DC statehood and electronic music

I was listening to Sam's Town for the 100th time the other day and I was thinking about the lasting effects of the album. I know, this is yet another reference to Sam's Town. I was thinking about the use of synthesizer in the music and I kept thinking to myself, "Am I going to hate this in 5 years because of the synth parts? Is this another Duran Duran that is destined to embarrass me and my music collection?" The overuse of synths seems to have that effect. Actually, I can see the Killers being something similar to an INXS. INXS had guitars. But they also had a lot of synths which really de-muscled their sound. And, as with the Killers, INXS tried to get serious every once in a while to the detriment of the entire world (see Guns in the Sky). Then I got to thinking about the place of the synthesizer in rock music. Some bands are able to use it effectively. Early 80s electronic groups (OMD, New Order) are considered to be arty (until they "sold out" by going poppy). But the rest of the 80s synth groups all have a very dated sound. The synth seemed to be lost what with the advent of grunge. I wish I had really been in the know during the late 80s/early 90s period when you had bands like the Lightening Seeds producing pure synth music in the same year that Pearl Jam released Ten. That had to be a sad moment for the Lightening Seeds (or Seed...it's pretty much just one guy) when it was obvious that synthy/ new wave music was passe. Anyway, it seems that the Killers kind of built off of the Trip-Hop/Electronica movement in the late 90s and especially the Postal Service. I credit the Postal Service's Such Great Heights and The District Sleeps Tonight with really thrusting electronic music back into acceptability. The Killers have just mainstreamed the synth...of course, the current music landscape isn't as dominated by synth bands as it was back in the day, and like I mentioned before it's not as much Duran Duranesque as it is INXSesque. I guess that's better. Somewhat. Maybe this is why they feel a great urgency to become a serious band, because they can see their careers fading to nothing and being remembered as a cool band back in the day that meant nothing.

It's interesting to go back and listen to bands that used electronic works back in the day, like Portishead. I wonder if that White Town man, the one who sang "I Could Never Be Your Woman", I wonder if he would be more popular today as it seems more likely that someone could pull off the one man behind a synth thing today then 10 years ago. People seem more accepting of someone sitting in their basement and producing music on a computer and putting it on MySpace.

Someone in class used the term "100% diversity" yesterday. I have no idea what that could mean. Really. It means nothing. It's a nice liberal buzzword. We also discussed DC statehood/voting rights in this class which was interesting. I don't know how many readers know this, but DC's license plates say "Taxation without Representation" (it's been that way since 2000). Yeah, so the District doesn't have a Representative in Congress that can vote. They have a delegate that can sit in Congress and pretend she's a representative and blow smoke rings in the Democrats' smoking room, but she can't vote. So, Congress was contemplating giving DC voting rights. There are a couple of options for this: 1) DC gets a representative, 2) DC becomes a state and gets 2 senators and one representative or 3) DC is counted with Maryland for representation purposes so the Maryland senators represent DC and the representative for DC is counted in the Maryland delegation. The bill that was proposed would have been option 1 (and it would have given Utah an additional seat in the House) but the Republicans attached some crazy gun rider to the bill and it was shot down. It was classic. Just like the Simpsons where the comet is coming to destroy the town and Congress is ready to unanimously pass a bill to evacuate Springfield but then someone attaches a rider to promote the perverted arts and the bill is defeated. What really surprises me is how much residents in the District think that they should be a state. What do I think? I don't think DC should be granted statehood for the sole reason that the District was created to make the capital of the United States independent from a state government. The capital belongs to the nation, not to a specific state. Because people live in the District, however, does not mean that they should not be represented in Congress. Supposedly, Congress should have the interests of the District in mind, but they famously do not (I do think the argument that DC residents don't deserve to vote because they make terrible decisions like electing Marion Berry, the crack-smoking, prostitute-soliciting, tax evader as mayor AND now a councilman is a funny argument but not terribly persuasive as a) It only applies to bad governance over the last 40 years and that doesn't justify withholding voting rights and b) Other voters in other states are just as bad decision makers and we still let them vote). DC residents do not get that the rest of the country feels ownership over the capital, that everyone can go to the capital and feel like it's their capital not just a state. There's something very important about that collective ownership feeling. People have strong ties to their states and dislike other states, but the collective ownership of the capital ties everyone in every state to the federal government and the nation. Thus, we are citizens of both our state (where we are living) and the nation (represented by the nation's capital which is separate from any state jurisdiction). If it was a separate state, it wouldn't collectively be ours. I think I repeated myself a lot there.

This leaves us with figuring our what to do with DC to allow them representation. I say, since DC is on the Maryland side and the real capital is where the seat of government i.e. the 55% of DC that is owned by the federal government, that DC residents should vote in Maryland senatorial elections and also vote for a representative that is part of the Maryland delegation. I think that this would make both Maryland and DC mad. Maryland doesn't really like it's DC suburbs too much (PG isn't Maryland enough, and everyone's jealous of Montgomery County) and certainly wouldn't like having DC to deal with and the District likes it's autonomy.

There you have it.

Happy Birthday tomorrow, Adrienne.