NPM: Detroit

Despite a short stint up in the Wolverine backwoods, I've spent over 75% of my life living one block from the city of Detroit. I grew up in a house across the street from my grandparents and I now live in my grandparents old home. Funny how life can work out sometimes.

Anyone paying attention to the News is well aware of the problems with Detroit. I love the city. I love how dirty, grimey, and unpolished it appears to outsiders. I love the view you get driving north on I-75 coming over the Rouge River Bridge and the city skyline appears with the RenCen glistening and the Ambassador bridge in the foreground and the smoke and haze of manufacturing surrounding the beauty. I'm pretty unapologetic of my love for all things Detroit (even Kid Rock and Eminem, but not so much Lions and City Council)

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, well Detroit is the city that never stops working.

That was until they starting bailing out Wall St.

I won't aplogize for this video, and it's as in your face as it needs to be.

“Pardon me if I don’t shed a tear...‘Cause they’re selling make-believe and we don’t buy that here.” - John Rich

Unfortunately, no one's listening.

NPM: Black and White

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn't agree with you. A camera in the right person's hand can be as powerful as any great work of art or composition. For quite sometime now a niche market has developed within photography focusing on black-and-white and the artistic ability it provides. According to Wikipedia,

"Today black-and-white media often has a "nostalgic", historic, or anachronistic
feel to it."

Who doesn't love black and white pictures? They usually capture a moment that communicates pure beauty. The magic is in there simplicity. Just one snapshot, catching a slice of life, that can sweep through our emotions. Stripped down to bare essentials, everything covered in shades of gray.

It evokes a simpler, much more easier time.

How long before my grand-children look at pictures of my life and "see the story of my life right there in black and white."

What I mean is, many of us nowadays hear the phrase "back in the day" to explain a time when things were easier and a Norman Rockwell moments was more commonplace than a car in the driveway. Dad worked, mom stayed home, and Eddie Haskell was your biggest problem.

But were those times easier?

Did my grandfather find times were great and things were easier as he walked to his factory job every day? Did my grandmother find her life charming and quintessential washing laundry by hand and walking to the grocery store with her kids everyday? Did they view their experiences as Norman Rockwell moments.

So, when will my grandkids pull out some old pictures and see my life in Black and White?

Really, is any time in life ever really simple and completely pure? Black and white? I don’t think so.

”A picture’s worth a thousand words but you can’t see what those shades of
gray keep covered …You should’ve seen it in color.” - Jamey Johnson

In the basement.....

I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.



I'll be in the basement the next 24-36, maybe 48 hours (maybe over the whole weekend) pounding out another manifesto because I have a blog and feel it is important.

I'll be around sporadically offering comments (as always), but stay tuned for the post tomorrow (or maybe Saturday or even Monday) on Fearmongering.

I know, I know, your all on the edge of your seat waiting for it.

Trust me, it won't be much, I have a tendency to disappoint the more I talk something up, just ask Michele, I'm surprised we even have a kid.

Come on I had to say it!!!!!

So, the hammering, sawing, cussing, loud obnoxious noises you hear will be me in the basement trying to create something with my hands....

And keep commenting on all the blogs, just because I may not be there as much doesn't mean you can't continue bashing me and calling me uncompassionate and heartless and an idiot for being pro-Bible, pro-Church, pro-Bush, pro-Life, pro-Men, pro-My Wife, pro-beer, pro Conservative, pro-Libertarian, pro-Country Music pro-Do the Opposite and believing someone else's dogma over your dogma.



So.....

In the meantime, enjoy one of these oldie but goodies from back in the day (which was written almost a year to the day...and not sure I've changed any. Good? Bad?)

Paid for by the committee to tell you I'll be out of the blogosphere for a couple days but around enough to make some basic comments when I feel like and then proceed to piss you off, and rile you up, but by being out of the blogosphere for awhile I can avoid having to answer all your comments until such time that I can come up with real cool quips, comebacks, and logical thought to combat what you said.

Play Something Country

It ain't always pretty

But it's real

It's the way we were made

Wouldn't have it any other way

-These Are My People (Rodney Atkins)

These days, it seems that country music has a stigma (no crap Brian!). It's hard to put a finger on one thing in particular, a specific point that gives it that stigma. And that point is proven by the fact that a hundred different reasons just raced through your head as to what that stigma is. Rednecks (I knew y'all wuld like em' that ther pithur), wife beaters, banjos, Nascar, dogs always dyin', cheatin' husbands, Deliverance, etc. But no matter, rest assured, if you ask enough people what type of music they enjoy listening to, at least half of them will say something to the effect of

"I like everything. Except for country, that is."

Why? Even people who enjoy, and like me, preach the qualities and pure artistry of country music, will put a disclaimer and qualifier when we speak up about country music. Almost solidifying the "stigma" or giving credence to it. Admitting the redneck factor, double wide, wife left me, got in a bar fight, truck broke down, and I kicked my dog (Vick style....eww, low blow) perception people have of country music.

"I'm not saying it's all good..."

"Hard to believe but..."

"It's not as twangy anymore..."

blah, blah, blah.

It's a large issue. The fact that people in our generation seem to automatically deny the quality or pleasurable benefit of country music and its offshoots. It is assumed this is largely in hopes of portraying the opposite element of hip-ness for the express purposes of impressing those around them. Granted, there are a number of artists who have been embraced as of late, especially by those in the Christian community -- by a "number of artists," it is meant "Johnny Cash."

Most of the people who are now claiming allegiance to the house of Cash never really listened to him before his death -- and even more telling, before his movie biopic. At least it means that there is some accounting for taste out there, not to mention that the less people we have listening to the latest fourth-generation Pearl Jam rip-off (and therefore, 3rd generation Nirvana rip-off...yes I said it...OVERRATED...said it again), the better; Cash's newly born hipster cred may be posthumous, but it's hipster cred nonetheless.

But if you really get down to it, country music is impossible to ignore. Truth be told, that particular industry sells records. A lot of them. If that is true (and it is), then for every person attempting to project instinctive coolness by denying country music, there is one who really doesn't mind appearing "countrified" (openly discussing their purchase of the latest Big & Rich album) and one who swears he "would never" but has and will. Hats off to the ones who are "keeping it real."

The great music journalist Chuck Klosterman, in his book: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs writes:

"While rock and hip-hop constantly try to break through to a future consciousness -- and while alt country tries to replicate a lost consciousness from the 1930s -- modern country artists validate the experience of living right here, right now."

Hmmm....I though Van Halen was all about Right Here, Right Now? It means everything! It's that magic moment!

Riiiiiight......anyway.........

I think he is on to something. He's actually expressing 2 elements to why country music has remained so popular for so many years, and why it will continue to do so. The first is expressly written by him, country music is primarily concerned with the here and now. Secondly, and I think more subversive in his writing, that it does not try to push its ideas on anyone, but merely reflects what its fans already believe.

No pretensioness (is that word), no fakes, no frills. It isn't always pretty, but it is what it is and that is is Life.

"...Country music doesn’t have to be politically correct. We sing about God, because we believe in Him. We’re not tryin’ to offend anybody, but the evidence we have seen of Him in our small, little lives trumps your opinion about whether or not He exists.

We love country music because it touches us where we live. It’s about mamas and when they were hot and when they are unappreciated and when they were dying. It’s about daddies and the difficulties they have sometimes in tellin’ the people that they work so hard to protect and provide for, how they feel about’em.

Country music is about new love and it’s about old love. It’s about gettin’ drunk and it’s about getting’ sober. It’s about leavin’ and it’s about comin’ home.

It’s real music sung by real people for real people—the people that make up the backbone of this country. You can call us rednecks if you want, we’re not offended ‘cause we know what we’re all about. We get up and go to work. We get up and go to church. And, we get up and go to war when necessary. All we ask for is a few songs to carry us along the way...” - Jeff Foxworthy, 2007 CMA's

Click here to see the whole speech.