at times, before the act can be said to incorporate live music, and their Macs/whatevers aren't musical instruments unless they can spontaneously create and play melodic or harmonic (or percussive, which includes turntable artists) content in response to, or along with, other musicians. I know that may be considered narrow-minded but so be it.

 

If tech actually has evolved to the point where a DJ can do that without a traditional (and by now turntables are traditional) instrument, I would most likely find out about it from this board, thanks to Craig.

 

Glad to be able to read Bob's account of youngsters who do enjoy real-time performance. Leaving out chords? No swing at all? I got that covered!

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We're not holding our breath here in Houston for Abbott to do the right thing. Or, maybe that should be that we ARE holding our breath because he isn't? :D

 

Whoa, that didn't take long:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/25/883311877/texas-governor-hits-pause-on-further-reopening-amid-covid-19-surge

Yeah, we're pretty shocked he did anything, though he is refusing to "go backwards" and stuff is staying open. He's not mandating masks, either.

 

OTOH, a number of businesses here have closed themselves either because they don't think it's safe or because they've had employees test positive.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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There are DJ's who spin records for 10000+ people. They are entertainers. If they play an instrument (singing counts) then they are musicians as well.

If you ever saw a DJ with really good at turntable technique, I'm almost certain you'd think they do play instruments. Also, many of them don't just play records, they do real-time improvisation using multiple sound sources - pre-recorded tracks, samples, keyboards, etc. It's basically "electronic music" in the classic sense of the term. I think it takes musical skill, or at least a highly developed musical sensibility, to do that. We've come a long way, though. At one point, people said those who used synthesizers weren't musicians.

 

Since I don't believe we are in disagreement about skill level or respect this is really about how one defines the term musician. And yes, some who "use" synthesizers are not musicians imo. Assuming we share equal respect for DJ's, synthesists and people who play "real" instruments why not call it what it is? Is DJ a derogatory or offensive title? Are tap dancers now percussionist, i.e. musicians?

 

When I play melodies, chords and rhythms I consider myself a musician (mediorcre at best). When I'm simply exploring weird sounds and noises I call myself a synthesist or pereferably a "sound explorer" at that point. If my role in a band were to provide just that then that's what I'd want to be called - no problem. Look at the movie set personnel; Sound Effects Editors - don't these guys sometimes have/need musical skills and improvise coming up with stuff?

 

Yes there's plenty of gray area but my point is if there's a specific term for what one does people should use it and be proud. Unless of course they suck at it.

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I didn't expect to see this from you, but that's part of the fun of gradually getting to know people.

 

Much respect to you sir.

 

Thanks, man. That's the problem with forums, no matter how well I "think" I write people get the wrong impression sometimes because we're not face to face reading expressions, body language, tone of voice and all the things people do in personal conversations. I flunked English Lit for a reason I guess. I'm a decent technical writer but that's about it. On a personal level I could care less about somebody's political views unless they're really scary in which case I won't be talking to them for more than 10 seconds anyway.

 

Another point about DJ's not being musicians. Those vids I referred to earlier were showing them using Abelton Live in the way it's designed to be used. Live, on stage in front of thousands. It's hard to describe but what they're doing is taking literally several dozen prerecorded tracks that were created and produced by themselves before hand and some were produced by other artists specifically for them to mash up in a completely different way than that artist had in mind. Other tracks are being created live and looped then mashed up and mixed with other tracks. This is totally foreign to us as "traditional" musicians. These people are all big names. They give some of their best original multitracks to each other after the original song has been released and it's been a big hit. The other DJ will take that and do all kinds of crazy things with it right there on stage in front of all those people. I've talked to enough young people about that including my daughters and grandaughters and I'm told that's why they go to these shows in the first place. It's not to just hear the DJ do their own stuff, they want to hear what they can do to another big stars stuff. The trick is and this is where they have created their own thing completely apart from how we think, they are NOT doing covers of the other songs, they are CREATING a whole new version of it live right in front of the crowd. The next show could be totally different. And right in the middle of that they will suddenly mix their own song into the other guys song. That's the show and that's why they are real musicians even if some can't play a note on a traditional instrument. However, don't be fooled, some are very good traditional players and that's shown in those vids too. And yes Craig, if I had the chance to play some keys in a show like that I'd do it in a heartbeat. I would love to lay a line down, he records it and then twists it all up into fifteen different knots. Sounds like fun because I would then do it again but different and so on. That also sounds a lot like jazz too.

 

The other thing is we have to listen to enough of it to get an understanding of what's happening and why it works. That's impossible for a lot of older players, their minds just won't go there. The flow, the style, the rhythms are very different from what we're used to and I have to admit I like it sometimes because I'm all about the excitement and the crowd. If they're having fun, I'm having fun. I can see where they're going, how they use the drop, how they build it up to get the crowd going. It's no different from what I used to do in Vegas in the 70's. Pace the show, pace the dancers, give them what they want to hear. BUT, first and foremost you have to understand what they want to hear which is where the generational thing comes in. These things have been part of show biz for centuries.

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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That's sounds really intriguing. I would much rather see that, rather than someone regurgitating tired old guitar hero cliches, or phoning in a predictable blues solo, expecting me to be entertained. I would even be so bold as to say that I would do well in such a scenario, in the event they wanted to add a live musician, playing a musical instrument.

 

So if someone would be so kind as to offer a good example? Google suggestion or link?...

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I don't consider DJs musicians because they cannot play any specific melody on their instrument. No disrespect. I see them related to musicians as collage artists are related to artist painters.

 

It's a different but related skill.

 

Calling them musicians muddies the term.

 

Put random pieces of sheet music in front of musicians, and many of them can play any tune you put in front of them. The rest could if they practiced their skills. (I played with a blind pianist who could read Braille music.)

 

Put random pieces of sheet music in front of a DJ, and no DJ can play them.

 

This to me is a big difference.

 

Like I said, no disrespect, just differentiation.

 

But that's off on the tangent.

 

Live music, live theater, DJs and other entertainment that is meant to draw crowds will be one of the the slowest businesses to come back.

 

As much as I'd like to gig, I am not eager to set up in a crowded room full of people, some of which might have COVID and contagious.

 

As much as I'd like to go to a symphony, I wouldn't even if they were back to work.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<

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It's about different definitions of "musical instrument". As others have said, the discussion seems to hinge on semantics, so it could be we've beat this dead horse to a pulp. I also think some may see a sorting into " narrow-minded vs open-minded who are willing to change with new realities" camps but I don't see it as that. New stuff is kool. I would welcome a modern remake of "Dueling Banjos". Dueling DJ's? Dueling Macs?
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So I'm returning to the "Now What" part of this thread with a development I must admit, even I, was a bit surprised about. We have a booking this evening (picked up short notice on our return from the Lake of the Ozarks last Sunday) but it has been raining today with a good chance of more tonight. I assumed we'd probably go ahead and cancel but now, however, I'm told that if it does look like it'll rain we'll go ahead and play indoors.
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Dueling DJ's?

Yes, I've often seen two or more DJs synched to each other, and they trade licks back and forth. I know most people think DJ as "someone playing Barbra Streisand songs at a wedding" but a lot of the real innovation in applying technology these days is in the EDM world.

 

My favorite term to describe what DJs do is "performing engineer," in the sense that they're doing highly skilled, real-time mixing of multiple tracks, samples, and instruments not in the confines of a studio, but as a performance. Then again, note that many DJs can play traditional instruments, they simply choose not to in that context. But, they will go into the studio and create tracks that they can then use live. Actually, I'm a good example of that. In all my solo Ableton Live gigs, 90% of the material I use is music and loops where I played the parts. So, I don't think you can call them "not musicians" if they can, and do, play instruments. Studio musicians are still musicians.

 

DJing is also a "gateway drug" to learning an instrument. One of the better bass players I know is a DJ who started playing bass 25 years ago, because he didn't like any of the bass loops he found, so he wanted to make his own. And like anyone who picks up Things with Strings, once you start, you can't stop :)

 

I know this may seem like it's a departure from the corona virus topic, but it isn't. When live performance starts to open up, I think we'll see outdoor DJ gigs happen before enclosed concert hall gigs. I've done quite a few gigs playing guitar with DJs. It's fun, and for the people here, it might provide some economic opportunities that wouldn't exist otherwise. I've always found DJs very open about incorporating people who play traditional instruments. Notes, I'd bet that somewhere not far from where you live, there's a DJ who thinks it would be super-cool to gig with a live sax player.

 

Because live performance opportunities remain rare, now might be a good time to try and understand what DJs do. I even incorporate "DJ thinking" into a lot of my rock music, and I feel it has really benefited as a result.

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I'm not going to try to find the vids I posted a few years ago so here's this from last year in Miami:

 

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAnERekFArI

 

Tiesto. I've heard of him. Look at that crowd! Look at that stage! Wow.

 

 

Want to see some instruments Notes? Check this out:

 

[video:youtube]

 

This is something else with a huge live orchestra plus small band instruments, singers, world instruments and everything else that makes noise you can think of. Two and a half hours, the first 45 minutes is a lot of orchestral stuff then the DJ's start with Steve Aoki at 51 minutes. The live players are sync'd up with the DJ tracks. What a show! This kind of thing is going on in local dance clubs in every city in the world while most of us complain about no places to play any more. All that means is we're dinosaurs, our time is rapidly coming to an end.

 

Stuff like this is so big, so huge it's hard to even begin to describe it because it's not my world, I didn't grow up in it but these kids did. This is their meaning of life, this is their musical world and obviously they appreciate live players just not our kind of live players. On a personal level my 16 year old grandaughter has been taking piano lessons for 4 years and is not bad. She likes it and is continuing with it but when she listens to streaming music it's stuff like these vids. From my very limited observations the kids taste in music is all over the place and I think that's great. They literally like everything including a lot of our music but that's more of a casual thing, it's not their main thing. I'm guessing they grew up hearing it around the house from their parents and I think our generation has taught them to be open minded about this because in many cases our parents really were not all that open minded. It was big band, Lawrence Welk and the Grand Ol Opry and they wouldn't tolerate much else so we rebelled against that.

 

Finally here's a little eye candy for us old guys. Juicy M rehearsing for her next tour and note the piano in the corner. Yes indeed! Just out of curiosity I looked her up. She's a big name, she's listed on the Top 100 DJ's in the world and has toured with the biggest names out there. And yes, she took piano lessons since age 4. To anybody who knows nothing about this stuff, understand that she is creating this as she's going. All those sounds, pops, hits, rhythms are from prerecorded tracks that maybe she did herself and she has to decide live, in the moment where to put what.

 

[video:youtube]

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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Is it just me or does each individual post keep getting longer and longer?

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Different electronic performers do the live thing very differently. The term "DJ" may or may not apply - it's a bit of a loose term.

 

Electronic musicians I've seen live -

 

Ulrich Schnauss - I love Ulrich's music (he's a current member of Tangerine Dream). But when I saw him live, he didn't do all that much. Pretty much a laptop and some sort of controller. He made a few moves here and there, but it was simple stuff like breakdowns, levels, fade in/outs, etc. Still a thrill for me, being a fanboy.

 

Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto) - Now I'm an uber-fan of MBM and the esteemed Mr. Dangers. He had a live drummer playing MIDI drums, of course to a click track, which was pretty awesome. He had a 2nd guy twiddling knobs of some sort, but Jack operated a live video setup where he "DJ'd" the video - flying in bits and pieces, doing fx, all sorts of manipulations live to the music.

 

Deadmau5 - I couldn't tell a thing about what he was doing. He was like 30 feet up high on a huge podium on an outdoor stage, wearing his giant mouse head, bobbing up and down. The crowd went insane. Sorry, I find him a bit boring....

 

Bassnectar - now this guy is something else live. You like bass? BASS???? BBBBBBASSSSS????? Get ready to actually hear your liver beating against your spine.....again, hard to see what he was actually doing, but between the frenetic music and the absolutely psycho-acidic videos and the wild crowd - who cares?

 

Girl Talk - if the guy is still making the rounds, and he's not too old to do what he used to do on stage, you gotta see this guy at some point. He does mashup-type stuff, but his onstage energy is reminicent of 30-yr old Springsteen. A total blast, unbelievable fun. Was he doing a lot of musical manipulation? I dunno - but he was entertainment incarnate....

 

Jon Hopkins - now this guy is a master. He can do the DJ thing absolutely, improvising, composing, mixing, all of it live. He's also a highly trained classical pianist. Not a musician? Then I don't know what anything is, just noise I guess.

 

Robert Rich - a master ambient musician. Plays all sorts of instruments while his incredible rack of modular synths loops and burbles and such in the background. Got to shoot the breeze with him for about 15 minutes after the show. A lifetime high point for me!

 

The electronic music world is vast and varied - really, it's where a lot of the true creativity has found a home. Experimentation is certainly more welcome in the electronic world than in, say, Americana or Metal or R&B or even a lot of indie and alt stuff. No, it's not as fully expertise in pure music as say, serious jazz, but it's still a remarkable world of sounds.

 

nat

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Back on topic.

 

A week ago in Florida the all-time record number of new COVID cases was 1,000/day, then we broke another record at 2,000/day, then 4,000/day, two days ago 5,000/day, and yesterday 9,000 new cases in one day.

 

It doesn't look like I'll be gigging very soon.

 

The governor opened the state up way too soon, will not admit his mistake (the buck doesn't stop there), instead blames the defenseless, and refuses to do anything to slow the spread of the disease except talk about closing bars (his latest scapegoat after the "Mexican watermelon pickers"). It's full speed ahead, your death is preferable to a stock market downturn.

 

We are out of work since March, our winter season (From October through May) is usually booked by now, and as of today we have nothing - nada - zip - zilch - zero booked. It looks like our unemployment will last well over a year. We are dependent on winter tourists, but who wants to come to Florida and play COVID Roulette when we are the nation's newest and hottest hot spot? (Thanks Governor DeSantis)

 

I know the disease is not anyone's fault in particular, but we have become the country that has mishandled it among the worst.

 

A columnist in our newspaper checked the June 17 deaths from COVID- 19 in four countries and computed the rate per million population using the CIA World Fact Book numbers.

 

Taiwan â 0.3 per million

New Zealand â 4.9 per million

South Korea â 5.4 per million

United States â 364.3 per million

 

Our government is obviously not protecting us but instead protecting themselves and their political donors.

 

And I'm unemployed for the foreseeable future.

 

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh.

 

Add to that the Florida Unemployment system is world famous by being almost impossible to get benefits. I've seen articles in two UK newspapers reporting this. It take an average of 12 hours to complete the forms with the designed to fail website that is only open 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you have to be very, very, very lucky to get it done in 8. Then in two weeks you have to do it again. Oh and there is a phone number, you get a recording saying they aren't taking calls and will not call you back (add insult to injury). Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah - we aren't going to help you.

 

This was designed by GOP Governor Scott who presided over the hospital that had the biggest Medicare fraud in history. GOP DeSantis said he would fix it and actually made it worse. It used to be open on the weekends until he "fixed" it. And meanwhile the sugar farmers, bankers, hedge fund managers, and others of the upper 5% got huge tax breaks and plenty of CARES act hand out$$$$.

 

Good luck everybody. It's going to be a loooooong, bumpy ride.

 

Insights, incites and a rant by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<

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Some people don't understand what a "lagging indicator" is. I keep hearing talk radio hosts saying "yeah, there's a spike, but there's no spike in deaths so it's not a problem, just young people are getting it and they don't end up in the hospital, [additional uninformed blather]." If you overlay active cases over deaths, it's almost like deaths are an echo, and there's a few weeks of latency.

 

Still, I wondered if maybe we skated through on this one, and there wouldn't be a big spike. Well, here's today's graph. And yes, Notes, it's going to be a "loooooong, bumpy ride." Anyone who depends on doing gigs is in trouble.

 

We almost had this thing beat, but then people got impatient...and now I think the economic impact will be even worse than if we'd just held off a little longer.

 

j7AKmHe.png

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I don't know that it's the governments fault here. Part of the equation all along has been the general population has to do their part too. Yes, people are impatient but in the case of business owners it's impatience born of desperation because they're right on the edge of losing everything they own. I'm very disappointed that so many people seem to be completely oblivious and uninformed about this. It appears there are way more than I ever imagined who either don't know about or don't believe that we all need to follow the guidelines. When DeSantis for example opens up Florida and thousands and thousands of idiots do what they did and are still doing now, what are you gonna do?

 

THIS is the real problem from the US SBA website:

 

United States small businesses employed 58.9 million peo­ple, or 47.5% of the private workforce, in 2015. (Source: SUSB) ⢠Firms with fewer than 100 employees have the largest share of small business employment. (Source: SUSB)

 

Call it 60 million people employed which equals half the workforce. We already have 30M unemployed now and a chunk of that includes big businesses. Small businesses have been and still are desperate to reopen and now they're being forced to close again. Some see it as political incompetence with ulterior motives, I see it as a desperate attempt to avoid an economic disaster which requires some help from the population and it's obvious we're not getting that. I have to admit I did not see that coming, I was naive enough to think only a small percentage of young people would behave this way and I suspect the governors of these spiking states thought that too.

 

Small business bankruptcies are already spiking and it's only the beginning, the unemployment bene's run out July 31 along with the rent and eviction moratorium. Everybody thinks landlords are filthy rich leeches who can just keep carrying their buildings forever. Right. I do some of their tax returns. The expenses are horrendous, they lose even 20% of their regular rental gross and they're hurting. If authorities simply extend the rent and eviction moratorium, what happens to the landlords? Keep that up long enough and they go into foreclosure. Great, people say. Dump it on the big banks, they're just leeches too.

 

Yes, the feds can keep printing money forever if they want and they can even implement Bernie Sanders favorite proposal and give every person in the US a $2,000 per month guaranteed income. Trillions and Trillions of dollars created out of nothing but an order from the feds. I can't even get my mind around the long term implications of that. I'm really beginning to think a second Great Depression is on the table now. Many of us here are on Social Security. It gets bad enough and they WILL have to cut the benefits to current recipients meaning you and me, Notes. Then to add to the fun, there's this:

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-antibodies-fade-months-study/story?id=71406787

 

The headline is of course, misleading but there is an element of truth here apparently. 40% of asymptomatic people and 13% of people with serious symptoms seem to lose their antibodies within two months implying they could get reinfected. Like so many studies we hear about this is preliminary based on a small sample. Lets hope it's wrong. I keep thinking about a doctor who replied to a question about the virus subsiding when hot weather comes. He said something like yes, that's probably true but if people are crowded into small spaces coughing on each other it doesn't matter what the weather is.

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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I don't know that it's the governments fault here. Part of the equation all along has been the general population has to do their part too.

 

The government has been giving misguided, inaccurate, contradictory, and false information to the public. At this point, they don't know what to do. Initially, the public DID know what to do - listened to Fauci, saw what was happening in NY/NJ/Italy, did social distancing, etc. That's why we almost had this thing beat. Then...well, you know what happened. "It's all good, it's behind us, it's going to fade away like magic, besides you can fix yourself with this miracle drug, we'll never hit 100,000 dead, congregations - no problem, party down Garth!"

 

Didn't quite turn out that way.

 

Yes, people are impatient but in the case of business owners it's impatience born of desperation because they're right on the edge of losing everything they own.

 

Better to be on the edge than over the edge. The fiscal stimulus bought those businesses time, and now, that money and time has been squandered.

 

Bottom line: Europe figured it out. Asia figured it out. This country didn't.

 

And think about it for a second - if a guitar player in Nashville who isn't a medical professional knew what was coming...what's the excuse of those who are supposed to be looking out for the health and welfare of the citizens of this country - and that most certainly includes small business owners. I'm one of them, and I've lost gigs because of this. And I was more than willing to lose gigs when I saw light at the end of the tunnel that would benefit everyone, and ultimately, make society whole again.

 

The wounds that this horrific response to the pandemic caused will result in scars that last for years, if not decades.

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I don't know that it's the governments fault here. <...>

 

Oh?

 

1) Waiting 6 weeks before saying there is a problem while they silently sold their stocks to protect themselves from the inevitable recession?

 

2) Telling is it's only a flu?

 

3) Firing the pandemic team to give more money to the Upper 5% before the first case?

 

4) Crippling our CDC arm in China before the first case?

 

5) Telling the people (and you-know-who's loyal base) to be rabid anti-maskers and making an example of showing up in public without one?

 

6) Opening the country too soon to try to bolster the economy for the CEO's, Hedge Fund Managers and Bankers at the expense of mass human deaths?

 

7) Not backing off when it was obvious that the pandemic was spiking again?

 

8) Blaming everybody but themselves instead of doing something about it?

 

9) Letting almost every bill the Democratic house passed sit on Moscow Mitch's desk without even putting it up for discussion?

 

And that's just a start. I could go on and on.

 

No the government didn't start it. But our government is responsible for mass murder by intentionally mishandling it.

 

The USA and Taiwan got their first case one day apart. Taiwan handled it while Trump and the boys said that it'll disappear by May (last May). The result is Taiwan now has 0.3 deaths per million and the USA has 364.3 deaths per million, an increase of 1,214%.

 

I'm sorry, CORONA isn't the government's fault, but it is entirely the present administration's fault that the USA has the most confirmed cases and the most deaths of any other country in the world.

 

Insights, incites and a minor rant by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<

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Notes, please dial back on the politics, or at least on incendiary terms like "mass murder." A pandemic is a situation the US hasn't experienced in our lifetimes. And Bob is right, the people have to do their part, and because they did at first, matters did improve. But part of doing their part is thinking for themselves, and knowing when to reject B.S. and act in the most prudent way, regardless of what their leaders tell them.

 

Attacking leaders for their incompetence and mendacity doesn't solve any problems. Most people can make up their own minds. Educating people as to what needs to be done can make a difference.

 

Discussion of how other countries handled the pandemic have to take into account that many governments lean toward a more socialist mindset. I know that's a "red flag" word to some people ("Do you want to end up like Venezuela or Cuba?!?!?") but I'm simply talking about the citizens of typical European countries, who recognize voluntarily that the greater good needs to be considered. Then there are the countries that say "you will recognize the greater good or you're in trouble." Both are effective ways to fight a pandemic. The US is still very much in wild west mode...which is why we spawn things like Apple Computers and moon landings, but also can't get it together to give an appropriate response to something that sneaked up on us.

 

Pointing fingers might be satisfying but it doesn't solve anything. Some people will dig for the truth, while others will not because they do not want to hear anything that contradicts their narrative. To complicate matters further, there still are a lot of surprises in this virus...like finding out it's not just about respiratory problems, or that even if there was a vaccine tomorrow, the means to distribute it properly doesn't exist yet.

 

The question posed in this thread remains valid: What do we do now? What's done is done. Specifically, how to we keep live music, and our music industry-related gigs, alive under these circumstances?

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That's for clarifying that Craig, it's exactly what I tried to say but again I missed the target. Intelligent, well informed people have no problem understanding what this pandemic is and what's required. You're comment about socialist leaning countries is exactly what I was going to mention too but my post was already too long so I didn't. We also have no problem seeing through what politicians say, how they say it and what they don't say. America is unique in the world, we have a free wheeling, individual responsibility mindset that nobody else has. It's what makes this country great and is the main reason so many people from all over the world want to come here. But, this pandemic has proven that a nation of proud individuals who don't like being told what to do is not the best thing to have at this time. The US mindset is no strong central authority, everything is local, the local authorities represent the population better than some huge, powerful central government. That's what the country was founded on, local individual responsibility. This is why I wrote that basically this isn't the governments fault.

 

How many times have we written here in this one little forum that media is everywhere now? Everybody is totally locked into social media, the news is everywhere 24 hours a day. That means there should have been no need for a strong central government response to this other than logistical and even then it's not really the feds responsibility to have the stockpiles of medical supplies to provide for the whole country in the case of a pandemic. That responsibility flows down to individual states and further down to individual localities and ultimately to us.

 

To me this boils down to one of two possibilities. Either the social media, "everybody is connected 24 hours a day" is a myth or the average person of all ages is really too stupid for words. Anybody with half a brain knew all about this pandemic, what is was capable of doing to us, what the stats are and most important what was necessary to mitigate it. This forum is proof of that. We were all talking about this since February and we all pretty much understood what was happening. Oh, we had some disagreements on the fringes but we all agreed on the central points about this virus. it was all over the place, everywhere, every news outlet and most importantly all over social media where the majority of younger people live. All this falls squarely on their shoulders. They shouldn't need the government to tell them anything about this once all these stories hit.

 

Frankly the more I write this out the more pissed off I get. This is turning into a real teachable moment about the principle of individual responsibility. People want individual responsibility, they want government off their backs? Well, here you go, you got it. You (meaning the general "you") can't blame the president or anyone else in government for this, it really wouldn't matter what they did or didn't do. If the other party was in power right now would it have mattered? I doubt it. They would of done the same things. They could have issued all the strong armed edicts they want and shut everything down even tighter but as we now see idiots will be idiots and we have a LOT of idiots. We all knew the ramifications of COVID since day one and it's obvious now a huge swath of the population chose to ignore it for whatever reasons. What a bunch of small minded fools. I had written here, well mostly on the KC forum not this one, for months that once the lock downs were over probably sometime in May, people would be educated enough about this virus to understand how to behave and opening things up would be ok. I had faith in the average intelligence and education of the population. I turned out to be the fool for believing that. It looks like all they did was play video games and watch Netflix all day rather than the news to stay up to date about this virus.

 

Now, will I play the fool again by saying the younger people and all the other fools have learned their lesson now and it will start getting better?

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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That's for clarifying that Craig, it's exactly what I tried to say but again I missed the target. Intelligent, well informed people have no problem understanding what this pandemic is and what's required. You're comment about socialist leaning countries is exactly what I was going to mention too but my post was already too long so I didn't. We also have no problem seeing through what politicians say, how they say it and what they don't say. America is unique in the world, we have a free wheeling, individual responsibility mindset that nobody else has. It's what makes this country great and is the main reason so many people from all over the world want to come here. But, this pandemic has proven that a nation of proud individuals who don't like being told what to do is not the best thing to have at this time. Bob

 

"It was in his inaugural address that John F. Kennedy spoke his famous words, 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' This use of chiasmus can be seen even as a thesis statement of his speech â a call to action for the public to do what is right for the greater good."

 

That was then...and this is now.

 

This ties together what you said - it's up to us - and what Notes said, that it starts with people at the top setting an example.

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No doubt, our world is gonna make some major changes because of the pandemic. My best guess is that we will be semi shut down until a vaccine is developed and deployed, so another year maybe.

 

I think live music the way we know it will take a serious hit and never come back to what it was. But because of that inventive people will come up with new and very different ways ways to make it work. As an example, take a look at the 'Scary Pockets' project. They have built a huge online following and looks like a pile of money to go with it (considering they invented Patreon to go along with it).

 

There are tons of opportunities for creative people and those that are just going along for the ride will suffer some.

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My hunch is that the data will continue to support that outdoor activities don't spread the virus- and consequently live music will be more relegated to outside performance. So far, that seems at least to be true of the protests, with most of the larger cities not having outbreaks as a result. But one article offered an explanation for that, saying that cellphone data showed that the protests were offset by everyone else staying home more, and businesses closing, what with the threat of violence, rioting and looting (I'm glad that where I live, people have kept their sanity and protests remained peaceful).

 

 

My wishful thinking is that it will be discovered that congregating outdoors does, in fact, spread the virus- but with weaker cases that result in milder symptoms (there seems to be some evidence for that part). And that this will result on an overall weakening of COVID, perhaps with mutations that downgrade it but still result in immunity- leading eventually to herd immunity. So that ultimately people will be encouraged, if they do not have morbidities that put them at risk, to do their civic duty by congregating outside as much as possible.

 

(edited) Yes, I'm aware that some studies show that antibodies may not provide permanent immunity. And also about the likely (in some minds) chance of severe, permanent organ damage that may result from even mild cases (it seems that no one who brings that up mentions the odds of that happening- without which it loses it's potency as a scare tactic) .

 

Thanks for indulging me by reading this. Back to your regularly scheduled program of gloom, doom, and panic.

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My hunch is that the data will continue to support that outdoor activities don't spread the virus- and consequently live music will be more relegated to outside performance.

 

Talk about seasonal! :)

 

(edited) Yes, I'm aware that some studies show that antibodies may not provide permanent immunity. And also about the likely (in some minds) chance of severe, permanent organ damage that may result from even mild cases (it seems that no one who brings that up mentions the odds of that happening- without which it loses it's potency as a scare tactic).

 

I don't think anyone knows the odds of it happening. It's only recently that doctors put two and two together about COVID-19 having effects other than bronchial problems. And five months into this thing, no one knows why it affects some people so dramatically (including healthy people) while affecting others (even with underlying conditions) minimally, if at all. Who knows? Maybe we'll find that anyone who ate a lot of bacon and drank excessively is much less likely to get sick, while people who have a strict organic diet are most likely to die :)

 

Thanks for indulging me by reading this. Back to your regularly scheduled program of gloom, doom, and panic.

 

Unfortunately, the gloom and doom are happening now, not just a possibility for the future, at least for a lot of businesses. We don't know what happens when the checks run out in July, but those weekly payments have been a lifeline for many people. It's tempting to think that things aren't really that bad - today, there are only five states where deaths are increasing week-over-week. But, given the latency between spikes and deaths, who knows what's going to happen in the next month. It's not a cause for panic, but it's also ridiculous to think we have this under control - just look at Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Arizona.

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