Rockin'--Not Retiring--In The Recession: Interview with Todd Rundgren

Rockin’—Not Retiring—In The Recession: Legendary Musician, Todd Rundgren, Stays In The “Arena”

Interview by Jack Criss

Publisher

Profiles Mississippi Magazine

(The following interview was conducted March 18, just days before Todd Rundgren took to the road again for another leg of a tour supporting his latest CD, “Arena.” It is published here only slightly edited.)

JC: The new CD, “Arena”, finds you very prescient: the lyrics and message are very relevant, almost in a frightening way. Was that on purpose? Did you see some signs during the recording of the record?

Rundgren: I do try and make the records, especially the ones I’ve done recently, relevant to some degree to the circumstances I find myself in at the time. So it isn’t necessarily always polemical; it’s not always me behaving as if I’m some sort of reporter (laughs). But it is a reaction in me—I guess I’m more like Bill O’Reilly (chuckles) than someone who just reads the news. I’m opinionated about the things that happen around me. In this particular instance I had already taken on one kind of personal revelation, which was the degree to which people lie (Ed. Note: TR’s CD “Liars” released in April, 2004). (With that CD) I was thinking at the time that only the executive branch was lying, but it turns out we all do it all the time, so it became ripe fodder for me to deal with that theme.

When it came time to do “Arena” it appeared we were entering another era in which everyone was realizing the degree to which they had been deceived over the past eight years. Now we’re at the point where we won’t be as easily deceived but we might be talked out of what we have to do by people who are just too entrenched or cowardly to buy into any kind of new order.

JC: Speaking as a fan, though, you’ve never really been overtly polemical in your career outside of the concerts you did for presidential hopeful John Anderson back in 1980. You always seem to address individuals and what they can do to change.

Rundgren: That’s a very astute assessment in that a lot of people, when they start evaluating the kind of situation we’re currently in, will stop at the societal level or tend to lump people together into larger groups as opposed to going to the individual components of that group. I guess there’s a recognition that the mob has a mentality all its own and that if you can figure out how to talk to that thing then you can control it. But underneath that “mob” are individual people who are much more complicated than any single-minded mob agenda. So I figure that if I want to affect change, I don’t address the mob, clan or family; I address the individual inasmuch as that’s where change comes from for me—I already wrote a song about it. (“Change Myself,” 1990) I can’t expect change in the world if I’m incapable of change. I figure let’s start with me and rather than act as a bludgeon act more insidiously like a virus.

JC: I think that’s a much more refreshing, and effective, approach than how some over-politicized musical group like Rage Against The Machine or The Clash come across.

Rundgren: Well, the advantage of the Rage Against The Machine approach is just like the way we’ve been going through the last eight years—they just happen to be on the other side of the political spectrum. Essentially, though, it’s the same thing: it’s all about somebody else. It’s not about me; it’s all about “you” or “you guys” or “the Man”—something like that. I mean, you never hear Rage Against The Machine screaming out, “I’ve got some personal problems that I need to deal with and I really have no right yelling at other people!” (laughs).

JC: Yes, and by the same token you never hear older Republicans say, “Don’t cut my government benefits.”

Rundgren: Exactly, but that comes from a survivalist sensibility that’s inside everybody and the “I will not be responsible for my behavior if, for instance, someone in my family is threatened.” I mean, it’s all well and good to keep the social contract as long as the most vital things are being handled and taken care of. So I can be all lovey-dovey and Christian like so many other people but, again, like so many other people, if you or your family is being threatened all “Thou Shalt Not Kill” stuff goes out the window. We can all be high and mighty when everything is safe and secure; it’s how we behave when we are threatened that really indicates where we’re at in a more accurate way.

JC: And we’re going to find out, aren’t we?

Rundgren: Well, it’s starting to happen now—we’re all at each other’s throats. The question is: What do you do in a time of panic? Do you just panic along with everybody else or do you try and ride it out? I’ve always subscribed to the theory that whatever is happening, if you succumb to your fear and confusion, you’re never going to make it any better so you might as well, just, Zen-up (laughs) and endure it until it’s over!

JC: Given all this, it’s easy to be cynical. In your career, though, you came of age in the Sixties, a very idealistic time, and were influenced by idealistic musicians like The Beatles and Dylan. Is there a role for the musician to enact change or are artists like you just tilting at windmills?

Rundgren: We tend to think that pop music is inherently trivial, but what passes for popular music at any particular era is usually serving some particular purpose. For those of us in the Sixties—and that fact that the music industry matured during a World War—a lot of the music was looked at as escapist: during the war (it was) to make you forgot about those conflicts as much as possible. By the time we got to the Sixties we were in total escapist mode: we’d been threatened by nuclear annihilation our entire lives and we’re thinking, God, can we just get a mental break here? I think a lot of the music of the Sixties, though, started to really address the root of our anxiety. Out of that came the whole peace movement and all the music that went with it that was supposed to mean something, something to take to heart. Music has always had that component, you know, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie loved to sing pretty songs about flowers and stuff but found their conscience wouldn’t allow them to only sing about that (laughs) so they had to sing about the strife their fellow man was going through.

JC: But, as you have decried in your song “Soul Brother,” so much of the music today is very plastic—there are few artists who are singing songs with messages. Where are the Pete Seegers? They’re veterans like you and your peers who are still putting out good and relevant material but I don’t see many musicians out there with much talent, frankly.

Rundgren: Well, it doesn’t necessarily even have to be “message music,” because the central mean nowadays for discovering new artists is all about American Idol, not the A&R department’s romantic search for new talent (laughs). American Idol is the likely place for the next commercial artists to come out and the audience that show draws just reaffirms how hungry people are for that kind of music you describe, the empty calorie stuff. I don’t think there’s ever been a night on American Idol where all the contestants had to sing protest songs! And I don’t know if that night will ever come (laughs).

In any case, you have to say, for almost any kind of so-called “art,” that it will tend to seek the level of the audience. There was a time when even the average person might have an appreciation for what is called fine art. Before television was the one and only media outlet, people would go to museums and look at paintings. I recall that that world of fine art always seemed a more political and social place than the field of pop art. Of course, pop art is relevant depending on the context. I get the feeling, though, that our current scene is a reaction to the so-called Global War on Terror—that, when people hear music, they just want to completely forget about terrorism.

JC: Let’s talk about your discography. You’ve said in the past that you make your records for yourself and your own enjoyment. That begs the question: do you ever go back and listen to any particular record or song of yours? Is there one that really stands out?

Rundgren: I don’t often go back and listen to my records from years ago. I do, however, listen to my most recent recordings fairly intensely and copiously for a couple of reasons. One is that I’m going to have to go out and play it live so I need to ingrain it to a certain degree. Another is that part of my music evolution is not to repeat things that I’ve done before regardless of the level of success that it achieved. That’s not contrarian, that’s just me. I’m like a shark—I have to keep moving musically or else I atrophy. I don’t dwell on what I’ve done in the past enough to develop that level of affection.

The other problem is that I have trouble with absolutes. You know, name your favorite this or that. Those would be absolutes and I personally live in a world of constant relativity. Change is inherent and stability is really an illusion—it’s just that change is happening so slowly you don’t notice it so you think there’s stability. I’m pretty much unafraid of change as a basic principle. I realize there are changes that are unpleasant and that you regret or would rather not have to go through, but such is life. These are the rules of the game. And constant change is one of the rules.

JC: That would seem to be a very Buddhist approach or theory.

Rundgren: Well I don’t practice any formal sort of religion but, in that sense, I’m very comfortable with a lot of Buddhist philosophy mostly because it doesn’t dwell on questions about the personality of the creator as so many religions do. Original sin to me was Man’s self awareness and as soon as he became aware of himself he did so as relative to all other things and it wasn’t good enough for man to just be one of those things—he had to be the most important thing and that’s why the personality of God was invented. So when people ask me if I’m an atheist I say no, I just don’t think we can understand the nature of what’s at the bottom of all existence. It doesn’t hurt us to think about it but when you become absolutely sure that you know, you’re about as far away as you can possibly get.

JC: Tell us a bit about the recent tour.

Rundgren: Musically we’re moving in a more moderate direction and I’m fine with that. We want to convey high energy and get the crowd exhilarated but, at this particular point, it’s not like we’re going to say vote against this or vote for that—everybody’s tired of voting. Now we have a whole other range of things we need to work on—we’re toiling in the fields, poring over the numbers (laughs), you know. In some ways it appears on the surface to be less heroic but, actually, it’s the steadfastness of it that does make it heroic: The fact that the storms are blowing all around you and yet you still…deliver the mail!

JC: Well whatever you do, take care of your vocal cords: those new songs require a lot of power!

Rundgren: As a matter of fact, my voice is holding up better than any other part of my body at this point!

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Is Haley Barbour Really A Republican?

I'll make this quick for now with a longer update to follow in the next few days. Let me just say, though, that Governor Haley Barbour's endorsement of emminent domain is a travesty. Here we have, once again, a prominent member of the Grand Old Party, the side supposedly FOR property rights, saying that such rights can be thrown out the window if a new, unproven economic project comes down the pike.

Like the late Governor Kirk Fordice, I had strong reservations about the giveaways we threw to Nissan to land that project. Touted as a major catalyst for "job creation," the truth is that jobs actually just "shifted": people left their existing jobs for a few bucks more at Nissan. No jobs were really created: people merely departed existing positions (mainly from local companies) to go with the new company. And all of those spin-off companies that were going to come into being from Nissan? Well, many are now closed.

While local companies and businesses struggle to survive while battling all the regulations, red tape and high taxes they must deal with, the Nissans and Toyotas of the world are invited in on red carpet with lavish incentives and exemptions that we local business people can only dream of.

Now, the Governor of our state says that private property and land should be no obstacle to "economic growth." Love your land? Love that property that's been in your family for generations? Well, if a big, sexy, foreign automaker wants it, you're just out of luck according to the theory of emminent domain.

Governor Barbour is wrong on this. Really wrong. Plus he is betraying the conservative credo by advocating the violation of property rights, a major and logical extension of the sacred rights of individuals. I wish he would pick up a copy of University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein's seminal work on the damage caused by emminent domain,"Takings," but he won't.

Let's hope members of the state Senate do the right thing, like their counterparts in the House, and oppose emminent domain.

Free to a good home: economic perspective

In an unprecedented move today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress for the power to regulate non-banking financial companies. If granted, in addition to power wielded over bailed out banks, the Treasury Department could seize control of financial institutions outside the banking industry, essentially nationalizing our country's financial system.

What does this mean for the average American citizen?

Beyond talking points issued by talking heads, many of us taxpayers don't fully understand how a blended economy based on the principles of capitalism is supposed to work. Some of us decry government controls but lack the knowledge to defend our arguments. Others of us vilify for-profit corporations but don't fully understand the implications of our pro-regulation theories. Fortunately, you don't have to be an economist to understand the economy.

Thanks to the omnipresence of the internet, you don't even have to buy a book. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is online in its entirety (Side note: I don't know who Jim is, but I'm glad we at least have such widespread access Hazlitt's work, which is still relevant more than 60 years since its original publication.).

You're busy. I understand. You don't have time to read all your email, much less a whole book (on economics, no less). Humor a tired, cynical blogger and just read a few chapters:

Chapter 1: The Lesson
Chapter 2: The Broken Window
Chapter 5: Taxes Discourage Production
Chapter 6: Credit Diverts Production
Chapter 14: Saving the X Industry

Of course, reading the book cover to cover would be beneficial, too.
--
Posted by Natalie Criss

How Free Are We?

According to a recent study, Mississippi falls in the "fair to middlin" range.

Conducted by William P. Ruger, Jason Sorens, and Fait Muedini, the Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom (PDF) provides "the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres" Unlike previous studies, the Index seeks to more accurately measure American freedom by including:

1) social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure;
2) far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable;
3) new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.

According to the Index, the freest states are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota. States that fared the worst were New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, California and Maryland. Mississippi falls in the median quintile along with Arkansas, Alabama, Oregon, the Carolinas, Nevada and Florida.

Compared to the Magnolia State's dismal standing on most national studies, this may sound like cause for celebration. Others, however, view this as a map of freedom's lost and ask: how must freer could we be?

Go On, Take The Money And...Run? Loan? Become Nationalized?

The news is probably not totally shocking: 16 WAPT is reporting that, as of today, nine Mississippi-based banks have accepted government "bail out" monies. What this will ultimately means remains to be seen. Personally, however, I was hoping that our locally-owned banks could hold out. As this story unfolds, perhaps we will receive insight into whether the nine banks got an "offer they couldn't refuse" or if they actively sought the funds. For the time being, however, I refer readers to my recently published op-ed on the frenzy, Let The Bailout Games Begin.

Let The Bailout Games Begin

Let The Bailout Games Begin
by Jack Criss

You really almost have to laugh to keep from crying.

Industries and businesses are lining up to get their government bailouts. Business is bad, they lament, and we need help. Billions of dollars worth of help. Where will this money come from? No one really knows—that question is put off for later. This is a national emergency, an unprecedented crisis, we’re told. We must act first and think later.

Can the businesses doing the begging slash their own budgets, maybe take some pay cuts or delete some unnecessary expenses? Well, no, not really. It’s not their fault, you see. It’s this economy, and Bush, and China, and the whole wide world, actually. Besides, blame is unproductive during the crisis. We must receive help to continue on as we always have and keep up a façade of normalcy and productivity, the executives wail. If not, the country will suffer. Detroit and Wall Street are symbols of America, are they not? They must survive. At any expense.

I’m an entrepreneur like many of you. I have lost my shirt many times. I have made terrible business decisions more than once. I wasn’t born into family money nor do I have a man in D.C. or in Jackson who can deliver favors. I survive by taking my case directly to the customer. I have to watch my reserves, if any, as diligently as I possibly can. Never will I have the resources and power like the major corporations and industries begging for federal aid. Yet this is what they are doing and will continue to do. Everybody is on board for the bailout games---everybody. Democrats and Republicans alike have signed up for the money and parrot all the justifications given.

Let me be clear: I don’t want federal money. I don’t want to take my neighbor’s money to prop up my business if I can’t make it on my own. I would deserve to fail and find other work. Yet that is what GM, Wall Street, the newspaper industry, the porno industry, the state of California… just about all the big players are asking for taxpayer-generated money to prolong failing business models.

What we’re witnessing on an unprecedented level is government paternalism as its most flagrant and, possibly, most dangerous. It is not just the “have nots” or the “underprivileged” who must have government assistance we are told; no, today any industry or company that is struggling---for whatever reason; causes are irrelevant---is requesting help, demanding it in many instances and, most ominously, are expected to ask for it. It is the norm in the new, state-sponsored economic reality of 2009.

Autonomy, therefore, is quickly vanishing in this nation, from the individual giving up on paying his credit card balance to the Wall Street firm begging for billions. Any default or negligence in your business model is seen as a claim to federal assistance which, of course, means money siphoned from taxpayers or worthless notes printed by the Federal Reserve to be paid by future generations or China.

What will happen, though, when there are no taxpayers, i.e., when those who still produce and make profits are all begging for assistance themselves or simply closing shop? With the economy sliding as it is, many companies attempting to survive on their own merit are finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Before, these businesses had to compete with others in their field; now, they also have to compete with their own government, the same government that may be financing their competition. Is the game being rigged where you have to get paid to play?


Nudge, nudge

There is a trendy new ideological movement in vogue at the moment, hailed by Democrats and Republicans alike and gaining momentum in our universities’ social science departments. It is called “Nudge”, named after a book by the same title, and one of the book’s co-authors, Cass Sunstein, will head President Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Dr. Sunstein was an advisor to Mr. Obama during the campaign, as well, a prominent member of his inner circle.

While couched in pseudo-individualistic jargon, the book “Nudge” represents an endorsement of government paternalism in ways once thought unimaginable. Sunstein and his co-author, Richard Thaler, lay out arguments by which the government and private sector (an antiquated term today) can improve people’s choices by manipulating the “choice architecture” they face. Call it B.F. Skinner with a smiling face.

One would have thought such flagrant attempts at government paternalism might be greeted with outrage or, at the very least, chuckles. Well, one would have thought that many years ago. In today’s America, however, where bailouts are becoming the norm, morality is whatever can be gotten away with and responsibility is playing along and not making waves, “Nudge” has become all the intellectual rage.

We can rule people’s lives not by brute totalitarian force, this theory says; instead, we can treat them like children or farm animals, dangle the carrots and squeak the toys, and they will do what we want them to do. According to the authors, most Americans are more like Homer Simpson (impulsive and easily fooled) than homo economicus (rational, cool and calculating). They write, “One of our major goals in this book is to see how the world might be made easier, or safer, for the Homers among us.”

Implicit in the Nudge theory is that government and social planners know what’s best for the individuals living in the United States. They don’t, obviously, but the fact that our top executives, highly educated and well-heeled men and women, are defaulting on their autonomy by begging for bailout money, tells me that this nation may be as meek and docile as Sunstein and Thaler believes it to be.

Those who know the history of government intervention will no doubt realize that, in time, “nudge” will become “shove”, and people will be forced to do things that are deemed in the best interest of the community, the nation…the state. Things such as bailing out failing companies and who knows what else.


“Knee Jerks”

The arguments offered in defense of the bailout frenzy are so weak and circular that it’s amazing they get any traction at all. Of course, sadly, most citizens are ignorant of economics so perhaps it’s not surprising. The worst defenses, however, may be those submitted by the so-called defenders of the free market. That has been a surprise.

John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank of North Carolina and erstwhile Ayn Rand devotee, said his company “had” to take the federal monies. If they didn’t, he whined, the other banks that did receive the cash would get an unfair competitive advantage.

And while Governor Haley Barbour said Mississippi may have to take some of the stimulus package bailout money he didn’t want to take it all. I applaud him for the courage to even show that much backbone; however, one national critic fired back at Barbour, admonishing him for taking this semi-principle because, he railed, “(Barbour) will only hurt Mississippi but not taking all the money.”

In both cases, a prime example of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Meanwhile, too many free market defenders worldwide are behaving like “knee jerks”, as I call them, looking only at government to blame while giving businesses a free pass. There is no doubt that government intervention, especially in the market, is damaging. No honest student of history or economics can really challenge that fact.

The market, though, because it should be free, must allow for human errors and mistakes. Sometimes big ones. I and others argue that people should be allowed to correct those mistakes even if it takes years. Regulators, on the other hand, insist on immediate new laws on top of laws, which then encourage cronyism, inflation, and nationalization, i.e., what we have now. Nonetheless, free market advocates cannot become social utopians as we have long accused leftists of being. The big business community has let us down this go around: most didn’t speak up. They mouths were shut even as their hands were out.


Run Along, Children

Free markets require intelligent adults who understand risk in business and prepare for hard times. There are no guarantees. Sometimes you do have to ask for help but you ask it from family members and friends or you reconfigure and approach investors to aid you through incentives that will benefit them, as well. You cut prices or vacations or some other expense. In other words, you do whatever is necessary in a private, freely cooperative manner.

In this recent crisis, though, we have witnessed the obscene spectacle of corporate executives acting worse than the caricatures made of them by many in the media: company loyalty has been thrown out the window along with concern for the employee and the customer. It’s all “Give me mine and to hell with the rest”. When Ayn Rand praised the “virtue of selfishness” she meant rational self-interest not childish, cutthroat narcissism. In business, selfishness properly means making as much money as possible but only by producing and creating products that people will pay for. It’s not very rational to act as a hack parasite of the federal government to keep your golden parachute. Being subsidized is not capitalism.

It’s a jungle out there right now. Those of us who didn’t ask for all the daily economic headaches are having to deal with them anyway. Even if we did want a bailout it won’t be forthcoming to businesses like Profiles Mississippi or yours. I will reiterate what I mentioned in the last issue: what we have to do is take care of each other, support each other and do business with each other as we see fit. Wall Street and the Beltway won’t take care of us nor should they. Let’s take care of ourselves. Not because there’s a law, a nudge, a bailout or a command. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Technology: All Is Not As It Appears

Technology: All Is Not As It Appears
by Richard Phillips

There are at least two instances where you should not trust your senses: mirages and television commercials. Neither is what it appears to be, and in at least one of the two, your misapprehension is deliberate. Television commercials are designed to convince you that something (theirs) is good, while something similar (someone else's) is bad. It puts me in mind of election advertising, that season being just behind us. Neither ever tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

What has brought on this train of thought is the recent series of Apple commercials showing one young man (“Hi, I'm a PC.”) being caught in some rather silly situations by another young man (“Hello, I'm a Mac.”). The whole thrust of these commercials is that the newest Microsoft Windows operating system—Vista—is no good and you should buy Apple's Mac with its infinitely better operating system. To which I say, “Scoff, scoff—bull biscuits!”

The facts are these. When Vista was just first released, it was too powerful and too much a drain on (the then) system components such as the microprocessor, memory, hard drive space and graphics processing. Wow, the four main pieces of a personal computer! The computers at that time did not, repeat, not have enough oomph in those areas as well as in several others. Consequently, the people who upgraded their computer from Microsoft Windows XP to Vista suffered terrible system bog-downs and crashes. That's where Vista first got such a terrible reputation.

In addition, Microsoft had expanded on some of the “fail safe” features, which attempt to make your surfing around the Internet more carefree and safe. Thus, User Account Control asks you, every time you go to install a new program, “Are you sure you want to allow this?” It's like the pop up that occurs when you go to delete a file, “Are you sure you want to delete filename?” They are both safeguards, and in User Account Control's case, it's safeguarding against the inadvertent installation of a program, which piggybacked on an e-mail, which appeared to be from one of your good friends.

Malware, they call it; spy ware, viruses, Trojan Horses, worms and the like. The only problem is that in guarding against inadvertent installations, Microsoft had to include intentional installations of programs you have bought. It's a price you have to pay to be safe, similar to having to take off your shoes as you check in for an airline flight. Annoying, but necessary, in this day and age.

As to the Mac operating system's “freedom” from these same kinds of problems, if Apple had a larger market share of the personal computer marketplace, they'd be in the same boat. The malware programmers (thieves, cutthroats, pirates, hackers) are going to put the majority of their efforts into the area, which will yield the greatest results, and in Apple's case, that ain't it.

Don't get the wrong idea—I like Apple products and the Mac and the iPod and the iPhone are wonderful gadgets, but I also like the truth. Today's PC running Vista is equally wonderful!